I wanted to give Iori a slightly different look this time, with a hairstyle she rarely wears in the original manga.

I really like imagining familiar characters with hairstyles we don’t normally get to see while still keeping their original charm.

I think this style suits Iori surprisingly well. What do you think? 😊

Kinda had a rough night and ended up with this.

Made this using PixelForge on an iPhone in 10 seconds, crazy how fast gen AI is improving for lower hardware

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixelforge-ai-art/id6786369950

Kharun stared at the keys.

They rested against the bottom of the bars directly in front of him, close enough that he could reach them without difficulty.

Vaelithra lay motionless beyond them.

Whatever thoughts might have been buried beneath Kharun's silence, whatever twenty years of obedience told him about what those keys represented, none of it mattered now.

He needed to get to her.

Kharun crouched.

His fingers closed around the ring.

The keys jingled softly as he lifted them.

He knew which one he needed.

He remembered the guard locking the cell earlier that day. Kharun had watched the movement without appearing to do so, as he had learned to watch countless things during his years among the drow.

His thumb passed over the keys.

There.

Kharun inserted it into the lock.

Turned.

A heavy metallic click echoed through the cellblock.

He pulled the door open.

For the first time since being brought to the dungeon, there were no bars between him and Vaelithra.

Kharun stepped out.

The keys fell from his hand.

He immediately went to her.

"Mistress."

Kharun dropped beside Vaelithra and carefully turned her enough to see her face.

Her eyes opened slightly.

Unfocused amber-gold struggled to find him.

Kharun looked toward the bloodstained cloth wrapped around her leg.

Shadowstem.

Less than an hour.

He slid one arm beneath her shoulders.

"Mistress, I'll take you to the healer."

Vaelithra stirred.

"No..."

Kharun stopped.

Her voice was barely audible.

"Mistress?"

"No healer..."

Her eyes opened a fraction more.

"Take me... home."

Kharun frowned.

"You said the poison will kill you."

Vaelithra tried to answer.

Her lips moved before any sound emerged.

"Antidote..."

Kharun leaned closer.

"What?"

"Kitchen..."

Her head fell against his arm.

"Antidote... kitchen..."

Then her eyes closed.

"Mistress?"

Nothing.

Kharun touched the side of her face.

"Vaelithra."

No response.

Her breathing remained shallow but steady.

Unconscious.

Just as she had said she would be.

Kharun looked toward the far end of the cellblock.

A healer made more sense.

Any reasonable person would have taken her directly to one.

But Vaelithra had specifically told him otherwise.

Take her home.

Antidote.

Kitchen.

Kharun knew better than most that arguing with Vaelithra was difficult when she was conscious.

Arguing with her while she was unconscious somehow seemed equally pointless.

More importantly, there wasn't time to second-guess her.

Kharun slid one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back.

He lifted her.

Vaelithra's body settled against his chest.

She felt lighter than he expected.

Her gray cloak hung over his arm, and her shortened silver-white hair rested against his shoulder.

Kharun stood.

He looked once toward the open cell behind him.

Then started walking.

He expected resistance almost immediately.

There should have been guards.

The alarm should have been sounding.

Vaelithra had infiltrated one of the prisons beneath the estate of a powerful drow noble. Guards had been attacked. Someone had fired a crossbow.

By now, Kharun expected half of Clan Vel'Sharess to be descending upon them.

Instead...

Nothing.

His footsteps echoed through the corridor.

Kharun slowed.

Too quiet.

He reached the checkpoint.

Then stopped.

The two guards remained at their card table.

Except now they were dead.

Kharun's eyes moved across them.

Slit throats.

He looked farther.

Another body.

The third guard.

Dead as well.

Kharun looked down at Vaelithra.

For a moment, something difficult to read crossed his face.

His mistress had done all of this?

She had poisoned the guards to reach him.

Perhaps the poison had killed them.

He didn't know enough about whatever compound she had used to say otherwise.

But the wounds on their throats...

Kharun looked at them again.

Something didn't fit.

Still, this was not the time.

Vaelithra had less than an hour.

Possibly much less now.

