To Live and Uplift Underground Ch.2


The caverns of the Dark Elf underworld were porous in a way that no cavern system on Earth was. Or could be, for that matter.


I wasn’t sure if our “great” underground city lied anywhere near a fault line, for all that any Drow would know what that was, but I did know that it lay in a mountain range. The older members of the gang even knew what the overworlders called it; the Mourndawn Mountains. It helped explain our situation, because we dwelt among a whole lot of rocky crust.


Why the city was founded in a mountain range, I didn’t know nor did anyone I could ask. But I could gander a good guess.


The deity that my people happen to worship was a demonic one.


One who reigned over earthquakes.


It might seem ironic, given we were particularly affected by them, but I always figured that the Drow religion was an attempt at adapting to the challenges of earthquakes. That it was merely a means to even have a society with all the unyielding horror of a constantly changing environment. But that would have never been enough for me to call this deity a “Demonic one”.


Because I didn’t know any better.


But, on my defence, it made sense:


Whatever could be said about the City, and many things could, it was an artifact of either remarkable engineering or marvelous magic. The earthquakes, after all, never seem to damage, or even affect anything in it. However, the same could not be said of its surroundings.


Or the ground directly underneath it.


The cavern that the city sat in wasn’t manually hallowed out. Rather, every earthquake that happened sank the city a few inches down. Sometimes it was more, sometimes it was less. But always a little. Because this changed the cavern's dimensions relative to the dome above the city, if the bottom of the cavern wasn’t “widened” to match the constantly expanding dimensions, the whole thing would have collapsed long ago.


Indeed, this was how the City “naturally” expanded; through a natural disaster, a few inches at a time.


Living on the outskirts meant not being protected by whatever artifice the City possessed, but it did mean still having to deal with it.


The many tunnels underground, the ones the gangs habitually used and fought over, were rarely dug by the Drow themselves. The fauna and the flora were significantly more prominent.


There were countless kinds of fungus life down here. Even of the sort that could walk, that could move, and, yes, defend itself.


Grooves of all types of mushrooms would dig down on the rock and suck up minerals and nutrients. Eventually, inevitably, either predators, circumstances, or maybe decisions, would see them move on, leaving tunnels big enough to walk through.


The Earthquakes? They kept the underground from getting too porous. Too unstable.


They knocked down all the tunnels whose structures could not stand on their own, and all caverns that were unsound. It left only those tunnels and holes that could truly be trusted. That could be depended upon.


The earthquakes, every so often, left more and more of those.


It made sense to me that Drow would worship the earthquakes then. That they would give it a personification that was as cruel as it was capricious. But I did not understand.


I knew magic existed here, and I knew that things were not the same as my first life.


But I still assumed that the Drow were merely playing a superstitious good guess.


But it was me who had a good secular one.


I was blissfully unaware…


But I suppose it doesn’t matter.


That me of that day still needed to go outside the safety of my gang cavern, to seek out some good rock.


A proper sort of stone.


It was normal for the womenfolk of a gang to leave our “home” spots and do whatever is it that they did. Times of immigration were the most dangerous, as were times of active “war” between the gangs. But there was a whole lot of time between those two where gangs and families waited, healed their wounds, and…grew.


Finding my cousin here out with some of her friends, also our cousins, was only to be expected since she had not been back at our cavern.  So I suppose I should have been prepared.


But I wasn’t.


The crazy thing is that, despite the singular fear that I had for my cousin at that moment, despite the way my heart was trying to claw its way out of my chest, Jarna’t was still…someone quite close to me.


I connected more to my cousin than I ever did to my own mother in my old life. Hell, I connected more with my spineless male cousins than I ever did with any member of my family on either side of my old one.


But given the chance, my natural inclination was to run away, so I breathed in relief when my cousin and the girls she had started to collect around her passed by without noticing me. And so, I carried on through the tunnels.


I needed a stone, yes, but not just any stone. Being that I was in a tunnel, I was surrounded by the stuff. But I didn’t have any tools to really work it and I was a male besides. I was too weak to break off a piece from one of the many walls, at least not to the shape and size I needed. Those freely available were far too tough for me to work with any certainty.


