Elves are not a monolith.

Take me for example. I am what’s called a wood elf. I thrive, as you can imagine, in forests, amongst the trees and nature. We are hunters and gatherers, we live in small but tight communities and are generally wary of outsiders. We’re good elves, we’re just careful, you see.

Now take a high elf. The ones that look their nose down at everything and everyone, oftentimes including each other. It’s all about who has the best of this or who made that into a trend. High elves tend to live in castles, which are cold and lifeless no matter how finely decorated they may be.

There are as many types of elves as there are fish in the sea, but for the point of this story, we’re going to stick to just these two for now.

See, the reason that I know castles are cold and lifeless is because I am currently trapped in one. Our hunting group had separated just briefly and the next thing I knew, I was being swept up in a net. I started to shout and struggle, but then a cloth was put over my face and I passed out.

When I woke up, I was here. I had a bronze collar around my neck that zapped me hard enough to almost knock me out whenever I disobeyed and I was informed that I was now my Lady’s servant, that I was to tend to her every need and desire or that I would regret my life choices.

My Lady is named Elyon Trarora, not that I am ever to address her by name. Her castle, whilst cold and lifeless, is the fanciest thing I’ve ever seen and I am assured by other servants that my Lady is one of the most sought after, hated and loved high elves that has ever existed. Of course, I don’t know if they say that because they mean it or because they, too, sport the same bronze collar that I do.

At first, I’m not certain what serving my Lady means. I think it means that I am to be at her beck and call like some trained wolf, that I am to serve her however she wishes to be served. I exist to please her and her alone.

As it turns out, that is a long list of duties. From opening her curtains at a certain time in the morning to serving her breakfast in bed—all day, I barely have time to breathe, let alone think. Every time I start to think that maybe I have a moment to myself, there’s her shrill, “Girl! Where are you now? I demand you come here immediately!”

(She won’t address me by name. Never even asked. I am just ‘girl’ or ‘you’ or sometimes ‘slave’ if she is feeling particularly venomous.)

For three months, I live like this. I long to escape, it is all I dream of. I want to be surrounded by things of green and brown, to feel the graceful flow of wind across my face. I miss my forest. I miss my community.

But the collar is always there to remind me that I’m stuck here. Possibly forever.

Three months and I have just settled into my routine when my Lady informs me that it will be a late night tonight, that I am to accompany her to a section of the castle that I didn’t even realize was in use. She tells me I will do exactly as I am bidden, I will say nothing unless asked and whatever I witness, I shall die with it.

Even though I hold the candelabra, she leads the way. This is already not the normal order of things. The section of castle that she takes me to is dark as night and drafty, enough to send a chill up my spine. I have questions that I don’t ask, but even if I could, I’m not sure that I would care enough to actually bother.

Eventually, we will reach a chamber, and my Lady will pull out a key from the pocket of her dress. She unlocks the door and gestures me inside—another first—before stepping into the room and locking it behind her.

What I see, in the simplest of terms, is a torture room.

It looks like maybe someone has tried to clean the room, but there are blood stains that won’t come out no matter how much you scrub. There’s a long table with books and other trinkets I don’t recognize, where my Lady tells me to place the candelabra. I do so, careful to mind the things on there, and then I turn to what I have been dreading to look at since the moment I entered the room.

It is a dark elf, skin as black as a moonless night and hair a pale, soft pink. She is tied by each limb to a round standing table and she is as naked as the day she was born. There is not so much as a mar on her skin, but I have a sickening feeling that is all about to change.

Dark elves have their own language and she speaks it now at the sight of my Lady, practically spitting her words. I don’t know what she says, but I silently applaud her. It sounded like something I wished that I could say to the Lady myself.

“I don’t debase myself with lower languages, so save your babbling for someone who cares,” my Lady says coldly, walking up to the round table. She makes to examine the girl, who looks on the cusp of womanhood but not quite there yet. My Lady looks at her closely, making sure there is no mark on her skin. “I see they followed orders. Good. Girl, to me.”

My stomach in knots, I make my way over to my Lady and she says to me, “You see that tray right there?” And she points to a small, standing metal tray that is next to the table. “There are tools upon it. Even as dimwitted as you are, I suspect you know what a blade looks like. Bring it to me.”

I do as I am bidden and do not fail to notice the dark elf looking at me. I don’t need to understand her language to understand that she wishes for me to stab my Lady instead. I lower my eyes, hoping that I do not give away how much I would like to do that very thing, were it not for this collar.

“This section of the castle is entirely empty, you know,” my Lady says, “So, please. Feel free to scream all you like. Even if someone could hear you, no one would care. Who would come running to save a lowly dark elf? The only elf here with less status than you is this wood elf.”

I try to ignore the jab, my immediate swell of pride and defiance. I would rather be a wood elf any day of the week than a cold, miserable high elf.

