Hey everyone.
This has been rattling around my head for a while now, and I figure I might as well get it started with and continued while I've got the drive to write it. As you might have guessed, the following is based off the Shivering Isles, but I'm doing my own thing with it somewhat, so I should probably say now that, while there are bits of this that you'll recognise, there are a lot of parts that you won't; I'm bringing in a lot of new character ideas and so forth, and there will be interesting things done.
Anyway, I'm not very good at this whole introduction business, so I'll just let you get on and read it. Do enjoy!
AAAGH!!...WHERE'S THE REST OF IT??!!!...IT FINISHED!!...IT CANNOT FINISH!!...IT HASN'T FINISHED YET!!!...
Oh my (mad)God I love it...*Bounces excitedly like a puppy*...
There's this...
This is blashphemy. This is madness. This is the Madgod!
Anyways, like the new idea. I was never a Sheogorath fan, nor crazed about his Nut-House realm we all know as the Shivering Isles, but I still think it's cool. Especially Dementia. Dead Grey Princes? And Carnius the new champion? This will be interesting.
"They opened with a creak, and he saw it spread before him. A twisted landscape of gnarled roots, growing upwards into the air whilst leafy branches clawed at the ground. Rock formations of shimmering, rainbow stone formed bizarre shapes, ones that seemed to gain form as you looked at them, moved, grew, reached towards you. Faces grew from the scenery, hungry mouths and gasping maws, clawing talons."
Welcome to th Shivering Isles.
McBadgere: Mmm...kay...
*Surreptitiously reaches for taser* ![]()
Cheers, though, and I'm pleased you like what you see. Sentinel and the Angel of Rage will both be expanded upon. They're both awesome. Especially Rage and her sisters. In fact, a lot of the characters I've thought up for this are going to be rather odd and unique. You might even say I'm going a little...
...crazy with them.
I'm a terrible person, I know. If you choose to stop reading from that comment alone, I completely understand.
Darkness Eternal: Thanks very mcuh. ![]()
Pleased you liked that bit of description, and expect some more like that; I've been reading quite a bit of Lovecraft lately...
Oh wow. I'm looking forward to this, Colonel Mustard!
Cool story, Colonel! I haven't got SI yet, so I'm kinda lost during the first bits, but I can still kinda relate to what's going on.
I'm also noticing the opening poetry, sweet stuff. It looks like a lady's torso, the way it's centered!
Grits: Thanks very much, and I hope you enjoy it!
Lay Saga: Well, those characters/sections are actually all original ones, so you're no more lost than anyone else reading this at the moment; I'm doing a lot of my own thing with the Shivering Isles, so don't worry too much. I'd recommend picking SI up at some point if you get the chance, though; it's probably one of the best TES expansions Bethesda have made.
And I can't say I noticed that poem shape up until now. Huh.
A Shivering Isles Fan-Fic? Why in all my years (not many), I've never seen one of these. Colonel, I am really intrigued to see where this goes.
Ah, I know the feeling, Saga. Actually, that's a lie. I kind of make one character to suit a playing style and then do everything with them. Because I'm one of those people with absolutely no sense of romance. ![]()
And thanks, Zalphon, though there is Madness Helps Me Save Myself just a few threads down; helped inspire this, I might add.
Dude...I'm married, and I have no idea about romance...
...
Update already!!...
Lady Saga: 16, with more planned? Blimey, I've got 3 and I've done a good majority of the main questlines you can do with them...
Darkness Eternal: God no, I'd hate that. ![]()
McBadgere: Ask, and ye shall receive.
Chapter 2-Her Ladyship
Carnius walked through the streets of the Imperial City in the same way he always did; disguised and unseen by its people.
To them, he was just an ordinary man, muscular in build with battered features, a scar on his left cheek, a nose that had been broken and clumsily reset. An adventurer, a mercenary, a hired thug or perhaps a soldier. Perhaps not worth the time of someone looking to mug an easy victim, but nothing out of the ordinary.
People only recognised him, Carnius found, when he was wearing his gauntlets. That was his mark, his uniform, and bystanders realised who he was only with those on. The rest of the time, he was nobody.
Today, he liked that. He felt like being nobody. Though he could do without feeling like his skull was lined with dog hair.
He made his way past the tall, vaulted, white stone buildings of the market district of the Empire’s capital, along the cobbled streets. The streets bustled around him, people both rich and poor brushing past him, while the stink of horse dung and sewage pervaded the air. He avoided the main road, where carts and horses rumbled along, and kept a wary eye looking skywards in case anyone was dumping waste out of a window.
His journey had the final destination of the Arena, and as he reached the imposing stone building the sound of cheering reached his ears. A match on, he thought, and judging by the volume and relatively scant enthusiasm of it, probably a pair of pit dogs. He smirked at the realisation that he was able to judge that just from the sound of the crowd, but he supposed that wasn’t surprising; he knew the crowd, knew its moods and fickle favours, had performed for it more times than he cared to remember.
“Carnius,” Hundolin called as he approached, the Arena’s bookie raising a hand in greeting. “Back here already? I though Ysabel was letting you have a little time off.”
“Thought I’d work off the hangover on a punchbag,” Carnius said.
“Might not be happening,” Hundolin said. “Her Ladyship is watching the match at the moment; she’ll want to talk to you.”
“Oh, she is?” Carnius asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll go speak to her.”
So his sponsor had turned up to match the day after he’d won his title as Grand Champion. He’d seen her at the match, of course, but to have her coming back now was surprising. She was probably looking for new talent.
Nobody was quite sure who Her Ladyship was. She was nobility, without a doubt, a duchess or lady or something similar, but anyone Carnius asked was never certain about what she was duchess or lady of. But she had money, excellent taste, was a regular customer to the arena and had, in her time, sponsored several promising gladiators, Carnius included. That sort of thing was enough to make sure people didn’t ask too many questions, even if nobody actually knew her name.
He made his way up through the stands, to the top where the boxes for the richer customers were reserved. At the busier matches, the top corridor was usually lined with bodyguards for each individual box, but this time it was occupied only by the twins Her Ladyship employed. They nodded a greeting to him as he approached, which Carnius returned, and one of them pushed the door open for him.
“I wasn’t expecting a visitor,” Her Ladyship said as Carnius stepped into her private box. “But it’s good to see you, Carnius.”
Carnius was unsure exactly how she had known it was him, but he supposed it was just one of the things Her Ladyships was capable of. A perfectly manicured hand, kept with a near-obsessive meticulousness by some beautician, patted the vacant seat next to her, and she said; “Please, take a seat.”
“Thought you might want to see me,” Carnius said, looking down at the arena. “Seeing as your sponsorship’s over now. Ysabel’s disappointed.”
“I’m sure she’ll live,” Her Ladyship said. “No doubt she’s already lining up candidates for me to invest in.”
This got a chuckle from Carnius.
“Either of those two pit dogs down there worth my coin?” Her Ladyship asked as she noticed the direction of his gaze.
“Blue team one, I reckon,” Carnius said after a thoughtful minute, watching as the Argonian in question blocked a flurry of axe blows from the Nord he was fighting with his shield. The lizard-man made a spirited swing at the yellow team fighter with his flail, but the Nord simply stepped back out of the attack’s reach before it could hit home.
“Really?” Her Ladyship asked. “He appears to be losing. You aren’t just saying that out of a sense of patriotism, are you?”
Carnius shook his head.
“He hasn’t been trained,” he explained. “That Nord’s only winning because he has been. And he’s not exactly making all that good a job of the match.”
“I see,” Her Ladyship said. “A potential Grand Champion, do you think?”
“No,” Carnius said.
“What makes you so sure?” Her Ladyship asked.
“He’s a pit dog,” Carnius replied. “Too early to tell.”
“And when can you tell that someone is a potential Grand Champion, then?”
“When he’s in the arena facing Agro…facing me,” Carnius replied. “That’s when.”
Her Ladyship nodded.
“Well said,” she said.
There was a silence between them as they watched the match. The yellow team’s fighter split the Argonian’s shield, before a kick sent the blue team gladiator sprawling to the floor, knocking his flail from his hand. The Nord’s heavy boot stamped down on his opponent’s chest, pinning him to the ground, axe raised to split his skull.
“Kill him! Kill him!” some members of the crowd chanted as the Nord looked around for confirmation as to whether he should spare the lizard-man before him or not. Beast-folk always seemed to get more people chanting for their blood, Carnius had noted in the past.
“Well, shall we let him live?” Her Ladyship asked. The Nord’s gaze had fallen on her, of course; getting the favour of a noble was a good way to win future funding for better equipment and training, and it always did well to do what they demanded.
“Let him go,” Carnius nodded. “Owyn can give him a dressing down, but he won’t be half bad once he actually figures out how to use that weapon of his properly.”
“Very well,” Her Ladyship said, sounding somewhat disappointed. “If he proves himself, perhaps I’ll give him a little funding. I’m feeling generous, now that my primary investment has paid off so handsomely.”
She stood, and said in a voice that somehow carried, despite the fact that it wasn’t raised; “Spare him; he’s proven himself well enough to earn that.”
The Nord nodded, getting a mixture of cheers and jeers from the crowd, stepping off the Argonian’s chest and allowing the beast-man to rise. The two fighters limped away to their respective exits, each one of them going to their own Fountains of Restoration to heal up.
“I remember your first match quite well, you know,” Her Ladyship said after a moment, returning to her seat. “The youth stepping out of his cage armed with nothing more than a pair of steel gauntlets and punching the other pit dog into submission. You were the first unarmed fighter I’d seen in the arena. Do you remember that, Carnius?”
“Course I do,” Carnius replied as the arena began to empty. How could he forget? That first, bloodthirsty thrill of victory, the elation of the crowd cheering him, and that beautiful, golden-skinned woman standing in her box, smiling at him and raising a goblet of wine in a toast.
That had been nearly fifteen years ago, and somehow Her Ladyship hadn’t aged a day since, keeping her looks of a woman in her mid thirties. Probably some enchantment they put into the makeup of the nobles or another trick like that, he reckoned; it was the sort of thing the rich folk could afford, after all. There were dark rumours that her agelessness was because she was a vampire, but Carnius couldn’t help but feel that that was nonsense. She simply didn’t seem like a vampire; vampires were, according to rumour, able to turn men mute with terror with a look, but when she smiled at Carnius she had a way of somehow making him feel a little taller and a little better about himself. Probably had some High Elf blood in her or something like that.
“So what does the future hold for you then, Carnius?” Her Ladyship asked.
“Now?” Carnius said. “I’m not sure. Training, a few matches here and there, that sort of thing, I suppose. What Agronak did before…you know.”
“You sound like you’re at a bit of a loose end, there,” Her Ladyship said.
“I suppose; I was so focussed on actually become Grand Champion I never actually thought about what I’d do after it.”
Aside from them, the arena was now empty.
“Well,” Her Ladyship said. “Perhaps you will find something new to fill your time soon enough. Maybe it is time to move away from the Arena.”
Carnius snorted at that, and got a raised eyebrow in return.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“It’s a gladiator thing,” Carnius said. “You can’t leave the Arena, once you sign up. Sure, you can go work as a mercenary or an adventurer or something like that, but you can’t leave it.”
“Why not? Is it part of your contract? Are you hunted down if you go?”
“No, it’s just…you can’t leave,” Carnius replied. “It’s a rule, or an obligation, something like that. It’s not written down, but you come here and you stay here. You don’t die of old age; you die down there, in the ring. Every gladiator does.”
“I’ve heard of plenty of who died elsewhere,” Her Ladyship said.
“They aren’t proper gladiators.”
Her Ladyship gave a quiet chuckle at this.
“If you’re sure that you are,” she said. “Then stay.”
Carnius frowned for a minute, trying to figure out what she meant by that, before she rose.
“I suppose I should leave, seeing as the match is over,” she said. “Good luck with holding that title of yours, Grand Champion.”
She swept away towards the door, before Carnius called out; “Wait a minute.”
Her Ladyship stopped.
“Yes?”
“I never asked,” Carnius said. “Why did you choose to sponsor me? Of all the contestants down there in the arena, all that time ago, why me?”
“Because I saw potential for a champion,” Her Ladyship said. “That’s the only reason why.”
“And why do you want a Grand Champion?”
“Everyone needs a champion, sooner or later,” she said. “I’m just looking out for the right person for the job.”
She stepped through the door, and was gone.
Most definately loving the Arena vibe currently going about the place at the mo!!...
Yes, I know this is Imp. City...
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Love the wander through the Market District, odours and all...
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The Arena section itself was brilliant...
That Woman was a brilliant mixture of charm and creepyness...So very intriguing...Methinks that she's not all that she seems...
...Oh, sorry Her Ladyship...
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Fantastic start up...With absolutely no shock will the words - looking forward to much more - be received...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
So Carnius is all about hand to hand, then? Or does he also use weapons?
I particularly liked this line
Loving the start of this Colonel, the flashing from different beginnings. Tells me that you've got way more in store planned for us!
The character development of your afflicted champion is already intense, a gladiator with feelings, how about that. Can't wait to see what affect the Madgod has on him!
Awaiting the next update eagerly friend.
Hello everyone; sorry for the delay in updating, but my internet connection unexpectedly dropped out on me about a week or so back, so I've only just managed to get a dongle into my laptop now (not sure how long I'll have to read updates of stuff once I'm done posting this up, so I'm basically poking my head through the door). But that's the main reason why an update has been rather slow coming. Apologies.
McBadgere: Thank you very much; charm and slight creepiness was what I was going for with Her Ladyship, so I'm pleased I managed to nail that combination. Glad you liked the rest as well. *Tips hat*
Lady Saga: He's all about hand-to-hand; I do Tae Kwon-Do myself, so I figured I'd go for a fighting style that I know the mechanics of quite well.
And yes, sometimes you just want a nice day in the shade, away from the public eye, don't you? ![]()
Illydoor: Egad, you're alive! ![]()
I do indeed have a lot of cool ideas in store for all of this, and some of them are going to be very fun to write indeed. And I'm enjoying writing Carnius' character a lot already; the Isles should have a few iunteresting effects.
Thanks very much for reading, everyone! ![]()
Chapter 3-The Biggest Runt on Nirn
“Carnius,” Owyn said as the new Grand Champion stepped under one of the arches that supported the Arena’s main structure. “You’re back already? I wasn’t expecting to see you here just yet.”
Carnius shrugged.
“Thought I’d spend some time on the punchbag,” he said. “Got a bit of a headache; work it off.”
“Ahuh? Y’know, Ysabel had a few ideas about what you could do now you’re the new Grand Champion,” Owyn said as Carnius shrugged his shirt off and stepped up to one of the sacks full of straw hanging from the ceiling that he used for training.
“I’ll bet she does,” he said as he began to strike it, a series of rapid blows that thudded against the cheap leather bag.
“She was thinking about matches against animals,” Owyn said as Carnius continued to pound the punchbag. “Maybe once a week; something regular to pull the crowds in.”
Carnius nodded, focusing most of his attention on the leather before him. The point of impact, where he struck again and again, was beginning to sag. If he’d had his gauntlets on, he probably would have ripped it open by now.
Owyn frowned.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Later, Owyn,” Carnius replied, not relenting from the rain of blows he was slamming onto the punchbag.
