Obelisk
Legacy Name: Obelisk

PART ONE

////WWWWIIIIPPPP////The shopkeeper laughs, a short, scratchy bark that startles the young elf woman, causing her to shrink back towards the door.

“Do you really expect me to believe that someone like you owns this?” He holds up the dress to emphasize his point, the airy fabric, woven of pure spider silk and dyed jet black, spills over his counter in a shadowy waterfall.

She knows what he thinks – he thinks she stole it. It's too large for her, tailored for someone at least a foot taller and considerably more willowy. The fabric is too rare and expensive for someone like her, a dirty, tired woman with an unrelenting cough, to own. He must think she stole it from some noble with exotic taste for things from the Underdark.

He is right that it doesn't belong to her. It belongs to her master, who tasked her to sell it.

“Please,” she begs, “I'm just a servant and my master asked me to –”

The keeper laughs again, cutting her off. “You can't fool me with your lies. I've heard them all before.” He folds the dress into a messy lump and stows it behind his counter. “Now get out of here before I call the guards. I can't stand a thief.”

“But I –”

“OUT!”

And so she slinks off, knowing she has been robbed, and knowing there is nothing she can do about it. That was the last thing of value her master owned, and now it is gone. Soon they will have no money left. And here, on the surface world, where her master is blind and abhorred and she dumb and clueless, they will have no means to make a living.

She lets the tears come as she drags herself through the dusty streets of the town. Her master is waiting for her at the outskirts, and even at this distance she knows he can sense her distress. No matter the length between them, the mental link between illithid and thrall is never broken.

When she leaves the gates marking the entrance to the city, she finds her master hiding along the treeline. It's still strange for her to see him in a dirty brown robe, the hood pulled forward to conceal his octopoid face, rather than clad in the luxurious finery that was just stolen from her.

He slips his hood off and stares at her. Even after almost a decade of forced servitude, Ara finds she can not read his countenance. His cold, pupil-less eyes could be regarding her with anything from pity to contempt.

“What happened?” Ara feels his chilly presence probe her thoughts. He never speaks aloud; only through telepathy.

She immediately begins to sob.

“Please don't be angry.” She hates to displease him, and the fear is evident in her tone. “The shopkeeper I tried to sell your robes to accused me of being a thief!” A tinge of anger rises in her voice as she realizes the irony of what the man did. “He took them for himself and threatened to call the city guardsmen if I didn't leave.”

He raises a ridged brow. “So, we have nothing now, yes?”

“Yes, we have nothing.”

He sighs and turns away, silently staring off into the shadows of the woods.

A sob tears through her frail body, wracking her shoulders and calling up a series of harsh, deep coughs. Ara covers her mouth, and when she spell ends, flecks of crimson stain her palm. She wipes it upon her grey, rag-like shirt, leaving a red streak. “It wasn't my fault, I swear. Please tell me you're not angry with me.”

He looks over his shoulder and for the first time in over a decade she can read the feeling playing over his alien visage: sadness.

“No,” he says. “I am not mad.”

PART TWO

Story and profile by Death.
Art by BelfryLuna.
Illithids/Mind Flayers/Dungeons & Dragons are © Wizards of the Coast.