Surfacing Ch. 01

Rausery was quiet, seeming to consider how to answer. It was me that spoke up.

"Children," I said. "The Duergar do it this way, try to follow a bloodline through the male. The female can subvert that bloodline any time with her actions, and he knows it. He tries to control her behavior, and control what other males get near her. It's more work, and it takes more of his energy and thoughts."

"With varying success," Rausery agreed with a nod. "It doesn't matter to us as much; the child is ours no matter what. If we care about knowing the sire for certain, we control our own actions."

"What does she get in return for that?" Gaelan asked with a wrinkle to her nose. "Lack of pain, or only less pain like the Duergar?"

"Sometimes. Also resources. Protection. Status or power," Rausery answered, ticking off her fingers. "Same as we provide for our males, for their own benefit. Except she accepts it more for her children, which she knows are hers. Our own kept males don't even get that satisfaction."

Jael grunted, her lips pursing more tightly. "And we are to deal with these Humans?"

"Or you can work alone, Jael, it's your choice," said her Elder. "They are as likely to try to kill or capture you for being a demon as they are to try to communicate with you."

"They are idiots! I'm not a demon!" the youngest blurted hotly, and it was painfully obvious she was thinking about Draegloth. "They have not seen a real one!"

"Or maybe they have," Rausery smirked at Jael. "They had to get the idea from somewhere."

"From us, long ago," Gaelan smiled at the thought.

I looked up at the Stars again and considered that. What about our pale cousins? Would they be considered demons as well? It was odd to think that I knew more about what to expect from Humans than I did the elves of the Surface. That hadn't been part of our lessons; there hadn't seemed to be any material on it at Shyntre's fingertips. I knew of an old, old war, and that we hated them, and they us...and that was about it.

That was when I noticed the barest lightening of the black Sky to deepest indigo in the East. The first Moon had set and the smaller, second Moon hovered just above the Western horizon as a bare sliver of light.

"Sunrise," I muttered, and my Sisters followed my gaze and trepidation.

"Will we sit out for long?" Gaelan asked Rausery.

"Long enough to know what Sunburned eyes feel like," she grinned. "We'll get to the Sunburned skin later."

The birds had begun singing very soon before the colors began to change. It was a tense and wordless wait on our remote outcropping as the Eastern horizon shifted in shade with alarming speed: indigo to the queen's own purple before it seemed to move straight to a strange mix of orange and...pink? The Stars faded and disappeared before the relentless march of daylight and—high above the smear of strange, fiery shades—I could finally see blue...Sky blue, though it was paler and did yet not seem to be as rich as my eye color.

I believed Rausery that it would become so, though; she'd seen it on calm days closer to midday. It may be many more days before I could stand the light long enough to do the same.

The Sun crested not as gold but as blood red, and the three of us had been looking right at it when it did. We quickly averted our gazes and as I blinked, I noticed a moving blind spot in the shape of a partial disc that blocked some of the detail of my sight.

It took a long time to fade; I wasn't even sure if it had by the time my head began to pound as I watched the full green of the evergreens and new grasses coming into view, seeing that the bark covering each sentinel was...brown. Like the old needles and mulched, dropped leaves and pods.

Gaelan whimpered.

"Keep them open, novice," Rausery growled. "It hasn't even gone to gold, yet."

And yet it was brighter than anything in existence.

The red tint changed to orange before too long, and my instinct knew that the bright gold from my dreams was next. My dreams? Or rather... from Auslan's dreams. His visions of the female figure in white standing before a Drow—that Drow changing from "anyone" to me, with my face. This golden sunlight he'd known I would see for real somehow.

Someday.

Jael keened a high sound of discomfort next, and Rausery kicked her with the toe of her boot. She went silent.

We were all leaking constant tears long before the Sun finally turned gold, swelling full and two finger widths above the horizon. By then I suspected it was the same for my Sisters as it was for me: I was blind whether my eyes were opened or closed, and the pain wouldn't stop.

"Elder..." I whispered.

"You're not intended to see today. Tell me when something changes."

What was that supposed to mean?

