To Live and Uplift Underground 12


The first thing in the morning, I was rushed in to see Aunt Kan’a.


The clamor of underground Elves complaining about being forced to wake up while the walls lining the outside of our caverns were still cold was an electric static that nonetheless belied both nervousness and excitement. Women and girls who had slept on the uncomfortable ground because they had already packed their mats were allowed more time to snooze away as those who hadn’t now tackled the last bits of packing that we’d do today.


I had not been one of the males who were part of the former, but a drowsy Soli had assured me that she would have one of the girls do it for me. I’d balked at the notion, of course, and protested that course of action; I could, I assured her, do it fast enough that it didn’t matter how long my talk with Aunt Kan’a was. Having a crew girl pack my things got direly close to having a female serve a male, and that was not the sort of grudge I wanted to generate.


Soli, in turn, told me to stop bitching and go do what I was told.


So here I was, in Aunt Kana’s room in these tunnels for the last time.


It still smelled of her, and her heat radiated from the small walls. It was still intimate in a way that only personal rooms were and that sort of luxury was so attractive back then. 


Sometimes I wonder if things had turned out differently. If, perhaps, Kan’a had been visionary in the gang rather than a load-bearing pillar. If I really could have grown and thrived under her firm hands.


But alas.


No sooner had I entered her room than the leader of my Crew paused some last-minute examinations of her packs and gave me a glare.


“So,” she clicked her tongue, “You are valuable again.”


There was a lot to unpack in that one simple sentence, but what mattered the most was the emotion behind it. As predicted, Aunt Kan’a was angry.


Given the circumstances, I thought it smart to not say a thing.


“Not gonna say anything?” Her frown deepened, “Do you believe that I talk to myself?”


I stared at her. Evidently, I had the wrong response, “Apologies Aunt Kan’a, but what…do you want me to say?”


“How about why you think you could go behind my back and deal with Talia’s fucking crew?” she growled.


I swallowed the saliva in my mouth, but I was, at least, ready for this question. I always knew that it was going to come up, “I had no choice, Aunt Kan’a.”


“Talia’s granddaughter made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”


It was a bold lie with just enough elements of the truth for me to get away with it. There were a dozen vile things a female in the gang could do to a male, but killing without reason was not one of them. The low position of males aside, we were still sons to one of its girls. The gangs cared enough about family for that to matter.


“Do you think I am stupid?” Kan’a took a small clay base that she’d been putting away and threw it to the floor, shattering it. Tiny jewels spilled from its wreckage. “How did she know you could make copper!”


That was the rub. It was clear from the start that I would never fully fool my Aunt. Not in this, anyway. She simply knew too much for my plausible deniability to do much.


But still-


“I told her about it,” I admitted. I looked away so as not to give the lie away. I was thankfully successful. Kan’a was only shocked by the admittance, at least., “After our last, um, meeting, I was so devastated that I needed someone to talk to.”


“Younger Talia was there, and, well, once she heard my claims she sort of… forced me to do it.” I looked at Aunt Kan’a from the periphery of my eye and, to my relief, while she had started being angry again- she was only looking at me as though I were an idiot.


“So,” she huffed, “You went to whine to Talia’s granddaughter because she showed you a little bit of attention and, like a whiney little shit, you complained to her about me?”


“I didn’t mention you!” I was quick to grimace and wave with my hands, “I just told her about my, um, feelings.”


The disgust that radiated from my Aunt made it hard to keep a smile off my face and, for the first time, not just because of my carnal hungers.


This was as good as being off the hook.


“But what does it matter?” I innocently asked, “You said it yourself; it’s just an insignificant thing from a male. Unimportant.”


She hadn’t, of course, but it was the sort of thing she would say and that was good enough.


“Just a-everyone’s talking about it, boy!” Aunt Kan’a bit the nail of her thumb, “It was all the youngblood bitches would talk about last night! When all it is is a shitty copper axe!”


I recall being surprised by that, back then. Because, well, Aunt Kan’a was right. To me, it was also just a copper axe. 


But I began to have the inklings that I had seriously underestimated the effect that I’d had. Given I missed the most obvious aspect of it, my male cousins copying me, I started to suspect I was also missing many of the actual underlying nuisances. Like the gang being excited about being one of us, being able to produce such things.


But then, the city being a bottleneck of resources was something everyone disliked.


“But they are just youngblood?” I tried, all the same, to minimise my impact. Aunt Kan’a not caring about me would have made everything so much easier. “Are we not simply overly excitable?”


“So I’d love to assume,” Aunt Kan’a snorted, “But they were all insisting on the most interesting thing.”


“Arione,” she seriously said,


“You haven’t been talking with that hag Talia, have you?”


This was the part that I had originally assumed that I’d have to care the least about, yet it was the one my Aunt was the most suspicious of. Because of that, I only needed to shake my head and say, “I haven't even seen her since I betrayed Jarn’at for you.”