“Eh, fine,” Owyn said. “I’ve got to go yell at that pit dog about his performance in the ring, anyway.”
The Redguard left, and Carnius’ brow furrowed in concentration as he attacked the bag. It was a relentless activity, and he paused only every minute or so to catch his breath. He’d soon run out of steam just from the sheer remorselessness of it, but it was the sort of thing he wanted to do. You didn’t have to think when you worked over a punchbag; you just hit and hit and hit and hit. The world was pushed to one side, any worries or troubles you had could be lost in the same implacable repetition of striking one blow after another. You just worked away, losing your mind in the rhythm of fists striking against leather and letting the minute drift by.
“Champiiioooon!” a hoarse, rasping voice cheered from behind him all of a sudden. Carnius knew who that was; there was nobody else it could be.
“Hello, Ta’Xarna,” Carnius said, not looking away from his work.
“What’s this?” Ta’Xarna asked from behind him. “Where is Khajiit’s greeting?”
“Said hello, didn’t I?”
This got him a snort of derision, but Carnius ignored it and continued his punching. He was beginning to flag, he could feel, run out of energy, but considering how long he must have been doing it that wasn’t a surprise.
A furry hand waved in front of his eyes and Carnius stepped back out of instinct, pushing it away from him and bringing fists up on an automatic reaction, swivelling on the spot to face Ta’Xarna. The tiny Khajiit just grinned at him.
“Just making sure you were all there,” he said as Carnius lowered his fists. “You pay attention to Khajiit now, yes?”
“Oh sod off, Ta’Xarna,” Carnius replied, shaking his head.
“No,” the Khajiit replied. “You are Grand Champion now. We are celebrating!”
“I celebrated last night,” Carnius said.
“We are celebrating again,” Ta’Xarna replied. “Khajiit is taking you to a tavern, getting drunk, finding a pretty wench and making much love to her. You are doing the same too. Different wench though.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe share if she is pretty enough and no other good women are around.”
“For the Nine’s sake, it’s too early to get drunk,” Carnius said. He frowned and added; “What time is it, anyway?”
“After sunrise and before sunset,” Ta’Xarna said. “And not too early to go and get drunk. Never too early to go and get drunk. Now put a shirt on, we’re going to find a tavern.”
Carnius probably could have told Ta’Xarna to get lost and continued with his work, but that would have had little success in stopping the efforts of the five-foot Khajiit, so he just shrugged.
“Fine,” he said, picking his shirt up from where he had left it and pulling it on. “Let’s go.”
“That’s my boy!” Ta’Xarna said with a clap of his hands, the soft pads on them muffling the noise. “We will find two pretty ladies today! Elves, Khajiit is thinking.”
The Khajiit and the Imperial made a strange pair as they left the arena, the small beast-man chatting animatedly to his fellow who stood a good head taller than him. His arena name, the Mighty Ta’Xarna, largest runt on Nirn, was a joke that only he could like, but despite the fact that the scimitar he fought with was the size of him and he did battle in a jester’s cap, Ta’Xarna was as vicious as they came. Not to mention that the crowd absolutely adored him.
The tavern they picked a waterfront one, despite Ta’Xarna’s protestations that all the women worth his time would be up at one of the fancier establishments in the city. It was dark, quiet and slightly dingy, just what Carnius was looking for, and the rather dumpy barmaid there knew them both well enough.
“Back already, I see,” she remarked as they pushed open the door.
“Eh, we were going to come here again sooner or later,” Ta’Xarna replied as they took a seat at the bar. “Might as well make it sooner.”
This got him a laugh, and he added; “Two meads for this Khajiit and his fine friend.”
“Coming up,” the barmaid nodded, pulling a pair of pewter mugs from under the counter.
“Why did we come here?” Ta’Xarna asked, glancing around at the barely inhabited bar. “I don’t see a single woman here worth Khajiit’s time.”
“You can go and find some later,” Carnius said. “I just want a drink.”
“Fine, fine,” Ta’Xarna asked. “You’re Grand Champion now, I’d think you want to celebrate it a bit more.”
“Just wish Agronak was here,” Carnius said.
Ta’Xarna shrugged.
“I’ll miss him too,” he said. “But he always tugged my ears.”
“Everyone tugs your ears,” Carnius replied, giving a small grin despite himself. To emphasise his point, he grabbed one of Ta’Xarna’s ears and pulled it, earning a yowl of protest, Ta’Xarna flailing a paw to fend him off.
“Leave Khajiit’s ear alone, or you’re going without one,” he growled, bearing his teeth. He shook his head. “Anyway, Agronak’s ear pulling was special. You could tell he really meant it. That always made Khajiit feel loved.”
Carnius nodded, before Ta’Xarna said; “Don’t worry, I’ll let you have a few years as Grand Champion before I go and steal your title.”
“That isn’t funny,” Carnius said, shaking his head as the barmaid set their drinks down in front of them. “Cheers.”
“Is pretty funny for Khajiit,” Ta’Xarna replied.
“Yeah, well you’ve always had a strange sense of humour,” Carnius replied, to which Ta’Xarna shrugged.
“Is normal one for any old Khajiit,” he said. “You Imperials just don’t get it.”
“If you’re sure,” Carnius said. He raised his tankard, and said; “To Agronak.”
“To Agronak,” Ta’Xarna echoed, clinking his against Carnius’. “And all the other good friends we’ve lost in the arena.”
Carnius nodded at that last comment. It was a sobering truth that both them would most likely die on the sands just as the Grey Prince had. It was probably why he wasn’t feeling as bad as he thought he should feel; he’d grown used to this sort of thing.
“Hey!” someone called across the tavern, and Carnius glanced over to see someone hurrying over to him. “Hey, Carnius, lad! I heard about you and the arena.”
Carnius glanced over to see an old man with a walking stick limping towards them, a grin on his weathered, wrinkled face.
“Gannall,” Carnius said as the old man approached. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Suppose not, suppose not,” Gannall said. “I don’t mind, don’t worry; you were probably busy training up till now, weren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Carnius said slowly, who decided to mention that he had simply been neglecting to come down to the waterfront for a while. “Didn’t you see the match?”
“Couldn’t afford a seat,” the old man said, pulling up a stool. “And I didn’t want to go bothering you for one, before you say that you’d have given me one; I may be poor, but I’m proud. Never begged anything off another man in my life, and I’m not starting now.”
He shook his head.
“To think,” he said. “I knew you since you were a little lad. And now look at you; Grand Champion of the Arena!”
He grinned and clapped Carnius on the shoulder.
“Your old dad would be proud of you, if he was still around to see it,” he said. “We’re all proud of you down here, you know; a Waterfront lad, getting famous from nothing. Just goes to show that there’s hope for us all, eh?”
“Suppose it does,” Carnius said, shifting in his seat as if suddenly uncomfortable. The last thing that had crossed his mind was doing the Imperial City Waterfront, of all places, proud, but if that was what the old man liked to think, then he was welcome to think it, Carnius supposed.
“You know what’s best about you and all this?” Gannall said, completely unaware of any discomfort on Carnius’ behalf. “You stuck with us, despite all your money and fame; you didn’t suddenly brush us all off and go mingling with nobby types and saying that we were good for nothing. You stuck by us. That’s something special, that is.”
“Thanks,” Carnius said, unsure what to say.
“Ah, don’t go thanking me, lad,” Gannall replied. “Y’know what, I’ll leave you and your Khajiit friend to your drinks, but I just wanted to say that. You did a good thing, sticking with your roots.”
He stepped up, and began calling to the barmaid for a drink, and Ta’Xarna watched him go.
“You know,” he said after a moment. “Why do you stay down here, anyway?”
“I just do,” Carnius said. “My house down here is fine. Besides, I was born here.”
“Khajiit was born in the docks in Anvil,” Ta’Xarna replied. “Doesn’t make them any better. As soon as Khajiit had the money to come and be a gladiator, he didn’t stay back in his awful shack in the port. Khajiit got his money and got himself a house. Now look where he lives; big place in the Elven Gardens, with garden, dining room, bedrooms, even a secret cellar for Skooma and Moon Sugar. Where do you live? Run-down hut down here, even though you’re making lots of cash with every fight you do.”
“My house is fine,” Carnius said. “I’m happy with it. Besides, you know I’m no good with numbers; if I tried to buy a place I’d just get ripped off.”
“Who’d do that to you? You’re six feet tall and can punch someone to death.”
“I just don’t think it’s worth the trouble.”
“If you’re sure,” Ta’Xarna said, though Carnius could sense the doubt on the Khajiit’s voice.
The real reason was more than that, but if he told Ta’Xarna then the best he’d get would be bafflement and at worst the Khajiit laughing in his face. Agronak probably would have understood, Carnius reckoned, but not Ta’Xarna, as much as he liked the cheerfully sociopathic beast-man. The reason why he hadn’t moved away was the same reason you never left the Arena once you joined it; if you were part of it, it owned you, forever. If he’d bought a new house with the money he’d won in the arena, nobody would say anything, and nobody would do anything, but there would be that quiet wellspring of resentment that would always bubble away back where he was born. It always happened when people managed to make money and moved away. Had Carnius left, people would quietly remark to themselves; “Carnius thinks he’s Better Than Us. He’s got Ideas that are Above His Station. He’s let it all Go To His Head. He’s Letting The Side Down. He’s Associating With All The Posh Types now.” He’d no longer become a beloved local hero, but instead be the one who sold out to fame and riches and forgot where he came from.
Of course, his sponsoring from Her Ladyship was probably him associating with the posh types in any case, but nobody seemed to have noticed that outside of the arena. After all, why talk about that sort of thing when you could talk about the time that mad Khajiit in the jester’s cap chopped a Nord in half with a scimitar? Or that time the Grey Prince had beaten four men alone, armed with just a short sword?
He drained his drink as that memory jogged something important, rising from his seat.
“Where are you going?” Ta’Xarna asked, frowning. “We’re nowhere near to being drunk.”
“I’ve got something I need to do,” Carnius said.
“Can’t it wait?”
“No,” Carnius replied, putting a handful of septims on the counter. “It’s important. That’s for the mead.”
Ta’Xarna frowned.
“If you insist,” he replied. “Maybe I can go to a place with prettier girls, now. Find those two elves I wanted.”
“Yeah, fine,” Carnius said, hurrying out.
Ta’Xarna shrugged before finishing his own drink, shaking his head as he set it down. If Carnius was gone, he supposed, there was nothing to hold him and his fun back. Now, at least, he might find something worth his time.
Aaawwww!!!!...Ta'Xarna is so sweet!!!...My Gods he made me laugh!...
Loved the idea of him fighting in a jester's hat...
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They made a good pairing, Carnius all quiet and moody and the Khajiit all funny...Loved it!!...
Just a thing, use italics to emphaize the thoughts. You seemed to have missed it in the last chapters ![]()
Dude, I loved the gladiatorial fight in "Her Ladyship". Gives me reason to keep writing so I can reach the arena sections in the other story. Love the Roman effect of the citizens cheering for death of a poor showing. It must be horrible to have your life end at the roar of the howling mob. Her Ladyship, a vampire? No way!
Dood! You do Martial Arts? That kicks @$$. No pun. But it's good to see Carnius do some hand to hand fights himself, a welcome relief from the other combatants. The tavern toast part was interesting, I loved seeing the group toasting to Agronak. The bravado vibe was greately written here, as was the fellowship. And being Grand Champion means you get money and hoez Gold and Wenches.
It's back! (finally)
McBadgere: Yeah, I've developed a soft spot for Ta'Zarna while writing this too. He will be appearing again, worry not.
Darkness Eternal: I know about italics thing but I haven't actually had any active thoughts in the last few chapters...
Glad you enjoyed the gladiator scene, and I was trying to get some sense of what it would be like to have your life in the hands of a crowd (plus it never made sense to me to have all the arena fights to the death; you'd just run out of gladiators...), or entirely dependent on whether a rich patron is in a good or a bad mood. And no, Her Ladyship is not a vampire, though I can imagine that she and Alucardius would probably enjoy one another's company.
And yes, I do do Martial Arts (krapow!), which will hopefully make Carnius' fight scenes nice and realistic as well as being visceral and exciting. And as for the gold and wenches, well...I wonder how long their appeal will last.
Chapter 4-The Parting Gift
You prepared for these things when you worked as a gladiator. In a profession where death was a constant that hung over you on gossamer threads, it was foolishness not to. Those who lasted in the arena knew that the likelihood of each match being their last increased with every bout, and so took some measures and made preparations. Everybody at the arena had the sense to get their affairs in order soon.
Agronak had not had anything as fancy as a proper will and testament made with a lawyer, mainly because he had never trusted them. Instead, he had given Carnius a key and made him promise that he would do as he had asked with it if he ever died in the arena.
Carnius’ first destination was his house on the waterfront. He unlocked the door to his small, shabby and yet well kept one-storey home and headed through the main room into his bedroom. It was simple and Spartan, more a place to sleep than to live, with the only other bits of furniture being a bedside table, a wardrobes for his clothes and a chest to safeguard his possessions. There were no books or even any pictures; Carnius hadn’t time for the latter and he found former too much trouble to work out for it to be any kind of pleasure.
He picked up the chest with a grunt, heaving it to one side and pulling back the threadbare green rug it lay on top of. Underneath that was a trapdoor, and he clicked back the bolt and lifted it up.
Beneath it, there was another chest. There were several items here that were most important to him; much of his coin, as, like Agronak, he held with local wisdom that said it was bad to trust lawyers, bankers or any of their kind, a few other bits of personal memorabilia and the key.
He took it and tucked it into his pocket, closing the chest and placing it back in its hiding place, dropping the chest over it and making sure that the rug wasn’t obviously disturbed. His work done, he left his house, locking the door behind him once more as he headed for Agronak’s old house.
When he found it, there were already people there, people he didn’t know. Opening up the door, going through it. Ransacking and looting it.
He strode towards one of them who was standing outside it with a heavy ledger and a quill, and asked; “What’s going on? Who are you?”
“Quinitus Tarral, Imperial Office of Taxation and Audits,” the man replied. “The inhabitant of this house here passed away yesterday, and as he specified no inheritor in his will it’s now property of the Empire. You a friend of his?”
“Yes,” Carnius replied. “And you can’t do this.”
“Why not?” Quinitus asked. “It’s all perfectly legal.”
Carnius shook his head; he couldn’t argue with that.
“Look,” he said. “I’m a friend of his. He made me promise to do something with his money for him if he died. I need to get it.”
Quinitus snorted.
“Nice try,” he said. “He’s got no will, so you don’t have a leg to stand on, let me assure you of that. Now move along and stop wasting my time.”
“Is everything still in there?” Carnius asked, changing subject.
“Yes, it is, seeing as we’re still making an inventory of it all,” Quinitus replied. “And that doesn’t mean you’re getting in.”
“Right,” Carnius said. “Thanks.”
He stepped past Quinitus, through the front door.
“Hey!” the clerk called after him “Where are you going?”
“In there,” Carnius said as he entered the spacious hallway.
“You can’t do that!” Quinitus protested. “Don’t make me call the Watch!”
“Call them if you want,” Carnius said. “I don’t care.”
