The Cost of Eight Drops - Prologue
TW: Kidnapping, slavery, poison, biting, blood, transformation
PROLOGUE
1500, Old World
The clattering of wooden wheels against cobblestone streets and the sloshing of water crashing against rocks woke him. His body was heavy as if he had drunk one of his brother’s detestable homemade wines and his head pounded loudly in his ears. But he knew he wasn’t drunk, he’d only had water this evening, but he couldn’t explain why he felt this way or where he was. There was no water in the Under Deark that would crash against rocks unless it was close to the surface. His eyes slowly opened, clarity returned to his vision with each blink, and he quickly found himself in the back of a closed wagon.
The salty air turned his stomach, and if he wasn’t already on his side, he would have vomited at the stench of it. Ristel tried to sit up, but found he was physically incapable with enchanted rope binding his hands and feet. He didn’t know where exactly he was, but from the stench of salt in the air and water sloshing outside the wagon, he quickly guessed he was somehow on the surface.
He wasn’t supposed to be on the surface.
He was supposed to be waking up in his bed in the Under Dark to hear the announcement of the matriarch’s decision of whose house he was to go to after winning second place of his graduation ceremony. The House of Myar and the House of Haur had staked claims on him and the matriarch of the House of Glannath was eager to discuss the benefits of the prospects. He remembered returning to his chambers for the evening but had no recollection of how he was bound and in an unfamiliar place. This wasn’t one of his brothers’ usual cruel pranks, this was very, very real and regardless of how he got here, he needed to find a way to escape.
With great effort he forced himself to sit up and felt strangely cold and empty from whatever was in his system. It had to be some sort of poison created by the drow, it was certainly far too enhanced for a surface dweller to conjure up, and it had nullifying effects to his magic. Given how quickly the drow were to take advantage of one another, finding out who did this was of little concern. His greatest concern was getting out of his confinement and figuring out a way to get home. Just as feeling was slowly returning to his fingers, the wagon suddenly stopped, and the door pulled open. Glowing violet eyes appeared in the darkness, staring down at him eagerly with a greedy pointed tooth smile revealing itself as Faeka of House of Myar stepped into the moonlight. She was dressed in her finest robe of concealment and looked far too pleased that he was awake. He quickly averted his eyes and desperately tried in vain to summon his magic.
“Well, well, it looks like my stolen prize is awake.” Her smile grew more pointed as she stepped into the wagon and approached him. “I guess I should have given you a larger dosage of my poison.”
“You did this?” he huffed out as he tried to move in his restraints. Ristel at least assumed correctly that it was a drow poison in his system, though he hadn’t quite anticipated it coming from the House of Myar. “Why?”
“Simple,” she shrugged as she looked down her sharp nose at him. “The House of Glannath declared Haur’s offer better than the House of Myar and I couldn’t stand for it. If I can’t have you, then I’ll be damned if the House of Haur gets you.”
Faeka Myar was never one to take a losing well and made sure her enemies paid greatly for it, though why Ristel was suffering her wrath was beyond him.
“So, you kidnapped me?” His brow pinched in confusion.
“Kidnapped?” she barked a cruel laugh and traced a hooked nail down his cheek. “No, you pretty thing, I’ve traded you to the Orion Hunters for a wonderful batch of surface dwellers to enhance the wealth and power of the House of Myar.”
“Why?”
“To make Glannath regret rejecting my offer.”
Faeka was much too prideful if she thought selling him off for her own gain would make the House of Glannath regretful. They would be furious and humiliated and all too eager to retaliate, but not regretful. Knowing how strong the house of Myar was, though, Faeka was undoubtedly ready for the confrontation that would come from this. She roughly gripped his chin and stared at him, taking in his features as he avidly avoided her gaze.
“It is a pity,” she sighed listlessly, “with your pretty face and powers as the second best from the graduation ceremony I had hoped to breed strong magical heirs, but Lolth provided a better option for me.”
Ristel knew better than to anticipate anything else but betrayal from his own kind, but he didn’t believe any drow would stoop so low as to sell their own to the Orion Hunters; he was clearly proven wrong. Rage filled him as he glared at the cruel female drow and he wanted nothing more than to burn the smile off her face, but so long as the poison pumped through him, there was nothing he could do physically or magically. He managed to rip his chin free from her hand and she merely smiled in amusement.
“You’re stronger than I thought to have woken so early,” she mused, releasing his chin to grab him by his hair and snatching a knot in her hand. “I’ll have to make sure to give your new keepers a good dosage to keep you compliant for the journey.”
She started to drag him out of the wagon, and he weakly fought against her hold.
