Fight Back

Aliara considered running for a half-second, and immediately abandoned the idea. She'd seen how fast Luneth could move. Worse, the drider was a crack shot with her bow. Aliara probably wouldn't even hear the arrow that killed her. Instead she dove forward and rolled. Time seemed to slow down. She could hear the creak overhead of Luneth's bowstring as the drider nocked an arrow. Aliara drew her dagger as she came up out of her roll and sprang forward. She didn't even stop to look at Luneth, which saved her life. The arrow that would have cored her throat out instead whistled past her shoulder, so close that its razored edge sliced along her shoulder and drew a thin line of blood. Aliara turned and whipped her arm around. Luneth was fast, though, and jerked her body to one side. Instead of piercing her heart, the knife scraped across her knuckle and went into a spin. Perhaps Quz the trickster was looking favorably upon His servant, though, because the knife's deflected path carried it straight into Luneth's bow as she raised it to aim again. The string parted with a loud twang.

Luneth looked down at her bow and cast it aside with a clatter. She lifted her hands and charged at Aliara, hatred etched on every inch of her face. The half-elf ducked below her grasping hands and vaulted herself forward, planting one hand on one of Luneth's knees and using it as a springboard to launch herself into the air. She somersaulted and landed in an ungainly sprawl on Luneth's back. It was all she could do to grab on for dear life before the drider started shaking.

Luneth bucked wildly, trying to dislodge her passenger. Aliara hung on as best she could, trying to stabilize long enough to grab her boot knife. Luneth's throat was right there. If she could just get at it... if she could just...

Luneth's hands closed around her shoulders, and she felt herself hoisted into the air. There was a moment of dislocation, and then she was flying across the cave. She smashed back-first into a stone pillar and slid to the ground. Dazed, she looked up in time to see Luneth stalking across the cave floor towards her. The drider's hands were twisted into claws, her fingers spasmodically clenching and unclenching. Aliara had seconds at most. She reached down to her belt, hoping to find another knife, but her hand slipped into her pouch and her fingers closed around something small and hard.

She brought her arm around and let fly at Luneth. The drider raised one hand to protect her face, and the tiny glass vial shattered against it. Luneth growled low in her throat and took another step forward, then stopped. She blinked quizzically and turned her hand palm-upward to examine it.

Tiny fragments of glass clung to her skin, and droplets of oil-dark liquid pooled in her palm. As Aliara watched, the darkness spread outward, following the drider's veins up her arm. Her skin began to smolder and flake as though it were burning. She screamed and shook her arm as though trying to dislodge a swarm of ants. Aliara had been completely forgotten; Luneth stumbled backwards a few steps and swayed drunkenly. The blackness was spreading now, from her shoulder out across her chest and up her neck. She gurgled and coughed up a spray of black foam. Aliara rolled to the side to keep any of it from touching her. She scooted backwards up the pillar and watched as Luneth collapsed.

The drider's legs buckled beneath her and she toppled over. More foam spilled from her mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. She writhed on the ground and looked up at Aliara with a pleading expression. Then another fit overcame her, the most violent one yet, and she fell still.

Aliara drew in a deep breath, held for it for as long as she dared, and let the air out in one huge exhalation. She stumbled forward and braced herself against a stubby stalagmite. Stepping carefully around Luneth's corpse-- she had no idea if merely touching the dead drider was toxic, and no desire to find out-- she retrieved her throwing knife from where it had landed and replaced it in its sheath. Then, and only then, did she allow herself to take stock of the situation.

"Well," she said aloud, "I'm fucked."

She had no idea which way the warren was, and no idea how far. Nor could she retrace her steps; she remembered the huge pit that Luneth had jumped over. She'd never make the leap herself. This was supposed to be the route to the City, right? But that wasn't exactly a refuge, either, not now, and she had no guarantee that Luneth had even been taking her the right way. She spared the drider's shriveled body a glance and shuddered. It looked as if it were starting to disintegrate into flecks of ash. At least the poison had performed as expected. How long was she planning to betray me? she wondered. Luneth had never let on what she was thinking.

Well, she couldn't stay here. The Underneath was full of towns, trading outposts and watering holes. With luck, she'd find an intelligent creature she could barter with for passage...

...where?

Her first thought was "back to the warren," the more she considered that, the less sense it made. What was waiting for her there? Teysa? You can't even look at her, can you? Can you imagine what it would be like to make love to her now?

Aliara couldn't.

You're not safe there anymore. The Matron had two "willing broodmothers," now she has one. And just how willing are you?

How long is she going to let that stop her?

Aliara shook her head to clear the intrusive thoughts. One thing at a time, she told herself. Get to safety. Get to civilization. Then decide.

Picking a direction at random, she set off.

The first problem presented itself almost immediately. Leaving behind the cave where Luneth had died, Aliara also left behind the faint traces of light that had allowed her to see. The caverns beyond were inky black, nightmare-black, utterly devoid of the faintest trace of light. Aliara could see very well with almost no light, but here she was seeing the difference between almost no light and no light at all. The darkness seemed like a solid thing, pressing down on her from all sides. It crawled up her nose and down her throat, stopping her heart and muffling her ****, ragged breaths. She closed her eyes and opened them again to no effect. Her pace slowed to a crawl with her hands extended in front of her, groping blindly until she felt slimy stone under her fingers. She traced it up and down until she was satisfied that she was touching the cave wall, then laid her palm flat against it and stood still until her heartbeat slowed down a little. She still couldn't see anything, but at least a hand on the wall made her feel a little less like she was teetering over the edge of an abyss.

