To Live and Uplift Underground 6


It’s funny what contrast does.


The knife-club that I’d remade for Aunt Kan’a, and had originally made from Jarna’t’s throwing club, had taken me quite a bit of labor to do. All told, about two days’ worth of labor. As the first weapon that I’d made, I could ascribe a certain sentimental value to it, but then I could also ascribe a certain amount of guilt to it. Because, sure, it never really belonged to me in the first place but now I would never be able to “give it back”, as unlikely as that was.


But somehow, for some reason, simply getting my future time stolen bothered me a whole lot more.


Now, if you think that’s strange, I can’t really blame you. As far as bullying goes, O’vilia’s was a pretty mild case and certainly wasn’t in the same ballpark as Younger Talia’s: I didn’t have to give O’vilia a blowjob.


But if you had to ask me why I felt this was somehow worse, I would have responded thus: I was ready to move on.


Working with rocks wasn’t bad and was very satisfying, but I knew I could do so much more. Knapping had been a hobby in my past life, and cutting stone through abrasion was merely something I knew could be done. Real, true mastery in the art still eluded me and would continue to elude me until I’d spent the proverbial 10,000 hours necessary to attain it.


There are worse prospects to entertain than that, I suppose, but I’d just begun to walk and I wanted to run. There were other doors that I wanted to open, and completely crossing this one would require me to close the others for a good while. 


There was just so much that I could do than play the song of rock and stone.


O’vilia’s “commission” wasn’t even necessarily a hard one, just a labor-intensive one. Even back then, I knew that the handle that I had already made for her mother would take significantly more time. Mostly because I could already see a way to keep the sanding to a minimum and get most of what I needed through knapping. 


But that was still time that I would have to spend.


The only thing, the one bright spot in all of that, was that O’vilia had not given me a time frame. I couldn’t put it off forever, I knew, but O’vilia did not know how long it was supposed to take. She could not know that I had extra obsidian lying around, and she could not know how long grinding and flaking the dark glass would take. Just spending the next two days making the knife crossed my mind. You know, getting it over with.


But there was copper in the gang, and I had no idea how long THAT would wait for me.


I put O’vilia off for later, and put Aunt Kan'a in my mind.


And, wouldn’t you know it, I had 5 new shiny stone weapons to turn in to her.


In a culture as permissive and occasionally encouraging of permanently “borrowing” others' belongings as mine was, one might be led to believe that Drow ownership didn’t exist for anyone that wasn’t “strong”. That is to say, that if a thing only belonged to someone who could keep it, then inevitably the only people who would own ANY property would be those most capable of doing so. IE, the strong.


Surprising as it might seem to you, that was not how it worked among the Drow.


Mostly because all the gangs, Clans, and miscellaneous named groups that worked that way all get killed by those who don’t.


Unity was an understated power, but a power all the same. Even among the Drow. So, some level of “trust” was required for a gang to even form. And more was required for a gang as big as my mother’s to exist. But still, we were Drow.


At some level, said trust had to be organized somehow, or it didn’t exist.


Thus, enter the Keeper.


The children of the gang grew up paranoid and watchful enough to take care of themselves and be on their own, but a Crew needed more to properly benefit the gang. So they had more.


Each Crew had a gal who would take care of the belongings of the Crew members. Someone who would keep an eye out for their things while they went out and did things. Someone who would, if something turned up stolen, reimburse the “hurt” party out of their own pocket, thus giving them personal reason to make sure things were well taken care of. No Drow would do this out of the goodness of their heart, of course, so our gang had a very simple benefit that would ensure there would always be girls lining up to be Keepers:


And that was that Keepers got to keep the belongings of whatever crew member died.


It was not a perfect system, not by a long shot, and was ripe for all kinds of abuses, but it was quite literally better than nothing. I would be lying if I said that not having to worry about my work being stolen back in the home tunnels wasn’t a blessing.


So when I went to Solis, whose status as the Keeper of  Kan'a’s crew turned out to be the sole reason she was originally sent with me, to pick up my finished pieces of work, I could also use her to gauge Kan'a’s mood.


“How is she?” I gestured towards the little private room the Crew leaders always managed to get.


“Testy,” Solis replied as she visually confirmed that I was getting my bag of things. I had not told her that my commission was in it since I didn’t want her to let on to my Aunt that I had waited to turn in my work. There was a certain amount of risk to doing that, but at that point, it was nowhere near enough to offset the benefits of waiting. Her guarding my bag was enough.


“Not enough weapons?” I quirked an eyebrow.


“What do you think?” Solis frowned.


“Nothing!” I replied as I went straight for Kan'a’s private abode.


