Role

Chapter 3

The Patrol

After hours of silent trudging the patrol crested a rise. The Duergar
were waiting. The fight was not memorable, the simple slaughter of a
Drow patrol. Ikso took a mace to the head and crumpled to the ground
unconscious in the opening moments of the conflict.

In the times to come she would wish that adamantite hammer
had crushed her skull.

Imprisonment

What followed seemed like eons. Endless trudging through the caverns,
the cleaning, the dismemberment of ally and foe alike, cooking that very
meat. She was sold several times at slave auctions, each time for less
silver than the last, as she lost her own luster.

Ikso had begun to go away in her mind as the humiliations continued.
She could become Fat Edgar, a recruit who had choked to death on a
squid cake the first week of training. She would oaf about camp running
a Fat Edgar monologue in her head about how sad he was about being
a slave of Dark Dwarves, but how forward he was looking to the
svirfniblin jerky that was waiting back by his rock.

She would become The Mistress of Blades when they would take her,
her screaming more rage than pain as she struggled against the violations.
Things in Ikso began to change. The more time among the blood and juices
the further Ikso retreated into her mind.

She could become Kruk, her second master. Sharp as a tack and ugly as a
rothe rear-end when Ikso became Kruk she could woo extra food from the
camp cook, and not just the nibbles of liver shed take as she cleaned the
corpses that would become food for the slaves.

What had started as simple depravities had progressed to Ikso being
presented with a rothe-hide basket full of man-parts of many races in
various states of decay. That night Ikso cycled through every personality
that had taken root in her mind. By the time they got to the putrid remains
of a Fire Giant Ikso was Ikso again. Still she did not break.
That night the Duergar got drunker than usual. Once she could move again,
covered in gore and worse, Ikso stumbled away from camp.

It was not long after that she saw the sun for the first time.