Quinitus hestitated as Carnius stepped into what looked like a study before hurrying after Carnius.
“I’m warning you,” he said.
Carnius turned on him, and Quinitus gulped as he realised just how much taller and brawnier than him Carnius was, clutching his ledger to his chest like a shield.
“Look,” Carnius said. “I made Agronak a promise that I’d do something with his money for him if he died. I know you’re just doing your job, but if you keep getting in my way then we’re going to have a problem. Understand?”
“Yes,” Quinitus managed. “Look, I know you might be upset if he was your friend, but I really can’t let you do this, please! There’s a legal process and everything we can work it out, but I can’t just let you march in here and take things. I’d lose my job if I did that.”
He shook his head, and said; “Who are you, anyway?”
“The new Grand Champion.”
Quinitus was quiet for a moment, before he said; “Oh.”
After a second he added a hesitant; “Congratulations, I suppose.”
“Thanks,” Carnius said. “Now look, can I get Agronak’s money out? I’m not just going off with it, and he made me promise to do something with it. Look, he even gave me this key for his strongbox and everything.”
He fished it out of his pocket to prove his point, and Quinitus frowned. Carnius could see he had the small man running scared, and he had enough self-preservation instinct in him to decide that refusing the Grand Champion was a bad idea.
“I suppose,” he said after a moment. “Seeing as you have the key and everything, it counts as a verbal contract. And if the money’s with a trusted party and is accounted for, it should be alright. Nothing I’d lose my job over.”
Carnius nodded.
“Say it was a charitable donation,” he said. “They don’t tax those, do they?”
“No, no,” Quinitus said. “You can take the money, if you want. Just don’t punch anyone, please.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Carnius replied as he pulled open a cupboard on the desk Agronak had. He wasn’t sure how much the Grey Prince would have actually used it; he was hardly the most academic of people. The speculation was immaterial, however, and what was more immediate was the grey steel box in there. He placed the key in its lock and clicked it open, pulling the lid back to inspect the stash of Septims within it. He wasn’t sure of the sum within, but Grand Champion was a well-paid title and it was certainly a lot. He closed it, nodding in satisfaction, taking it and tucking it under his arm.
“Alright,” he said. “I’m done.”
He doubted there was much else he could do for Agronak’s house now.
Quinitus nodded, then hesitantly held up his quill and asked he asked; “I don’t suppose you can sign my ledger, could you?”
“Fine,” Carnius shrugged. “Where do you want me to sign it?”
Quinitus flicked to the back of it, to a blank page, and said; “Just there would be fine.”
Carnius nodded, taking the quill and scrawling something approaching his name on the parchment.
“Now there’s a keepsake worth hanging onto,” Qunitius said, ripping the page from the book. “Thank you.”
“It’s alright,” Carnius said, making for the door.
He left Agronak’s house with his package, heading back through the crowded streets of the Imperial city. People bustled around him, but paid him no more heed other than to move out of his way. Soon enough, he had found his destination; a large building of white stone, one that looked old but was still well kept, with the words ‘Saint Allesia’s Home for Parentless Children’ written on a sign above the door.
He rapped his knuckles on the heavy oak door, and after a few moments of waiting it swung open for him. He was greeted by an Imperial woman, who asked him; “Yes, sir? What can I do for you?”
“I’ve come to make a donation,” Carnius said. “Just a bit of, you know, charity.”
He rattled the strongbox and the girl nodded.
“Of course, thank you,” she said. “Come on in.”
She lead him through into a small side room, and nodded for him to set down the strongbox on the table.
“How much are you giving?” she asked as Carnius did so, pulling the key from his pocket.
“I’m not sure,” Carnius replied. “I was just giving you what’s in the box.”
He pulled the lid back, revealing the contents, and she gasped as she looked at the gold within.
“By the Nine,” she murmured. “I…there must be thousands in there. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. There’s been work on the building we’ve needed to and we were worried about how we were going to get the money, but this is…thank you, thank you.”
She bit her lip, tears of amazed gratitude beginning to well before she cleared her throat.
“Sorry,” she managed. Carnius was standing a little uncomfortably, blushing at the outburst of emotion. “This is just…it’s quite a shock, that’s all.”
“It’s fine,” Carnius said. “I think I understand.”
She nodded.
“What’s your name, sir,” she said. “I mean, we were hoping to build a new set of dormitories and if you wanted to we could name it after you; this should pay for it.”
“It’s not my money,” Carnius said. “I’m giving it on behalf of a friend of mine. He, ah, he can’t deliver it himself.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “I’m sorry to hear that. It was a very generous thing of him to ask for. What was his name? We can put up the new wing as a memorial for him, if you think it would be the sort of thing he would like; it would be a good thing to be remembered by.”
“Yeah, he’d like that,” Carnius said. “His name was Agronak; Agronak Gro-Malog.”
“The Grey Prince?” the orphanage’s proprietor asked, to which Carnius nodded. “I see. I suppose he was well known for being charitable with his money.”
She smiled at him, and said; “Thank you, again. There would have been a lot of people who would have kept this, I think. It was good of you to do this.”
“I promised him,” Carnius replied with a shrug. “And I’m a man of my word.”
“And the world could use more men like you,” the woman said. “Thank you again, sir. I’ll be sure to put this to good use.”
“I’m sure you will,” Carnius said. “I think I should go, though. Good luck with making that new wing.”
He rose to left, before he was stopped by the orphanage’s owner asking; “I didn’t get your name, sir. What is it?”
“It’s nothing important,” Carnius said. “I was just a friend of Agronak’s, that’s all.”
“If you say so,” she said. “But if it’s all the same, thank you. We’re in your debt here.”
“Don’t mention it,” Carnius replied. “I just passed the money on.”
He nodded a farewell to her, which she returned, still sitting by the box with a disbelieving air about her. He made his way through the front door, making sure the latch closed behind him, and it was as he stepped back onto the street that he realised something; he had absolutely no idea of what he was going to do with himself next.
Yeah, not all contests ended in death. People didn't want to waste a life that they invested on. Its like murdering a famous football player because he did a poor showing in during a football game, you know. I reread the Ladyship scene(Isabelle) weeks ago, and yeah, I did conclude that she is not a vampire. I knew that
Good that you do martial arts. As a practitioner and a writer, I am quite sure you will write a compelling yarn on the do's and dont's and how's of hand to hand combat. Gold and wenches...good for a time. Depending on the individual, their appeal can diminish quite significantly.
We certainly get to see more of Carnius in this chapter. For example, his not so extravagant living conditions and lack of books means he either is short on coin or he prefers a more humble living space. The lack of books tells us he is not much of a reader either. I like the fact that a memorial of Agronak was offered. It wa still sad to see the fallen champion's house ransacked and looted. Good chapter. We can only wait to see what is in story for Carnius.
RL has kept me from catching up on too many of the stories here. But I thought I'd check yours out as it is still quite short.
I have to say, you hooked me from the first post. The various scenes we saw are excellent teasers of the story to come. Ending with the death of the Grey Prince (one of the real tragedies in the game, I have to admit) is a most excellent way of beginning the narrative.
Be as crazy as you wish - it's the Madgod we're talking about, right? He isn't called Mad for nothing, right?
After that first chapter, I really, especially liked the most recent (The Parting Gift) as it tells us more about Agronak's character and the sort of man Carius really is. It gives us a real sense of history that is so much more enjoyable than seeing a full-developed character spring out of the waters of Lake Rumare, so to speak.
Being a bit of a grammar dictator myself, I am quite pleased by the technical quality of your writing, as well. I find nit-filled stories very difficult to read. This story isn't typical of that sort of tale, and I can just enjoy what you, the writer, is trying to tell us. Thanks for taking the time to put out this sort of quality - it is much appreciated.
I think I will keep following this story, just to see the dance scene with Her Ladyship, the Angel of Rage, and Sentinel. Those teasers showed me the kind of characters they are, and I'm intrigued!
Ta’Xarna is tremendous fun to read. I love that Qunitius asked for an autograph. Pure enjoyment, Colonel!
Oh-ho-hooo yes!!...
...
A fantastic episode that shows much of Carnius' character in that he didn't just run off with the money...Then again, this is possibly why he's a Champion eh?...
...
Loved the section at Agronak's house...The dialogue was perfect...
...Made me smile muchly...
Brilliant stuff...
Looking forward to more...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
Darkness Eternal: Indeed, people did not want the gladiators they had invested in from dying; one of the odder things about Oblivion was that all the fights were to the death, but I can understand that from a design viewpoint.
On the martial arts thing, I'll say now that that isn't really my main focus with the story (it'll appear, of course, but still...). I'm more trying to focus on character and, in this case, the setting.
And on the lack of books, Carnius isn't much of a reader, no; I'm trying to go for a hero who, while still a smart person, isn't particularly well educated and was unable to get good schooling when he was younger. Thus, books don't mean all that much to him, and he can, in fact, barely write, hence the scrawled signature.
Haute Ecole Rider: Thank ye kindly, good sir! (Or possibly madam. Internet, you know how it is)
I'm glad you're enjoying this, and having Carnius develop over the course of the story is somewhat my intention; I'm trying for somewhat of a Bildungs-Roman story, so I want him to grow out time, and full development straight out of the lake would be counter productive.
And on the grammar note, I always try and keep it good. But thank you in any case. And enjoy the characters when they appear! ![]()
Grits: Thanks very much indeed!
McBadgere: Well, it wasn't so much that Carnius is a champion that caused him to honour Agronak's wishes as it was that he's a basically decent person. And I'm glad you liked the section at Agronak's house; I enjoyed writing it a lot, and I'm pleased you enjoyed reading it too.
In short, thank you everyone, and I love you all!
Except you, Clive. Go back to your corner.
I also took tae kwon do as a teen, but slacked on it in as high school started. Got to green belt before I decided I liked sleeping in on Saturday mornings instead, or partying with all my friends the night before.
Nice concisely written post there - not too rambling and elaborate to kill the pace of the story.
Can't wait to see what trouble is going to come Carnius' way, he just seems like a guy that attracts it!
Rather sullen too, wonder which side of madness he will prefer...
Just one thing:
Sorry old mate...
Tried to suggest impatience and excitement towards reading more...
*Shrug*...
Quick! Call the Arcane University! We've got a threadomancer on the loose!
Chapter 5-The Door
There's scratching. Scratching in the walls. I don't know what it is. I don't know why there is scratching. Nobody told me that there would be this damn scratching.
I listened. Put down my quill, halted this chronicle, something dangerous in itself (don't tell them, please. They'll be angry with me. We can't let that happen) and listened against the walls. There is a scraping, a gnawing, a scratching, something eating away at them. It must know I'm in here.
Oh no. Please, if you're reading this, send help. Send help, stop it before it gets in!
But the chronicle…the chronicle must continue.
Must write it or they'll see I've stopped…
The crowd roared as the razor-edged claw closed over the heavy gauntlet, clattering against Daedric ebony and gripping. The land-dreugh tugged, trying to stumble Carnius with the grip it held against him, but the gladiator moved with it. He pulled himself in as he swung a punch with his free hand, slamming the spiked knuckles of the heavy metal gloves into the thick carapace that guarded its arm. The bone armour cracked on the impact and the claw released, and Carnius braced raised his arm as the other one swung towards him.
It hit the vambrace protecting his wrist and he turned his forearm as it impacted. The claws slid away before they could get a grip and Carnius' hand twisted around, gripping onto it as the land-dreugh lost balance, the crablike creature shrieking in anger and dismay before his free fist slammed home on the joint. Its cries turned to those of pain as the armour around it cracked into jagged shards that sliced into muscles and severed nerves, the claw lolling uselessly as the crablike being stumbled away from his grip.
Across the arena sands, man and beast faced one another. Carnius panted, blood pounding in his ears as he sized up his opponent in an instant. One of its claws was now useless, nothing more than a barely-controllable club with a sharp, bony edge, the other still working but injured. The razor-tipped forelegs it had were still very much in commission and sharp enough to gut him if he wasn't careful, and he needed to get around those if he wanted a chance to kill it. The head was what he needed to deal with; pulp its tiny brain and it would die.
A moment later, he had formulated a plan for that. One that would look nice and dramatic for the crowds, too.
He moved, shifting over to the left, the dreugh following his movements as he did so. He pressed along the wall of the arena, yelling at the beast as it watched him. It dithered for a moment as the crowd yelled and bellowed for it to do something, before the noise and pain pushed it too far and it charged forwards with a shriek of anger.
Carnius crouched, grabbed a handful of grit and hurled it at his enemy as it skittered towards him. It gave a hissing wail as it was blinded, stumbling and staggering away. It drew to a halt, its remaining good claw scraping over its beady eyes as it tried to clear the stinging sand, and Carnius moved. It may not have hit the wall like he had hoped it would, but it was good enough.
He darted behind it while it was distracted, vaulting onto its back. The dreugh shrieked as it realised where he was, jolting as it tried to throw him and slicing a claw towards him. Carnius grabbed onto one of the lesser arms that protruded from its back with one hand, blocked with the other, the thick chitin claws glancing off the Daedric ebony and throwing it away.
He took his opening, pulled forwards and punched.
The blow crashed into the back of its skull, snapping the shell that protected it and pulping the soft meat beneath it. The Dreugh shrieked and toppled forwards, staggering before Carnius drew his fist back again, the spikes on his gauntlet's knuckles dripping with transparent pink blood and chunks of bone and gore. He smashed it home again, and the Dreugh pitched forwards, toppling onto the sands.
As he rose the crowd roared, clambering to their feet as they bellowed their approval. He looked around at them and raised an arm in acknowledgement. He could pick out coin being passed between customers and bookies along with a few angry words here and there.
He gave a final wave as he headed back down towards the Bloodworks, making his way through the tunnel built from viscera-stained stone. He pushed open the door at the bottom, smiling as he looked at the gore-stained basin in the circular room at the bottom.
He splashed water from it onto his face, the cool and salty liquid running over his skin and bringing the dirt with it. The enchantment on the basin took effect immediately, the fatigue in his muscles seeping away and the nicks and bruises from the fight fading and closing.
Owyn was waiting for him in the Bloodworks, and the Redguard nodded the new Grand Champion his approval as he saw him.
"Good work," he said, stepping from the wall which he was leaning on. "Crowd loved that one if the noise they were making out there was anything to judge by. Here, your pay."
He handed Carnius a small purse that gave a quiet clink as it dropped into the gladiator's palm. Carnius pulled its neck open to check it, the red glint of light within showing its contents to be rubies.
"Should be a thousand Septims' worth of them in there," Owyn said. "Easier to carry than that many coins."
"Thanks," Carnius said as he pocketed it.
"Of course," Owyn said, the Redguard stepping through into the rest of the damp innards of the Bloodworks. There were a few gladiators lounging about, practicing against dummies or sparing against each other with wooden weapons. "Hey, pit dog!"
The Argonian he addressed looked up from where he was expecting a shield, and a clawed hand picked up a flail.
"You're on in two minutes, pit dog," Owyn said. "Head up to entrance, get ready."
"Of course," the Argonian said, standing up and sliding on a helmet, heading past them. He paused as he saw Carnius. "Hey, are you…?"
