[Lost Era, November 5, 1001. Lightless City.
Day 40 since entering the Underdark.
I often wondered whether I should return to Twilight Forest and ask the vampire lord who wrote under the pen name Mary Sue—Lilith, in truth—to write my biography.
I already had a title: "Bound, with Two Gods Fighting Over Me." I would tell her about Lolth's avatar screaming before her death, and Asmodeus's fury at being forced to save me.
The story would end with one failed elf paying tribute to one failed mother. Anyone who caught the double meaning would know just how much lay beneath it—
As tributes went, theirs were undoubtedly successful.
Which meant that, by any measure of the outcome, they had failed completely.
When the pillars' radiance finally reached everyone's eyes, illuminating the bodies of slaves, Drow, and spiders strewn across the wreckage, I finally had room to breathe.
Of course, the slaves' and Drow's "sacrifice" had value.
They had, in fact, been dragged onto the battlefield by the Drow.
But in the end, they had fought for themselves.
Because...] "You're free."
Tang played Resting Melody, its gentle notes flowing into the wounded survivors' ears.
Warmth spread through their wounds. Yet neither their quickening recovery nor their returning strength lifted their spirits as much as the human before them, newly dressed in Drow leather armor.
"Free?"
The slaves murmured the unfamiliar word and looked at one another.
Some felt a surge of excitement, but quickly held it back. The declaration had come from a human, not their owners.
So they turned toward the Drow army.
Most of its soldiers were men, but the commanders were all women from the great families.
The spider disaster had been stopped, but those women still intended to rule the city for another ten thousand years. None