To Live and Uplift Underground 7


While the size of the City was limited by the number of earthquakes we survived, and its “growth” was thus capped, it already housed around 80,000 souls even back then. I want you to imagine how big it must have been to have that many people, and then I want you to realize that the cavern that it was in had to be even bigger than THAT.


The empty floor of the cavern, the space between the City and the walls of the earth, deserved the label of “Outskirt” more than the rocky tunnels where I lived did. But nobody lived in there for a variety of reasons, and my sort did live near the city, so our space became the “Outskirts”, and the emptiness of the cavern just became the “Outside” of the City.


Imprecise names for precise locations.


But this Outside was huge too. It had to be, to encompass a city that could house 80,000 people.


And the Outskirts that we lived in, in turn, encompassed that Outside.


The Outskirt was immense, no two ways about it. Moving from cave to cave, tunnel to tunnel, to find spots where the gang could be safe could, and did, take days and sometimes weeks. Especially after an earthquake. Even with the Outskirts not being able to bear many Drow on its own, because let’s be honest, it couldn’t, “not many” at this scale still ended up being a lot. So there were many gangs.


These gangs ranged from the small, like a dozen or so members, though at that point whether or not they deserved to be called a gang was an honest matter of question, to the immense.


My mother’s gang, for example, was around a little bit over a hundred Drow strong.


A quarter of all Drow in the gang were male, with half of that number being either children or youngsters at any point in time. Similarly, half of every woman who lived was also someone that a high enough gang member begat somewhen recently. But no, the birth ratios were half male and half female despite what numbers might indicate. The mortality rate simply made it that way.


But, sure, let’s take the males out of the equation. Let’s take out, even, my Mother and her personal circle out of it, too, and the unaffiliated inside the gang in addition with what family members they chose to help them.


That still amounted to 64 Drow who were part of the Crews and these, in turn, were split among 4 Crews, of which Talia’s and Kan’a’s are the only relevant ones at this point in time. Because the numbers weren’t equally spread among all crews.


Talia’s was the biggest at 20 members, and Kan’as was the third at 14. 


Back then, all crews had about an even spread of “veterans” too, who were the true core of any crew. The rest were the “new blood” who were the young Drow who had proven themselves. And the unblooded who were, well, what children were allowed to hang around and sort of do things for the crews.


The latter two groups outnumbered the first, as you’d expect, but altogether over a dozen girls was a huge number of women for a mere subgroup of a gang to have. That my gang COULD have crews not only of this size, but many of them, spoke of its success all on its own, and of its ambitions of ascendancy. It would go a long way to explain Aunt Kan’a’s reflexive response, I suppose, because so long as the whole gang was growing, she was too, and so there was no need for her to take any “risks”.


Luckily for me, youth was linked to risk-taking across all species.


Younger Talia was perched in a high crevice inside our home tunnels, one of those holes that could not be furnished but didn’t otherwise hurt anyone because it didn’t have anything or lead anywhere. Her two friends, Nis’a and Tisa were with her, quite literally hanging out.


Like me, it was comfortably warm enough for them to go about with loincloths or simple skirts, though they obviously went with chest coverings of various kinds.


I’d used my clothing to wrap the weapons I made enough that the only thing I didn’t feel humiliated to wear was my waist tunic. It wasn’t as though we had a bare chest taboo for males like we did for the women in the Outskirts, but a guy with a bare chest was still considered somewhat provocative all the same.


As the trade and movement of goods within the gang worked on either patronage or a barter economy, I would have to either beg Zinta or trade for new clothing. Neither was a prospect that I relished, but it was altogether academic as I couldn’t wait until I did either before I tried to get the ore. Without Kan’a, my ability to get that copper was far more limited, time-wise.


So that’s why I took the risk of showing myself to the wolves with some of my flesh bared.


“-I still say it's bullshit,” I could hear Tisa whine as I carefully approached, “If they never let us join a raid, how are we going to get blooded?”


Nis’a nodded furiously, “We can’t all get lucky like you, Talia.”


“Nis’a,” Talia rubbed her forehead, “Please tell me you aren’t implying the only reason why I killed that dumb bitch was because I got lucky.”


“B-but that the weapon broke when it hit her!” Nis’a complained.


Well, that sounded familiar.


“We are lucky it did anything!”


I was treated to the sight of Younger Talia slapping Nis’a upside the head, almost making her fall from the crevice they were in.


“Abyssal Matreal, do you hear yourself?” Younger Talia demanded, “‘The weapon was bad’, so it had to be luck and not my skill at work?”


“R-right,” Nis’a rubbed the sore spot in her head, “What was I thinking?”


“To be fair,” I announced my presence, “The knife-club breaking upon impact, leaving behind a length of sharp stone in whomever it hits, appears to be one of its salient points.”


Like iron bending true, three sets of heads snapped in my direction and stared when they recognized me.


“Arione?” Younger Talia confusedly asked.


“I kneel, cousin,” I said as I waited below them.


I was, of course, somewhat nervous. You could say that it was the lack of torso clothing, though you probably would have guessed that it was the fact that I had been forced to give one of them a blowjob. It was a little bit of both, in all truth, but mostly it was the fact it could have all been so much worse. That it should have been so much worse. I was becoming aware that I liked certain off-putting things, yes, but it was still a sort of attraction that terrified me; I was still expecting to someday wake up regretting everything.


“That said,” I decided to oil up what could be a hard sell, “So far, you are the only one that’s killed with them so far.”


Younger Talia blinked again.


And then a wavy smile slowly spread on her face.


“See? Straight from the mouth of its maker,” she haughtily looked at her friends.


“I don’t know,” Tisa replied as she leered at me, “I think it might just be that Arione is really good with his tongue.”