"Not now, pit dog," Owyn barked. "Head up; crowd's waiting."
"Good luck, kid," Carnius added, to which the lizard-man nodded his thanks. He hurried away up the stairs, scaly tail brushing against the floor with a dry hiss. "Saw him before; was doing alright. He any good?"
"He's a quick learner, I'll give him that much," Owyn replied. "And he's survived this long. Refuses to hear that his flail's not the best weapon for the sort of brawling you get in an arena."
"If I remember right, you said the same thing about me fighting with my fists," Carnius replied. "Look how that turned out."
"You just got lucky," Owyn said.
Carnius snorted.
"What?" Owyn asked.
"Every one of us here is just a wet-behind-the-ears pit dog to you, aren't we?" Carnius asked, gesturing to the gladiators.
"Well, what can I say?" Owyn said. "That's what I all saw you as, and first impressions stick. Except for Ta'Zarna."
"Oh, and what was he?"
"A goddamn maniac. And that never changed."
Carnius shrugged at this, and Owyn suddenly glowered.
"Arran!" he called out to a Redguard gladiator who was practising a series of combat manoeuvres with a pair of scimitars. She stopped what she was doing as the Blademaster approached. "What in the Nine's name do you call that?"
"I'll leave you to your berating," Carnius said as he stepped over to the small locker and mannequin that held most of his arena possessions. He slid off the studded leather tunic and kilt that formed the large part of his armour as the Imperial Arena's champion, and removed his gauntlets. A shirt and trousers of loose, cool and clean cotton, top dyed blue and the bottom simple black, were pulled on, and he inspected the gauntlets. They were still flecked with a few stray chunks of Dreugh-matter, and he wiped them off with a cloth, setting about oiling and cleaning them the best he could. The daedric metal that bladed his knuckles was undamaged, the hardened ebony resilient enough to withstand anything a Dreugh could throw at it and was already clean of blood; he had noticed that was always a strange trait of those bands that ran along them, as if it were somehow drinking it in.
The work did not take long, and soon enough he left, heading into the bustling streets of the Imperial City with his gauntlets safely stored away in the Bloodworks. The crowds flowed around him as he made his way along the pavements, his journey uninterrupted aside from when he was nearly sprayed by a sheet of water from a passing carriage. He halted by a street corner where a boy was standing with a bundle of scrolls under his arm, brandishing one of them like the sceptre of some king, and bellowing at the top of his lungs; "Black Horse Courier! Black Horse Courier! Get all the news you could possibly want here!"
His gaze glanced towards Carnius as he saw him draw to a halt.
"Want a copy of the Courier, mister?" he asked. "Only a Septim."
"What's it reporting on today, then?" Carnius asked.
"What everyone's talking about," the boy said. "The island that's appeared in the middle of the Niben Bay."
"Island?" Carnius asked.
"Yeah," the boy replied. "It just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night, with this door on it, and nobody knows why. People are worried that it's another gate from when the Hero of Kvatch stopped them last time, but nothing has come out yet."
"Let's see a copy," Carnius said, interest piqued.
"Course, mister," the boy said. "One Septim, please."
Carnius reached for the purse at his belt, and realized that the only one he had was the pouch of rubies that Owyn had given him. He took one of the precious stones out of it and handed it to the boy, who frowned.
"I don't think I can change this, mister," he said.
"Just keep it," Carnius said. "I don't need it, anyway."
"Really? Thanks, mister," the boy said with a grin, handing over a rolled up copy of the Courier. "Wow. Have a good day. Thanks."
"Not a problem," Carnius replied.
He left, heading towards the Elven Gardens district, deciding to read the scroll over some lunch at the King and Queen. The bouncer at the doorway, a grizzled Orc who had once been an adventurer if his scars were anything to go by, nodded at Carnius as he passed through the door; his clothes may have been far simpler than that of most of the upper-class tavern's clientele, lacking as it was in jewellery and ornamentation, but it was clean and there was a sack of coin at his belt, and that was enough for the hulking Orsimer.
Eating here was somewhat of a guilty pleasure for Carnius, but as he ordered a platter of bread, cheese and a few slices of cured pork, he felt he needed a good lunch, and the inn served the best in the city. He waited at the table for his order and unfurled his copy of the Courier, tracing a calloused finger under each word as he read.
Niben Bay Mystery Door!
In a bizarre and alarming turn of events for the citizens of Bravil, the city finds itself to be the neighbour of a new landmass within the Niben Bay. The small island, no larger than fifty feet in size, is reported to have simply appeared in the middle of the bay at midnight with a flash of light, much to the surprise of the local residents. On the island itself, it is reported that a gateway, shaped like three faces, is the dominant feature, along with a number of plants that local experts from the Bravil Mages Guild have been unable to identify as anything belonging to Mundus. Fearing that it may be another incident similar to the attack that Bravil suffered during the Oblivion Crisis, Count Terentius dispatched a contingent of city guards and mercenaries to seal the area; while nothing Daedric has come out of the gate, the mercenaries who entered returned from their experience after having suffered some kind of severe shock, and reports say that their recollection of events beyond it remains somewhat incoherent.
Commenting on the situation, Captain-
"Interesting read?" a voice asked from behind Carnius. The gladiator glanced up as the chair opposite him was pulled away and Her Ladyship sat.
"Interesting enough, I suppose," Carnius said, raising an eyebrow. "Can't say I expected to see you here, milady."
"I was here on some business of mine and thought I would stop off for something to eat," Her Ladyship replied. Behind her, Carnius could see her two bodyguards waiting nearby, the twins' hands resting on the pommels of their weapons "And who should I happen to see other than my favourite gladiator enjoying some lunch of his own?"
"What sort of business?" Carnius asked.
"Oh, there have been one or two trade opportunities that have recently opened up here in Cyrodiil that my own estates and people could benefit from," Her Ladyship replied. "I'm merely helping the process along the way."
"That the sort of thing nobles usually do?" Carnius asked.
"Not typically, but the territory I rule over is rather unusual," Her Ladyship said. "I need to take a more active interest in its affairs in order to ensure that things run smoothly."
She snapped a finger at a servant girl, and glanced at Carnius as she hurried towards them. "But in all honesty, I'd rather give business a rest for the moment and simply enjoy some lunch with a good friend of mine."
"What can I get you and your friend, ma'am?" the serving girl asked, bobbing a curtsey as she reached them.
"Just a luncheon platter, if you may, with sliced chicken instead of the usual pork," Her Ladyship replied. "And some wine; do you have any good vintages in your cellar?"
"We have a few bottles of Surilie Brothers three ninety-nine, ma'am," the serving girl said. "Would that be acceptable?"
"Perfect," Her Ladyship said. "One bottle, chilled, and two goblets for Carnius and I. That will be all."
The serving girl curtseyed and hurried away to fetch her order, and Her Ladyship turned back to Carnius.
"Now, how has your time as Grand Champion been treating you so far?" Her Ladyship asked.
"Can't complain," Carnius replied, setting his copy of the Courier down on the tabletop.
"Can't complain?" Her Ladyship asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're the Grand Champion of the Imperial City Arena, with fame, gold, inns treating you to free drinks and hordes of women who are completely overwhelmed with admiration for you and you merely can't complain? You'll forgive me if I'm a little incredulous about that."
Carnius shrugged.
"Well, I suppose it's good," he said. "I'm pretty lucky to be where I am, after all."
"And yet now you're here, it isn't enough," Her Ladyship said. "Tell me, Carnius, what lies in store for you now that you're actually Grand Champion?"
"Training, the occasional match, that sort of thing," Carnius said. "What I did before, really."
Her Ladyship nodded.
"You were perfectly happy being a gladiator before you become Grand Champion," she said. "So why the sudden change in heart?"
Carnius was quiet for a moment, leaning back in his chair before he said; "I liked doing all this gladiator stuff back when I was working towards something. I had…I had purpose, a goal. Something to achieve."
Their conversation was interrupted for a moment as the serving girl Her Ladyship had talked to earlier set down a few trays with food, along with the bottle of wine in ice and a pair of goblets.
"Enjoy your meal," she said with a curtsey, disappearing a moment later to deal with a customer."
"Go on," Her Ladyship said, pouring a goblet of wine and passing it to Carnius.
"Well, now I'm here I don't really have anything to work towards. I've won," Carnius said. "I kind of feel like…what's that term sailors use? When there's no wind?"
"Doldrums, I believe," Her Ladyship said.
"That's the one," Carnius said. "Doldrums. It's like that. Before, there was a breeze, wanting to make it to Grand Champion, but now I'm actually the Grand Champion, it's gone. I'm just drifting. I don't have any direction now."
"There must be something for you to do, I'm sure," Her Ladyship said.
"Well, there's talk of getting the Arena over in Kvatch going again now that the city's beginning to get back on its feet," Carnius said. "I figured that I could probably help there; got experience in this, after all."
"I've heard much that same, but in all honesty, how long will that take?" Her Ladyship asked. "After all, they still have to worry about how well stocked their granaries are and if people are going to bother trading with them; the good people of Kvatch will have a few more pressing matters to deal with before they can make time for gladiators and circuses, I believe."
She took a sip of her wine.
"So," she said. "You want something better to do with your life, then. A new goal, perhaps. Why not simply leave the Arena and do something else?"
"Look, I've said before, it isn't like that," Carnius said. "You can't just up and go."
"I'm well aware of what you said, Carnius, but it simply makes no sense to me," Her Ladyship said. "It seems to me that it's for the best if you have yourself a fresh start, but you seem to be quite insistent on staying there."
Carnius shrugged, ripping a hunk of bread from the platter before him and taking a bite.
"Tell me, Carnius," Her Ladyship said. "Would you call yourself a free man?"
"What sort of question is that?" Carnius asked with a frown. "Of course I would."
"I see," Her Ladyship said. "Then it seems to me, Carnius, that for a self-proclaimed 'free man' you wear an awful lot of chains. You don't wish to leave the Waterfront despite the fact that it's a gods-forsaken pool of filth-"
"Hey!" Carnius managed.
"And you will defend said gods-forsaken pool of filth despite the evidence that piles up to paint it as such," Her Ladyship continued. "And you choose to linger at the Arena for no discernable reason even though it's clear that you are simply wasting your time there."
She shook her head.
"What in the name of all the gods that have ever been are you doing, Carnius?"
"And why do you care?" Carnius asked.
"I suppose it's because I invested a great deal of time and effort in you," she said. "And I've come to care about you as more than just a mere investment as well. But if you want to sit here in your doldrums and spend the rest of your life doing nothing of worth simply because you feel obliged to then I suppose there isn't much I can do about it."
Carnius shrugged as he chewed on a mouthful of salted pork and bread.
"Look," he said. "I need to stay here, alright? It's what's expected of me."
Her Ladyship was quiet for a moment, before she said; "Perhaps you are right, Carnius. All I'm saying is that you should keep your options open."
Her gaze fell on the open copy of the Courier that was resting by Carnius' plate.
"Speaking of openings, I see you've heard about that doorway and mystery island," she remarked.
"It's an interesting read, I'll give it that," Carnius said. "You think it might be another Oblivion gate like the ones that we got in the Crisis?"
"Call it a hunch, but I'm not certain," Her Ladyship replied. "There are no hordes of ravening Daedra spilling forth, for a start."
"Maybe," Carnius said. "Still, the people who did go through got a shock from something in there. Not sure if anybody else is going to be following through."
"I would beg to differ," Her Ladyship replied. "I have a feeling that there are going to be a great number of people doing quite the same thing."
"Really?" Carnius asked. "Who would that be?"
"Adventurers, I would guess," Her Ladyship said. "People seeking fame, riches and glory. But others too; those who want a fresh start, or run where people aren't going to follow, where they can leave their old lives behind. You always get souls like that."
Conversation turned as they ate and drank, meandering through various subjects, and Carnius found he was enjoying himself. Considering the vast gaps between their backgrounds, he had somehow felt that he and Her Ladyship would have no common ground. But despite this, the conversation was enjoyable, flowed on its own accord and Her Ladyship seemed to be having an equally good time. If anyone from his local home on the Waterfront could see him now they would either be amazed or outraged.
"I'm afraid I really must be leaving," Her Ladyship said some time later, just as she was finishing the last of her wine. "As much as I've enjoyed talking to you there is still a good deal of business that needs attending to."
She smiled at him as she stood.
"We should meet up again, sometime," she said. "I'll send a courier to find if you if I'm in the Imperial City again."
"Of course," Carnius said, heading towards the door. Her Ladyship fell into step behind him, her two bodyguards following behind. "I'd like that, I reckon."
He pushed open the door, and allowed Her Ladyship through into the street. She waited for him on the pavement for a moment as he stepped through.
"Well, I suppose this is where we part ways," she said. "I hope you find some kind of calling, Carnius. I really do."
"Thanks," the gladiator said. Her Ladyship curtseyed him with a smile that seemed to mock what she was doing, and swept away up the street. Carnius watched her go for a few moments. Then he returned back to the inside of the King and Queen, found their table and picked up his copy of the Black Horse Courier so he could do some more reading on this doorway.
...
A fine feast you return with m'friend!!...
Amazing stuff!!...
Loved the fight at the start...Nicely done...
And agains withs thes mysterious womanses!!...
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Absolutely brilliant writing...Love it!...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds most heartily*...
Oh yeah...
This...
Thank you, good sir McBadgere! Very pleased that you're enjoying this once more and I'll do my best to make sure that my future posts are somewhat less tardy. ![]()
Glad I managed to get that opening part suitably chilling, as that was exactly what I was going for; yay for unnerving and mysterious subplots! ![]()
P.S. I am also completely unable to say 'And agains withs thes mysterious womanses'. All that it's achieved is me lisping all over the place and me getting a few funny looks from my mum.
This is a very fascinating story. The level of detail you use truly makes the world feel real. Even the fight with the Dreugh was riveting. Hopefully Carnius goes and investigates this strange, new island (I'd truly be surprised if he didn't judging by the name of the story).
Actually, I'm planning on having the rest of the story detail how Carnius decided not to go and instead lived a largely unfilling life of empty fame and this actually has nothing more to do with the Shivering Isles whatsoever. ![]()
And I'm pleased that the details are working; whenever I write stories in video game worlds I always try and add as many of them in as I reasonably can in order to bring them to life more than the games do, as I don't have the same restrictions as a game does.
MOAR!!
Chapter 6-Through the Looking Glass
The last person that Carnius wanted to see at the moment was down in the Bloodworks as he entered them. Practising a feint of some kind with his huge scimitar, Ta’Xarna’s pads were skittering and hissing against the stone floor as he moved on the balls of his feet as he swung the curved blade with a whoosh of movement. He saw Carnius and grinned, bringing the blade up so that its tip pointed towards the ceiling.
“Carnius!” he called. “I did not expect to see you here just yet. What are you doing?”
“Just getting some things of mine,” the gladiator replied. “Don’t mind me.”
Ta’Xarna shrugged and went back to his practise, slicing a figure of eight in the air before him as he whirled the scimitar around. Carnius let him work, heading to the chest and mannequin where his things were kept. His first action was to slide his champion’s raiment off its place on it rack, and place it into the pack he had dumped at his feet. Noticing what he was doing, Ta’Xarna halted his practice, frowning at Carnius.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Carnius paused as he unlocked the chest that stored his gauntlets. He had really been hoping to avoid this conversation.
