“Wake him up every hour, and bring him back to the hovels in the morning,” Alaric ordered, as he walked away.

  “Yes, sir!” The guard replied, with starkly fake enthusiasm.

  The sound of the lieutenant`s stride receded with every step until Athelstan couldn`t hear it anymore.

  The dark elf frowned, trying to remember who was on duty tonight. The voice sounded like Harold, but he doubted it. Having the drunkest man in all of Godrin garrison, as his overseer, would be too convenient.

  “Wake him up? Every hour? Yeah, I ain`t gonna lose my sleep just to torture some dumb drow,” the soldier muttered.

  So it's Jasper! Not as great a role model for guards, as Harold, but he will get there one day, Athelstan allowed himself a faint smile, an expression which quickly turned into a grimace, as his back blazed with sharp pain, smothering his amusement.

  Resisting the urge to scream, red-eyed quickly scanned the room. It was a dingy, dusty torture chamber. Four walls, sporadically marked with blood stains, so old and dried, it could be considered as much a part of a wall, as the stone and plaster. A thick old wooden door, and of course, no windows.

  He was stripped naked of his slave rags, his legs and hands cuffed by chains, approximately 2 meters long, to a cold wall behind him. A wall he tried not to touch at all, both due to his wounded back and the chill it radiated.

  “Bloody surface-dwellers truly have an extraordinary sense of hospitality,” he muttered in ire.

  To the right of him, a simple table was installed, with a bunch of clean torturing instruments on it.

  To the left of him was a small brazier with a waning flame. Only a few embers were inside it, still flickering with orange sparks, barely surviving the cold, silent anger of the cell.

  Another one among contests, a slightly heated branding iron explained four fresh insufferable burns that dappled the elf`s spine, a fiery look in his eyes, and most disturbingly, a scent of fried meat in the chamber. Now, considering the only thing he had eaten for the last two years was watered-down gruel, fried meat would be mostly desirable under normal circumstances. However, not the kind made with his own flesh.

  “Fucking Alaric, I`m going to kill him sooner or later,” Athelstan gave a silent promise.

  Drow shook his head, only to be struck with pain again, fortunately, this one, at least, helped to clear his mind. He had to escape from this cell, from this damn camp, from this sun-cursed land. Alas, revenge right now and here was not an option. Especially considering how weak his body felt.

  Gorguth was going to free the elf after the evening bell, or at least he promised to. Now, Athelstan wasn`t sure how much time, exactly, he spent in this intricate guest room, but it was most likely already that time.

  He could either wait for the dwarf or try to escape on his own. The only reason he needed a dwarf was to uncuff him from the slave chain and incite a riot by doing the same to others. Whether it`s good or not is up for debate, but Alaric had already removed him from that chain, just replacing it with another. The guard outside had the key; Athelstan had a chance to kill him even in this uncomfortable position, though the use of blood right now would likely drain him even more. As for the slave riot, the dwarf will start it anyway if he wants a chance to escape. The herd won`t live through it, but it was never the purpose of freeing them.

  So, either hope the dwarf, a race almost as trustworthy as humans are, and with even worse manners, will come and save him. The unlikely outcome, considering the drow and short bastards had a war spanning for about 4000 years already, thus, Athelstan believed, there was a better chance Gorguth would come here to kill him.

  Or, forget about the dwarf`s unlikely help, kill the guard, uncuff himself, and try to escape the city on his own.

  For Athelstan, the answer was rather obvious. The only obstacles to this plan were the need to lure the guard into the room and the hard job of killing him. He also didn`t know where the second guard went, it seems he left the place while the elf passed out, though it rather reinforced the urgency of acting now.

  Elf cocked his head and looked at the door, as he tried to remember everything he could about Jasper.

  The sun-cursed had a short temper and, according to other guard`s gossip, his wife cheated on him with one of the lieutenants. Athelstan was pretty sure the man knew about them, but could do little to nothing, considering whom she did it with. So a frustrated surface-dweller could only beat the slaves and some of the lower-ranked guards.

  The red-eyed prisoner tried to straighten his spine, despite the pain it caused him, and behave as confidently as possible. If he was going to insult the man, he would have to look like a fresh slave, the one that has been here only for a few months, and still hadn`t the drow`s arrogance beaten out of him. Jasper being accustomed to Godrin for only 6 months and the fact that the elf was in this room 4 times in the span of 2 months helped a lot. Athelstan and Gorguth became frequent visitors of this place once they started to distract the guards, for the other to steal a handcuff key, but only this one was successful, and they wouldn`t have another chance.

