The morning had crept up on the world on it's usual cat-silent paws, tip toeing over the horizon after walking in paints of amber, rose, and lavender hues. Nature spread the paintbrush dawn and smeared the pastel palette into the coming day, sneaking through the bedchamber window and going unnoticed by the prone figure in the bed. Darkness fled the oncoming dawn in a slow retreat, fingers of grey stretching through the diaphanous curtains drawn over the wide panels of glass that revealed motes of dust meandering along on a lazy agenda. Satin whispered, teasing the dawn with the hush and gasp of drawn breath as the room's sole occupant twisted in the confines of silvery cloth caressing silken skin.
Silk murmured against satin, tuned by a soft sigh as the morning gently tapped at a sleeping mind, entreating it to enjoy the glory of nature's splendor. Silvery satin gave way to the struggling of consciousness soon as the occupant rolled on the feather mattress cradling sinuous flesh tenderly and pulled away to reveal the sharp contrast of color. A bare arm hung limp from the side, willowy limb nearly scraping the knuckles of sculpted fingers over the pristine white of the marble floor. Wiry muscles corded the sculpted arm to form the delicate curve of a shoulder ending in the sharp turn of the bone underneath flesh and gave way into the valley of a slim spine, arching low until the sheets obscured the eye, but not the curves. The skin was painted like midnight silk, pitch lining the twists and turns of living flesh that stood out blankly against the shimmering cloth that seemed to outline the plump curves she was blessed with from behind down toned legs that had managed to sneak the curled fold of her knee out from underneath the sheet.
At the crest of ebony flesh was a crown of luxurious waves that nearly matched the bedclothes in the color of glistening, new fallen snow. Blackened ears pinned back the wisps of curls as they came to sharpened points, just like the rest of her features. Elvish cheekbones were set high, brows a thin line of silver-white in a sea of darkness over dusky lashes that fluttered against her dark cheeks like smokey butterfly wings in a breeze. A thin silver chain wound around the slender throat of the dark sleeping beauty, the rest obscured by her position. Plush lips parted, their hue as dark as the rest of her with the slightest violet tint, a flash of pink slithering out to moisten their dried surface. The dark elf, Sherridan, was the picture of sensual serenity in repose, with her pristine hair spread in wild disarray over the down pillow as if winter had come to her bedroom while spring danced merrily outside her window. The oaken headboard loomed over her head darkly, spreading over the wide span of bed that she called her own for the time being, and framed her with carved nymphs and satyrs, vines of wine grapes and leaves so detailed they seemed taken from life and impressed upon the wood.
The furniture in the rest of the room was much the same, ornately carved oaken desk, set in meticulous order. Quill pen and inkwell, parchments, and a black tome with etched silver runes, were positioned neatly there. On a rack nearby hung a pressed robe that could have been a cardinal's. Indeed, it was a priest's robe with the high necked collar and severe cut of long sleeves ending in the low sweep of a skirt, but it was devoid of color except for the purest black. At the skirted feet of the priestly robes, a beltpouch was neatly folded, it's contents organized inside and well hidden from the prying eye. Whereas this rack held only attire, the next rack held weaponry, displaying the finely crafted steel of a shortsword made by Elven hands. Its etched metal swirled from tip to hilt, and the edge honed razor sharp. Hanging from a peg underneath was the wound length of leather, scaled from end to tip where it finished off in a set of deadly barbs that hummed with their own energy, a hunger for fresh blood. On the next peg beside it was another wound length, this one of deceptively slim chain links and rods that had a hum of their own, thriving on battle.
For a creature bred underneath the world, this was odd surroundings to be found in. However, much of her recent life was far from the normal lives of her kindred beneath the earth. Blanketed in velvety darkness, the world of the dark elves was filled with intrigue, espionage, and murder. The constantly shifting balance of power roiled like a tidal wave flows just underneath the surface of the ocean until it crests upon the beach with all it's destructive glory. A society bent on absolute chaos led the hand of anarchy in slim hands, where the red glimmer of eyes knew no shadows and the methodical plotting for conquest knew no ends. From birth, every dark Elven child was drilled to hate the surface world, the bane of the sun burning into their sensitive eyes and the rest of cultured civilization never understanding the power and glory that was in their home of eternal night. Hate was reviled with hate, tempered by violence with the utmost control to find the most efficient means to the end, to power. In the dark of the world, where the sky was jagged stone, one house over threw the higher one for social status, or failed and was completely obliterated.