“Getting some things together,” he said, not looking up at the Khajiit.
“And putting them into a backpack,” Ta’Xarna said. “You are travelling?”
“Yeah,” Carnius said. Overhead, noise muffled by the thick stone, he could hear the faint, dull roar of a cheering crowd. “I’m going away for a while. I’m not sure how long, yet.”
“Leave?” Ta’Xarna asked. “But you are Grand Champion.”
“And that’s why I want to leave,” Carnius said.
“But you can’t just go,” Ta’Xarna protested. “The Arena needs its champion. And you’re that champion.”
Carnius shook his head.
“That’s the problem,” he said. “Look, what does every gladiator here, every pit dog and brawler and all the others want to do once they join up?”
“Become Grand Champion, of course,” Ta’Xarna said.
“Exactly,” Carnius said. “And here I am. Grand Champion. I’ve achieved the goal, I’ve won, I came out on top, and I hate it.”
This earned him a raised eyebrow.
“Why?”
“For a start, I had to kill Agronak,” Carnius said. “And as much as I’ve been trying to put that behind me I’m still having trouble doing that when I have to come in here every day and see where he used to be. And now I’m here, I’ve got no goal. Nothing keeping me here. I’m just going to have to sit around and kill time until somebody kills me. I need a fresh start, Ta’Xarna, and I need to go somewhere where nobody will try and follow me. I need to do something new.”
Ta’Xarna was quiet for a few moments, before he said; “Khajiit thinks he sees.”
“You do?”
“Think so,” Ta’Xarna said. “And Khajiit does not think he could stop you if he wanted to.”
“Alright,” Carnius said. “Thanks, Ta’Xarna.”
“It is no problem,” the Khajiit rasped. “You are good friend for Khajiit.”
Carnius extended a hand, but Ta’Xarna simply grabbed him in a hug, a tuft of fur on the tips of his large ears brushing against Carnius’ cheek. The Grand Champion nearly staggered before he hugged Ta’Xarna back. It was broken a few moments later.
“You will be coming back, yes?” the Khajiit asked.
“Honestly, I’ve got no idea,” Carnius said. “Maybe.”
“Then where are you going? Khajiit might need to find you.”
“That doorway in the Niben Bay,” Carnius said.
“The one that the Courier says has that strange land behind it that drives people mad?” Ta’Xarna asked. “Are you sure?”
“As I said,” Carnius said. “I need a fresh start. I’ll see what I can make of that place.”
“If you are certain,” Ta’Xarna said. He shrugged. “I wish you the best of luck, my friend. And you will be welcome back here in the Arena if you decide to return, of that I will be certain.”
“Thanks, Ta’Xarna,” Carnius said with a smile. “I’ll miss you, my friend.”
“And me you,” Ta’Xarna said. “Now go, my friend. Go and visit the land that makes everybody go mad. Perhaps Khajiit will follow one day; he would fit in nicely.”
Carnius grinned at him, placed his gauntlets into his backpack and left.
I am inclined to agree with him. Once you've achieved a goal that you've strived for, it really seems in a way like you're losing something. Maybe there should be a term for this... Post-Completion Depression?
Anyways, another good chapter
I am eager to see where you take it.
The return of a gladiator champion! Welcome back, Colonel Necromancer Mustard.
This update was absolutely juicy with battle scenes and blood that reminds us the gritty, intricate details of the life of a gladiator. From a full arena of gladiators and Dreugh slaughtering to a handful of rubbies and Owyn berating pit-dogs and the inevitable revelation of the mysterious door in the island. I enjoyed the read and I absolutely loved the fact that you stayed true to some of the characters. Owyn's humor, her Ladyshipps' personality as well.
In the following chapter, you also present the emotional weight that holds down against Carnius in his title of Grand Champion and his deed to attain it. I love how you reminded us that even though gladiators kill, they also feel sympathy and sadness. I very much loved this and I am glad you used it.
A good trip away from the IC to the Bravilian territory and at long last, close to the mad gates of Hell The Madhouse! We are presented with a great detail of the gaping maws of the doors to Oblivion and how it has been devouring the people who willingly walk into its inviting jaws. So, Carnius goes to the Shivering Isles for a second chance at "redemption". This was a great touch, giving him more feeling than your average adventurer wanting to go in for coin only. His steps into Oblivion is definetly the first steps into a new battle that will undoubtedly rival the ones he had in the arena. . .one that will change his life drastically. Excellent read!
Oh and a minor negative below.
Nits: "Ta’Xarna shrugged and went back to his practise."
Should be practice.
Zalphon: Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it depression, but it's human nature to be driven by and targets to aim for, in order to get a sense of purpose. Once we actually reach that goal, it's only natural for us to seek a new one in order to simply avoid becoming bored of life.
Darkness Eternal: Thank you! It's good to be back! ![]()
I'll admit that the hardest part of wirting this so far has been working out Carnius' motivations for going through the Doorway; the drive to get away as far as he can is a good one, but I liked the somewhat sinister idea of the gate 'calling' to the lost too and it helped to actually coax him through. Actually getting that drive to go through down onto the page in a convincing way was tricky, but I'm pleased I managed it.
Also, old bean, I might just say that it is actually how we spell practise over here in Blightly, wot. So from where I'm standing, my good chum, 'practice' is the wrong way to spell it!
*Puffs pipe and adjusts monocle*
McBadgere: It wasn't any specific Elf, so don't worry about it being Areldur. At the stage in history that the story is set in, he'd be off Knight-of-the-Nineing at the moment.
And the idea of a Ta'Xarna spinoff is a very, very tempting one now that you suggest it. Please don't put such enticing ideas in front of me, McBadgere; I'd rather just focus on one story at the moment. ![]()
Thank you all very much, more should be coming soon!
*Coughs* We spell it both ways...Practice means the same but is a noun and Practise is a verb...And bizzarely, they both have the same definition...Repetition of something to gain skill...
What?...I can read a dictionary too you know?...
...
Soooo...Who would be Grand Champion now that Carnius is gone?...*Walks away whistling*...
...
And in this case, as it is Ta'Xarna's practice, the spelling with a 'c' is the correct use.
You see that! You got grammarred, suckah! Grammarred in tha face! IN THA FACE!!
And fine, you can be Grand Champion while Carnius is gone, seeing as you really want to. ![]()
*Puts back out by swinging his mighty weapon...*...Damned magic swords!!...Nah, I think I'll leave it to Ta'Xarna...
And please...Keep yer grammar out of my face!!...It's unseemly...
...
Though I will admit...I did not know that about the two versions...My thanks...
...
Accidentally misspelled the word ‘contorted’ as ‘contortured’ in this chapter. Part of me now wants to start a campaign to get that word in the dictionary…
Chapter 7-Fringe
The first sensation was one of pain. Pain as every atom of his being was ripped apart. Pain as they made the transition between one plain of reality and another. Pain as they assembled themselves with a boom of displaced air back into the form they made up.
Carnius cursed, stumbling forwards and falling on his hands onto a floor of cold stone, lit by the harsh blue-white light of that portal behind him. He rested there for a moment, gasping for breath in lungs that were raw from the shock of being unmade and reformed with such violent suddenness.
“How very dignified,” a voice that dripped with good breeding and contemptuous class remarked. Carnius raised his head, breath still ragged, to see a balding man with grey hair and a hooked nose sitting behind a desk of thick oak, a jacket of black velvet covering an embroidered red silk shirt. The gladiator pulled himself to his feet and dusted himself down a little. “The floor is quite clean, you know.”
“Fine then,” Carnius said, looking around the room he was. It was small, at most a dozen square feet in size, made of grey stone. Its only furnishing was the desk, topped with dark green leather, and two chairs on either side.
“Please, take a seat,” the man behind the desk said. Carnius sat, placing his pack by his side and noticing the metronome on its leather surface, the thin metal arm swinging back and forth between two faces, one which snarled and one which smiled. “I imagine you’re here about the door.”
“I suppose I am,” Carnius said, still looking around the room. “Who exactly are you?”
“I am Haskill, the Chamberlain to the Lord Sheogorath,” the man replied. “And currently laboured with the most arduous duty of serving as the greeter to those who decide to come through his doorway.”
“And where exactly is this place?” Carnius asked.
“We are on the borders of the Shivering Isles,” Haskill said. “Beyond this room is the Realm of Sheogorath, the Prince of Madness and the Lord of the Never-There.”
“Right,” Carnius said. “Sheogorath…he’s one of the Daedra Princes, isn’t he?”
“What an astute act, to remember a piece of lore widely known to just about all the people of Nirn,” Haskill replied. “I’m sure you must be so proud of that. And before you ask, this doorway is an invitation, and that is all; it poses no threat to Mundus and no compact has been violated. All it seeks to do is allow people entry and egress to and from the Isles.”
“What about the other people who came through here?” Carnius asked. “The ones who came out mad.”
“They entered this realm and were ill-prepared for it,” Haskill replied. “Their minds are now my lord’s property.”
“Can they be cured?” Carnius asked.
“Cured?” Haskill raised an eyebrow. “You talk of them as if they are diseased. Their minds simply exist in another state of being, now. That is all. They may one day be reverted to their original state, they may not. But there is no simple ‘cure’.”
“So why this invitation?” Carnius asked.
“My master seeks a mortal to act as his champion,” Haskill replied. He looked Carnius up and down, surveying the grizzled and scarred gladiator. “As to why, I do not know, and seeking to divine such reasoning is a fool’s errand.”
“Right,” Carnius said. “So what happens if I choose to go on through the Isles?”
“Who can say?” Haskill asked. “There is always choice, wherever you go, and the Realms of Madness are no different in such regard. But if you choose to pass through the Gates of Madness, perhaps Lord Sheogorath will find you of use.”
He steepled his fingers and leant back in his chair.
“So,” he said. “Will you enter, or will you leave? And do make up your mind quickly; I have not got all day.”
“I’m going in,” Carnius said, resisting the urge to glower at the man.
“Excellent,” Haskill said. “Should you find your way through the Gates of Madness and into the rest of the Isles, then by all means, pay his lordship a visit in New Sheoth.”
He slid a folded parchment across the table, and added; “This map should also be of use to you if you succeed in passing through the Gates. Good luck.”
He stood from the chair and walked away, fading from view as he walked towards the far wall and leaving Carnius alone in the room.
“Hold on!” Carnius protested. “There’s no door to get out of here.”
He looked around the room, frowning.
“Damn posh types,” he muttered. “This some kind of joke?”
The walls stirred. Carnius blinked as a wave of tiny movements rustled across the stone, and hundreds of bright blue wings bloomed out from them. A great flock of butterflies burst out of the ceilings and walls, flapping around him as they formed a trail of colourful insects that flew towards the sky. They went sunwards, and Carnius frowned as he watched them go with the realisation that the walls had simply disappeared.
The landscape around him was alien in every way that he could possibly imagine. He was one the top of a hill, and the ground around him was jagged and rolling, as if the bones of the soil had snapped upwards but failed to break the skin, or the soil had suffered some great tectonic seizure that sent fissures and hills rumbling upwards in violent spasms. Where trees would have grown, instead colossal fungi of impossible vastness covered in thick rubbery skins snaked and wound towards the sky, thick trunks cavorting over expanses of ground. Cloying and thick undergrowth spread beneath the cyclopean mushrooms, some of it blooming with bright flowers while other had heads that trailed vines of a pestilential brown; some seemed to be normal trees and firms that he recognised from Cyrodiil, but others were overgrown and bloated fungi or strange plants that had a peculiarly fleshy quality to them. There was the sound of birds calling and insects chirruping from the plants around him, chittering and hooting and shrieking of all volumes and pitches.
In the distance he could see what looked to be a massive wall of black basalt rising from the ground over the other side of a valley, great ramparts shining slick in the sun that shone bright upon it. There was a cobbled pathway down from the top of the hill Carnius was on, lined on either side by broken and toppled pillars, and as he set off down it, he found the air here had that same damp, breathless quality that it had on that island in the Niben Bay.
With nowhere else to go, Carnius set off downhill along the path. He kept a wary eye on the greenery around him as it rustled and shifted, and part of him couldn’t help shake the feeling that there was something in the plants, or perhaps the plants themselves, that was preparing to leap out at him.
The first being that he met in the Shivering Isles that was not Haskill then tried to kill him.
He met it as the path reached a dip in the landscape, path roofed by roots one of the immense, twisted mushroom trees that had its head crowned by twisted and contorted branches that reached towards the sky like broken fingers. It was an ugly, froglike creature that was squatting in a puddle beneath the massive plant’s underside, and a flat, jowly head set between hunched shoulders turned to face him. It gave a guttural growl, limp lips wobbling with the noise to expose browning teeth, and raised an axe and shield of crude pig-iron and splintered wood.
With a baying noise, it charged, axe raised, ready to swing down and split Carnius’ skull. The gladiator relaxed his stance, raised his hands and waited for it to reach him. This was what he had been doing for fifteen years, and compared to some enemies he had fought, this creature was child’s play. The axe was in its right hand, he noticed, the shield in its left, and it wore no armour. He knew what to do.
The weapon swept down and Carnius sidestepped to its right. His left hand shot out and closed around its wrist, stumbling it as he turned and used his grip with his left hand as a cantilever with his shoulders and stepping forwards to slam his clenched fist into the side of its skull. With a crunch of bone, it collapsed, side of its skull caved in and leaking blood.
Carnius breathed the damp air heavily for a few moments as his body called for air in anticipation of yet more combat, adrenaline pounding in his head. He scanned the area, but could find no more of its companions, and took a few deep breaths to try and still the hammering of his heart as it pumped oxygen throughout his body.
Once it had calmed somewhat, he set off again, skirting around the puddle that had formed beneath the tree’s roots. For a moment, he paused as he saw the pale yellow of the mushroom tree’s undersides, where trunk began the metamorphosis into roots; thousands of semi-regular bumps, in the rough shape of a square rose from its underside, each one of them dimpled and slick with damp from the air. Carnius peered at it for a moment, and the started as he realised what they were. Teeth. Thousands and thousands of teeth, all of them somehow growing from the underside of this tree.
He shook his head, continuing along down the pathway as it began to wind its way uphill, the greenery beginning to thin out. Part of him was considering turning from this bizarre and exotic place, where the only people he had met so far were some kind of fat Argonian that wanted to kill him and a snooty toff. The thoughts trailed off as the path began to dip once more and he saw a building in the distance, a construction of sturdy white stone without any window or doorway he could see. As he approached, more details became clear; carvings in a language that he couldn’t read adorned it in a manner that seemed more like the randomly splashed slogans of graffiti than the work of any stonemason. As he rounded the other side, he saw its doorway, a portal of thick brass with its centre shaped like the mouth of a woman, face contorted in a scream or a snarl. There was a strange humming in the air around it, and Carnius extended a cautious hand to see if it would swing open. For a moment, his vision flashed black and there was a screaming in his ears before he stumbled back. He let it be and continued down the road. As rocks began to rise up on either side of him, the road forked. There was a signpost, and Carnius stopped to read it. At best, it was cryptic and at worst, downright useless; the one pointing to the left pathway read ‘The Gardens of Flesh and Bone’ and the one to the right ‘Passwall’. The other four markers on it, however, seemed to point to no path in particular, and simply read ‘Rage’, ‘Lust’, ‘Pride’ and ‘Despair’. After a few moments of deliberation, Carnius took the right pathway, deciding that this Passwall place sounded the most like civilisation of some kind.
