“Your tutor has arrived.”
Aunrae’s father, the House Mage of Duskryn, spoke quickly and left. He was more and more distant as of late. She sighed. Death was around every corner even within her own house… especially within her own house. She was beginning to find the house intrigues tiresome. She had just happened upon a tome detailing the trials of Kiaransalee, and her rise and fall as a great death god. Aunrae thought she caught a glimpse of her own frosty breath in the warmed chamber air. The radiant heat of the lava that flowed a short mile beneath the magnificent drow city of Menzoberranzan made such frigidity impossible. The chill came and went in a moment.
Aunrae listened to her father walk down the hallway. There was an entreating, dark whisper that Aunrae ignored as she dressed and gathered her scrolls, quill, ink, and a boiled thighbone. The message she received a week before from her tutor had been very specific. She stowed an extra dagger in the small of her back and envied her tutor’s freedom from the paranoia and pettiness that plagued drow nobility. Aunrae slipped into a chain shirt and cinched on an ornate belt. Her favorite possession, a black steel morning star circled in wicked barbs, hung from a heavy ring at her side. Of course, the pettiness could be fun from time to time, especially when it ended in violence. Just last week Aunrae pulverized one of her younger sisters who had attacked her openly, trying to impress house elders. The ambush was comically obvious and Aunrae was able to cast a preparatory spell. The strength of a minotaur flowed through Aunrae during the combat, and each swing of her morning star was punctuated with a satisfying crunch. Poor, poor Zestree… if only her plan had been as resilient and useful as her thighbone proved to be.
She gathered everything together and stopped at her bedchamber door, almost forgetting the Duskryn amulet of Lloth that was worn by each member of her house. The amulet featured a riding lizard with ruby eyes and whose tail ended in a menacing black spider, signifying the success of House Duskryn in exploration, commerce, and fealty to the Queen of the Demonweb Pits. She put on the necklace and ran face-first into another sister, Zarintra.
“Where are you off too, defiler?” Zarintra was always annoyingly stealthy and delighted herself startling those that expected death.
“I am meeting my necromancy tutor. Would you like to come as well? Zestree is coming.”
“The favor of Lloth does not come from a tutor. All I need to know about the faith I learn from the House chapel and our matron mother. I have no need to study necromancy like a dry, sulking boy. Males study necromancy out of some feeble need to have power over something.”
Aunrae’s eyes narrowed and clenched her fists. A cold, otherworldly wind exploded from some dark corner of Aunrae’s room and her silver hair flew in a furious tangle. A disembodied, wailing shriek filled the room and the sneer on Zanitra’s face slackened for a moment in fear. She staggered back into the hallway. A ceramic bauble, an exaggerated playing piece from a sava board that Aunrae bought at the bazaar, flew from a shelf through the door and exploded into dust and shards at Zanitra’s feet. Aunrae was already walking down the hallway.
“Defiler!” Zanitra screamed, “You will never enter Lloth’s chapel again! It was you that broke the ancient image of our Queen Mother! Lloth has cursed you, I feel it. You will not come to Lloth’s Sanctity again, unless I am there to open your belly on her blessed altar. Light on you and die!”
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