Driven and broken, smashed and cursed.

This was the illusion the world wished to keep. The forever child who believed that evil and chaos such as this would tuck itself into death-bed and never awaken again. This was the sort of illusion that She so hoped for, delighted in, embraced. For it was the ignorance of people that allowed darkness to spread--a blind eye to the screaming. It was in this temple dedicated to Her that many had quietly come. Bathing themselves in the cursed sunlight and patiently staying their hands from slitting the throats of the weak and unworthy until She would bestow upon them some sort of favor. Any favor. Until She returned to them.

Tonight, word had reached them that she would return soon. Years of waiting could be cast aside. Through out the city, black hands snatched at the nameless and homeless, spilling their blood over dark stones.

It was a twisted thing, with many jutting towers haphazardly raping the sky. In the light, when the Temple was silent and the sacrificial fires did not burn? It looked like teeth from a great black mouth (for the walls were obsidian, in honor of Her skin) and at night, they looked like the great shimmering legs of bloated spider. How perfect. How beautiful.

This night was no different within the Temple than any other. Gathered around black tables stained sticky with the blood of sacrifice and experimentation, Priestess writhed their bodies in perfect worship. Their voices cried of the earth, dark places, shadows and caves unending. They were strange to be heard in such a place above ground, and yet--fit. Their words rang like ghost-bells within the stone, drowning out the screaming.

"Olath Ilhar, udos sila dos l'vhid d'vel'bol zhahus, vel'bol zhah, lu'vel'bol orn tlu.

Jhael was simply one of many with her sisters, black-limbs an unusual sheen (for drow, like their detested light brethren elves, did not sweat usuall) coated in blood waved in ritual to Her.

"Olath ilhar, nym'uer dosst dalharen."

So it was that Jhael almost missed the female that had stepped through the wall to simply plant herself in the middle of zealous worship.

"Nym'uer udossta ortelassan!

So she was the last to notice that the entire collection of females had suddenly laid upon the stone, face down and quivering. Her white brows were just beginning to gather above her nose when she heard--

"I am come," three simple words that drove Jhael to the stone floor upon her knees as if a hammer had been driven into her spine. For a split second, her will allowed her to settle on the features of the most excruciatingly beautiful drow female that ever was, ever would be, and ever will be. A female of such paragon features that it instilled so much fear within her heart it drove all wind from her lungs.

Unfortunate for her, being the last to prostrate herself before HER, meant that she had HER attention.

"I am so very, very disappointed." There were no words to describe how HER voice twisted suddenly, ten thousand snake-tongues hissing, the scuttle of a million spider legs--aching poison. "How long have you been here, and not one of you has found it? Not one of you bring me the head of this al'vur!

Why have you not done what I have asked of you?"

A hand that was not-a-hand, but a shape of writhing spiders reached out for Jhael's face. She did not know if she begged forgiveness or if it was simply the air rattling out of her throat--

There was no hand. No spider-bite. No death. In the silence, Jhael dared look up.

The female was staring off into nothing, her exquisite brows gathering in concentration. "He is here," murmured, and without any explaination (as she was wont to do) the female stepped back into the wall whence she came, leaving The Temple to echo long in the terror filled, adoring, yet some what...confused silence.

She had come to express her displeasure with them. No doubt, to dole out her punishment. She had come, and instead of unleashing the fury of She upon her worshipers--simply left with a murmur.

Unheard of.

The frenzy of worship and sacrifice that night within the new temple of Lloth--and for several nights after--was enough to ingrain the blood flecked foam of fear within the very stones; obsidian black shine turned dull as lifeless eyes.

There wasn't much left of Renor, really.

A quivering, bloody, eyeless heap on the floor before Quilara's desk wetly struggled for breath. The male guards had drug her body in and thrown it with a touch of enthusiasm before Quilara, and while in other times and places she might have had them flayed alive for showing such disrespect...Now, she turned a blind eye to it.

"Report," Quilara barked at Renor. The female's armor had all bent rent and torn, as if chewed and clawed by a great beast. The rest of it seemed as if it had melted away by some vicious liquid. Half of Renor's face had simply been ripped away, exposing muscle that glistened pink and red even in the rich purple fae fire that lit Quilara's room.

"Therr wwhuuzz uunly wwwwwuuun," Renor began. Her mouth and throat filled with liquid and she spat it out before continuing. She gave her report and blamed the males she was given for poor scouting. She explained how they had lied to her to try to kill her--how they had told her that it was only a single male and certainly, nothing to worry about; that her victory would be assured.