  “Hey Jasper,” the slave called a guard, finding irony in the fact that, as any other drow officer, he was once taught the human language to be able to interrogate the sun-cursed prisoners during the war, “... how`s your wife?”

  “Whatever you think you do, knock it off dirt elf,” the guard said after being stunned for a moment, “After I tell lieutenant Alaric you know our language, he will visit you again and treat you even better than he already does,” Jasper added.

  The drow nobility learned how to inject venom in their words from a very young age, part of the skill set needed to survive a treacherous pit of snakes, also known as the royal court. Something that surface-dweller was about to experience.

  Admittedly, the guard`s prisoner preferred to kill opponents literally, but he still was more than capable of dealing with them figuratively.

  “Well, I might shut up, but your wife just can`t,” Athelstan said, as he opened the phial of poisonous rage his heart was, and poured it into his words, “Last thing I heard, she kept moaning for the entire Midtown to hear, when the lieutenant Alaric paid her a visit.”

  He didn`t genuinely think it was Alaric, that bastard was a sadistic son of a bitch, but he also was exceptionally faithful to the empire`s religion, and even surface-dwellers` religion condemned cheating in marriage. It also despised all the races that weren`t human, but the lieutenant enjoyed their rare interactions far too much for it to be just out of belief; no, he either liked hurting others or had some personal beef with dark elves.

  “And he is not even the first to do it, they say lieutenant Gideon came the day before Alaric,” Athelstan tacked on, the words feeling weird inside his mouth. Sun-cursed language was much rougher than the Shade tongue, he spoke for the majority of his 68 years under this land. Where the last one was soft, full of vowels, almost singing, the first was all consonants, dull and practical … Truly fit for the barbaric race it belonged to.

  “Frankly, I pity you, Jasper, it must be sad to have a wedding tackle as impotent as yours is and a face to suit it. Elisabeth might as well marry a dirty pig, at least it would be good in one of those things,” he added in conclusion.

  Athelstan did go a bit overboard, but in his defence, he couldn`t properly scowl surfacers for the last two years, fearing they would be gossiping more carefully around him, once they find out the elf-slave understands far more phrases from human language, than just “Move”, “Shut the fuck up” and the timeless gem “Piss in your pocket, you bloody idiot,” usually followed by laughter and, “I ain`t going to uncuff you from the common chain just for that.”

  Slave rags didn`t have pockets at all unless you count holes as such.

  “I was going to ignore the lieutenant`s orders,” the guard said, as Athelstan heard the rumble of a falling stool. At the same time, he concentrated on his right hand and its bleeding nailless fingers, taking control of the crimson liquid, tracing it into his fist, ready to turn it into a small, glass-like shard. Jasper, unknowing of his dark future, continued, clomping to the door, “...but you kind of talked me into it. Your words suddenly inspired me to change my ways, they brought back the eagerness I had when I was still serving as an infantryman, fighting the drow infestation of what is now known as the north province,” the man said with gratitude in his tone, as fake as Athelstan`s helplessness.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “In short,” the rattle of keys, “I`m going to fuck you up, dirt elf.”

  The crude door banged wide and a figure walked in. He was dressed in black and blue uniform, colours of Godrin`s ruling house, with a chainmail. Jasper had a short untidy grey beard with streaks of black, the man himself was sturdy for his age, but his face was worn by time, with wrinkles around his eyes, he looked at the start of his 50`s. This made Athelstan quite confused, soldiers so old usually would at least have a lieutenant rank, something this guy surely missed.

  Athelstan backed off to the merciless coldness of the wall, playing his role of an arrogant elf, who just understood that he is handcuffed alone in the room with an old soldier whose manhood he had just trashed. Admittedly, it was only partly acting, since his victory over this man wasn`t guaranteed.

  He slumped closer to a wall, solidifying a small sharp tapering metal-like shard in his right hand. Then he turned the pointy end to himself and raised his hands as if protecting himself from the man. This position allowed him to hide the weapon from the human, while also appearing scared.

