2007 Figgies Ambika Clip
Oddly, this post happens to be Lady Ambika's sole appearance in Kupopolis so far, though it certainly won't be her last. I'm amazed she made such an impression. ^^ --Aurora 23:41, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
Deep below the lands of the sun, in an enormous cavern some eight miles wide, lay a mysterious realm of intrigue, decadence and cruelty. It was a city of darkly beautiful mansions carved from stalagmites and stalactites, and every building possessed a dim glow of purple and blue. It was also a city of unspeakable horrors, ruled by the haughty priestesses of a mad goddess, murderous aristocrats and their downtrodden slaves. It was Zhanduril, the City of Shadow, and a Dark Elf named Phaelarn proudly called it home.
Phaelarn strode as confidently as ever through the broad avenues of the glittering Narbondellyn district, past expensive boutiques and exclusive eateries that served all sorts of exotic dishes from the surface. He was tired, as he always was after sojourns to the hellish Lower Underground, but he was back home in civilization, glory be to the Spider Queen. Crisply uniformed guards patrolled the ostentatious stalagmite mansions of the nouveau-riche Drow, merchant families who sought to make a name for themselves. Phaelarn smirked as he passed them. He was a houseless rogue, but possessed more wealth and power than many noble families in Zhanduril would ever know, and he answered to no one. No one, he corrected himself, except her. Then again, everyone in this city answered to her.
Every Dark Elf alive did.
He glanced up at the colossal pillar in the center of the cavern. It was the one stone in the entire city that was left in its natural state, unworked by the terraforming magics his people practiced with such flair. It was a giant stalagmite that reached all the way from the cavern floor to the ceiling high overhead. They called it Narbondel, and it served as the city’s timekeeping device. At the start of each day, the Archmage of Zhanduril cast a heat spell at its base, and to the heat-seeing eyes of the Dark Elves, a dim orange luminescence crawled its way up the pillar in time to the movement of the cursed sun in the Lands of Light. The pillar was currently bright orange in its entirety, marking the time as high noon. Phaelarn sighed in relief. He did not want to keep her waiting, not with the mood she'd been in lately.
He stopped at the edge of a forest of giant mushrooms in the southwestern portion of the city. Through the towering fungi, there was a huge plateau that rose ominously above the rest of the city, the Qu’ellarzorl. It was there that the city’s most powerful families resided in sprawling, beautiful but immensely fortified compounds. Phaelarn stared up at one such fortress in the distance, at the plateau’s far-most edge, which was his destination: House Everhate, First House of Zhanduril. It consisted of a huge mound and dozens of spiraling stalagmite towers, stalactite lookout posts and gilded aerial walkways. Every Zhanduran ever born stared up at that glittering palace, glowing in shades of purple, blue and red, and longed for that kind of power. As Phaelarn waited for his escort, he unconsciously toyed with a crystal, spider-engraved coin in his pocket. Even he was envious, though he surely had the funds and the clout to build such an estate somewhere else. It was in his blood.
A group of female soldiers garbed in exquisite chain mail greeted him at the forest’s edge. They all sported shining, curved sabers and each wore a silk black and red over-tunic embroidered with an elaborate spider symbol. It was the insignia of House Everhate, and as agents of the First House, they were the only Drow in all the city who were permitted to openly wear the symbol of their house--a status which filled them with an overbearing arrogance. They were all taller than him, lean but imposing, and were glowering at him to a one.
“The Matron Mother demands your presence, male,” the commander, a hulking female with cropped white hair, spat with only thinly veiled contempt. Phaelarn grandly tipped his feathered cap to her, and bowed.
“I am ever the Most Holy Disciple’s humble servant,” he replied glibly. The commander scowled, and glared at him, but said nothing further. Phaelarn followed them into the giant fungi, emerging atop the plateau, and arrived before the sprawling, thirty-foot high wall of blackest adamantium which surrounded House Everhate. It was covered in dimly glowing magical symbols, defensive glyphs that every noble house large and small utilized to repel invaders. Not that anyone had ever been crazy or stupid enough to attack House Everhate in the thousands of years of Zhanduran history...however, times were unusual of late. Phaelarn glanced around, and noted the increased number of soldiers patrolling the aerial walkways. Things were definitely getting interesting around here, he thought to himself. Phaelarn loved interesting times. They always seemed to provide a marvelous opportunity to line his pockets with or’an.
