Drow's Dilemma Ep. 116: Bargaining

"That is what we will do during our free time, then," Elerra decided.

For the rest of the evening, the three conspirators were in a frenzy of scheming on top of their regular tasks. All the while they were looking over their shoulders for the mysterious player(s) that were stealing away people like them. Though they tried to relax, their rest period was not very restful. The sun was barely even out of sight by the time they were ready to set out again.

The Faerie camp of the Aelsunites was a bit farther away from New Duskhaven than the Dark Elf camp had been. The Light Elves had set up a large, well organized military camp with massive tents, entrenchments, fortifications, broad roads, and layers upon layers of all the trappings of high surface civilization. They worked fast, and even a temporary camp was treated with all the architectural care that humans put into a city.

The Fae nearby lived in the woods. But the way they moved and twisted the forest, waters, rocks, and soil was wondrous to behold. It seemed as if nothing was there but nature itself, but far more lively an exuberant than nature unchanneled could ever have been. And it was all shaped to be perfect for habitation, wilder and more primal, but in its way no less luxurious or elegant than the camp of the Byzromine Light Elves. The two Aelsunite Factions on first look could not have seemed more different, but they were united by their love of Beauty

Since the Sun was down, the Light Elven city-camp was pretty much asleep, with only a few guards patrolling the perimeter. The Faerie forest camp never truly slept, though, for they danced as gleefully under sun, stars, moon, or clouds.

And dance the nymphs did. The drow could hear them singing and laughing in those overly lovely, enchantingly clear voices long before they came close enough to see them. Elerra slowed slightly with a look of distrust on her face. It caused her to walk a step behind her handmaiden, which normally would have bothered her Noble sensibilities. But such joviality was... disconcerting.

"Elerra," Mizrae hissed chidingly. "I can practically smell your fear." But she didn't look very comfortable either.

"They're just so... alien," Elerra whispered back.

"It sounds like a lot of fun to me," Laele said with a roll of her eyes at the silly, mistrustful nobles. Their years of cruel social maneuvering left them ill-prepared for this task. Her hand fearlessly rose to the nape of her neck where her short dress was fastened. Deft fingers untied the fabric, then she caught her clothing as it fell from her body and left her completely nude.

Physically, Laele clearly didn't have the refined perfection of her noble companions. The way she carried herself, however, gave her an appeal that the other two did not possess. She furthered her attractiveness by adorning her body with artful dyes that highlighted the most appealing aspects of her form.

The two nobles could not allow the mere commoner to appear more brave than they were for more than a moment. At once they dropped their own robes and joined the handmaiden in her nudity. They did not adorn their bodies as Laele had. They were drow Nobles, after all; only nymphs and succubi were more attractive than a noble drow. In their minds, anyway.

"Well?" Laele asked with one quirked eyebrow. Then she led the other two deeper into the camp.

The interior of the faerie camp more than lived up to the promise of its approach. It was like nature itself had felt honored to have the fae, and built a wood, a spring, a meadow, and a hollow for them. Silvermoon Lilies blossomed under the night sky, and pixies and nymphs danced and sang. All inhumanly perfect, all gloriously naked, with bare, pale flesh gleefully on display.

The nymphs looked very much alike, for the most part. Same pale skin, same perfect features, same buoyant hourglass figures with wide hips and massive breasts, same long slender limbs and pointed ears. The main difference was in their heights - some being only a little taller than the drow, some being taller than all but the tallest of human men - and their very long hair and large eyes, which were every shade of leaf, weed, bark, and blossom imaginable.

The pixies were quite similar, though less curvy, one-tenth the height, and had colorful butterfly and dragonfly wings.

The drow were surrounded by two dozen dancing, laughing, singing nymphs who grabbed them and tried to pull them into their dance. They spoke quickly and melodically in Sylvan, though some greeted them in Common as well.

"Drow visitors!" one nymph with Periwinkle hair and eyes laughed.

"We never get drow visitors!" another with red rose colors added.

