The setting sun in the American Desert was both a blessing and a curse to Alleria.  She hated the sun.  For one of her species, the great burning ball of hydrogen millions of miles from her could blind her sensitive eyes in an instant.  It was particularly annoying to drive towards it.  Her tweaked and refitted sedan rolled along what had once been an interstate highway.  In a few minutes though, she would be free from wearing the dreaded day-vision goggles she had to wear during daylight hours.

How’d I get talked-out of that? she wondered to herself, pushing a snowy white strand of hair behind an elegant, long and curved ear.  I could’ve gone there, killed the bastards and been done with it, but no, Faen has to convince me there is something weird going on out here, and that I might find it interesting because of the weapons…  Just great…  She sighed as she pulled over.  Least the sun is low enough to lose these stupid things.  Alleria pulled the bulky goggles she wore over her eyes off.  They had been made from the frame of what one of the other rangers had called ‘ski goggles’.  Her sapphire blue eyes glanced upward; a rare color indeed for a Drow, offering a stunning contrast to her ebony skin.  She tossed them into the passenger seat before starting down the road again.

*****
She wondered as she drove about why her people were the way they were.  They had always fought one another for things so trivial.  Even she was no exception.  She was a Lhuhari.  Her very family name, when translated to English meant web-crafter.  Entrapment was a part of life for a drow.  She knew this well, and had used her sex appeal, skilled hands and knowledge of alchemy to entrap her enemies many times before.  On the surface though, she was still learning.  Enemies here would kill from an incredible distance.  The weapons they used in war were devastating, and some could utterly erase one’s physical form from reality.  Her people did have similar weapons, but none that could match the raw power of the surface.

But she did.  She had done what her race did not want to.  She had adapted.  As a priestess of the goddess Myla, she was tasked with making weapons and armors.  She had devised a new weapon, for which she was ridiculed.  Seeking approval, she found it, but also her invention turned against her.  So she fled, thanks to Faen.  Like her, he was of the sidhe, but had been born a slave.  He had survived though.  He had come from the city of Lerais, which had been buried by the surface interlopers who called themselves The Breed Empire.

Alleria wasn’t a priestess anymore.  She was a ranger from the northern regions of the Central Wastelands.  Despite all the dangers the world above had, there was more wonder there than she ever thought possible.  Like how water fell from the heavens in some parts of the world, or how when the sun was gone, the sky was filled with smaller suns, that were millions of miles from the earth she was standing on.  She often found herself wondering just what was beyond that blackness.  Were those small suns home to other worlds, like the one she was standing on?  Did they have creatures like her?  Was something like that even possible?

Her attention was drawn from her imagination to the road ahead.  Sure enough she saw something odd on the horizon of the now black landscape.  Her infaread vision peered through the darkness and saw heat.  It flickered from time to time.  It must’ve been a fire.  She shrugged as she let the sedan slow.  Her foot moved to the brake and gently pushed on it.  The rear lights came on as the wheels grinded along the dirt and stopped.  She opened the door.

Alright, Faen… she thought.  What’s the big deal?  She played with a pair of binoculars and brought them to her eyes.  She could see the fire clearly now in the distance.  It looked like there were a few people just around it, cooking a large beast.  She couldn’t tell quite what it was, but it looked like a cow.  “All this for just a cow?” she asked aloud.  However, it was then she saw one of the hunched figures move and she immediately recognized what it was.  “Grell make fire?”

She had always thought the mushroom men were just mindless beasts.  After all, the grell found on the surface were descendants of the grell her people had created centuries ago through magic.  They were stupid creatures, that severed thousands of uses.  They were used as beasts of burden most of the time, and creatures used in war.  They were savage and ape-like, but most importantly, they were food.  A mutant strain of fungi that proved very useful to her people.

Somehow though, they had come to the surface.  She didn’t know how they got there, but they had.  She had her own theory, regarding how someone left a bag of spores on the surface and they became the massive brutes that were all over the wastelands now.  She’d even heard rumors back home about how the creatures had been created in the first place for conquering the surface.  They hadn’t succeeded though because there was too much fear.  Fear of the surface and that they weren’t able to adapt there and fear of the sun.  There had been hundreds of tales about how a burning orb of fire glowed above the surface.  It was true, there was something there, but it was only harmful if their eyes weren’t covered.

She watched for a while.  They were huge, at least seven feet tall each and had light grey speckled skin.  She had seen other kinds as well, but being mushrooms, the grell could have numerous shades and colors, but they had a distinct face; dark, spider-like eyes and freakish mandibles.  It was as if their cheeks were lined with teeth and could open wide, allowing it to take large bites out of its enemies.  It wasn’t designed that way though.  It had mutated early on, but the drow had liked it, so it stayed.