It was hard to gauge when the best time to turn in something like this was, but “when they really needed it” was probably a good bet. I will admit, I went inside her room with some nervousness.


But I was feeling pretty good about it.


Aunt Kan'a had already rewarded me for so much less.


As before, the first thing that hit me was the scent of my aunt.


Nothing but heat provided radiation to see by here, and hers lighted the walls. The musky scent of her maturity and her gender was ever present, trapped by the natural rocks in this small cave. We had been in this tunnel for a while now, and were probably due for immigrating to some other tunnel, so her private quarters only had time to become more and more hers.


“Arione?” Kan'a frowned when she saw me slip through her door curtain, “Please tell me you aren’t here to try and ingratiate yourself to me. I’ve no mood for it.”


“Oh?” I said, feeling cheeky, “What if I say that what I have will do that, anyway?”


You know, it’s not like I was particularly confident by nature. But there is an elation to showing off what you made to others. Happiness makes fools out of all of us, I suppose.


“Then I’d say you must be very-” the older woman started rubbing her face, her words getting heated by the second.


She stopped, of course, when I pulled my 5 stone weapons out.


“-correct?” Aunt Kan'a ended as I laid the knife-clubs on what passed for her table one by one, “Really, you actually did it?”


“Took me the whole two weeks,” I happily lied as she took one of the knife-clubs, and hefted it in her hand.


“Feels a bit lighter than the last one,” she noted as she took it by the bottom and swung it, “Hmmm, why’d you make the head smaller?”


“I thought it unwieldy for that length of haft,” I nodded at the weapon, a bit thrilled that I actually got to talk about it, “But more than that, it allowed me to get the weapons quicker, and I rather thought you’d want them as soon as possible.”


She smiled, “You are not wrong but, hah, I only see 5 of these ‘knife-clubs’,”


“Where’s the sixth?”


And, just like that, my nervousness took over.


I had to remind myself that this, too, was, technically, advantageous to me, “I am sure you heard about this, but Talia’s crew took it from me.”


“Hmm,” Kan'a tapped her chin with the flat of a stone blade, “You let one of her granddaughters take it from you.”


I knew that there was a very small chance that she’d be serious about her victim blaming, but that was just how it went. That small percentage that she might be serious was what made the “joke” work. Still, I dutifully bowed my head, “If that’s what you say happened, Aunt Kan'a, then that’s what happened.”


Between Outskirt Drow gangs, stealing was a strange thing. If a gang took something from another without beating them first, it was considered “bad manners”. Because it was a way to stake a claim of superiority over another without it needing to be true. But superiority that was implied, but not shown, was an affront to every bit of a gang’s sense of worth.


So, of course, it happened all the time.


Things were not so simple between members of a gang.


I had stolen from my cousin first to make the weapon, and that kept me from being any sort of wronged party. As far as things went, Younger Talia played her hand perfectly and left me with absolutely no claim for any sort of recourse.


But I hadn’t kept the weapon to myself, technically, and I was now part of Aunt Kan'a’s crew. She’d publicly and visibly claimed me when she had Solis go with me, even.


Taking a weapon back from me was one thing.


Taking from weapons that Kan'a’s girls used was quite another.


The question was:


Did Kan'a want to let it go?


“Hmm, seeing you bend down like that is not a bad look,” Kan'a opined as my response went to the heart of the matter, “But no, I can’t say I particularly do.”


I sighed with relief.


“Still, I will not have you evade responsibility,” she said, and my breath hitched for a second, “I do believe we can talk it over your reward.”


That tone. Oh, that tone.


The sense of authority, the undertone of desire.


It stirred me like the moving earth.


But still, I could not lose myself in the eaves of my aunt’s dominating personality. Not yet.


For my work, I needed a specific reward.


“Have I-” I swallowed the saliva in my mouth and dared ask, “-have I proven myself, after all?”


“Well, I can’t say I am particularly enamored of a weapon that only lasts one single battle,” she casually said as she got up from her seat, “But something is better than nothing, and 5 somethings better still.”


“Oh, right,” I blinked, “I used glue in the joinery. The weapons should last a couple of skirmishes now.”


Aunt Kan'a stopped and frowned as she felt at the tip of one of the stone blades. She brushed against the hardened glue joining the blade to the haft.


“Huh,” she said before a smile blossomed in her face, “Well, well, well, aren’t you a useful male!”


I preened at the praise.


“Yes, I’d say that does it,” she smirked, “Oh, you best believe I am not letting you go now, boy.”


She languidly walked towards me.


“Point in fact, how about I show you the benefits of it?”


I was tempted.


I was sorely tempted.