"It is the night, it is their time!" a pixie with riverweed green hair and sky blue eyes declared.

"Welcome! Welcome! Join the dance!" they called out, one after another.

Laele took a deep breath, observed the dance for a moment, then leapt in. She imitated the dance as best she could, all the while hoping that the nymph would give her points for enthusiasm. There was no way that she could match the grace and beauty with which the nymph-kin danced.

Neither Mizrae nor Elerra felt like joining in and inevitably being upstaged by the nymphs and pixies, but neither felt as if they had much choice. They took a couple of moments more to study how the strange women danced before jumping in themselves.

The nymphs pulled the three drow along into their revelries for a few minutes before a very tall nymph with pure white hair and glowing purple eyes swept in. "Ladies, ladies! Our guests are not used to our dances. Leave them be."

With giggles and theatrical sighs, the nymphs let the drow go and swept off into their own dancing. The tall nymph who towered at almost twice the height of the drow approached them, leaning over and holding out her hand. "Greetings, travelers. Forgive the ladies: they are unused to mortals, and heedless of their frailties. What brings you here into Aelsuna's embrace?"

The two relieved nobles panted a moment, finding themselves unable to respond to the absurdly tall nymph for a moment. Laele was able to gather her wits before them; unlike them, she had gone with the flow and had not tried to even match the skill with which the fae danced. Strangely, the nymphs and pixies actually seemed to appreciate Laele's approach more than any effort the drow Nobles made.

"We have come seeking to better our chances at conceiving offspring, my lady," Laele responded respectfully. "We were told that you know a way."

The tall nymph laughed with the sound of a waterfall and wind through the trees. "You have, darlings? Well, you have indeed come to the right place. And I am the right Nymph. I am Amethelia the Ancient, Daughter of Aelsuna, the Sun's Own Alchemist. Do you wish a blessing, a potion, a spell? Do you wish to conceive off of your beloved, to gain a child from a stranger who will remain so, or to ensnare some unattainable man? Do you aim for the same man, or different ones? Do you want daughters of surpassing beauty and power, or sons to make their father's proud? Single births, twins, or triplets?"

Laele blinked before looking towards her companions. Those were more options than any of them expected.

The nobles were likewise stumped. Just how honest should they be? What exactly did they want to conceive? They didn't know that they had a choice. Mizrae finally spoke up. "We... want the same man and... he might be under the false impression that we have already conceived his children."

"As for what we want to conceive... er, I think one daughter each would satisfy?" Elerra asked more than stated looking towards her companions. They both strugged and nodded.

Amethelia laughed once more, her tone benign, but alien. "Ah, you seek to pretend to have conceived, when you have not, then to turn that pretense into reality. Is this man your lover? Have you even had sex with him yet? How long ago are you pretending to have conceived? Shall I speed up the pregnancies so the period of gestation aligns with your deception, so that you may not be found out?"

This also took the drow by surprise. They had no idea that the nymphs had this sort of power. In fact, the nobles outright didn't believe that it was possible. Clearly, this pale-haired nymph was deceiving them in order to get some advantage over them...

"It was, what? Two months ago that it supposedly happened? That's when he thought we had sex with him, which we never did," Laele said, which earned her some glares from her companions. "Hey, telling her will help us!" she said defensively. "Um what was the other question? Oh yeah. No, he... well, he barely even knows us."

The tall nymph listened to the words of the drow, nodding with that mischievous smile all along. "I see, I see. So, you wish to ensnare him. Do you want him to accept you, lust after you, or love you? And who is this man?"

Laele's face grew heated for some reason. She hesitated, looked back at the noble drow (who still seemed adamantly against giving Amethelia all the information), then finally spoke up. "I-I don't know."

"Lust," both of the nobles said adamantly.

"Right, that one," Laele decided with not much certainty. "Or at least acceptance. Lord Blackdawn-Duskhaven has too many lovers."

