The sun burns away the wise; the fool embraces the light above Droweblith. The wise embrace E’lith; her darkness embraces the strong; A gift from Kro'henlith to the Drow. –Dreketh, A high priestess of Kro’henlith
“Kro’henlith”, Rykzir corrected Truhrgar. “The ‘H’ is almost silent, subtle, but present.” The way the dvergar pronounced the sound with guttural phlegm made his fingers tap the hilt of his dagger with jealousy for the sacred name of the goddess. He looked over to the gray-skinned dwarf; his scraggly beard was a mockery to his own hairless jawline.
“Apologies, my lord,” he replied, tightly rolling the scroll he was quoting from. Truhrgar then leaned back his head exposing a thick artery in the neck. Rykzir released his hand from the hilt and slid it along the cushion of the chaise.
“What of these candles you brought me?” he asked as he lay on his side, propping himself up on his elbow. He glowered in the light of a mélange flame which burned, without heat or smoke, in a mantled hearth along the wall before him. Once summoned, the undying flame would appear to give off light until dispelled.
As Truhrgar stepped between the Drow and the hearth, he cast a stark shadow that barely contrasted with Rykzir’s violet-skinned, muscular thigh and abdomen. He set on the table a stone box engraved with a spider's web, as well as a bowl of water next to it. He bowed slightly before turning to kneel before the hearth.
Hewn into a thermal vein, it contained a number of loose stones which drew their heat, not from the undying flame, but from the surrounding rock. He grabbed one, stood up, and slowly sank his thick, calloused hands into the water which began to bubble and hiss with steam from the heat of it.
Rykzir’s eyes dimmed as he squinted with anticipation or boredom, he was not yet sure. Truhrgar removed the lid to the stone box, revealing three, dark amber-colored candles.
“If our Matron chooses you to consort Lolketh,” he paused while Rykzir groaned at the thought. “Ritual candles, such as these, contain an important ingredient with which to weave a powerful magic, should you become more proficient.”
“Should?” Rykzir scoffed and locked his fingers across his stomach.
“Nothing is certain in the house of Qu’eblith,” the dvergar struggled to form the beginning of the surname of Rykzir’s family. He placed one of the candles into the boiling water.
“How ever did you serve my great-aunt for so long with such enunciation?”
“Our matron…” he paused, reached his hand into the scalding water and pulled a wick as white as a Drow’s hair from the melted wax. “…notices my worth.”
“And what worth has a slave?” Rykzir asked, his keen eyes discerning that the dvergar, through all his wrinkles, winced in pain.
“A slave is not content with his place. I am content. Do you know what makes a candle, my lord?” He gulped anxiously, and realized he forgot that Rykzir did not like an emphasis of things he did not know.
“Does our matron allow you speak to her in such a way?”
He did not expose his neck this time, but held the thin strand taut between his stubby fingers. “No, my–”.
“Besides, candles are for Altyrdrow and even lesser races,” Rykzir interrupted, waving his free hand callously.
“Tallow candles yes, but ritual candles, no. Ritual candles are used by high priestesses and unwittingly, but, necessarily, preserve a useful material within the montan wax,” Truhrgar said.
“What is montan wax?” Rykzir asked while admiring the depth and complexity of color of the candle’s melted body floating on the surface of the boiling water.
“It is extracted by a complex process, from seams of suffocating rocks that burn, which the dvergar call trykvoldr, and which the Drow care nothing of and have no name for. But the montan wax, once prepared, burns cleaner and brighter than common tallow,” he drew attention to the strand taut between his fingers, plucked it, and it sounded like a feeble harp.
“Ach, a musician’s ear after all,” the dvergar quipped.
Intrigued, the Drow stood up from the chaise. His long, white hair illuminated as though it were amber in the arcane firelight. His muscular, well-articulated body lustered purple as if it were some distantly-forgotten, moonless midnight. He walked past the table exposing his naked backside to the gray dwarf.
