Resurrected as a Drow Chapter 2

A blinding white light erupted from the center of my palms like a flash bang that filled the entire temple with its radiance, and the screams this generated made my skull ring.

I didn’t blame those who screamed, however, because the light that sliced into my left eye was hot and painful like molten iron, and it even threatened to scorch my very brain if I left it open for even a second longer. Like a reverse brain-freeze.

Whatever the fuck that was.

However, even with both eyes closed, there was still a marked difference between my regular-- left-- eye, and my right, which I’d taken to calling my dark eye.

From what I could tell, the light was different through my eyelids as well, and when I opened my right, I was stunned to discover I could actually see perfectly fine.

Well, maybe not perfectly because it was still quite bright, and I had to squint a little, but through my dark eye, I was unaffected by the blinding beams pouring from my hands.

Belia The Bitch of Bitch House, or whatever, was now starting to wrinkle under the full blast of the light, so I lifted my arms and directed the last of it at the chrome-like dome above us in the temple’s sanctuary.

The resulting flash scattered the light to encompass the entire space, and even Mother Sevahtra and her clan suffered the same fate as her enemies because I was mostly just going on instinct here.

Then the strange pressure ebbed within me, and I put my hands down and grinned when I saw the light was slow to fade, and everyone was still writhing on the floor in supreme agony.

Meanwhile, I used my time wisely, and while everyone was busy being blinded, I ran up to the nearest fiend who had a dagger readily handy on his armored belt, ripped it off him, and then slashed it through his gut.

From that point on, it was easy, and I fell into a type of trance as some muscle memory came back to me from somewhere long buried, and I fought those who attempted to challenge me in the fading sunlight.

Distantly, I remembered someone I always called Staff Sergeant yelling at me to mind my foot work and keep my knife high and tight. And even though I had no idea who the Staff Sergeant was, the basics of his training came back to me, and I leapt to the side when a large bearbull wearing purple attempted to swipe at me.

Then, with a few practiced slashes, I was able to throw my enemy off balance when he attempted to get back at me with a mighty swing of his sword.

This allowed me to close the distance the moment his flank opened, and with a series of ruthless and rapid stabs, I punctured pretty much all the major organs I could reach.

The giant beast-man went down like a building, and I was onto the next.

And the next, and on, and on until I had amassed a decent pile of bodies by the time my flashbang was in its death throes.

As the light dimmed, I shuttered my right eye and opened the other one so I could see normally with sight that didn’t need to adjust like everyone else, and then I continued my feverish killing spree.

Even though the light power had faded, my body was now imbued with a new kind of energy that fueled my muscles with agility and swiftness, and every time my dagger found its target, I thrilled at the feeling of hot blood spraying over my face and dripping off my forearms.

And, by the time I finally made it back around to Belia, I savored the way I grabbed her around the neck, slammed her back against the stone floor, and then plunged the dagger into her heart.

When I came back to myself, I was panting and shaking slightly from the release of adrenaline zinging through me, and I was startled when someone spoke.

“At least we know he can Rampage like a proper warrior drow,” Dagwyn drawled in her deadpan voice, and she stared down at the two fuckhead guards with blood splattered all over their purple cloaks due to the gaping wounds I slit across their throats.

“R-Rampage?” I croaked out, and then I lost the battle with my weary legs and sat down on the cold stone floor.

“The way you went berserk just now,” Helera chimed in as she sauntered closer to me with a strange expression on her heart-shaped face. It was either an expression of curiosity, or malice.

Probably both, and if that was the case, I should probably be worried, but I was too exhausted to really care just then.

“He should be thrown from our Noble Tower!” one of the Matron Mother’s hobgoblin slaves finally blurted out, and I turned to glare at the weird dog-ape thing with my regular eye. “He is obviously an Omen! He uses nelvar magic!”

“Shut up, Fespius,” Mother Sevahtra snapped and glided up to where I was still sitting next to Belia Bitch Face. Then the Matron Mother glanced at me and raised a thin silver eyebrow as if to say she would deal with me later.

