#vierna

Nepenthe swaggered in after, her gaze thrown over her shoulder and grinning at someone she’d exchanged greetings with. Where Athalia was all poised and narrow, Nepenthe was broad and expanded to fill the space, bracing a shoulder against the doorframe as she swung that easy smile on Vierna. She wasn’t in her armour, instead wearing comfortable clothes that covered her to the wrists, her pale hair pouring loose over one side of her head.

“Follow me,” Athalia instructed, snapping her fingers thrice like she was waking Vierna from another trance. “Nepenthe will help you.” She pivoted, the click of her heels following her like a second set of footsteps.

Nepenthe crossed the room. Vierna felt more ambushed than gracefully awakened—she didn’t have time to brush her hair or dress, forced out of bed in a simple shift. She counted herself lucky to slip on her shoes. She wondered if Athalia did this on purpose as a means to throw her off-guard or if she was just waiting for Vierna to wake up and didn’t have the patience for touch-ups.

It must have shown on her face, because Nepenthe said, “This is the highest honour, so it’s best not to keep her waiting. We’re going further down, but there’s no lift for it.”

Vierna and Nepenthe spoke like Vierna had no choice, at least not one that left her looking respectable. She doubted they would drag her kicking and screaming to—wherever it was—but refusing would have amounted to sacrilege.

The fog in her mind made talking feel like she was speaking around a mouthful of ooze, anyway. The only reason she could think semi-clearly was Athalia’s greater restoration and Lolth’s presence chipping away at Tharizdun’s efficacy.

Why had she accepted Dumaran’s help at all, if not to lean into Lolth? Was the voice of dissent her own, or planted by the Chained Oblivion?

She accepted Nepenthe’s elbow. Nepenthe hoisted her to her feet and they set off after Athalia, who waited beyond the ambulatory in front of one of the chapel alcoves. Tal’dorei’s refugees were housed in the Heart of Malice cathedral until they figured out who responded best to treatment and could be moved to different lodging.  

Athalia vanished into the stone, the alcove wall hiding her from the civilians trickling in and out of the nave. Vierna started, but Nepenthe tugged her arm. They proceeded through an illusory wall.

They descended a spiral staircase into what must have been the crypt. The ceiling bore down on them, more foreboding, and the crystals were spread further apart, creating a blend of lavender hue and monochrome. Vierna thought this was where she would converse with Lolth, but Athalia led them further, yanking a wall candelabra down on a hinge with a crack. A section to its left ground open, leaving an arched void with more plunging darkness beyond.

Of course. Lolth was a master of deceit—it could never be anything but a labyrinth. Vierna was her own vault of secrets; she never faulted Lolth for it, only saw her as intelligent and doing as she should, a goddess to take example from.

There were no proper stairs, only an uneven stone path on an incline. Vierna began to sweat between Nepenthe’s body and the closed air pressing in on her. It was claustrophobic after the high, vaulting spaces of Dumaran and the cathedral. Nepenthe offered to carry her on her back, but Vierna shook her head—each step strengthened her resolve. Her ankle was sore, sure, but her exhaustion was much deeper than that.

Some interminable time later, after a handful of twists and stretches, the tunnel opened. A church—less grand than the Heart of Malice, almost modest by comparison—waited at the end, set into the rock. They entered through a set of double doors.

Inside was more intimate than the cathedral. The architecture was similar, but shorter. On the far wall was an effigy of Lolth, cut in sharp, flattering shapes. The spider legs of her lower half extended from the wall and curved above a circular pool in the ground. Red gemstones sat in the place of her eyes and decorated her neckline and crown like drops of blood. She looked at ease in her power, eyes half-lidded and mouth drawn in an elegant smile, one of her humanoid arms resting over her chest while the other ascended.

Athalia crossed to a wooden table set against one of the aisle pillars. There were sundry items—ceremonial daggers, vials, a mortar and pestle, sheaves of dried herbs. Nepenthe followed, but casually, allowing Vierna to catch her breath and absorb the temple.

“It works best if you undress,” Athalia said without facing them, voice still a deadpan. Did she have any other tone? She poured from a decanter into a hand-sized bowl and turned to Vierna. “You’re to drink this, then lie in the pool face-up. It’s not deep. You won’t sink.”

She passed the bowl. A murky mud-brown liquid filled it halfway. Vierna lifted it to her nose—she couldn’t place the scent, but it smelled as appetizing as it looked, somewhere between sour and tart. It could have been poisonous.

“What—”

“A broth,” Athalia interrupted.

“From?”

“Bones,” Athalia said, approaching irritation. Vierna couldn’t tell if she was mocking her or not.

“No need to be curt, Athalia,” Nepenthe chided, but sounded amused. “I don’t think Vierna is asking because she won’t drink it, but because she’s curious.”

It was half-true, but Vierna wasn’t going to argue semantics if it got Athalia to explain. She couldn’t do it well, besides, through sign or voice.

Athalia sighed, shoulders dropping. “It’s a mixture of broth made from demon bones and some tea made from mushrooms we grow in the city. It has a tranquilizing effect—it will help open your mind and facilitate a connection.”