“What use does it have to me?” he turned and asked. Truhrgar dared not show his disdain for the decadent phallic display.
“My lord, the ephemeral spider walks between this world and the next. It is a creature as hard as stone and yet, seemingly at will, a smoke or vapor.” He skimmed the wax from the water, squeezed it into a ball in his hands, and saved it in a pouch. In the cleaned, boiling water, he washed and set aside the silken strand. “This unique phenomenon can be yielded from their silk.” He swapped the cooled stone with another heated one from the hearth, bringing the water back to roiling, then placed the remaining candles into it.
“To which purpose?”
“My lord?” Truhrgar held the strand humbly in his hand. Rykzir, perceiving his body language, knelt to one knee, but held a tight grip on the dagger lying on the chaise. “Keep these strands in your hair, if you learn the spell, then should urgency require, feel for the double knots. Following the strand between your fingers, cast the spell.” Rykzir marveled at how such stubby fingers could tie such a petite strand, but the dvergar were renowned for their craftwork.
“What is the spell?”
Truhrgar skimmed the last of the wax and saved it in his pouch, then cleaned the remaining silk strands and finished knotting them into Rykzir’s hair. He reached into the box that contained the candles and removed a false door, pulling out a rolled parchment from the hidden section. “Manuscribe this into your spell book; I cannot read Drower.”
“Can you read at all?” Rykzir snidely asked, and snatched the parchment. He moved away from the bright light of the hearth fire to the other side of his chamber and sat within an oriel window. He rolled out the scroll along his folded legs and felt the cool draft against his face as he poured over the arcane script.
The glint of the dagger’s blade in the fire light caught Truhrgar’s eye and he saw his opportunity. He deftly examined it, smelling that the poisoned edge was still fresh. He tucked it carefully between his gauntlet and burly forearm.
“Slave, bring me my ink and quill.”
Truhrgar paced to a desk drawer and placed the scriber’s tools and a needle onto an obsidian board with folding legs. He did not tremble as he made his way to his lord, hiding his forearms beneath the scriber’s table. Rykzir came across a confusing script and, meditating upon it, looked out the window. He admired how far he saw in the darkness of the cavern, punctuated by magical lights of many colors, whatever the caster chose.
The towers of Metzyr’eblith rose into the ceilings of the caverns, their colorful luminosity disappearing into the heights. But, in the Dregs below the towers, were always the dim yellow of candle light, not even a bright yellow like the ritual candles when burned. Beyond the city, he saw the Mer shimmering from some towers which rose up from its waters. At such distance, even the brightest light had no color and he instead imagined the colors of the waters and distant cavern walls from his past trysts.
“Slave, do any dvergar have alchemy to change the color of the candle light?” he asked as his mind wandered.
“Yes, with various salts and minerals, my lord.” He set the table over Rykzir’s thighs, careful not to brush his lord with his hairy arms, or the hilt of the dagger he now guarded with his palm. With the motion of a wyrm, Truhrgar’s arms struck at Rykzir’s neck and face. His hilted hand twisted to cover the Drow’s mouth while his free hand drew the blade just enough to slide across the dark neck. Careful not to cut himself, for a drop of blood would indicate paralysis and inevitable combing of his flesh. “You should not have forgotten this,” he growled in a menacing voice, and looked at the dagger. He felt the hot breath of Rykzir’s laughter through the palm of his hand and moved it enough to hear him speak.
“You have taught me well, old slave,” he chuckled and looked down. Truhrgar saw near his waist the faint glow of green swirls in Rykzir’s open palm. “We would have joined each other in death.”
“You should not treat your death as equally as mine, you are Vulgyrdrow,” he said and stood up releasing his grip. He looked down at the spell forming in his lord’s hand and smirked. “Acid to my crotch? What a horrible way to die.”
“I could smell you, and the poison of my blade, crossing the room.”
Truhrgar looked down and, smelling his shoulders, he scowled at the pungency. “Have you kept up on practicing battle spells, my lord?”
