Surfacing Ch. 25

Next I heard a creature above me, and I looked up.

*Ohhh...fuck?*

What was I looking at?

As large as me. Four legs, a torso, and a head. Shiny black and sleek. Climbing down, head first, and somehow clinging to the bark with no concern for falling off. Each limb bent in a way that shouldn't be possible for a biped. Each foot set down deliberate, flexible, and...familiar. The limbs and hands had tiny bristles like...

Like a spider.

Where were the eyes?

I shifted on my branch, not daring to look away but having nowhere to go unless I wanted to drop far down to the ground. Mourn might catch me if I did. Might. Was there something else? My own spiders had moved into a defense stance on my shoulders but were responding more to my own tension rather than the creature, I thought. They were not prepared to leap forward of their own accord; they simply waited for my command, whatever it was. That was interesting.

"Wilder?" I asked aloud in Common, not a shout, and intended for whoever might answer. The creature paused in its climb and did not answer.

"Yes," Mourn answered calmly.

The hybrid still waited in his tree but on alert, and the shapeshifter looked toward him when he spoke then looked back at me, completely silent. Now I could see the eyes. Two of them, not eight, but large for the head, and glassy opaque like a spider.

What now? Show no aggression, right? No matter how... "close" it got? Was defense considered aggression? I was allowed to defend myself, no matter what.

It crept closer.

Why this shape? What was it trying to say?

I remembered to breathe and reached to pluck one of my babies off my shoulder to rest on my palm as I raised it up toward the Wilder, who paused again.

*Dangerous?* I asked, receiving only a confused feeling from my guardian, who was waiting for *me* to tell it whether the spider-Elf was dangerous or not.

Great.

I retracted my companion to set it back on my shoulder with the other one, my eyes fixed above me. Mourn wasn't moving; my spiders weren't jumping. Maybe I was just feeling naked and moist and vulnerable—kind of confusing this high up with nowhere to run or duck away.

Not nearly as confusing as the way the individual fingers on the Wilder began to lift up briefly before going back down. Sometimes tapping, sometimes not, they moved faster and slower; it went on for a while as the rest of the body shifted only slightly side-to-side. There was a pattern here. I just didn't know how to interpret it.

My spiders did. After a time I heard them, and it was the most bizarre realization I'd had up on the Surface. My babies were both female—something I hadn't known—and they wanted the male spider-Elf to keep "dancing." They were entertained.

*You've got to be jesting.*

The Wilder had chosen to communicate with—and please—my guardians first? What the fuck? Mourn wasn't kidding about the behavior being very hard to read! And this was even based on an animal I knew all over the Underdark!

The male "danced" for a little while longer, but before too long moved closer while my guardians allowed it. I stayed still as well. We were face-to-face, and close, and I could make out a vaguely Elvish skull but no hair or nose, no ears or mouth, and as I'd thought, the eyes were too big. They were like staring into a black-glass mirror as I saw my own silhouette, thanks to the firelight behind me at the cave.

Suddenly something rough pressed into my cunt. Simultaneously, my spiders squeaked in delight.

"Hey!" I shouted, jerking back and realizing the Wilder had quietly extended an arm between my legs as we stared at each other; it was his bristly finger in my snatch. I moved my hips away but also lost my grip on the second branch. "Fuck!"

Mourn was already moving. "Go limp!"

*Fucking...shit...!*

My babies were holding tight up in my hair and I relaxed as I let the mercenary catch me after a very brief fall, where he next grappled with the trunk, skidding down a bit while handling me roughly to get me bent over his shoulder. He grip now secure and the ground still far below me, he climbed down with no protest from me. I was so glad to get my feet back upon the soil.

*What the fuck, spiders?*

They only twitched excitedly on my neck.

"Tsah," Mourn said, looking up at the tree as the Wilder came down to join us.

The shifter let go of the tree while still fairly far up and landed too quietly on the ground for his size. Then the color and shape changed before my eyes as the shiny, black skin turned a lighter color, while hair quite a bit like Krithannia's sprouted atop the head as the ears I'd been missing before now extended to long points. The joints and proportions of the limbs "corrected" themselves and soon the Wilder stood up in a pure, naked Elf form facing us.