Because I wasn’t sure about what I was doing.


Eventually, in a tunnel far away, I found a rock half the size of my head. It wasn’t readily porous, it was somewhat lighter than the other rocks like it that I had tried, and, upon striking it from an angle, it readily flaked off.


It wasn’t perfect; it was actually a bit too heavy, but I decided that it was as close to what I needed as I would get.


And so, absconding off to a hidden cavern in that tunnel, I took a heavier but smaller rock in hand and sat down.


And then…I just started to chip away at the bigger one.


I used chemistry to escape from my parental family and metallurgy to escape from my wedded life, but I had always found a certain fascination with working with my hands. Stone knapping wasn’t a thing that I tried for very long, but it WAS a thing I tried.


And that memory had recently come to mind even when the face of my old mother no longer did.


I don’t know for how long I worked, but I steadily made loud clicks in that hidden enclosure for hours as I reduced the stone I had found more and more. It was limestone, I think, but at the time I had no way of making sure. Either way, I broke the rock piece by piece until it was a leaf about twice as big as my hand.


But by the time I had made it a flat leaf, cold had started to truly seep in.


Either I was closer to a grove of Blind Mushrooms than I had any right to be, or it was getting closer to evening than I thought. Either way, I would have to hurry up.


By the time I was losing feeling in my fingers and my toes started going numb, I had reached a point that I wasn’t utterly ashamed of, so I started traveling towards my home.


Clean water was a bit hard to come by sometimes, but if your ears were sharp, you could find little spots where little streams would fall through cracks in the stone and seep underground. I didn’t immediately enter my home tunnel, but the area around me was still warm enough that I felt safe in wetting my flat leaf-shaped stone.


It allowed me to grind it upon the smooth stone around the water spout, making the sharp edge along my stone be consistent throughout it.


But night waits for no one and its chilling touch started brushing against me soon enough.


It still wasn’t perfect, but it was as perfect as I was going to get it, I suppose. And I still needed to do many things. All to make something that was almost certainly useless.


Drow gangs are funny things, you know, because, yes, they  do indeed work like what you think of as a “gang”. But I honestly think a better term for them would be “clan” as they are composed of blood relations for the most part. We just couldn’t call ourselves that because a “Clan” was something a well-to-do family that lived in a city had, not a pauper family out on the outskirts. So my gang was in a very literal sense also my family. 


They were, and have no doubt about this, worse than my two original families ever were. They had the same dramas and problems that my old ones had while adding a whole spectrum of horror to it. Yet for all that, I found myself drawn to them in a way that I didn’t to my old ones.


With no way to escape, with no way to run, I had to learn to deal with them and come to terms with it all. With no way to shut them out, I couldn’t help but be intimately aware of their cruelties and pettiness. But also? Of their suffering and plight. Not even the worst among them wasn’t pitiable, I suppose, because what were we if not the waste of the drow?


My favorite cousin was a budding rapist, yet I could not bring myself to dislike her. My male cousins were pathetic, but they held on to every hope and good news like the young men they were. The elders of my family were all flint-gazed women who still clothed and fed us and for no other reason than that we were part of the gang. 


Part of the family.


I was horrified by the invasion I had just participated in. Enough to feel compelled to do something.


But never against them.


There is a term for the acclimation I was going through. Stockholm syndrome, I think? But I am more…content with these people that call me “cousin” and “nephew” than I ever was with those that called me “son”, “husband” and “daddy” in my old life. I could not hate my new family.


Not when I could put myself in their shoes. Not when they hurt the same way I did. Perhaps that was the lesson? “Family is suffering and that’s ok?”


I don’t know, but by the same token, I didn’t want to repeat who I was in my first life. That life came to no good end.


I found one of the spots the gang trappers like to use, just outside of the main claimed tunnel. Many animals and creatures called the underground their home, and the humble cave rat was practically a keystone species. Practically everything ate them, and we outskirt Drow were no different.


And so it was, there was a very furry rat trying to escape from one of the rope traps.  


“Sorry about this, buddy,” I told the rodent, who trashed even more as it saw me coming near it. The standard practice was to beat it to death with a stick when you were going to harvest it, but I only had a sharp leaf-shaped stone blade in my hands. 