Phaelarn was led through the gates, and into the central mound of the Everhates’ castle, a huge black building with an onion-shaped dome that was a dark parody of the Elven palaces of old on the surface. It was home to a magnificent temple of the Spider Queen, and living quarters for the nobles. They wound their way through a number of dark, twisting corridors until they at last reached a set of double doors guarded by two more elaborately uniformed female guards. They nodded, and swung open the doors to the Matron Mother’s throne room.
It was a large, circular chamber, filled with priceless tapestries and paintings depicting scenes of grotesque violence from the wars that long ago sundered Elvenkind in the Crystal Dimension. The floor was a beautiful black marble, covered by stunning carpets given as gifts from the late Empress Salynae, in that time when Zhanduril enjoyed a better relationship with the surface. A number of black-robed priestesses and nobles, sycophants and toadies all, were gathered here and there, eyeing the flamboyantly dressed male with expressions ranging from curiosity to abject hatred as he made his way to the back of the chamber.
It was there, upon a ghastly throne carved from a single, huge black diamond, that Lady Ambika Everhate, First Matron of Zhanduril, sat with a distant look on her ebon face. The Most Favored Disciple of Sindrai’el was as coldly beautiful as ever. She was the perfect picture of Drow femininity despite her nearly eight-thousand years, in her low-cut gown of violet brocade, her golden eyes a powerful enigma. She was positively dripping in jewels, as usual, the most prominent of which was a huge onyx in the golden tiara that crowned her long, gorgeous locks of copper, so unusual among the Dark Elves. Phaelarn fought the impulse to keep his eyes on her, well aware of Drow propriety, and lowered them submissively as he bowed and knelt before her.
“Master Phaelarn as you commanded, Dread Lady,” the guard commander said with a bow. Lady Ambika waved a hand at her in profound indifference.
“You are dismissed,” she said. Ambika reached out toward Phaelarn with her left boot, a vastly uncomfortable-looking thing of black leather and a long, slender heel. “You are permitted to greet us, mercenary,” she said flatly. The rogue leaned over and took her foot into his hands fondly, and gently kissed it.
“I am honored as always to serve you, Dread Lady,” he said almost sincerely as he let go. Almost.
“Of course you are. We are eager to hear your report of goings on in that festering hole below,” Ambika started, “but first we must deal with a certain other matter.” Her eyes narrowed sharply, and she turned toward one of her guards. “Send in that piece of rothé dung.”
“At once, Dread Lady,” the soldier said, crisply saluting with one mesh-gauntleted fist. She barked out commands to several other guards, and after a moment, the doors opened again and two guards dragged in a harried-looking Dwarf, covered in iron shackles. The runes on his mail shirt marked him as a merchant of some sort, if Phaelarn could recall correctly. He prudently skipped out of the way, while one guard shoved the prisoner onto the floor before Lady Ambika. She glared at him, her eyes filled with a towering contempt.
“Do you speak a civilized tongue, filth?” she asked. The Dwarf stared at her lamely, and was cuffed in the back of the head by one of the guards.
“The Most Holy Disciple is speaking to you!” the soldier snarled. The Dwarf shrugged lamely, and was struck a second time.
“Very well,” Ambika spat in disgust, using the Common tongue. “We will address you with the crude gibberish you vermin call a language. It has come to our attention that a group of harglukkin were seen trespassing in the Qu’ellarzorl a fortnight past, and that you were the leader of this pack of squat-faced vermin. What say you, hargluk?”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, madam...we’re none but humble merchants,” the Dwarf pleaded, “come from Undermarket to sell our wares here in th’ Bazaar, and then down river in Lith My’athar. We dinnae mean to go where we wer’n meant to, we just got lost. We’re none ta seek trouble, madam, just honest trade.”
Ambika fixed her eyes upon the pathetic merchant, staring at him unblinking for what seemed to be an eternity. Finally, she rose to her feet, reaching into her billowing black velvet shielding cape to rest her hand on her belt. Phaelarn stifled a snicker. He knew what was coming.
“I believe you, hargluk,” Ambika said softly, and the Dwarf’s eyes lit up in gratitude.
