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The Sweetest Revenge

“My gift will last for some time,” the motherly woman told the small half-elf. “The Commander sent you here, yes? He is the only one who refers to me in such an impersonal manner as to simply give me a title that some petty halfling street vendor might use to sell false fortunes. I will have someone travel to the dragon’s skull and see that your steed is tended to until you can return to it. The forest and her denizens heed my instruction.”

“Eyes, dear; leave them shut,” the Oracle, Zarraema, whispered before she pressed her palm more firmly against the half-elven girl’s forehead and pressed downward toward her eyes. The motion pressed down on the muscles that controlled Gilloleth’s eyelids and forced the girl’s eyes shut. Once this was accomplished, Zarraem’s hand returned to its previous position, allowing the half-elf to open her eyes once more of she wished to ignore the Oracle’s words and interrupt the transference of the dark-sight power.

“You know, there is an old saying about revenge,” the mysterious woman spoke in a gentle tone while she focused on transforming Gilloleth’s eyes so that she would be able to see in the pitch black of the underground cavern. “Those who seek vengeance should dig two graves. If this man was able to best your family then do you believe that you will be able to stand against him? Would they want you to throw your life away to him trying? I will help you with your task if it is truly your wish but I beseech you to give considerable thought to this course of action before you set out to face someone who may well be far above your limitations.”

Zarraema could remember being in this kind of position many times before. Countless hopeful adventurers had come to her for direction on various subjects from revenge to the locations of untold treasures. The Oracle always tried to sway their intentions but had never been able to actually do so and she did not believe that this girl would hear reason. She would help Gilloleth as she had helped so many before her. There would be no regret in Zarraema’s heart for what might happen to the half-elf for doing so. The Oracle would have her payment and Gilloleth would have her answers. Then their paths would part and Gilloleth’s fate would be her own.
 
The pinching at her eyes felt strange; as if her eyelids were being kept shut with an unknown force. This process was longer than she thought but she kept her eyes tightly shut and would not open them until she was instructed to.

Yes. She had heard this spiel from servants that had stopped her as she packed for this journey. They did not understand. They never found anyone they loved dead and likely never would. Saying such things were easy to say when you weren’t the one experiencing them. Now all Gilloleth wanted to do was tear apart the one who had taken her very life from her.

“I do not have anything to live for anymore,” she told the oracle in a matter of fact tone. “All I am afraid of is dying before I am able to even get to the one who did it. As long as I am able to face him in battle and attempt to destroy him, my life will be well worth it.”

Clearly Gilloleth had been devastated by the death of her parents and unlike any other girl of her rank, she was going to do something about her pain. Perhaps this was a form of suicide. Her grief was ever mounting and nothing soothed her. Her family had been a beautiful and loving one. Anyone who wanted to destroy that for a mere bauble was truly the most heinous of villains.

"Please help me. Please?"
 
“This is but a challenge set before you by the divine forces that guide us all,” the motherly woman said as she passed the eyes of her people onto the half-elven traveler. “The gods clearly have an important task which they needed your parents for or they would not have taken them from someone so young; especially one of elven lineage. You might be of age by the standard of the short-lived humans but you are but a child to your elven blood. Throwing your life away will do nothing, child, but it is not my duty to protect you. You have come all of this way and I will not turn you around without the answers which you have come for.”

As the passing of the eyes completed, Gilloleth would have experienced what all surface-dwellers experience upon receiving the Oracle woman’s gift. It wouldn’t be pleasant but it would last no more than ten second in entirety. There would be a flash of bright light, despite the facts that her eyes were closed and she was sitting in a pitch dark cavern. Then there would be burning. It would be an intensely painful sensation that could easily be likened to someone pressing a miniature branding iron against the half-elven girl’s eyes. After the burning would come the cold; an intense cold that pressed not only against Gilloleth’s eyes but her brain as well. The closest thing that one could use to describe such a sensation would be a brain freeze but it was far more intense than that. Then, after the cold, there would be nothing. There would be no throbbing and no remnants of the intense pain that had just wracked Gilloleth’s eyes and mind. It was just simply gone and when she opened her eyes, the cave would be as clear as the shaded forest in the mid-day sun.