His guess was right; less than fifty yards along the path the rocky walls that had started to rise receded, and building with a thatched roof and plastered walls came into view, part of it straddling the road as an archway. He headed through it, emerging into what looked like the central square of some kind of village. It was a decrepit, swampy place, the houses all raised on stilts and the whitewash on their walls peeling from the damp, thatch on their roofs half-rotten. The place seemed deserted, and Carnius frowned.
“Anybody home?” he called.
For a moment, all he heard was the same cries and chatters of the birds and insects in the undergrowth, and he wondered if the village was abandoned. And it was then that he heard the roar.
The bellows of some immense, enraged beast, the sound hit him like a wall, and his gaze shot towards its source, up a stepped path climbing a hillside on the village’s edge. Silence fell, the creatures of these Shivering Isles cowed into silence by the noise, and Carnius turned to face it. After a moment, drawn by some kind of curiosity that he couldn’t explain, he followed it up, deciding to see what the source of the noise was.
He found what he could only call an arena; there was a flat expanse of stone, shaped in a circle and ringed by small cliffs, and, the one vital ingredient that made a battle into a show, a crowd, all of them watching the two combatants. One side was nothing Carnius could call unusual, a group of adventurers of some kind, wearing and wielding a variety of armour and weapons. But their opponent, on the other hand, was something else; some kind of giant standing a good twenty feet in height, collared with iron, its head covered with a heavy helmet. One arm ended in a massive, rusted cleaver that was flecked with blood, the other in a vambrace and a great hand. Its skin seemed to be made up of patches sewn together over flesh, glowing tattoos spiralling and whirling across it before they were covered by its irons.
Carnius stepped into the small crowd of people who were watching, and they cheered as the monster picked up an adventurer and used the unfortunate man as a club to smash one of his comrades away, the broken corpse sent flying before it slammed into the massive onyx gate that the combat took place before. It roared again, the deafening noise made tinny by the helm it wore, before swinging down with its cleaver on an Orsimer who tried to slip around its flank and stab a claymore into its stomach, separating his midriff from the rest of his body in a spray of gore.
Taking advantage of the opening, a Khajiit wielding twin daggers slipped around its behind and stabbed the weapons into the back of its thigh in a bid to lame it. He was rewarded with a bellow of pain before the Gatekeeper kicked back at him, the beastman barely able to scramble out of the blow’s way and scamper out of reach.
As it turned, Carnius saw the wound in its leg was simply fading from view, sealing up with only a trail of brackish blood to mark its presence. An arrow from a distant Bosmer situated at the edge of the arena sunk into its neck, where the veins should be, but the giant being merely tore it from its neck and the injury sutured itself shut.
These adventurers were good, Carnius would give them that much, working as a team to try and bring the thing down; the remaining ones had split into teams, following directions bellowed at them by an Orc, ones armed with spears trying to bait and distract the creature at arm’s length while a few more tried to slip round its flank and take it down there.
A spear stabbed into its gut, the haft of the weapon digging deep into the organs of its stomach and the monster bellowed in pain. It stumbled back, clumsy footsteps almost flattening the Khajiit that had managed to land the blow with its axe just a few moments ago. Finding respite, it reached to the weapon embedded into it and tore it free with a wet squelch, its haft and head dripping with viscera. The hole in its stomach beginning to close, it hefted the spear in its hand, gaze turning towards the Bosmer archer who was nocking another arrow to his bow. A moment later, accompanied to a yell of delight from the crowd, an overarm throw sent the weapon screaming into the Wood Elf and skewered him through the chest.
One of the others, an Imperial armed with a pair of swords, cried out a name and sprinted towards the fallen Mer, uncaring for the presence of his foe. A moment later, a great hand grabbed him, lifted him into the air and slammed him down on the floor with a crack. He did not rise.
If Carnius was in their position he would have already cut his losses and run; whatever healing abilities this creature possessed, it was too much for their own weapons to overcome, and even thought they were good fighters with solid tactics this creature had them outmatched. The only problem was that the giant they fought had them outmanoeuvred; they battled it with their backs to the gate, and no way out besides getting through it.
There were only four left now; the Khajiit, who had backed away, their commander and the two spear-bearers, one of them now grabbing a mace from its sling in place of his lost weapon. With a deep, rumbling growl, the massive creature advanced, footsteps thudding against the ground.
“I told you the Gatekeeper was going kill them all,” Carnius heard someone in the crowd next to him remark to another spectator. “Look, he’s going to finish them off right now.”
The Gatekeeper, as it was called, bellowed a challenge and charged, ground shaking beneath its steps. The adventurers tried to scatter, but a swing from its cleaver slew two of them as they tried to get away, before the Gatekeeper turned and grabbed the Orc who was making a swing at it with his claymore, Mer and monster alike bellowing in fury. It squeezed, bone cracking under the pressure, and it dropped the mangled body as it advanced on the Khajiit. The beastman yowled in terror as he found his back pressed against walls, trying to back away from the Gatekeeper, and bolted away in a desperate sprint in the hope of getting around it.
A massive hand closed around his tail, swung him up into the air and swung him back down to the ground once more.
The crowd cheered and applauded as the Gatekeeper stopped what it was doing, casting around for any more enemies before simply standing still. Their entertainment gone, the crowd began to disperse back down the hill, and after a few moments Carnius was alone at its top with only a Dark Elf woman in a dress of bloodstained blue silk for company.
“Wasn’t that simply marvellous?” she exclaimed to Carnius, joy written across her features. “I always feel so very proud of him when I see him do his work!”
She clapped her hands together, smiling in joy, before she looked at Carnius proper and frowned.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I suppose I am, yes,” Carnius said.
“I thought so,” she said. “I’m Relmyna Verenim, by the way. And who are you? Another pilgrim hoping for a blessing to take root? Or perhaps…are you an adventurer, like those degenerates that my darling Gatekeeper just had to deal with?” She frowned. “No, you might be dressed like one but you don’t really look like one, do you. Perhaps you won’t be quite so unspeakably vile as they were.”
“I’ve never been adventuring before ma’am, no,” Carnius said. “Carnius Hackelt, by the way.”
“Well that’s a relief,” Relmyna said. She looked him up and down, before she nodded. “Then I suppose I am pleased to meet you, serjo Hackelt.”
Carnius glanced at the Gatekeeper, and back at Relmyna.
“Do you mind telling me what that ‘Gatekeeper’ thing is?” he asked.
“Him?” Relmyna asked. “Why, he is my beloved child! He is the consummation of Sheogorath’s wisdom in the womb of my genius. His birth was painful and bloody, but well worth it. From it, I made the perfect guardian; he does not rest, he does not eat, he does not allow any other than those permitted to pass and he cannot be killed.”
“Who are those permitted to pass?” Carnius asked.
“Those with Lord Sheogorath’s blessing, of course,” Relmyna said. “You, however, do not yet possess that, I don’t think.”
“So how would I get past him, through those gates over on the other side?” Carnius asked. “Get to the rest of the Isles?”
“To get through those gates, you would need to get the keys,” Relmyna said. “And they are sewn up within the body of my child. You would need to kill him to get them first, and you cannot kill him. It is the perfect defence, and I am a genius for conceiving such an idea.”
“How would I get that blessing, then?” Carnius asked.
“It would be difficult for you,” Relmyna said, looking him up and down once more. “Difficult, but not impossible. Your problem is that your soul is dull, uninspired, lacklustre. If I were to cut you open then the world would be wholly unimpressed by your uninteresting blood. You are simply too…” she paused, as if the word she was to say next was somehow taboo. “…sane.” She shuddered.
“Right,” Carnius said, somewhat perturbed by the way she talked about cutting him open.
“Still,” Relmyna said. “You do have quite a remarkable musculature on you. A client of mine is looking for a someone to serve as a base for a flesh-sculpture and your muscles would be nicely suited for that. Of course, I’d need a better bone structure and that skin on you would have to go, but-”
“Ma’am,” Carnius interrupted. “I have no idea if you’re complimenting me or something there, but I have one to thing to say to that. I’m not normally inclined towards assaulting people at random, but if you keep on talking about me like that then I will hurt you.”
Relmyna shrugged.
“Fine then,” she said, setting off down the path back down to Passwall. “Good luck getting past the Gatekeeper, by the way. You’ll certainly need it if you want to get into the Isles the way you are right now.”
Carnius lingered a few moments longer, watching the Gatekeeper as it nudged one of the corpses with the horny, jagged toenails of its foot. Then he began the short walk to Passwall, wondering just what he had managed to get himself into.
I really liked this chapter. The description of the butterflies was masterfully done as well as the conversation with Haskill. He's annoyed, but he's quite subtle about it and I really like how you played that off.
The comment on being "too sane" was also quite...accurate for the location. In the world of the insane, is sanity not the equivalent to insanity?
Anyways, a great chapter which I really enjoyed. It was well-written and I am eager to see it continue. I think you could put an interesting spin on a questline I really enjoyed.
Oooh, that was soooo nice...
...
loved Haskill...He makes me laugh...
Absolutely beautiful description of the Isles...Amazing stuff...
Truly breathtaking fight against the Gatekeeper...Well done that man!...
Excellent chapter...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
Zalphon: Thank you very much indeed; Haskill is one of the easier NPC personalities to pin down (mainly because he's quite a well developed one, and one of my favourites to appear in Oblivion/The Shivering Isles) but I'm pleased I managed to get him right.
On the sane thing, I'm actually planning on having the term be an insult on the Ises, and I mean really bad one too, though that's an interesting point on the relative state of sanity; seeing as sane behaviour is determined by the majority, if the majority is insane are they not then sane?
Glad you liked it, and more should be comign soon. There will be spin on this, too, don't worry; hopefully, spin you should like. Thanks! ![]()
McBadgere: Thank you very much!
I'll admit I probably owe a fair amount to H. P. Lovecraft for the actual description of the Isles (man's a master of giving incredibly evocative descriptions when he wants to be), and I've been aiming for the same level of the macabre and gothic in them.
And if you think that that fight against the Gatekeeper was good, wait until you see when Carnius has to deal with it...
This is crazy! This is Madness! I got grammared, Fuq! I will spot an error, I swear to the bowels of Oblivion, I will be on the lookout, Colonel.
At last, we finally get to enter the Nut-House and meet some Nut Cases. Your discriptions of the Shivering Isles was spot on, the effects of transitioning from Mundus into an Oblivion realm was well-written and superb, you narrowed down Haskil's character to the letter.
A warm welcome, eh? Attacked by the first creature in the Isles, the Grummite. The gatekeeper fight was great and well-written and a bloody good show. Carnius was sure in for a surprise to see that brute tossing people around like pathetic ragdolls ![]()
Relmyna Verenim . . .our lovely demented women of the realm, one of the many psychos and sadists out there! I suspect there will he blood and lots of it when our gladiator kills that pesky Gatekeeper! I forsee a sick and twisted tale on the maniac and demented side! I will await with my popcorn ready.
Great read!
I'll leave one in on purpose for you, how about that? It'll be a challenge for you; spot the grammatical error and win a prize! (but no cheating and copy-pasting it into a spellchecker).
Pleased that I managed to get Haskill right (he ranks in my top 10 favourite NPCs for Oblivion, so I'm kind of in no position to get him wrong!), and let me assure you that Carnius is going to run into a fair few more Grummites on his time on the Isles. None of them are going to be any more endearing than the first. And that Gatekeeper is going to be a challenge to bring down; let me tell you that I'm looking forward to writing that scene...
Glad you're enjoying, sir, and believe you me, a macabre and bizarre tale awaits! Do enjoy!
Chapter 8-Flesh and Bone
Carnius sipped at his ale as he looked at the diagrams on the table before him. Situated as he was in the Wastrel’s Purse, Passwall’s local tavern, he had been hunched over the slate for the better part of an hour as he sketched out chalk diagrams and plans for dealing with this Gatekeeper; he had often done this before key matches in his gladiator career, working out how he would deal with an opponent, using what information he had on them to try figure out how to bring them down.
So far, he knew his strategy was going to involve getting in and out of the Gatekeeper’s reach; even with the magical enhancements to strength and endurance that his armour and gauntlets provided to him, he knew that if he was grabbed by the giant guardian or took one hit from that cleaver he would be dead. He had taken a leaf out of that dead Khajiit’s book, and many of the diagrams he had sketched out had circular arrows to work out how he could hit it in the back of the knees and legs; laming the thing would make it far easier to kill. The only problem was the thing’s regenerative abilities, and that rendered the entire exercise theoretical.
“Another ale?” Dredhwen asked from where she was leaning on the surface of the inn’s bar.
“Alright then,” Carnius nodded, looking up from his plans and draining what was left of his current ale. “Could use a few drinks.”
The Bosmer nodded and opened the tap on the casket on the bar’s surface, letting the cooled drink pour into the tankard she held. She held it steady as she approached his table, setting it down and glanced at the slate Carnius was drawing on.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Trying to work out how I can kill the Gatekeeper,” Carnius replied, tapping the slate. “Problem is that it’s all theory at the moment.”
“You want to kill it?” Dredhwen said. “I don’t think it-” she yawned, holding her hands over her mouth as she did so. “Sorry about that. I don’t think it can be done.”
“There’s got to be a way,” Carnius said. “Somehow. Spells or something, maybe. Are there any spellcasters here in Passwall?”
“Well, there’s Relmyna, but I don’t think that she would help you,” Dredhwen said. “But you should ask Jayred Ice-Veins. He keeps saying he has a plan to kill it, but nobody will help him; he needs to go into the Gardens of Flesh and Bone, and that place is just too strange for anyone else here.”
Carnius was quiet for a moment, watching her face. He could detect nothing that suggested she was making a joke.
“Where is he?” Carnius asked.
“His house is just to the southeast,” Dredhwen said. “He should be out tending to his Swattle around now.”
“I’ll go pay him a visit,” Carnius said, glancing back down at his slate. On the ‘G’ he had managed to form to mark out the Gatekeeper, he sketched out a rough star shape of arrows, his theoretical self darting in and out of the colossus’ reach. His drink and plans finished, he placed a handful of coins and his borrowed slate on the counter next to where Dredhwen had started to doze and headed out into Passwall. The damp feel of the air had receded somewhat as the sun had risen higher into the sky, burning some of the moisture away, but the clouds that muffled its glare prevented it from going in its entirety.
He found Jayred’s house just a few dozen yards away from the Wastrel’s Purse, the building raised up on stilts like all the others in Passwall, no doubt to protect it from flooding. He remembered what Dredhwen had said, about him being out and attending to his ‘Swattle’, whatever that was, and skirted around the back of the house to see what he could find there, not bothering to knock on the front door which, he noticed, had a human skull hanging on it.
