Yelena

“He – he - !”

She woke up in a haze, beads of sweat flying from her hair.

She could still see him – the Blackbird, and Knox. She could feel his satisfaction as his servants changed. She could feel his anger as his body changed. But worse was the feeling of his anger fading, giving way to ecstasy as the shadow he worshipped clawed its way into his mind, and what was not corrupted was draped in the dark.

She had to draw a shaking hand across her brow before she blinked this new room into existence. The small, flickering embers of torch sconces lined the chamber, and two humanoid figures watched her with a mixture of fear and surprise.

Marius and Amara.

“You know,” Marius began, unsheathing his poisoned blade. “I’d say you look like shit. But that’s pretty much par for the course at this point, isn’t it?”

She flashed him a look before turning to the red-haired Lightbringer.

“I suppose even Firvak’s have nightmares then,” the girl said, twirling a little burr of flame between her fingers.

Yelena slumped, feeling the pain of her last fight radiating up from her chest, feeling the distinct absence of something now – something that wanted to come back to her.

“More than you know,” she replied.

Her hands shook, edging closer to the blade that lay beside her bed.

“How long was I out?”

“A day or so,” Marius answered. “This whole dog-house is ready to go to war, don’tcha know.”

“They don’t have a choice,” Amara adds, eyeing Marius.

“There’s always a choice,” the thief responds.

Yelena watches them both out the corners of her tired eyes, feeling again the pit of emptiness that her stomach had become.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Marius continues in the fiery face of the redhead. “War’s a profitable business, and not just in terms of finances.”

Yelena groaned. “Always thinking of keeping your pockets full, eh Marius?”

He shrugged. “Perish the thought, my dear Argent. It’s not gold I’m after this time. But a free ride.”

“A free ride below.”

It was Amara who spoke – confirming her own suspicions about both of them, no doubt.

“You both want it, don’t you?” she asked. “You want to go to the next Layer.”

It wasn’t really a question, and Marius said nothing in response. But Yelena took it upon herself to answer, face half in shadow, and half-bathed in light:

“We have to.”

She expected the girl to ask them why. She expected at least a glint of curiosity in those flaring amber jewels that were her eyes. But she merely twitched her nose and leaned back, like she was taking them both in.

“Me too.”

“You kidding me?” Marius asked. “You got yourself a whole little pool of worshippers here, little Miss. Why – and I know Yelena won’t mind me saying this - why d’you wanna throw in with a bunch of nae’r – do – well, forsaken Averixians like us?”

“Thank you for telling me how I feel about that, Marius.”

She tried to read Amara’s vacant face – tried to parse the meaning behind her eyes as they looked down her nose at her. She remembered the look of hatred in her eyes when they’d spoken on the balcony above. She knew something was in there, behind the façade of that young girl’s tan face, waiting to burn.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And yet, she didn’t.

“My reasons are mine,” she finally said, locking eyes with Yelena. “I can’t stay here. But I won’t let these Gnolls die. I’ve already messed up enough. I owe them. I can’t explain it any better than that, and you don’t have to understand. But I need to do this.”

Marius scoffed, muttering something disdainful under his breath. But Yelena, meanwhile, couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“I can understand that,” she said.

Marius let out an exasperated wheeze. “Yelena, you’ve got that suicidal glint in your eye that makes me nervous.”

“I told you, Marius: I don’t plan on dying any time soon. Do you?”

“Nah,” he said. “But I know a clusterfuck when I see one, and if we’re going up against the Don, we’re gonna see a lot of blood spilled. Ours, and theirs.”

“But in the end, we’ll win,” Amara said, leaning forward. “I’ve seen what you two can do. Combined, we can break that bird.”

“You never met him,” Marius said quietly. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

Then, for a painstaking second, the wave of darkness Yelena saw in her dream returned, and she saw them lying beneath the balcony under her – shadows spawned with her own essence. Power unleashed and shackled to unwilling forms, weak forms…

“Marius,” she said. “I don’t think any of us did.”

And in the face of his fascinated confusion, a new voice then emerged behind the darkness of the chamber door.

“Quite so.”

Amara’s eyes lit up, as did the fast-fading torchlights in the corner of the stone chamber. Yelena and Marius both braced themselves for combat only to see the withered, crimson-clad figure of the Elder Gnoll appear as if from the air before them all.

“Elder,” Amara breathed.

“Great, now we’ve got Peeping-Tom doggos.”

The Elder’s veil shifted towards Marius for a few seconds before she spoke again.

“Thief of virtue,” she said, in a voice that rang with the power of a legion. “Bungler. Fumbler. Jovial Juggler. The face of laughter, seeking redemption.”