I gave her the smallest of nods to let her know I wasn’t going anywhere, and at this, the Matron Mother broke her austere eye contact with me and then swooped down to address the woman with the dagger still sticking out of her chest.

Apparently, Belia wasn’t quite dead yet, and when the Matron Mother took one finger and pressed straight down on the hilt, Belia gasped as a spray of red blood arced out of her mouth.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Matron Sevahtra clicked her teeth in a cruel imitation of how Belia teased her earlier. “You should have known better than to gloat before you were sure of your victory. What a child’s mistake. But then again, I would expect nothing less from your Mother, Daria. Always was the lazy sort. Sending her children off to do her dirty work.”

“M-My forces will-- ack!” Belia attempted to argue, but Sevahtra pressed down even harder until she had the bitch’s attention.

“Look.” The Matron Mother then snapped her fingers, and the shimmer of something that looked like a golden chain made out of runes broke off her wrist and evaporated into mist. At the same time, the sound of distant explosions could be heard deep below us. Followed by the screams. “Do you hear that? Those are your forces fighting my warriors who have just received my signal.”

Boom. Boom.

“I don’t understand,” Belia said and coughed again until her whole mouth was dark red.

“My warriors would have known to collapse all but the top three floors the moment they got my signal, so your forces are now buried under over a million tons of rubble,” the older woman said.

“B-But that would have killed all of your House members as well!” Belia stuttered out.

My eyes widened. She killed the rest of her house just to win the battle?

“That is the cost of Ascending and keeping your position in Oshara,” Sevahtra spat. “The higher you rise, the greater the loss you must face at times. Something Daria should be aware of. And make no mistake, House Claden’Du will rebuild and keep our station stronger than before. Consider it a mercy you will not be a witness to the Judgement Day House Ozin-Na will face.”

Then the Matron Mother’s eyes glowed a dark red, and she held her hand up with her fingers pointed into a conical shape. She muttered something in an ancient language that made the hair on the back of my neck curl, and suddenly her arm transmuted itself into a black obsidian blade.

With one sharp slash, she sliced off Belia Ozin-Na’s head.

When it rolled to a stop face up, she still had a look of shock on her half wrinkled face, and all three Daughter’s gathered around to look down at it.

“Do you see her skin? She looks so…” Here, Helera trailed off as her expression flickered between disgust and terror until finally settling on something in the middle that made her look like she was suffering a bout of violent indigestion. “She looks so old! What in Void’s name could have done that?”

“Nelvar magicks!” the hobgoblin creep Fespius squawked out again, but Dagwyn silenced him with a sharp elbow to his gut when he tried to butt into the group. “Ack!”

“Shut up, Fes,” Dagwyn growled. “But he might be right. My eyes have barely recovered from that atrocity. Is this what you meant when you asked Drogu for a ‘light in the darkness,’ Tryss?”

I glanced over at the lavender-skinned woman, and she was observing me with such intensity, I felt even more naked than I already was, if that was possible.

“I’m not sure what I meant,” Tryss settled on and trailed her wine-colored eyes down my figure and back up. “But he helped, didn’t he, Mother?”

At this, the Matron Mother crouched down to pick up the severed head of Belia so she could examine it up close. The places where my sun beams blasted the right side of her face were saggy and wrinkled, as if those parts of her skin had aged centuries under the rays of my light, and her eye was a milky white like a marble.

If Belia hadn’t attempted to shield at least one side of her face, she would have been fully blinded and aged into an unrecognizable hag.

It was slightly unsettling to think I could have done something like that, but moreso, I didn’t really know how to feel. One side of me, the unsettled side, recognized this power was destructive and needlessly cruel when it came to killing. There were much more efficient ways to end a life, and that side of me didn’t revel in pain for pain’s sake.

But the other half of me reveled in pain for pain’s sake.