She extended her other hand in front of her as she walked. It was slow going: in addition to the awkward positions of her arms, she had to pick her way across an unseen and uneven floor. More than once she stumbled and barked her shin against a rocky outcrop or stump of stalagmite. Her feet had been wrapped in slim leather boots, utilitarian and good for silent creeping-- but they were not meant for hiking, and the loose pebbles and scree on the floor of the caverns were tearing at her soles.

Ignoring the pain in her feet, she pressed onward for what felt like hours. The tunnels remained as dark as ever, and with the darkness came a creeping, bone-grinding cold. It settled in through the layers of silk and leather, through skin and flesh and muscle and tendon, gripping her heart in icy fingers. Every breath of frozen air burned in her lungs. The sound of her breathing filled her world: raspy, heavy breaths, ragged and thick.

Water dripped, somewhere in the distance. That, and the scuff of her feet against the ground, were the only sounds. Gradually, she became aware of another: a heavy, slow thump, like the beat of a distant drum. It thudded in her ears, soft and insistent.

ka-DOOM, ka-DOOM, ka-DOOM

Her heartbeat, she realized. It fluttered, missing a beat, as though noticing it had disrupted its function. She stumbled at the sudden dizziness.

The cold was making it hard to think. She paused for a moment and slumped against the wall. A grey wall of fatigue washed over her. She wasn't sure how long she'd been awake; it was hard to keep track of time down here, and already her memory was playing tricks on her. How long ago had she killed Luneth? Hours? Minutes? Days? She hadn't eaten since then, either, and her stomach gurgled uncomfortably. She slid a couple of inches down the wall and sighed. Perhaps with a rest she would...

"If you fall asleep, you'll die."

The voice jolted her awake. It was as clear as a bell, as if the speaker was standing right next to her. She jumped to her feet and whirled around, her tiredness suddenly forgotten. She knew that voice.

"Tey?!" Her cry echoed off the cave walls and came back to her distorted: ey-ey-ey. "Tey, where are you? I can't see you!"

Nothing. The cave was silent but for her breathing. She rubbed her forehead and pinched the bridge of her nose. She must have imagined it, that was all. Teysa was nowhere near here. She's probably worried sick about me, too, wondering what's become of me. The thought made her feel terribly guilty. Tey, I'm sorry. I wish I could have said goodbye.

She set off again, picking her way through the darkness. The rough floor tore at her boots, and soon she could faintly feel the stone against her feet with each step. When she made it back-- if-- she'd have to replace them. The chill had settled into her, making her muscles creak, raising goosebumps on her exposed forearms. She tried to take short, sharp breaths through her nose to keep from losing heat. She was so tired. She paused again, both hands pressed against a stone pillar to keep herself from falling over. The stone was like ice beneath her fingers.

"You'll freeze to ****. You can't sleep here."

Once again, that voice: so clear, so present. It didn't feel like her imagination. It even echoed slightly. "Who's there?" Aliara shouted. "Who are you?" She'd heard of shapethieves and doppelgangers, lurking in the Underneath, but the voice didn't sound mocking or cruel. It sounded like the Teysa she remembered: warm, kind, concerned. She pulled herself upright.

She's right. Or I guess I'm right. I can't stop moving or I'll die.

With an effort of will, she dragged one foot up, put it in front of the other, took a step. And then another.

Finally, finally, something changed in the endless monotonous blackness. It was just a flicker, a faint difference in the dark shapes ahead of her, but after what felt like eons of uninterrupted blackness it was enough to bring her to her knees. She picked up the pace and nearly ran headlong into a dangling stalactite. She felt it at the last second with her outstretched hand and clumsily ducked to avoid it, stumbling and gashing her flank on what felt like a sharp crystal ridge. She let out an involuntary cry and began to topple forwards, stopping herself at the last second with a two-handed grip on a rocky ledge. The sharp edge of the rock bit into her palm-- hopefully not hard enough to draw blood, but she couldn't tell-- and she stood there, leaning against the wall and panting, until her breathing returned to something like normal.

Only when she trusted herself to walk did she continue onward. Another ten minutes and the light had grown to the point where she could make out the faintest details of her surroundings. In objective terms, the light was still the barest glimmer, a stray photon here and there. Aliara, though, found herself nearly weeping with relief. She could see enough to avoid constantly walking into stalagmites. The ground here was littered with them, a stony forest that came up to her knees in places. She looked around, seeking the source of the light, but to no avail. It seemed brighter around head-height, shading to gloom at her feet. The air here was warmer, too-- not comfortable, but some of the tightness in her tendons ebbed away.

With the cold gone, though, the fatigue swept back in, along with the hunger. Thirst, too; she hadn't had anything to drink since the stream, and how long ago had that been? She couldn't tell. She wished she'd prepared a little more before fleeing the site of Luneth's demise, but she'd been operating on adrenaline. She started to become aware of a pain in her feet, too, especially her right foot. The ankle throbbed, though she didn't remember turning it at any point.

She plodded on relentlessly, her eyes fixed on a point about ten feet ahead of her. The cave gradually widened, the stalagmites thinning out. There was no sign that any living thing had been in this cave at any point in human memory: the dust of ages lay undisturbed on the floor. The light gradually brightened, though it never grew beyond a faint gloaming. Aliara could see faint glowing traceries on the wall, like the veins of some buried giant. Fungus of some kind, she assumed; at least it explained the light. It was enough for her to avoid stubbing her toes or barking her shins, but her feet still ached, and she could see the soles of her boots were thoroughly shredded. A sharp pain radiated up her right leg with each step, and she began to favor the leg as much as she dared.

"You need to drink." This time, Teysa's voice came from somewhere to her right. Aliara's head whipped around in time to see a familiar mop of black hair disappearing behind a stalactite. She broke into a limping run, but by the time she reached the stalactite, the cave was empty once more. A drop of water plinked from the stalactite's tip to the floor below. Aliara rubbed her eyes and stared.