“Thankee, madam, I--”
“My people have an old proverb: ‘Lil waela lueth waela ragar brorna--lueth wund nind, kyorlin elghinn.’ Do you know what this means, hargluk?”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, madam, but I dinnae ken--”
“Of course not, you stupid filth,” Ambika snarled. “Allow me to enlighten you. It means, ‘The foolish and unwary find surprises--and among them, waiting death.’” The Matron Mother ripped her hand from her belt, unleashing a vicious, adamantine-handled whip of nine, living serpents. She stepped down from the dais of black basalt upon which her black diamond throne rested, and advanced slowly on the terrified Dwarf, her stiletto boots clicking ominously on the marble floor.
“Please, I beg ya madam, have mercy--”
“Mercy?” Ambika laughed, a cold, hollow sound devoid of any emotion that sent a chill down Phaelarn’s spine. The serpents on her whip writhed and hissed in grim anticipation, their forked tongues salivating venom. Ambika’s eyes suddenly flashed with terrible anger. “There is no mercy for rothé dung like you, Dwarf!”
She stared at him momentarily, muttering a word beneath her breath, and the hapless prisoner was suddenly naked, his armor stripped from him in the blink of an eye. Ambika raised her whip high and brought it down sharply onto the Dwarf’s stout torso, and he cried out in pain as the vipers sung their fangs into him and released their nerve-burning toxin. The gathered Dark Elves laughed mercilessly as the merchant cowered on the floor in the fetal position, groaning in agony.
“Please...” he moaned, and the laughter only grew louder. Ambika’s eyes narrowed again, and they were filled with cruel pleasure.
“Oh yes, beg, you filthy mongrel,” Ambika purred as she lashed him a second and a third time, “it makes this even more enjoyable.”
Phaelarn snickered as he watched the spectacle. It was a thing of beauty, really, the way she waited for the poison to burn before administering the next blow. No priestess used her whip of fangs with as much brutal efficiency, with as much obvious pleasure, as Lady Ambika. He grew warm, and bit his lip.
“I said beg, cretin!” Ambika barked and beat him a fourth time. The Dwarf howled in anguish, and Phaelarn winced. The mercenary had only once in all his hundreds of years suffered the misfortune of being on the wrong end of a whip of fangs, ages ago as a cheeky lad in the Academy, but he remembered the suffering all too well--and his tormentor only had three snakes on her whip. Dwarves were sturdy folk, and did not fall to pain so easily, but this one looked as if he wanted to die. He almost felt sorry for the creature. Almost. It was fairly amusing to watch, after all, and Phaelarn was simply dying for some decent entertainment. He giggled to himself at the dreadful pun he just made.
“Miserable filth!” Ambika screamed, reverting to the Drow language as she tore into the Dwarven merchant with her whip again and again. “You offal soil the glorious Underground with your vile stench!” She kicked him, turning him onto his other side, and struck him some more. “Stupid, miserable, useless little savages! You should thank your false barbarian gods that we permit you to exist!”
Finally, it seemed to be over, when the dwarf’s battered and bloodied form lay motionless on the cold, marble floor. However, from Phaelarn’s vantage point, he still appeared to be breathing. Ambika hooked her whip back onto her belt, and turned her back to the mutilated Dwarf, returning to her throne.
“Remove this disgusting thing from our prescence,” Ambika commanded her guards. “Take him to the chapel, that we may give his wretched and pitiable life some meaning in death as a gift to the Spider Queen.”
“At once, Dread Lady.”
The soldiers dragged the dwarf away, and Ambika looked around her throne room with some disdain.
“I grow weary of you. Leave us.”
The throne room emptied out quickly and rather prudently. When at last they were alone, Ambika smiled at Phaelarn, and it made his blood run cold.
“Dearest Phaelarn, it has been too long. Have you grown displeased with me?” she asked a bit too sweetly. Phaelarn shook his head, and Ambika beckoned to him with one slender, ringed finger. He obediently sat on the dais at her feet, and she took off his cap and ran her fingers through his thick white hair, in much the same way as one would pet a beloved housecat. Phaelarn would never tolerate such an indignity from anyone else, and even most matron mothers would not dare to treat him in such a manner despite the fact that he was a male. Lady Ambika was altogether different, however. He was immensely grateful that she took the time to play with that Dwarf before he had the chance to speak with her. Ambika was always in a far better disposition after torturing someone.
