Reaching the Light

For years legends had been told of the surface that we monsters had been driven away from, of blue skies that stretched as far as the eye could see, and of fields filled with food. Most of the people who lived down in the tunnels considered the surface a myth, they thought that even if it existed there was no way it would be what the legends spoke of, that was impossible, they said.

Maybe I was just stupid or naive but I was going to go there. I would find the surface and prove just how wrong all of those idiotic adults really were.

It was trouble at first, I had to work my way through the ranks of the guild. Traveling out into the tunnels to hunt down whatever dangers lurked there in order to maintain the safety of the village, it was tough work but I would need to be a good fighter if I wanted to make it all the way to the surface so I threw myself into my work and quickly rose through my training becoming a full member of the guild in just under a year. The battles that I fought as a member of the guild were dangerous and brutal, there were many who fought alongside me that I was forced to bury and many more who I didn’t get the chance to bury. They would all be remembered but this was something that I had to do and all of them had helped to give me the skills I would need in order to make that a reality.

After that I had the respect of the guild now I needed to build up the store of money I would need to purchase supplies for the trip, that took me another year and by that time I had wrangled approval from the guilds master to take on this very dangerous quest. With all of that wrangled the last thing that I would need in order to take on this journey was a companion, and preferably one with more experience exploring the caves than I had but that took care of itself. Towards the end of my time taking jobs and building up my store of cash for my journey I was sent out on a quest to wipe a small colony of illithids before they could spread any more than they already had. Accompanying me on this very dangerous mission was a person draped in a black cloak with some sort of metallic mask under his hood and a large gnarled wooden staff which was odd because wood was very rare down here so using it for something like a staff would normally be pretty wasteful. As we walked through the tunnels I held the torch but he looked ahead as if he could see far beyond the meager section of tunnel that the torch lit but he said nothing, we walked in silence for an hour or so before approaching the small cavern where we told the illithid hive was.

He raised his left hand and motioned for me to go in front as I pulled my spear off my back and lowered it in front of me I slowly began to make my way inside of the cave. As we approached one of the dentures I launched my spear forward and drove it right through its brain before it could react but I then I heard a deep growling voice speak “Idiot, now they all know were here.” I turned and looked back to my companion but nothing about him had changed however he was now advancing past me with his staff raised into the air, he then spoke in that same voice but nothing about his face seemed to move to create words. “Adolebitque in gehénnam tactus,” he shouted as a humongous fireball shot forth from his staff decimating a large portion of the cavern, however as he lowered his staff an illithid made even uglier by having half of its tentacle life beard and skin singed off by the fire charged him with a club managing to hit him in the chin sending his helmet flying and knocking his hood off of his revealing what he really looked like and it was quite the sight to behold. He had skin that resembled that of an ithilid but other than he had a normal human head which made his skin almost look like a mask being pulled around a skull that it did not quite fit. He however did not react well to being demasked, he leapt to his feet and grabbed his attacker by the face lifting him into the area before a blast of fiery energy emerged from his palm and melted his attackers head. “I would rather not have to kill you too young one.” As I looked up at him in fear I slowly began to back away from him as I leveled my weapon towards him “What the hell are you?” He sighed and his shoulders fell as he looked over at me “I am a human born of an illithid, I was cast out of this hive and thus I joined the monster who fled the surface and became one of you,” he said as he kneeled down and picked his mask up on the ground before replacing it on his head before raising his hood once more “Let us head home, this hive is finished.”

With that the two of us began our partnership as warriors, he would be the one who would travel with me to the surface. Over the few months that we worked together before we set out, I found that his mother was a prostitute who had fled into the deep in order to escape the human society of the surface, he told the stories his mother had told of a world that hunted all those who were different. Of a surface where those called Butchers hunted all of those monsters who dared to come out from the depths of the tunnels. He knew what we would face when we made it to the surface. With him at my side I now knew I would have to fight and push back the Butchers if we were ever going to establish a colony for monster on the surface of the world. I knew the challenge that stood on the surface waiting for me, and that was if we would even be able to make our way there. It was a perilous trek and my adventurers had perished in the tunnels cold and alone trying to make it but this was my destiny I would do it. I would free us from the dark.

A year after we had first met the two of us set out from the village heading deep into the tunnels in search of a path that would lead us to the surface. We traveled for months and months, his mind allowed him to help us map the tunnels as we pushed further and further and our supplies dwindled we push closer and closer. And then about a month further on we reached it, we pushed out past a caved in cavern into the beautiful moonlight. But within moments we were surrounded by about a hundred soldiers covered in plate mail wielding long bows with arrows aimed right at the two of us.

I smiled as I raised my spear “Looks like we won’t get a chance to talk,” I said as I launched myself into the air with satyr legs flying far above the archers heads before landing behind one of them and driving my spear into his back. As they spun around to face my new position he began to raise up into the air with his cloak billowing away from his body as he spoke “Ventum deorum effluunt,” with this a powerful blast of wind flew forth from his sleeves managing to knock over a few of the knights. I smirked before leaping into the air once more landing on the shoulders of one the knights momentarily before slamming my spear through his helmet and then jumping away once again. These Butchers thought they were tough but nothing compared to the monsters of the deep. “Currere run curro, non possumus ea ictum!” shouted one of the Butchers as the group began to quickly retreat, it seemed that they had been driven off for now.

Over the next couple of months we would be forced to fight off the Butchers a few more times but eventually there raids seemed to slow as more and more of the villagers from home emerged from the tunnel joining us in our growing village. Over the next year or so we would fight off a number of raids from the Butchers but eventually they died out, realizing that raids against the village were becoming more and more senseless. About a year after we had arrived I was scouting about a five day travel from the village when I encountered an old man carrying a large axe over his shoulder “Grata monstrum illud tale tuum videre rara. Omnium novissima non im impressi habes.” I smirked, in the time since we had reached the surface I had learned the language “Cur nos pater transire videbis.”