The cave was empty.

"You need to drink soon. You're dehydrated." Teysa's voice echoed off the ceiling. Aliara whirled and set off the way she had been traveling before.

"Who are you?" she cried, her voice hoarse even to her own ears. "What are you? Leave me alone!" She stumbled forward, no longer watching her path, no longer caring if she tripped and fell. She'd rest then, maybe, rest here for a just a little while. Just until her strength came back.

"If you lie down here, you'll never get up. You need water." This voice came from just ahead, so close, so mockingly close. Aliara whined through gritted teeth and **** herself forward. Her head spun with vertigo. She stumbled, windmilled her arms to keep her balance, failed, and toppled forward. Both arms shot out ahead of her to break her fall, and she screwed her eyes shut as she braced for impact.

Her hands splashed down into a shallow pool. The sound shocked her scattered thoughts into order. She opened her eyes and found herself staring into a small brook. The water burbled past her wrists. It was as black as night, but when she cupped her palm and brought some to her lips, it tasted as sweet and clear as any mountain stream. She drank two palmfuls before giving up and plunging her face into the stream. She sucked down the water in great, greedy gulps, five or ten at least, luxuriating in the feel of the water sliding past her chapped lips and down her parched throat. Finally, her belly full, she sat back and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Some sixth sense made her look up.

Teysa was there, on the other side of the stream, looking down at her with a faint, sad smile on her face. Teysa, pink-skinned and two legged. Human.

"Hello, Li," she said, folding her hands in front of her.

Aliara was strangely calm. She didn't need to pinch herself. The pain in her foot was enough to let her know she was awake.

"You're not here, are you?" she asked. She was amazed at how calm she sounded.

Teysa gave the tiniest shrug of her shoulders. Her expression didn't change.

"I mean, you're a, a, hallucination or something. Right? You're a vision I'm having."

Teysa only shrugged again. "Maybe. Does it matter?"

Aliara wasn't sure what to say to that. She levered herself upright, groaned, and clutched at her side. A sudden, intense bite of pain stabbed into her abdomen, almost drowning out the ache in her foot. "Ah!" she gasped. "Am I... will I die?"

"Sure," Teysa said, her tone friendly and casual. "Someday. Everyone dies, Li."

"I mean... now. Soon. Am I dying now?"

"That depends." Teysa folded her arms and gave Aliara a flinty stare, though that smile still played about her lips. "Do you want to?"

Aliara opened her mouth to say "no" and paused. It wasn't as easy a question as she thought. She remembered Luneth's dying rattle, the black froth that had foamed up out of her mouth. She'd wanted to live then, hadn't she? And she'd **** herself to keep moving through the cold and the dark.

"I... I don't think so," she stammered. Hearing it out loud hardened her resolve. "Yes. I mean, no, I don't want to die. I don't."

"Then don't," Teysa said, and vanished.

Aliara blinked in surprise. The cool water was doing wonders for her, but her head still felt heavy. She couldn't rest here, she knew that-- streams attracted thirsty animals, and animals attracted predators. She'd been lucky enough to find this place when it was empty. She couldn't press that luck any farther-- not if she really did want to live. The fatigue was really clawing at her now, though.

Behind her was a dead end, so she hobbled forward and stepped over the narrow creek. The path beyond was lit by more of the phosphorescent fungus, so she followed the light. It was probably a little more dangerous than true darkness, but she was too tired and sore to care. As she walked, her legs loosened up a little, but the pain in her feet never went away. Her boots were down to ragged strips at this point and sharp pebbles dug into her toes as she went. She tried to pick her way carefully across the floor, but it was so uneven and the light so dim that it was hard to avoid all of the hazards.

She walked for hours, through lightless tunnels and grottoes lit by glow-worms and phosphorescent fungi. Sometimes she had to double back where a tunnel dead-ended or turned into a burrow too small for her to fit into. At one point she found herself in a cave filled with splintered bones. Her heart caught in her throat, but they were old, even the newest ones dry and covered in the dust of ages. She hesitated as she was leaving and grabbed one, a long femur with a splintered end. From the look of it, it had belonged to something minotaur-sized at least. It was too old and fragile to serve as a weapon, but she had other plans for it. The next time she passed through a cave filled with glowing lichen, she scraped the bone's end across it. Some of the glowing matter stuck to the bone-- not enough for a proper torch, but to her practiced low-light vision it was at least enough to navigate by.

At one point she found a rushing stream and followed it for as long as she could. More of those grubby white fish splashed by beneath her, heedless of the strange invader in their subterranean world. After a while, the river drained away down a deep hole. A few feet upstream, someone had laid flat stones end-to-end across the river to serve as a bridge. They were just a little too regular to be a natural formation, and despite the crudeness of the construction, Aliara nearly cried with relief. This was the first sign of civilization she'd seen since leaving Luneth's body behind. She told herself it could easily have been left there by troglodytes or some other semi-feral humanoids, but she couldn't shake the spark of hope inside her breast.

She kept walking, though fatigue was starting to make her eyelids flutter. Sleeping alone down here was an extremely bad idea, she knew that, but the alternative might be even worse. She wasn't sure she'd be able to fight now even if she had to. Her limbs felt as though they were moving through molasses and she kept stumbling. She wasn't sure how long she'd been walking-- it was impossible to measure time down here in the featureless dark-- but it had been a long, long time, a day at least.