The cave around Gilloleth was surprisingly expansive. This area of the cavern opened up into a large circular room with two pathways in and out, opposite one another. The first, the one that Gilloleth had come in through, went straight to the surface world. The other led deeper into the hard, cold earth where the terrible beasts of the Underdark were sure to dwell. There were a handful of carved logs pulled into the cave; makeshift benches, chairs, and tables. In the center was a pile of rocks with a black flame in the center with an old kettle hovering above. Other decorations lined the walls, including suits of armor, weapon racks loaded with all manner of weaponry, old pictures, shelves piled with trinkets and magical objects, and treasure chests loaded with piles of precious metals, gems, and coins. The Oracle had quite a collection of treasures.

The Oracle, herself, was probably not what Gilloleth was expecting to find here. The seemingly kind and motherly woman stood at roughly five and one-half feet in height. She wore a robe of dark crimson silk with black trimming and onyx jewels woven into the fabric in intricate elven designs. Her skin was as dark as the night, her eyes were as red as blood, and her hair was the color of the full-moon’s light; a rich silver with a healthy sheen. Zarraema, the Oracle, was a drow.
 
The sweetness was shocking and Gilloleth, despite the anger the boiled inside of her, could not become cross at the Oracle for her words. Being considered a child had been a sore spot for the young girl but it was true. By elven she was still considered a youngling. Such a gruesome task for someone so young was likely a point of pity for many.

“My life has been forfeit the moment I found them,” Gilloleth replied in her soft and docile tones.

Then she was silenced by pain. It was all encompassing; centering around her eyes. All at once she felt her eyelids both melting and freezing. She squirmed were she stood, screwing her lips tightly together to keep herself from crying out in agony. Like a child she stomped her feet, whimpering slightly as the pain petered off. Slowly she opened her eyes to the surroundings around her and was stunned by what she saw. The interior was large and items ranging from polished stones to armor covered the entirety of the walls. The half elf wondered what she could possibly give this woman did not have.

Then her gaze turned to the woman and she recoiled. Zarraema was a drow?! The expression that crossed Gilloleth’s face was one of confusion. What drow, and a female at that, was as sweet and gentle as this oracle? Was this some sort of trap?

“So what do I owe you for this information and gift?”
 
“Breath still fills your lungs, young one, and your heart still pounds inside of your chest,” the Oracle said as she pulled her hand away from Gilloleth’s forehead. “Your life is not forfeit; not yet, though I fear that will change if you chase down someone who is so clearly dangerous. If your memories of your parents are accurate then the man you are chasing may be far above you in skill. Of course, you surface creatures do tend to over-romanticize your loved ones.”

With this, Zarraema turned her back toward the half-elf and moved toward the black flame and the kettle. Her movements were graceful; something that should have been expected given her race. Though the surface races may have hated the Underdark dwelling elves, none could deny that the drow people were as graceful as their untainted kin and even more dangerous due to their ruthless and cutthroat society.

“Forgive me,” Zarraema continued as she stepped over a log which had been carved into a bench and sat down with her back still to Gilloleth. “While I was making the necessary adjustments to you ocular nerves, I took the liberty of peering into your memories. If I am going to be helping you then it is important that I know what kind of person that you are, after all. I would hate to guide someone with a dark heart to a powerful treasure which they could use to kill or enslave the innocent, after all. Unfortunately, your story seems to be true.”

The drow woman reached out and touched her hand to the kettle. It should have been scalding hot over the black fire but she did not wretch her hand away. She merely slowly pulled it away and placed it in her lap. “My price used to be simple; some gold here and a magical trinket there. Weapons and armor were fantastic; worked steel from the surface world, enchanted to be something far greater than a simple tool to kill a man.”

The drow woman arms spread as if she were presenting her collection of treasure to her half-elven visitors. “Some of the weapons within these racks are enchanted with enough power to cast down a dragon and some of these armors can protect their wearer even in the molten core of that same dragon’s fiery breath. I have trinkets for all manner of purposes and wealth beyond anything that I would ever need. My collection of treasure rivals a dragon’s cache in total worth.”

Her arms lowered then, slowly moving back into her lap. “Yet I find that it no longer brings me happiness. What good are treasures that I will never use and never spend? When I was younger, they were fun and exotic but they are not a suitable legacy. It is rather fitting that you have come with this cause. One of you, either you or this man, will die from this contract while the contract gives me new life. I want a child for my services. I care not how I obtain one. You can abduct a newborn surface child for me if you would like, or vow to bring my your first born, should you be victorious. Or, if neither of these options suit you, you can find me a man who would be willing to bear child with a drow woman.”
 
