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They wanted her to lie down and die. 

The order had been the most expected one of her entire existence, all two and a change centuries of it. These yathtallar and their broods who had rested on their laurels for twice as long as she had been breathing, who did nothing but offer the Spider Queen petty, shallow sacrifice, whose audacity never seemed to falter. They were ignorant of what the Dark Mother desired. Their efforts amounted to twitches of the finger, they had not sweat or bled or begged in their worship for centuries. Even if she were to be opened up on an altar, a drop of her blood was more of a gift than the entire noble house of Xorlarrin. 

“Undoubtedly, as devout as you are, yathrin ,” spoken with contempt, from the lips of some c'rintri who knew nothing of devotion, “you are pleased.” 

“A hungry spider must feed. Give yourself to it joyfully, for in the end Lolth will consume us all. Better to suffer the torments of the flesh now than to face the wrath of the goddess later," murmured the other, the more recognizable, parroting one of the only phrases they had managed to memorize with brains as slow and dull as their skill. The Headmistress of Arach-Tinilith, the stagnant place Lavinia had just left behind, was more than happy to deliver the news, joy cloaked in a false reverence for their Queen that made Lavinia’s jaw clench, her teeth grind, her temples pulse.

She lashed her tongue inside her mouth, she pressed it against the backs of her teeth, she swallowed the words that bubbled like acid in her esophagus.

“Ah.” Was the response she did allow herself, casually lacing her fingers together, the sharpened points of her nails unforgiving against opposite knuckles, leaving pinpricks of blood against freckled skin. She did not give the other drow the satisfaction of an elaborate response, simply lowering her lashes and nodding curtly. There had been no courtesy, no advance notice to allow her time to get her affairs in order, not that she had anything or anyone to be concerned with. Without allowing for further conversation, she turned on her bare heel, walking with her back to the two senior drow in a show of silent arrogance, her spine straight and shoulders square and a slick smirk on scarred lips that spoke of unfaltering confidence. 

Bare feet strode silently in the stone hallways of the clerical school. Lavinia brought her arms out to her sides, nearly skipping, balanced on the front of her feet, a private laugh on her liar’s tongue that she failed to swallow. Or'shanse she was meant to be, ktonos she would be. Lavinia could feel it now, the flames licking between her toes and up her ankles and into her very being, sinking through pores and infiltrating sinew and bone and nerve. 

They did not know of her favor, they could not fathom the depth of it. Vandree, Faen Tlabbar, Mizzrym. Hanging by spider’s silk, unawares of their precarious positions and exposed backs. Duskryn, Xorlarrin, Baenre. Weak, bird boned from their time resting on unearned laurels, relying on a crumbling bounty brought to them by hands long dead and gone. All of them, merely infants - premature, senseless, sporting soft spots on their craniums that begged to be excavated and Lavinia carried her Queen’s blessed daggers. The thought of opening them up under Lolth’s watchful eye filled her with a euphoria so overwhelming she paused in her stride, hands crawling over her own arms to cup her face, splayed across her cheeks, sharpened nails against her brow.

“I will, I will, I will.” She murmured giddily, a grin behind freckled hands, grip tightening marginally with each passing second. It was easy enough to imagine, a quick twist of the wrist and she could dip her zealous fingers into them most intimately, in a detestable way, in a grotesque way. She could claw something out of the very center of them, just as they had done to her, scrape them bare like a Hook Horror fixed on a rotting carcass.

“One by one by one by one.” Another laugh, hoarse and half-whispered. “Glut yourself on their noble blood, Quarval-sharess . Better to feed you than keep their useless husks walking around your city, providing you with nothing, only taking.”

She always gave. Lavinia gave whenever bade, she gave when not.

However, this time, this time , there was something there for her, too, just for her, a boon for her bottomless dedication. Not only did this offer her an opportunity to pull herself up several rungs of Menzoberranzan’s proverbial ladder, but it offered an opportunity for vengeance. So long, too long, she had spent beneath the feet of others. 

With a slow, laborious exhale, Lavinia lowered her hands and again began to walk, one foot in front of the other with an excited bounce to her movements. It would be such a grand stage for such a deserved accomplishment. She allowed the darkness of the corridor to swallow her, an open and angry maw, a brazen nod to her ideal fate as finally, finally, finally echoed in her worshipful mind.

---

That same chorus continued to reverberate back and forth from one ear to another an entire day later, jumping across the synapses in her brain. That same refrain, clanging like discordant cymbals against the inside of her skull, pushing at the backs of her eyes.

Elliya Lolthu.

 

Elaborate braziers hung from chains so long they disappeared into the blackness of the chapel ceiling, from the parts of the ceiling that remained in the crumbling structure. They were placed every ten feet, encrusted with gems and their silver bodies etched with the holy symbol of the patron of the Drow, sharp and angular and arachnid. The violet flames roared in the stillness of the evening, serving as the only light source beyond the subtle bioluminescence of their native fungi and small clusters of laculite that grew endlessly in every corner of the Underdark. 

She had been here many times before, stood on the sidelines as others were fed to Lolth. One day she expected her fate would be the same - that she would be devoured, but not so soon. It was far too soon. So many things left to do… Many needed to fall by her hand.  

Lavinia supposed they wanted her to be afraid, or perhaps resigned. Her tenacity had infuriated many of her superiors, her rise had been met with scorn and spit. Undeserving, they said. Urchin girl, nameless, houseless, a triviality. Some sort of joke, a plaything. A target. Despite all of that, they had never succeeded in besting her. She was faster. She was more cunning, more agile, more brutal and more precise. She never hesitated; allowed the will of the Flesh Carver to drive each twitch in her muscle and spark off her synapses. Lolth favored her, even if the rest were too blind to see it, or too arrogant to admit it.

“Elliya Lolthu.”

 

Again, she mouthed the words, silent, reverent. The air was pierced with voices, cold and high. They filled the space, expanding like a noxious cloud and then disappearing into the ether, sucked up into the endless nothingness. They uttered words but she did not hear them, too focused on the thrum in her veins, the warmth that had begun to blossom at the tips of her toes. 

A moment later, Lavinia took her cue, moving swiftly across the stone. All of her prayers were running through her mind, a continuous and zealous loop, as she settled against the altar. She could feel it leeching her body's heat, pulling it into the porous surface as if wanting her to feel death's embrace before it actually arrived. Fingers splayed against the stone and her breathing was even despite her predicament. She could hear the yathtallar somewhere to her left, talking still, handing over the blade that belonged in Lavinia’s hands more than the yathrin who clutched it.

Serve me faithfully.

The voice was in her head, cold and high and dreadfully, perfectly familiar -  she recognized it immediately. Mother . Flesh Carver. Queen of Lusts. She could have laughed.  Of course it was. It always was, it always had been, always would be. Lavinia felt her lips twitch into a soft smile, unseen by those who surrounded her. She could hear them shuffling, the soft whisper of the robes around their ankles. She felt breath ghosting over her now, felt the way her skin prickled from their proximity. Snowy lashes fluttered and then fell, closing her eyes and plunging her into peaceful darkness. Here, she could feel the embrace of Lolth most of all - her strong embrace around the entirety of who Lavinia was. Every skill she had honed, every word learned, every spell mastered, it was all in the pursuit of praise. It did not matter much to her if it was truly the manifestation of her goddess or simply an echo of her approval, she basked in it.

Cold steel kissed the flesh over her sternum. The point snagged her skin, crimson beading around the blade.

Serve me well.

Her eyes snapped open. Without even a breath, Lavinia reached up and wrapped her long fingers around the ceremonial dagger that had been primed to cut her open, to let her worthy blood whet the appetite of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits. She looked up, finally taking in the face of the unfortunate drow that would be taking her place on the altar. Taleari of House Kilviir. A boisterous one, assuredly, and a much less filling meal. She pulled her hand back, the sharp blade slashing across her palm and between her fingers as she instead took hold of Taleari’s wrists. She tightened her grip, the muscles in her arms rolling and flexing as she pulled the other closer toward her. As she moved up onto her knees, she whispered to the new sacrifice;

“Ah. Pity, I was hoping they would use someone a bit more filling for our Queen.” 

She tilted her head, obsidian gaze unblinking, tongue running against her bottom lip, gliding across the scarred flesh, and she laughed. Lavinia’s chin tilted up and she cast her eyes to the ceiling, a raging chorus of worship banging around on the inside of her skull. With a final giggle, her attention snapped back to Taleari and she began to push against her wrists, thumb tight against the radiocarpal joints, digging. The sharpened points of her nails cut into her flesh, causing the priestess to gasp and attempt a recoil to no avail. Crack.  

Bones broke and sinew snapped, it echoed in her ears as loudly as her heart did as she bent the other woman's hands very much the wrong way - forcing, and forcing, and forcing until the very tip of the blade, stained already with Lavinia’s blood, was positioned similarly on her terrified, trembling replacement. With a final shove, the steel sunk between the Kilviir’s clavicles, held tightly still in her own hands, leaving her sputtering and gasping. As a snarl left Lavinia’s lips, she used the flat of her palm against the pommel and a fistful of the other's robes to force her body flat to the stone.

There was an eerie silence outside of the struggling of Taleari’s lungs.

She stood. She circled her, flicking the handle of the embedded blade, relishing in the way it made her body twitch.

Both hands took hold of the leather pommel now, fingers dancing along the protruding blades on either side, a perfect and deadly mimicry of a spider’s legs. Lavinia tsked softly at the trembling woman, and her eyes gleamed in the violet flames that surrounded them. They roared upward, sputtering excitedly, and it was likely what stayed the hands of the others gathered mere feet from her. In a single fluid motion, she had hopped back onto the altar, a knee on either side of Taleari’s hips.

With a hissing exhale, she began to drag the knife downward, splitting the priestess open neck to navel with a voraciousness that should have made her pause, but she could not afford a single shred of hesitation. Her fingers were relentless, sliding into the wound to pluck and pry and hurt.

“Let our revenge be brutal, sweet and wicked…” Lavinia whispered, nosing the woman’s cheek, bringing one of her bloodied hands to grasp her by the jaw. “Let our vengeance take a millennia…” Her free hand was exploring within the noble’s chest, careless with ribs and muscle and sinew. “...so that our enemies know the taste of fear, cruelty and punishment.”

She pulled her arm back, and with it, a fistful of gore. There she stayed, looming over the other until her offal had been scooped and scattered amongst precious gems in the stone bowl, all painted with her plentiful blood. When the choking and sputtering and wheezing finally faded, Lavinia exhaled. Crimson spatter marked her face, neck, the fine silk of her robes and any other skin not covered by the fabric. She pulled the knife out and ran her tongue along the blade, tasting her success, lips curling in a grin. 