We remained either seated or lying down for perhaps another hour in full daylight on the rocks. The birds' singing now seemed incredibly loud; blood pounded in my ears and behind my eyes and it seemed I would get no peace and no relief. I could feel the heat of the Sun even this early in the day as it touched me or the black of my clothing. It warmed me and felt pleasant now, especially compared to the chill of night, but I knew it would be dangerous to stay exposed to it for long periods at a time.

I blinked sightlessly once again, and it felt like ground glass had been dusted beneath my eyelids. Frayed nerves scraped themselves raw against my own flesh.

I cried out.

"Sirana?"

"Something...changed, Elder," I said, gritting my teeth.

"How so?"

"My eyes..."

"Tell me what you feel."

"Ground glass."

"That's it. They're burned. Go inside and bandage your eyes. Keep them closed."

When I staggered to my feet, I had no idea which direction I was going. I felt Rausery's hands take firm hold of my shoulders and point me in a different direction than I'd been headed.

"This way. Straight ahead."

"Y-you can't see...?" I began to ask.

"No, I still can't. I know this place. Don't ask stupid questions and get into the dark."

I wasted no more time doing so. In mere moments, my Sisters joined me, though the Elder remained outside for somewhat longer.

It occurred to me as I felt blind in my pack for something with which to wrap my eyes that my spiders were anxious, crawling quickly over my arms and making little hops from place to place.

"I'll be okay," I whispered, thinking it at them as I worked to calm myself so they could sense it, too. "Will have to see how you little ones do in the light as well."

"A good idea," Rausery said as the three of us began binding our eyes. "I doubt D'Shea created them for this world. They may die, Sirana."

"Or they might just hide," I replied. "I have plenty of pouches and crevices."

"If you think so. They're your brood." She clapped her gloved hands and we jumped. She had our attention. "Don't take those blindfolds off. It will take several days for your eyes to heal to where you can even see in the night without pain."

"Wh—how will we hunt and get water?" Gaelan asked.

"Why do you think we gathered extra? And we're ready for another test: moving through the night forest without eyes at all. You should be able to do that by now, and if you can't, you deserve to smack into a tree. Meantime, I'd get some sleep if I were you."

It took a while to ignore the pain long enough to drift into reverie, but eventually we managed it.

*****

Our cycles took on a certain torturous, reliable pattern from that point: blind foraging, blind running, blind fighting, followed by a cold night of hard hunting for meat and all edibles before we endured another warming morning and usually burned our eyes again in hot afternoon—though not nearly as bad as the first time—and started over again. We were given more tricks to ease the pain or lessen the damage, making a "sunblindness mask" from flexible bark, for example.

"Extra good for snowblindness, too," Rausery had said. "Snow reflects Sunlight the same as liquid water. A pale yellow soil or quartz rock is nothing compared to the shock of glittering snow."

The masks blocked the worst glare and protected our eyes against burning, though it played hard against my peripheral vision and I looked forward to acclimating enough not to need it anymore. Even blind, I could not always hear as well as I always had in the Underdark, and it was because of more than birds and insects.

It was because of the wind.

Gusts of moving air whipping past our ears were its own kind of sensory overload; it varied day to day and throughout each hour with no discernible pattern. I had begun to understand why the Surface creatures had to be inured to a certain level of constant noise. The roaring of air across our sensitive ears—often worse the higher we climbed in those mountains, and especially so on the peaks and crests—could make it to where I lost both sight and sound.

That was when I began to pay more attention than ever to smell and taste and touch. The "acclimation" I had thought would be mostly sight turned out to be my entire body, and how well my mind could process new detail and discern new patterns.

We soon experienced Sunburn on our skin as well. By all evidence, Rausery had been looking forward to this particular lesson, as it was the only time she used her Feldeu while training us. Simply put: she wanted to fuck us, one each day, on a high and fully Sun-exposed piece of mountain.

"It's tradition," she chuckled, holding on to the back of my neck as we looked out over the vast, quickly greening landscape through our masks.

"Tradition, Elder?" I asked.

"Initiations in culture, passed from elder to younger."

"Oh. I thought that was 'sludge slides downhill.'"

Rausery laughed out loud, her deeper voice whipped quickly away by the wind. She massaged my neck. "Strip down and present for me, virgin. Keep looking out at the Surface as I use your twat."