“I have,” Rykzir replied and wrapped each end of the scroll around two spools of polished bone affixed to the table. Turning them, he rolled the scroll until he was at the beginning of the script. “And my spell book?”
“You commanded, I obeyed. Next time, be more specific.” He set the dagger upon a small pedestal beside the oriel window and went back for Rykzir’s request. He asked from across the room. “What do you think of the spell?”
“It is fascinating, older than what I expected for an invisibility spell.”
“It’s not an invisibility spell,” the dvergar cleared his throat as he brought over a tome bound in flesh. Its spine and edges riveted in drowersteel plates that glinted in the flickering firelight. The flesh was dried and leathered, stretched over tortoise shell and bone to give it a hard cover.
Rykzir read down the lines of script again, turning the spools when needed. “The ephemeral spider?”
“Good, my lord. What about it?”
“This spell consumes it,” he replied as Truhrgar laid the spell book upon the center of the scriber’s table, below the scroll.
“And you detect some invisibility?”
He looked through the scroll, pausing where he could make more sense of the script. “Plane shifting.”
Satisfied with his pupil’s answer, Truhrgar walked to the hearth and grabbed the cold stone from the bowl and set it upon the others in the hearth. It sizzled and hissed as the water boiled off. “Manuscribe the scroll, my lord, never lose those pages. It is far more useful than any invisibility spell.”
“How have you come across such arcane magic?” Rykzir asked. “And before the Matron’s test. I cannot possibly learn this in time.”
“No, I most certainly think you could not.” Truhrgar laughed like a deep drum. “If you could, you would be greater than any mage in recorded lore. But, to answer your question, the library of Qu’eblith is a vast treasure of some of the most arcane in Metzyr’eblith. It would be a travesty were any of it lost.”
Rykzir turned the spools as the dvergar walked up beside him, setting a vial on the pedestal next to the dagger. He plucked the needle from the table, and Rykzir heard the puncture of his skin. It sounded tough and reminded him of punching the leather of a belt. Truhrgar stepped before his lord, with a cloth pressed against his wounded wrist, and held out the vial filled with blood.
He took the vial and thanked him with the wave of his hand. Placing it in a hollow of the table, he vigorously stirred it with his plumed quill before dipping the tip into a dried cake of ink. The dyes were all reddish hues of a multicolored pallet once mixed with the blood. He stirred the vial again, unconcerned that the little bit of color might taint the redness within. A bit of coagulant clung to the quill which he promptly flung out the window without regard to where it landed.
“You have not told me in all these kuryls if the blood is a requisite for the arcane or merely aesthetic.”
“Thus, it has been since before your mother’s mother. Thousands of kuryls before I was born.”
“This is why I hardly know how a candle is made,” Rykzir quipped about his cryptic answer. He peered at the script, sometimes pausing on a single word, mediating on its meaning and which colored ink to use for each letter. He just finished the first line when he heard commotion from the atrium below. “Slave, bring me my apparel and set this aside.” He motioned for Truhrgar to remove the table and fixated his gaze to the house guards, with their black-lacquered, drowersteel armor that plated together like the chitinous husk of a ban’thwil.
The house jarl yelled something to the gate’s watch, but it was muffled under the lockstep of the marching order. Eight dvergar smoothly stepped through the pointed cinquefoil arch, two carrying each of four legs which stretched out in front of the dark-shelled litter. Followed by eight more slaves carrying the four legs that stretched behind. It had a ghastly arachnoid appearance. As it passed, it caught the flicker of the undying flames which lined the atrium, lighting it with an occasional white opalescence.
“Our matron has arrived. It’s not even eight,” Rykzir said while inspecting a terrarium across the room. Inside was a little tyl spider spinning a web, it filled in six of thirteen sections and was halfway finished with the seventh. From afar, he saw each filament of the spider’s work, while Truhrgar had to lean in close to get a better look.
“Is your cousin with her?” he asked, while tapping on the crystal shell.