Standing slowly, Lavinia turned to meet the eyes of the yathtallar and the other yathrin that had gathered, giddy for her demise. Their sudden silence filled her with smug elation.  “And let the forests burn.” She finished off the prayer, breathless and smiling, wide enough to flash sharp teeth, feral, growing more reminiscent of a creature with each passing moment. Some denizen of the Underdark’s most rotted caverns, plucked from the waste and placed on a twisted pedestal, a mocking reminder of what Lolth truly prized.

Her steps were sure, light, jaunty. She held her chin high, she let her shoulders brush against those who would have been overjoyed to see her split and splattered, dissected. Lavinia paused only to hold out the blood-stained dagger, not even glancing in the direction of the one who took it from her.  The suffocating silence broke, the swell of conversation filling the space with noise. There was an uneasiness attached to every syllable, she could feel it in the air, quivering molecules that were caught somewhere in the magnetic field, suspended between what was a moment ago and what is now. Lavinia did not bother to hide the curl of her lips, unflappable in the face of her success. She descended, making her way through the crowd that was slowly reanimating.

One needed to understand chaos to serve their goddess - and perhaps not even understand, but accept it. It simply was. Nothing was ever sure, nothing was ever promised. It was that the noble women seemed to have forgotten. 

Their name held only as much power as the Spider Queen willed.

It was anything but advisable to slink her way through the shadows of Qu'ellarz'orl, but slink she did. 

The twisting streets and occasional alleyway were barren compared to the cramped, hellish conditions of the Braeryn and try as she might, Lavinia could not forgo the comparisons. Up here, the wind whistled in the caverns and the moisture trailing off massive stalagmites hit the ground audibly. Ambient noise that was not drowned out by shouting or wheezing coughs or the ringing of vendor’s bells. 

Her fingertips trailed along intricately built stone walls as she traversed the plateaus, letting her feet lead her as her mind wandered. It was never quiet in the Stenchstreets. Everyone was always awake, always working, always scheming, always fighting and killing and disappearing --

The same people who lived here, on these plateaus, took their pleasure in turning her once-home into their hunting grounds. It was some type of sport to them, to move through the Braeryn and claim the skulls of whatever Undercreature they could find, whatever unfortunate bastard had not managed to get indoors before the nobles descended upon them. She distinctly remembered hiding behind piles of garbage and beneath the too-crowded shacks, held aloft by rickety foundations. She remembered how those ramshackle homes would sway and groan above her from the weight of all the people packed inside, and remembered the fear that it would simply collapse on top of her.

What if that chase through Kyorbblivvin had been an evocative of -- 

Abruptly, she reorganized her train of thought.

Prid’essoth had been too easy of a target. Even if she had stripped her bones bare and laid out perfectly portioned slabs of noble meat, it would not have been sufficient. Lavinia’s mouth twisted at the thought, and the yathrin brought a hand to her chin, thumb hard against the center of her pout as she considered. It would not be too long before another woman fell to her ego and her lust and extended a hand in a foolish invitation, but… 

Lavinia was tired of the games. 

She was tired of the boring, two-move-matches that failed to summon the need for thought, for strategy. That failed to spark even the smallest ember of passion in her gut. Lolth deserved passion, and yet all she had to do was show up wearing a coquette’s mask, fluttering her lashes and speaking in dulcet tones. Even in their deaths, the c'rintrin failed the Queen of Lusts. She was tired of ducking in and out of compounds she did not want to be in, the lingering, foul sensation of their hands on her skin, the acrid taste of their lips and the sour smell of their breath. Lavinia’s tongue swept across the backs of her teeth in an angry lash, the muscle at the hinge of her jaw jumping.

The flash of fury came from the mere existence of iron-clad reins, held in the greedy hands of The Ruling Council of Eight. Their clawed grips desperately continued to cling to a status-quo that had no business keeping its hold on Menzoberranzan. 

House Baenre, always comfortably seated at the top. Too comfortable, too proud.

House Barrison Del'Armgo, consistently right beneath them, and seemingly content to be so. Ambitionless.

House Xorlarrin, who had taken advantage of House Baenre’s destruction of House Oblodra to claim a new spot. They relied on the cunning of others, sporting abrasions from dragging coattail.

House Faen Tlabbar, useless. 

House Mizzrym, forgettable. 

House Fey-Branche, irrelevant. 

House Melarn, unthreatening.

And House Tuin’Tarl, who she, herself, had steered toward a spectacular collapse. One of the other houses, the ones on the cusp, were likely to strike the killing blow. Perhaps House Duskryn or Hunzrin. Either way, it would certainly be a scramble to fill the momentary void and sit themselves upon the council. Lavinia did not understand why they would bother coveting such a powerless position. Despite what they may have thought, the ilharessen held nothing but their names as it had been decades since the last impressive feat accomplished by any of their houses. 

After all, besting them had not been difficult, even in the very beginning. Their shortcomings were what earned her a place on Tier Breche, far away from the muck and mire of the Stenchstreets.

The Spider Queen deserved far more than these boring, half-baked sacrifices and prayers with no reverence behind them when each syllable should have trembled with adoration. It had always struck her as odd that her boundless devotion evoked such frustration from the Yathtallar, even when she had been engrossed in her studies at Arach-Tinilith, but time mingling among them and their ilk had provided an insight she had been previously lacking. 

They did not remember how to worship. How to venerate. How to revere. 

High Priestesses without a word of prayer that had not been memorized from someone else’s lips. 

The noises around her shifted, from ambient to intentional, from whistling winds to footsteps, and Lavinia refocused, lest she end up with a blade between the ribs from one of the very women she was chastising in her head. She rolled her head on her neck with an absent sigh, reaching up to push some of her stray hair back and behind her ear. Her gaze was heavy, both with her thoughts and the fatigue that came with them. 

Bare feet whispered against the ground with the grace of her movements until they stopped in front of a particularly familiar door. It was a sort of muscle memory at this point, making her way there. With a glance to both her left and her right, she slipped inside. 

“You’re back already.” 

Lavinia’s quip died on her tongue when Minthara spoke first, though the paladin did not turn around.

“You sound disappointed.” Lavinia murmured, arms folding over her chest as she propped her weight against the arch of the entryway, raising a brow. Despite the irritation that had been gnawing at the edges of her brain matter like greedy rats, banter came easily. Bitterness did not coat her syllables, her tongue did not grow thorns and her blood did not boil. 

“Disappointed? Did you want a welcoming party?”

“If I did, you are making it clear that I am not getting one.” There was somehow both an eye-roll and a smile in her words, though neither manifested on her face.

Minthara chuckled, clearly amused with herself, reaching up to push her flaxen tresses out of her face and turning to face Lavinia simultaneously. She leaned her weight onto the back legs of the chair, her own arms folding over her chest. “Did you not enjoy yourself?” 

Despite the tease in her voice, there was a harder edge to her gaze when it swept over the yathrin, the corners of her mouth tensing. Lavinia lowered her lashes and took note of it, a brief pang of confusion echoing the pulse of her blood. Her head tilted in response, almost lazily. “I did not.”

“Ah. So the ssouk was disappointed with her hunt, hm?”

“Extremely.” Lavinia’s mouth twisted and her brow furrowed in obvious disgust.

“It is always disappointing. There has not been once that I feared I would not come out on top.” She continued, throwing her arms up in exasperation, though she remained where she stood.

“Not even once?” Minthara slowly lowered the chair back to the ground, her boots following suit, and she leaned forward as she spoke.

“Not once.”

“We can’t have that, can we? Who knows what you would get up to if plagued by boredom.” The Baenre stood and her eyes sought out Lavinia’s. Obsidian and ruby collided with enough force that both their breaths caught, a small hitch that they both ignored. 

“Are you challenging me?” The priestess murmured, feeling her skin prickle at the charge that was building in the air between them. Her arms unfolded, hands flexing at her sides, and she pushed off the wall. The two circled one another in a strangely relaxed manner, sweeping across the room, round and round until it was Minthara with her back to the door and Lavinia to the left of the chair that the paladin had previously been perched in. 

“Yes.” 

Minthara’s mouth twitched into a smirk that Lavinia had the urge to sink her teeth into. Her lungs froze for a second, depriving her of the appropriate amount of oxygen to formulate a response, but the feeling faded as quickly as it came and she hummed in affirmation, eagerly engaging in what promised to be a beautiful danse macabre.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“When else?”

Lavinia did not need any additional confirmation. The muscles in her calves had slowly been tensing throughout their back-and-forth and the second her synapses fired off, she was moving. Minthara caught her first punch, long fingers curled around her fist, and she yanked her arm back to block the other drow’s responding blow. 

“If you give me a black eye…” She started, bending back to avoid a rather impressive kick from the paladin, and then sweeping her leg outward to catch Minthara’s feet. She stumbled but caught herself, much to Lavinia’s chagrin.  “You still have to fuck me.”

Minthara snorted. She flashed her teeth in the brief approximation of a smile that twisted her lips.

“Do I?”

“Yes.” 

Lavinia barely side-stepped the next swing, though she noted that Minthara’s fist unraveled right before it would have made contact. Her gut twisted and she dismissed the feeling as quickly as it came. She stepped forward, sliding a foot between Minthara’s and hooking her leg behind the other woman’s, attempting to trap her. Minthara would have fallen for that before, but after a handful of sparring matches, she had become wise to Lavinia’s twists and turns, her deadly grace. “You seem to think you can tell me what to do more often than not, yathrin.”

Even though the paladin had avoided being tangled in her legs, she did not avoid her left hand. It was not much of a blow, as Lavinia had thoughtlessly mimicked the earlier pulled-punch, uncurling her fingers before they made contact. Her palm pressed hard against Minthara’s  torso, fingers probing at the spaces between her ribs. For a moment, she fantasized about peeling apart skin and sinew and slithering into the thoracic cage, curling her way around the Baenre’s insides until she ensured she felt exactly as tangled as she did.

“You listen. Sometimes.” Lavinia breathed, her tongue pressing against the backs of her teeth as she fought against a sudden swell of confusing emotion. She drummed the tips of her fingers against each individual rib, feeling the vibration through the bone. Minthara watched her wordlessly for a moment before snatching her hand, a thumb pressed to her palm, following the arc of her thenar muscles.

Lavinia almost resented the way she could feel tension ebbing away. Minthara almost resented how soft her touch was.

Almost.

“You listen… never. You should not come here as often as you do -”

“And yet you do not stop me. You do not turn me away, ussta d'nilok.” The priestess turned her gaze down enough to meet Minthara’s own. She swore she could pry open the bars there, dive deep into red pools and swim through every wrinkle of her brain.

“Are we not sparring?”

“Lavinia-”

“Minthara.” She stepped in closer, trying to force the confrontation to continue. 

“People will make assumptions.”

People did make assumptions.

A scoff left Lavinia’s lips and she shook her head, pulling her hand back but not with enough strength to force a separation. There was a tension now, strings pulled tight, trembling from the force. They stared at one another. Neither wanted to speak, as what needed to be said was unspeakable. They both knew and yet Lavinia proceeded to ask the very question she should not have - 

“What is there to assume?”