I couldn’t help my slight blush any more than Younger Talia could help the furious scowl on her face.


The leering, at least from Tisa, stopped when Talia smacked her behind her head, “Are you bitches imbiciles?”


“I-I am sorry, Talia,” Tisa flinched away from her, “I wasn’t thinking!”


“Just-just stop talking,” Talia demanded.


“...I didn’t mean to imply anything,” Tisa muttered while Nis’a looked upon her with sympathy.


Younger Talia looked at me again and, now that her good mood had been dispelled by her friends, grunted, “What do you want?”


“Can  we, um-” I doubted myself for a second, thinking about whether or not this would work. In the end, I decided to go through with it, “-can we talk alone?”


Their eyes widen.


Nis’a opened her mouth.


“Shut up!” only for Talia to preempt her, “Point in fact, you and Tisa can make yourselves scarce.”


“But we want to see it!” Tisa complained.


“Only if you are bleeding and gasping on the ground,” Talia growled.


“Aww,” both girls lowered their heads and then made to slip out of the crevice.


They actually made it to the floor before Younger Talia sighed, “Just…I’ll tell you all the details later.”


“Yes!” Both girls pumped their fists.


And then gave me one last leer as they left that corner of our caves.


“So,” Talia extended her legs and splayed herself against the wall of the crevice. She was trying to appear imperious, like what she thought the City Matriarchs would if they were willing to even set foot in the shitty underground wilds, “Alone, yes? Honestly, I am surprised you can even look me in the eye; most boys wouldn’t, after our bout of fun.”


“But then,” she said as she affected a languid smile, “I did show you what a real girl was like, so I suppose it’s only to be expected.”


I am not made of stone, you know, so I would be lying if I said that this didn’t make my heart beat faster. I knew that it was horrible, but my aggressor, acting as though her sexual harassment made her more desirable in my eyes, was not really incorrect. She was, however, wrong about why she was right. But then, I’d be the first to admit that a world where every single man got off to what I got off to would be really fucking weird.


The simple fact was that this, being her response to me coming out of my own will after what she did to me, revealed something of a lever that I was beginning to recognize. Because here she was, ready to have her ego stroked.


Unfortunately for both her and me, I wasn’t here to do it sexually.


“I hear you got blooded,” I casually said.


So I obliged in a different way.


“Oh, and that makes sucking clit better?” she chuckled, “I suppose what they say about males is true, after all: once you see success, they start flocking to you like bats.”


“Power is attractive,” I admitted a truth I had only recently found out.


“Bastard, I’ve always been attractive,” she smiled as she shrugged, and her big chest bounced above me.


“So I see,” my eyes linger on her breasts for a few seconds, before I shook my head, ”But I hear you did it with my weapon.”


“Ah, so is that what this is about?” she quirked an eyebrow. “You think I owe you anything? Because let me tell you, your ‘masterwork’ broke after a single cast.”


“That’s probably why it killed,” I shot back.


“And yet you are only making the assumption that I killed with it,” Younger Talia didn’t even bother continuing her original line of denial, “when I’ve got plenty of throwing clubs. You are making a rather big presumption.”


“Everyone is talking about it,” I said, intuiting that this was the way to get her to fully open up, “I am not the only one impressed.”


“Oh, really?” she eagerly asked, “What else are they saying?”


“That it was done with a stone weapon that broke,” I shrugged.


“Oh-” she deadpanned, “And you think it was your stone knife-club…thing that bro-”


I was giving her a leading look as she went on until, eventually, she sighed, “-ok, fine, it might have been that shitty stone weapon, what of it?”


The smile had not left her face, and I was just a male that was, presumably, coming to her to ask for scraps. One that had been “acquainted” with her in a good light, from her point of view, and one that had provided her with a useful tool, but favors and debts were taken seriously down here. At the very least, serious enough to justify someone doing horrible things to someone else in the eyes of our community.


It was laughable that I might provide such a threat but, well, the fact that Younger Talia was important enough for me to try was itself soothing to her ego.


“Well, what are you going to do now that you don’t have it?” I finally got to the meat of our meeting.


Because now it was time to find out if she really was as ambitious as I hoped she was.


She blinked at me, “What do you mean? I will just use other stuff.”


“Like the same weapons and equipment that the non-blooded have,” I pointed out, “Or did you loot anything good from whomever you killed?”


“I am not wanting for much,” she started frowning now, “What’s it to you, bastard? You think I need you?”


“I think,” I said, smiling wide as I pointed at her, “That you deserve better equipment.”


Younger Talia stared at me for a few moments.


Before her smile returned.


“Choking deeps, Tisa was right,” she laughed, “Your tongue is really good!”


“Get me another stone weapon, and I’ll put it to work again,” she promised me.


“What if I got you something better than stone?” I asked.


“Are you….are you looking to become my pet, or-” she confusedly asked.


“Well-” I blushed but still pushed through it, “I heard that your crew got a bunch of copper ore-”


Maybe it said something that Talia didn’t question whether I was even capable of it. I mean, it could have just been simple ignorance. But with this belief placed in me, it was just a simple question of whether the effort she’d have to put in it was worth it.


“You can make one?” she demanded, eyes boring into me, “Really?”


But the possibility that, at her age, being only newly-blooded, she might have a metal weapon of her own, like the veterans of the gang, was enough for us to even talk about what I got from it.


It was enough for me to forget to be careful about what we spoke. Safe as we were, secluded as this part of our home caves were, I needed to keep in mind that people had taken to following me.


But no Drow could be on guard and on the lookout at all times.


Somewhere nearby, a pair of eyes watched and listened, hidden, from a distance.


And they did so just about close enough to make out what we were talking about.