Syvara was breathing heavily as she reached the end of the tunnel. Behind her, she could hear the voices of the guards, shouting as they chased after her. ‘Get back here!’ ‘You’ll pay for your treachery!’ ‘Stop right there criminal scum!’ The usual, tired old phrases they repeated by rote day in, day out. But, of course, to the alleged nine-year-old “criminal,” the phrases were new. Horribly and terrifyingly so. And so, with fear giving her wings, she forced her way through the tight crevice, far too tight for almost anyone to fit through - anyone except a terrified little nine-year-old Drow girl, perhaps. Her cloak tore, a long strip of cloth flapping out behind her as she finally wormed her way out of it, collapsing to all fours in an attempt to catch her breath.

Pant. Pant. Cough. Pant. More exertion in the last fifteen minutes than she’d had in the previous nine years, the little girl thought uncharitably to herself. And for what? A ritual gone wrong, when she had received no training for it, no instructions beforehand? She didn’t know what she had done, but Moth- no, that woman didn’t deserve to be called her mother. Even Miss Ellistriara was more her mother, and she had only been Syvara’s tutor for half a year! But the sound of voices close behind her reminded Syvara that she was not yet in the clear. While the adult, armored guards of Kys’dialis had no way to fit through the crack, they could definitely-

Syvara’s head snapped back at a harsh cracking sound, witnessing, to her horror, fingers of frost as they reached out through the crevice. The rock froze into brittle hardness before another blast of phantasmal force slammed into it, shattering little shards of rock and widening the gap even more. She couldn’t stay here, and with no way back, Syvara did the only thing she could do: turned tail and fled, deeper into the caverns, deeper into the Underdark, not knowing where she was going and not caring. Not as long as it was away from here. Left. Right. Right. She scrabbled up a ledge, then took another left. On and on she ran, stumbling over dips in the naturally-formed cavern floors, slipping past stalagmites and beneath stalactites and around columns where the two met, until the sounds of pursuit died out behind her. Pausing to catch her breath, the little girl reached down for her waterskin, taking a long drink of what tasted like the sweetest, coolest water she had ever drank. And then a voice cleared it’s throat behind her.

“My, my. A fugitive should be more cautious.” Eyes wide, Syvara whirled around, stumbling backwards in surprise as she spotted an older Drow man, his black robes shrouding a tall, slender body, long white hair held back by an onyx spider-head pin as two red eyes stared down at her, face set in a grim expression as a swarm of tiny red orbs of light flitted around his head like fireflies.

“Malesstrenin…” Syvara tried to form words, to form a question, but nothing would come out of her mouth.

“You forgot your lunch, little sister.” Malesstrenin glanced back, eyes narrowed before turning back to Syvara. He held out a bulging sack. “And after the cooks worked so hard to make it, too!”

“I…” Syvara closed her eyes for an instant, decided not to let her brother know how worried she was, for both of them. “They made it too heavy, I couldn’t be bothered to carry it,” she lied, taking the sack nonetheless.

He seemed to understand, though, and knelt down in front of her, wrapping his arm comfortingly around her shoulders. “Yes, Mother sent me to find you. Her exact words, by the way. I found you, dear sister. And now I’m going to go back to Mother.”” He smiled, and Syvara’s lips turned up in response. But her own smile was wavering: both she and her brother knew what their mother had intended.

“C-can’t you run away with me? Or even without me! If we split up, right? That would make it harder for them to catch us, and then we could meet up again-” She was silenced by a finger on her mouth, and soft lips on her forehead.

“Be brave, little sister. Like you’ve always had to be. The Underdark is a big place, after all, and mother’s reach is not so long. You have a duty now, to evade her. Got it? Besides… She’ll be busy.” Torturing me, Malesstrenin carefully didn’t say, his smile warm and genuine - born from a lifetime of lying through his teeth to people who had been lying through their own teeth for far longer than he had been alive. His hand came down on Syvara’s shoulder, and the young girl looked up at him, before rushing forwards and throwing her arms around his waist in a fierce embrace.