Rykzir looked to the litter which stopped in the middle of the atrium, surrounded by house guard. Behind and to the right, he saw their high priestess walk forward, her flowing gown waving like the Mer in Lolketh’s hands as she followed close behind, keeping it off the stone.
“Yes,” he longingly said, gazing upon her beauty, but hesitant at the thought of consorting with her. He didn’t want the responsibility, or the publicity. Were it up to him, he would live out his kuryls in the tower as a mage in obscurity. Though, as he watched their matron’s consort exit the litter first, commanding the respect of even the Drowess of the guard, he thought the power would be nice.
Truhrgar brought him an indigo-blue cloak with a blood-red hem, its illuminated embroidery shone in the light of the fire. He stood up and slipped it around his shoulders, pulling from the nape his silk-white hair, which flowed to the middle of his back. Truhrgar returned the scriber’s table to the desk and looked over at his lord, who sat back down to lace his boots around dark, slender pants. Rykzir clasped his belt with a silver buckle, synched his cloak, and headed for the door.
“My lord,” Truhrgar abruptly stopped him.
Caught by his absent-mindedness, Rykzir turned, retrieved the dagger from the pedestal and sheathed it in a strap along his chest that held the cloak closed. At the door, the slave handed him his spell book. He looked at the cover a moment, then placed it in a satchel that hung from the side of his belt.
“Now you look like a proper mage.”
Rykzir motioned his hand and crooked his fingers, muttering an incantation, then smelled pleasantly musk. “Let’s go greet our matron.”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Read the first chapters. Feel free to critique. Will link the next chapters at the end of the first. Two stories running so far.
Chapter 1
The sun burns away the wise; the fool embraces the light above Droweblith.
The wise embrace E’lith; her darkness embraces the strong;
A gift from Kro'henlith to the Drow.
–Dreketh, A high priestess of Kro’henlith
“Kro’henlith”, Rykzir corrected Truhrgar. “The ‘H’ is almost silent, subtle, but present.” The way the dvergar pronounced the sound with guttural phlegm made his fingers tap the hilt of his dagger with jealousy for the sacred name of the goddess. He looked over to the gray-skinned dwarf; his scraggly beard was a mockery to his own hairless jawline.
“Apologies, my lord,” he replied, tightly rolling the scroll he was quoting from. Truhrgar then leaned back his head exposing a thick artery in the neck. Rykzir released his hand from the hilt and slid it along the cushion of the chaise.
“What of these candles you brought me?” he asked as he lay on his side, propping himself up on his elbow. He glowered in the light of a mélange flame which burned, without heat or smoke, in a mantled hearth along the wall before him. Once summoned, the undying flame would appear to give off light until dispelled.
As Truhrgar stepped between the Drow and the hearth, he cast a stark shadow that barely contrasted with Rykzir’s violet-skinned, muscular thigh and abdomen. He set on the table a stone box engraved with a spider's web, as well as a bowl of water next to it. He bowed slightly before turning to kneel before the hearth.
Hewn into a thermal vein, it contained a number of loose stones which drew their heat, not from the undying flame, but from the surrounding rock. He grabbed one, stood up, and slowly sank his thick, calloused hands into the water which began to bubble and hiss with steam from the heat of it.
Rykzir’s eyes dimmed as he squinted with anticipation or boredom, he was not yet sure. Truhrgar removed the lid to the stone box, revealing three, dark amber-colored candles.
“If our Matron chooses you to consort Lolketh,” he paused while Rykzir groaned at the thought. “Ritual candles, such as these, contain an important ingredient with which to weave a powerful magic, should you become more proficient.”
“Should?” Rykzir scoffed and locked his fingers across his stomach.
“Nothing is certain in the house of Qu’eblith,” the dvergar struggled to form the beginning of the surname of Rykzir’s family. He placed one of the candles into the boiling water.
“How ever did you serve my great-aunt for so long with such enunciation?”