He found Jayred in a patch of swampland that had been fenced off, the Nord standing next to what looked at first glance to be a moss-covered boulder. He gave Carnius a cheerful wave as he approached, and called; “I’ll be with you in a moment, friend! Old Betjar here just needs sorting out.”
He slapped the boulder on the side, and Carnius blinked as what he thought was stone wobbled. Six flabby legs, each tipped with webbed feet, unfolded from where they were tucked against its flank, and a wide, jowled head rose up from where it rested against the ground. Watery amber eyes looked up at Jayred, and the Nord folded his arms.
“Don’t know why you’re looking at me like that, girl,” he said. “Go on, off you go, I’ve saved you a nice patch of moss to help that down and everything. C’mon, shoo!”
The creature made a noise that sounded like ‘mwap’, and waddled away, fat belly sliding against the swampy ground it went. Jayred watched it go and then stepped to where Carnius was leaning on the fence around his land.
“What can I do for you, friend?” he asked.
“Well,” Carnius began. “I was going to see if you could help me with something, but I’ve really got to ask; what on Nirn is that?”
“Those?” Jayred asked. “That’s me Swattle herd, that is. I farm ‘em; good eating on a Swattle, and their hides are well waterproofed once you’ve tanned ‘em. Plus they’ve got a nice skeleton, too.”
“You farm them?” Carnius asked. He was a city boy, through and through, and while he would be the first to admit that his knowledge on animal husbandry was severely limited, he was pretty certain that all farm animals either had fur or feathers and went ‘moo’, ‘baa’, ‘cluck’, ‘quack’ or ‘oink’.
“That I do,” Jayred said. “Damn fine herd, too.”
Carnius decided not to press that subject any further.
“So what can I do for you, friend?” Jayred asked. “You said you wanted some help?”
“The Gatekeeper,” Carnius said. “I’m trying to kill it so I can get into the rest of the Isles. Drenhwed over at the Wastrel’s said that you were planning to do the same. I figured we could help each other out, combine resources, that sort of thing.”
“How soon do you want to deal with it?” Jayred asked.
“Soon as possible,” Carnius replied. “I want to get through that gate.”
Jayred grinned and clapped his hands together.
“Excellent,” he exclaimed. He vaulted the fence, and clapped Carnius on the shoulder. “Just wait for me round the front of my house for a few minutes; we’ll head for the Gardens of Flesh and Bone and I’ll explain my plan along the way.”
He emerged from his front door a few minutes later, the flaxen farming clothes he had been wearing replaced by a suit of leather armour, with a strung bow slung over his shoulder.
“You ready?” Carnius asked.
“That’s right, friend,” Jayred said.
“Good,” the Imperial said as the pair set out up the path. “So what’s this special solution you have for killing the Gatekeeper, then? Some kind of magic?”
“Magic?” Jayred asked. “I’m not like Relmyna, no. I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in bones.”
“Bones, you say,” Carnius said as they passed under that archway that marked the way in and out of Passwall.
“Aye, that’s right,” Jayred said. “Bones. Relmyna thinks that her Gatekeeper can’t be killed, that no power in Oblivion or Nirn can bring it down, but if I know one thing, it’s that anything can be killed by the bones of its own kind.” He tapped his skull, as if to emphasise his point. “There’s power in those things, even if nobody but me realises it. Enough power to kill the Gatekeeper, certainly.”
Carnius nodded as the path they took began to wind up a hill, deciding that he might as well humour the Nord; he didn’t have any better ideas for killing the thing, after all.
“So I’m guessing that there are Gatekeeper bones in these gardens, then,” Carnius said.
“Aye,” Jayred replied. “Only problem is, the Gardens are guarded; skeletons, shambles, that sort of thing. Anybody who goes in gets attacked by them in minutes.”
“Well, you’re the bones expert,” Carnius said. “If you get these Gatekeeper bones, I’ll hold them off for you.”
“Exactly what I had in mind,” Jayred said. “Don’t worry, I know where it is. Though if you want to hold them off, I’d recommend you get your weapons out of your pack now, friend. They aren’t going to wait around for you in there.”
“I’m already armed,” Carnius replied, raising a clenched fist to show the wicked spikes of red and black on the knuckles of his gauntlets. Jayred grinned.
They stopped before wall of thick white stone, ramparts weathered smooth by time out in the elements. A door was set into it, made from solid iron and carved with pictures of bones, skulls and organs. Carnius could hear a faint, regular thudding on the edge of his hearing, seeming to come from within the garden itself.
“Give me a hand with this, will you?” Jayred asked, rapping his knuckles on a thick bar that was swung down across the gateway. Carnius complied, taking a moment to dump his pack by the side of the door so that it wouldn’t impede him in a fight in the garden itself and to check the two waterskins filled with a healing and a stamina potion were in position at his belt. The two of them heaved the bar up and swung open the door.
Carnius had not been quite sure of what to expect from the Gardens of Flesh and Bone, but he had certainly not thought it would be quite so literal in its adherence to its title. There were no plants in here, or at least nothing that he would call a plant, but it was certainly full of life.
Human eyes in the centre of fleshy petals turned on muscled stalks to stare at the newcomers as they made their way along the pathway that ran through the garden. There was a bush that had thousands of tiny blood vessels for its branches, each one swollen and engorged with sanguine fluid. Another plant seemed to be made from nothing more than nerves spreading and flowering from its root which was, Carnius noted, a large mass off grey brain matter half-embedded in the ground. Despite the fact that he was well used to the gore and viscera of the arena, had seen men and women alike gutted on its sands and had done the deed himself more than once, Carnius began to feel nausea rising from his stomach.
At the centre of the garden, a massive tree rose from the ground, one that seemed to be put together from thousands of bones; he could see skulls, femurs, vertebrae, the individual digits of fingers all meshed together to form its trunk, with yet more branching out over his head. From it, that same regular drumbeat sounded, and Carnius peered through the gaps in them to see a heart suspended by strands of muscle in the very centre of it, swelling and shrinking in time to that beat.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jayred asked. “The tree of bones; the very centrepiece of the Gardens. Now come on, friend. We need to get to the Gatekeeper’s body, and this place’s guardians are going to wake up soon.”
Carnius nodded in agreement, and he followed Jayred as the Nord headed towards one of the walls of white stone that surrounded the garden. The Gatekeeper skeleton was waiting for them, massive sun-bleached bones sat upon a throne set into the garden’s wall, a dead king holding sway over a macabre court.
“Right,” Jayred said, rubbing his hands together and approaching the throne. “Let’s get to work.”
Carnius glanced behind them, back along the pathway that ran through the grisly garden to see if anything was approaching as the Nord climbed up on the throne. For a moment, it seemed all clear, and then three figures came into view. Sun gleamed off bare skulls, and flesh-stripped digits clutched rusting weapons, and the three skeletons advanced.
One with a mace, one with a sword and shield and one with a claymore, Carnius noted, raising his hands to a position that would guard him from the three enemies. They were undead, so wouldn’t be particularly intelligent, and seeing as they were skeletons, they wouldn’t be as hardy as most other types of the walking dead either. Carnius could deal with one without too much trouble, he thought. Three, however, would complicate things.
Whatever rudimentary intelligence that they had was enough to direct them to fan out as they approached in an attempt to flank him. Carnius watched them move, noting how the one with the claymore was ahead of its fellows, and stepped into action. Three swift steps brought him within the undead creature’s reach, and as he expected its swung its claymore at him, the long blade swooping towards him at a horizontal. He moved to his right, left palm pressing down onto the flat of the blade and jarring its tip to the ground, stumbling the skeleton. His right fist crashed into its ribs, knocking it back and sending lightning-bolt cracks snaking across the bone. It stumbled away, and he saw the one with the mace pressing forwards. He stepped into its reach before it could swing, and an uppercut slammed into its jaw with enough force to send its skull, unfettered by sinew, tumbling away, bones clattering to the ground.
The one with the sword and the shield hung back as the skeleton armed with the claymore regained its footing behind him, clacking its jaw together in a challenge. They were going to charge him together, unless Carnius did something.
He threw himself towards the one with the claymore, deciding to get himself between the skeletons and Jayred. Surprised by the sudden manoeuvre, the skeleton tried to block him and parry any attacks, but Carnius' bare hands were a far cry from conventional weapons, and the reinforced vambrace that guarded the back of his left wrist pushed its blade away. The back of his right hand slammed across its jaw, the ebony spikes slashing across the bone and gouging four parallel lines across where its face should be. Its stumbled back, thrown from the impact, and Carnius slammed his boot into its spine, sending it tumbling into its fellow.
At the end of the path, between the greenery, something else appeared behind the two toppled undead. It was a large beast, easily a good head taller than he was, a crude construction of bones chosen at random that were held together with twine and wire. The head of what he guessed was a mer or human glared at him with empty eye sockets, and a lower jaw taken from an Argonian opened and clacked shut as a challenge. It raised its hands, each one tipped with wicked talons, and charged ignoring the skeletons it leapt over.
Carnius blocked its first swing, stepped out of the reach of the second. He tried to step round to its side, where the its shoulder and back was open, but it recovered its footing too quickly and the counter he launched was blocked by it throwing its own wrist up. It was enough to stumbled him, and he cursed as its other pair of claws slashed into his right shoulder, deep gashes already running red. He gritted his teeth, right hand snapping out to grab its own shoulder and forced it into a bow. The back of his left hand smashed into its skull and drove it to its knees, and a second blow snapped the bone in its entirety.
He screamed as a wave of chill burst from it, frost snap-freezing across his skin and armour. He stumbled away from the body as it became coated in ice crystals along with the ground around it, cursing as pain ravaged across him. He could feel hot blood seeping from where the skin froze to the metal and tore, and he fumbled at his belt for the waterskin filled with healing potion. He popped off the stopper and took a deep drink, feeling the wounds begin to heal and the flow of blood slow.
He was panting for breath as the two remaining skeletons rose, and he could see more skeletons and another construct approaching them. He was good, but he was realist; even with his skill, he wouldn’t be able to take down all of those. And it wouldn’t matter how many he would take down before he was overwhelmed, he would fall all the same.
“Jayred!” he called over his shoulder. “We need to get out of here, now!”
“Fine!” Jayred replied, his bones filmed with what looked like the legs and arm bones of the deceased Gatekeeper. “I’ve got what we need.”
Carnius barrelled forwards, throwing his shoulder into the breastbone of one of the undead that tried to stop him and knocking it to the ground, Jayred in his wake. The next few moment dissolved into an insane blur of blocks, parry and counters as Carnius battered a path to the gate through the undead, ignoring the nicks and cuts that assailed him. At one point a mace slammed into his stomach, the impact almost enough to double him over, but he drew upon some reserve of bloody-mindedness and strength and shoved the offending skeleton away, all too aware that the gates were in sight. He just had to hope that his Arena raiment would have absorbed the worst of the impact for him.
He reached them, slamming the knuckles of his gauntlets into the chest of one of those bone-constructs that tried to stop him and knocking it away, and gestured to Jayred to follow. The Nord barrelled through the threshold a few moments later and Carnius followed, slamming the door shut and pulling the bar into place. They stopped outside, panting as the adrenaline began to subside, both of them leaning against the wall.
“That was amazing!” Jayred exclaimed after a few moments, raising his hand and grinning. Carnius slapped his palm, grinning. “To think you went at those things with just yer fists, too! I’d like to have you at my side in a tavern brawl, friend; you and I would be unstoppable!”
“Hah, cheers,” Carnius said. He groaned suddenly and clutched his stomach, pain returning in place of the adrenaline. He doubled over, grabbing at the skin filled with healing draft and took a deep swig. After a few moments, the agony began to fade, and he stood up straight, grinning a grin with more than a few glinting gold teeth in it.
“Right,” he said. “How soon can you get those arrows ready?”
“Tomorrow morning, I’d reckon,” Jayred said.
“Good,” Carnius nodded. “Because after that, we’re going to kill the Gatekeeper.”
Cool!!...
...
Even though I've been to the Isles a couple of times, I've never done that quest...The boy discovered that hitting the Gatekeeper repeatedly with a high level sword whilst employing the Escutcheon of Chorrol would drop the nasty without the need for the arrows...So my version would be a damned sight less cool than this!...
Sooo nicely done...Loved the idea of the planning on the slate...And, as ever, the fight was superb...Wonderful stuff...
The Swattle was sooo cute!!...Loved that...
The description of the Gardens was wonderful...There's a shocker!...
...Can't remember ever going in there...Although I must have done to rebuild the Gatekeeper...*Shrug*...Yours was amazing...Espescially the nerve tree...*Shudders and "hurp"'s a little...*...
...
There was a sentence in there that made my eyes hurt...Somewhere in the first third...And if I picked it up, it must be odd...But, as I've just spent the last six hours trundling around Chester Zoo and fatigue is starting to kick in, it seems I can't find it again...Grrr...If I do, I'll pimm you...Heh...There's a threat...
...
All in all, an amazing job...Absolutely loved it...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds most heartily*...
EDIIIITTT!!...Nah, sorry, it was this one...
Don't set yourself up on purpose due to make mistakes. Why?
Anyways, you outdone yourself in the description of the garden, and the dialogue was superb. Now the battle? The battle itself was great, my friend! Carnius showed his skill with his own blade, and a bit of hand to hand at the very end. I also expect a tavern brawl now one of these days.
I wasn't a big fan of the SI questline, I'm not particularly a Sheogorath lover, though I do love other Daedra, but the manner in which you describe the land and the Daedric realm makes me want to read more. Of course, there is our great gladiator protagonist which captured my attention from the start. I foresee mad things in the future, and I am looking forward to the final battle with the gatekeeper! And then onto the gates of madness itself!
Nits:“You’re want to kill it?”
It should be "You want to kill it?" or "You're going to kill it?"
Am I right?
McBadgere: Yeah, I'm killing the Gatekeeper the old fashioned way, with the bone arrows. I imagine that Carnius using exploits to beat would be somewhat of a less compelling read...
The Gardens in the game are a fair bit different to how I wrote them here, which probably explains why you don't really remember them even when you went for the Gatekeeper, seeing as in the game it's basically a courtyard of grass with a dead Gatekeepr in the middle. I decided to be a little more...literal in my own interpretation of it.
And cheers for finding that dodgy sentence; I'll go and fix it up now.
P.S. I used to Chester Zoo when I was kid with granddad! It was awesome! I loved it! Now I want to go there again! Exclamation marks!
P.P.S. I don't mind the complaint; I've got a job now, so the summer holidays are officially over for me forever... ![]()
Darkness Eternal: I purposefully make those mistakes so that I've got something to keep you on your toes, of course. I like challenging my readers. And yes, that was the mistake I had in mind. Here, have a cookie.
The fool. Little does he realise my cunning plan of using that as a blind for little mistakes I make here and there. The deception is flawless! Muhaha! Muhaha! Muhahahahahahahahaha...
What?
And now that you mention it, I've got a hankering to write a tavern brawl. Which is going to be interesting when, considering this is the Shivering Isles, your average tavern brawl would would probably be completely nuts...
I really liked the more literal interpretation that you gave. It had a more...macabre, grotesque feel and I really liked it personally. I couldn't remember the original gardens, but yours is much more creative.