A few stabs at its neck and its trashing suddenly turned cathartic.


I started cutting then.


Stealing from the trapper was serious business, but I could hopefully avoid punishment by doing this right. Even as the rat bled into the ground, I ran my stone blade through its fur, caking my fingers in blood but slowly pulling its skin off its frame. The paw fur I didn’t take, but I didn’t butcher its pelt too badly as the rat was left with only its musculature.


After that was what I wanted.


I carefully peeled as much of its ligaments and tendons as I could, cutting muscle only when I couldn’t avoid it. I went for the big ones first, like the hamstrings, but I harvested what connective tissue I hadn’t messed up. Thankfully, by the end, I had a small handful of it.


I then lifted the rope trap, rat and all, and tied it around its fur. I put it in a hard-to-reach place and, well, the trapper was supposed to check on her traps before nightfall. If she did her job, she’d find her catch, minus its ligaments and tendons. 


If she didn’t, I would blame a wild animal for snatching it during the night.


Because nightfall was coming fast by that point. I could feel the chill in my bones.


Because that was what night was: a time when our wondrous city sucked ALL the heat out of the underground for miles and used it for their nefarious purposes. The temperature lowered enough to freeze water but also? Enough to be blind.


With little hate radiating out of anything, the vaunted dark vision of the Drow became a bit useless. It was truly dark for us.


Nightfall.


But I had done what I had come out to do. Well, hopefully anyway.


Now I just needed one more thing.


I cleaned the rat ligaments and tendons on my clothes as much as I could before popping them into my mouth. They tasted like copper and had a gamey aftertaste but I wasn’t eating them. I was just chewing them.


But as much as I wanted to get all of this done where I was, I couldn’t.


I finally went back.


The entrance to my home was blocked by a large number of fur curtains, but they were overseen by hidden watchwomen. Had I not been who I was, I would have been killed before I could even see it. As it was, seeing movement from my peripheral vision raised the hackles of my neck.


But I would lie if I said that I didn’t sigh with relief upon entering my home.


For outskirt Drow, home was a changing thing. Sometimes, we needed to move from tunnel to tunnel as we depleted game, water and edible mushrooms this far out from our city. Sometimes, an earthquake would happen and we would need to move to a more structurally sound tunnel. Sometimes a “war” happened and we would need to move out of our tunnel.


Ideally, we would pilfer all our needs from raids on other gangs or, some of us dared dream, on the merchants arriving in the city from the well-known routes. More realistically, we would be scavenging most of our goods and food from the waste that constantly came out of the City. Either way, the woman who organized our immigration throughout our territory and selected which tunnels we would set in was probably third in power and responsibility in our gang. 


She didn’t select our destinations, merely our routes, and so we were where we were for very deliberate reasons.


Because, unlike the outside, it was warm here.


Dozens of bodies walked, talked, played, fought and just plainly lived in this closed-off area. All the ways to these few tunnels had been sealed and were tightly guarded by a procession of women through the night. With these many Drow living together, a pleasant amount of heat could be formed. Furs, fungus fiber tapestries and the odd fabrics that had made their way from the city to us were applied to many different caverns and so created a ready warm air bubble.


This way, neither the city nor mushroom grove could steal all the heat from our home.


I happily took my many layers of clothing off and set them over my shoulder as I stripped down to a single tunic.


I would have gone with only a loincloth like the females would, but the elders were very strict on that kind of thing for men; They did not want any of our girls to be unfairly tempted.


And maybe you’ll laugh at that, but I had seen boys get their clothes stolen and made to go back to their sleeping posts as pranks. Sometimes, that was how a lot of them lost their virginities. “Unfair temptation” indeed.


I was still chewing on my mouthful of tendons and ligaments, trying not to throw up as I reached the sleeping spot that I shared with my cousins. Being blooded, perhaps Jarna’t would now leave me, us, as she became a warrior of the gang.  For her, that meant more food, lodgings with fewer roommates, and a more secure way to store their things. 


But for now? I could reach into her bag and pull out one of her clubbing sticks.