There was something satisfying in slaking my thirst for vengeance on someone so deplorable, and as I looked down at my hands, I couldn’t help but clench my teeth in a feral grin.

I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Fuck that bitch.

“It seems as if you really are a drow,” the Matron Mother finally said, and I looked up into her hard burgundy eyes.

“What else would I be?” I asked without any sarcasm. I really was curious to what she might be thinking because I didn’t know what I was supposed to.

“That ugly blue eye of yours suggests you might be mixed race, but usually mixed race dilutes the magical blood,” she explained as she continued to stare at me, and I wondered if the woman ever blinked. “I’ve never seen such raw power come from one so unrefined. Who did you say you were again?”

Even though I felt like I could take a nice long nap right on the floor where I was, I dragged myself up to my feet so I could try to be proper in the Matron Mother’s presence.

“I’m not very much more knowledgeable than you, just a warning,” I disclaimed before I went on. “The Goddess called me Fynn Draven, but this is all I know.”

“What a strange name,” Tryss said, but unlike her two sisters, she seemed to find my name pleasing instead of odd because she was the only one who wasn’t pulling some kind of face.

“Doesn’t sound very drow,” Helera pouted and flicked her single braid over her shoulder. “I still say he’s to blame for everything.”

“Fyn is the old tongue for ‘light,’ so that fits, and it is the opposite of Na, which is ‘night,’ making it double fitting how you vanquished the Second Daughter of the ‘Heirs to the Night.’” The Matron Mother seemed to be saying this aloud more for her benefit than anyone else, but then her eyes focused back on mine. “Very well Fynn Z-aev-yer. You are now only Fynn, and you must forget the ways of your old House because you are now in service to the House of Claden’Du.”

“Easy. There’s not much to forget,” I said.

“You’re giving the male a name?” Dagwyn screeched. “Already?”

“Weren’t you paying attention, you idiot?” Helera fired at her sister sharper than one of her arrows. “He’s just Fynn now. Fynn nobody. Or slave number one, whichever he responds to most readily, I suppose.”

“I respond to Fynn,” I stated and raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“I bet I could make you respond to a lot more,” the female leered, and I only let my brows tick upward ever so slightly when her ruby gaze lingered on the organ between my legs.

“Don’t be gross, Hel!” Dagwyn snapped, and this set the two off to squabbling again.

“Daughters,” the Matron Mother said idly, but she didn’t seem to be overly bothered by their antics because she was still busy dissecting me with her eyes. “And you will respond to whatever we call you, is that clear, male?”

“Understood, Matron Mother,” I responded dutifully. Part of me, the drow part, knew I had to treat her with the utmost respect if I wanted to live, but the other part of me…

What was the other part of me?

The other part of me wanted to push boundaries. I was just glad I recognized this was not one of those times to do so.

“Since he is a part of your chattel now, Mother, can I have him?” Tryss’ mellow voice slipped into the conversation as smoothly as a silk sheet, and Sevhtra’s merely glanced at her youngest daughter.

“Have him?”

“Yes, Mother,” Tryss said as she bowed her head slightly. “You and my sisters seem to think it is my words in the spell that brought him to us. I would like him.”

“Hmm, I supposed you may have your fun with him, yes,” the Matron Mother said, and both of my eyes flew open wide.

“So, he is indeed mine?” Tryss asked in a way that sounded like she was getting at something specific.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Sevahtra challenged and spiked a flaxen eyebrow up toward her hairline.

“Then say it properly,” Tryss demanded, and she folded her arms over her chest. “Say you, as Matron Mother, will give Fynn to me.”

A tense moment passed in silence, and my heart skipped a beat.

“You slippery little bitch,” Sevahtra finally purred, but she was smiling at her youngest the whole time. “Fine, you’ve earned it, I suppose. I give thee, Tryskaylan, one male drow by the name of Fynn. Do what you wish with him.”

This caught the attention of her other daughters, who had stopped their bickering immediately.

“What?” Helera gasped as she stashed the arrow she’d aimed at Dagwyn’s head. “She gets the male?”