So not poison, then, but Vierna hadn’t thought to try anything from a demon because it might have acted like a toxin regardless. When they died, their ichor resembled the unending shadows of the Chained Oblivion. All the same in death. Maybe she should have—maybe she could have used it to her advantage. Maybe—

Moot now. Pointless, too-late ideas.

Vierna didn’t strip, but cupped the bowl in both hands and closed her eyes. The air quivered, plucked, like Lolth lurked in the hidden recesses and Vierna had landed on her web. Did she ever leave?

She sipped the broth first, sputtered, then asserted herself and quaffed it in a few short gulps. It burned, though not to the point of pain. It shifted into a tingling bordering on numbing, warming as it slid down her throat and branched across her chest.

She stepped over to the pool, backing out of her shoes. The water—if it was that—was an impenetrable black. She dipped a toe past the lip. It was the same temperature as her, lukewarm, and had a consistency slightly thicker than water. She eased her feet in. It was ankle-deep, with a shallow dip in the center that might have gone part way up her shins at best.

She lowered herself onto her hip. The broth affected her balance, putting torpor in her limbs—the room had smudged at the edges like charcoal—so she gripped the outer rim of the pool. It looked like she was being swallowed, no longer able to make out her lower half. Nepenthe and Athalia knelt on either side of her.

“Lie down,” Athalia said, more gently now. “Spread your arms and legs.”

Vierna did. It would have been easy to float—her body was weightless—but she refused to let go of the edge, her fingers hooked. If she let go, she would fall, and she didn’t know how far or what waited at the bottom.

“Let go,” Nepenthe urged, her voice a whisper. 

Vierna lowered the back of her head into the liquid. The second she did, the noise from the room was snuffed. Underwater had sound, but even that was gone—no burble of bubbles or murmur of the flow against her ears. Her chemise and hair eddied around her.

She released the edge. It didn’t feel like she was in water, but suspended in air. She wasn’t falling at all.

Nepenthe and Athalia faded from view. The rutilant gems in Lolth’s effigy were the last thing she saw, burning at a low glow. The stone spider-legs wrapping the pool above her were like an embrace—or a cage. She couldn’t decide which.

She wondered if this was what it was like to die without pain, the only way she had ever wanted to die.

—

Losing consciousness had been a lazy drift down a river, but she came to with a jolt like she’d been dropped in a glacial-fed lake. She was lying on cold, hard rock. There was no difference between her eyes being open or closed, so much that she was frightened she’d gone blind. The darkness was absolute. It reminded her of parts of Ruhn-Shak, ruins consumed by writhing shadows. Maybe she had never left after all and the Chained Oblivion was toying with her. Maybe Dumaran was a place of non-existent hope she’d dreamt up out of desperation.

She had her body, though. She groped her way onto her hands and knees. Gradually, silhouettes appeared in the gloom. A cavern gaped around her, the ceiling far out of sight. Pendulous strings of web arced between each other and the walls like banners, noticeable only by the pearly sheen whenever they caught an unseen source of light.

There was a massive entrance—exit?—both in front and behind her. She had no sense of how deep she was; she could have been in any tunnel in the Underdark. No—she’d gone beyond the Underdark and entered the Abyss itself. She was in the Dreadnest.

“Oh, Vierna. My heart sings to see you.”

Vierna snapped her head in the direction of the voice—because it did have direction, coming from the maw of the cave in front of her. A set of eyes opened, the same carmine-red she had passed out under. Then a second. And third. And fourth. Column-thick spider-legs unfurled from the hole, and Lolth emerged.

Vierna had always been tall for a drow, but she was utterly cowed by Lolth. In simple terms, she was a drider—a black spider below the waist with a woman’s body riding on top. Except in addition to her spider appendages, eight humanoid arms branched out of an extended torso. She was layered in a chitinous armour and topped with a heavy, jagged crown. Bone-white hair drifted endlessly into the darkness, seeming to join with her webs.

Vierna felt like her eyes deceived her, but she didn’t want to rub them. Staring without blinking, Lolth’s proportions seemed a little too long, a facsimile of humanity. There were darts of movement on her armour—spiders that, for Lolth, were small, but must have been the size of Vierna’s head. There were an untold amount of eyes on her.

Lolth beamed as she approached, her canines a set of thin, lengthy fangs. Her lips were peeled back over her teeth—it wasn’t a welcoming smile, but a possessive, predatory one. Vierna was frozen to the spot.  

“Come, now,” Lolth cooed, and two middle arms reached for her, plucking Vierna off the floor and setting her on her feet. She didn’t let go straight away, helping Vierna find her balance. Vierna was too stunned to resist. “Poor thing, that’s better.”

Her voice wasn’t what Vierna expected. It was befitting of a queen, regal and mellifluous, wafting to her sweetly and wrapping around her like a shawl of silk. She could see it being as intoxicating as wine, meant to win her over in slow swallows rather than all at once. But then, what had she expected?