"Where are you going, Li?" This time, Teysa's voice came from her left side. Aliara looked over and was unsurprised to see the paladin sitting on a rocky shelf about halfway up the wall. There was no visible way for her to have gotten up there, but there she sat all the same, her legs dangling. She wore a long white tabard marked with a golden sunburst. When Aliara looked up at her, she waved, the same almost-smile from before on her lips.

Aliara simply stared at her. After a moment or two, Teysa repeated her question.

"Where are you going?"

"I... I..." Aliara licked her chapped lips. "Home," she managed.

"Home? Where's home? I thought you didn't have a home?" Teysa cocked her head. "Or do you mean my home? The warren? That's my home, now. That's where I live. Are you coming back to me, my love?"

"I... I... I can't, Tey. I can't. I'm sorry."

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Either. Both." Aliara's head spun. "It's not safe anymore. You, you changed, and-"

"Changed? What are you talking about?" Teysa's skin shimmered. For just a moment, it was the pale grey of old stone, her eyes black holes without pupils. Then the moment passed and she was herself again, her old self.

"Teysa, help me!" Aliara cried deliriously. "Save me! I'm lost!"

"That's ok. You've been lost before. You always find your way out. You know what the first step to getting un-lost is?"

Aliara's eyelids fluttered. "W-what?" she managed.

"You have to know where you're trying to get to." Teysa pushed off the wall and dropped to the cave floor. Aliara heard her land quite clearly: two rapid, staccato impacts, the soft _thwap _of her bare feet hitting stone. Aliara took a step towards her, and in that moment Teysa passed behind a stalagmite and disappeared.

"Tey?" Aliara asked, her voice quavering. The sound bounced off the walls of the cave, ey-ey-ey-ey.

No answer came.

Aliara limped onwards. She was barely conscious of individual steps anymore. The pain in her feet had crept up to her shins. Worse than the pain, though, was the tingling numbness that spread outwards from her fingertips and toes. Exhaustion, cold, and hunger were wearing away at her, like water on stone. Drip-drip-drip. She could feel herself eroding. Is this what dying feels like?

It hurt less than she'd expected. She wondered what would happen after she died. What did Teysa believe? Would the paladin go to live with Agamor in his solar palace? Aliara tried to picture it: a massive structure, all creamy marble and gold-leaf, shining like a fresh coin. It would be warm all the time, she was sure of that, warm like a late summer afternoon. She wondered if it was too late to convert. I wouldn't mind seeing the sun again. I miss it. Plus, she'd get to be with Teysa. That would be nice.

She can't go there anymore, Aliara reminded herself. She's a drider now. The sun would burn her. The thought saddened her. Maybe Teysa would go back to being human after she died. That would be best. Aliara didn't think she'd want to spend eternity with a drider as a partner.

Part of her recognized the absurdity of her thoughts and raged against them, but it was a small part, and getting smaller all the time. She limped forwards, her torch drooping from one arm. Its guttering glow cast a million shadows across the wall. Aliara took one look at those shadows and shivered. She knew intellectually that they were just stalactites and stalagmites, rock formations that had been here since the Gods created the Underneath, but they were so much more than that. The shadows were malign. They were watching her out of a million eyes and whispering out of a million mouths. Her own eyes flickered back and forth, hoping to catch them at their chattering, but wherever she looked she saw only meaningless scramble-patterns of light and darkness against the walls.

She shuddered and drew herself upright. That small, screaming voice inside her pulled itself together a little bit. Get a grip, Li, she told herself. You're not dead. Not y-

A giggle echoed off the walls. Aliara froze statue-still. She stood there for a long few seconds, willing herself to believe she'd imagined it, but just as she began to relax the giggle came again. It sounded like a child at play. Close, too. It echoed off the walls. With the second giggle came a faint sound: a rhythmic slap of skin against stone, someone running barefoot through the cavern. No, not running. Skipping, maybe.

The sound came again, and Aliara cringed backwards. A pathetic mewling noise rose up in her throat and died there. Something was coming, she could tell, and she desperately did not want to meet it. Her feet were rooted, though, her arms boneless. She stood and waited.

The skipping sound grew louder, then stopped abruptly. Something shifted in the darkness, and a tiny figure stepped into the circle of light shed by Aliara's torch.

It was a little girl, filthy and ragged, her face covered in a layer of grime. Her copper-colored hair hang in lank clumps. It was thick and filthy, but Aliara could see the pointed ear-tips that just barely poked out between the strands. The girl wore a cotton vest and baggy canvas trousers held up by a piece of twine. She reached down to scratch at her hip, and Aliara saw the brand-mark there: not faded, but fresh, a reddish welt. A ****-mark.

The girl looked up at her and smiled. "You lost?" she asked.

Aliara tried to speak and found she couldn't. Her throat dry-clicked when she tried to swallow. "I-I-I..." she began. The girl giggled shyly and covered her mouth with one hand.

"You are lost, silly! I know."

"Please," Aliara gasped. She wasn't sure if she meant to say "please help me" or "please leave me alone," but she didn't get the chance to find out.

"Not just down here, either. You been lost. Ever since you let that human lady mess with your head." The little girl put her finger against her temple and spun it in a circle. "You forgot, dintcha?"

"Forgot what?" Aliara tried to remember to blink. Her mouth was so dry. Her heart was hammering fit to burst.

"Nobody's gonna look out for you down here. Nobody cares. You gotta look out for yourself."

"No, that's wrong," Aliara stammered. "Teysa, she cares about me."

"Really? Even now that she's a great big spider?" The little girl curled her fingers into claws and held them out, baring her teeth. She hissed so loudly that Aliara stumbled backwards a step. "Spider eat flies, dummy. That's what they do. You can't blame 'em for doing what comes natural. But you don't have to be a little fly, 'less you wanna."