Minthara squeezed Lavinia’s wrist for a moment before she released her grip on the other woman entirely. The priestess watched her with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, the sudden silence between them and the shift in activity leaving her wary. The Baenre knew she should chastise the priestess, remind her of their difference in station. She knew that dismissing Lavinia from her room, from the compound, was the more appropriate course of action. She knew that the time they spent together had become too much, and yet none of that knowledge left her lips. 

“They’ll assume you are fond of me.”

“Or that you are fond of me.” Lavinia parried. “And I am. Fond of you, that is."

“Lavinia-” Again, she felt scolding words pile on to her tongue only to sour in the next second. Minthara did not want to usher her out or pick at her confidence, but she did want to bid her caution. 

“Besides, if they did speak, I would cut out their tongues.” Tilting her chin down, Lavinia let her forehead meet Minthara’s. She wanted to ask the other drow if she doubted her capability or her word, or both, but she did not, even if she craved the answer. Something, which perhaps was just her own ego, told her that Minthara was smart enough to see the path the priestess was carving. With their gazes locked, she could take her time traipsing through the red chromatic, cataloging each glimmer and the way her pupils pinned when Lavinia smiled.

With their gazes locked, Minthara could take the same languid journey through eyes black as pitch, esoteric and endless. 

There was another beat of silence.

“Did I distract you, a'temra?”

Lavinia blinked, head tilting slightly to the left. “Yes. You distract me often.”

“I could have slit your throat.”

“So you have said before and continue to say now. Is it to make you feel less ensorcelled?”

The Baenre growled, reaching up to take purchase of Lavinia’s chin only to find her fingers tangled in the freckled digits of the Veldriss that haunted her bed and her mind, deep enough to disturb what should have been silent trances. Minthara’s voice dropped, lower now, smoke over a riverbed, rocks rubbed smooth but waves jagged. 

“You are insufferable, yathrin.” 

As if emphasizing her point, Lavinia used their interlocked hands to raise their arms, spinning under them before releasing her grip. The flourish put her in a rather advantageous position - not quite behind Minthara, but on enough of a bias to put her in a precarious situation. With a grin so smug it could be described as feline, Lavinia wrapped an arm around her companion’s throat from the front, flexing only enough to earn a sputtering sound. With a slick smile, she nosed at Minthara’s temple.

“Insufferable though I may be, I am still going to best you.”

Without prompting, she used the way their hands were interlocked to pull the other drow in close, not giving her a chance to adjust before she was walking them back, back toward the door she had come in through. Before Minthara’s shoulders tapped the impressive masonry, she had slipped her foot behind one of the priestess’ and used the grip to switch their positions, bringing her forearm up to Lavinia’s throat, applying pressure as she had done moments earlier.

“We will see about that, won’t we?”

“You broke my wrist.”

It was hardly an accusation, but rather stated fact. The words were thickly coated with adoration and Lavinia fluttered her lashes, peering out from under them at the woman whose bed she shared. Her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, a thin sheen of sweat across her forehead and chest, bruises already blooming on her biceps and forearms and thighs, pitch against dusky flesh. 

Casually, she lifted her right arm between them, gesturing toward the odd angle of her hand.

“And you nearly punctured my lung.” Minthara returned, turning her head so their gazes could meet. For a moment, her breath caught in her throat and for a moment more she regretted locking eyes with the priestess. It was easy to see how so many fell prey to her antics - she was nothing if not enchanting. Each uncanny thing about her appearance only fueled the strange air of mystique she ported, bolstered by the Flesh Carver’s clear favor. She wanted to claw those airs away and seek out the spider-eyed yathrin ’s true intention, dissect her motivations and make whatever contingencies necessary to protect herself, to ensure her own victory. The Baenre ran her tongue along her bottom teeth, studying Lavinia’s expression for a long moment.

She took hold of her forearm, still bloodied and bruised, and the cleric cocked a brow in question, confused by the paladin’s choice. The other drow did not speak, simply adjusted her grip, trailing long, elegant fingers downward until they could lay across Lavinia’s wrist. Minthara pressed her thumb into her skin, her teeth catching the swell of her bottom lip as she felt Lavinia’s pulse flutter beneath her grasp. With a rather brusque exhale, she prodded along both the proximal and distal rows of the cleric’s carpal bones. None of them shifted or shuddered beneath her touch and she clicked her tongue.

“You complain too much. It is not broken, Lavinia. Sprained, maybe.”

“Oh. I would have preferred if it was.” Lavinia sing-songed, rolling over so that she could straddle Minthara’s hips, the paladin’s hand still firm around her wrist, fingers still secured to her pulse point. 

Without fighting against the grip, she leaned forward, bringing their lips so painfully close together that she felt the ache in her sinews. Tangled, haphazard curls spilled around them when the dark-eyed drow shifted, a curtain of pale hair to block the rest of the world out. The silence only lasted a moment before the tightening in Minthara’s chest made her feel she had to speak. 

“You could stop pulling your punches.” 

“Mm, well, what would they say if I bruised your pretty face, qu’essan?” Ruby eyes flashed in annoyance but Lavinia continued to speak as if she had not noticed the way Minthara’s jaw tensed - but of course she had. She could not ignore a single minute change in the other’s features, even if she had wanted to, which, admittedly, she did not. 

“Do you not think your mother would have me hunted down like the rat I am?”

“Do not call me that.” She muttered, shaking her head and turning her attention back to Lavinia’s hand. She felt along the ligaments, noting the sudden, sharp inhale from the other drow.

“Why not, qu’essan?” Lavinia murmured, breathless from the steady throb radiating from her wrist. She sat up, using her free hand to tuck some of the runaway curls back behind her ears. Gently, she tightened her thighs on either side of the paladin’s hips. The cleric tilted her head, pondering what next to say since Minthara had not yet responded to her last prod.

As if reading her mind, Baenre's free hand sought out the end of her braid and yanked it with no small show of force. “You are testing my patience, yathrin.”

“You? Patience? How much of that do you really have for me to test?” She had gone to reach up with her free hand and soothe her head, but the same fingers that had so cruelly pulled at her hair were now walking up the back of her neck and drawing lazy circles along her scalp. 

Lavinia sighed contentedly, rolling her head so the weight of it was in Minthara’s palm, cradled by her elegant fingers. Her lashes fluttered as her eyes closed. The other woman cleared her throat and she hummed in response, not bothering to look, which was truly such a foolish show of trust.

“If you would stop acting out for two seconds, I could fix your sprain, lince’sa.”

Her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek as if whittling a sore into the soft flesh. “Ah, an eye for an eye, then?”

“I do not know what you mean.” Minthara did not look up at her, focused instead on her arm. Lavinia grimaced at the pressure applied and then the strange cooling sensation of the paladin’s healing magic. It was a rather strange combination of feelings, but that had become expected when in present company.

At least this time it was physical. The physical was so much easier to understand.

“Of course you don’t.” Lavinia bowed her head as the other continued her work, nosing at her neck. Eager teeth found the lobe of her ear, taking gentle purchase of the cartilage between top and bottom incisors. She could feel the flush on Minthara’s face even if she could not see it and her lips twitched into a smirk, which Minthara could feel even if she could not see it. 

They were still like that for a moment, the priestess acquiescing to the medical attention she was receiving. When the glow faded from Minthara’s fingers and she could no longer feel the waves of magic rolling through the layers of muscles and ligament, Lavinia exhaled, a breath she had not known was trapped in her chest escaping. 

Before she could continue their banter, Minthara flicked her gaze up and caught that of the yathrin , stalling her brain in its tracks. “You speak to me as if you want to keep me. Waela.”

“I have been called that before.”

“I believe it.”

Lavinia half huffed and half chuckled, her teeth now catching the blemishless wisteria flesh of Minthara’s neck, nipping until the skin welted. All it earned her was quickened breaths and she was a greedy woman, she wanted more. She sucked bruises into the skin and that earned her the reaction she wanted - a sharp gasp, an arch in Minthara’s mid back and the hand that had been so gently cradling the back of her head taking vicious purchase in her hair, close enough to her scalp to start that delicious burn all over again.

Before, the Baenre would have chastised her for such brazenness. Before, she would have pulled away from Lavinia’s overeager ministrations, and delivered some ultimatum with absolutely no conviction behind it. That part of their game had faded away, replaced by spider-silk tightropes that shivered with every inhale, that threatened to come unglued at the slightest misstep.

Minthara groaned, tilting her chin back so that the priestess could trail her burning lips down the slender column of her neck with less obstruction. She received a sigh against her skin in response, followed by a low hum, though Lavinia continued to lay searing kisses across every inch of her skin. 

The fingers in that girlish shock of pale hair tightened further, the muscles in her bicep contracting as she rather roughly encouraged the other woman to come back to her lips. Lavinia was not bothered by the overly physical instruction, following the direction of the pull and happily crashing their lips together. Like every time before, and like every time yet to come, they battled in their embrace. The sheer overwhelming passion that swelled between them like a tidal wave threatened the precarious balance they had crafted, and yet their mouths did not separate until the desperate need for air forced it. 

“I do not know why you are so opposed to me revering you, qu’essan.” As a response, Minthara sunk her teeth into Lavinia’s bottom lip hard enough to split it, the sudden rush of the yathrin’ s blood on her tongue amplifying her lust. The other drow gasped in slight shock but recovered near instantly, leaning further into the kiss, blindly feeling around the bed until she could interlock her fingers with those on Minthara’s free hand.

Lavinia pulled away from the kiss, tongue swiping along the swell of her pout to collect the remaining blood speckling already scarred skin. 

“Because it is a false reverence.Yathrin you are, you know only how to revere one, and it is the Spider Queen. I do not even think your knees are capable of bending for another. Or am I wrong? Do you not belong to the Flesh Carver?” Her voice was husky, strung tight with a yearning she would not verbalize, every syllable carefully crafted. That red gaze pinned Lavinia as if she were the one with her back to the mattress and as it searched her, she felt helpless to stop it. Fingers twitched from where they embraced Minthara’s, her thumb absently following the lines in the paladin’s palm. 

It was almost as if she were expecting one answer, but hoping to see another.

The priestess exhaled through her nose, shaking her head only slightly, movement still restricted by the fist in her mussed curls. 

“You ask questions you say you know the answer to, ussta d'nilok.”

Minthara dropped the hand that held tight to Lavinia’s hair, letting it trail across her shoulder and bicep, moving languidly, connecting every obsidian fleck on her skin to the next. Lavinia’s breath hitched, stuttered, but only for a moment. She forced her lungs to regulate and her heart to stop its embarrassing arrhythmia. 

“If I am wrong, you ought to tell me.”

Pressing her tongue to the backs of her teeth and drumming her fingertips against the priestess’ hip, considering the abject stupidity of this conversation. What ridiculous banter to engage in. To even imply that such a zealot would prostrate herself at any other altar was a potential catalyst for her rage. Minthara had taken note of the quick, deadly switch that seemed to flip in Lavinia whenever something evoked her faith. 