He was taller than me, but maybe not quite Noldor tall. His features looked very strange, as if they had somehow blended Deshi's and Cris-ri-phon's ancestors with a Noldor. His skin was a very deep brown, his eyes—his distinct Elf eyes—I thought might have be some shade of red, but much darker than any Drow. It reminded me of some of the deepest pigments of red and orange I had glimpsed in the canyon coming down onto the Midway. Instead of eyes like blood or forged copper, his eyes were like Sun-touched earth.

"Why did you put your finger up my cunt?" I asked in Surface Common.

The Wilder blinked, and I knew he hadn't understood me in the least. Fuck. I withheld my sigh of irritation as Mourn translated—presumably in exactly meaning, because the male smiled in amusement. He gestured with a strong hand toward my bare shoulders and murmured a few words to Mourn—the voice was quiet and pleasant, subtle and brief.

My bodyguard's tail fluttered in amusement as well. He gave me my answer in Drow. "He says this is what a male spider does when the female accepts his dance."

"He's making excuses."

"I do not think so."

"A prank?"

"No..."

"Oh? What is it supposed to mean to me?"

"Tsah finished the courtship for your guardians' benefit, I think."

"WHAT?! He was courting my spiders?!"

"I warned you it would be difficult to interpret."

The Wilder was chuckling now, his arms folded as he watched me—presumably my face and my funny expressions and gesticulations—before he said something else to Mourn, who responded. I wasn't even sure how to describe the sounds they both made, except "brief." Before the first thought even seemed to be complete, "Tsah" was finished talking. He did move his hands in signs to emphasize his meaning, though; at least that method was familiar, even if the signs weren't.

Then it came back to strike me: he was a deep brown Elf, kind of like Cris-ri-phon. Not pale. Not black.

"Are all the Wilder brown?" I asked Mourn, deciding to keep my hands still and my face more stoic this time.

"You will see," was all Mourn said, following suit and leaving his hands at his sides.

"What does it mean in his 'culture' that he got close enough to stick a finger inside me?"

"That he dances well, that the mating ritual is complete. He will have forgotten that detail about you by tomorrow, but he'll remember your companions."

I squinted at him. "You jest."

Mourn's face was placid. "Not at all. He was in spider form, Sirana, and in tune with your guardians. Following instinct. Possibly also following your lead."

Well, of course Mourn had been watching me touch myself when I was bored.

"Do not take insult," he continued, "as he meant none and it will not be used against you."

I grunted, trying not to pout. Forget the rules of engagement from my City, huh? Hmph. "Only if he didn't do anything to me or my baby."

"I do not believe he did. Only the one finger you felt. What a spider would have done."

"What?"

Mourn asked Tsah another question, who answered him. "He says male spiders collect their seed and weave a sac around it which they then push into the female."

Well, of course, no penises. It felt weird that I hadn't known that. Who among the Drow paid attention to how spiders mated, anyway? The wizards, maybe? Auranka?

"Did he just push semen inside me?" I demanded.

Mourn shook his head. "Tsah mimicked your totem, nothing more."

Fucking weird.

Gavin and Jael, carrying Graul, were carefully coming down from the cave, and Tsah turned his head to look their way. Once they reached our level, the necromancer held back and let Jael come forward with the drake. Tsah's eyes were steady and extremely observant, noting Gavin's stop and shifting his gaze to Jael and Graul. The drake leaned forward and stretched out his neck, making a noise between a snuffle and a chirp through his nostrils.

Jael stiffened like a metal pole as the Wilder shifted his face right before her eyes to look more like the drake—a slightly longer face, sharper teeth, a familiar brow ridge—and Graul and he touched noses as Tsah mimicked a throat rattle I'd heard many times from the drake. I would have guessed it was a greeting; Graul looked pleased as he blinked hazy, partially blind eyes and rattled back.

Then the Wilder looked up to study Jael very, very carefully. Mourn hadn't been exaggerating how close he got as he took in her scent still wearing a drakish face. Jael scowled at him, holding his eyes defiantly whenever he looked at her, but Tsah looked down and away plenty of times as he paced around her in a circle, lightly tracing his fingertips along the stitched seams of her leathers here and here as he studied her clothing.

"Don't touch me," she hissed at the naked Elf, and probably would have lashed out already if her arms weren't full of mature, heavy drake.

"Calm," Mourn cautioned her, using a soothing tone. "He won't harm you. He will take nothing."

I could not read the warped Elf-drake face at all, but I watched the body language and wondered about Mourn's non-answer to my question about all the Wilder being brown. Tsah never once focused on Jael's hair or her skin color in his evaluation; it neither bothered nor fascinated him, as far as I could tell. It was her clothing and her tools, her weapons which held his attention. I was not sure if it was a covetous gaze or not, though Mourn suggested that it was not.