“Our matron…” he paused, reached his hand into the scalding water and pulled a wick as white as a Drow’s hair from the melted wax. “…notices my worth.”
“And what worth has a slave?” Rykzir asked, his keen eyes discerning that the dvergar, through all his wrinkles, winced in pain.
“A slave is not content with his place. I am content. Do you know what makes a candle, my lord?” He gulped anxiously, and realized he forgot that Rykzir did not like an emphasis of things he did not know.
“Does our matron allow you speak to her in such a way?”
He did not expose his neck this time, but held the thin strand taut between his stubby fingers. “No, my–”.
“Besides, candles are for Altyrdrow and even lesser races,” Rykzir interrupted, waving his free hand callously.
“Tallow candles yes, but ritual candles, no. Ritual candles are used by high priestesses and unwittingly, but, necessarily, preserve a useful material within the montan wax,” Truhrgar said.
“What is montan wax?” Rykzir asked while admiring the depth and complexity of color of the candle’s melted body floating on the surface of the boiling water.
“It is extracted by a complex process, from seams of suffocating rocks that burn, which the dvergar call trykvoldr, and which the Drow care nothing of and have no name for. But the montan wax, once prepared, burns cleaner and brighter than common tallow,” he drew attention to the strand taut between his fingers, plucked it, and it sounded like a feeble harp.
“An ephemeral spider’s silk?” Rykzir’s pointed ears turned toward the thing.
“Ach, a musician’s ear after all,” the dvergar quipped.
Intrigued, the Drow stood up from the chaise. His long, white hair illuminated as though it were amber in the arcane firelight. His muscular, well-articulated body lustered purple as if it were some distantly-forgotten, moonless midnight. He walked past the table exposing his naked backside to the gray dwarf.
“What use does it have to me?” he turned and asked. Truhrgar dared not show his disdain for the decadent phallic display.
“My lord, the ephemeral spider walks between this world and the next. It is a creature as hard as stone and yet, seemingly at will, a smoke or vapor.” He skimmed the wax from the water, squeezed it into a ball in his hands, and saved it in a pouch. In the cleaned, boiling water, he washed and set aside the silken strand. “This unique phenomenon can be yielded from their silk.” He swapped the cooled stone with another heated one from the hearth, bringing the water back to roiling, then placed the remaining candles into it.
“To which purpose?”
“My lord?” Truhrgar held the strand humbly in his hand. Rykzir, perceiving his body language, knelt to one knee, but held a tight grip on the dagger lying on the chaise. “Keep these strands in your hair, if you learn the spell, then should urgency require, feel for the double knots. Following the strand between your fingers, cast the spell.” Rykzir marveled at how such stubby fingers could tie such a petite strand, but the dvergar were renowned for their craftwork.
“What is the spell?”
Truhrgar skimmed the last of the wax and saved it in his pouch, then cleaned the remaining silk strands and finished knotting them into Rykzir’s hair. He reached into the box that contained the candles and removed a false door, pulling out a rolled parchment from the hidden section. “Manuscribe this into your spell book; I cannot read Drower.”
“Can you read at all?” Rykzir snidely asked, and snatched the parchment. He moved away from the bright light of the hearth fire to the other side of his chamber and sat within an oriel window. He rolled out the scroll along his folded legs and felt the cool draft against his face as he poured over the arcane script.
The glint of the dagger’s blade in the fire light caught Truhrgar’s eye and he saw his opportunity. He deftly examined it, smelling that the poisoned edge was still fresh. He tucked it carefully between his gauntlet and burly forearm.
“Slave, bring me my ink and quill.”
Truhrgar paced to a desk drawer and placed the scriber’s tools and a needle onto an obsidian board with folding legs. He did not tremble as he made his way to his lord, hiding his forearms beneath the scriber’s table. Rykzir came across a confusing script and, meditating upon it, looked out the window. He admired how far he saw in the darkness of the cavern, punctuated by magical lights of many colors, whatever the caster chose.