Plants didn’t grow underground for the most part, and wood from overground was an expensive luxury that was hard to transport into the city. So it was that for those like me, the only alternative that we really had was to find the right kind of mushroom and cut it up so that it would dry up into “wood” over a few weeks.


Moisture was something any fungus liked to gobble up, so there were spots between groves where we could lay dead pieces of fungus and let the live ones suck all the water out of the dead ones through the air. We just had to be careful that they didn’t get their roots into the stone, too. The result was, depending on the fungus, fibrous pieces of matter that could be carved, cut down or used to build things.


Again, very much like wood.


And Jarna’t? She’d managed to collect a menagerie of striking clubs. The one I grabbed was one we had looted on the raid, but was not, thankfully, a trophy from one of her victims. I don’t think she’d ever forgive me if I took something like that.


But this? Well, I was still her best friend, and that had to count for something. But I NEEDED the stick.


Eyes watched me pilfer the thing and my male cousins watched me leave our sleeping spot. They would run straight to Jarna’t and tell her everything, I knew, but still I carried on as I finally had everything that I needed to work.


I found a quiet hole in the wall, one that none of my cousins would look into, and finally spat the rat connective tissue out.


It was soft by this point in time. Soft and pliable and full of my saliva as I splattered on the ground. I smacked my lips a bit as I tried to get the taste out of my mouth. I remember wanting to get a drink of water, but more than that, I wanted to finish my useless task.


I made grooves at one end of the fungus wood. I cut deep with my stone leaf, and made depressions that would not bend. I measured just with my eyes, looking at my stone leaf and, just in case, decided to widen the grooves I had made at the start.


And then, I wedged it into a single groove that split the end of the fungus stick. 


Glue would have been ideal here, but I didn’t have access to any. No, what I had access to was connective tissue and clothing.


So, taking said collective tissue, which I was pretty sure I could not make softer, I started tying the stone blade with the ligaments. I used the tendons to loop into the grooves in the side of the stick, and tied them up when they came to their end. I used every single one that I had and pulled it tight against the stone and the fungus wood.


And then, when I had run out of connective tissue, I used the stone blade to rip parts of my outgoing tunic to make large strips of clothing.


I wouldn’t be able to easily get another, I knew, but we weren’t moving out of this area any time soon, and that made the risk worth it.


I tied long strips around the shaft of the “wood” where the stone blade was wedged into the stick. I secured it many times with many knots until I was sure that the split end would not easily separate.


All I had to do was let the tendons and ligaments dry, and they would tighten some more all on their own. This SHOULD provide a secure fit but, without glue, I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.


I still had some leftover strips after that. I had been overzealous in collecting them as a resource. So I used them all to wrap up the other end of the stick, making a more comfortable handle.


I looked at my creation, at the stone knife at the end of this club-length stick and…kind of palmed my forehead.


It didn’t look right.


It was not long enough to be a spear. And it was not short enough to be a knife. But it had a pointy end, and the stone WAS sharp, so that was alright, right?


Right?


It was useless.


But then, I had known it would be. Even if I had made a stone knife or an actual stone spear, what would this even do?


The Drow had steel foundries and got trade from all over the underground. They had mages, sorcerers, and priestesses who could bend reality. The least member of the noble houses had enchanted weapons and armor and, in the city, there was no shortage of clever contraptions. The city was never short of tools of death. Even slaves could, and were, outfitted like an overworlder’s dream levy.


Sometimes, very rarely, very luckily, such things even reached out here. Sometimes, we would scavenge a noble battlefield and find things that might make a gang reign over its neighbors.


Because while we eternally aspired to be bandits, we were in the end scavengers.


That is why, despite it being useless, I had gone through all the trouble to make this thing.


Because I had overheard one of my other aunts talk about this after my raid: She was complaining that she couldn’t equip all her girls.


My mother had set her to skirmishing against a smaller gang. Not normally a hard task, but the gang had been growing so much that our success was outstripping our ability to arm ourselves. If a male died in one of these, well, that was just life, but every single female warrior dead was a blow to the gang. She was an investment that took time and resources to recoup.


But that was just what Aunt Kan’a was going to have to face.


