From the private journals of the Prince of Ust Sschind

At some point far too long ago for my tireless research to uncover, or for the collective racial memory of my species to even dimly recall, we lost true agency over our greatest source of power.

It wasn?t just us, of course. Most of the other precursors fared no better. A flawed, diverse pantheon, basking in their ill gotten potency, claimed dominion. Demanded tribute in exchange for a fraction of what once belonged to all. Negligent, avaricious, spiteful gods.

I can only speculate the true reasoning behind such flagrant usurpation. Motive buried beneath immeasurable time, the cost of their action has brought enough transformation upon themselves to erase who they were initially. I wonder if even they remember, or if generations of worshippers applying their perceptions to their deity of choice have yoked them into assigned, inescapable roles.

I do hope it has, however small a consolation that inconvenience may be.

An old drow?s fantasies aside, the fact remains: in this static world change has a price. There have been...disagreements on how to pay it. Physical, spiritual, tangible, or intangible, every being has some limit to the price they are willing or able to pay. Some simply lack the strength of will to attempt it. The ethically minded rely on their own energy. The devout align themselves with a deity whose ideals match their own and work in their name. The selfishly practical make use of others to pay on their behalf. Power doesn?t discriminate, but it will differentiate.

My people long ago refused to weaken themselves in order to gain what the younger races call magic. Insular and prideful, in order to exercise our will to power we turned to shedding blood. Gorging a dark goddess with fear and fodder in exchange for political leverage and the potency to conquer. In a way we became just as trapped as the slaves we kept, addicted to the parasitic syphon of strength.

Which brings me to the day I procured her.

The storm at sea had forced a pirate vessel to seek safe harbor, but the harbor they had chosen concealed the jaws of a trap. My hunting party surrounded the vessel as it coasted into the cove and drove it into the shallows with merciless efficiency. Plundering a pirate ship always engendered such a perverse sense of satisfaction. Disorganized jetsam, serving no purpose other than to further their own greed, desperate for freedom. The graveyard of wooden skeletons at the bottom of the bay was a testimony to the supply of such prey.

It was rare for a woman to be among them, rarer still for them to put up a fight. Even as I watched her being beaten into that cage on the deck of that fool?s ship I couldn?t help but admire the spirit in her. What a prize, thought I, what fuel her torture would bring. The House Priestess I served would surely relent her constant, insipid whining for stronger tribute and the resulting boost to the House Matron?s declining social standing would place me within reach of leaving her service for good. To secure my entrance into the Scholar?s Guild would mean my release from the blood trade. I would stand apart from the Game of Houses, if I so chose.

What a young fool I was, lusting after that hollow freedom. What a greater fool still, to lust after that venomous sea snake of a woman. It was her eyes, I think, plain and brown as muddied earth. Those eyes held no fear.

Her demeanor said otherwise and the contrast seduced me. Once flogged and caged, she looked every bit the slave, cowering there with the idiot and his crew. Cunning camouflage and no more. I was bringing a viper into my home and the instant I realized what was wrong with the picture she was painting, I had already fallen under her spell. Something in me screamed that those defiant eyes would bring me power as I had never known and, like any self serving member of my species, I decided that this tribute would be mine and not the Priestess?.

A later page:

Our hunting outpost was called Ust Sschind. A half-ruined, half-heretical city whose only relevance was its proximity to major shipping lanes and its crew of skilled workers capable of making entire ships disappear into composite parts for repurposing and profit. So close to the surface, many drow succumbed to madness and outsider influences. So many, in fact, that the Scholar's Guild had a chapter house dedicated to the study of it in the deepest part of the tidal cave system. Perhaps I have become a treatise, or maybe just a warning pamphlet.

Bold risk within the social order, if successful, was always rewarded. Typically in the fashion of more drow trying to kill you in your sleep. But that, ah, that risk to keep a slave for my own wasn?t just bold. It violated doctrine. I didn?t know, for how could I have guessed, what her true nature held. No devout society would suffer a witch to live, not even the societies from which we cultivated our slaves. They are considered a race unto themselves, even though their heritage could be as vast as the sea. Witches defy the natural order, often deriving their magic from unknown sources. Rogue gods, demons, even the much rumored fae might be lending such a creature power. To keep one from destruction at the hands of the justicars was a crime deserving of lethal punishment.

Each detail of my newfound plan was obsessively explored. I would travel back to the hunting outpost, make a gift of this batch of slaves to the chapter house in exchange for applicant status, bribe or dispose of any in the hunting party who might expose my scheming to the Priestess, and revel in my newfound freedom. I?d have to wait a decade or so before transferring back to a proper city, a small sacrifice. By then the House Matron?s status would have plummeted past the point of recovery. A House Prince blatantly daring to defy her Priestess? To steal her blood slaves? It was a death knell. A social poison without antidote.

She would send her assassins, naturally, but they wouldn?t dare risk the ire of the Scholar?s Guild. Not after the last incident, wherein a House Matron attempted to use her second son and House Wizard to plunder their secrets. The resulting feud had shifted the balance of power far too drastically for comfort. The other Houses would rather pay to see the assassin?s fail. All the angles. I was sure I saw all the angles.

My estate house in Ust Sschind doubled as convenient holding for the slaves in transport. I began to make my arrangements. A tedious process of carefully crafted delays, well timed bribes, and a few untimely deaths. To ease my anxiety during the waiting periods I found distraction in toying with the mind behind those dirt brown eyes. I teased my prize with visions of her future as tribute to the Scholar?s Guild. Each interaction only heightened my confidence. Asherah, her name was. She spat it at me during one of her attempts to kill me. Normally this would be an unremarkable occurrence in and of itself, but she used magic to do it.

I?d had all of her possessions confiscated, it was protocol. I had the cells frequently tossed for scrap made holy symbols, not that they would have gained power in a structure so suffused with carvings dedicated to the Dark Queen. There were no wounds on her body, and I had kept her isolated from the other prisoners. Without tools, even a mage should have been impotent after enough time. They used the magic as a crutch, throwing it in a desperate attempt to escape at the first opportunity. She hadn?t. It was like she had saved it. I was enthralled. So how? What price had she paid?

This mystery consumed my thoughts and our conversations. Never was her answer the same. Press as I might, the serpent only took succor from defying me. I couldn?t kill her and she knew it. I had over invested in my own plot, of which she was an integral component. Gradually our conversations twisted, until I found myself forgetting that I had her chained to a wall and she simply refused to show me any respect. The pretense of the frightened captive was completely abolished. My tribute, I thought, would be better than I dared hope.

And then, on the eve of the final movement of my concerto of House betrayal, fangs found my throat. The outpost exploded in chaos. I woke to the fires of a slave revolt. An uprising that had been kindled from my own dungeons. And on their lips was the witch?s name. And in their cries was ?long live the liberator! Long live the Prince!? I stared at the chains that had held her, locked but empty. She had played me with the expertise of a premiere House Matron.

I would kill her, I decided, only after she begged for death for years. I would chase the witch to the ends of the world and break her. She would be at my mercy if it took the rest of my life.

I was furious.

I was in love.