The towers of Metzyr’eblith rose into the ceilings of the caverns, their colorful luminosity disappearing into the heights. But, in the Dregs below the towers, were always the dim yellow of candle light, not even a bright yellow like the ritual candles when burned. Beyond the city, he saw the Mer shimmering from some towers which rose up from its waters. At such distance, even the brightest light had no color and he instead imagined the colors of the waters and distant cavern walls from his past trysts.
“Slave, do any dvergar have alchemy to change the color of the candle light?” he asked as his mind wandered.
“Yes, with various salts and minerals, my lord.” He set the table over Rykzir’s thighs, careful not to brush his lord with his hairy arms, or the hilt of the dagger he now guarded with his palm. With the motion of a wyrm, Truhrgar’s arms struck at Rykzir’s neck and face. His hilted hand twisted to cover the Drow’s mouth while his free hand drew the blade just enough to slide across the dark neck. Careful not to cut himself, for a drop of blood would indicate paralysis and inevitable combing of his flesh. “You should not have forgotten this,” he growled in a menacing voice, and looked at the dagger. He felt the hot breath of Rykzir’s laughter through the palm of his hand and moved it enough to hear him speak.
“You have taught me well, old slave,” he chuckled and looked down. Truhrgar saw near his waist the faint glow of green swirls in Rykzir’s open palm. “We would have joined each other in death.”
“You should not treat your death as equally as mine, you are Vulgyrdrow,” he said and stood up releasing his grip. He looked down at the spell forming in his lord’s hand and smirked. “Acid to my crotch? What a horrible way to die.”
“I could smell you, and the poison of my blade, crossing the room.”
Truhrgar looked down and, smelling his shoulders, he scowled at the pungency. “Have you kept up on practicing battle spells, my lord?”
“I have,” Rykzir replied and wrapped each end of the scroll around two spools of polished bone affixed to the table. Turning them, he rolled the scroll until he was at the beginning of the script. “And my spell book?”
“You commanded, I obeyed. Next time, be more specific.” He set the dagger upon a small pedestal beside the oriel window and went back for Rykzir’s request. He asked from across the room. “What do you think of the spell?”
“It is fascinating, older than what I expected for an invisibility spell.”
“It’s not an invisibility spell,” the dvergar cleared his throat as he brought over a tome bound in flesh. Its spine and edges riveted in drowersteel plates that glinted in the flickering firelight. The flesh was dried and leathered, stretched over tortoise shell and bone to give it a hard cover.
Rykzir read down the lines of script again, turning the spools when needed. “The ephemeral spider?”
“Good, my lord. What about it?”
“This spell consumes it,” he replied as Truhrgar laid the spell book upon the center of the scriber’s table, below the scroll.
“And you detect some invisibility?”
He looked through the scroll, pausing where he could make more sense of the script. “Plane shifting.”
Satisfied with his pupil’s answer, Truhrgar walked to the hearth and grabbed the cold stone from the bowl and set it upon the others in the hearth. It sizzled and hissed as the water boiled off. “Manuscribe the scroll, my lord, never lose those pages. It is far more useful than any invisibility spell.”
“How have you come across such arcane magic?” Rykzir asked. “And before the Matron’s test. I cannot possibly learn this in time.”
“No, I most certainly think you could not.” Truhrgar laughed like a deep drum. “If you could, you would be greater than any mage in recorded lore. But, to answer your question, the library of Qu’eblith is a vast treasure of some of the most arcane in Metzyr’eblith. It would be a travesty were any of it lost.”
Rykzir turned the spools as the dvergar walked up beside him, setting a vial on the pedestal next to the dagger. He plucked the needle from the table, and Rykzir heard the puncture of his skin. It sounded tough and reminded him of punching the leather of a belt. Truhrgar stepped before his lord, with a cloth pressed against his wounded wrist, and held out the vial filled with blood.