“You are not entirely wrong.” Lavinia responded after another beat of silence. “Certainly, I belong to the Queen of Lusts. I am her Zedriniset.” The Baenre offered a ‘hn’, raising her brows as if expecting her usually verbose companion to continue, but she did not.

“Then what did I say that was incorrect?”

“I cannot say yet. Soon, though. When I am seated in my rightful place.”

“When ? Always so confident… and that is if it is confidence and not hubris leading you down this path of yours.” Despite the slight bite of sarcasm in her words, Minthara was fully convinced of Lavinia’s trajectory. There was no reason to doubt her. Everything she had said she would do, from their very first night together, she had done. She had bested Minthara in the dense fungi of Kyorbblivvin. She had stepped on the necks of noblewomen who thought to subjugate her, had scooped out their offal and held it above her head as an offering to their goddess.

And, here she was, traipsing around Qu'ellarz'orl and padding through the twisting corridors of the Baenre compound without an iota of the fear she should have ported. 

Sometimes, Minthara wondered if she should have done exactly as Lavinia swore she would never and used her name to force reluctant obedience. That thought never lasted long, though, swept away by each cheeky response and wry smile the cleric delivered to her.

“I deserve to be, because it will be done.” 

There was that same confidence, that same brazenness, etched into every letter that rolled off that devious tongue. Minthara could not help but watch her lips as she spoke, admiring the carefully carved scars and the way the blood that she had caused with her own wicked teeth still speckled the creases. 

Despite all logic, ignoring all sense, Minthara took a strange solace in knowing that this Lavinia was her Lavinia. 

There were no laugh-heavy kisses or dagger-edged banter with anyone else, the yathrin had said so herself upon their very first meeting. The others, of which there were many, could not compare, and even if it had not come from the cunning lips of the other woman, Minthara would have known it to be true. The ilharessen left Lavinia wanting in a way the paladin never would. The warmth in her stomach roared to an inferno and she could feel the want running through her veins manifest into some sort of monstrosity, snapping its jaws and sharpening its claws. She was so sure she could free its rabid, desperate twin, the one she could see locked away so cruelly behind stygian eyes, the same ones that searched her own. 

“Do you not believe me?” Lavinia had lowered herself again so that their mouths brushed as she spoke, her sweet breath spilling over Minthara’s face. 

“I do.” Spoken truthfully. 

Words were no longer sufficient communication. 

They kissed heatedly, Minthara sliding back and using her elbows to prop herself up, if only to tangle her limbs further with the priestess’. She felt Lavinia’s fingers crawl up the line of her spine, taking care to touch every vertebrae in the column, before they slipped into flaxen tresses, curling them around and round freckled digits. She did not pull but rather mimicked the Baenre’s actions from earlier and cradled her skull, using it to deepen their embrace.

Tongues battled with the same ferocity their verbal quips carried and bothered breathing turned to hot, open-mouthed panting only entertained for a second before they kissed again. Every proclamation Lavinia had ever made, every rung of the ladder she swore to ascend, she promised anew her successes without speaking at all, squeezing Minthara’s hand, which she still held. 

“You are positioned to take control of the Council.” 

“Mm.” She acknowledged the truth of that statement but hooked a leg around Lavinia’s hips to knock her off balance and pull her into her chest. 

“And I will take control of the clergy. We will-”

It was easy to close her eyes and envision the picture being painted for her, one where the two of them held all of the power, where Menzoberranzan sat neatly in their intertwined hands. Still, she cut off Lavinia’s idealization with another searing kiss, forcing her to swallow her words. That was all it was, idealization, even if it did make her blood sing to consider such a spectacular victory with the cleric at her side.

Lavinia pulled back to speak again.

“Then you can scold me for calling you qu’essan, but only because it will no longer be accurate.” 

Minthara rolled her eyes without a drop of malice, catching Lavinia’s chin in her grip and running her thumb along the swell of her pout. She looked at the blood left on the pad of her finger and flicked her gaze up expectantly. The priestess cocked a brow but followed the wordless command, parting her lips just enough to allow Minthara’s thumb between them. She curled her tongue around the digit, coating her tastebuds in the metallic tang of her own blood. Before the Baenre could withdraw, Lavinia’s eyes flashed and she clamped her teeth down, earning a snarl from the other drow.

Just as she went to scold, Lavinia interrupted, a grin spreading over her features,

“I know. I’m insufferable.”

They both smiled then, a symphony of laughter spilling off usually cruel tongues -  Minthara’s harsh and throaty and Lavinia’s with its ghostly rasp. The magnetic force between them was damn near impossible to resist and neither of them seemed inclined to try. As they drifted closer, seeking out one another’s breath, Minthara could not help the smirk that tugged at the corner of her lips.

“Yes, that you are, ussta lince’sa.”

Time was a strange thing within the boundaries of Menzoberranzan, cloaked as the vicious city was in the never-ending pitch of the Underdark. Weeks felt like days felt like minutes and those minutes felt like years. 

Before, it had been easy to keep track of the slow tick of the world’s clock - bored as she was, Lavinia had nothing to do but count each breath, every expansion and collapse of tired lungs, every entered and ended trance. Now, it all slipped through her fingers, occupied as she was with both her new station and her consistently present company.

Lavinia pursed her lips, slowly releasing air in a sharp whistle. 

“Minthara.”

“Hm?” The other drow did not look up, her brow furrowed in concentration. And it was the type of concentration that Lavinia knew she should not break, so for a moment she bit her tongue. She sat on the edge of the bed, crossing one leg over the other and lapsed into silence. It was a comfortable quiet, despite the myriad of thoughts bubbling across the surface of her brain. 

Her eyes closed briefly as the melodic sound of the quill scratching tickled her eardrums, punctuated by the soft ring of the metal tip hitting the side of the inkwell. Lavinia knew without looking that each word the paladin wrote would be rendered beautifully in a borderline calligraphy.

She envied the parchment and ink.

“Out with it. I can practically feel you vibrating."

“I am not. I am being calm. You just want to talk to me.”

“Ptau'ro.” The Baenre muttered without a hint of malice, clicking her tongue and shaking her head as if admonishing the priestess who was perched behind her. Lavinia cackled in response, her chin tilting back toward the seemingly endless ceiling, the melody of her mirth shattering the stillness around them with beautiful, impulsive violence. Minthara should have felt a twinge of irritation, but instead she felt a tug at the corner of her mouth, muscle twitching. She was barely biting back a grin of her own. Instinctively, she raised a hand to her face, wrapping her slender fingers around the bottom half of her face, thumb pressed against the hinge in her jaw.

Still, the paladin’s eyes betrayed her and glittered with amusement.

Her laughter quieting, Lavinia stood, sweeping her heavy braid over one of her shoulders. Two or three steps would be enough to close the remaining gap between she and the other drow but she stayed put, just out of reach. Keeping her hands to herself felt like some test of will, fingers twitching as they ached to anchor against Minthara’s skin. Her tongue lashed against the backs of her teeth and her head tilted again. 

“What do you want, Lavinia?”

“You.” She answered quite simply, and though Minthara was not surprised, her tongue still tied itself into a knot and she huffed. Her torso twisted and she slung her arm over the back of the chair. Lavinia ensnared her with an ease that should have summoned some sort of concern or elicited frustration instead of the damning heat that filled her veins. The Baenre was quiet, still pressing the pad of her thumb to the temporomandibular joint, rubbing in hard, sharp circles.

They spent too much time together. People would ask questions. People did ask questions, and the paladin had no interest in answering any of them, nor did she have an interest in defending her choices. As enchanting as the yathrin was, there was no real reason for her to continue with such an arrangement. Lavinia was an indulgence, one the Baenre more than deserved, but nothing more than that. Her whole life she had never needed to stop herself from taking what she desired, and this had been no different, but her appetite should have been sated months ago. And yet, she hungered, even now, as resentful as she felt. 

Being so flagrant in their interactions had been akin to painting a target on each of their backs. Even now, she could practically feel the circling of vulturous drow, ravenous for their blood and bone.

Lavinia was dangerous. Untrustworthy, even. 

Uncontrollable. 

What made Minthara so different from the other c'rintri that Lolth’s zealous daughter hunted mercilessly? What protected her from those sudden, manic bursts of reverence that ended in bloodshed? Certainly not anything that would merit the carelessness Minthara had shown when entangled with her. Slowly, her hand fell away from her face and took the quill back up. The other’s dark stare followed the motion with rapt attention, watching how Minthara rolled the feather’s stem between dexterous fingers. 

Lavinia wanted to memorize the scars on her knuckles. 

“Do you not have some ilharess to cut down? Some prayer to utter? Does your goddess not miss her most devoted kneeling at her altar?” Minthara’s tongue felt barbed and she readied venom in her mouth to coat her syllables, steadying herself against the frustration she saw already flare in the other drow’s esoteric stare.

“I could find one, I suppose.” Lavinia’s tone conveyed that she was taken aback. Her arms crossed over her chest and her weight shifted onto her back foot, increasing the very distance she had been so eager to eliminate moments earlier.

“Perhaps you should.” Minthara forced her eyes away, turning back toward the desk and the maps sprawled across it. She could feel the other woman’s tension rise. She could always feel what Lavinia did. Every emotion seemed to seep from her very pores and pollute the air around them with a fierce thrum, palpable and fiery. There was a lack of pretense that Minthara coveted and yet she was steadfast. Her muscles tensed, knowing the rejection could summon a vitriolic reaction. 

“So you are sick of me then?”

“Yes.” 

No.

“Pity.” 

The Baenre nearly barked out a laugh, hoarse and barbed, and Lavinia met it with a roll of her eyes.  “I am sure you think so, shebali .”

Her choice in words was a poignant dig and summoned a hiss from her current company. She expected Lavinia to argue, for her temper to rise and her hand to go for one of the various weapons strapped to her person and was surprised when she did not. Instead, snowy lashes fluttered, soft against the tops of her cheeks, casting jagged shadows across her features in the flickering light, accompanied by a shrug. Lavinia spoke unwaveringly. 

“I know so.”

Minthara went to speak but the yathrin had already turned on her heel, dismissively waving her hand as an end to the conversation. She clearly had no interest in continuing this acrid banter and the silence that lingered after her departure was near suffocating. The Baenre shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose as her brow furrowed, feeling she ought to say more, punctuate her point with additional viciousness, and yet she did not. 

For a moment the light of the corridor laid itself across her chambers in a sharp line, but it disappeared as the door shut. 

 

---

 

Sick of her.

What an idiotic thing to say. 

What a stupid play to make.

Lavinia had assumed the paladin smarter than that, than the rest of the noblewomen who were content to rest on their laurels. She had assumed incorrectly. Why break an alliance that was clearly beneficial for them both - she would hold the clergy in her grasp and, inevitably, Minthara would sit at the head of the Ruling Council. It was infuriating in its way, both due to its senselessness and its audacity.

