Legends of Belariath
Vhid`anon
The Netherglooom is a terrible place for anyone to grow up, even the race of Moriel or dark elves find it a harrowing experience. Nobles are known for killing off heirs that threaten their dominion over others. While on the surface, the game of politics is played through marriages back and forth between families and kingdoms, in the 'gloom dark elves come together most often for purely sexual reasons, rather than to procreate. On the surface, where the sun shone bright, people would joke about the race of dark skinned elves who seemed to be sealing their own fate by attacking each other so viciously and not doing what they should to increase a population their own paranoia and cruelty continuously depleted. Of course, such comments were said in the sun. Not in the shadows, where those of ebon skin and deadly eyes might hear, and take action.
Growing up as a slave in a sheltered cavern keep, Vhid`anon knew nothing of the surface world except that it existed, and that things were different there than where she was. Surrounded by a handful of slave sisters, all raised from birth to be nothing more than specifically trained sex slaves, she learned nothing of the typical dark elf societal mores and rules. She knew 'master' and his ways, his wants and 'needs', and what he expected from her. Master was the young dark elf's world.
'Master', for Vhid`anon and the rest of her slave sisters, was an old dark elf mage. Saying he was aged meant a great deal, since most dark elves expired while in their prime. The more powerful and popular a dark elf became, the more likely she or he would be to attract deadly and dangerous attention. There was always room to rise in the Nethergloom's underground cities and kingdoms. The inevitable end to a powerful Moriel's life would be subterfuge or assassination, death at the hands of an enemy. And it was a respectable death. The more nefarious the means used to kill someone, the more obvious it was that the victim was feared, hated, and worth taking down.
Vhid`anon's master had usurped the entirety of Moriel standards by excluding himself from the play of the game altogether. He killed everyone around his hidden keep, ensuring he had no neighbours and thus, no nearby enemies. He was harsh, he was cruel, and he was rich. All of the things someone should desire to take from him. By being separate from the games of Houses though, he had no political power and thus, had little value to those who still played. Instead, his focus was sex. The aged mage enjoyed the lithe young seeming forms of his slaves as soon as he was able morally, unless they were special order. He raised slaves in groups, having no fear that the ignorant young females and males under his thumb knew anything of their rights within Moriel society. There was no matriarchy in his household, no worship of religion. He allowed nothing to come between his total domination of his charges and their training.
His slaves, for all intents and purposes, were perfect and highly coveted by many Houses for the prowess they came out of his home having. And Vhid`anon was one of his prize possessions. Trained on the pleasures of the mouth and body on several different races that the master secreted in without the rest of the Nethergloom knowing, she was incredibly skilled. But then, so were all his slaves, including her twin. Vhid's talents went beyond knowing where to touch or tickle a man with finger, tongue or toy. She reveled in her beauty and had always been somewhat of a princess personality, preening herself like an exotic bird whenever her master permitted her compliments or credit for her behaviour. She was born to be what he was helping her become, and she knew it, and learned her lessons well.
In the matter of her slave sisters and her twin, however, Vhid`anon found herself conflicted. She learned early that not everyone enjoyed the sexual attention she readily accepted. Though her master never plucked the maidenheads of his trainees, knowing that intact female slaves fetched a higher price than those who were deflowered, it did not mean he did not enjoy their bodies. He could be brutal, and unfortunately enjoyed girls who cowered, screamed and cried. It made him feel powerful in a way he didn't get typically, seeing as he had separated himself from the game of Houses. Beating and terrorizing some of his slaves was rewarding for him in depraved ways. And his favourite target was indeed Vhid's twin. It might have been because the girls were identical and Vhid he could never get the seductive and alluring Vhid`anon to submit as he could her sister. Towering over Vhid with whip or chain in hand only served to make him feel like he'd been cheated and tricked into doing exactly what the little Moriel wanted.
Because Vhid`anon was a pain slut.
