Draykon just grinned. “He’s lucky I didn’t use the pointy end.” He twirled his bloody dagger and stared down at the unconscious priest.
I felt another twinge of unease. The sheer loathing that burned in my friend’s eyes was unnerving, and though I was trying to forget, I couldn’t help but think about the fate of the priestess.
By the time Khazla and I had reached the bedchamber, Draykon was pulling the priestess from Rylviari’s bed by a handful of her silky white hair. The priestess—Nessa, she was called; Sister Nessa—had raised purple-blue eyes to my face, fearful and pleading. Time seemed to slow as Draykon stepped behind her and tugged her head back, then dragged his curved blade across her throat. When she slumped to the floor, a dark crimson stain began to soak into her pure white hair.
I tried to push the image from my mind. A faint echo of Melakor’s voice assured me that such collateral damage was unavoidable; that Nessa was a martyr, a victim of the Temple of Arachnia just like Khazla and Draykon and myself, and that by bringing down Rylviari we’d stop the spider cult from harming anyone ever again.
But doubts were beginning to seep in like poison.
Am I really doing the right thing?
Beside me, the troubled look on Khazla’s face suggested she was wondering the same.
She was still frowning when we reached the flesh pits on the outskirts of the city—though I couldn’t really blame her for that, since just thinking of the place was enough to make a scalegrin scowl. For Khazla, revisiting the macabre holes that had dominated her childhood and added extra fervor to the other acolytes’ bullying must have felt like her own personal hell.
Speaking of hell, the pits were a maze of treacherous gorges and sinkholes, crevasses and stalagmites, made even more dangerous by the unstable footing: a mass of flesh, bone, feces and offal, ingested over time by the pit-wyrms and processed into a dusty powder that they excreted in crumbling patties, which were in turn eventually consumed by tiny bacteria-like scavengers and not-so-tiny trash-shades.
As a society, the night elves prided ourselves on this advanced method of sanitation—after all, what better way to rid oneself of organic waste, bodily or otherwise?—but I’d always found it pretty disgusting. The wrinkled noses of a few of the disciples around me told me I wasn’t the only one. I’d long suspected that the real reason the noble classes in particular were so fond of the flesh pits was because of their suitability for conveniently disposing of unwanted corpses.
Down below, one or two dust-rats were picking their way through a nearby ravine, but they paid us no need, focusing instead on the pit-wyrms they were overseeing. The Psy—the ability to communicate with and control the scaly reptiles—was considered a sign of low birth, given that the creatures’ only use was in the disposal of waste. Consequently, those revealed to possess the Psy, no matter their birth caste, were immediately relegated to the outskirts and appointed as dust-rats.
Poor Khazla, already born to Uldrazir’s lowest social station, had shown no aptitude for the Psy whatsoever, hence her abandonment to the temple. Likewise, Draykon had failed even the most rudimentary magical training, which, as the son of a minor, but ambitious archmagus, was an unforgivable crime. All three of us had found each other, and had stuck together through years of being spat on by those who were born to the temple rather than abandoned to it.
As I stared down into the pit, I fancied I could see the remains of those very acolytes; the ones who’d locked me in the vault that fateful day; the ones we’d since sacrificed, one by one, to help Melakor grow stronger. There could be no power without bloodshed, after all.
Of course the corpses of my tormentors were long gone by now, naught but dust in the pits and perhaps fragments of bone in the guts of the pit-wyrms. A fitting end for those who’d made my life so miserable for so long. And after tonight’s ritual, I’d never have to endure such torment again, and nor would anyone else.
Steeling myself with that thought, I gave the signal for my disciples to dump the bodies they’d carried from the manse. A handful of limp figures dressed only in pale sleeping shifts went plummeting down into the crevice, each landing with a soft thump and a puff of bone-dust. I glimpsed crimson-stained white hair fluttering during one corpse’s descent, and turned my back on the pit, swallowing down a lump in my throat.
The moment we entered the twisting tunnels of the Netherdark, I felt better. My qualms faded, and the nagging guilt grew fainter by the moment until it winked out, altogether, like a phosphorescent shrimp swallowed by an anglerfish’s toothy maw. In its place came conviction, optimism, and the absolute certainty that I—that we—deserved more. Melakor’s influence had spread far indeed; his ability to inspire his followers had once been limited to just a few feet around his Core. Now, it almost encompassed the pits.
And soon, Uldrazir itself, I promised silently.
Despite my renewed confidence, we crept cautiously through the Netherdark. Just because Melakor controlled the monsters that prowled its tunnels did not mean we were safe from harm. Though most of the deep creatures would be deterred by our roachlight lanterns, there were still Ferals to contend with: elves who’d been cast out from Uldrazir for the gravest of crimes—murder, heresy, looking at the Archduke the wrong way—and consigned to the Netherdark without even a single torch to protect them from subterranean horrors. Miraculously, many of these outcasts managed to survive their exile, at least for a while, eking out a living among the labyrinthine cave systems and slowly losing themselves to madness until they were themselves considered native predators, victims of the cannibalistic Netherdark.
Thankfully, our journey was Feral-free and uneventful. We passed only the usual creatures—white-eyed abyssal orcs;