But I could do more than just be a stone worker. I could do more, much, MUCH, more than simply getting rocks and forming them into weapons.


I needed to be way more than that.


So, with some difficulty, I shook my head, “I-I am sorry, Aunt Kan'a. I’d love to, believe me. But, if this is not too bold of me, I am looking for a particular reward.”


I bowed my head again as I said it, not daring to look her in the eye.


Kan'a stopped walking towards me and was silent for a moment.


Then she sighed, “I should have figured.”


“What is it?” she quirked an eyebrow, “Not happy with handjobs anymore? You want to get at my loins?”


I gawked.


That was in the cards?


“Um, well, I-I was thinking that Aunt Talia’s gang took something from, um, us,” I quickly rushed before I could change my mind, “And that we could get something for it.”


“You want revenge?” she said with incredulity.


Then laughed.


“Well, fuck, I guess even males can inherit something from their mother, ha!” she wiped a tear from her eye, “Well, what were you thinking of, boy?”


“We are not getting that weapon back, I can tell you that right now,” she said with good cheer, “But I think we can get Younger Talia to apologize to you. You know, get on all four and bow her head to the earth.”


“Abyssal depths, we could go all the way and aim to get her to do it while naked,” she said, “How does that sound?”


That-oh, wow, I could envision it. I could envision the girl who made him give her oral get down and glare at him from the ground.


I could imagine that unvoiced promises of calamity to come, and the sure, fixated, hateful obsession-


But no.


No, no, no!


I, argh, I had a goal!


“It occurs to me,” I forced myself to say, “That I could be making the gang better!”


“You-” Kan'a stopped and looked at me, dumbfounded, “You think I am making you choose between getting satisfaction and getting working materials? Are you-are you stupid? I already said you proved yourself!”


Sigh, this was the beginning of my sales pitch and it was already screwed up. Still, I forged on, “I don’t mean the stone weapon that I’ve been making, Aunt Kan'a.”


“Then what could you be talking about?” Kan'a asked, getting more confused.


I took a deep breath.


“The copper ore that Aunt Talia stole,” I said.


“I know the gang plans on selling but…I could work it,” I told her, “I could extract the copper from it, and make weapons that don’t have to be replaced after they’ve only chipped!”


“What?” Aunt Kan'a asked.


“I know it’s more than the weapon that Younger Talia took from me is worth,” I outright admitted, “But if we-you- could promise some weapons back, the minority to be sure, or maybe even just some of the copper in a more purified form, I could outfit our crew, Aunt Kan'a!”


“That’s…” The older woman bit her lip and started clenching her hands.


“Think about it!” I begged, “There are 14 girls in our crew. Sure, half of them are veteran enough to have earned their knives and spears, yes. But they’re iron, so just taking the rust out makes them smaller every time, and we’ll always have to wait on the City to replace those weapons!






“I could make it so that more people in the crew have metal weapons,” I promised, “If you’ll just-”


“ENOUGH!” Aunt Kan'a barked.


She was breathing hard, at some point having become incensed by spiel.


And I-I couldn’t understand why.


“Aunt Kan'a?” I meekly asked.


“What are you-did you seriously-arghh,” she hissed as she started pacing around her room.


“Do you seriously think that I’d believe that you can get copper from ore?” she asked.


“Well, yeah,” I blinked, “That’s where you get copper from.”


My head flew to the side.


A stinging pain in my cheek let me know that I’d just been slapped.


“Did you-” Aunt Kan'a repeated herself again, this time slower, “Think, that I’d believe that YOU can get copper from ore?”


Ah.


“I-I can,” I gingerly told her, “I definitely can.”


“Oh, and I am just supposed to believe that you won’t get mugged if I can get you that precious copper, supposing that I believe that you can do anything with it!” She mimed my speech, and she mimed my tone. She mimed my mannerisms but made a mockery of them.


All the while, I was wondering precisely what was happening, “I-I don’t have to go too far from the caves. If anyone mugs me, everyone’ll know who it was.”


Why was she exploding in such a way?


“Promises!” she said, ‘All you are giving me are promises!”


‘And I am supposed to believe them?” she sneered.


The anger in her eyes was fiery.


But there was something behind it. An emotion that I was familiar with. 


I recognized this. 


She was-Aunt Kan'a was using anger to mask…uncertainty?


Anger did not appear out of the dark like this, but there was a nervousness fueling it. This explosion felt all too familiar.


In the depths of my Aunt’s mind, did it seem like I was criticizing her? Did I somehow put her in a position where she lost face even by just saying “no”?


“Aunt Kan'a,” I said with all the confusion that I felt.