Sick of her ? 

Clearly, there had been some quick switch that she had missed the signs of. The incredulousness of it rang true in her bones but simultaneously she saw it for what it was - strategy. Minthara, as a Baenre, could easily hold her own, even against the favor that Lavinia curried with the Spider Queen. The rest of the houses were content to kowtow to her family, pledging their allegiance to them and establishing the stagnant order of power that Lavinia wanted to rip apart with her bare hands.

“Imbecilic.” The priestess sing-songed to no one at all, reaching for the intricately carved handle of the curved dagger strapped to her thigh. She ran her thumb over the grooves, sliding it from its sheath and balancing it in her palm. It was rather heavy, bejeweled and intricate, yet she easily moved it between her fingers. With a giggle, she tossed it upward, catching it by the blade, unflinching when the knife’s edge slid across her skin. Blood bubbled and bloomed at the site of the small injury and she switched her grip to her other hand to allow her to wiggle her fingers, the red stark against the dusk of her skin.

Ripping the paladin’s throat out would have been a worthy act of devotion and even considering it made her body buzz, a static feeling that started in her toes and raced upward, enveloping her. Something inside of her fought against the feeling but as her thoughts all converged on that of her dark mother’s approval, the strange distaste for such violence toward Minthara was quickly unwelcome and dismissed. The yathrin rolled her head on her neck, clicking her tongue against her teeth and she watched unblinkingly as the liquid crimson traced the grooves in her palm and followed the line of her wrist and the curve of her forearm. The pitter-patter of her own life as it rolled off the crook of her arm and hit the stone beneath her feet echoed in her ears.

Even a few droplets of her blood were worth more to the Flesh Carver than the heart of every Baenre in the city. 

Of that, she was sure.

It had been another night of disappointing borderline blasphemy. 

What else could one call such desolate prayers uttered by disimpassioned tongues and blood that would not be good enough to nourish the rats that raced through the Braeryn, let alone to be fed to the Spider Queen? And oh , their smiles and their laughs and their self-assurance, as if they had accomplished something worth celebrating, something to be proud of… 

The c'rintrin, especially the Yathtallar and yathrin in their ranks, had not a shred of deserved dignity between them. They were akin to starved, blinded animals; snapping hungry jaws at scraps that had long ago molded, unaware and happy to swallow whatever spore they needed to give them the illusion of fulfillment. 

Fingers flexed at her sides, a poor attempt at regulating the fury that flared in her gut, singing her esophagus, broiling behind her lips. Her digits themselves were hungrier than the whole of the Ruling Council.

Frustration had built up in her blood over the last few days and continued to fester even now, a sourness in her veins that colored her perception with considerably more ire. Lavinia’s tongue lashed against the backs of her teeth, tension gathering in her shoulders, pulling them up toward her ears. She focused on the ridges etched into her bone, from canines to molars, trying to ground herself. She continued to walk through the still evening, bare feet silent against lichen moss and silt. The path before her was sparingly illuminated, splotchy spots of blue light every few feet, provided by particularly hardy clusters of laculite that pushed through openings in the craggy rock that made up the cliff sides of Qu'ellarz'orl. 

Just like the rest of Menzoberranzan, the minerals did their best to survive the relentless city. 

She should not have been there, that Lavinia knew. It was dangerous, especially now after she and Minthara had ended their frequent trysts. But, tonight, she did not dance through the shadows in hopes of finding a paramour. There were no planned rendez-vous. Her company was not expected. When she had first loosely planned her decimation of the noble Houses of Menzoberranzan, this particular woman had come quite a bit later on her list. Admittedly, there was a bit of a personal edge to her choice this evening.

“I know it was not enough. They are not enough.” Lavinia murmured to the air, tilting her head as she continued to step, one foot and then the other, in a wide, swaying stride. The priestess lifted her weight onto her toes and spun leisurely, a laugh catching on her teeth as zealous thoughts began to blossom behind stygian eyes. 

“They do not feed what should be fed. They do not give what should be given.”

Despite the anger, born of a rejection she refused to acknowledge lest she legitimize it, her words ported a strength that suggested she was more than sure of them. Her mind wandered momentarily, back to the ceremony of the evening, to the overused prayers and the minute-bows and muddy blood.

“I will feed what is deserved. I will give what I ought, and I will have what they should not.” 

There was a tingle that started in the craniovertebral junction, as if cold fingers had gripped the base of her skull and cradled it and the matching mouth had breathed down her spinal column, summoning a shiver that could not go ignored. A trembling exhale accompanied her attempts to regulate her body again, her walk slowing momentarily. 

As delicious as the irony of cutting her lover-no-more neck would be, her target for the evening was much more… impactful.

Myrineyl Baenre, Quenthel’s firstborn and the First Priestess of House Baenre, was who the yathrin sought out as the night drug on. 

She touted a station that Lavinia coveted simply because it should have been her who occupied such a position, House or no. Myrineyl had only managed to step into the role because dear Sos’Umptu, in her finite wisdom, had chosen to resurrect the matronless House of Do’Urden and stand at its helm. It was by chance, Myrineyl’s relevance, and Lavinia intended to be the one who put an end to such a charade. 

Snowy lashes fell, plunging her world into temporary darkness, as she focused her magic. Tendrils of shadow reached from beneath the caps of giant mushrooms and from the cast of the compound itself and snaked their way around her svelte form, caressing biceps and waist and calves as it began to cocoon her in its inky embrace. There was a calmness to it that was unachievable most of the time and Lavinia relished it, even as she felt the shadows begin to guide her and, blindly, she followed.

Shadow-step had always been useful, but especially in situations like these where she was assuredly not welcome, a trespasser with devious intent. She moved in whispers, from pool of darkness to pool of darkness, from the black line cast by a column to the grayer shadows that were interrupted by the flickering of intricate sconces. 

The fence that surrounded the Baenre compound was imposing in its own right, stretching up twenty feet and pulsing with magic. Guards were posted every couple of feet and Lavinia swept her gaze from left to right, taking stock in how many she would need to deal with should she be seen, though a fumble of that nature was unlikely. She had poked and prodded for information from other members of House Baenre and knew the enchantment well - it would be a nearly impassable barrier to anyone else. She was not anyone else. Lavinia held Lolth’s favor and she knew this implicitly, even if the upturned noses of the noblewomen kept them blind to stark reality. 

She could not be enwebbed, magical or otherwise, blessed so sweetly by the Flesh Carver. The strands simply slid from her flesh and she moved freely, untethered, unbothered. It was but one of many boons for all her tireless devotion and her endless successes. Her accomplishments would only continue, of that she was sure, and as long as she kept climbing, Lolth would cradle her head and her heart in sharp-fingered hands. She would keep her close to her endless, open maw, her fangs and teeth, and she would devour her endlessly at the end of it all. 

With a shake of her head, the priestess pushed herself back into the present. It would not do to get lost in fantasy now, no matter the temptation the images summoned. Her tongue pressed flat against the roof of her mouth and she watched the movements of the guards carefully. Poor deluded bastards. Slaves, most likely, choiceless and exhausted. No one would come to relieve them of their posts, they were far too dispensable, hardly worth the time and attention it would require Quenthel and her ilk. 

With wide, starry eyes and in a fanatic whisper, Lavinia spoke once more to the spiders and shadows alone. 

“Yes, yes, yes , a ceremony you deserve - grand enough for you. Why do they speak your name so plainly, Mother? Where is their exaltation? Their choirs singing praises? They offer you petty jewels, spoiled blood and tough meat. Not me, never me. I will bring you the Yathtallar’s skin.”

Freckled fingers poked eagerly at the wrought-iron columns that made up the fence, a giggle brewing in her belly that she forced back with a harsh swallow. The magic rippled like the surface of a placid pond, outward from the point of impact, and she again glanced up to ensure it had not caught any attention.

Once she was sure, she slipped her arm through the gap, the rest of her body following suit.

Passing through the barrier made her heart beat faster, hammering behind her ribcage as if desperate to break bone and launch itself from her body entirely. It was a combination of adrenaline and eagerness that kept her on edge, her very molecules practically vibrating at what awaited her only a few yards away. Lavinia could not afford to hesitate and as soon as she had fully reached the other side, she dipped back into the familiar embrace of the shadows. There was no itch of paranoia in the back of her brain, no concern, no fear of failure.

Lavinia had spent enough time at the Baenre compound to know where the chapel was. 

She had plotted this course months ago, and had taken special care to pay attention to the layout. It had been easy enough to place herself in an advantageous position - she and Minthara spent plenty of time wandering around the grounds with the goal of disappearing into some dark nook or stumbling into the same chapel she sought now. The domed building sat atop one massive, pillar-esque stalagmite in the center, its enchanted glass projecting a rather impressive illusion showing the transformation of a spider into a drow, and then back again. 

Gromph Baenre had always been an irritating show-off. Too bad his usefulness started and ended at petty illusions. Surely others would disagree, and the yathrin felt strongly that those others were allowed to be wrong, as others oft were. 

Absently, Lavinia wound a loose curl around her finger, head tilting as she grew ever closer to the grand bit of architecture, bare feet silent against silt and smooth stone. 

“So the ssouk was disappointed with her hunt, hm?”

The voice of the woman who had scorned her, somewhere between coveted and loathsome, rang between her ears. This time she would not be. Sinking her teeth into Myrineyl’s skin would be far more fulfilling than any Matron Mother of the lesser Houses. Her lip curled at the thought and the wave of passionate devotion that came next nearly put her on her knees. 

“O’ Flesh Carver,” Lavinia murmured, breathy and wild-eyed, “To you once again, Dark Queen, do I offer my being. I am your servant in all matters, yours to command.”

With each word, she took another step. With each breath, she felt her muscles wind tighter, and tighter, and tighter -

“I am your instrument of vengeance. I go forth this day, as every day, bearing the dark sword of your anger to fell the foolish and the undeserving.”

The yathrin’s hand fell to her hip, fingertips fluttering over the heavy obsidian handle of her chosen blade, gleaming as its owner’s eyes did, with equal hunger. She felt ravenous, her stomach looping and twisting and turning with every foot closer she grew. When she could press her palm to the looming entry, the beast in her belly roared, eyes flaring and hackles raised. Lavinia’s tongue ran along the backsides of her teeth and she took a shuddering breath in, eyes closing briefly.

Without further pause, she pushed the massive door open, the squealing of the hinges immediately drawing the attention of a startled drow - and even if those had been properly oiled, the giggle on her tongue pierced the quiet evening with startling violence. 

“Hello.” 

Myrineyl was slack-jawed, the hinge so loose that her tongue nearly lolled out from shock. The sheer audacity of this no-name girl to enter the Baenre chapel, to address her with such a lackadaisical tone, made her brain stutter. Clearing her throat harshly, the Yathtallar straightened her posture, pushing aside the svelte darthiir that had been perched at her feet. Lavinia was not surprised to see such a sad-eyed creature here, Myrineyl was known to have a strange fondness for them.