A good reminder that I had sacrificed things to be with Kan’a’s crew was appropriate, I thought. And it should have been, really.


But Kan’a’s burrow only furrowed further, “That’s an interesting point, isn’t it? You did that, yet that girl was, for some reason, telling others about your skill. Curious, wouldn’t you say/”


But Drow paranoia was a wild, unfortunate thing.


“Jarn’at and Younger Talia have never liked each other?” I gaped, flabbergasted that she was missing the most obvious things, “Rather than boasting about me, Jarn’at was clearly lowering Talia’s head. I-I am not sure what else there is to say.”


“Yet the little warrior and the little minx have been part of the headache you’ve given me from the start,” she shook her head, “It’s almost as if this was all an attempt by that old hag to make a mockery of me, isn’t it?”


The thought that Jarn’at’s mother and Younger Talia’s grandmother would ever expend this much time and these many resources on mere youngsters to, at most, make Kan’a look like shit was not just far-fetched, it was insane.


She’d have to depend on newly blooded girls to keep on an act for months on end.


She’d have to depend on me, a male, to do the same!


No, more than that, she would have to have known that I would be a potential asset like I was, only to then waste me away just to twerk Kan’a’s nose!


If Aunt Talia could afford that, she wouldn’t need to.


“Aunt Kan’a,” I couldn’t help but continue to gape at her, “Please tell me you don’t actually believe that.”


She observed me for a bit, studying me as I recovered from how jarred that had made me, before she grunted, “No.”


“Not quite.”


“Thank, Metreal,” I breathed with relief.


“All the same, I’ll not take a chance,” she said and gave me a look, “When it’s our crew’s turn to screen the gang, you’ll be there too, helping us out.”


The words were cold water on my head. “A-as in, supporting the front line?”


“You could always be part of the front line, if you like,” Kan’a chuckled


“I might die,” I replied.


There was a small smile on her face, “Maybe. But then, that would stop whatever game that old bitch was playing, wouldn’t it?”


Damnable, short-sighed paranoia. I didn’t care about her sacrificing me as a male, since men had little value. But I had more than proven that I could make the gang strong. The copper axe should have been the wake-up call she needed to realize that I could make HER crew strong. And yet, here we were.


What a small, petty bitch. Fuck.


“...is that all?” I asked instead of saying the dozens of things I wanted to say.


“Make sure you stay with us as we travel,” Kan’a dismissed me with a shake of her hand, “Because I’ll be watching, understand?”


I exited her room feeling the stress..


How long an immigration took was fairly random, but it usually didn’t take longer than one month. Hell, for all I knew, the whole affair could only be a few days. In which case, my crew might not get called to screen at all.


But, just in case, I would lay my head law. Regardless of what happened, all I really needed to do was not stand out during this time. 


—----------------


So, of course, I did.


M’ita, Mistress of the gang larders and technically its cook, approached me at the end of our third day.


The morning after I got called up by Aunt Kan’a was without further drama or tension. Each crew made sure all of their members were ready to go. The old males that were in charge of the gang children even corralled those kids who weren’t old enough to be recruited to carry things.


In the end, we waited for my mother to stand in front of our largest exit. And for her to raise a rare hand crossbow and swing it forward.


“The way is scouted, and our path screened. We move.”


Sometimes she said more. Sometimes, she didn’t even say a thing. As the years went on, my mother mingled less and less in places where the gang youth could see her. She, like Aunt Kan’a, always had her private rooms and the places where those who led the gangs gathered. Unlike the crew heads, she didn’t need to come out of them save to relieve herself.


That wasn’t to say that she didn’t directly lead us, just that her presence was directly correlated to how important someone was. Until I’d joined Aunt Kan’a crew, I was a nobody and after I was still only a newblood.


The notion of seeing more of the woman who gave birth to me in this life was…rather conflicting.


But then, I already had experience with having mixed feelings about my parents.


At any rate, the people in charge of the day-to-day aspects of the gang who were not its leaders trailed after her. It was her inner circle.


I saw Zinta trailing after my mother, with her daughter in tow. The old drow looked over the throng of our gang and, somehow, caught my eye.


She winked at me.


It was such a simple thing, but it still made my stomach flutter.


However, M’ita followed after her and her eyes, too, scanned the crowd.


Her eyes, too, stopped when she got to me.


But instead of winking, she stared at me for a few seconds.


A sense of trepidation filled me, then.


Travelling with a hundred other Drow presented its own share of problems that needed to be solved. Some passages were wide enough for 10 people to travel abreast. Sometimes, it was barely wide enough for a single one to do so, forcing the whole clan to travel in a single line.


We avoided every single passage that would require crawling or a lot of climbing, but it was all the same, revealing about why is it that all gangs screened these immigrations. More than one time, a single dozen ladies with hands full of weapons and heads full of bad intentions could have piled up both bodies and booty had they struck us.