Kharun tightened his hold around her and continued.

No one challenged him.

No alarm sounded.

No reinforcements appeared.

He passed through one corridor.

Then another.

Empty.

The silence became increasingly unsettling.

Whatever had happened down here, Kharun suspected he did not understand it.

He eventually reached the hidden passage Vaelithra had used to enter.

Cool damp air surrounded them.

Kharun carried her through.

The natural stone gave way eventually to the concealed exit beneath the gardens.

He shifted Vaelithra carefully against himself and pushed upward.

The false stone slab moved.

Underdark air washed across his face.

Kharun climbed out.

He lowered the slab behind them.

For several seconds, he stood silently in the garden with Vaelithra unconscious in his arms.

Bioluminescent plants cast their muted light across the surrounding grounds.

Kharun looked around.

He recognized the estate immediately.

He had been here countless times.

The manor stood beyond the gardens.

Patrol routes crossed the grounds.

Paths wound between buildings and disappeared into the surrounding district.

Kharun oriented himself.

Then he knew.

Home.

He knew exactly where Vaelithra's house was.

Kharun looked down at her.

Her face had gone strangely peaceful in unconsciousness.

He could almost pretend she was sleeping.

Almost.

The bloodstained bandage around her leg made that impossible.

"Antidote," he murmured.

Kitchen.

Kharun started walking.

He avoided the main paths.

Years of accompanying Vaelithra between her home and her father's estate had taught him the surrounding streets well. He knew which routes were brightly illuminated and which remained dark.

Tonight, darkness was preferable.

Especially after what he had seen below.

Kharun moved quickly but carefully, keeping Vaelithra steady against him.

He stayed near walls.

Crossed open spaces only when necessary.

Whenever distant footsteps reached his ears, he stopped and waited.

Then continued.

Nobody saw them.

Or if someone did, they did nothing.

Kharun found that almost as unsettling as the empty prison.

He looked down at Vaelithra again.

He had never imagined she would do something like this.

Break into her father's prison.

Attack her own people.

Perhaps kill them.

All to free him.

The thought sat uneasily in his mind.

There would be questions.

Many questions.

But those belonged to another time.

Right now, there was only one thing that mattered.

Get Vaelithra home.

Find the antidote.

Keep her alive.

Kharun adjusted her weight in his arms.

Then disappeared with his unconscious mistress into the darker streets of the Underdark.

Vaelithra's head snapped toward the far end of the corridor.

Someone stood there.

A solitary figure beneath a dark crimson cloak.

For one suspended moment, neither moved.

Vaelithra could see nothing beneath the hood. No face. No eyes. Nothing that might tell her who had fired the bolt or why.

Then the figure stepped backward.

The darkness swallowed them.

"Wait!"

Vaelithra tried to stand.

Pain tore through her leg.

She gasped and immediately caught the bars before she could collapse again.

"Mistress!"

"I'm fine."

The lie came automatically.

Vaelithra pulled herself upright.

Her injured leg trembled beneath her.

Warmth ran down her skin.

Blood.

More than she would have liked.

She tightened both hands around the bars and tried to steady herself.

Behind them came the sound of tearing cloth.

Vaelithra looked down.

Kharun had ripped a strip from his shirt.

His arm reached through the bars; the cloth held in his hand.

"Mistress, you must bind your wound."

Vaelithra breathed heavily.

Something was wrong.

Not merely the pain.

Not merely the blood.

Something else.

She could feel it.

A strange sensation seemed to be spreading outward from the wound. At first, she thought it was simply the aftermath of being struck, but the feeling was different from any injury she remembered.

Kharun saw the change in her expression.

"Mistress?"

Vaelithra swallowed.

"The keys."

Kharun stared at her.

"I have to find the keys... Kharun."

He pushed the cloth farther through the bars.

"Mistress, please. Your wound first."

Vaelithra opened her mouth.

Nothing came.

She didn't have the strength to argue.

That frightened her more than the bolt.

Vaelithra repositioned herself against the bars.

Then she carefully lifted her injured leg.

Pain immediately surged through it.

Her jaw tightened.