I didn’t know her very well. My impression of her was that she was a humorless woman with an authoritative bent. She would have been a miserable doughy old woman had she been a human. But as it was? She was a dark-skinned elf of indeterminable age with sharp features and a perpetual frown on her face. She was objectively pretty, but it was hard to enjoy the view when staring too long could be seen as a sign of disrespect.


I truthfully couldn’t say that I liked her. Nor did I have much reason to do anything for her.


But she had been fettered enough that she complained about her task loud enough for me to hear it. Which meant that she thought that she was in deep shit.


That she was in trouble.


That she was….over her head.


Like me.


We were scavengers and so used up every single thing that we could. So if my aunt was complaining about not having stuff? It really did mean she had jack shit.


Yet was a goddamned stone knife-club any better?


I didn’t know. 


The only thing was, my heart was full to overflowing with the need to do SOMETHING.


I might have pissed off a few people by doing this, not least my cousin, who could say she had a claim on me, but it didn’t matter. And yes, I was being stupid. The best thing for a Drow male to do was whatever he had been told to. It was the safest too. Males who made waves never did it for a good reason.


But still, primitive weapon in hand, I went to see my aunt.


Aunt Kan’a was in a little cavern separated from the rest of the home tunnels by a curtain of furs and blankets. This was what a “room” was to the gang, and only women of a certain position got to enjoy one all on their lonesome.


As a male, you really didn’t want to call attention to yourself, though, even if these women had children, so logically it couldn’t always be bad, right?


They had to interact with the “gentler” gender of the Drow species at some point, right?


This couldn’t be a mistake on my part.


Because if it was? Well, if it was…then what?


I…I didn’t want to keep running.


I was so, so tired of running.


I wanted to do something, anything, without shutting myself out.


I swallowed my throat and called out, “Aunt Kan’a?”


It was only a few moments before a voice called back, “Just get in here.”


Oh good, she was home. I parted the curtain and came into a room practically blinding with the heat radiating off the walls.


Aunt Kan’a was a dark skinned drow of about 5 feet and 9 inches, two more than I was. She had broad, defined shoulders that didn’t look manly, not when she had a rack to match hanging off her chest. She had a length of clothing binding her tits together, but other than that? She had a loincloth on.


She was sitting down, going over papers atop a table, her ass pressing against the ground. 


She was old, ancient even by human standards, but she did not look like one bit of it as she faced me. Except…the room. It smelled of her.


It was a musk that was soil-y, somehow implying age. No elf sweated much or was very smelly, but we outskirt Drow lived in confined spaces for much of our lives. We were hygienic and took what baths we could, but we lived close together and our homes were hot-spaced by necessity.


Aunt Kan’a smelled ancient. Yet her eyes, the swell of her hips and the shape of her big boobs gave that a decidedly sexual edge.


Ancient? Yes. But fertile.


“One of Ariet’s, right?” Kan’a guessed and I weakly nodded, “I won’t waste both our times by asking your name, so I hope you have a good reason to bother me.”


“And before you say anything,” the old elf shushed me up before I could even talk, “I am not in the mood to resolve whatever male quarrel you might have. So I hope, for your sake, that you are here with a message.”


“Otherwise, you'd best turn around,” she made a circle with her finger, “And get out of my sight.”


I probably should have done as she said and taken the opportunity she had given me. As a male, the ability that she had to make my life a living hell could not be overstated. Aunt or not, the pecking order was enforced. Yet if I had, all that I had done would have been for nothing.


Better that I finished this and got punished for it.


So, instead of answering, I pulled up the knife-club that I had in my hand and presented it to her.


Aunt Kan’a looked at the thing, her eyebrows furrowing as she inspected it.


“Where did you find this thing?” she asked me as she reached out and took hold of it.


“I overheard you say you didn’t have enough to arm our sisters,” I replied even as she inspected the stone blade. Her forefinger pressed against the edge of it, but not enough to draw blood. She pushed against the leaf-shaped blade and found it secured in its place. She grabbed hold of the handle and gave it a few swings.


It was crap and that didn’t need to be said. It was a stone weapon when the worst in a society that could still get access to rusty iron weapons, “And that mom was pressuring you to go on a raid regardless. I guess, I felt like I had to get that for you.”