“What are they doing?” she asked herself, focusing the binoculars a little more.  After a moment, she decided to get closer and climbed back into the car.

*****
Well, he was right.  They are making fire, and using it.  Alleria pulled the sedan around before slowing as she neared the encampment.  The grell looked up at the sedan and started hooping and hollering at her.  The largest of them beat his chest, grabbing a stone axe that was at least the size of Alleria.  It bellowed in an odd tone before she saw two other grell leap towards a truck.

“Oh, fuck!” she muttered.  With the flip of a switch, her sedan was ready for war.  It had a turret on the roof.  It mounted a small autocannon, which turned and with the flip of another switch opened up.  It locked onto one of the trucks and blew it apart.  She watched as a grell leapt from it as the large-caliber round ripped it apart.  Alleria spun the wheel as she pulled a trigger on the wheel.  A smaller machinegun popped up on the left side of the hood and spewed bullets into the grell.  They roared and shouted at her, swinging their stone weapons at her vehicle.  The biggest one roared and threw the stone axe at her vehicle.

“Fuck!” she shouted, swerving to avoid it.  The massive stone weapon smashed into the rear wheel.  Alleria was thrown in her seat as she braced for the impact.  Her head went into the steering wheel and she fought to stay conscious.  Recovering, she grabbed her weapon from the passenger’s seat and rolled out of the car.

The grell were still there and shouting at her angrily.  Alleria raised her weapon.  It was one of only a few things she’d brought from her home, but had been the reason for her departure.  The Impaler was an assault rifle of drow design, but unlike the other weapons of her people, the impaler fired steel bolts that could pin people to walls.  She shouted and took aim at the largest grell.  She fired three bolts into the thing, each one ripping through the skin.  Milky white blood spilled from the wounds as it struggled to stand.  She shouted at it as she fired three more bolts into it.  One tore through an open mandible, ripping it clean off the face, while the other went through the throat.

Another two were behind her and quickly closed.  They roared and swung their stone weapons at her like the primitive savages they were.  She ducked one blow and dropped her implaer in favor for a smaller pair of handguns.  They too had been crafted by the former Priestess of Myla and like her main gun, fired nails that could pin someone to a wall, but these were much smaller.  With a few quick pulls of the trigger, she made them retreat a short ways and that gave her time to grab her impaler and open up.  The grell roared at her and ran for cover behind her now immobile sedan.  One leapt onto the roof, causing it to collapse a little under its weight, before it leapt right at her.

“Oh, shit…”  She dropped her impaler again and her right hand went to her left hip.  It grabbed the hilt of a short sword and she lashed it out.  As she did though, the blade broke apart, becoming a whip with six segments made from the weapon’s blade.  It was a weapon of a priestess of Myla, the swordwhip.  Swinging it from left to right, she managed to get it around the grell’s neck and with a flick of her wrist, it sliced through the neck, beheading the mutant mushroom man.  One remained.  It bellowed angrily at her before turning and fleeing towards another truck.  She grabbed her impaler and took careful aim.  Her finger felt the trigger and with three quick pulls, she killed it, sending the bolts through the back of the creature’s oblong skull.

With a sigh, she lowered the weapon.  The grell had been defeated, but their camp remained.  She looked to her vehicle.  She had to replace the tire, and that was her first objective.  That was weird… she thought.  Wait…  Alleria approached the big grell and knelt down.  There was an odd tattoo on its chest.  She pulled out a cloth and whipped away some of the blood and pulled out the nine-inch-nail that had gone in at that spot.  She cocked her head.  That was definitely a drow symbol, but it looked like the moon in a crescent form.  Hmm…  She stood up after looking at it a little more and went to change the wheel of her car.

*****
She tossed the wrecked wheel from her and watched it roll away for a moment, before slipping on the replacement she had in the backseat.  A sucker was in her mouth as she contemplated what surface grell were doing with drow symbols on them.  She pulled out the sucker for a moment and looked towards the west.  She heard something and could see with her infrared that something was coming her way.  She couldn’t tell if it was friend or foe, but she pulled her impaler closer to her just in case. With that, she set back to getting the wheel on.  Using her alchemy, she quickly sealed the wheel to the bolts and grabbed her impaler.  The camp was still a mess, but she knew that searching the camp could reveal a lot about these odd grell.  There was also the nearby truck.  That too could reveal something, especially if she could find something on it that told her where it came from.  Maybe there’s something on the bodies I missed, or in the truck…  She pulled her binoculars from her belt and looked towards the trucks.  She still couldn’t tell, but it looked like they had been fitted for war.  Then again, everyone out here was ready for war.

She looked to the camp, then the truck, then her car, and weighed her options…