“You’re strong, brother,” she said, a fake smile of her own in place now. “When I come back, I’ll find you.” Their words built a comforting fantasy, but in the end, the two Drow stood up. They turned around and each went their own way: the eldest to a certain doom, and the youngest into uncertainty. Syvara wanted to turn around, to look at her brother one last time, but the shadows swallowed him. Syvara knew that she had to keep moving forwards, now. She had a duty, after all. To the dead.

There was no more light from the surface now. Syvara marched onwards through the deep, but even her Drow vision was unable to pick out any detail through the shadows that now shrouded her. She could see shapes and hear sounds, but had no other points of reference. The constant drip-drip of water, the skitter of small insects and their only-just-larger predators, the slow clack of the occasional falling rock were her entire world. Far behind her, very far behind her, she could hear the occasional snippet of a shout, proof that even if she was out of the guards’ sight, she was not out of their minds. The cavern beneath her feet started to slant upwards, but Syvara kept walking. It branched off, but some branches were short and shallow dead-ends, others were too narrow to fit through, and yet others were ignored in favor of continuing in the same direction. Down in the Underdark, with no friends, no food, and no landmarks that she knew of, Syvara had precious few certainties, and those she had were grim indeed. Stopping meant death. Slowing down meant death. So did making too much noise. The sounds of the tunnels continued, and so did Syvara, her soft boots trudging near-noiselessly over the smooth, even stone floor. She stopped, her purple eyes wide in fear.

The Underdark was massive, sprawling, and uncaring. For the floor to be smooth and even was sign of work. And no effort would be made for a road that would not be trodden. Glancing around, the young girl decided that she was far away enough from the guards that she could risk a bit of light. She held her hand out, palm-up, and chanted the words taught to every Drow child. A soft sphere of purple light hovered above her palm, and in its eerie glow, she looked down at the floor beneath her feet, desperately trying to remember old lessons.

‘Rounded, even, small, Svirfneblin made this hall,’ she sang in the silence of her own mind. ‘Blocky, ugly, big, Duergar here did dig. Lost, forlorn with age, Fomorians came to rage. Graceful, smooth and neat, the Drow made this complete.’ But she was missing a verse, and she knew it, and she couldn’t remember what it was… Until a wet, distant sound jogged her memory. ‘Black stones over loam, Illithids… Call this… Home…’ Mindflayers. Creatures of nightmares made real, and Syvara had no desire to see one. Ever. But the sound of voices behind her grew louder, and she realized that no matter how scared the guards might be of venturing into Illithid territory, they must fear failing her mother even worse. And where the guards followed, Syvara had to forge ahead.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped forwards, forgetting the gentle light at her side and letting the cave plunge back into darkness. She crept slowly along the sides as details became clearer, bright lights hovering along the walls and casting harsh shadows into the center of the hallway. The sack on her back scraped against the smooth stone walls, and she froze, hoping that nothing had heard the clearly-audible sound, relaxing only when it became clear that she was still in the clear, at least for the moment. But as the wet sound from earlier drew nearer, Syvara realized that it was the sound of footsteps, and she shrunk further back into the shadows when a tall, purple-robed Illithid strode past her, heading back where she had come from.

Taking her stroke of luck and running with it, Syvara dashed out of concealment as quickly and quietly as she could, turning immediately off the hallway and taking a smaller one, hoping to make her way around the outskirts of the Illithid village. Behind her, she could hear the sound of conversation, picking out the odd word of Undercommon from the discussion: it seemed that the Illithids weren’t willing to let the Drow enter their village. Which, Syvara realized as she ducked into a crack between two stalagmites, watching as a Mindflayer couple hurried past her impromptu hiding place, was as much a problem for her as for her pursuers. But the choice between being captured by Illithids and being captured by her mother wasn’t much of one, so the Drow girl continued moving, pausing only to hide from Illithids as she skirted around their village.

