>>5423851You gnash you teeth, passing the gesture off as a smile with a small nod. These elves—nearly as haughty and as full of themselves at the Novice, but with only half the charm! Maybe if they hadn’t been so pitiful as to lose their war and get driven underground, they wouldn’t be living like…
Like…
Ah, right. Like you.
You take a breath, calming your automatic reaction of outrage and vitriol. You maybe be a devout follower of the True Faith, but you are no zealot, unable to see the virtue in outsiders or the faults of your own traditions. You can understand the Elf Queen’s skepticism, even if you resent it (and the difficulties thus presented). You are equal to such a challenge—and you’ll prove it!
The Elf Queen watches with interest—not alarm, just interest—as you draw your shoggoth-sword. The descendant-attendant who she permits to observe this affair starts to move towards you, raising his hands and beginning to draw mana up through his body and into his flexing palm, but his Queen-Mother stops him with a look and a slight gesture of the chin; Ivno, who was watching him, returns his dagger to his belt.
The watches as you take a deep breath. Humming quietly to focus upon the feeling which your bard-servant once drew forth, and focusing your Fearsome Presence, you will the shoggoth-sword’s dagger-length to extend…
>17And extend it does! The blade unfolds into a panoply of sharp and jagged edges, eyes sprouting forth across its length and flitting about the room. The Queen of Elves shrinks back, but only slightly, then settles in to regard it curiously.
“You and your people know the ‘shoggoth’, Myrymma?” you ask.
Queen Myrymma fixes you with an expression of mild bemusement, and perhaps slight annoyance.
“You know we do,” she answers. “I know you slew the thing… Or at least, took a portion of it for your own, and drove the rest back into the shadows.”
“I did,” you agree, “and I did it with the help of the Dark Gods Below and Beyond. This is the strength they offer. It is no empty promise.”
“You did this with their strength?” Myrymma asks pointedly. “Or they USED your strength, YOUR strength, and pretended that it was a gift rather than the result of your own struggle? Theral, a god can command or take credit for any task, but what do they really DO?”