With an indignant scoff, the First Priestess stood, making a sweeping gesture with her right hand and tossing the crystal she had held onto the ground. It exploded in a fine glitter, shards spraying the stone, the sharp vinegary smell of wine filling the air. Lavinia’s nostrils flared at the scent and she took note of the empty bottles to the side, counting three and excitedly curling her toes at the resulting realization.

Drunk. 

 

Good.

 

She could admit that the woman before her now was rather creative in her sadism, but it was done in her own interest. It was a selfish bloodletting, a prideful slaughter. Nothing about her blade or magic was meant to revere, was meant to worship. Myrineyl, like the rest, had lost her way some time ago. It was almost a pity, but she had more than enough at her disposal that the deficit should not have existed at all. As her eyes wandered over the hunched, trembling form of the servant the Baenre had cast aside, she let herself consider how best to take care of this particular sacrifice. 

Mother would be so, so pleased. 

“Shebali, as I live and breathe.”

As she lived and breathed, hm? Not for long, not for long, not for long at all.

Lavinia tilted her head, the endless vacuum of her gaze fixed on the flashing red of Myrineyl’s. Almost familiar, but in a way that only stoked further fury. 

“What foolish plot brought you to me? Have you finally grown tired of your charade? Here-”

The Yathtallar stepped aside, gesturing mockingly toward the bejeweled altar that sat on the only elevated platform in the room. There was a set of stairs leading to it that opened like a maw, slimming into a throat and all Lavinia could think of was the jaws of her Mother, wide, welcoming. 

“I’ll give you a chance to lay down and bleed prettily. Streea, no? That is about what you are good for, yathrin.”

“Mm.”

The young drow’s uncharacteristic silence made the hairs on the back of Myrineyl’s neck stand alarmingly stiff. She eyed her warily. Lavinia moved with a strange grace, one foot in front of the other as she made her slow ascent, pausing about halfway. With a soft sigh, she deemed it worth her energy to speak.

“It is strange to me…”

Absently, she looked down at her nails, at the adamantine claws that were fastened around her fingertips. They gleamed in the candlelight. She lazily rotated her wrist, this way and that, admiring the shine and flash.

“...how all of you keep making the same mistakes.”

The drip of wax was the only sound that echoed within the chapel for a long minute.

“If a child cuts itself,” Lavinia’s eyes snapped back up and in one swift movement, she unsheathed and threw the dagger at her hip. It whistled as it cut through the air, embedding itself between the wide blue eyes of the Baenre priestess’ newest toy. 

“It understands after the initial injury that sharp things are not to be handled so carelessly.”

As the body crumpled to the ground, twitching and groaning, she dashed forward and wrenched the blade from the quickly fading man. Warm blood pooled under her feet, between her toes, and she treasured the bolt of warm lightning that struck down her spine. 

“You and your sistern do not seem capable of that understanding. Children are better equipped to fight against me than you and yours are.”

That incited a response. Myrineyl laughed then and Lavinia resisted the urge to grimace at the irritating sound, shaking her head. Her fingers twitched at her sides, purple sparks jumping between the tips. 

“Such pride for such a desperate little thing. You speak of Lolth’s favor, of her blessings, and yet where do you find yourself? In the beds of your superiors, gleaning power and protection from them. Do you ever get tired of trying to prove yourself knowing it will not change a thing?”

Myrineyl’s gaze glittered with malice and she tilted her chin upward, using her position on the platform to look down her nose at the other. “Were you not just between my sister’s sheets for the same reasons?”

Lavinia flexed her hand, blinking slowly, steadying the spike in her heart rate, the arrhythmia that came alongside her anger. No, no, no. This needed to be completed with precision. With purpose . She could not just lunge, even if her muscles burned from the tension and her hands longed to wrap around the Baenre’s stupid, smug neck. 

“Are you hoping to curry Lolth’s favor, or ours?”

“You are just as stupid as your mother, and her mother before her.” Lavinia crooned, obsidian stare flicking back and forth, from Myrineyl’s smug face to the shadows, eagerly awaiting the soft whisper of thousands of legs and the tremble of overfull pockets in the walls. 

“I do not need your favor, nor do I covet it - not from you or any of your deluded kin.”

There was a sneer on her lips now and she shook her head, slowly ascending once more, her path marked by the poor bastard’s blood that still stained her soles. She was laughing again, a quiet chuckle that picked up in volume with each inch closer she drew. She tossed her head back, shaking it back and forth, incredulous at the continued idiocy.

 

All the money, all the power, all the access …

 

… and yet they remained as ignorant as the swine that still festered away in the Braeryn. Pustulent, putrid, unthinking creatures. Unfit to call themselves Yathtallar.

 

Myrineyl chortled in bitter response, her stare sharpened and her fingers carefully closing around the hilt of her own blade. The other woman’s delusion, her raving, was infectious, it made the Baenre feel uneasy, on-edge. She could almost swear the walls were breathing in a pattern to match her own and the floor right beneath her beat in rhythm to her heart.

Again, Lavinia moved swiftly, skipping up the remainder of the stairs until they were toe to toe. She was taller by about a head and rocked onto her tiptoes to emphasize it, a grin twisting her lips until she was flashing her teeth, seeming every bit the terrible predator she purported herself to be.

One of her hands lashed out to grasp the Yathtallar ’s wrist, closing tightly and pulling, forcing her to unsheath her weapon. Snowy lashes fluttered and stygian eyes caught red for a single breath before Lavinia was forcing the steel into her own abdomen. She gasped as she felt her skin give way, felt the warm rush of her own blood bubbling around the blade. She stepped closer still, using the injury to lock Myrineyl in place, keeping the dagger embedded in her flesh, her hold on the older woman’s wrist tightening further. 

Lavinia tilted her head down, nosing at the shocked drow’s temple. In a trembling voice that carried both her ecstasy and her fanaticism, she whispered hotly against the Baenre’s cheek. “Elamshin was born in me. I was born to be an extension of the Flesh Carver’s jaws. I am her Zedriniset.”

“And what a benevolent one, at that. Here, Yathtallar.” Now she pushed her back with considerable force, barely grimacing as the blade unsheathed itself from her body. She swept a hand across the injury, collecting her own blood on her fingers. She drug those same digits across the altar, the porous rock as ravenous as she herself was, sucking the offering into its surface. Lavinia prowled forward, closing the space between she and Myrineyl once more.

“Look at that…” She gestured to the crimson smear of her own gore, held her injured hand up between them, momentarily distracted by the way the rivulets traced her knuckles and the lines in her palm, how delicately it trailed down her wrist, toward her inner elbow. 

“Your best offering will be your last. Poetic, is it not?” 

Lavinia’s gaze flicked up once more.

She flashed her teeth in a violent grin, grasping the blade that had just been embedded in her own body and closing her hand around it. She did not seem affected by the way the steel cut into her palm and fingers, though she assuredly must be, and as Myrineyl stared in horror, she swore she saw a spider crawl across those stygian eyes - first one, then the other, as if the sacred things lived in her very head. Perhaps less delusion and more truth, but it was much too late for that realization. The Baenre swayed on her feet as Lavinia stepped in closer, forcing her to slide backward, unsteady from the overindulgence of her evening. 

“You-”

“I?” The yathrin mocked, her voice pitching and her eyes wild. 

“You will regret your foolish actions, girl -” Her voice shook with her rage, raising an octave with the sheer intensity of her feeling.

“No. In fact, I will remember every action fondly. Just to spite you, Myrineyl.” 

Incensed, Myrineyl lunged forward, blindly swinging, precision hampered by rage. Lavinia side-stepped, reaching and weaving bloodied fingers into the other drow’s hair, closing her hand in a fist as close to her scalp as she could. She twisted her own body, forcing Myrineyl to move with her, closer to the edge of the altar. She kicked forward, aiming for the backs of the woman’s knees and knocking her legs out from under her. It sent prideful priestess to her knees, snarling and gnashing her teeth. Her head was swimming, brain rattling against the sides of her skull as the black-eyed drow pulled her around by the hair. 

Lavinia flexed her fingers against the back of her skull. The muscle in her arms rolled and tensed, biceps aching with the intensity of her grip. If she squeezed a little harder, maybe she could break through the bone without need for a blade. Maybe she could crack her open just like that, reach into her head, scramble her brains, scoop fistfulls out to hand-feed the Flesh Carver. 

Again, silence enveloped them. She could hear nothing beyond Myrineyl’s shaky breathing, the crackle of lit wicks and the rhythmic drip drop of fragrant wax as it spilled over the edge of the altar. She was sure the quiet was on par with her relentless taunting and so she let it linger. 

“It was cowardice-” She croaked, throat desperately dry, “to approach me like this.”

“Is that a balm for your loss? I will let you have that. It won’t make this feel better, though.”
She did not wait for an answer. She used her hold on Myrineyl to pull her head back and used the momentum that action caused to bounce her forehead off of the stone. It would not kill her, but it would incapacitate her enough to allow Lavinia her own indulgences. She just knew where to draw the line, a line that the Baenre had clearly disregarded. Her guard had been more than down, it had been non-existent, and what a pity that was.

Boring. They were all so boring, even now, even at this station - Myrineyl had proved nothing but an unfortunate lush.

 

“So the ssouk was disappointed with her hunt, hm?”

 

Again, that damnable voice snaked its way into her brain, smooth like the floor of the Glimmersea and just as dangerously enchanting. Each remembered syllable flirted with the wrinkles in gray matter, flitted across the surface, playing the role of a teasing reminder. It was disturbing, really, how deep the paladin had wriggled her way under Lavinia’s skin. Anger welled inside of her and she snarled, gripping the unconscious woman by the back of her neck and dragging her across the floor, around the other side of the altar.

Lazily, she flicked her wrist, that purple glow from earlier surrounding her hand and then Myrineyl herself, allowing the grown woman’s body to hover a few feet off the ground without need for Lavinia’s strength. 

She eyed the looming statue that sat behind the altar and in front of her, the beautiful visage of their Goddess carved out of some stone that was undoubtedly expensive, but built so many years ago that the hands that originally crafted it were no more than dust now. Lavinia gracefully lowered herself to her knees, bowing her head to the effigy.

“I hope to sate your hunger, if only for a moment, Mother.” She whispered, fingers weaving together, clasped hands in her lap.

Her eyes closed.

Lolth’s hands cradled her head, one massive palm over each of her ears, arachnid digits wrapped easily around the top of her skull. She offered no resistance, letting her head be manipulated, turned this way and that. Lavinia could feel her breath, could feel her many eyes as they burned holes into flesh and marrow, creating as many entryways into her very being as the Queen of Lusts could want. As her humble dedicant, she would have happily clawed the tunnels wider if bade. 

