Chapter Text
LADY MACBETH: Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!
The sand is hot on her feet and the half-elf lying beside them is beautiful. Skin like moonlight. The expression on her unconscious face is practiced; peaceful, to most – to those who wouldn’t know what she is.
But I know what you are, thinks the Drow, crouching down to press a dagger across her neck.
The half-elf's eyes shoot open. Her hands move to the small contraption in her pocket before the blade against her carotid artery. Baffling.
"Tell me what you did to me and I will kill you quickly," she says.
The raven-haired woman wheezes in response, confused.
"Otherwise, I will dismember you piece by piece. And I will start with your toy."
The half-elf's eyes flash to the artefact in her hand.
"You know nothing, Drow," she hisses. "Do you think I willingly boarded an Illithid ship? Are you mad? I was a prisoner just as you were."
"And I am missing my memories. What strange luck for this to happen in the presence of a blameless Sharran."
The smallest flinch. Confirmation enough.
"You’re wrong," she sputters, "I’m no—"
But before the lie can leave her lips an enormous warm vat of energy erupts from their skulls. It floods upwards, and their eyesight slowly fades into a series of images. She is a Sharran indeed. Upper-ranking. But if the images are to be trusted, this is their first meeting. Two silhouettes on a beach. As the vision recedes, she drops the dagger to the sand and it lands with a muted thud. The half-elf has already recovered, rolling over nimbly and springing to her feet, hands beginning to weave a spell.
She should lunge. Slice. Instead, she looks at the ground and says: “I saw into your past. Did you see into mine?”
Silence. No answer, but also no Ignis. Net neutral.
Then, finally: “No.”
Her voice is very sweet. Unbecoming of a Sharran.
“I saw…well, I have the impression we saw the same things.”
“You’re Shadowheart? The name they called?” she asks, referring to the men and women in the strange dark rooms of the visions.
“Yes. And you?”
Her mouth drops open to answer that she cannot remember. There is no shame to it. The unknown threads weaving her personality, her emotions, they have no trace of this feeling. But before she can speak a name slinks into her mind, cool and even.
“I’m Sister,” she says.
Shadowheart laughs with only the slightest touch of cruelty.
“Really? Shouldn’t it be, like, Elvanshalee? ” she adds, gesturing vaguely towards her face.
Her face. She ignores the jab and strides to the shoreline to lean over the cool clear water. A thick plait of bone-white hair falls over her shoulder into the pool, collapsing her reflection. When it returns she’s met by two bulging, manic eyes.
Grey skin, white hair, red eyes, spiders, spiders, spiders, spiders, spiders, spiders, spiders.
Sister.
Not a name – a relation.
Not an identity – a warning.