"Dark and Light?" by Anya ´broom rider´ Kholodova

Zmeifen, a half-drow wizard, is a bad guy. He wasn't bad from the beginning, but people's prejudgement to him because of his all-black appearance, eventually brought him to the dark side (the fact he doesn't much regret, though). Actually, he's on his own side and no one else's, but the methods he uses are those of the dark wizards. Four years ago he was brought to this castle as a slave. Now it's his castle. Now he was recognized, feared... and hated. But hatred is nothing new to him, at least this time he kind of deserved it. As for the castle - it was re-decorated according the tastes of it's new owner, who prefers to work the Fire magic and has a kind of obsession with snake-like dragons.
Inspecting his new castle, after bringing down it's previous owner and his teacher, an evil sorceress, Zmei discovered in one of the dungeon cells a wreck of an elf. Pale-skinned, silvery-eyed and silvery-haired, fragile-looking, once beautiful, he was now dirty and starved to the critical condition, still something in him had captured Zmeifen's attention. So instead of putting him out of his misery, like he did with the most of such prisoners, Zmei ordered to nurse the elf to health and, being a healer himself, personally supervised the process. Ones the elf's (who's name is Rhianel) life was no longer in danger, it became clear that he was a person of light, but by some magical interference to his brain he was brought to the state of a quiet madness. Healed, fed, cleaned, and dressed in white, the elf looks beautiful ones again, but this guy is a real kaleidoscope of the behaviors, being for a short period of time a perfect Renfield (exept for the fly-eating part:), than talking a high elven wisdom, than, as if suddenly awaken to reality, he was brooding on his pitiful state of mind, than becoming peaceful and serene, laughing softly to his thoughts, than taking a horse and rushing into the night to find something, just to be found lately lost and exhausted far away from home... All this in totally unpredictable manner. And this crazy elf seems to feel a deep affection for Zmei, he follows him like a shadow, sleeping on the floor beside his bed, and sometimes calmly gives him wise advises on the matters that would make a normal good elf to shiver with horror. Zmei likes his company a lot, he doesn't even know why, he's a weirdo too, after all. Sometimes he thinks that he should try to fix magically Rhianel's mind, but is afraid to make him totally insane instead, also Zmei feels that the elf's affection for him may have something to do with the magical brainwashing he had suffered. Also, he knows that the elf should possess some kind of power, otherwise why he was hold in prison?-but he can't find out what is it.

Other pictures of those original characters are 'Lord Zmeifen', 'Blasted thief!', 'Rhianel', 'Going on an errand', 'Balcony Scene' and more, just browse around the gallery...