“Where are they taking me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve already gotten what I wanted.” She shrugged, completely unbothered. “It is none of my concern, you’ll have to ask the Orion Hunters.”
“Lolth will not bless you for selling one of her own to humans.”
Faeka’s confident smile turned down into a scowl and whatever amusement she had faded into anger. “Lolth is the one who provided the opportunity to sell you, and I’ve wasted enough words on you, male.”
With a snatch of her wrist, she dragged him out of the wagon by his hair and made sure he hit the ground hard the moment he was exposed to the surface air. After spending his whole life in the Under Dark, the clean air of the surface was too pure for his lungs and filled him with the freshest breath only to be immediately expelled from his body the moment he felt the hauntingly holy glowing blue eyes of the Orion Hunters watching him.
He couldn’t tell them apart, they all had shaved heads, glowing blue eyes, and large muscley builds under ordained white robes with blue crosses to signify their devout holiness. They were more akin to warriors that belonged on a battlefield than devout holy men, but who was he to say what humans could and couldn’t be. Ristel had never associated with any humans, let alone any others besides the drow. The large bulky men moved aside, and a shorter thinner male dressed in a similar holy garb, but without the blue cross stepped forward adjusting large round glasses on his face.
“My, my, if he isn’t a perfectly unique specimen.” His dark blue eyes shined with eagerness as he assessed Ristel. “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Lady Faeka.”
“You’ve yet to be displeased with anything I’ve brought you, Dr. Boyle” she scoffed with pride and grinned darkly down at Ristel. “He was my favorite, so I do hope you enjoy him.”
Ristel couldn’t help but wonder how many of their own people she’s willingly turned over to these humans. There was enough truth to the rumors to know that once the Orion Hunters got their hands on a rare breed, they would do everything they could to extract all forms of valuable information from them whether they were alive or dead. The drow had many secrets that were better left as secrets. Lolth would rebuke Faeka for selling her chosen people to the humans if only for the knowledge it provided them.
“Tis most true,” Dr. Boyle chuckled in agreement and stepped forward. “You’ve provided the necessary sedatives?”
Faeka dug into her pouch and held at least a dozen glowing magenta vials. “Two of these should keep him at bay for the majority of the journey, if not the whole of it, though it would behoove you to use them sparingly until you can replicate it in your lab.”
“Duly noted, Lady Faeka,” Dr. Boyle bowed with a flourish of his wrist and held his hand out expectantly.
Faeka chuckled in amusement at the strange sense of worship the small Orion Hunter offered to her and placed the vials in his hands. Dr. Boyle kept his head bent low as he took a step back and carefully tucked the vials into his pockets. Grabbing Ristel by the hair once more, Faeka easily tossed him over to the larger men and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Until our next deal.”
Ristel landed hard on his side and looked up at the smaller human’s face. The eagerness in his eye bordered on manic as he smiled.
“Load him up and take extra care not to break him.” Boyle pushed his round glasses back onto his nose, and there was a malicious blue glow in his eyes. “I plan to have so much fun dissecting him.”
Large burly hands hoisted him in the air until he was over someone’s shoulder. Unable to even fight against his bindings or call upon his magic, the world Ristel knew got farther and farther away as the Orion Hunter carried him aboard a ship and below the deck. The salty stench in the air grew worse as he was taken into the belly of the ship and tossed into a holding celling. Though he was still bound in rope, he was shoved behind bars, quickly shackled hands and feet, and a thick collar was wrapped around his neck. There was a prick of a needle at the nape of his neck, and he felt the cold liquid of Faeka’s special poison seeping into his veins.
“Hopefully this does it.” The smaller human chuckled as he placed an empty vial in his hands. “I would hate to waste such a precious resource, so be a good drow and take a nice long nap.”
Ristel wanted to turn and cast a spell to take the head clean off his shoulders, but all too quickly the poison took effect and once again he sunk to darkness.
[SCENE CHANGE]
Where . . . am I?
I want to go home!
I want my mommy.
I’m going to die here. . .
Oh no, we’ve finally arrived . . .
The barrage of fearful thoughts of others roused Ristel from his unwanted slumber. The fact he could hear other’s thoughts again was a good sign that his magic was recovering, if at a dismal pace, though he couldn’t completely call upon it. His mana levels felt as though they were completely empty and iced over, as if he had somehow exerted too much when he hadn’t used them since his graduation. These had to be some sort of lingering side effects from Faeka’s poison, and he hoped Lolth would make her pay for what she’d done in good time.
