class easily. His time at the academy would have been perfect (by Drow standards) except for the graduation ceremony, where he disgraced himself by not taking part in a ritual, refusing the advances of two high priestesses, one of them his sister, Vierna, and damning Lolth. Vierna, angered by Drizzt's defiance, showed him what happened to those who defied the Spider Queen: she took him to a drider's lair. She started to leave him there, but Drizzt's mother interfered and saved Drizzt from certain death by the driders. She threatened to turn Drizzt into one of the hideous creatures if she heard of any more defiance from him. He graduated with honors, even though he did not participate in the ceremony. He believed that no one really noticed his absence from the ceremony because the others were wrapped up in the moment. He began patrolling the Underdark with his assigned patrol group. He witnessed first hand the cruelty his race showed the other races of the Underdark. Not long after graduation, he took part in a surface raid in which he saved the life of a child of the most bitter enemy of the drow, the surface elves, by hiding her body underneath the corpse of her murdered mother. Zaknafein, having similar morals to Drizzt, believed he had killed the child, but Lolth knew he allowed the child to survive and House Do'Urden fell out of the Spider Queen's tenuous favor. Zaknafein, fearing that Drizzt had succumbed to the evil ways of the drow, fought with Drizzt, and was told the truth of the matter by his son. Upon hearing Drizzt say that he had no part in the murder of the surface elves, Zaknafein became ecstatic, and revealed that Drizzt was indeed his child. They planned to escape House Do'Urden and live in the caverns of the Underdark. Unfortunately, Matron Malice and her daughters, in a bid to find out why Do'Urden was no longer in Lolth's favor, were watching. They knew that the only way to rectify the situation was to offer Drizzt up as a sacrifice to Lolth. Malice informed Zaknafein of the plan to sacrifice their son, and to stop it from happening, Zaknafein offered himself to replace Drizzt. This was Malice's intention all along. She believed that once Zaknafein was dead that Drizzt would begin behaving like a proper drow noble, and would take the