“That’s not fair,” Dagwyn whined as she returned her dual scimitars back to her back scabbard. “Tryss is the reason we have this blight in our House in the first place. Why does she get a reward?”

“Are you saying you’d rather have the ‘blight’ all to yourself, Second Daughter?” Sevahtra questioned. “Seems strange after you call him such a disease.”

“Yeah, Daggy.” The light blue skinned daughter continued to needle her darker skinned sister by attempting to poke her in the ribs. “Now who’s interested in getting Fynn between her sheets?”

“That’s not the point!” Dagwyn erupted like a small volcano, and she bodily shoved her sister away from her in the chest. “I was ready to run out there and fight for this House--”

“Which would have been stupid, seeing as how everyone in our house besides us is now dead,” Helera muttered under her breath and received a swat from the Matron Mother for her trouble.

“Dagwyn, your valor has not escaped my notice, but until I know for certain this interloper means us well, I am giving him to Tryss to mind him personally. It is because you are correct, she is most likely the reason we are stuck with this strange drow male instead of… something pure and female and… useful.”

“Chaos reigns,” I chuckled to myself as some of Drogu’s words started to make sense.

“What did you say?” Sevahtra asked me sharply.

“I… It’s something the Spider Goddess said to me before I woke up amongst you all,” I explained in a steady and neutral voice I hoped she would take as respectful. “When I asked her why she was doing all this, she simply told me that chaos reigns.”

“More proof he is favored by Drogu-ani,” Tryss posited and shrugged a casual shoulder. “Or the opposite, right, Dagwyn?”

“Could be.” Dagwyn clicked her jaw shut as she glowered between Tryss and me. “The Spider Goddess is a trickster by nature and loves to fuck shit up just to make it interesting, so it could be a curse just as much as a blessing. Only time will tell.”

“So, I will do us all a favor and be the one who is responsible for him until then,” Tryss said in a way that made it sound like she was agreeing with Dagwyn instead of arguing with her. “Good idea, Dag.”

“Um… right,” Dagwyn faltered as if she didn’t understand how she’d lost the plot of the argument, but then she simply straightened her spine and nodded her chin down once like the matter was closed.

It was impressive reverse ideology, and when Tryss saw me staring at her, she gave me a subtle wink.

It was fucking… sexy.

“Mother, what are we to do now?” Helera asked, and all of her adolescent antics from before sloughed off her. “Were you honest in what you said about our House? Are we down to what we have here?”

Helera’s question sobered everyone gathered, and I took a moment to glance around at who all were left after Belia’s raid. Aside from the sisters, me, a couple of bull bears, and Fespius, there wasn’t much left of the Matron Mother’s noble House.

“Alas, unless there are any poor souls who managed to reach the top three of the seven floors of Claden’Du, then no, they have surely perished,” Sevahtra said.

“What do you want to do with Ozin-Na’s Second Daughter?” Dagwyn asked and gestured to the head still in the Matron Mother’s hands.

“Make a sack for her,” she ordered and tossed the head to her Second.

The darker-skinned woman caught it with ease and then went about cutting off a decent square of material from one of the unmarked cloaked figures so she could fashion herself a plain sack for the head that she tied at all four corners.

“Shall we make a call to the Matron Council for their assistance in gathering all of the Houses in the Tower to rally against Ozin-Na?” Hel asked and nodded at Tryss.

This seemed to be some sort of signal because Tryss brought her fingers together into a spade-like shape with the first two fingers on each hand touching at the top to make the tip of the spade, and the thumbs meeting as well to form the bottom.

But before the woman could perform whatever task her sister asked her to do, the Matron Mother held up a commanding hand.

“No, wait,” she said. “I’m not yet sure if informing the Council is wise. What if there is more to this plot than meets the eye?”

Tryss lowered her hands, and the glow in her eyes died back down.