Though he tried as hard as he could to break the young slave's spirit, he never could. She was rightfully named the 'chaos flower', a trouble maker when he had his back turned and a princess when his eyes came to rest on her and her activities. If she was caught making trouble with other slaves or doing something he had told her not to do, she wooed him with petulant looks and sexual favours, using the very skills he had taught her against him. If she had not been on special order, he would have killed her simply and quickly, just to be done with the trouble the girl caused. Unfortunately, the entire group of slaves that she was being raised with was special order. He dare not kill a single one of them, nor hurt them permanently and mar the beauty of their skin. They had been ordered to the detail, from what they would look like and where they were from, to what they would know and how they would be trained. There was no way for him to break Vhid`anon, a girl who was eager to feel the hard kiss of his whip or his hand on her flesh. So, he found her weakness, created it in fact. Her care for her twin and the other girls was his only tool for reining in the sometimes incredibly deceptive girl.
When Vhid`anon misbehaved, the master would take it out on the other girls, or her twin. And she felt their beatings, their pain and torment, as keenly as if it were her own. While in the rest of the Nethergloom such weakness for the plight of others was subdued or negligible, the master cultivated it in Vhid as much as he could. If she disobeyed him, didn't move quickly enough, didn't perform better than the last time, her slave sisters felt his ire. And if he wished to have her seductive nature turned to him, it was through the torment of the others that her attentiveness was gained.
Vhid`anon was a pleasure slave first, a pain slut next, and a loyal slave sister to her peers third. She was taught how to dance, to write and speak poetry, to sing songs that either aroused the loins or touched the spirit. She would also seek the master's whip, raise his ire until he beat her and make him expend all of his energy and aggression on her as a way of keeping him from hurting the other slaves. And the day he sought revenge on some silly wrong doing on her part and attacked her twin with a viciousness none of the slaves had before witnessed, Vhid`anon became a murderer.
The trip to the surface wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. Most of the slaves made it to the surface world intact, though some were lost to various dangerous Nethergloom beasts that found the group of girls easy pickings until they learned to run. Once they started running, the ones that survived never stopped, not til the darkness of the surface world's night struck their skin and the chill of winter burst across their near naked flesh. In the Nethergloom, there were no seasons, no weather. Everything was an insane constant that would have driven those from above crazy. The moon and the stars hiding behind dark and heavy winter clouds but peeking out on occasion stunned the small group of inexperienced dark elves. Some ran back down into the tunnel and who knows what happened to them. The rest scattered like dark leaves on a chill wind. Vhid could not take care of anyone and promised nothing to any of them except for this escape. What happened once they hit the surface would be up to them. Except in the case of her twin.
Vhid`anon meant for her blood sister to hide and wait for Vhid to come back for her, to bring help in some way. And Vhid was immediately leaving the girl's side, going to look for shelter, food, clothing, whatever she could use her flesh to bribe someone out of. She hadn't gotten far when her doubts took hold and she doubled back after a few hours to seek her sister's comforting words and reassurance that they would be fine. Her sister was not there, but tracks led through the snow to a keep some distance off. Vhid had no choice except to go, and to have herself captured, so she could find out if her sister had been captured too. So captured, she did indeed find out her sister too had become a 'guest' of the lord of the keep. The big challenge was that unlike the elderly mage the girls had grown up with, this man was a noble. He was keenly paranoid of all other Moriel but familiar with the games of Houses and the wiles and subterfuge that dark elves instinctively knew how to play with each other. He did not fall prey to Vhid's tactics and nor did he let her see her sister. Ever again. Though both girls were to become slaves to the man, he soon learned Vhid's weakness, and like her master, had no qualms of using it against her. She could correspond to her sister in letters but no more than that. And she dare not say anything negative that might put her sister in danger. The noble was powerful on the surface, and had deadly range through his contacts. His ever watchful eyes followed Vhid`anon everywhere she went. And before she knew it, she was wearing his collar.
Vhid was also finding her own way around on the surface. She was a dancer, a poet, a singer, and extremely beautiful. To satisfy her ache for pain, she became pierced in every inch of her body that her tips at her dancing job afforded her, up to the point that her master began to take even that money from her. Money fast became her second weakness and there was trouble for anyone who got in the way of Vhid making money or keeping money or hiding her money from her master. She discovered the worship of Kirva and began to understand her own people that much better. And though her arms ached to hold her sister once more, she was content to be the slave she had been raised to be, content to stay in her new master's protective embrace when he deigned to offer it, and content to enjoy the new freedoms the surface world brought. Open spaces. Sunlight and a melting of that strange white stuff called snow, making travel easy and ambush of others ignorance even easier.
And chocolate. Vhid's third weakness.