One such an occurrence set the cogs in motion for a unique life of servitude to the cloth hanging like a dark figure, dormant and waiting for her to awake. In a failed raid, her lesser house was washed with the blood of nobles so that no witnesses could petition for retribution. Plundered, then burned, the house fell to the might of progress and the law of the Beast, the weak shall always fail. Were it not for a single nursemaid fleeing the carnage while the bloodlust of the soldiers was tempered by rebuttal, Sherridan would have met such a grisly fate. It seemed Chaos had other things in mind for her.
Her first memories were of the lodge, a dark castle in a niche of the city that was rarely visited by anyone else, no wayward traffic passed its doors that were knit with bone with intricate, almost loving, care. More like it scrambled up the parapets, melding with stone to create morbid works of art with practical applications. These light fixtures holding globes of faery fire cast an eerie blue glow dagger edged fence of bone encasing the grounds, house and graveyard all. Here is where the dead were brought, no matter what causes and no questions ever asked. There was no better way to dispose of an unseemly corpse than to give it to the Necromancers and the Necropriests alike. Surrounded in tomes of pressed flesh and bound in artistically crafted bone, she read the pages scrawled with the fluid Elvish script in blood ink. The secret realm of spirits opened up underneath her fingertips, hungry for the untold knowledge of ages for there was no better bastion than the mind of the finest long since left their mortal coil. She studied tactics with the finest generals, those who died in their sleep and those who died in their glory ... philosophers who had nothing better to do than to churn their spectral thoughts and refine their theories, music and math, science and sorcery. Last of all, she learned the fine art of torture, from long dead practitioners and recipients both, revelling in the creativity and purity of pain.
Yet, Sherridan's life would be drastically changed a bare century and a half into her service and research, when she was whisked away from her home to save another. A most ragtag band of vagrants from other worlds joined her in this quest, stolen from their lives for the need of the this one. Outfitted with weaponry and augmenting their armor, the band were called The Chosen, and sent off to obliterate the scourge of the land with their own meager talents. None of them knew where she came from, and she knew none of their homes either. They were not bound by the compunctions of racial hatred or society disdain. They accepted her easily, giving her free reign to use her talents with the spectral world and the more corporeal one. This is how she met Michael, servant of the wind and rain, of fire and earth. His emerald eyes pierced her wholly, cutting straight through every boundary she'd ever erected as easily as a blade would through silk. How she tormented him by carving the trees, burning leaves with her command of fire and he always retaliated with his bladed tongue, scathing comments that hurt more than she dared admit. The most reluctant heroine bucked and fought at every chance, but when the opportunity for salvation came in the form of an invitation to the Dark, she fondled the knob but did not open the door.
Daylight caressed Sherridan's possessions until they were in the full, rich golden glow of the morning and she sighed, twisting again in her bed trappings until it had revealed more of her slim, ebony legs. Not unlike her surface kindred, her limbs were built long and slender with delicate bone structure and inherent grace, but the comparison ends there. While her racial cousins were willowy nymphs of the woods, slender and athletic, the dark elf was graced with voluptuous curves for a more carnal society. Churning the sheets with some unknown dream, she rolled again to her back, and the plump mounds of femininity bounced gently with the motion of her body, the rest bared by her tossing and turning. Fingers splayed over the flat span of her belly, silken ebony skin concealing the work hardened ridge of muscle underneath. Lips parted again, sucking in a gasp that gave her dark breasts a bounce, crested with hardened nodules of pitch as her hand slid over the pliant flesh to invoke a shiver. Broader hips led to sculpted thighs, parted in anticipation for the slow progression of her hand, as her heels drew back on the mattress for purchase. Those hips tilted, daylight now glistening on the thin sheen of sweat that coated her dark form, slim fingers sliding over the slicked surface to find the hairless folds of her cleft, drawing another pitched little sigh.
Those slender digits parted her netherlips to find the delicate jewel of her sensitivity, strumming the nub slowly with dream sent hands that she envisioned belonged to another. Sherridan's mind filled in with the strong, calloused hands plunging into the dewy recesses to make her body sing with appreciation. He smelled of earth and leather, sweat and sunshine, everything she was told to hate but exhilarated so very much. Her dreams supplied his rich mouth closing over her gasping one, swallowing her cries in a torrid kiss while his freed hand claimed one ripe globe, rolling the turgid nipple between his rough thumb and forefinger. It was her own hand that seized her breast, hot under her sensitive palm, and pinched the dark crest to simulate the dream's hold on her. Hungry kisses bruised her lips, angled to spear her mouth with the heady flavor of his tongue where she parried with her own, swirling and stroking in their own lover's dance. His throat vibrated with a low growl, coarse and primal as the beast flowed in his veins, spurring his need on as she answered with her own throaty purr. Passion burned her like dry kindling, licking her flesh with delicious flames that raged with her pounding pulse and her spine bowed off the bed to push her insistently close.