Aliara, mute, shook her head. She desperately wanted to close her eyes, but couldn't.

"Nobody's ever gonna look out for you but you," the girl repeated. She crossed her arms seriously and shook her head. "You just gotta survive. That's all. One day at a time. You used to know that, but you got all mixed up. Now look atcha."

"Help me," Aliara mouthed. She couldn't form the words, but the girl seemed to understand. She cocked her head thoughtfully.

"I am helping ya. Don't forget. One day at a time, that's how you make it down here." The girl gave Aliara one last look, then turned on her heel and ran.

It took a long, long time for Aliara's heartbeat to return to normal, even after those footsteps had faded into the darkness. She fought to control her rising panic. Only when everything around her had been silent for a few minutes did she allow herself, cautiously to proceed.

Time lost all meaning, here in the dark. The numbness was spreading inward. It ate the pain as it went, leaving behind an awful emptiness. Aliara's world shrank. It was no bigger than the cave around her, no bigger than the ground in front of her. No bigger than the next footstep. The next. The next.

Something drove her, some reservoir of will, though in truth even she couldn't say what it was. _Where am I trying to get to? _A town, maybe, or just a trading post. Even the drow would do at this point. She still held her glowing bone, though the phosphorescence was fading, and did little more than texture the darkness. The cavern sloped downward and she picked her way down the slope. Halfway down, a patch of loose gravel gave way under her foot and she cried out, flailing to keep her balance. Her ankle twisted badly under her and she went down hard, landing on her bottom. She bounced and rolled down the slope, carried on a tide of scree, until she fetched up hard against a boulder. Rocks skittered and bounced all around her. The impact had knocked the wind out of her and left a huge bruise on her side, and she'd lost her torch. She lay there in the darkness and moaned. She no longer felt tired. Instead, her limbs felt thick and clumsy, her movements uncoordinated. She felt as though she were a puppeteer tugging on strings to make her body move. It was an effort of will even to sit up.

When the Matron had first captured her, she'd woken up blind. She'd been helpless then, webbed to a wall like prey, but the blindness had somehow made it so much worse. She couldn't see the Matron coming, couldn't even try to defend herself. All she'd been able to do was lie there as the giant drider pierced her, penetrated her, filled her with eggs, and left her trapped and hanging like a piece of meat. She hadn't even been able to see Teysa, but the other woman's voice had been a source of comfort for her. Now she didn't even have that. She was alone in the darkness.

The all-too-familiar terror rose inside her. Threats all around, in the dark, lurking. They were watching her, waiting for her to pass out or make herself ****, and they would pounce. If she could only see them, she could prepare, could steel herself for the fight even knowing she'd lose. But the darkness robbed her of even that small comfort. When she'd been blind before, her imagination had been her worst enemy. It had peopled the darkness with terrors and monsters even worse than the one that had captured her. It had turned every scrape of stone on stone into the Matron returning to **** her or kill her. Now her treacherous imagination struck back, filling the cave around her with malevolent shadows. They ringed her, slowly tightening, their claws and fangs dripping poison. When they caught her, they would not just kill her-- they would wrap her in chains again, chains so tight she would never, ever break them. They would carry her down into the center of the earth to serve them forever. She fought to keep her breathing controlled, lost, began to hyperventilate. Blind. Blind...

There was a rasp, the sound of flint striking steel, and a flame burst into life a few feet away. It was tiny, impossibly faint, but it perfectly illuminated the pale oval of Teysa's face. The light did not reach beyond the edge of her head, and it cast strange shadows across her cheeks, giving her a haughty, aristocratic look.

"You have to get up, Li," she said. "You're not done."

"Why?" Aliara moaned. She had propped herself up against the boulder and was sitting there on the floor, trying to control the jitters in her limbs. Her slide had further torn up her trousers and shirt, and she could feel something warm trickling down her back. "Tey, leave me alone, please. You're not here."

Teysa ignored that. "Come on up, Li," she said, sounding cheerful and chipper. "You've got work to do."

"What work?" Aliara asked. "Teysa, what do you want from me?"

"I want you to live, my love. I want you to come home to me."

"I can't. It's not my home anymore. There's nothing for me there."

"Nothing?" Teysa frowned. "That's not a very nice way to talk about the woman you love."

"I do love you," Aliara insisted. "I did. I do. But you're not you anymore, Teysa. You're one of them. The driders. This face, this isn't real." She pointed up at Teysa's face. "That's how I know you're not here. You don't look like that anymore."

"I'm still me, silly," Teysa said. "Who else would I be? I'm always me."

"You're not!" Anger welled up inside Aliara. "You changed! You promised to stay with me, and then you changed!"

"Is what happened to me my fault?" Teysa asked. "I didn't ask to be changed. You know that. It was you who told the Matron to save my life, wasn't it?"

"I did," Aliara admitted. Tears trickled unnoticed down her cheeks. "I did, and I'm sorry. I didn't know what she was going to do." She pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest. "I was so scared. I didn't want to lose you, Teysa, I couldn't. Maybe I should have just let you die." Her voice cracked on the last syllable and she burst into tears-- great, wracking sobs that heaved her whole body. Teysa watched her patiently until her spasm of grief had subsided.

"Would that have been better?" Teysa asked, as calmly as if she were discussing the weather. "If I had died?"

"I don't know!" Aliara wailed. "God, why did it have to be up to me? It shouldn't have been my decision to make."

"But it was. Life happens that way sometimes." Teysa looked down impassively. "Most of the time, you don't get graded on your decisions. Nobody tells you later if it was right or wrong. You just have to choose, and live with that choice."

Aliara let out a choked bark that was half-laugh, half-sob. "What happened to us, Tey? We used to be adventurers. We saved people. Why did we give that up?"