She railed against the males and cursed the name of one who had been her lover. She gurgled and spat, bled out more and quivered in pain that must have been unimaginable--but never moaned. Quilara, with her daughters standing at her shoulders behind her chair--that ultimately looked like a throne, on purpose--folded dark hands on the black surface of her desk. A mockery of patience that neither of her daughters appeared to have governed yet, as they both curled their mouth down at Renor in disgust.

Quilara let Renor rant. She let the female blubber and seethe, curse and scream about what had happened until the drow that looked more akin to tenderized meat than drow, tired herself.

Quilara waited. The silence became a skin stretched over obvious bones within the room, her eyes settled dispassionately upon the gasping lump of flesh on her floor. When Quilara heard her daughters shift uneasily, felt their eyes flick to one another and then down to her, she unfolded her hands and arose from her chair. In a whisper of spider-silk thin material, heavily draped with the richness of station and rank, she rounded the corner to her desk and came to stand before the dripping face of Renor.

"You have served me, daughter, well. Since you were born." She mused, her hands behind her back. Renor gurgled her eager agreement.

"You, of all my daughters, have been the strongest." Behind Quilara, she could almost taste the bitterness from the other two sulking behind the desk. "Lloth had surely blessed me when I gave birth to you; your fervor and frenzy to serve Her and your House has, as even I must admit, brought us great power." And how it ate at Quilara over the years, knowing that her daughter appeared to be amassing more at her age than she ever could.

But now--"It is a shame, however," Quilara bent down from the waist to inspect what remained of her daughter, shivering and flapping like blind fish out of water. "--that you seems you are to be nothing more than a bumbling fool, floating along a series of good luck." Renor's mother spat the last words out in acrid hatred.

"Your good luck has run out.

"Not only could you not kill a single, solitary male, you have wasted the lives of good fighting stock, good breeding stock. You have lost the power you once held, signifying the lost favor with Lloth.

"Have you any idea, you stupid bitch, how many years it will take us to regain her favor? If at all? Have you any idea what shame you have brought to our name and this Temple?"

The muscles around Renors empty eye sockets twitched. Had she eyes anymore, they would have been widened.

Quilara's mouth twisted downward in disgust. "I should have strangled you with your own umbilical cord," hissed. And then Quilara lifted her foot and eased the wicked point of her heel into the empty eye socket of her daughter.

At first, Renor burbled in a panic, begging her mother for a second chance. As the heel contacted the back of empty socket, Renor's pleading soon turned to curses, then to entreaty to Lloth. While Quilara pushed lackadaisically forward with her weight, crunching bone and warm-wet sucking sounds filled the utterly still room. Renor's flopping reached a frenzied peak and then stopped all together once there was a resounding moist-crackle of skull collapsing.

Quilara twisted her foot right to left a few times, wiped her foot on a rich rug and settled eyes on the two graying daughters left behind her chair.

"Well?? snapped. They both did their best to school themselves from twitching and straightened as if at attention. The daughter standing to the left of Quilara's throne like chair wore a mixture of pleasure and horror. Now that Renor was dead, she was Eldest daughter. The one to her right already wore a combination of panic and deviousness. She would no doubt have to shift her attentions from killing Renor, now, to her other sister.

"Matron Mother, I--," started the newest Eldest.

"I did not tell you, you could speak, worthless whelp." Quilara marched back to her desk. There would be endless effort to cover this. "Both of you will keep your mouth absolutely shut, or I promise you that your fates shall be less merciful than your sisters. We must not let Lloth's favor with us fade.

"Should the temple find out...." Quilara did not finish. She didn't have to. They were all aware of what happened when favor ran out below ground. They weren't below ground anymore as such--and they may yet have time to hide this...

"Take the body and put it back into the alleyway where it lay. Strip it of its emblems and markings; leave it naked if you must. I care not," Quilara had already dismissed the body on the floor, leaning back in her chair and staring outward at nothing.

She could hear the soft jingle of metal as the newest Eldest Daughter shifted her weight slightly from one foot to the other. An annoying tells of her daughter?s thoughts--Quilara would think the two idiots would have learned to hide themselves better.

"You are dismissed, idiots!" And Quilara pinched the bridge of her nose while the two of them scrambled out of the room with their sisters dead body.

Quilara turned her thoughts completely to what seemed to be an impossible task at hand.

Not once did she bother looking at the red smear in the middle of the room; all that was left of her first born child.