"Yes, Elder," I said as I removed my newly-mottled cloak and laid the many pieces of my uniform upon it on the flat stone promontory.

The air felt chilly as it sloughed heat directly from my skin and hardened my dark purple nipples to tight points. The wind ruffled my hair and my mons fur alike and the way it caressed me around shoulders and waist, hips and thighs felt like the current of a stream. At the same time, I could feel exactly where the Sun struck my skin, its energy punching through the air without weight, without effort, and seeping into me. If I faced one way or the other, I knew exactly where my skin was exposed.

"Keep your mask on, Blue Eyes. Good, now. Kneel down, that's good. Spread your legs a little more. Keep looking out."

My Elder reached between my thighs to rub my sex with her gloved hand, leaning to pinch my nipples and stroking my skin, blocking part of the Sun until I was moist enough for her. Then I felt her take tight hold of my hips and slide her hot and hard Feldeu along my crack. I moved my hips around, pleasuring myself and her, slickening her weapon before she would plunge it inside. Eventually Rausery released my breasts and leaned back a bit and I knew without looking that the Sunlight was nearly straight above me; its seeping heat coated my bare back like a blanket.

I counted perhaps eleven different shades of green as I waited to be taken—all somewhat smudged as I had trouble seeing distances in this light—but I could grant that I had never felt such a vastness as this with my entire body as I kneeled naked on all fours on the edge of a high, flat rock.

My hands gripped the gritty ledge as my Elder sank swiftly to fill my sex and plow it for a while, stopping before one of us came, then starting again...stopping...then starting...then changing to a different orifice as I mewled, wishing she would let me climax as the Sun burned my naked back.

The experience was fun and new, and between the fits and starts, I tested how far I could see out and below without getting dizzy, gasping the thin air as Rausery fucked my netherhole. She did at last allow me to peak.

The aftermath of the experience, however, was miserable. The Sunburn darkened the grey-black tone of my skin to a purple-black and it radiated heat as if Sunlight itself was leaking out of my pores, but only after being locked within my skin doing its damage. Clothing felt hot and scratchy and was nearly impossible to ignore. It was a surprise and disturbing the way our skin peeled in small, grey strips after a few days and my Sisters and I needed to groom each other... but at least that part was painless. Rausery said it wasn't so bad; we could have had blisters, as though we'd put our skin over a candle for too long. And after longer exposure than that? I would only imagine.

It was an excellent lesson reinforcing both the power of the Sun and the careless exposure of our skin. Extreme exposure was possible in good weather just as it was in cold and wet.

By the twenty-fifth day, our endurance had increased enough to be able to go out at midday wearing the masks and keeping our hoods up. Some rainy days gave our eyes much-needed relief. On the Sunny days, though, I could catch glimpses of that Sky blue that I'd wanted to see, though I could not believe how much heat pounded down on me from above when I went out into direct Sunlight. I was not used to sweating so easily and was grateful for those ever-shifting breezes and winds even in the Spring chill.

My spiders had begun to travel with me inside their pouch rather than stay in the cave, and as expected they did not like the light at all, though they would come out at night, even under Moonlight. If I tried to force them into Sun, they would just crawl deep into my glove or bracer and they were impossible to extract without crushing them until I went back into darkness and called them out on their own. They would obey, but not at the expense of their own survivability if there was no threat to me. I had to accept that weakness to this weapon and consider it in my near future.

My Sisters and I had innumerable opportunities to see so many of the creatures that lived in the forest, in both day and night. There were so many and none edible that I would refuse to eat. I had high confidence I would not starve with this abundance, even on my own, even as I began to notice an increased hunger that had to be related to my pregnancy. This was even before more plants began to grow with the warming and lengthening of each day. The Underdark would never produce this much food simply by existing.

Gathering food became our only focus for several weeks once we were in competition with the birds and rodents for certain mushrooms, berries, nuts, and blossoms. I knew why we were grinding and pressing these energy bars now: we were not only making some for us, but also gathering enough food for Rausery to make the return trip back down below.