“What are you afraid of?”


It was only a second later that I realized that was PRECISELY the wrong thing to ask.


“Me?!” she screeched, “Afraid?!”


Her hand swung again, so wide that I managed to see it this time. It helped somewhat to manage the impact it made on my cheek and the brief sense of vertigo that I felt as my head swung from one side to the other.


“Fucking male!” she was on top of me then, ripping, pinning me to the ground as she took my clothes off, “Idiotic youngster! Imbicile!”


She pushed me to my side.


“Who are you, to call me anything?”


And she grabbed a hold of my dick.


“This is what I get for treating you nicely,” she hissed and readied a hand with her middle finger extended.


“And not showing you your place!”


The hand went directly for my ass, and her middle finger penetrated my anus.


“F-fuuuck!” I grunted as my cock immediately got hard in her first hand, as the blow with her second went directly for my prostate.


 “Afraid? Me? Afraid?” she asked, more incredulous each time. She pumped my cock to the beat of her questions even as her hand came out only to slam into my ass again, “How dare you?”


“You see this?” she asked as she rammed my ass with her finger again and again, “This? This is all you are good for.”


Her hand was painfully tight around my dick as she went up and down its shaft, making it feel as good as it was agonizing.


“To think I had a good opinion of you,” she spat. Actually, literally spat on me as her hands got quicker.


“To think I was gonna favor you like a pet,” she continued, her ministrations being horrible except for how incredibly stimulating they were.


I was afraid.


I was, for that moment, afraid like I had not been since the raid.


My heart thundered in my chest.


But my loins felt so very hot.


That fear.


That domination.


That horrible situation.


I was not ready for it and I would not have been its match, even if I were.


There was only one conclusion to it all.


“I-I am sorry!”


I came.


“You better be,” Kan'a grumbled as she pumped my jizz out of my dick. Her finger on my ass stopped working, but my prostate had already been beaten up enough, “Yeah, that’s right. You BETTER be!”


I clenched my teeth as I dumped what must have been double the amount of semen that I came when I signed up with her.


I thought then that I knew what the heights of pleasure were.


I could not have imagined that there was THIS.


It was as if I was orgasming fear itself.


“What, no response?” she growled as I couldn’t even breathe from how hard I was cumming, “Nothing to say NOW, bastard?”


And then, at long last, I shot out my last burst.


“Well?”


“I-I am sorry, Aunt Kan'a,” I gasped, so much as to answer her as to get some air in my lungs, “I won’t ever do this again!”


“...good,” she said, finally letting me go.


She got up and walked back to her table.


She sat down and very carefully ignored me.


“Then get to fuck out. I’ll let you know when I have more work for you.”


I did as she asked. I took my back and quietly left her room.


“...told you she wasn’t in a good mood,” Solis casually said when I passed her on my way out, but I had no response to her except to laugh.


Seriously.


I laughed until I choked.


I laughed until I couldn’t laugh anymore.


I laughed until I sobbed.


“There, there, it’ll all get better,” the Drow said as if she’d done this many a time. She probably had.


“T-thanks,” I quickly recovered, though, and got out of there.


I know what you must be thinking right now. That I was breaking down and using the usual psychological escapes to lessen my trauma. But you have it wrong.


I finally understood why I had been so angry-no-disappointed with O’vilia. Because she got me hot and bothered being taller than me, stronger than me, and more influential than me, bullying me, but did not go all the way and do something about it.


But hah, this wasn’t just about me, was it?


You know, I understood Aunt Kan'a. That’s the thing, it might not have been clear to others, but it was starkly clear to me why she did what she did.


Because, at the end of the day, it wasn’t that divorced from what I used to do.


Aunt Kan'a was weak and the weak did what the weak had to do.


She had fooled me, thinking she was hungry. Thinking that there was ambition lying behind her eyes.


But she was no Jarn’at.


Maybe it was because of her age, or maybe she’d always been like that. Maybe she only climbed to where she could climb, but I saw it; she liked where she was. She liked the size and power of the gang and the hole she filled in it. So anything that threatened that comfort had to be stamped out ruthlessly.


She accepted me with open arms because having her crew deteriorate even a little bit threatened that comfort. But the notion of actually trying, of putting everything she had done until that moment in any slight amount of danger for the promise of more, unsettled her.


Oh, I was sure that if my Mother dropped and Kan'a was handed the gang on a silver platter, that she would take it. And I am sure that she told herself that she was the sort of person who could make it on her own, too.


But she wasn’t, and she never would be. I could see that now. I could see it so clearly.


And I?


I still needed that copper.
.
.
.
After that, I went to see Younger Talia.