**Shadows and Smoke**
The dispensary's neon sign flickered like a dying star, casting jagged shadows across shelves lined with amber jars. Behind the counter, Marcus Hale—middle-aged, salt-and-pepper stubble, eyes heavy with decades of weariness—rolled a twenty-sided die across a weathered map of the Underdark. His fingers, calloused from trimming buds and packing bowls, lingered on the figurine of Valas Hune, the drow rogue whose obsidian skin and twin scimitars had become his escape. *Another night,* he thought, *another campaign.* The cloying scent of Dragon's Breath Kush clung to the air as he inhaled deeply, the smoke curling into phantoms that danced with the candlelight.
"Valas slips into the sorcerer's sanctum," his dungeon master droned, "silent as the Void."
Marcus leaned back, the chair creaking beneath him. "And I slit his throat before he utters a spell."
The die clattered. A natural twenty.
Then the world *twisted*.
The smoke thickened, coiling into his lungs like serpents. His vision swam, the dispensary melting into shadows, the die transmuting to cold stone beneath his palms. When the haze cleared, he was no longer Marcus Hale.
***
The cell stank of mildew and despair. Iron bars, rusted and grim, bit into the flickering torchlight. His hands—*slim, pale,* ***wrong***—clutched at silken hair the color of moonlit snow. *Valyrian.* The word slithered into his mind, sharp as a blade. He lurched to a cracked bronze mirror nailed to the wall. A boy's face stared back: sharp-featured, violet-eyed, with a cascade of silver hair. *Varys.* The Spider. But not the bald eunuch of history. This body was whole. Unbroken.
And beneath the skin, power thrummed.
*Drow senses.* He could taste the rot in the straw, hear the skitter of rats three cells over. The memories of Valas Hune—centuries of scheming in Menzoberranzan's cruel glow—flooded him. Blade-work. Poisoncraft. The art of waiting. *But Lolth's chains are gone,* he realized, flexing fingers that had once carved sigils into thralls. Now they traced the edge of a black velvet pouch beside him. Inside: a *piwafwi* cloak, twin daggers forged of adamantine, vials of midnight tears. Treasures from a world where magic bled freely.
A rasp of keys. A slaver's leering face. "Up, little ghost. The sorcerer pays well for pretty things."
Valas—*Varys*—smiled. Sweet. Vacant. The mask of a helpless boy. Inside, the drow seethed. *Let them think me meek. Let them think me broken.* The slaver dragged him into sunlight that scalded his sensitive eyes. Lys sprawled beyond, a city of perfumed vice and pale spires. A litter carried him to a manse of pink marble, where a sorcerer with oiled curls and hungry eyes awaited.
"A fine specimen," the man purred, circling Varys like a jackal. "You will drink this. It will… soften the pain."
The potion reeked of nightshade and lies. Varys drank, letting the bitter draught coat his tongue. *Fool.* Drow metabolisms were not so easily subdued. The sorcerer led him to a chamber adorned with glyphs, a knife gleaming on an altar of obsidian.
"Now, my child, we serve powers beyond—"
Varys moved.
A dagger flashed. The sorcerer's throat became a crimson grin. No grand spell. No duel of wills. Only efficiency, honed in a thousand Underdark skirmishes. The man gurgled, collapsing as Varys crouched over him, violet eyes cold as winter stars.
"You mistake me," he whispered, Lolth's cadence in his voice. "I am no vessel for your petty magic. I am the shadow that consumes it."
By dawn, the manse was his. The sorcerer's guards—drunk on fear and Lysene wine—found their new master in the courtyard, clad in a cloak that drank the light, daggers dancing in his hands like shards of night. Bodies fell. Oaths were sworn. And in the highest chamber, Varys sifted through grimoires and gold, the weight of Valas Hune's legacy settling into his bones.
*This world has no magic,* he mused, pocketing a vial of wildfire. *But I do.*
Somewhere, a spider spun its web.
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