Lolth dusted off Vierna’s shift with two other hands and then another took a tress of Vierna’s blanched hair, letting it cascade through her fingers. “Your hair used to be dark, didn’t it? And your magic so much more potent.” All hands left at once, but her face blocked the space in front of her in a sudden snarl. Her eight eyes made it difficult to focus, like Vierna’s vision had quadrupled. “Tharizdun will pay for what its done.”

Vierna croaked, then clutched her throat. The words were still clogged up there.

“Hmm.” One of Lolth’s primary hands came to hover in front of Vierna’s throat. A tapered nail strummed at an unseen tension. She tugged, and something snapped—Vierna gasped, words rushing in.

“Is this real?” she panted.

Lolth chuckled, and it echoed above and behind Vierna, skittering away. The webs and Lolth’s hair shivered around them. “I’m very real. But this—“ she flicked a set of fingers to her den, “—is only real insofar as visions are. You’re not truly in the Dreadnest. I’ve woven this space in your mind as an in-between. You opened the door—I stepped inside.”

Vierna wondered if a simple yes or no would have sufficed.

Lolth’s chuckle raised into a cackle that made Vierna jump. “Oh, but you know things are rarely that simple! A yes or no wouldn’t have satisfied you. Don’t pretend I don’t know you, Vierna.”

So none of her thoughts were private and belonged to her here. Lolth’s smile endured, as if agreeing, but it was logical—Vierna submitted herself to her. They were connected.

“Why did you wish to see me?” Vierna asked.

Lolth drew away. “To help you, my sweet. I despise the Chained Oblivion—I take hope through you that not all is lost. Where the Luxon conceals my children in a light I cannot see into, the Chained Oblivion does the same with a darkness I cannot penetrate. I should be the ruler of darkness, I was banished from the surface—and yet.”

There was a quivering anger under her words that spoke of a loathing that was as ancient and immortal as she was.

“Am I cured, then?” Vierna ventured.

Lolth gave a slow shake of her head. “Not fully. I've done more than a greater restoration can do, but I can still see the Chained Oblivion’s…mark, in you. But you’re where you belong, closer to me; the more time passes here, the more its influence will erode. You will be yourself again.”

“Will I?” Doubt clouded her voice.

“I've been watching you for longer than you know, Vierna.” Lolth’s hands clasped in front of her, then expanded, and like a cat’s cradle strung to her fingers, a web formed between them. “I can trace your bloodline back—families are webs to me as much as they are trees to others.” Little flecks filed along the strands, in and out, expanding and spiralling. “You’ve travelled so very far. You have always struck first. You’re accomplished; where others would squander their gift of magic, you use creativity and resilience to not just survive, but elevate yourself. My Children of Malice need that.”

She closed the web with a booming clap. “I see an auspicious future for you, Vierna. I want to help you get closer to it, to who you’re meant to be.”

“I—” Vierna swallowed, clutching the words, hoping to make them stick. It wasn’t lost on her what Lolth’s blessing meant, how many would have killed for it in Tal’dorei. Above all, she was grateful to be closer to being free of Tharizdun. She bowed her head. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure.” Lolth leaned in again and tipped Vierna’s face up. The back of another hand caressed her cheek. Lolth’s skin was marble smooth, but her knuckles were bony and her touch was chilly. “I cannot stay—occupying your mind puts stress on the body. But fear not, for I’m never far, and we’ll speak again.”

Two fingers closed her eyes.

Vierna thrashed awake, flinging water. She tasted salt, then bile as she bent over and vomited violently onto the cobblestone. It was a torrent of black goo and whatever broth she’d consumed before. She heaved until she was empty and nothing but spittle and acid drooled out—it was then she noticed someone rubbing soft circles into her back, and another keeping wet hair away from her face. The palm between her shoulder blades belonged to Nepenthe, thicker, and the one holding her hair was Athalia.

Lolth was right—she wasn’t fully free, and would likely never be the same again, but it felt like several more fingers had been prised from the hand around her throat.

But maybe they are the same, some small part of him thinks, as he stares down at her in the dark. If this is how she feels—if this is how he felt, tearing his eyes from the blood bathing Alfira’s torn corpse—that slivered spark of good she seems to see in him might just be real. “But what I’ve found helpful, myself,” he says, reaching to brush a drying piece of Glut’s flesh from her cheek with his thumb, “is knowing there’s someone I can talk to. Knowing I’m not alone.” He lets his hand linger, a few moments, breath in and breath out, as he looks for something like permission—the way her lips part, the quick glance she gives his own—before he closes the distance with violent want. She makes a noise of surprise, then a hunger of her own, as they stumble back towards the stone, his hands firmly cupping her chin, grasping her waist, hers softly in his hair, and he loses himself in her mouth, the way she moves against him as he takes one wrist and pins her to the wall. He doesn’t know how long he stays there, kissing her, but when he pulls away he sees her lipstick spread dark across her face, can tell from the amused glint in her eye that it must also coat his own. Like blood, some forgotten thought whispers: exultant, breath fast, a taste like no other. But he quite likes shared breath, too, and he leans in to take more.