#think the little mermaid but instead he is a drider

[mel-0n-earth]

BG3 February Writing Challenge: Day 3

Day Three (SFW): First encounter with their love interest (LI)

Link to the original prompt list

[Again, I'm using this writing challenge as an excuse to develop some ideas I had for a Kar'niss x Tav fic. I wrote a bit about my OC Tav in my fills for Day One and Day Two.]

Shadows crawled and swirled and gripped and strangled like so many vines in a gossamer jungle of night. Yes, as did sun bring forth seed from soil, so did shadow draw the Lady’s deeds into fruition. Yet Kar’niss could not thrive in such darkness as did his Lady, no. No, no, no—it was his Majesty’s light that guided him through throngs of gloom and rot to seek out followers anew, to lead the acolytes to her temple atop the moonlit tower. He would do as she asked, for as long as she asked. What more had he than her voice like molten gold in his fractured mind?

She spoke to him now—whispers crawling like spiderlings, or more aptly, wriggling like a worm. Lead, it said. Lead them to the tower. And pleased he was to appease his Mistress.

Then a shadow, a flicker in a corner, leaving a trace like the smoking wick of a snuffed candle. Something was here, waiting, watching. For whom? Or what, for that matter?

The Lady bristled.

“’Ere, web arse, something moved up there,” the goblin said, voice crunching like tiny bones. “Want me to drag it out?”

A glimmer, a flash in his mind, like branches of lightning connecting in the sky and driving earthward in a shower of spark and dirt. Then, a figure where shadow once was, a sole figure standing defiant amidst the gloom—no, no, not any soul. True soul.  

Such a strange sight to decipher in the dark—neither male nor female, drow but not drow. Such an oddity would be lost in the rank and file of Menzoberranzan, swallowed in the limen of their placelessness. A rancid giggle escaped his throat, cackling, keening.

“Such a strange servant you have chosen, my Queen. Yet even drow have folded in your dark. How have they survived? Where is their lantern?”

A raised brow, a downturned mouth, reading, measuring, deciding. And yet, unafraid. Strange to see, so very strange.

“The Absolute guided me here,” they declared (such assurance to their voice—warm, regal even. Even if Kar’niss could not decipher their place in the grand design, yet it seemed this one knew it well, wore it like a mantle). “She said I was to take yours.”

Oh, how his mind spun with that. Loyal he had remained, yet loyalty hardly bore the same weight as survival—such a word, survival, the Underdark had brought him to loathe it.

Survival—he’d said once before, in another life. One loses something when their existence is reduced to such a trite notion. Why survive when I could live?

FOOL, fool he was. The spider bitch had not liked that—no, not at all. Blessed was he to stumble into his Majesty’s light. Better off he was crawling on eight legs on the surface than on all fours before the noble Houses of Menzoberranzan.

Yet her voice was silent now. Surely, if she objected, his Lady would say so? Was he to take her silence as acceptance? A confirmation of truth? It seemed so…

“Very well. If it is your will, they can have it.”

A glint in violet eyes, pale and glowing in the dark, like quartz in dark stone, a precious thing born of the very earth. Once, he might’ve written a song about such a lovely thing, plucked it from the vestiges of his long-shattered lyre—no more. That fool was long dead, back bowed and broken to beastly form. Only the servant remained.

“Good,” their voice came once more (no, not a mantle—more a sovereign’s ring, to be honored with a gentle hand, a touch of lips, a gesture of gratitude for having briefly brushed with such splendor). “You may go now.”

A pit formed in his stomach, large and cavernous.

“Go?!” the goblin screeched. “Whatcha mean go?”

“We can’t go without you,” the orc pleaded. “The shadows would tear us to pieces!”

Kar’niss hesitated—only for a moment. Then, a snarl, a drawing of brows, anger brewed with confusion to boil in his belly. “This is not her Majesty’s will,” he hissed, all seven eyes burning in his skull-cage.

The not-drow’s eyes narrowed, striking him like a holy beacon in the dark. “The Absolute wants you to go,” they hissed, serpent-like, deadly and exquisite in equal measure. “Now.”

The voice did not sound as his Lady’s did, yet it struck a similar chord in his fractured mind—reason in the madness, harmony among the discord, beauty amidst ugliness. He would bow to it. He would obey.

“If it is her majesty’s will—”

“You can’t be serious!” the brute fool of an orc shouted. “You know what’s out there!”

Righteous anger blazed through him, devouring sense in its wake. The words fell sharp from his tongue, like daggers buried in a corpse. Did they not see? They were under their Lady’s scrutiny. This was a test—one he did not plan to fail, for he had already suffered the full extent of his failures. “If it is her majesty’s will,” he seethed, throat bubbling with delirium, “Then we. Shall. WALK!”—

--a blinking of many eyes, their fragile figures kaleidoscopic in his vision, copies upon copies of doomed and daunted faces regarding him with disbelief. Yet he would not be swayed. They had spoken—his Majesty had spoken—

“She will protect us,” he said, voice wrapping around his own fear like a child’s blanket. “She must.”

He cast aside his Lady’s light, and crawled stumbling into the choking dark.

As the shadows slit him open, boring their tendrils into the last dredges of his sanity, he felt life slip from between his clawed and blackened fingers. Close, so close was he to his death, his salvation. It would all be over soon, the Lady’s shadows would consume his disgraced form, and silence would settle over the scattered fragments of his mind.

But it seems he would be granted no such mercy. Instead, a voice came to him, slithering and familiar.

I’m not done with you yet, my pet, the Spider Queen crooned from out the Demonweb. It would be far more fun to see how thoroughly they might break you.

Kar’niss’s eyes went wide, and a scream tore his throat as the shadows dissipated and his body began the process of slowly, agonizingly, knitting itself back together.

The fool’s journey, it seemed, had only just begun.

#I have no clear idea of where I'm going with this #think the little mermaid but instead he is a drider #even I do not yet fully comprehend my vision #bg3ficfeb #day three #bg3 #kar'niss #OC Tav #Tav x Kar'niss