A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 87: Dinoryn

"I don't know what could possibly be the matter with -" the voice that must have been Jhul'un's began to say as she opened the door. She trailed off when she caught sight of the male bowing respectfully to her.

Jhul'une was not tall even for a drow woman. Her eyes -- a reddish purple like her mothers -- were level with Caleldir's. Her hair, unlike her mother's, was more of a pale violet, and the platinum roots that were showing at the crown of her head suggested that it was dyed that color. It was twisted up in a neat bun to keep from getting into her beautiful noble face. The sheer amount of it meant that is was probably as long as her mother's. The robes she wore were just as practical as Iiv'lua's, but were in darker grays and richer blues.

She blinked her long silver eyelashes at the almost disturbingly pretty male in pleasure slave's robes. "Mother, you must know that I have already-"

"No, I know you have coupled with a male before. This is not someone I have hired or rented, though. This one is yours -- a gift from me for reaching your first century," Iiv'lua told her daughter over her shoulder. Her hands came up to rub Jhul'une's arms affectionately. "I thought it would be good for you to have something of your own -- to practice authority and discipline."

Jhul'une's lips twisted into something like annoyance and awkwardness, which her mother was unable to see from behind her. But Caleldir would be able to see it quite well.

"Thank you, mother," the younger woman said in a respectful tone even if her expression suggested that she wasn't sure what to think. She didn't even know if she was thankful or not. A personal slave could be a lot of responsibility.

"Shall I leave you alone with him? He is collared, and there are seals on his magics. Do try to be careful with those," the Matron said. Before her daughter could even answer, Iiv'lua left her rooms and teleported away.

Jhul'une blew out a long breath and put her hands on her hips as the observed the slave's reaction to meeting his new mistress. Because she guessed that that was what she was to him now. "Typical," she muttered to herself. "Just when I came back and thought I had a moment to relax by myself."

"Well, this is an awkward situation," Caleldir said dryly. "I suppose that you are not all that much more thrilled about me being here than I am about being here. And, frankly, I would rather not have been captured and sold by that cursed mercenary. Not that you would care about that. I am Caleldir Blackdawn, newly returned to the Underdark. I would normally declare myself at your service, but right now that seems a meaningless statement."

She watched him for a few moments longer -- longer than would be polite if she was actually addressing a fellow noble, male or not. "Call me Jhul. I will call you Cal."

Finally, she properly approached him. If he was really hers, she might as well inspect him. Triple-check that he didn't have a dangerous spell or item on him. She quickly saw that, if he did, then there were far more sealing spells on him to render him mostly harmless. Didn't stop him from grabbing a knife and stabbing her, though, especially considering the fact that he had said outright that he didn't want to be there. So she would not trust him for now. No wise drow would.

"Do you have any alignment detection spells?" Caleldir asked, noting the drow's distrust. "If so, you will find that I am both Lawful and Non-Evil. Good, in fact. I will not try to kill or injure you. I will escape if I can, I will not pretend otherwise, but you have no reason to fear that I will stab you or something." Tie her up in her bed and slip out the window with some of her stuff, sure. No stabbing though.

"Hmm," Jhul hummed in a noncommittal tone. Then she whispered a quick spell. "I see." She said after a moment. "However, this is no reason to trust you. You understand." She had been a century in the Underdark; relaxing her guard around a newly acquired slave would not come easily to her. And he had outright said that he would escape if he could. It would be quite difficult for him to do so as long as he still had that collar on, and only a female from Dinoryn would be able to take it off.

Even though she had only meant to visually examine him, she found her hands running across the exposed flesh of his abdomen. He felt nice, even if her hands seemed to be making him tense and uncomfortable. Maybe... maybe it would be relaxing to take him to bed with her. Yes.

Having made a decision, Jhul's hand went to a bangle on her wrist. She fiddled with that for a moment, then there was a faint surge of power. Then she touched the collar around his neck. "I've keyed this to me; you will not be able to stray far, but you can come out of the room. Do not think that stabbing me will go well for you; this thing can kill you if I die while it's keyed to me." Handy for bodyguards, and definitely useful for untrustworthy slaves. Lolth, she wished she could put such a device on all the people she had coupled with. That would be very difficult and have dire consequences, though.

Caleldir rolled his eyes. "Like I said; I have zero intention of killing you, even if it was certain that that would free me. Not unless you yourself were trying to kill me. I am not that stupid. After all, I want to escape. If a valuable piece of property runs away, that merits far less pursuit than if a kin-murderer runs away. Attacking you will not serve me no matter the situation."