As his cognitive functions were coming back, he noted that his body felt as though it were led, his tongue dry and swollen, and as he managed to sit up quickly discovered he was no longer alone. Squinting through the darkness there were at least fifty people, orcs, tieflings, hobgoblins, and others bound in chains, stuffed shoulder to shoulder on the opposite side of the bars. From the hopelessness painted on their faces he easily assessed that they were either sold to or captured by the Orion Hunters.
“Finally up, drow?” someone near him grunted, causing Ristel to turn his head in the direction of the voice.
A green tiefling that looked as though he’d been drawn out of the sea sat beside him. His head was shaved haphazardly, half of left of his curved horns was missing, and there was a strange layer of film over his golden eyes that hinted at some potential blindness.
“Where are we?”
“Far from home,” the tiefling scoffed, “from the whispers I’ve heard, I’d gather we’re in the New World.”
“New World?” Ristel’s brow furrowed. They were whispering in the Under Dark that the surface dwellers had found a new uncharted continent to colonize and steal the magic from, but it had sounded too good to be true to Ristel; turns out he was proven wrong yet again.
“Supposed to be a place of new beginnings to those who come here willingly.” The tiefling shrugged, “Can’t say what it will mean for us though.”
“Nothing good, that’s for certain . . .”
Another voice spoke up and forced Ristel to look up and find there were twelve others residing in the space behind the bars with him. He wasn’t sure what set them apart from the others to be separated by bars, but if they were selected by the scientist as he was, which didn’t bode well for any of them. With the slight rocking of the ship, he couldn’t tell if they were moving or docked.
Gulls called loudly outside and the center of Ristel’s chest suddenly felt very hot. Looking down, there was a ray of sun singing his skin and finally forced him to move. Stealing a peak through the smallest hole in the wall where the sunbeam was cutting through, all he saw for miles was blue. He’d never seen the day light sky before, it was perhaps the most unique shade of blue, it was bright and nearly blinding after living his entire life in the under dark. It was different from the Orion Hunters’ trademark blue eyes, it was pure, warm, and the promise of a better future, however but given his current predicament he was in it was foolish to believe anything that shade of blue promised.
Suddenly the only door opened, allowing the blinding sunlight to streak through, and the Orion Hunters barged in and started pulling people up by their chains, half-dragging them out of the room.
“Easy with the cargo!” a hunter barked from above the deck. “We want to make a decent profit this time!”
As those bound in chain ascended up the stairs, the familiar slim figure of the scientist descended the stairs with bulky Orion Hunter with a ring of keys behind him. They stopped outside the barred cage and Boyle’s face spread in slow menacingly excited smile. The others behind the bars shrank back against the walls as the scientist poked his head through the bars, but unable to move more than his fingers Ristel glared directly at him.
“Well, well, well, if my specimens aren’t all bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to leave.” Boyle mused with great intrigue in coating his voice. “It will make this whole process easier, though I’m sure you’re not ready to walk, drow.”
Ristel’s glare hardened at being pointed out, but he refrained from wasting his breath to deem a response.
“You are going to be my favorite to unlock your secrets, I can tell by that rebellious look in your eye,” Boyle’s right eye twitched with a sickening excitement. “I can’t wait to get you to the laboratory.”
The bulky Orion Hunter opened the holding cell and pulled on the chains, pulling those closest to the door to their feet.
“Be careful, you brute!” Boyle snapped, looking ready to launch himself at the much bigger man. “I paid good money for this batch of specimens to be alive and pristine!”
“Stop whining, you’ll fog up your glasses, doc.” The larger man groused as he yanked harder on the chain.
“I will make you the next one I test on should even a hair be out of place.” The human doctor practically foamed at the mouth with rage and earned an annoyed eyeroll from his brother in the order.
“The wagon is ready on the bridge for your special monsters.” The larger man crossed his arms and looked down disapprovingly at Boyle. “You’ll have them in your laboratory by nightfall.”
“Excellent.” Boyle pushed his large glasses haughtily on his nose. “You’ll have to carry the drow, though, the narcotics of the poison in his system are particularly potent and he can’t walk.”
The bulky man looked unimpressed as he looked down at Ristel still sitting on the ground while all the others had been pulled along. In one swift movement Ristel was hoisted up by his shirt and tossed on the man’s shoulder. He couldn’t help but wheeze as the armor under his robes dug sharply into his stomach, and it only dug deeper as he practically bounced on the upturned corner with each inclined step of the stairs.
Far too quickly he was brought into a world filled with so much light that it nearly burned his retinas as he caught the faintest glimpse of this New World before he was tossed unceremoniously into the back of an enclosed wagon. All he saw was the blue sky before the door slammed shut, purging all hopes of escape and the foolish hopeful thoughts of a better future out and plunging them all into darkness as the wagon lurched forward to pull them to Boyle’s laboratory.