Marius stiffened but said nothing. Yelena couldn’t help but notice a change come over his face, like a shadow falling over a mist-covered isle.

The hidden face of the Gnoll leader then turned to bow to Amara.

“Child of fire, shrouded in fury. Scarred. Determined. Untrusting. The flame-coated fist, seeking strength.”

Amara too made no reply. Somehow, with the bow she returned to the Elder, it was as though she knew what the Gnoll was going to say before she said it.

And then, predictably, it was Yelena’s turn.

“Warrior of light, clouded by shadow,” the creature’s snout huffed. “Disciplined. Focused. Conflicted. The blade in the dark, seeking herself.”

Yelena met the beast’s claims as the Gnoll lingered on her, breathing deeply, getting her scent.

“Is it fate, or chance?” the beast then whispered. “That you would come here, and stand beside the Lightbringer…Myron told us you would return one day. And on that day, a reckoning would come.”

Yelena almost sprang to her injured feet. “You know of Lord Myron?”

The Gnoll sniffed. “We know a great many things, as do you, Yelena.”

In the face of her confusion the Gnoll turned away, snuffing out each burning torch with little more than a look before bringing them to life again, creating a pantomime of viscious shadows that played up the walls of the chamber.

“You have seen what he has done, haven’t you?” she asked. “He has taken what you despise within yourself and forced it upon his followers. He has built an army to blot out the sun of the Sands itself.”

Yelena nodded. “Yes,” she said, spooking Marius with her ferocity. “I’ve seen it.”

The Gnoll regarded all three of them.

“And you all know, of course, that you must leave through him.”

“Because…he is the Layer Lord,” Yelena murmured.

Amara’s face was twisted in surprise, but Marius did little more than shrug.

“’Course he is!” the thief exclaimed. “That’s why I could use my Persuasion skill on ‘im! That’s why everyone worships him like dogs in that palace. That’s why everything revolves round him.”

“Though it was not always so,” the Gnoll continued. “This thing he was made into. The compunction to defend the path beyond does not dwell in his heart.”

“So, it’s only him that has to die, then?” Amara broke in. “We just need to find him and blast him!”

“Not so easy, kiddo,” Marius snorts. “Guy’s got a whole damn army. And if what this fancy gal’s saying is true…things have only gotten shittier in that palace.”

His eyes shifted to Yelena who confirmed his suspicions with a grave nod.

“Great!” he exclaimed. “You know, they say no one ever signs up for an easy life. But honestly? Gimmie a quill and I’ll sell my soul for a bed by a pool…”

“You’re saying you know we all want to go below, aren’t you?” Yelena couldn’t help but ask. Then, at the Elder’s nod: “That’s exactly why you brought us here.”

Even through the veiled cloak, all three surfaces knew the Elder Gnoll smiled.

“Do you know why the Shifting Sands are so named?” she asked them all. “No. I doubt even your Lord Jael would have remembered to pass down the legend. The Sands are a place of change. A transitory place. There was a time, long ago, when those of your old world – the Ida’Mallok you call the Magisters – used this place as a site of meditation before venturing on into the depths. It is a place where one cannot enter and re-emerge from unchanged. You three are testament to that.”

She let the statement hang as each one of them regarded the other with new, yet no less distrustful, eyes.

“You have seen this place and all its horrors and its doom,” she continued. “Yet within its depths, you have found eachother. You have found a strength you did not hold within you above, and you have married such strength with the will to press on. We born of the Sands – children of the Everloft - have no such will. It is something we yearn for that exists only within you. It is something we hate, and yet we seek it, insatiably. It is what the Ida’Mallok covet above all else. But they, like us, can only be as they are. It is you – the Cha’lokk – that truly give this place its name. It is only you that can be a force for change – whether for good, or for ill.”

She folded her scraggly paws in front of her, almost in a gesture of pleading. But she did not bow as she made her request to the warriors of the Sands:

“So, I ask you, Cha’lokk of Averix: will you help us win our war? Will you take the head of the Blackbird, and continue your quest below?”

Yelena, Amara, and Marius shared a look. They met the eyes of their other in the faces they saw, and were forced to acknowledge pain, happiness, and above all the sheer effort to persist that the Gnoll was talking about.

At least, that’s what Yelena saw. She felt it enough that she smiled, even though she could only guess at the unspeakable horrors they would all soon face.

“I bet you already know what our answer will be, don’t you?” she asked the Gnoll.

The Elder’s smile was truly visible now, her teeth gleaming beneath her gilded veil. She had no shame in showing it.

“Why else would I have brought you all this way?”