"At least you seem to be intelligent," she commented. Since she didn't plan on trying to kill him either, she felt reasonably certain that her inevitable murder (because drow rarely died of anything else) would not be by his hands.

He smiled again. "Another reason neither to trust nor distrust me. I am smart enough to know what actions would be foolish. I am also smart enough to figure out which actions would be wise." He left it at that. Skilled as he was with magical devices, he was confident that he could find a way to remove this collar if given the time. And tools.

"Come," she said as she turned her back to him. Jhul then turned down the hall towards the door at the end. Through it was her bedroom. The place was huge, as bedrooms went, but wasn't quite as large as Caleldir would be used to in R.I.S.A's dimension. The main features were windows that overlooked the courtyard below and the big, richly covered curtained bed. Aside from a couple of tables to put things on, there wasn't much more to the space. There was, however, a door within that was currently open to show a huge walk-in closet filled with various pieces of doubtlessly enchanted clothing. Jhul entered, then sat on the edge of the bed, waiting to see if her new slave would follow obediently.

Caleldir withdrew a little. "You know," he observed. "I really do not mind if you want to take some of that alone time now..."

Her eyebrows rose. Her mother had failed to tell her anything about the slave. But apparently, he wasn't there willingly, and he didn't seem eager to couple her. Lolth, he was THAT kind of pleasure slave, wasn't he? It would be just like her mother to do this to her. Iiv'lua was probably sitting there up in her room, smug as anything, expecting her precious heir to learn a little authority. Because Drow matrons did not ask, they took. And the world was supposed to be both afraid and in awe of their beauty. Jhul could hear her mother's words as if the woman was right next to her. The drow woman sighed.

"Come," she tried to say in a firmer voice. It sounded more impatient than demanding. "Message my shoulders, and then maybe I will choose to relax alone." Not what her mother would have liked her to say. But her mother wasn't here, was she?

She seemed willing to compromise. Huh. That was unexpected. Just a massage? Caleldir briefly tried to see if his cantrips had been sealed along with all his other magic. They had not. Nor had the mercenary bothered to seal his divine magic at all. He grinned. "My Lady Jhul, it would be my pleasure to ease the weariness of your muscles. I have some slight skill in the healing arts, and can work reinvigorating spells directly into your skin, if you allow me." And his pleasure magic too. He would give her such a magnificent massage that she would hardly even want to go further. Probably. She seemed unenthusiastic about forcing him anyway.

Jhul merely nodded. That was very useful in a masseur. Perhaps having her own pleasure slave wasn't going to be that bad after all. She leaned forward slightly as he positioned himself behind her. Then, after a moment's thought, she untied her robe and let it fall from her shoulders to a pool around her hips. The healing magic would definitely work better on bare skin. And she was completely bare underneath the robe. Cal had full access to her deep obsidian skin from the base of her elegantly curved spine to her neck.

And more, if he was so bold. How easy it would be to reach around her front to give her plump and perky breasts the same treatment as her shoulders...

Caleldir did not react all that much to Jhul's self-exposure. Somewhat worryingly, he was getting used to seeing beautiful women in various states of undress. He could be a professional about this. He would note the, still strange to him, sight of his own ebon-sheened hands and fingers against the dark flesh of her shoulders and back. Part of him missed the contrast between the light and the dark, but not all. It was still rather amusing to be a drow.

His arcane-enhanced touch was skillful even without the magical additions, as Caleldir had gotten very skilled at this sort of thing with all the practice he had done on Selene. That said, this was supposed to be a relaxing, not an arousing, massage, so he toned down the eroticism and upped the comforting. Starting at her shoulders, he worked his way down to the small of her back and then up once more, coaxing and prodding all the muscles back to their proper locations. He most certainly was not bold enough to reach around and caress her bosom, though. He was trying to keep her mind off of sex, after all.

As she relaxed more, she reached up to unclasp and remove the things that held her hair tightly to her head. The dyed pale violet tresses spilled forth, and were guided over her shoulder to give her slave free access to her back. Newly freed, her hair was erratically curled and messy, but even with the extra volume, it was easily long enough to partially join her robes in the pool of fabric around her. The smell of some sweet fruit wafted in the air as her hair moved. The scent was an appropriate smell for the color it was. Neither Selene's and certainly not Ashyr's platinum tresses were at all scented -- not, at least, while they were in the wilds above the surface.

"Since my mother failed to do so, tell me about yourself, Cal," she asked idly as she felt him knead her flesh. At that moment, she certainly seemed perfectly content to let him massage her and leave it at that. Taking a man against his will was hard work, after all. Too hard for a person recovering from as long as journey as she had just taken.