A smile bloomed on her lips, much too sweet considering the copper smell that had begun to fill the chapel from both their injuries and the fantasies that were playing across the front of her mind like the most enticing play. “Should have fought harder, should have been better, c'rintri she is. But no matter, no matter at all.”  

Lashes fluttered as she opened her eyes once more, gaze momentarily bleary from how tightly they had been shut.

Lavinia stared at the still-levitating body of the groaning, groggy, gregarious drow. With a small tilt of her head, she reached out, dragging her bloodied fingers from temple to jaw and then taking Myrineyl’s face in her grasp, grip carelessly bruising. Violet, glittering strands of spider silk crept from her hand and wound around the drow’s face, and then her torso, and then each individual limb. With a casual flick of her wrist, the webbing severed and instead, following her gesture, began to bind the First Priestess of House Baenre against the towering idol of their Quarval-sharess.

“Wake up, Yathtallar. ”

Wake up, Yathtallar.

Impatiently, Lavinia waited for the older drow’s eyes to flutter open, though she was sure her lids were heavy with the force with which her skull had connected to the sharp stone edge of the spectacularly crafted altar that sat feet behind her now. It was stained with the blood of a million drow and twice as many darthiir and co'nbluth, and now with the still glistening essence of the Baenre strung up in front of her. She whistled softly, closing the distance between them as she noted the twitching of the muscles around Myrineyl’s mouth.

“Playing dead will not help you now, mal'ai. You are all the same. Prideful enough to assume you are untouchable.” Her gaze flicked downward, studying the sharpened, venom-dipped metal tips that she wore like rings, covering neatly filed nails. Myrineyl remained stubbornly silent. Lavinia tutted, tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth.

“You would think a devotee such as yourself would be excited right now… She is here with us, can you not feel Her?” The younger drow certainly could. It showed in the gleam in her lightless eyes, in the breathlessness of her voice, in the way her hands twitched like hungry, eager spiders at her sides.

“She looks upon us now, wael. You are not the sacrifice you should be when you carry the name you do. You waste the Flesh Carver’s very air when you breathe. Do you not regret such a thing?” Her hand had crawled upward, first her own side and then Myrineyl’s, each movement feeling like the tarsus of many spiders moving in tandem. She continued to travel until she could catch the Baenre’s jaw and hold it fiercely, digging into her malleable flesh. 

The bones in the Yathtallar's neck popped at the force with which Lavinia turned her head, forcing their eyes to meet. Myrineyl felt as if she were being swallowed by that black-hole stare but yet she could not look away, her mouth drying further with each passing moment.

“What was it you had said to me…” Lavinia paused as if genuinely deep in thought, though they both knew that was not the case. Clearly, the yathrin had been planning this for some time. The notion made Myrineyl’s lips curl, teeth flashing in a brief snarl. How dare this urchin girl make such bold moves, how dare she stand in Myrineyl’s own temple and accuse her of failing their Goddess. 

“Ah, right.”

She smiled. Myrineyl wanted to shatter it, or perhaps the girl entirely, so she never need lay eyes on her again.

“A hungry spider must feed. Give yourself to it joyfully, for in the end Lolth will consume us all. Better to suffer the torments of the flesh now than to face the wrath of the goddess later.” Lavinia spoke nearly in song, bending forward in a dramatic bow, braid sweeping across the floor before she straightened, the grin on her features nothing short but sadistic. Her teeth seemed terribly pointed in the flickering of the candlelight and she relished the way the wrinkles around Myrineyl’s eyes deepened as her expression twisted. There was anger behind it, but under that there was fear and Lavinia inhaled deeply, letting the intoxicant fill her head. 

It was something special to cause a crack in the facade of the same type of woman who would have so gladly subjugated her only a few short months ago. Her rapid rise was cause for some concern, she was not ignorant to the target she painted on her back, but she felt assured in her Goddess’ favor and confident in her own abilities. It was one thing to just be able to kill, and to do so brutally and reverently, it was another to have an uncanny knack for slipping into the perfect position to do just that. 

After an audible exhale, emptying her lungs, the yathrin clapped her hands together.

“Shall we?”

Lavinia lifted her leg rather languidly, extending her limb until her bare foot, stained by Myrineyl’s blood and the spilled wine alike, rested right beside the Baenre’s cheek, toes flexing against the cold stone of the effigy the First Priestess found herself bound to. Lolth held the First Priestess in her stone arms with the help of Lavinia’s careful ropework - the closest the disgraced Baenre would ever get to the Flesh Carver’s hungry mouth. A chorus of baneful amusement spilled off of her venom-slick tongue and she leaned forward until she could rest her cheek against her own knee, fluttering snowy lashes with a smirk that could only be described as mischievous. The flexibility in and of itself had an inhuman quality that brought with it the question of exactly what she was. She relished the nervous twitch in the other woman’s brow.

The rubies that sat in the eyes of the effigy glittered in approval.

One hand crawled toward Myrineyl’s face and took possession of her jaw, working her fingertips into the hinge, forcing her lips to part. With no care, Lavinia placed three of her fingers in the open space, hooking them against her bottom teeth, thumb under her chin, behind the bone. The other drow seemed to realise what was about to happen. She tried in vain to turn her head, to force the grip on her to grow slack. Stygian eyes flared with some indescribable rush of emotion as Lavinia slowly bent her knee, bracing her foot against the statue, using it to give herself leverage for her next move.

Before her poor or'shanse could utter a word or manage a scream, Lavinia pulled with all the strength she could muster.

The yathrin could feel the ligaments snap, how the noblewoman’s jaw went slack in her grip. Another twist of her wrist and she ensured the joints on both sides popped, rendering her mouth useless. The guttural groans welled behind Myrineyl’s now perpetually parted lips and the hopelessness being nearly tangible summoned a shiver that raced from her tailbone, up her sline and to where her neck met the base of her skull. She could not help but sigh blissfully, rolling her head, gaze cast up toward the ceiling in silent prayer.

In a wide arch, she swung her leg up and over the drooling, whimpering High Priestess and settled her weight on both of her feet once more. Fingertips descended from the tip of her chin to a wide sweep across her collarbones and then further down still, playing along her ribcage until she finally felt the intricately designed handle of her dagger strapped to her thigh. With a soft sigh, she unsheathed it, twirling the blade between her fingers. The adamantine edge caught the flicker of torchlight and gleamed menacingly. 

“There is an irony in this, is there not?” She spoke in a purr, flicking her eyes upward so she and Myrineyl were staring at one another. The loathing that boiled behind the Baenre’s gaze was enough to summon another laugh from the depths of her being. There was no playfulness to it, it was razor blades and chewed metal as it tumbled from her tongue. With that same quickness she had shown earlier, she plunged the knife in the soft spot just above her sternum, the suprasternal notch.

“You and your insufferable sister…” Lavinia tutted, shaking her head with a slowness that vastly contrasted the swift way that she dug the blade downward, opening the other woman up with a surgical precision. It was reminiscent of the way she had torn the unfortunately Mizzrym priestess in near half, though with a more controlled mania. She stabbed the dagger into the Yathtallar ’s thigh to keep it from falling as shaking, devoted fingers probed past skin and muscle and bone to the squishy, integral parts that made Myrineyl up.

The offal was always the best thing to lay at Lolth’s altar for that reason. Guts were the innermost workings of a person, the things they could not survive without, no matter what magic they wielded. She always found the warmth on her hands in strange contrast to the perpetually cool air of Menzoberranzan.

Well, at least up here. The Braeryn was always hot. There were too many bodies packed into too small of a space.

“You sought to pay your penance with my flesh and She rejected your offering. It is I who courts her favor, not you, it has not been any of you since Yvonnel died.” Lavinia was close again, snarling the words against the Baenre’s temple, her fingers digging into cheekbones, the sharpened nail-tips she wore precariously close to the woman’s eyes. 

“Does it not get tiring, riding the coattails of a woman so long dead she is dust? Do you have no ambition? No love for our Queen? Do you not want better?”

There was a gurgling noise that she took as an attempt to speak. Her tongue traced a path from a droplet of sweat at her temple down her neck to where her blood was thick and viscous, painting lilac skin in sticky carmine. Lavinia’s grip tightened until the metal that adorned her fingertips punctured her skin. It immediately bubbled and blistered in response to the poison she had painted them with and the subsequent choking and sputtering only solidified her resolve.

“The very concept of existence requires chaos, and yet you subsist on the status quo. You are a complacent, docile thing. You are not one of her Daughters. You have lost your way.” Spoken in a whisper, the words pitched higher with each syllable. There was a strange sheen to her eyes now and a grin on her lips that was fanged and nasty. The questing hand buried deep in Myrineyl’s guts curled into a fist, pulling back. Her fingers flattened. In her palm sat what was likely a portion of intestines. With the utmost care, she placed it in the beautiful stone offering bowl that lay at the foot of the altar. 

Lavinia continued through her methodic dissection with zeal, murmuring prayers so reverently that the abyssal burnt itself into her lips. She was not deaf to the noises and the twitches in muscle but she was far too focused to do anything but hold the other woman’s limbs. The Flesh Carver was so close, her ever-smiling mouth against the side of her face, the bones of her fingers between each and every one of the priestess’ ribs. Her Mother, Her Queen, Her Goddess, Her Everything, everything, everything was proud. 

She grew consumed by her practiced and precise butchery, carving and cutting and digging and worshiping --

With an unholy shriek from unoiled hinges, the heavy doors swung open.

Lavinia did not turn, the corner of her lips twitching as she tilted her chin upward, closing her eyes. She knew very well who was behind her - the lack of blade in her back spoke volumes.

Smug satisfaction warmed her insides and bloomed outward from her gut, fiery roots snaking through her veins with a rapidity she should have been surprised by. Heavy boots accompanied a quick, intense stride and in a single moment a gloved hand had taken purchase in her hair, right above the beginning of her braid, taking a fistfull of white curls. 

“What do you think you are doing, yathrin? Do you long for my attention so desperately?” 

Minthara spoke in a hiss, eliciting an arguably inappropriate chuckle from her momentarily restrained companion. Muscles in her forearm tensed and her fingers flexed, using her grip to force Lavinia’s spine to arch. The priestess willingly leaned into it, bending backward until she could meet the other’s eyes, upside down as she may have been. 

The priestess’ esoteric gaze caught the ruby red of her captor. There was a twin hitch in their breaths. Lavinia ran her tongue along the backs of her teeth, barely biting back the grin that wanted to take over her features. 

“I needn’t long for something I did not lose, d'nilok.” 

Minthara scoffed, her head shaking in the type of admonishment that held no weight. Lavinia took note of that fact, her lips curling into a wry smile as she slowly drug the flat of her blade across the flesh of her thigh, not breaking their eye contact, painting freckled flesh crimson with noble blood. Fingertips danced absently through the gore, drawing circles and lines with an ease that suggested practiced hands - and they were, extremely so. The paladin knew that well. 

Her nostrils flared with a harsh exhale and her gaze narrowed as sharp as the blade which flashed in the light as Lavinia moved it slowly. 