Gilloleth tensed a moment. Finding a child for that woman could prove to be very difficult. Then again girls were finding themselves in delicate situations all of the time and many babies were tossed out into the elements to suffer and finally perish. In her travels she was sure that she would stumble across such a baby. The half elf very well could not promise the drow woman her first born if she may not get the chance to have one.

“There are plenty of unloved and unwanted babies within this world,” Gilloleth stated in a matter-of-fact tone, “I am sure that I could find you such a babe and bring it back to your cave as payment. Also, I am sure I could easily find a man interested in a drow woman. Men are men, after all, and your kind does have a certain amount of grace.”

Though at that moment all she could think was poor things of the species. It was a dark elf that had taken the life of her parents after all. Prejudice of that nature was hard to quell, especially when the wound was so fresh.

“Either way I am sure that the task can be done. I just need to know what I can do; how I can find this man and how I can gain power over him so I can put an end to his miserable life.” Her delicate hands balled into tight fists and she looked towards the dark skinned woman with her sharp new sight. “I could care less for love and affection at this moment. I am sure I will die very much alone regardless of my survival or death.”

Things had become very bleak for her in those days preceding the death of her parents. The thought of living with perfectly happy, normal people was quite beyond her at that point.
 
The dark-skinned elf still did not turn to look upon the half-elf whom she presumed was still standing at the entrance to her lair where she had left the half-bred surface dweller. The Oracle retched out again and touched the pot with a slow and careful motion. Again, the drow woman did not recoil from the heat of the kettle though it had been hanging only inches above the black flame since presumably before Gilloleth had stumbled into Zarraema’s dark world.

“Perhaps I should have been more precise in my words,” the silky-voiced woman spoke as her hand returned to her lap. “I will require a child of no less than half drow blood. After all, it will have to be able to survive in these pitch conditions if it is to be raised by me. If you somehow come across such a child on the surface world then it will probably already be permanently blinded by that accursed sphere of fire you call the sun. I could possibly teach the child to see with the farsight but there would be no guarantee that the child’s mind would not sink into insanity as a result. No, I do not think that you will simply find me a child.”

Zarraema paused for a moment and looked around the room at all of her treasures. Once, they had brought her joy but now they simply reminded her of another time when adventurers came to her frequently. These days, however, she did not receive visitors often and her once helpful purpose in this world was compromised. She needed something more; a new purpose. Loneliness and a need to feel like her existence mattered had driven the Oracle to desire the rewards of motherhood long ago.

“One of us will have to birth the child and I will not accept just anyone as the father,” she continued in a rather frank tone. “During your quest, I ask that you try to find only the strongest and the noblest of men before sending them back to me to cast judgment upon their mettle. If you have not found a suitable man by the time that you have completed your quest then you must return to me here and you must conceive a child with a male of my kind. You will live here during the term of pregnancy and when the child is born, I shall take possession of it. Then you will be free to return to your life as you see fit.”
 
The idea of bedding any man was repulsive to her. The young half breed was untainted by even the lips of a man. She had not received her first kiss; had never even held the hand of someone of the opposite gender other than the hand of her father. Her cheeks turned a bright crimson at the thought of bedding a drow to give the Oracle a child. Simply it would not do and she would need to find a courageous man of honor to lay with Zarraema.

She ventured further into the cave. The light gray material of her boots padded softly against the floor. They were made of the finest leather and treated into silky suede. The pale green cape she wore billowed behind her softly. The white tunic she wore was cinched about her waist with a silver belt and gloves of the same material as her boots tied up the length of her arm. Truly she did not look like some hardened warrior or even an experienced traveler. Gilloleth Le’irk looked more like a painting of a lady about to go on a ride. Though the half elf thought she cut a rather intimidating figure in those clothes.

“Could you not just find a male drow to lie with?” she asked. “It stands to reasons you could find a male of your own species that is both strong and noble.” Then it came to reason that, perhaps, the oracle did not want to have a drow be the father of her child. “Though I am certain I can find a male of noble ilk to bring back to you. Regardless you will have your baby by the end of my quest of revenge.”
 
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