What happens next, I try to keep my gaze downward, but my Lady seems to sense that and instructs me to watch. “If you so much as glance away, I will use the collar on you until you are begging for death. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my Lady,” I say, my voice low and quiet. I reluctantly force my gaze upward, back to the nameless dark elf.

What happens next… I don’t want to describe. There are plenty of instruments with plenty of uses and my Lady seems bound and determined to use them all. I hate how helpless I am, I hate that, after a while, I become accustomed to the dark elf screaming and sobbing, shouting in that language I do not know and sometimes whispering, pleading.

She takes her eyes first. One clean slice for each and she instructs me then to bring her a jar filled with strange liquid. I do and she plops the eyeballs in them, causing a little bit of the liquid to splash back on me. It burns and I cannot help but wince and my Lady laughs. “Be more careful next time, then.”

What I witness is the slow disassembly of another living creature. No detail is too small to be ignored, down to fingernails and toenails, each carefully ripped from her in a way so that they are still intact. I watch eyelids removed, ears removed, nose removed. Piece by piece, she is coming undone.

Of course, killing her is inevitable, but my Lady makes sure to drag it out for as long as she can. She tuts to herself when the poor girl finally stops moving, but my Lady does not stop in her task. There are still organs to be placed in jars full of liquids that burn me because my Lady is not careful in the way she just drops them. The hair, a source of pride for dark elves, is shorn and my Lady works until the dark elf is just a shell of herself. Just bone, muscle and flesh.

My Lady turns to me then and says, “The papers on the table. I wish you to use them to stuff this girl. There is needle and thread to sew her back up when you are done.”

I am aghast at my new instructions, not that it registers on my face. I fear deeply being the next one on this torture wheel and though it will take me some time and many attempts at not vomiting, I will set forth my disgusting task. Replacing organs with papers, sewing her with neat stitches that I have learned in my time here from her groin to the top of her head.

“Next time, you’ll have to be much faster than that, or perhaps you will be my next victim,” my Lady says, striking fear into my heart. I only nod, gaze upon the ground, and apologize profusely.

“I imagine you wonder what that was all about,” my Lady says. I start to reply that no, I am not curious in the slightest, but she continues on without giving me a chance. “Well, some of it was just for fun,” she admits to me, “But the organs—they were necessary. You see, I had a daughter once, Ayla. She was about this things age when she fell sick and died.”

My Lady turns to face me directly now and there is a maddened glint in her eye that I do not like at all. “I have searched from the top of the world to the bottom for the texts that I have found. Texts that tell me how I can have my Ayla back. You will help me with this task.”

I start to shake my head without thinking about it. Wood elves are all about what is natural and necromancy goes as far against nature as one can get. I barely get a shake in, though, before she zaps me with that collar and I fall to my knees, struggling to catch my breath.

“Like I said, you can be next,” my Lady says from above me, “I also do this for fun. Now get up and help me put all of these jars onto the cart.”

I slowly rise to my feet, the world spinning around me for a moment and I mindlessly begin to help her with her task. I think absently to myself that my Lady has not a drop of blood on her, except for on her hands, which she wiped cleaned whilst I sewed the dark elf back up.

“I am not a cruel mistress,” she says as though she can read my mind, “I will send her back to her people. They will be too stupid to know anything is wrong and even if they do figure it out—what will they do about it? I could crush all of them with a mere thought.”

When all of the jars are on the cart, my Lady bids me to pick up the candelabra whilst she rolls the cart. We leave the room and head further into the wing, to the very back where the chill is like ice and it takes everything to keep my teeth from chattering. How I miss the sun.

The next room also requires a key to unlock and I am let inside first to set the candelabra down before helping my Lady with the cart. This room is empty save a stone table  and a small window from which the moon can beam down upon what is a skeleton. Ayla, I presume.

Now we do our tasks in reverse. Painstakingly, my Lady puts the organs into place and I wonder how it is that the liquid does not burn her. Or maybe it does and she just doesn’t care. Each organ must be put just so and my Lady works until she is satisfied, taking a step back.

What follows next is not so gruesome, but rather boring, which is welcome. For the next thirty minutes or so, my Lady just reads aloud a book she had brought with her from the other room. The language I do not recognize, though I do know it is not high elf. She goes on and on, her free hand stretched over her daughter and it is when I begin to feel sore on my feet that she finally says, “Arise, Ayla. Come back to mommy.”

At first, nothing happens. Then there is the slightest twitch of a finger bone, a toe bone. Everything twitching slowly and oddly and then the skeleton sits up, its organs somehow staying in place. Her dark eyes—the eyes of that girl that I could not save—pass over me without seeing and land upon her mother’s weeping face.

I can already see thin lines of muscle, tissue, and skin starting to form across her body, like little threads of life. Criss-crossing into patterns, forming so slowly that the process is likely to take some time. It is both horrifying and fascinating to watch.

“Hello, mother,” she says, her voice distorted by a tongue that is not hers and does not settle right in her mouth. “I have missed you.”