“Mother, you are wise, but perhaps a mote paranoid,” Helera said as she rested her hands on her shapely hips. “I think the plot was just what Belia intended, which was to decimate our house Claden’Du. But she failed, so by the city of Oshara Edict’s, we can get the Council to force our neighbors to ravage the House in the Twenty-Seventh station. What’s there to think of?”

“A lot, you foolish girl,” the Matron Mother snapped and then made a particular hand gesture, which forced her daughter’s lips to seal over into a smooth light blue patch of skin that lay flush with the rest of her face.

“Mmm!” Hel attempted to wail as she felt the place where her functioning mouth used to be.

“Hehe,” Dagwyn laughed like an evil gremlin, and I also had to try and hold back my amused chuckle.

“Take heed, Daughters, you have only been named First, Second, and Third due to the deaths of your more experienced and better sisters during the raid. Do. Not. I repeat, do not proceed to talk to me like any of you know what the fuck you are doing,” Sevahtra said in a voice that rose above Hel’s struggling. “There is a time for direct action, and a time in which vengeance must temper and cool. Right now, we have no idea how Belia breached our part of the Tower, and that, my lovelies, is important information we must find out above all else. If we cannot prevent something similar in the future, then what is the point of rebuilding if the foundation of our section of the Tower is prone to weakness?”

“But I thought Nodrin accounted for all the vulnerabilities?” Dagwyn said.

“Well, obviously not, Dag,” Tryss scoffed and crossed her arms, and then she tipped her head toward the doors of the temple as if to say, “remember how we were raided just now, our elder sisters, brothers, chattel, and slaves murdered? Or is the space between your ears filled with air?”

“Heh,” I snorted.

“Hey!” Dagwyn barked, but the muffled mm-mm-mm sound of Helera cracking up without a mouth distracted the feisty female from coming after me.

“Our time to strike is not now,” the Matron Mother reiterated and then flexed her fingers so Helera could have her lips back. “We are the Warriors of the Void…”

“…And the Void is Eternal,” the three sisters said in unison.

“We strike from the shadows of the blessed darkness that Drogu provides,” Sevahtra went on and floated up on a cushion of air as her speech became more impassioned. “Dear Daria Ozin-Na will not know what awaits her once our pieces are all aligned to fall, and I can assure you, Daughters, the tons of rubble crushing her spawn will be nothing to my decimation, and when we are done, she will wish for mercy!”

All at once, my hair stood on end on the back of my long ears, and a roar built within my chest that I released along with the remaining members of Claden’Du.

“Raaaaaaaahhhh!” I raised my voice along with Tryss and Dagwyn beside me, and the power I felt reverberating around the sanctuary of the chapel almost acted as a tangible thing.

More of that magic wind started to whip around in a small tornado in the middle of the circle where I was summoned, and the Matron Mother levitated herself over to the altar.

“Yes!” Sevahtra called and opened her arms wide. “Drogu, hear our cry!”

The whirlwind swirled faster as we all approached and congregated around the circle, and I could feel the magical energy pass through every individual until bolts of obsidian energy limned in violet shot out of the center of each of our chests.

I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to happen or not, but when I glanced at the sisters, they all had matching expressions of What the Ever Loving Spider Goddess all on their faces, so I figured this was a bit out of the norm even for a Priestess who worshiped a Goddess of Chaos.

But the bolt of frenetic energy kept me stuck in place, so I couldn’t move away even if I wanted to.

As it was, nothing hurt, and I decided to be endlessly fascinated with this world and my new existence instead of endlessly coming to terms with things as if it was some sort of crisis.

Granted, not remembering who or what you were only about an hour ago might be a crisis for some, and maybe it was, or maybe I was just really good at compartmentalizing.

That sounded about right.

Whatever the case, I decided this a Crisis Did Not Make.

However, what did seem to be a crisis was how the whirlwind collected all the dark energy it had harvested from all of us and then shot it out directly at the Matron Mother.

“Mother!” Helera screamed right as Sevahtra collapsed over the altar.