The Drow's Mistress

Chapter 5 Abandoned and Escaping

“Look at yourself, you wretched creature!”

This was exactly what Minolene had wanted. Her insults hit swifter and truer than her whip, each word a dagger that threatened to shatter what remained of his pride. The whispers and snickers from the crowd were razors that cut deep into his soul. Ysilnod begged the gods to show him mercy and knock him out. He dared not move at all. Countless lessons had taught him the importance of remaining in place, with his feet planted wide apart. If he did not wish for a fate worse than death, then he would do well to let his mistress whip him where she pleased.

The lashes on his inner thigh were a lattice of red marks. Ysilnod shook his head desperately as he arched his body forward and stood on his toes like a bow drawn to its fullest. His throbbing member was the arrow notched on a bowstring. Pained mewls spilled from his lips. His vision blurred as sweat and tears filled his eyes. The familiar faces around him twisted into ghoulish, floating heads that would not stop laughing at him.

Minolene simply stood on the other end of the court, an imposing regal figure without a single wrinkle marring her satin robes. She had had her fill of Ysilnod’s suffering. It was sweet and exquisite. Waves of pleasure swelled inside her, rising higher and higher until they crested. She wound her whip and clasped it to her belt. Her serpents slithered across her alluring form as she caressed their cool, scaly skin.

“Open your eyes. Look at me.”

It was time for the finale. Ysilnod’s dazed eyes fluttered open. He found himself staring at the face of the devil in all its loveliness.

With a sudden swirl of her whip, Minolene struck the most vulnerable part of his naked body. The loud snap of her greater serpent whip cracked in the dark hall. Ysilnod’s head jerked up with sudden violence. Like a bowstring drawn beyond its limits, the drow finally snapped. His body slowly crumpled as he folded onto his knees. The drow had passed out.

Silence descended upon the court. Nobody dared to breathe as Minolene savored the moment. After a long while, the heat in her cheeks finally faded away. Her voice was as brittle as winter when she spoke.

“Get a healer to examine him.”

A drow stepped forward and began inspected Ysilnod’s unconscious body. After a long moment, she turned around.

“Milady,” the healer said cautiously. “His shoulder is shattered and his arm paralyzed by poison. We could reattach his tendons but it is unlikely that he will ever wield a weapon again.”

“Send the cripple where he belongs then.” Minolene issued her final order of the day as she clasped her whip to her belt.

Drow, especially male drow, who were not able-bodied were banished from their house even if they could make their way back to Mynzoberranzan. Their fate was to become homeless refugees who roamed the lands until they were taken down by predators. There was no place for weaklings in drow society.

After wrapping a dirty rug that had belonged to a slave, the drow dumped Ysilnod in a tunnel outside the city. To Minolene, the lowly male drow had done his duty and was no longer of any use to her.

The tunnel was dark, damp and rank and seemed to lead straight to hell. Oddly shaped mushrooms were the only things that grew in the barren Underdeep. The other creatures of the subterranean realm were predators that killed and ate one another to survive.

Ridden with injury, Ysilnod could hardly lift a finger. Even if he could, there was nowhere he could go. He had been banished from Mynzoberranzan. These caves were filled with massive carnivorous predators like grotto fishers* and claw horrors*. These were not monsters he could fend off alone even on his best days.

He considered the surface world, its unknown lands, and the massive ball of fire burning in the sky.

He cast the idea aside the next second. The drow and the other races shared an intense mutual hatred for each other. Resentment was nurtured in each dark elf since childhood. When they reached adulthood, drow clerics would send them on missions to kill innocent lives on the surface. Any white elf, human, or dwarf who was good would execute a drow as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Freedom did not give Ysilnod the release he sought. Instead, he found himself stuck in a hopeless state of affairs.

The drow’s eyes flickered toward a dark corner of the cave. A black widow was silently spinning its web. The arachnid had a round belly and violent streaks of red and black painted across its back. Rows of fine bristles lined its eight slender limbs. The spider symbolized the Mother Weaver, Loylth. This grotesque creature was venerated and celebrated in drow civilization. Anyone who dared speak or think ill of the great Mother Weaver would be punished.

Ysilnod turned his silent gaze toward a smaller male spider lingering in the vicinity. He watched as the creature performed a cautious mating dance to gain the female spider’s favor. It dared not stray too near its female counterpart for the ferocious female black widow would devour its own kind when it was hungry. A long, careful dance unfolded. As the mushroom sitting next to Ysilnod’s face bloomed, the female spider finally accepted the courtship. The male spider scuttled toward his mate like a servant throwing himself at his mistress’s feet. The difference in their sizes were as stark as day. Two hours passed. The female spider was finally sated. Her male partner was utterly exhausted.

Ysilnod shut his eyes. He knew what was going to happen next. The female spider would soon feel the first pangs of hunger. She would reach out for her mate, rip him apart and devour him. That was the drow society in a nutshell. Loylth had imposed her evil, oppressive order on the drow. Ysilnod was the male spider, drained dry and fully expended, now left to suffer an undignified death.

A sudden whiff of death drifted past. The rumbling of iron wheels rolling down a stone tunnel sent the earth trembling. That would be Mynzoberranzan’s cleaning crew. The goblins ferried the corpses of their fellow race out of the city and dumped them outside so that the dark, opulent beauty of the drow palace would not be sullied by the death of its lowly servants.

Instinct got Ysilnod moving. His desire to live drowned out all feelings of despair. He felt like a puppet being held on strings, his limbs moving of their own accord as he hid himself in a crevice in the tunnel and waited for the cleaning crew to pass. The stench of rusted metal and dead flesh hit him like a punch in the face. He flipped himself over the side of the cart silently and lay down next to the dead bodies.

Oblivious to what was going on behind them, the goblin slaves continued cursing their drow mistresses and the coarse ropes biting into their flesh as they dragged the heavy cart of bodies down the tunnel. The drow were nimble and light, and the additional weight of one more drow was virtually imperceptible. The goblins were lazy creatures who searched for a new dumping ground only after the last had been filled. That meant that nobody really knew where they would end up dumping the bodies that day. Most monsters in the Underdeep feasted on live prey. Scavengers were usually slower on their feet and easier to deal with.

Ysilnod lay silently in the pile of corpses as the cart trudged along. The drow had no idea where fate would lead him.