"Un'gurut," Tsah said with a single-hand sign toward Mourn.

"Kho'le," the halfbreed agreed with a nod, and the Wilder finally shifted his face back to his natural one and smiled in a way that was familiar.

"Xotl'pa," Tsah said, and he was happy.

Mourn smiled and bowed his head in a Yungian fashion. "Shekho."

The Wilder then looked between me and my Sister, comparing and contrasting us, and I folded my arms beneath my breasts with my spine straight as I stood nude and barefoot in the mud. Even Mourn wore more clothing than me at the moment, his loose, Yungian pants though without a shirt or shoes as always. Ironically, I looked most like the Wilder except for my pendant.

Tsah seemed satisfied to shift his attention to Gavin, who still held back. I had only started thinking about what status this male possessed as he made first contact with outsiders, when I read far more wariness and confusion when the shifter considered the tall Deathwalker.

"Tuh'tagh," he said, making a plucking motion atop his head, pantomiming the pulling of cloth back.

Gavin cautiously lowered his hood, his Humanness obvious, yet his eyes alien and haunting, his face white and set in equal stern wariness to the Wilder. Taking a much briefer whiff and a half-circle around, Tsah looked concerned as he looked up at Gavin's face.

"Kil'nugh, xhofa," he said, signing as well, motioning toward Night-mare and toward the cave.

"He would inspect your mounts, Gavin," Mourn said. "I suggest this be allowed."

"Tell him to be cautious in the cave," the grey mage replied blandly.

Mourn did so, and Tsah nodded and we all watched as he circled and inspected Night-mare first. I could tell that he was trying to read the animal, as he had my spiders and Graul, but he received nothing. Absolutely nothing. I glimpsed a tremor run through Tsah's frame as he made a sound like disgust and blew a pop of air out as if to expel what he had breathed in near the undead mare.

The Wilder grumbled to himself as he swiftly climbed to the cave where the fire still burned. His silhouette became stark and we watched what could pass for a shadow performance as the wild Elf crouched, observed a resting Roh, and soon crept closer. I could see no detail of expression and nothing in his hands suggested to me what he thought about the creature, but I waited with the rest, glancing at Gavin's stone expression before looking back.

The Greyland beast shifted, I heard a deeper rumble and then a squawk and following screech which hurt my ears.

"Oh fuck, Gavin!" Jael warned. "Do something!"

The most the necromancer did was rub his mouth thoughtfully as he looked up. "Hm."

Mourn got closer, his spines rising up a bit as his thigh muscles tensed and he prepared to spring, if needed. He waited, however, and the next few movements inside the cave were almost too fast for us to respond anyway. It was nearly over before we realized it had begun.

Roh swung her head to the side and snapped her sharp teeth at the Wilder, who leaped back and...up. He clung to the cave ceiling, shifting again even as I watched, and I noticed Mourn turn his ears back again in irritation, his tail lashing, as clicks poured out of two individual throats. I couldn't hear anything else but the Roh'ghast's scraping and shuffling against the stone as she came fully aware, but Mourn was practically grinding his teeth at whatever he heard.

"The high-pitch?" I asked, and he actually jumped a bit hearing my voice, but nodded.

"They are both using the echo. It'll draw more Wilder for certain. Be ready."

"What's he doing?!" Jael asked, squeezing Graul tighter.

"Communicating, I'd guess," Gavin murmured.

Roh shifted on her four limbs and clung to the wall as well, crawling out onto the upper lip of the cave with Tsah crawling out after her. He had shifted his body to move like her, even being much smaller, and he was a fast learner from what I could see in the dark. It was unnerving how close to a small Roh'ghast he looked already, even if he hadn't bothered changing his skin color.

"Mourn, what is he?" I demanded. "What status does he hold among the Wilder? Why is he here?"

"If some Wilder shift to only one form and back," Gavin pondered, "for our Guild Leader said only *some* of them have more than one shape, then I'd guess this one is their best mimic."

Mourn grunted. "Correct. Tsah adapts to any animal form he wishes. This is unique among the Wilder. There is a cost, of course."

"His memory," I said.

"More his long-term memory as an Elf."

"He remembers a language," Gavin challenged.