It took another fifteen days to be able to go out in daylight without the mask with my hood up, and by then I knew the Trade names for nearly everything I could see and my mind worked constantly taking in my resources, the angles of ever-changing shadow, and the obstacles of ground and plant. Confidence aligned our shoulders as I glimpsed my Sisters stalk the forest with me, and I began to look forward to seeing more beyond this mountain where we'd been living well into this season of renewal.

My only regret would be that we would not see it together, and I had to hope that Rausery's and Shyntre's gifts of knowledge would be enough for each of us to return. In this quiet landscape devoid of racial threats, it seemed like a foolish hope. We hadn't truly been tested yet. When we were, we would be alone. This Surface place, warmed from above by the brightest Star in the Sky, would be as unforgiving of mistakes as both the Underdark and the Abyss.

When I thought about it, I worried more for my Sisters than I did myself. Gaelan was far more cautious and less used to solitary, self-directed assignments than I was, and Jael...she was just so young still. She had not had the opportunity to mature too much beyond when I'd first met her in battle. True, I was only fifteen or twenty years her senior, not much considering, far less even than the years that separated Shyntre and Auslan, but...

....but I had been pressured to change from challenges well beyond the Sisterhood, which was significant on its own. Kain. Lana. Kerse and Wilsira. D'Shea's own compulsion, her drive and her rivalries, and Auslan's healing and visions. I'd survived it all. I could do so again, and I'd carry my child along for the ride for as long as I could. That was the biggest pressure for change.

"The eldest of you will be heading out first," Rausery informed us after one last night of preparation, eleven days past the Spring equinox. She was looking at Gaelan.

To her credit, my Sister just nodded. She had been expecting this just as Jael and I had been; we only waited for Rausery to make the call.

The Elder said, "Tell me again where you are going."

"East, to the forest on the far side of that mountain range," Gaelan pointed to our right, in the opposite direction of where she'd told me she felt the ley lines leading to the Necromancer. "There are more Human patrols and lodgings, and the Warpstone cult lies deep within. I must destroy their 'home stone' to severe the connection with their matron power."

"Remember you also have to go through two mountain passes."

Gaelan nodded. "Possibly guarded by dwarves, yes. Or find a way around them."

Rausery nodded, shifting her gaze to Jael instead of me. "And you?"

"East, also," Jael answered without much inflection, "but farther South through a different pass. I search for a larger city, built higher up but not far from a large cliff. The cliff castle, Manalar."

Rausery nodded. "You will have to confirm its name in case it has changed. Whom do you seek?"

"A healer-warrior called the Godblood. He likely has other names."

My eyes narrowed a bit as I thought about that. "Does he reside there?"

Rausery tilted her head. "I thought so. We are going off only the queen's vision on this one."

"What did She say exactly, Elder?"

"She says we will find him at Manalar in the warm seasons of this year, and She would be right because it would take that long for Jael to reach him."

I felt an odd trickle roll down my spine despite my Elder's logic; it wasn't sweat but it did feel somehow cold. "Yes, but...if it is not his home, then there might be an event to call him there at that time instead."

"Such as?" Gaelan asked.

I shrugged. "A need for a healer or a warrior. Both together imply unrest and death."

Rausery started to smile, her dark crimson eyes watching me intently. "A war. Interesting. I forget how you draw out the unspoken the same way D'Shea does at times. You could be right, most organized conflicts between groups of Humans happen in the warm seasons."

She shifted her gaze over. "Jael, you're going to have to watch for patrols much farther out from the city than we told you, another day at least. Use any method of disguise at your disposal. You memorized where the Undercroft is? That will be your best point of entry, but do not go in without having an alternate exit as well. You will have to study it."

Jael nodded stiffly. "Yes, Elder."

Finally Rausery turned to me. I spoke merely at the look.

"I'm heading North and West to the ley line intersection and an old Tower where a Necromancer resides. I'm to destroy him...somehow."

"He is still living flesh despite his magic, you can strike him down if you get close enough," Rausery said with odd familiarity. "Surprising him will be the hardest part. Just burn him and scatter the ashes to make sure he does not somehow rise again."

I tilted my head. "Have you seen him before, Elder?"

"He was here twenty years ago, yes," she said placidly.