  “You know when I went into infantry at 15,” Jasper said as he went to the table with torture instruments, unbuckling his sword, “I was very vocal at North province about being more merciful to drow. I wanted to kill your kind fast, to not prolong your civilians` deaths for no reason. The more cities we liberated from you, dirt elves, the less of this attitude I had until I got rid of it at all, when we got to Machton and I experienced the sight of an entire city, your army left butchered. Unfortunately, the Inquisition kept that record in my profile, so I lost all the ways to get a promotion.”

  With a loud bang, he dropped his sword on the table. “You reminded me of those times, and I don`t like remembering them,” the man said as he spun and made his way to a prisoner.

  It was an interesting story, Athelstan didn`t expect to hear. Shadelia, a city to which the guard ignorantly referred as Machton, was the first moderately big surface settlement drow encountered and conquered, hence why it had the honour to get the “shade” part in the name.

  When humans started their last rebellion, it spread like a plague from the South East Province, Godrin, through all the colonies, both dwarven and elven. They used guerilla tactics and had willing spies among the serfs and slaves. That combined with an ongoing war with dwarves, the insignificance of surface colonies to the underworld and the human race being unable to attack the drow mainland, made elves leave them. Before that, however, they slaughtered all the humans in Shadelia, children and men alike, poisoned the wells, and set the city on fire, as a last “fuck you” to humans.

  Athelstan at that time was at the start of his 30s fighting against dwarves in the mainland.

  As these thoughts crossed his mind he stiffed. His hands were covering his upper body and face, his only means to determine the guard`s position were his sensitive ears.

  6 steps later the man came close enough to be punched but the elf waited. Jasper couldn`t jab him in the stomach since it was covered by the elf`s knees, so instead he aimed for a head. His fist found only Athelstan`s hands, as he effectively guarded himself. The soldier tried to grab the ashy hands off the head. That`s when the drow struck.

  He eased his left hand, making the guard lose his balance for a moment, and jumped like a snake, chains rumbling, jabbing the man in the throat with a crimson shard.

  Jasper managed to step right at the last moment but his carotid artery still got a deep cut and he pressed the wound with his right hand, while punching the attacker in the stomach with his left one.

  Athelstan used his left to intercept the man`s hook, while striking him again, a magical shard cut through the guard`s palm as if it was butter, cutting half of it and hitting the same spot again before the guard tried to step away.

  Unfortunately for Jasper, the elf didn't catch his left hook but instead wrapped the man`s hand with a chain, tanking the punch. It hit hard and drow painfully exhaled, his vision blurring for a second, yet pushed through it, took the shard in reverse grip and slashed the back of the soldier's neck.

  With a loud crust, his bones were cut, the shard turned into blood again, and Jasper fell on his killer, a fountain of blood coming from a slotted neck, covering both his killer and the ground in a warm substance.

  Athelstan slumped to the wall, slippery fingers trying to take the keys from the guard's belt. Finally, after a few seconds, he got it, pushed the corpse away and started to uncuff himself. Suddenly, he heard a clomping of someone's stride along with a silent rattling of chainmail.

  The lost second guard, he thought speeding up. No point in hiding a body, the blood pool as well as the stains from dragging it would be obvious from the doorway, he continued the thought.

  With the last rambling of a chain, the ex-slave broke free, swiftly took a sword from the table, closed the door and jumped from the right part of the room to the left to not leave any visible footsteps, and waited for his visitor.

  After a few seconds of calling Jasper the second overseer turned to a door. Athelstan`s body went stiff, ready for a second fight, when, suddenly, he heard a bumping noise and the man`s muffled scream. A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing one of the garrison`s guards, standing on his knees. The surprise in a soldier`s eyes was as clear as a log-like hand that was currently strangling him. As realisation descended, a sense of calmness smothered his panic, and he reached for a sword, strapped to his right thigh.

  Dwarf who was currently stealing the poor guy`s breath, swiftly put his other hand under the man`s reaching one, firmly taking a soldier into a lock. At the same time, Gorguth smashed the guard`s left hand, using one of his characteristically short legs, making his unwilling prisoner grunt again and pinning his last free limb to the ground, sealing the human`s fate.

  After a dozen seconds, a trapped soldier finally lost his resistance and life.

  Gorguth released a corpse without any change in his weary face; not even a muscle moved. Athelstan had known a dwarf for a bit over a year, and he could swear a short bastard had only two expressions—one neutral, resting, and seemingly bored one that he showed almost always, and another, an angered one that made the dwarf look like everybody alive, dead, and in between owed him money and an apology for crimes unknown but certainly inexplicable. Right now, luckily, he had the first kind.

