She strikes out on her own

“What will you do?”

Even now, several days later, Aliara was no closer to answering that question than she’d been the night Lotho had asked it. She’d given his offer due consideration. There was little else to do during the long, monotonous journey back to Vollerat. The night before they’d arrived, she had sat down to dinner with them and cleared her throat.

“Lotho,” she began, “everybody…” She surveyed the circle of fire-lit faces, staring at her with polite anticipation. “You’ve been so kind to me. I owe you my life. I’ll never forget that. But I… I don’t think I can join your band. Not forever.”

Kurk looked disappointed. Rhuyem looked positively heartbroken. But was Lotho who spoke. “We would never compel you, milady,” he said quietly. “I think I understand.”

Perhaps he did, at least in part, but not fully. Even Aliara was not entirely certain of why she couldn’t join them, even if she was certain she couldn’t. She struggled to put her feelings into words. “I’ve spent so much of my life in a party like this,” she began. “It’s really all I’ve ever done. And I need to find out if there’s another way I can live. I need to… I need to find out what I want. What I’m for. And I can’t do that if I’m always pledged to someone else’s cause.”

They stared at her in mute incomprehension. Only Talia seemed to have a glimmer of understanding. She gave Aliara the slightest nod and went back to her stew.

“Very well,” Lotho said, bowing his head. “I respect your choice. You’ll accompany us to the city, at least? And take your share of the bounty on this wyrm. You look like you could use the money.”

In fact she’d taken more than her share. Each of the others had insisted on donating a few coins to her traveling fund, and they’d bought her a new pair of boots out of their communal treasury. Lotho had handed those off to her as they’d parted ways. “So, Aliara, you’ve come out of the darkness and into the light,” he said. “What will you do now?”

“Get a drink,” she’d said, and meant it. Oh, had she ever meant it.

And here she was, almost a week gone by and no closer to giving him a real answer. She’d avoided drinking her savings, at least, after one big night that had led to one uncomfortable morning. She’d paid for her room through the next week, and had set that as a deadline for herself to find some new work. Or at least to have a destination in mind.

She considered leaving the Underneath entirely. Vollerat, a major trading hub, was not far from an egress point—a few days’ travel would take her to the dwarven city of Blackgate-Under-the-Mountain, and from there she could leave via the Rust Mountain Gate. By this time next week, she could feel the sun on her skin again. The thought made her feel queer and queasy. Would it blind her? Would she burn now? She’d been below the earth for so long…

There was nothing tying her to the Underneath anymore, was there? Wasn’t that what freedom meant? But there was nothing to call her to the surface either. She found herself at loose ends, without any sort of plan to speak of. She’d lived so much of her life to other people’s timetables, she found it challenging to craft one of her own.

During the daytime she prowled the streets and markets of the city, keeping one ear open to listen for gossip. She haggled with hobgoblins and watched her back against gnomish pickpockets. At night, she took her meals alone in a corner of the tavern, her ears pricked up for hints of work. From time to time a particularly drunk or arrogant customer would harass her, wondering what a surface elf was doing all by herself so far from the forests… but after what happened with the first couple, the rest of the patrons quickly learned to leave her alone. She spent that time considering what to do. Should she go back to mercenary work? Maybe she should return to the forests and see if she could find her people. My mother’s people, she told herself, and that thought brought its own deep wellspring of emotion.

What about her mother? Aliara had always assumed she was dead. That was the safest assumption to make. Yet the uncertainty nagged at her. Even if her mother had survived the drow, there were so many ways to die down here. And if she was alive, how could Aliara possibly find her among the millions of souls that called the Underneath home? It was impossible, a fantasy, yet her thoughts kept returning to it.

In the end she decided she was overthinking things. She had struck out on her own not to achieve a specific goal, but to strike out on her own. Self-reliance was an end in itself. She could take work as a soldier or a spy if she wanted to. Hell, she’d even dance on tables in one of the seedier clubs. The important thing was that whatever she did, she’d do it for herself.

And what about Teysa? That was another thought that would not leave her, no matter how she tried to clear her mind. What about her? I don’t owe her anything.

No, but you’re curious about how she’s doing, aren’t you? Even if you aren’t in love with her anymore, you still care about her.

Maybe so. Maybe so. But that was a whole separate problem, one Aliara did not feel competent to handle right now. With difficulty, she wrestled all of her feelings about Teysa into a box and shut the lid tight. She’d have to open it eventually, she knew, but she had enough on her plate now.

The next morning, a merchant and his retinue arrived at her tavern and paid for three nights. Aliara sat quietly at the bar and listened as the merchant—a fat human with rings on every finger and a florid complexion—laid out his planned route with his seneschal and bodyguards. “The chasm road has grown more perilous of late, sir,” the seneschal insisted. “You may need to hire more guards.”

Aliara took notice of that and shifted in her seat. She had never followed the chasm road into the deeper reaches of the Underneath, but she’d heard plenty of stories of the riches one could win down there if one was brave and quick and lucky. She had a quiet word with the seneschal that night, and when the caravan departed three days later, it did so with Aliara riding on the back of a wagon with a shortbow clutched in her hands.

“What will you do?” She could still hear Lotho’s voice, but at least now she had an answer for him.

“Whatever I choose,” she murmured under her breath. The crunch of the wagon’s wheels swallowed her words, and neither of the guards that flanked the wagon turned to look at her.

“Whatever I choose…”