Crevice by crevice, step by step, Syvara snuck past the Illithid village, careful to keep out of sight of the Mindflayers as she went, stopping only once she figured that she was on the opposite end from the pursuit party. With a small sigh of relief, she darted out of her latest hiding place, a surprisingly deep hole in the ground, dashing away from the lights and into the concealing darkness beyond. At which point she bumped into something tall, squishy, and clad in purple robes.

The Illithid’s angry hiss filled her ears and mind with terror, and Syvara scrambled backwards, desperately reaching out and shouting out a single word, the dim almost-light of the caverns suddenly replaced by something even less light. Concealed by the magical Darkness, Syvara got to her feet and jumped to the side, laughing in relief when she heard the soft sound of a squishy robed body hitting the floor, before clapping her hands over her mouth and sprinting forwards away from the last Mindflayer.

Thought fled from her brain as she fled from the monster behind her, only to come rushing back in sudden terror when she was pulled to a jarring halt by the straps of the sack around her shoulders. Glancing back with wide eyes, she saw the Illithid holding out an imperious hand, with a spectral copy of it tangled in the sack of food her brother had given her. She jerked forwards, trying to break its grip, but the magical hand held on, and she stumbled, almost falling over for her mistake. The backpack started to float backwards, dragging her ever closer to the Mindflayer as it went, Syvara’s eyes wide with panic. With a swift, slippery movement, she wriggled out of the straps, leaving the sack behind her in the Illithid’s impotent telekinetic grip and sprinting forwards.

Once again, the young Drow girl found herself taking random turns, leaping over obstacles and through tight gaps in the stone, doing everything in her power to lose the monstrous pursuers she was sure were behind her. When her feet hit a heavy, round object she stumbled and fell, scraping her hands on rough stone as she caught herself. Looking around, she was relieved to note that the cave she was in was natural now, uninhabited too, except by the usual small critters that filled every corner of the Underdark. Even the fact that she had tripped on a skull wasn’t enough to dampen her cheer at having escaped two things that wanted her dead, and so she picked herself up, dusted herself off, and started down the upwards-slanting tunnel.

The ground was relatively smooth for a cave, but clearly worked by animal feet not sentient hands, the smoothest path weaving through stalagmites and around bumps, almost directionless except for the fact that it led constantly up. Syvara followed it, moving lighter now without her brother’s sack, her good mood sobered slightly by the realization that she had no food, and few things in the Underdark were edible unless prepared just so. Still, she kept moving, upwards and onwards, pausing only at another crack beneath her feet, looking down to see a delicate ribcage. Near to it, she spotted the flattened, large skull of some manner of bird, its tiny hooked beak chipped. Gazing in awe, Syvara realized that she had never seen this type of bird before in any of her mother’s aviaries, nor in those of the city itself. It must have been a wild bird, something from far, far away in the Underdark.

Picking up the skull out of fascination, curiosity, and a lack of anything else to carry, Syvara smiled slightly, moving onwards and glancing down at the skull. To break the silence that was beginning to weigh on her, she started to speak softly, introducing herself to the long-dead bird, and explaining her current circumstances.

“It all began when I messed up a ritual…”

Time passed faster now, with Syvara’s mind occupied, and her steps became lighter, her pace quicker as she strode upwards, slowing down only when she realized that she could see the cavern around her more easily than usual: something was casting a light. Instinctively, the Drow girl ducked to the side, slipping behind a stalagmite and peeking out to see what sort of lantern it was. Spotting nothing obvious, Syvara decided it must be further down, and so she set the skull down with a whispered goodbye and resumed walking, moving silently and carefully, always alert for anything that could mean danger. The light got brighter and brighter, with no obvious source, until Syvara had to squint to see anything, so white and painful was the illumination. After what seemed like an eternity of nothing but walking and squinting, shielding her eyes from the glare, Syvara reached the source of the light.

Instinctively her eyes opened wide, before closing shut in pain then cracking open once again, as she gazed out upon the forest laid out beneath her. Trees, as far as the eye could see, filled with birdsong and the sounds of animals. Far off in the distance, a small village with white walls and red roofs.

And up above, blazing bright, the Sun that lit up the Surface.