He took the vial and thanked him with the wave of his hand. Placing it in a hollow of the table, he vigorously stirred it with his plumed quill before dipping the tip into a dried cake of ink. The dyes were all reddish hues of a multicolored pallet once mixed with the blood. He stirred the vial again, unconcerned that the little bit of color might taint the redness within. A bit of coagulant clung to the quill which he promptly flung out the window without regard to where it landed.
“You have not told me in all these kuryls if the blood is a requisite for the arcane or merely aesthetic.”
“Thus, it has been since before your mother’s mother. Thousands of kuryls before I was born.”
“This is why I hardly know how a candle is made,” Rykzir quipped about his cryptic answer. He peered at the script, sometimes pausing on a single word, mediating on its meaning and which colored ink to use for each letter. He just finished the first line when he heard commotion from the atrium below. “Slave, bring me my apparel and set this aside.” He motioned for Truhrgar to remove the table and fixated his gaze to the house guards, with their black-lacquered, drowersteel armor that plated together like the chitinous husk of a ban’thwil.
The house jarl yelled something to the gate’s watch, but it was muffled under the lockstep of the marching order. Eight dvergar smoothly stepped through the pointed cinquefoil arch, two carrying each of four legs which stretched out in front of the dark-shelled litter. Followed by eight more slaves carrying the four legs that stretched behind. It had a ghastly arachnoid appearance. As it passed, it caught the flicker of the undying flames which lined the atrium, lighting it with an occasional white opalescence.
“Our matron has arrived. It’s not even eight,” Rykzir said while inspecting a terrarium across the room. Inside was a little tyl spider spinning a web, it filled in six of thirteen sections and was halfway finished with the seventh. From afar, he saw each filament of the spider’s work, while Truhrgar had to lean in close to get a better look.
“Is your cousin with her?” he asked, while tapping on the crystal shell.
Rykzir looked to the litter which stopped in the middle of the atrium, surrounded by house guard. Behind and to the right, he saw their high priestess walk forward, her flowing gown waving like the Mer in Lolketh’s hands as she followed close behind, keeping it off the stone.
“Yes,” he longingly said, gazing upon her beauty, but hesitant at the thought of consorting with her. He didn’t want the responsibility, or the publicity. Were it up to him, he would live out his kuryls in the tower as a mage in obscurity. Though, as he watched their matron’s consort exit the litter first, commanding the respect of even the Drowess of the guard, he thought the power would be nice.
Truhrgar brought him an indigo-blue cloak with a blood-red hem, its illuminated embroidery shone in the light of the fire. He stood up and slipped it around his shoulders, pulling from the nape his silk-white hair, which flowed to the middle of his back. Truhrgar returned the scriber’s table to the desk and looked over at his lord, who sat back down to lace his boots around dark, slender pants. Rykzir clasped his belt with a silver buckle, synched his cloak, and headed for the door.
“My lord,” Truhrgar abruptly stopped him.
Caught by his absent-mindedness, Rykzir turned, retrieved the dagger from the pedestal and sheathed it in a strap along his chest that held the cloak closed. At the door, the slave handed him his spell book. He looked at the cover a moment, then placed it in a satchel that hung from the side of his belt.
“Now you look like a proper mage.”
Rykzir motioned his hand and crooked his fingers, muttering an incantation, then smelled pleasantly musk. “Let’s go greet our matron.”
Read the first chapters. Feel free to critique. Will link the next chapters at the end of the first. Two stories running so far.
Simeon Tor:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/story-lore/34598-simeon-tor-chapter-1-the-heat-of-battle
The Heart of the Drow:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/story-lore/36014-heart-of-the-drow-chapter-1
This is the most edited Chapter 1 so far, so re-posted for anyone who wants to read it, would love feedback.
Read the first chapters. Feel free to critique. Will link the next chapters at the end of the first. Two stories running so far.
Simeon Tor:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/story-lore/34598-simeon-tor-chapter-1-the-heat-of-battle
The Heart of the Drow:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/story-lore/36014-heart-of-the-drow-chapter-1