“My sojourn in the Lower Underground took somewhat longer than I expected,” Phaelarn apologized.
“What news from that stinking pit of hot bile?”
“News I believe of some great interest to you,” Phaelarn answered slyly, “but first we must discuss the price.”
“Do not fret, dearest Phaelarn. You shall receive your usual compensation,” Ambika replied, waving a hand. Phaelarn frowned slightly.
“Ah, but therein lies the rub, Dread Lady. This information was not easy to come by, even for one such as myself,” he pointed out delicately. “However, perhaps a few hundred more or’an would allow me to be more fairly compensated...”
Ambika stared down at him, her eyes as hard as agates.
“Do not test me, mercenary,” she snapped coldly, clenching her fist on a clump of his hair. “You live at my sufferance. I permit the existence of Veld’Z’ress, despite its irregularity in the eyes of Sindrai’el’s Way, because you and your band of miscreant rogues have proven useful to House Everhate in the past. Do not lead me to believe my leniency has been ill-placed.”
Without so much as flinching, Phaelarn quickly lowered his eyes submissively.
“Of course, Dread Lady. Please forgive my impertinence. I am but a male, after all, and a houseless one at that.”
Ambika laughed cruelly, and relaxed her grip on him.
“For now, dearest Phaelarn. Very well, what then is this information that you thought was worth your very life?”
Phaelarn leaned against the throne, playing with the coin in his pocket.
“My contacts in Bazzakrak have informed me that a human envoy arrived in the Lower Underground a fortnight past, making overtures of alliance to Phiott Whitehammer of the Dwarves,” he reported. Ambika scowled.
“Do you know where the human came from?”
“We believe him to be Eblanese, Dread Lady. He has since returned to the Night Above, but my contact also said the Herrenkammar convened not long after the human left.”
“A human from the Night Above?” Ambika balked. “What are those stupid little savages playing at?”
“We do not as yet know, Dread Lady. The Herrenkammar is a notoriously secretive body, and we are not as yet able to ascertain what went on in those deliberations.”
Ambika growled, tapping her long fingernails upon the arm of her throne. “I was perfectly content to let the humans kill each other during their little Godswar, despite the entreaties for aid we received from Scande and North Viper. We had nothing to gain from it. Salynae was foolish, as are all humans, and did not know her place, and the Spider Queen punished her hubris by letting her enemies overcome her.”
“I did make a bit of a killing, though,” Phaelarn reminisced with a contented sigh. Ambika cracked a smile at the mercenary’s double entendre.
“I’m sure you did, dearest Phaelarn. Didn’t we all? But that is beside the point. Humans are by and large uncultured barbarians, and they cannot begin to comprehend true power. That is why they kill each other over absurdities, fighting over that shining hell they call the Surface. The worlds would be well rid of all of them, as far as I’m concerned.”
“From your lips to Sindrai’el’s ears.” Phaelarn nodded in agreement.
“So long as they were fighting amongst themselves, as long as Zhanduran festhalls were stocked with fruits and wine, I cared not what they did,” Ambika said. Suddenly, her jaw clenched. “I will be frank with you, Phaelarn: I do not like this. Of all the races, only the Dark Elves were brave enough to plunge into the darkness without fear, and carve out a paradise. The Underground belongs to us, Phaelarn, it is a gift of the Spider Queen to the Drow. We are her exalted people, the true rulers of the Night Below. That is why those mongrel Dwarves fear us and retreated to that stinking hell below. They fear the darkness that gives us strength. And now their fear has driven them to call upon those godless barbarians in Eblan. They are too pitiful to face us alone, so they must call on humans to defend them. How pathetic.”
“True, Dread Lady. However--and once again, forgive my impertinence--we would do well not to underestimate these humans,” Phaelarn argued. “Despite their lack of sophistication, they have proven themselves a most resilient race. They did cast out their own gods, after all.”
“Your wisdom belies your sex, dearest Phaelarn. Perhaps you are right.” Ambika leaned back upon her throne, absently stroking his hair. “Oh, Phiott, you miserable little bastard,” she mused aloud with a hollow chuckle. “You think you are ready to play with your betters, do you? Well, two can play this game, and I think I shall rather enjoy it.”