"There is not much to relate, and yet, far too much to tell," Caleldir answered. "I am from House Blackdawn, which I gather your history relates as having been cut off from the rest of the Underdark twelve centuries ago. I recently left my home to try to reestablish contact with the rest of the drow, only to have my way home cut off behind me in a disaster. I soon ran into some drow nobles seeking to reclaim their House from usurpers, and, glad to have found my own kind again, promised to help them with my arcane knowledge in their revenge. But the usurpers hired a canny mercenary to sabotage their rivals, and that mercenary captured me and sealed most of my magic. And here I am." He sighed. "The wider Underdark is a much wilder place than the calm, isolated, peaceful caverns I once knew. I was a librarian and a researcher, not a warrior or a spy. I was not ready for how brutal and treacherous things were here. Our own records told us that our kin, and we in the past, were a pretty quarrelsome and cunning lot, but twelve centuries of relative peace and plenty, cut off from any contact in the outside world, with the only conflicts we had being the constant attacks by the mindless ghosts and malfunctioning machines of Deusterra, caused our plotting skills to fall to rust in favor of trust in other drow and straight-forward combat skills."

"No. I can't imagine you were prepared for any of this at all," Jhul agreed with a sigh. "A hundred years spent here, and I hardly feel prepared either." It was a sentiment shared by countless other drow, even the nobles, whose hardships were arguably less than drow of a more common variety. "But do not think that the fact that I share your sentiments will cause me to release you. Forget your life from before, Cal. You will not be going back to it. My mother would kill me if I couldn't keep track of one pleasure slave. You might think that to be exaggeration. It is not."

Caleldir paled a bit. As much as one with a drow's complexion could, at least. "I... I would not want to be the cause of such a death," he admitted. Great. His duty was to try to get back to Ashyr and Selene, and R.I.S.A., but he did not want Jhul's death on his conscience. Especially because that would wreck the chance of making the Dinoryn into allies, and Duskhaven needed the Dinoryn. "But I should warn you that even if I forget them, I have powerful friends who will not forget me." He looked a bit forlorn. "Then again, the most powerful of those friends are not drow, so perhaps I will never see them again."

Jhul let out a great yawn. He really was good at a relaxing massage. She could feel herself start to fall asleep already. Which wouldn't be a good thing with her new and -- well, she would think him to be untrustworthy, but she was actually convinced that he was telling her the truth. Unfortunately, part of that truth was his admittance that he would try to escape. Which meant she had to go through her stuff and make sure that there was nothing he could get a hold of that she didn't want him to. Only after that was finished could she relax enough to let him massage her to sleep.

"Come on, slave," she said as she pulled away from him and shrugged her robe back over her shoulders. "I'm putting you back in your room."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, 'mistress'," he replied in a dry tone. He noted to himself that it was a good thing that Jhul was so easy-going with him. Or at least very tired. He had gathered that most Drow would have already done some rather nasty things to him for all the independence he had shown.

Jhul stood, looked over to the pile of books on her nightstand, and picked one up to hand to him. "There. To keep you occupied."

"Thank you," he said as he gratefully took the book.

As she walked out of her room, a thought gave her momentary pause. "Oh. I suppose I have to feed you, too. Hmm..." She turned the corner into a small eating area. Within, there was an enchanted chest for keeping food cold. She opened that and pulled out what looked to be a large loaf of bread -- while it was, in fact, a bready meat pie. "There. Hope you like lizard steak and mushrooms. I don't have anything else."

"I do indeed like steak and mushrooms," he agreed. "Washed down best with clean water. I can still use my weakest magic, divine and arcane alike, so if you give me a cup I can create and chill my own water."

Jhul did give him a glass to drink out of. Though she did find it interesting that he had access to spells of both an arcane and divine nature. Not interesting enough to quiz him about it when she was already so tired. So she left him alone without further questioning him.

He settled down to reading. Well, as far as prisons went, this was comfortable enough. And not as worrisome as it had been with that mad dryad.

After an appropriate time for rest, Jhul stopped by Caleldir's room only briefly to drop by more food and another book. She informed him that she had somewhere to be for a couple hours, and told him to behave himself. She was wearing more formal robes at the time, and her hair was done up in an elegant fashion, weaved through with gems and golden chains. But Jhul didn't look like she looked forward for whatever necessary thing she had to do. Her eyes were unfocused and preoccupied, and her lips were in a thin line of worry.

Caleldir could do nothing about this, though. Not that he could think of, anyway. So he continued to read and contemplate his plight for the many more hours that he was trapped in his room. For a while, he even tried to tamper with his collar, but was afraid to do too much too quickly lest someone catch on to what he was doing.