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[Thrax]

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"What do you mean you refuse?!" Streea's voice was rather harsh and a bit shrill, as she queried her husband, Dharzhal. She was a priestess of Lloth, the one who kept him informed of his goddess' wishes. "You have no choice!" she harped. "The Mistress decreed it. Males do not, should not, question her dictates... ever!"

"It is too immoral. I will destroy the formula and forget all about it," he avowed.

Streea grabbed him by the shoulder, and he permitted it. He watched as the cords of her priestess' whip transformed into a mass of writhing vipers. He remained unperturbed and she could see he meant it. "You *will* obey!" she demanded, nonetheless.

He matched her hard gaze with his own. "I... will... not!" he stated. The steely glint of determination mixed with anger flashed in his eyes. "I will die first," he threatened.

She frowned and bit her lip, then lowered her head and turned away. The snaky coils of her whip ceased moving and became leather cords once more. Taking a deep breath, she announced in a voice laced with sadness and resignation. "Well, one of us will anyway." She stalked off, leaving him all alone in his laboratory.

He took the scroll that bore the list of reagents and procedures for making Distopia and tossed it carelessly onto a brazier's red-hot coals. In seconds it was gone.

You exist now only in my mind, where it shall be forever locked away where you can harm no one.

Then he fell to the floor, unconscious, having been struck in the head from behind...

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He awoke, tied securely to a stone chair in his own home. His head was pounding. Before him stood both Streea and Nizzre, his daughter. Streea held a piece of parchment in her hand. "Why?" he asked them.

Nizzre remained silent, allowing her mother to speak for them both. "To save you. The Mistress is very angry with you..."

"And us," Nizzre added.

Streea glared at her, then looked back at him. "She wants your insolence punished... severely."

"Then do it, and be done with it," he replied impassively. "I have been beaten before by those accursed whips. Their sting is nothing new to me."

Streea nodded. "Yes, but it isn't that simple."

He knew what she implied. The Spider Queen's wrath was easily roused, and when aggravated, deadly. "If you kill me," he protested, "you won't have the formula. It dies with me."

Streea held up the parchment. He could see it was a perfect copy of his original of the formula. "While you slept," she said, anticipating his question.

"Then you don't need me." He resigned himself to death.

"Yes I do," Streea argued.

"*We* do," Nizzre chimed in.

"There is a price to pay for your many sins against the goddess, my husband. I shall pay for them myself." She spoke as calmly as if describing the weather outside.

"What?!! Never!" he exclaimed.

Streea gave Nizzre the parchment. "With my sacrifice, your life is preserved... for now. That is the price of your freedom, your rebellion, and folly."

"NO!!! You cannot!! I won't allow it!!" He struggled to free himself but he was tightly bound and his efforts were futile.

She leaned over, bringing her face near to his own. His lips quivered in suppressed anger and the fearful expectation of catastrophic loss. "I love you," she told him, kissing his lips gently for what seemed to him as both an instant and an eternity. "Aluve' my love. Where we will meet again, or if we ever shall, I do not know. Remember me," she whispered in his ear before she pulled away, disappearing into the darkness with their daughter at her side.

"NOOOOO!! Take me!! Take meeee!!" He yelled frantically, his rage and remorse no longer controllable as he looked heavenward, pleading for deliverance that he knew would never come.

But the sight of cold, black, lifeless stone was the only thing that filled his eyes, except for his tears.

[Thrax]

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Dharzhal lay in his bed. From time to time he held up a vial of poison, his own special blend, and looked at it. Just remove the stopper. One small taste, hardly more than a single drop, and it will all be over. The pain will all be past. You will join her in the next world.

"Give me that!" Nizzre shouted. Using her hiding skills, she had been watching him from the shadows for the last few hours, concerned that he might try such a thing. She grabbed the vial, wresting it from his grasp.

He glared at her, filled with loathing. "How could you do it?! How could you take your mother's life, daughter? Get away from me!"

Nizzre, hardened by nature as a drow and by her life's own difficulties, did not flinch at the rebuke. She scowled. "What are you talking about? Mother is not dead!" She tucked the vial away in a pocket of her robe.

Dharzhal sat up, winced, then lay back down; his head was pounding.

"Did you think the Mistress would kill one of her own priestesses, a good one too, for the likes of a male like you, father?"

"But she said..."

"She said goodbye to you, yes. She had to return to the Underdark. She will become the wife of a prince there. Her life will be far better than what she has had with you here," she said, derisively. "I almost envy her."

For a moment, Dhar thought he had almost been taken in. "You lie! She is dead and you are saying that... were told to say that... to keep me from killing myself."

Nizzre laughed loudly. "The Mistress doesn't care whether you live or die, father! I do... mother... does, however. She agreed to divorce you and return home for allowing you to go on living," she explained. "I am not so sure it was worth it. Time will tell."

"She still expects me to create the drug?"

"If you don't, I don't know what might happen. The Mistress may elect to kill us all. I wouldn't blame her. I would not put up with a male's impertinence for one minute. I have killed them for less than what you've done. Consider yourself fortunate. But if you want this family to go on living, then you had best do as she has commanded you and make the drug."

"Prove to me she is alive."

Nizzre shook her head. "I was told that your life together was over. I saw mother enter the Underdark. She is gone. What you had together, is gone. If you wish for *me* to be gone too, then by all means keep up your defiance. You are a slave to the Mistress, father. You can no more unlock the chains she has put on you, than you can change the color of your skin. Accept your fate, and let us live."

Dharzhal clapped both hands on his face. "I can't! I can't! I will be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe more... innocents."

"Innocents?!!" She cackled. "The humans *hate* us father! The elves hate us as well. We have no friends here. They are all our enemies, and they are anything but innocent! Let them all die."

He shook his head.

She took a deep breath. "No matter. I have the formula. I will make the drug myself!"

"No!! You don't know what you are doing! You might poison yourself!"

She leaned over. "Then *you* do it, or I will!"

He resigned himself to the despicable act. He had tried to resist, but forces beyond his power to control pushed him to it, he reasoned. Besides, what *did* he owe humanity, or the elves? Nizzre was right; they were drow, hated and despised. What did it matter if their enemies suffered, and died? He got up from the bed, ignoring the throbbing pain in the back of his head. "Give me the formula," he requested, extending his hand to her.

She complied, watching him carefully. "I have made copies."

"I am sure," he replied. "Come, let us get to work on it."