"Maybe you did. I never stopped," Teysa said. "The broodmothers. We saved them. And the drow. The refugees, I mean. You saved their lives too. Lil'esh's sister and the rest of them. That was us." She cocked her head. "See? We haven't changed that much, I guess."

"Yeah, well, we also used to move on after we saved people," Aliara said. "Get paid and go to the next village. That was how it was. No masters, you know? How come we couldn't do that this time, Tey? How come you had to stay in the warren?" She sobbed again. "Now look what's happened!"

"Job wasn't done," Teysa said simply. "You know that. Look what's going on now. They still need you, Li."

"And why is that my problem?" Aliara shouted, her hands balled into fists. "What about what I need? Why doesn't anyone ever ask about what I need? I needed you! And, and, and I told you that, and you wouldn't listen! You had this stupid plan, and you had to go and be a big hero all over again. And look what it got you."

"Because you can fix it." Teysa said. She spoke evenly, patiently, like a woman with all the time in the world to make her point. Aliara shook her head, confused.

"What?"

"You asked why it's your problem. Because you can fix it, Li. You can save those people. The drow, the driders, everyone. You can save them." Teysa's face lowered until it was even with Aliara's.

"That's all there is to it, Li. If you can help, you have to. Because it's right."

Aliara opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, a familiar giggle echoed off the rocks. A rolling, tumbling mini-avalanche of scree washed down the slope, bouncing and skittering. She winced as tiny rocks pelted her feet. Another rasp, another whoosh of flame, and a second circle of light appeared on the opposite side of her from where Teysa stood. The little girl from earlier grinned down at her. She was missing a front tooth, but the gap in her smile only made it seem more genuine.

"Aw, will you give it a rest?" she asked. "Listen to her! 'Because it's right.' How do you know what right is?" She looked directly at Aliara while she spoke. "Don't listen to her, Aliara. This was all her idea anyways. She talks a big game, but look where she ended up! She couldn't save the driders. She couldn't even save herself."

"It is noble to suffer for a noble cause," Teysa said. Her voice remained as even and placid as ever, even slightly cheerful. "Epistle to the Varomians, 8:22."

"It's stupid to die for no reason. Me, just now," the little girl retorted. She stuck out her tongue. "Come on, Li, you can't be buying this crap. 'Sacrifice' is a fancy word for 'gettin' killed for sticking your nose in other people's business.' You know better than that."

"There's more to life than mere survival," Teysa replied. Neither her nor the little girl would look at each other. Both addressed Aliara directly. "There's more to life than avoiding pain. There has to be."

"Who says?" retorted the girl. "When you die, that's it. Game's over. All you can do is put it off as long as you can, one day at a time. Life's tough enough without looking for trouble."

Teysa shook her head gently. "When you're starving, all you can think about is food. When you're thirsty, all you can think about is water. When you're in danger, all you can think about is getting to safety. But when you're not starving and you're not thirsty and you're not in danger... what do you look for then? Love? Belonging? Freedom? Respect? If you're just looking to survive, day-in, day-out, then you'll never reach for more. You'll never become more."

"Oh, like you?" the little girl interjected. "What higher purpose have you found? Doing the right thing? Seems like you just got yourself turned into a spider. Some reward! And if someone like Aliara gets hurt along the way, that's just part of the price, right? Too bad, so sad."

"We all suffer in life," Teysa replied. "It's up to us if our suffering means anything."

"And who decides what's meaningful, hm? How do you know what's right?"

"It's simple. Agamor shows me the way." Teysa closed her eyes and smiled serenely. "Service to others is the highest good. Agamor teaches us that-"

"There's your problem!" shouted the girl. She bounced up and down excitedly. "There's your problem! You didn't come up with any of this stuff! You're just parroting what they told you when you were a kid! You never had to make a really hard decision in your life. You just do what your God wants. That's convenient, isn't it? Means you don't have to think for yourself! You don't have to decide what's right and what's wrong, you just look it up in that big book you have instead of a brain!"

For the first time, Teysa bridled. "I don't have a book," she said, her voice low and coiled. "I look in my heart, and I see what's right."

"Nope, you just look in your book." The little girl smirked triumphantly. "The book told you that it was selfish to try to be happy, so you didn't try. The book told you that sacrifice was noble, so you sacrificed right up until you ran out of stuff to sacrifice. Even your humanity! And now the book says that Aliara has to sacrifice for you, 'cause you don't have anything left to give."

"Never!" Teysa said. She sounded horrified. "I have always protected Aliara with my life. I faced down Lolth to save her!"

"And you didn't learn a thing doing it, did you?" the child replied. "You just stumble along, reading your darn book, and you believe that means everything will work out ok. And the first time it doesn't, you have no idea what to do. If the book told you to spend your life building castles instead of saving people you'd be doing that now. You wouldn't even think about it."

"Masonry is a noble profession," Teysa said, but she sounded unsure of herself.

"How do you know? Does the book say so?" The girl rolled her eyes. "See, Aliara? She don't know nothing about how to live. Don't let her try to get all high and mighty with you. She pretends that she knows right from wrong, but all she really knows is how to read a script. "

"At least I think about other people!" Teysa snapped back. "At least I try! I don't just give up and run away every time things get hard!"

"Runnin' away gets a bad rap," the child replied. "It saves lives. Maybe if you'd run away you'd still be human."

Aliara's head spun. She tried to focus. The faces in the darkness blurred, spun, switched places. Now a young Teysa, pale face framed by a bowl-cut of thick black hair, stared up at her. Now the little half-elf girl's eyes were heavy with years of pain and fear. They circled her, carrying their discs of light with them.

