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The darkness and silence made it far easier to tap into the wellspring of primal magic that lay deep within me-within all drow-and spread my essence outward, feeling the magic in the room through the depths of my soul. Dark shapes and patterns danced before me. Sigils and runes whose meaning I could not begin to fathom, but whose purpose I could feel as surely as the cold that permeated our subterranean home. As if through ancestral recall, some secret buried deep within the heart of all things that live and breath, I recognized the nature of this forbidden magic. I found myself recoiling in overwhelming horror, eyes wide open but unseeing, pain wracking my flailing limbs as though I had been struck a physical blow. The first thing I saw as the veil began to lift from my vision was my sister, looming over me like a serpent poised to strike. The wisps of eldritch smoke that curled up from her fingers as they weaved through the air, the ivory locks drawn aloft by an impossible breeze, and those horrific eyes in which only shadows could be found… Perhaps thanks to the will of some deity who possesses the mercy we drow lack, I was not fated to witness that fearful visage for long… Time. Time was never an important concept to me, or to any drow. Far from the light of the sun, blind to the phases of the moon, sheltered from the changes of the seasons-there is so no way to perceive the passage of time in our lands. The fading days are marked only by an endless parade of lies and betrayals. And yet, somehow, I can sense that time is different in this place. The abyss seems to twist to my perceptions, my expectations, meting out the moments as my torment dictates. Years sweep by like zephyrs, felt but never known, as each instant spent imprisoned within the shadows and the silence bleeds imperceptibly into the next. Now, however, as I eagerly await the coming of my dark nemesis, the space between my breaths seems to drag on into infinity. Perhaps magic immemorial flows through this forgotten place, or maybe the solitude has simply driven me so far into madness that each moment seems to linger eternally in my eyes. Time itself is conspiring against me, eroding my readiness slowly but surely… He knows the perfect moment. He can sense the instant when I begin to think I may have misjudged the hour, when I begin to question whether he will come at all. At the very instant I begin to think it might be safe to rest, pain lances through my right hand, forcing me to drop the shorter of my two swords as control of my fingers is momentarily surrendered to the stunning blow. This is not new. We have danced this dance nine hundred and ninety-eight times, and never have I captured the initiative. Never have I escaped the searing touch of his phantom blade. Never have I even beheld the face of my tormentor. |
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