In that light, it was hard to not feel a certain sense of fear. Yet, that fear was the only thing to turn up in the days after our immigration started.


We harvested what food we could from the grooves that we passed and we constantly refilled our water. That we were able to pass through enough of them to keep our bellies full and our mouths perched was by design; if our gang couldn’t plan these movements like that, we would have died long ago.


During the first three days, I did as Kan’a asked. I traveled with them, broke fast with them, talked with them and interacted with them and only them.


True to her word, Aunt Kan’a had her eyes on me, but I knew that it would have to veer somewhere else eventually. Not that I planned on doing anything that would trigger her, but it was nice to know that I didn’t need to be in my “best” behaviour all the time.


And then we stopped for the day on the third day.


M’ita was a lady as tall as Jarn’at was. Her tits, ass and hips were well-hidden by a full-cover dress of furs, but I had seen her around enough to know that she was bottom-heavy. Her face, sporting very dark lips and a sharp nose, had very inquisitive heat-sensing eyes that bore down on me.


The girls of Kan’a’s crew stopped talking as she made her way to the area, and cleared a path as she made a beeline.


Yes, a beeline to me.


“Arione?” she asked with the lowest voice I had yet heard among women. It wasn’t low enough to be mistaken for a man’s, but it was very noticeable.


“That’s me,” I confirmed, wondering what this was about.


“Did you really make the axe that Talia’s granddaughter is carrying?” She got to the heart of the matter, and the girls around us started whispering.


Why, oh why-


“I, um, did,” I admitted as I frantically looked around, hoping that she wouldn’t be observing this but, nope, there Kan’a was comfortably sitting in a cave.


Looking at the things that were happening like a hawk.


“I would have you make something for us,” M’ita nodded as if my agreement was already a done thing.


“But-but the copper ore belongs to Talia-” I started to say.


“I already talked to her about it,” M’ita cut me off, “That won’t be a problem.”


And, with four words, our gang’s larder mistress damned me, “You will have Talia’s blessing.”


Even as the color left my face, I could only do what she expected of me and nodded, “Cccertainly, yes. That is what I will do.”


“I won’t ask the Goddess of you, but if you can make pots or pans from the copper, we would be very thankful,” she said slowly, her voice full of meaning. “Do you understand?”


“Yes, but-um-,” I fumbled, “Shouldn’t you ask Aunt Kan’a about this? I-I’m part of her crew and-”


“I already cleared this with your mother,” M’ita cut me off, distinct amusement in her face, “And I am not putting you in danger.”


“Besides, Kan’a has never cared what we do with her males,” M’ita chuckled and then started leaving.


“We’ll talk more when we finish our trip,” she told me and left me to face the hard gaze of the woman M’ita had inadvertently snobbed.


And doomed me with it.


After that, I knew it wouldn’t matter. Aunt Kan’a didn’t have to say it, but her eyes promised me a place in the frontline. No, more than that, she needed to teach others a lesson about who was it that ran her crew and I knew that my death would be a fine reminder. I…didn’t think it would matter if I was good enough at surviving the skirmishes.


I did not believe Kan’a had any intention of letting me come back from it alive.


So, on the third day, when everyone had turned in to sleep, I did what many foolish newbloods did and snuck away from our crew’s area.


Maybe my absence would be noticed, but it didn’t really matter. I was screwed either way.


So I went through the lines of tents that we set up to avoid dying from hypothermia during the night. It was a fascinating thing how we were all set up, really, with each crew area being its own heat bubble in miniature that would help take the worst of the night chills off.


All the same, someone always had to be the vanguard, and that group that benefited least from said heat bubbles. In the early part of that trip, that was Talia’s crew.


I made my way through all the tents of dozens of girls from different crews, weathering the painful cold as I did, until I saw a face that I recognised.


“Arione?” Tisa, one of Younger Talia’s minions, asked in surprise from where she was, damn near the end of where our gang had set up for the night.


She had a rare spear in hand. It wasn’t hers, it couldn’t be without her even being blooded, but all night sentinels were loaned at least that much so that they could best respond to any single sudden danger.


The lithe form that I knew her to have was positively covered in folds and furs, to the point that anyone who didn’t know her might have assumed that she was fat. But, given that she needed to guard the backways into these areas for a long stretch of the night on her own, this was the bare minimum she could be dressed in. The clothing didn’t even need to be hers; her crew needed to make sure she was alive enough to perform this task.


“C-c-could y-y-you,” I wasn’t so blessed, so a chittered with the bone-deep cold that had sunk into all the tunics that I could wear, “Y-y-you do me a f-f-favor?”


“I suppose?” she gave me a one over and winced at my state, “I can get you into a tent, at the very least.”


“I-I-I n-n-need to s-s-see soooomeone,” I said.


“Talia?” she asked.


“H-her grandmother,” I shook my head.


“O-older Talia.”