Aunt Kan’a looked between the improperly long stone weapon and me before she sighed.


Then she put the weapon down.


And reached for my tunic.


“M-ma’am?” I asked as I took a step back, but her hand was on my shoulder, grounding me on the spot.


“It’s trash,” my aunt confirmed as her hands fished around my crotch and found my cock, “But something is better than nothing.”


“And it would be bad form to not reward one of my males,” she grunted as she pulled my cock out of my tunic and ran her hands through it.


“O-one of your males?” I gasped as her thumb and forefinger found my glans and squeezed the neck behind it.


“A good little male that doesn’t need to be ordered to be useful? Yes, you’ll certainly make a fine addition to my band,” the authoritative woman nodded as if it were already a done thing, 


“I-I am already Jarne’t’s carrier!” I moaned as my cock flushed with blood and started extending.


“The eager little shit?” Kan’a asked, stopping her fellation for a moment as she thought about it, “Did you steal this from her?”


Her voice was threatening and accusative, but there was a vindictive smile on her face.


“No!” I gasped as her grip got tighter, and my cock extended to its full length.


“Oh, you’ll certainly get punished for this,” she laughed as her hand went down my cock before she stopped for a moment to stare at it, “Uh, but with a cock this big, I suppose not for too long.”


“Ah, whatever,” she shrugged as she started giving me broad strokes the smashed her palm into the base of my cock and almost pulled her hand off past the edge of my mushroom head, “You're mine now.”


My toes were curling and and her pumps were getting faster. My breath was hitched and my fists were clenching.


The pressure in my crotch built up to a crescendo and I moaned out loud as my seed splurted out into the ground.


“That’s it,” Aunt Kan’a encouraged me, “This is what happens when you know your place and make those above you happy.”


“This is what happens when you make me happy,” the old drow smiled in a very satisfied way as my orgasm ended.


My seed had dirtied her floor, and her hand was completely glazed. She was already making to grab a piece of cloth to clean herself off, even as I felt a bit woozy.


It was my first sexual experience in this life. It had happened with one my old aunts.


An aunt who took it for granted that I would work for her now.


“If you find any more of this, bring them to me,” she ordered as she cleaned her hand.


“Oh, I didn’t find it,” I shook my head to clear away the tiredness that descended upon me.


‘Yes, yes, you stole it,” my aunt said with what she thought was great patience.


‘I made it,” I clarified and my aunt stopped.


“You…made this?” she asked, pointing at the primitive weapon.


For the first time in this life, someone actually believed me.


“The wood I did steal from Jarna’t,” I allowed, not being able to help the shame bleeding through my words, “But the rest? I made myself. The stone blade, the handle and the binding.”


“Reeeally?” she said, a curious look coming over to her face. She stopped cleaning her hand and brought it before her face, seeming to study my seed even as her eyes darted towards me, ‘And who taught you this?”


“No one,” I replied, “Or, well, this is my first try.”


Kan’a laughed and, to my mild disbelief, opened her mouth as her tongue darted for her glazed hand. It scooped up and slurped all the rest of the seed from it into her maw.


“What a useful male indeed,” she hummed even as my dick started to awake again, “My sweet nephew, make more weapons like this.”


“I promise you that I’ll make you VERY happy,” she told him with look that sent shivers down his spine.


And then she pushed out of her room.


I knew that favored males were treated like pets. I knew that falling out of favor after having gotten in it was like having a limb chopped off. I knew that sex of this kind was basically a tool of manipulation and if not an outright reason to molest me.


But I didn’t care.


I was, at that moment, intoxicated.


I didn’t like aunt Kan’a. I couldn’t even say that I was that attracted to her.


But the authority that she had over me, and the sweet promises that she laid on the ground like breadcrumbs, flipped a switch in me.


She was a powerful woman who had power over me. And, instead of tearing down what I had built up, instead of rejecting me for flaws that I was well aware I had and for some that only existed in her head, she had rewarded me.


I knew it was manipulative and I knew what this was. 


But I had built a literal caveman weapon and had been rewarded for it.


And I could make so much, much better than that.