"Animals don't think about anything more than survival. You're more than that, Aliara, I know you are," Teysa said. "You can be more. You can be noble. You can be a hero!"

"Hero, huh?" replied the girl. "Was it heroic when she died? You remember that, don't you, Aliara? She got you killed. And for what? A bunch of murderin' spiders?" She pointed accusingly at Teysa. "In a way, you know, you're worse than they were. Sure, they **** some people and killed some people, but they never acted like they were doing them a favor. They never acted like their victims should have been grateful."

"But Aliara is alive because of me!" Teysa protested. "Aliara, I faced down Lolth for you!"

"Yeah, and she rewarded you by bringing your lover back." The child's mouth twisted into a sneer. "That's all you are to her, Aliara. A reward. A nice little pat on the head for the good doggy who obeys her mistress. She doesn't care about you. She doesn't care about anyone. She just cares about being a 'good person.'"

"I am a good person!" Teysa practically yelled. A vein bulged on her forehead. "You, you're the bad influence! You just want Aliara to fritter away her life as a sellsword! Accomplishing nothing, adding up to nothing... just drinking and fighting and, and wenching..."

"Gets you through the day, doesn't it?" The girl grinned. "Higher purposes are for people who never spent a day on a slag heap bustin' rocks. Higher purposes are for people with big churches and big names. When someone starts talking about higher purpose, it means little people like us get screwed."

"As long as you think like that, you'll never be free," Teysa warned. She turned to look at the little girl. "You're still wearing the ghosts of the chains they put on you. Until you take them off, you'll be afraid wherever you go. You'll never find the freedom you're looking so hard for."

The girl's grin faded. "Maybe. But you're no freer than I am. You just convinced yourself you like bein' a ****. You're a clockwork knight, marching along when someone else winds up your key. You'll give your life for strangers and you'll never question it, because you never question anything. Because then you might have to make a real decision, and that scares you more than anything." She turned her back to Aliara and looked over her shoulder. Reaching up with one hand, she pulled down the corner of her patchwork vest, far enough that Aliara could see the livid scar that crossed under her shoulder blade. It looked fresh. "You remember this one, right, Aliara?" she said. "Master O'rrok asked me to fetch and pour for his guests. I thought I was sooooo lucky, getting to spend a whole day inside, no breakin' rocks, and maybe I could steal a teacake or something. He even gave me clean clothes to wear. But the tea kettle was too heavy and my hands are real small, and I spilled a little on the caravan master." She held up her hand with her fingers a tiny bit apart. "Just this much. But that was enough. He asks his foreman for the whip, just like he's ordering a scone, and then he makes me take my shirt off and he whips me right there, right in front of everyone. And then he asked if anyone else wanted a turn." Her voice was stony, utterly devoid of emotion. "So yeah, that's what 'living for others' means. It means living for their amusement. And sometimes dyin' for it, too."

"Shut up! Shut up! Leave me alone!" Aliara clutched her throbbing forehead. She looked up through tear-stained eyes, turning from one of them to the other. "You don't know me! You don't know anything about me! You're just hallucinations! You're in my head!"

"So what if we are?" Teysa asked. She smiled again, warm and genuine, and seeing that smile broke Aliara's heart all over again.

The little girl nodded solemnly. "If that's true, then everything we're tellin' you is no more than you already know."

The light went out.

Aliara screamed in loss and frustration and despair. She lurched forward, clawing at the empty air, sobbing Teysa's name over and over and over. Her voice echoed mockingly off the cave walls, sa-sa-sa-sa-sa-sa. Some of the returning echoes sounded just like Teysa's voice. Aliara beat her fists against the stone floor over and over, ignoring the flares of pain.

Gradually, the tempest in her head died down, to be replaced by a leaden blankness. She sat there for a long time. She was at the bottom of a pit, a deep and terrible pit, with blackness pressing in all around her. The darkness seemed to have a physical weight, an intense pressure that sat on her and crushed her down into the ground.

Fatigue tore at her brain. It was hard to think, hard to assemble the scattered shards of her mind into some kind of workable order. Had she fled from Luneth yesterday, or the year before? How long had she wandered in the darkness? The gnawing emptiness in her stomach had receded, leaving a queer numbness that was somehow worse. Her throat was parched. Hadn't she just had a drink? Had that been a day ago? Two?

She wanted to live. That much, she knew. To live... for what? Where would she go?

Back to the warren? Back to the monsters that had blinded her, captured her, **** her? The monsters that even now expected her to come save them? They can be better, Teysa had said, but did that betterment have to come at the cost of Aliara's freedom?

But where else? Back to the world above? She hadn't seen daylight in so long, she was starting to forget what it looked like. And what would she do when she got there? Go back to mercenary work? Try to just forget this part of her life had ever happened?

The little girl was wrong. There was more to life than survival. For so long, so so so long, Aliara had merely been existing. She hadn't realized it at the time, but when she was with Teysa, it was like rising out of a fog. All those years of scraping by one day at a time, and what did she have to show for it? She still remembered waking up next to Teysa in the City the morning after they had returned from the Basilica. She had felt like an exhausted mountaineer reaching the summit, only to find a massive new peak rising in front of her. It had scared her, but it had been exciting, too.

But Teysa was wrong, too. Endless, joyless sacrifice was no way to live either. It was, in its way, a form of cowardice. Teysa never had to think hard about what she was doing, or make difficult choices. She never had to take responsibility. When she suffered, it made her noble; when she failed, it was ok, because at least she had tried. Nothing she ever did was wrong, because nothing she ever did was her fault. And where had following that path led her? Led both of them?

There had to be another way to live. There had to be. A way to live for herself and others, a way to make her own choices about right and wrong. A way to live free. She would find it, or she'd die trying.