"Basic words, not complex concepts, as some beasts can also recognize words. His memory for animals he engages is eternal, however, his evaluation absolute to his Elders because he cannot lie about it. He epitomizes Oneness with the beasts of the world to a level most fear to strive."

"Roh isn't of this world," Jael pointed out.

"This does not seem to frighten him," Gavin commented. "Perhaps he welcomes it."

The necromancer was rubbing two fingers firmly into his palm as he spoke, in a way which suggested it was supposed to have some effect. All I could tell was that Roh could have flown off multiple times, but hadn't, and she shifted around the stone cliff, clinging to it, threatening and snapping at the shapeshifter.

Maybe Gavin was on to something; maybe Tsah was having the time of his life engaging something entirely new. The longer I watched, the more it seemed Roh was less on outright attack and more in refusal, a defense. I wasn't sure what Tsah was saying to her, or even if they got a meaning across each of them understood, but if the Greyland beast had been intending to snap up a snack, she would have crawled past the mid-point already.

She didn't. She merely got stubborn and refused to budge.

Finally, Tsah withdrew and skittered unbelievably fast down the steep side of the slope, shifting mid-descent and reforming as an Elf shortly upon reaching level ground. Jael shuddered at the fluidity of the change, and I didn't blame her; it was surreal. Dream-like. He rejoined us and nodded his head to Gavin then looked at Mourn.

"Kieyw'cah," he said, motioning what was still gibberish to me.

"We wait here," Mourn told us, and the Wilder sprinted away into the darkness.

*******

After Gavin had Roh calmed down and back inside the cave, I decided to wipe myself as clean as dry as I could and get dressed before any more Wilder showed up. Mourn had clarified that some of them could, in fact, speak Surface Common in varying fluency and most did wear some type of clothing, particularly during the cold months.

"Well then, Tsah is quite a first impression," Jael commented, sitting cross-legged with Graul curled in her lap. "If you're saying the rest of them don't grunt and scuttle naked along the ground."

"I do not think they care about first impressions," Mourn replied. "Though Sirana taking my suggestion to sit naked in a tree did imply we are willing to meet on their terms."

I narrowed my eyes at his expression. "Are you laughing about that now?"

The hybrid relaxed enough to grin. "Only in hindsight. I appreciate your willingness to consider other forms of communication."

As if I had much choice about that ever since I fucked a Duergar...

Just as quickly, Mourn ceased being amused.

"Stop," he commanded.

I froze; I had been reaching for my weapons belt. "What?"

"May I ask you to do something else for me?" he said.

"Like what?"

"Bury Soul Drinker here, at the back of the cave, before we meet them. The less information the relic has of them, the better."

Jael and I probably had the same expression.

"Just...leave it here, untended?" she spoke my main concern aloud. "What if one of them comes back to snoop around and finds it?"

Mourn shook his head. "I know Tsah. He will recommend Night-mare remain here, as she is entirely undead with no animal instincts left. They will not tolerate her any closer to their lair than this. The Ma'ab skeletons, too, they must stay. I am not sure about the Roh'ghast. Soul Drinker should not be seen at all, and no Wilder will come near that mare. Gavin will also know if she is approached, correct?"

Gavin looked up from where he reorganized the pack knocked over from Tsah's scuffle with his flying mount. He nodded, the firelight throwing unnerving shadows across his face, making him look quite ghoulish. "I will. And I agree. I will even call up the skeletons themselves for added security and early warning."

I pursed my lips, looking out into the dark. "The main enemy looking for Soul Drinker is Cris-ri-phon."

Mourn smirked. "He's never found this place in the whole of his existence."

Jael cocked a brow. "Oh? How do you know? And how is that even possible?"

"The Wilder have strong magic and stronger motivation to stay hidden from him in particular, and the Archmage is not as omnipotent as he'd like to claim. This is even greater reason for you not to bring the relic into their home."

Frowning, I asked, "Why?"

"You will see."

*Argh!*

I insisted the half-Dragon—with the big hands and claws and plenty of muscle—dig the hole for me, and he did not argue. Rather than touch the dagger again and give away my intent, I kicked the whole of my tool belt—Red Sister daggers, poisons and powders, crossbow pistol, bolts, the abortion vial along with the wellness pellets, all of it along with Soul Drinker— into the shallow, dry pit. Mourn nodded in thanks as he started filling it back in.

"Not taking any weapons at all?" Jael asked incredulously. "You can, you know. Mourn is armed to the teeth!"