Something about it, about seeing her stain her skin with the blood of another, made the beast in her belly snarl and gnash its teeth in fury. The hand in the woman’s hair tightened but before she could do anything further, Lavinia’s own grip closed around her wrist and she spun under Minthara’s arm in order to face her.

“Do you expect me to allow this to - ”

She did not allow the still-breathing Baenre to finish speaking. Her head tilted, fingers flexing, tightening their hold. “Sick of me, was it? You do not seem sick of me. Sick with your want of me, perhaps.”

The yathrin’s gaze glittered as it focused on the narrowed one inches from her face. A scoff caught on the paladin’s tongue but it did not manifest.

“Perhaps just sick from the hunger you harbor for me and only for me…”

A warning growl slipped past gritted teeth. Lavinia pointedly did not heed it.

“Does it infuriate you, the magnitude of it?” 

A pause.

“It does me. You make me mad, you know.”

Minthara’s brow unfurrowed and her glare softened, more inquisitive than anything else. The priestess before her had been content to flaunt her macabre deed and poke at the Baenre’s pride with pointed words but this… this was a strange twist. Lavinia had cinched the upper hand with her brutal ministrations. There was no reason to offer an even ground, and yet she did. Clicking her tongue on the back of her teeth, she stared, unblinking, and spoke slowly and with purpose. “You make yourself mad. You are mad, yathrin.”

“Perhaps. But it is not in the way I am mad for you, nor in the way you are mad for me.”

The ambient sounds of dripping gore, scuttling spiders and flickering candles were only disturbed by their breath.

Lavinia tilted her head, reaching back to unwind Minthara’s hand from her hair and instead intertwine their fingers, her thumb absently stroking the silvery scars that ran across the other drow’s knuckles. She brought their clasped hands between them, at chest level. 

Palm to palm, she elongated her fingers until their hands were pressed flat together. 

“I could kill you. I ought to, for what you have done.”

“It is not your offal filling the offering bowl, Minthara.”

“And are you saying I should be grateful for that?”

“Yes.”

Minthara reached up for the mace lashed across her back, the musculature shifting as she closed her free hand around the handle, palming the pommel, her eyes narrowing once more. The threat was empty. If she was going to attack, she would have by now. Back and forth banter only served to diminish her chances of success and yet she could not seem to stay her tongue.  

“She was in my way. She was in your way - our way. It was a gift and yet you feign fury.”

“Do you not feel the sting of blasphemy when you speak such sentiments? In a chapel, no less, yathrin.” Minthara snapped, pulling her hand back and pushing some stray strands of flaxen hair behind her ears, the sweat beading at her temples accompanying the hot rush of blood through her veins.

“And if I did? Does it make your heart race to consider I may chance the Flesh Carver’s anger for the taste of your lips?”

Lavinia was well practiced in the intricacies of seduction, Minthara was sure that tongue had weaved thousands of webs that all led to their occupant’s doom, and yet she felt herself being encapsulated by the glitter of that esoteric gaze and the dulcet tone of her voice. It was hard to put up a resistance against the desire that waged war against every facet of her logical mind. The coy flutter of ashen lashes and the dimple in the priestess’ cheek as she smiled only served to addle her intentions further.

She had meant to put a stop to this, had meant for the sound of metal spikes against a terribly hard-skull to echo off the chapel’s stone walls. She had meant to leave the yathrin dead on the floor.

Yet, Minthara had not. She had not so much as raised her weapon, and she seethed at the display of weakness. The only solace was that Lavinia had not done so either. Her blade had been abandoned after she’d cleaned it against her skin. It sat on the stone altar inches from where they stood now.

“Flattery. The type that could cast you from Her good graces.” The Baenre muttered darkly in response, looking away and over toward the mutilated body of her own kin. The execution itself had been carried out with doubtless precision and she could imagine the manic gleam in obsidian eyes that brightened with each stroke of the knife, each fistful of gore distributed into the bowl that, now, was nearly overflowing. Lolth certainly did prize this no-name cleric, even if others were too blind to see it. Not any woman could take down a Baenre, yet alone one as practiced as Myrineyl. Judging by the discarded goblets and broken bottles and the sticky red wine beneath her boots, she had been caught quite unawares.

Minthara felt no pity. Myrineyl ought to have been more careful, more aware of her surroundings, less susceptible to this exact type of situation. It was indispensable to nurture a controlled sense of paranoia, especially porting the Baenre name and the power, influence and wealth that came with it.  She should have known better. She was Quenthel’s first born, groomed to take her place, and yet she had failed so spectacularly at the hands of the young priestess with eyes of scoria. 

While she still would not call it a gift, sure that it was enacted partially out of spite, it certainly was a boon. One less imposing figure in her way. Myrineyl clearly could not fulfill her duties as the Matron Mother’s successor now, which opened a clear pathway for Minthara to do just that. 

“Ah, but I believe your presence here now is divinely sanctioned.” Lavinia’s gaze held a heat that Minthara felt echoed behind her ribs.

“Is that so, ussta ssouk?” 

The priestess smiled, absently tracing the lines in the other drow’s palm, her touches featherlight to avoid piercing wisteria skin as she had done with the bound woman behind them. A nod provided her answer to the question Minthara needn’t have asked. 

“It is so. Do you doubt yourself so casually, Minthara?” Lavinia spoke slowly, a fleeting tease in her voice even as she fixated on their hands. Again, she threaded her fingers into the space between the paladin’s. She took a single step forward and the Baenre did the same, the space between them rapidly decreasing. Each shallow breath threatened to have their chests brush. They could both feel the painful lightning striking each nerve, they could both feel the hunger they stirred in the belly of the other.

“I do not doubt anything, let alone myself. Then perhaps it is a testament to the Spider Queen’s favor that I should be here tonight, to venerate you for such a cunningly executed sacrifice.” It was Minthara who spoke with intention now, her eyes darkening, the hand not held by Lavinia’s finding her hip, digging into bare flesh and silk alike and dragging her forward.

Lavinia blinked, a smug smile unfurling over the pout of her lips, bloodstained as they were. “Perhaps. But is it my favor or yours, ussta p'luvt?”

“Could it not be ours?” They had both stepped in as if physically exemplifying the paladin’s words, eliminating that final gap between their bodies, pressed close, hands still clasped.

“It could. It may very well be, qu’essan. Our vision could align with hers. You, at the head of the council. Me, her right hand, with the clergy on a leash… It is advantageous. Strategically sound.” 

It certainly felt that way to Lavinia, as if she had been given a permission she could not quite describe. There was something to be said about her Mother’s penchant for chaos, something to be said about how easily this could end in her own downfall, and something more to be said about how such a possibility seemed trivial in this exact moment.

Any other time the consideration would have filled her with cold dread, a heart-pounding panic, but not now. Not when she was trapped in that crimson gaze, not when the muscles in her face ached from the fondness in her expression. Minthara reached up to run a thumb along Lavinia’s cheekbone, smearing some still-wet blood along her freckled skin.

“Have I told you there is no finer thing in Menzoberranzan than your skin, veldriss?”

“Maybe. I would hear it again, though.” And again. And again.

Lips replaced fingers and the other drow left hot, open-mouthed kisses across her jaw, pausing to nip none-too-gently at the lobe of Lavinia’s ear. A pang of want struck her and she gasped, finally untangling their fingers. As if both were compelled by the same invisible force, they took one another’s faces in their hands, mouths crashing together in a kiss that communicated as much desperation as it did passion. 

Lavinia grasped the front of the angular, stiff leather Minthara wore, sending them both sprawling onto the altar; still flecked in the other, forgotten, woman’s blood. She grinned, holding her leg out, dusky skin exposed by the slit in ceremonial robes as it opened, pale silk pooling around her hips. She arched her foot and gently prodded the paladin on the shoulder, crooking her finger in a come-hither motion that pulled Minthara forward as if leashed by those eyes alone.

As the Baenre moved forward, the yathrin acquiesced by bending her knee, bringing it up toward her ear so that Minthara could loom above her.

Planting a hand on either side of Lavinia's grinning visage, she lowered herself closer until they could kiss again, the hand not holding her weight finding purchase at Lavinia’s waist. There was a chuckle beneath Minthara’s words when she began to speak again, voice low, thick and rough, desire coating each syllable like molasses. 

“Do you wish for me to desecrate you under the Queen of Lust’s watchful eye? Will your pleasure be as much of a sacrifice as the blood you’ve spilled?” 

Dexterously, the priestess began moving the nail caps she wore. She tossed them carelessly off to the side, nearly deaf to the ringing clatter of the intricate metal bouncing off marble and stone. Eager hands took purchase of Minthara’s shoulders, reigniting their twin need and dissolving any potential hesitation.

Words paled in comparison to the communication that took place between lips and teeth and tongues. There was no way to verbalize how Lavinia’s breath against her ear nearly threatened to undo her. There was no way for the priestess to explain the explosion of warmth that started behind her ribcage and filled the rest of her in the next moment as Minthara’s lips drug down the scarred, freckled column of her neck, biting and kissing and bruising and soothing. 

Lavinia arched off the altar as that clever, smug mouth dripped kisses down her sternum, leaving scorch marks she was sure would take months, if not years, if not decades, to fade. The hand that was not anchored to the other drow reached back and over her head, gripping the edge of the stone as Minthara’s teeth caught against her skin. As if in instinctive response to the stygian-eyed woman’s attempt to stabilize herself, Minthara shifted her weight so she could hold herself up with one arm, the other free to cup the underside of Lavinia’s thigh. 

Minthara slowly moved further down the other’s body, kissing across the top of her thigh before moving on to the inside, where her skin was more sensitive. There were scars there, too, and she traced each one with an unmistakable tenderness. 

A laugh tickled Lavinia’s tongue and it was seemingly infectious - she felt Minthara’s mouth twitch from where it was pressed to her body. Before she had a chance to quip, teeth had sunk into the meat of her thigh and she yelped, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the noise of unexpected pain. 

“Xsa'ol - Minthara!” She spoke in a hiss, though when Minthara peered up at her from between her legs, the irritation in her face immediately dissipated. 

The quickening of the priestess’ breath was satisfying in and of itself. 

A sheen of sweat that had begun to collect at her temple, frizz had begun to muss the baby hairs that framed her face, the gooseflesh rising along her forearms and across her chest - all of it combined into an ambrosia that was impossible to resist. Minthara let her forehead rest against the muscle of Lavinia’s thigh and she groaned. The fingers on the underside of Lavinia’s leg tightened their grip, well-manicured nails leaving crescent moons behind that seemed a lovely compliment to the starry sky of her skin. 

As Minthara began to drag her nails downward, eliciting a shiver that forced an impressive arch into the other drow’s spine, she could not help but admire her, bloodied as she was. “You are lovely, you know, ussta ssinaeth. Exquisite.”

This time it was Lavinia’s turn to respond “I know.”