The Drow's Mistress

Chapter 6 Unexpected Meeting

Nidia flipped around and sighed. She flipped around again and sighed a second time.

The half-dragon could not stop tossing and turning. She had not had a single wink of sleep when day broke. She did not have enough gold pieces to lay them all out on the ground beneath her. Unless she could make herself a bed of gold, sleep would continue to thwart the young dragonling. The memories of her father’s vast treasury popped up in her head. All she could see was mountains of gold and the enormous gems embedded in their golden faces, glittering with a different colored radiance. Buried along all that gold were exquisitely crafted artifacts made of precious metals and fine weapons of elven make.

‘Gold is the best! Gems are the best! Everything that glitters is the best!’

As the sun brightened and cast its light on Nidia’s birthday, the half-dragon clasped her hands together and prayed that the Njoror, the god of prosperity, would bestow upon her more of everything on this very special day.

With a penchant for hoarding gold, the half-dragon had already squirreled away a sizable cache. Unfortunately, Faeruin was a continent rife with danger. Orcs and bandits lurked behind every bush and tree, waiting for an opportunity to jump on traveling merchants. Goblins could often be seen lingering in the distance, waiting, like vultures, for the orcs and bandits to be done before they swarmed the merchants again and ran off with whatever was left. It was simply too dangerous to carry all her gold on her. Nidia had no choice but to entrust it to the mercenary guild. Instead of cold, hard coins that glimmered prettily in the light, she had a flimsy, plain slip of paper that was worth nothing.

Disappointment sat heavily in Nidia’s gut as she thought about the slip of paper shoved somewhere in her pack. What was she doing with her life? Dragons loved gold and precious gems not for what they could buy but for their glittering glimmer in the golden light of the sun, their sweet singing as they clinked and collided with one another, and their everlasting luster.

The next adventure would bring her more gold, the half-dragon tried to console herself. Once she amassed a sizable hoard, she would withdraw all her gold from the guild, take everything with her and build herself a proper lair.

But that would not happen for a long time. After all, Nidia was only a young dragonling who had recently left the nest.

The dragonling started to whistle as she packed up. She was going to walk from Tezil to Evenfall and deliver a map to a mage. Her luck appeared to pick up as she made her way down Dragon’s Coast. The quests she managed to take on along the way were easy and profitable. Soon, the dragonling had forgotten all about the failed assassination of the drow that had happened nearly twenty days earlier.

Yet, Fate had not forgotten about Nidia. Pulling the strings of multiple seemingly coincidental incidents together, the weavers began to weave and, as they did, a young redheaded half-dragon found herself intrigued by a strange bit of news that the ferryman shared with her as she crossed Lake Dipper.

Lake Dipper was fed by River Damp, which ran from the Oslan Spine. Over the past few months, the crystalline waters of the river had somehow become polluted. Trash flowed downstream and turned up in the lake. The worst past was the rotting, bloated bodies that came with them. The bizarre phenomenon had incited panic in the settlements around the lake.

Fascination flashed across Nidia’s eyes as she listened to the ferryman. At this moment, she had no idea what she had just stumbled upon and would not until a while later, when she spotted something as she was making her way down the bank. The man’s face was behind greasy silver hair while his dark skin was littered with swollen wounds that looked angry and inflamed. The lower half of his body was still in the water. Judging from the way the upper half of his body was sprawled limply across the ground, the man had barely managed to drag himself out of the lake and prevent his own drowning.

Dark elves were an extremely rare sight on the surface. Most never survived their first encounter with a duplicitous drow. Nidia had somehow run into them twice in a month. Alarm bells began blaring in the half-dragon’s head. She knew that she should leave immediately, yet she could not contain her curiosity. Nidia lifted her greatsword and gently nudged the drow’s head with the fuller. As dirty tangled knots parted, she caught an elven ear poking out from dull silver hair. A familiar faint birthmark marked its tip.

Blood fled Nidia’s cheeks. Her assassin had somehow tracked her from Twilight Range all the way to Dragon’s Coast and caught up with her. Had the drow never heard of the saying “live and let live”? As Nidia sighed to herself, she saw the drow move sluggishly. Faint whimpers spilled from his chapped lips.

‘He’s alive!’

Nidia strode forward, grabbed a handful of the rags he was wearing and dragged him out of the water.

The half-dragon nearly squawked in horror when she found out that the drow was completely naked under those rags. Her heart raced as she kept her eyes on the wounds. Unfortunately, it appeared that no skin was left unmarred. Terrible-looking injuries littered the drow’s dark skin, glowing red and angry as foul-smelling pus slowly seeped out of the cuts. Nidia twisted her face away and clamped her hand over her nose. As she stood next to the unconscious drow, she found herself deliberating between giving him a quick death and leaving him to suffer the fate that he probably deserved.

He was literally at death’s door, yet he stubbornly refused to die. The drow was ridden with injuries. His face appeared to be the only part of him that was spared. In spite of the deathly pallor that now colored the drow’s face, he remained beautiful.

Nidia was stuck. She wanted to know why the drow had an assassin after her. If she were dealing with an uninjured assassin instead of a dying one, she would have happily pummeled the drow until he told her what she wanted to know. There was nothing she could do to a drow that was on the verge of death. She did not have the patience for gentle persuasion. If she were to lose her temper and go berserk, she might kill him in a fit of blind rage.

Nidia stuffed her hand into her pocket, where a certain drow badge rested. An idea slowly came together in her mind as she traced the engraving on the mithril thoughtlessly.