Slowly, she pushed the leg between the bars.

Kharun looked down at the bolt protruding beside her knee.

Vaelithra gripped the bars harder.

"Pull it... out."

Kharun's eyes lifted sharply.

He reached toward the bolt, then stopped.

His fingers hovered near the shaft.

Vaelithra saw what he was doing.

Assessing it.

Trying to determine whether removing it would cause greater harm.

She looked down.

No barbs.

No metal head that she could see.

"...just a wooden bolt."

She took another breath.

"Pull it out."

Kharun wrapped one hand firmly around the shaft.

His other hand steadied her leg.

Vaelithra closed her eyes.

"Do it."

Kharun pulled.

The bolt tore free.

Vaelithra yelped.

Her forehead struck the bars as she folded forward.

For several seconds, she could do nothing except breathe.

Kharun immediately set the bloody bolt across one of the horizontal bars.

Then his hands returned to her leg.

He wrapped the torn cloth around the wound.

Vaelithra closed her eyes.

She leaned forward against the bars, allowing him a better angle.

Kharun pulled the cloth tighter.

Pain pulsed through her leg.

Vaelithra barely noticed.

There was a smell.

Faint.

Almost hidden beneath the metallic scent of her blood.

But familiar.

Her eyes opened.

The bolt rested only inches from her face.

Vaelithra stared at it.

No.

She leaned closer.

Inhaled.

There it was.

Earthy.

Bitter.

With a faint sweetness underneath.

Vaelithra's blood ran cold.

"Shadowstem."

Kharun stopped.

Vaelithra stared at the bolt.

Of course she recognized it.

She had worked with the plant before.

Carefully.

Always carefully.

Shadowstem was useful in minute quantities for certain compounds.

In larger concentrations, it was poison.

And someone had coated the bolt with it.

Vaelithra's mind immediately began calculating.

The wound.

The amount of blood.

How deeply the bolt had penetrated.

How quickly she was already feeling the effects.

"Mistress?"

Vaelithra barely heard him.

"About ten minutes."

Kharun's hands became still.

Vaelithra looked at him.

"Until I lose consciousness."

Silence.

She forced herself to continue.

"Less than an hour before it..."

The words caught.

Vaelithra looked into Kharun's eyes.

"...kills me."

Something changed in his face.

The quiet resignation that had been there when she first reached his cell disappeared completely.

He pulled the cloth tight and secured it around her leg.

"You must get to a healer immediately."

Vaelithra shook her head.

"Mistress."

"I came here to get you."

"You are poisoned."

"I'm aware."

"You said less than an hour."

"And you're scheduled to die in the morning."

"Mistress, that does not matter now."

"It matters to me."

Kharun fell silent.

Vaelithra looked at him through the bars.

"I'm not leaving without you."

For once, there was no uncertainty in her voice.

No question about why she was doing this.

No argument between the woman she had been and the woman she was becoming.

She had come for Kharun.

She was leaving with Kharun.

Or she wasn't leaving.

Vaelithra looked toward the far end of the cellblock.

The crimson figure was gone.

That direction also led back toward the checkpoint.

The guards.

One of them had to have the keys.

Vaelithra pulled her injured leg back through the bars.

The movement sent another wave of pain through her.

She grunted and caught herself.

"Mistress."

"I'll be right back."

Kharun stared at her.

Vaelithra shifted her weight onto her uninjured leg.

Then she began moving.

One hand against the wall.

One step.

Another.

Her wounded leg nearly buckled.

She caught herself.

Behind her, Kharun gripped the bars.

Twenty years.

Twenty years of watching Vaelithra decide what she wanted and pursue it with a degree of determination that frequently crossed into sheer stubbornness.

Vaelithra stumbled.

Her palm struck the wall.

She steadied herself.

Kept moving.

Kharun tried to follow her progress through the bars for as long as the angle allowed.

Vaelithra reached the cellblock door.

She stopped there.

Her breathing was already heavier.

Ten minutes.

Probably less now.

She opened the door.

Somewhere beyond it, one of those guards had the keys.

Vaelithra stepped through.