One foot in front of the other, she began to march.

The slope she had fallen down was out of the question. She was far too weak to climb. But the path was clear in the other direction. She picked her way forward as quickly as she dared, one hand set against the cave wall. She hadn't been walking long, perhaps half an hour, when she heard the sound of rushing water.

It was an effort not to run towards it. She kept up her steady pace, one step at a time, letting the wall guide her. More than once she had to detour around a particularly large stalagmite or area of broken ground. Her boots were useless rags now, and her feet had gone numb, but she pressed on. As she did, something caught her eye: a faint glimmer on the edge of vision, so faint that she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined it. The light grew steadily until it was a constant, a dim radiance that pulsed out of the ceiling. Crystals, she realized, as tiny and bright as stars, set in the stone. They cast a silvery glow over the cave and limned every stone in liquid moonlight. Up ahead, a tiny brook babbled across the floor. The starlight sparkled on its surface, making the dark water look like a night sky. Aliara collapsed onto her hands and knees next to the brook and cupped her trembling hands. She raised them to her mouth and carefully took a tiny, delicate sip.

The first sip almost made her throw up, but she held it down. The second was easier. Each sip refreshed her more and soothed her dry throat. When she had had her fill, she sat back against a pillar and watched the water go by. Something caught her eye: a patch of brownish lichen clinging to a stream-washed rock. She narrowed her eyes and tried to remember. Was this kind safe to eat?

She didn't think she had much choice. She reached out and scraped up a few clumps between her fingers. The taste turned out to be awful, bitter and sour all at once, but she choked it down. After a few minutes, she still hadn't thrown it back up, so she grabbed a few more pinches.

Scraping every rock within sight of the river clean barely put a dent in her hunger, but the combination of light and food had taken some of the edge off her despair. Her exhaustion came crawling back, though, despite her efforts to push it aside. She knew that she would not be able to remain conscious much longer. She'd have to risk sleep. At least she could move away from the river. Perhaps she could find a place a little more out of the way. She struggled to her feet again and set off.

The light continued to build as she went. In some places it was faint, others stronger, but it always came from crystal nodes in the ceiling. She found herself wondering if someone had exposed these crystals on purpose. Was this part of the Underneath traveled? And if so, was that a good thing or a bad thing? Either way, she would have to sleep soon. She did not have the time to find an ideal place to rest. An acceptable one would have to do.

Before long she found herself in a small, round cave, its floor thickly clustered with stalagmites. At the center of the thicket was a shallow, bowl-shaped depression, oddly clear of obstructions. She couldn't tell if it was a natural formation or not, and she was too tired to care. Right now it looked to her like a nest in the middle of a grove of trees. At least it would be somewhat difficult to spot her in there, and some of the larger locals might have a hard time struggling through the stones to reach her. She set her glowing bone down carefully and heaped small rocks on it until its light was buried, then picked her way across the floor by feel until she reached the depression. She curled up inside it and closed her eyes.

She awoke from dark, amorphous nightmares, clawing her **** way back to reality. For a moment, she lay there disoriented, not remembering where she was or why she was so sore. Her back, especially, twanged with each tiny movement. The memories rushed back all at once, and she rolled over and silently cursed her luck. She wondered for a moment what had woken her, then froze at the sound of voices.

It was impossible to tell what direction they were coming from or how close, or even to make out what they were saying. They echoed off the walls of the cave and filtered through to her as noise. But they were voices, of that she was certain-- at least two, male, sounding a bit preoccupied but not openly hostile. She was thankful that she'd had the foresight to bury her torch. She gradually became aware of a dim yellow light, which slowly grew along with the voices until she was sure it was a torch. She crouched down among the stalagmites, hoping against hope that whoever was coming wasn't hostile-- or, at least, that they wouldn't look too closely for her.

The voices grew clearer as the torch approached, and she began to make out individual words. She held her breath and willed her heart to beat as quietly as possible as she strained to hear.

"-said that last week!" said one voice. This one was low, guttural, and uneducated, the voice of a sword-for-hire if she'd ever heard one. "This is a waste of time!" the voice added, sounding indignant.

"And I suppose you have a better idea?" This voice was a bit more sophisticated, if not aristocratic-- a merchant, maybe, or a hedge knight.

"Yeah I do! We get in them pits ourselves. None of this capturing beasts stuff. We get paid directly and no muckin' about in the dark."

"Those fights are all fixed. Everyone knows that." This was a new voice: higher-pitched, reedy almost, with a nervous air to it. Aliara pictured the speaker as tall and gangly, with bulging eyes and a prominent Adam's apple.

"We won't catch anything if you idiots can't keep quiet," said a fourth voice. This one was female, petulant, and just a little shrill. "And that torch! We might as well bring a brass band with us to announce we're coming."

"Not all of us can see in the dark, Talia," said the second voice, the sophisticated one Aliara had pegged as "leader." He sounded patient, like a long-suffering parent. "And it's fine if the light attracts predators. That's what it's for. Unless you think there's something down here we can't handle?" He left the question hanging in the air.

By now they were very close indeed. Aliara reached down to her belt to make sure her knives were at the ready. A hunting party, by the sound of it: not ideal, but not terrible. They weren't slavers, at least. She hoped. They'd be in her little cave in a matter of seconds, and with a torch, the odds they wouldn't see her were very low. Part of her wanted to just step forward and ask them for help.

Another part, though, an older, more primitive part, kept trying to go for her daggers. Kill 'em! it said. While you have the element of surprise! You're outnumbered, so you have to even those odds!

Her nerves jangled and she steeled herself. They were a few steps away. What would she do?