  “I see you had some fun already, elf,” his, hopefully, ally said in the Shade tongue, as he analysed drow`s blood-soaked, tortured figure and the slaughter behind him.

  “Well, I had to somehow make myself comfortable in this room, considering my hosts weren`t keen on giving me any way to pass time, except very generous torturing,” Athelstan said. He didn`t drop his guard though.

  After all, while Gorguth was one of the most reasonable dwarves he ever met, to the point where his own race would consider him leaning dangerously close to being a heretic, the bad blood between their kinds was too old and sturdy, to allow any meaningful trust, outside of the shared belief that they will eventually backstab each other. The fact that both of them fought in wars against dwarves and drows, respectively, did not help either.

  Hearing this dwarf sniffed and, undoubtedly feeling the scent of fried meat, briefly showed a second type of face.

  “Alaric?” Gorguth said walking from the doorway.

  “Yeah, who else but that son of a bitch,” Athelstan replied, straightening up, towering at least 2 heads over the dwarf. Motion that invoked another blaze of pain in his back.

  “Son of a bitch indeed,” Gorguth said, slowly going away from the elf, without turning his back. “Can you move? Preferably fast. Though it's unfortunate Alaric decided to switch places with a usual torturer today, I`ve already given the key to chains to the slaves from our barracks, now we can go only forward.”

  “I`ll be fine, just give me a minute to change clothes with the surfacer,” Athelstan replied, silently appreciating the fact that the guy`s clothes weren`t bloodstained. “That being said,” he faced the dwarf, as he started to undress the human, “Why did you save me, Gorguth? As far as I`m concerned, you lost the need in me once you stole the keys,” drow said, carefully observing his helper`s face for any reaction.

  Dwarf, rarely for him, raised his eyebrows at the bold question and went stiff for a second, before relaxing, apparently deciding to give a straight answer.

  “I had considered such a set of actions, up until I decided a person of your origin and skills,” now it was the elf`s turn to freeze, “would greatly contribute to the success of my escape attempt, increasing chances of both of us, leaving this sun-cursed place alive.”

  “And what kind of skills and origin, do you think I have, Gorguth?” Athelstan asked, trying to sound unbothered.

  “You squeeze your fist, whenever guards go too far beating you. When you open your palm later it`s always bloody, more bloody than it should be.”

  “It`s just small bleeding from my nails cutting the skin, nothing special. Nobody trims them here if you didn`t notice.”

  “Indeed, that wouldn`t mean a lot to me if not for some other strange things about you. You speak the sun-cursed language, a skill that only drow officers have. I know how your race age, and you look less than 100 years old since it`s the age when a drow starts to grow a beard. Elven soldiers have to be at least that age to be promoted past lieutenant… Unless they are nobles of course, and there is only one noble house among the Shadow Empire, that occasionally gives birth to children with a gift of blood control. It's a Kieran house and, I reckon, they had a boy about 70 years ago. Tell me, nightstalker, do I need to say his name, or should we stop circling the truth?” Gorguth asked, cocking his head; his face – a mask of unyielding stoicism.

  After a moment of consideration, Athelstan continued undressing the guard, as he asked, “Maybe I am Athelstan Kieran, after all, and maybe I`m interested in working with you, but what exactly is your plan, old man?”

  He looked at a dwarf, waiting for an answer. He knew Gorguth was old because his hair was completely white, a sign of a dwarf well over 300 years old, 350 to be exact, because that`s the time it changes from grey to a lighter colour. Quite seldomly, dwarves lived up to this age. It was not completely ancient, since their lifespan was generally up to 500, even though most of them died being much younger. After all, the Underworld wasn`t a friendly place, nor a safe one.

  Gorguth also had to have quite an influence once, since information about drow, especially the one that touched matters of magic and houses, that possessed it was quite secretive. Having such a big difference in appearance didn`t make espionage any easier.

  As Gorguth opened his mouth, something unexpected happened. A voice appeared, talking, seemingly from everywhere.

  …

  The Accords Aspect has been born.

  …

  Initializing The Accords System.

  …

  Launching The Introduction

  …

  It was the last thing Athelstan heard before he suddenly lost consciousness.