The Ancient Nymph's eyes went wide and her grin grew larger. She pulled Laele into a tight embrace. "'Lord Blackhaven!'He is a worthy target indeed. Then, I shall call you my sisters!"

Letting the drow go, she spun away. Though she was a full eight foot tall, she moved as lightly as any pixie. Her tone and mannerisms shifted, and holy light began to suffuse her as the sounds of nymphen revelry faded into a faraway murmur. "So, I will give to thee my blessings, refugees of the darkness below. If thou takest the seed of the Nymph Demigod Caius into thine wombs thy shall without fail conceive one daughter each, of surpassing beauty and power, with the gestation period sped up by two months so that in four months no mortal doctor will be able to tell that they were not conceived upon that day.

"Moreover, in order that thou mayest gain and keep the lusts of the Demigod, I shall wrap you in mine blessings. Thy beauty and essence shall be increased beyond the ken of your kind. Thou shalt be gifted with grace and seductiveness of the purest moonlight: that the darkness and beauty of the night's silence shall be suffused within thee, guiding thy words, walk, and way to thine goals.

"But if thou takest mine offer, then thou shalt be bound to thine path. Thine beauty and grace shall come at a cost: for thou wilst be disgusted by the ugliness thou once reveled in. Thine deception shall come at a greater cost: for to conceal this great thing, thou shalt lose the ability to deceive on lesser things, and thine ways shall be guided from the darkness of Lolth to the pure moonlight of Ellistraea's truth. And the lust thou shalt incite in the one impervious to its ravages shall cost you the concealment of your beauty: for the greater a light grows, the less it can be concealed. The clouds hide not the moon, but the mortals below. And, finally, to attach thineselves to the Demigod, thou shalt lose the power to ever conceive from any other man, and thine hearts shall be bound to the target of thine deceptions, so that the untruth you seek to exploit shall in time become more true than any mere fact."

As she spoke, Amethelia the Ancient, Daughter of Aelsuna, floated off the ground very slightly, winds softly flowing around her, lifting her hair around her like a rusalka's watery tresses, golden light infusing those pale locks. Her eyes turned from purple to a fiery red-orange. "So, adopted daughters of the moon, wilst thou take mine deal? Wilst thou make thine lies and deceptions into truths that can stand under the light of ten trillion stars and shy not away?" The ancient nymph leaned down, floating in the air, reaching out one glowing hand. "Think thou carefully, for once thou touchest thine hand to mine, thine path is forever set. Thou wilst truly get not only what thou thinkest thou desireth, but what thou actually desireth in a way that thou yet knowest not. What say thee?"

Laele took the nymph's hand without hesitation. The noble drow looked rather horrified. Those terms seemed a terrible price to pay for a mere pregnancy. But what choice did they have? It was this, or get kidnapped by some sinister unknown. At least this was they knew what was to befall them. So, hesitantly, they took the nymph's hand as well.

The nymph's smile was dazzling. "Then we have a bargain, daughters of Ellistraea." She whirled away. "Now, that you have agreed to my bargain, I will name the price of my spells. This is both the cost of my work and the fuel by which I work my arts. There are three of you, and from each of you I will ask four things. Now, listen carefully, and you will never forget.

"The price will be paid: Body, Mind, Spirit, and Soul. The cost of the Body shall be a stone, a bloom, and a metal. The cost of the Mind shall be a story, a song, and a dance. The cost of the Spirit shall be laughter, tears, and anger. Finally, the cost of the Soul shall be a dream, a desire, and a memory. Each of you three must pay one price in each place, and none of you may copy another's cost."

Around the three drow, the faerie encampment began to fade, as did Amethelia herself from the feet up. She smiled again. "Bring me what I have asked, mothers of the unconceived, and when you have them, I will be there."

Amethelia and the faerie encampment vanished, leaving the three drow alone in a seemingly ordinary bit of woodland underneath a cold moon.

The drow turned to each other, their faces ashen. How in the abyss were they going to manage to pay the nymph back?