One thing you must understand is that the game world is a condensed version of the "lore" world. Cyrodiil is much larger than what the game represents, the taverns are bigger, the arena is huge. Same for all the other games. Good thing about writing is that we are left with an imagination to expand the lore world than it already is.
Grand Theft Auto IV had Liberty City as the location, though of course, it is much smaller than the actual New York City
Boy do I ever remember the first time I went up against the Gatekeeper !!! URK !!! I loved this, and didn't think I was going to! You captured the mood of Passwall exactly as it felt entering it that first time! Awesome and surprising write !!
DE: Oh, I'm fully aware of that, and I reckon that if Bethesda had the resources they probably would have done even more to make the Shivering Isles unique and detailed as they possibly could. But that was what I was expecting the first time I went up there, that's all. Still, as I'm writing a book and thus have only the restriction of time, I don't have to be held back by the same restrictions, I'm adding in these details now.
I realise that's a tad rambling, but I hope you get my point. If not, sorry.
mALX: Thank you very much! Glad to have surprised you, and I hope you like the rest too! ![]()
Chapter 9-Threshold
The stars were wrong in this place.
Carnius was used to looking up at the night sky and seeing pinpoints of light against a black or blue backdrop, with perhaps fainter white light behind them. But here, it was different; the comforting and familiar orbs of Masser and Secunda were gone, and while stars still shone, they were patterened in strange and unsettling half-shapes that he could just see when he let his eyes unfocus. Behind them, crimson and purple nebulae bled light across the sky, celestial cuts and bruises, as if Kynareth had been beaten and ravaged and her corpse hung across the sky as a warning or trophy. Yet despite this unsettling wrongness in the sky, Carnius found the sight from the back of Jayred’s raised porch a difficult one to look away from.
Next to him, a few lanterns burned, filled with some kind of herb in order to ward off the mosquitoes that swarmed from the swamp where the Nord kept his herd. He could hear the Swattle calling in the distance, and he was wondering if they were in any way related to the creature that he had encountered on the road earlier that day.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” a familiar voice said from behind Carnius. He glanced up to see Jayred sit down on the chair next to him, two bottles of mead held between his fingers. He was wearing an apron for woodworking, the thick cloth covered with pale dust, and the sounds of bone being crafted had echoed out of his the entire afternoon. He offered Carnius one of the drinks, and the Gladiator took it with a nod of thanks, pulling the cork from it and taking a swig.
“A Redguard I was sweet on use to love looking at those,” Jayred said as he took a seat, glancing skywards. “She always kept saying could see patterns in them, was determined to find them. Said she reckoned you could draw power from them somehow, and wanted to work out the way to do that.”
“Really? What happened to her?” Carnius asked.
“Well, she got Sheogorath’s blessing and was allowed through the Gates,” Jayred said. “Never heard from her since.”
“You trying to follow her, then?”
“Nothing so romantic,” Jayred replied. “There isn’t much good pasture for Swattle here in the Fringe; the best stuff is over in Mania and Dementia, so I’m going to get my herd through and get them a new home. What about you, friend?”
“I’ve been…trying to get away from some things back home,” Carnius said after a moment. “Make a fresh start.”
“In the Isles?” Jayred asked, shaking his head with mirth. “Between you and me, Carnius, you seem pretty…you know, all together. I’m not trying to be rude here, mind, but you just don’t really seem like the sort who would go there. Not sure you’d necessarily fit in, that’s all.”
Carnius nodded at that. Jayred had a point; it was true that he wanted to go somewhere where his fame wouldn’t follow him, but it would really have been as simple as just leaving Cyrodiil. Skyrim and High Rock were always supposed to be pleasant, and Hammerfell was good if you could deal with heat. But part of him wanted to go further than that; get away from more than just the fame, but to escape the bad memories. As much as he hated to admit, there had always been a savage thrill in bloodshed and combat, an adrenaline-laced joy in the feeling of bone crunching and blood splattering underneath his knuckles. But with Agronak, there had been nothing but guilt, shame and the feeling that he had deserved no victory, as much as Agronak had wanted it to end that way. He needed to get away from all that, find something to occupy his mind.
“You ever mind that idea?” Carnius asked after a moment. “Being mad?”
“Do you ever mind being sane?” Jayred asked. “It’s just the way I am. If I was unhappy about it, then I just wouldn’t be that way. Simple as that, really.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Carnius conceded. Something occurred to him, and he added; “Completely unrelated, I know, but do you want anything for putting me up tonight?”
“The help you’ve given me tonight more than makes up for it, my friend,” Jayred said. “I’d be an awful Nord if I begrudged bed and a good meal to a man who I was going to be fighting and possibly dying alongside tomorrow.”
“Let’s hope we won’t be doing any of that,” Carnius said. “You sure these bone arrows of yours will work, right?”
“If there’s one thing I trust in, my friend, it’s bones,” Jayred replied. “You keep the Gatekeeper occupied, and I’ll make sure my arrows do what need to be done.”
Carnius nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Just make sure those shots are good ones; I doubt I’m going to be able to last against that thing for too long.”
“Hah, seeing the work you did on those skeletons and shambles today, I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Jayred said. “Don’t worry, Carnius, tomorrow you and me will be able to go to anywhere we please in the Isles.”
He raised his bottle of mead, and Carnius clicked his own against it.
“To victory, my friend,” Jayred said.
“To victory,” Carnius echoed. “Let’s hope we get it.”
Oh...
...Oh my...
...
*Thunderous applause*...
Bloody hell that was amazing...You were right!...
...
I absolutely loved that transformation into the Chaos creature thing...Excellent stuff...
Such a brilliant story, and most definately looking forward to where it goes from here...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds thunderously*...
Well, I promised you an entertaining fight, so it's only fitting that I deliver, after all. And surprisingly enough, the Chaos Spawn/Shoggoth moment (I only really realised the similarities between them after I finished writing it) was a spur of the moment scene written right on the whole stitch-breaking bit. Hopefully the rest should be just as good; would be a bit incongruous to have jumped the shark by just chapter nine. ![]()
Also, because all of you on the thread have been such good, wonderful readers, have yourselves a sneak peak at this http://i346.photobucket.com/albums/p417/thebean011/001.jpg I put up on one of the denizens of the Isles that Carnius is going to encounter (apologies for the text, but the writing didn't scan brilliantly. If it isn't clear I'l just type it up on the site).
Definitely one of the better fight scenes I've seen in a story. I loved the detailed description of his putrid smell. Apologies for the short review, but your fight scene was riveting.
Don't worry about it, I'm just pleased you enjoyed it and grateful that you took the time to comment. And the comment of being one of the better ones means a lot; I'm truly flattered. ![]()
Ah, your talent for details is most shown in this chapter with the difference in celestial descriptions between Nirn and the Realm itself. As deadly as they are, Oblivion realms can indeed be beautiful. Such as Moonshadow and the Hunting Grounds.
‘Contortured’ should definitely be a word. Your campaign has my support.
I’m still very much enjoying this, Mustard!
mALX: I made it up all by myself, yeah; I based the anatomy of the head off a hummingbird's (one of the notes there says how they drink nectar from flowers, with the pollen providing a naturally occuring shield spell, so they're actually herbivores) and the body's off that of a Deinonychus, sans the famous claw. It doesn't see in the thermal vision, though, but now I'm going to have to think up a predatory beast from the Isles that does because I like that idea too much to simply leave it alone.
DE: Well, I'm trying to write Carnius as somebody who has generally grown a thick skin when it comes to committing acts of bloodshed in general; his killing of Agronak was the exception, rather than the rule, on account of the two of them being so close. I imagine that that's why the segregation of Blue and Yellow team in the Arena is so heavily enforced, and why gladiators from the same team almost never fight each other; you hardly want them getting too attached and wanting to kill each other, after all. Carnius is in that boat, so he won't feel too bad about killing someone from Yellow team, but as he knew Agronak well he feels bad about that one in particular.
Grits: Excellent! With you at my side we shall storm the dictionary building, overthrow the fat bourgeous pigdogs that choose which words are in it and which are not, and open the dictionary for the people! For freedom! For revolution! For the word 'contortured'! CHAAAAAARGE!!!
I'm caught up and I have to say this has been a very entertaining story so far. SI is a nice change, there was another SI story on here, but it kind of petered out.
The fight against the gatekeeper was a lot of fun, and I'm happy you are adding in some of your own detail.
Having Agronak as a friend was really neat and I can totally see his death driving Carnius to the realm of madness.
I did find it funny that he wants to get away from the arena, and yet still fights in his raiment. The Khajiit friend was awesome too, he does seem like he'd be a good fit in the Isles, perhaps we'll see him again.
KC: Thank you very much, yer majesty! ![]()
Gotta say, I didn't really think of the raiment that way, but Carnius' decision in taking it was more pragmatic; it's the only armour he has, and a pretty good suit of it, too. And we may well be seeing more of Ta'Zarna again in the future, too. I'm a great believer in firing my Chekov's Guns.
mALX: Thanks! I'm tryign to make the Isles as much of a living, breathing realm as I can, so I'm adding in details like that to make it as authentic as possible; the shield spell in the pollen means that the animals get protection as well as a good meal, and thus are motivated to feed from other flowers like it over the rest in order to spread the pollen and thus help the flowers breed. Just like in nature in the real world, only with extra magic involved.
Chapter 10-The Bard
“Murderer!”
The word scraped from a throat that was hoarse and ragged with rage and grief, half-choked with tears. Relmyna Verenim, crouched as she was over the desiccated corpse of the Gatekeeper, looked up at Carnius through enraged eyes, features contorting into a snarl of untold fury.
“Monster!” she snarled. “You monster! Look what you’ve done! You killed my child! You killed my only child!!”
She stood, hands held wide as magical power danced at her fingertips, gaze fixed with murderous intent on Carnius. Dredhwen and an Imperial Carnius didn’t know grabbed her arms before she could rush forwards, and she struggled for a few moments before dropping to her knees once more. They released and she let out a low moan of grief, slumped and sobbing over the body of the Gatekeeper.
Carnius watched the scene without much in the way of sympathy for her; he found it difficult to empathise with somebody who had brought that creature into the world and who had remarked on how he would make a good sculpture.
“So Sentinel was right,” a familiar voice remarked from behind Carnius. He turned to see the butler type who had greeted him, Haskill, standing not far away. It seemed he had just appeared from thin air, in the same way he had faded out of view the night before. “You did kill the Gatekeeper. Most impressive.”
He glanced at the two keys that Carnius still held in his hand.
“Just use those keys to open the gates whenever you so feel like it,” he added. “I suppose you were probably wondering what to do with them, after all. And after that, Lord Sheogorath himself wishes to hold an audience with you.”
“So I should head for New Sheoth?” Carnius asked. A momentary look of surprise flickered across Haskill’s face, but the chamberlain quashed it in an instant.
“How did you work that out, I must ask,” he said.
“Looked like the only big city around, so I figured it would be the capital,” Carnius replied. “Like how the Imperial Council are based in the Imperial City and the Emperors were based there before them. Rulers always stay in the biggest towns, after all.”
“Well, make your way there and present yourself to His Lordship at the palace, as soon as you can,” Haskill said.
“Haskill!” Relmyna called from where she was slumped by the Gatekeeper’s body. “This man murdered my child! He is a murderer! Have him locked up! Have him executed!”
“My apologies, Lady Verenim, but Lord Sheogorath’s decree was quite clear; whoever succeeds in killing the Gatekeeper and unlocking the Gates of Madness is to have an audience with him as soon as possible,” Haskill said, with a curt, slight bow in Relmyna’s direction.
“What?” Relmyna asked, eyes filling with rage. “He…he planned on somebody killing my child?”
“Those were his orders,” Haskill replied.
“How dare he?” the Dunmer seethed. “First he ignores my letters, and now it turns out he has invited people into Isles as part of his plan to kill my darling?”
She stood, a look of terrible wrath in her eyes, and said to Haskill; “Tell him that I have had enough; he has made an enemy of Relmyna Verenim, and I will stop at nothing, nothing until my child is avenged!” Her gaze fell upon Carnius. “And you, Imperial, will suffer in equal measure! You and your master will pay!”
She stormed away down the hill, Haskill and Carnius watching her go.
“Well, that’s a rather concerning development,” Haskill remarked. “I’ll have to inform Lord Sheogorath of this when I return.”
He glanced around.
“Sentinel said you were fighting the Gatekeeper with a Nord,” he added. “Where is he?”
“Jayred?” Carnius asked. “He’s down fetching his Swattle herd. Do you need him to speak to Sheogorath too?”
“No, not particularly,” Haskill said with a shake of his head. “According to Sentinel you were the one who takes the Haratak’s share of the credit for killing it, and you were the one who made his way through the gateway in the bay. You are the sort of person Sheogorath was calling for, after all.”
“Right,” Carnius said. “Anything else I need to know?”
“I simply recommend that you stick the roads for now, and perhaps try and keep a wary eye on Relmyna when you can,” Haskill replied. “She is quite good at holding a grudge.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Carnius said. “See you in New Sheoth, Haskill.”
“I look forward to it,” Haskill said in a tone that suggested he would rather be in the most chill and benighted depths of Coldharbour than seeing Carnius in New Sheoth. He stepped back, and faded from view, and Carnius turned his gaze towards the imposing Gates of Madness. There were two doors, one decorated with a manic grin carved into its surface, the other a grimace or a snarl. Carnius unrolled the map and glanced down at it; there were two road leading from Passwall, it seemed, one through the southern province of the Isles, Dementia, and another taking a more scenic route along the northern half, through the realm named Mania. The choice was an easy one, the Dementia road being a far more direct one, and Carnius rolled the map up in time to see Jayred approaching, his herd of Swattle slithering up the path before him.
“You haven’t it opened it yet, friend?” he asked as he ordered his herd to a halt with a click of his tongue.
“Just wrapping up a little business with somebody I know,” Carnius replied. He tapped his belt-purse, which was now bulging with coin from the bet he had made on himself with the mayor of Passwall. “I’m all ready now, though.”
He made his way up the steps that lead to both of the gates, the two keys in either hand. The two implements, one carved a golden metal and the other cut from a purple crystal of some kind, hummed in his hands. He approached one of the gates, the left hand one and raised the golden key to its lock; with a discordant whine it jumped in his hand, somehow jerking away from the hold in the massive portal. Carnius frowned, raised the other key and inserted it; it was almost eager with the ease that it clicked home. A twist sent a great clank echoing from the gate, the noise somehow sounding like a moan of pain or despair, the key spinning in the lock and, once that was done, fading from view. After a moment’s consideration, he did the same with the second gate and key. With that one, there was the distinct impression of laughter within the echo.
Jayred had already pushed the gate open, and he and his herd of Swattle were making their way along the Dementia road. He was just fifty paces ahead, and Carnius stepped through the threshold to catch up with them.
Moment of broken balance scales tip paradigm shifts gauntlet shatters snake-chain. That moment? Yes. No. One of the many. A weight on the scales. That is what it was. An influence, when the snake’s tail first began to slip from its jaw.
I can still hear that scratching, you know. I think it’s getting louder. Please help. I’m sorry for what I did, I truly am. Please. I’m afraid, now.
They came to the village just an hour or two before darkness was about to set.
The place reminded Carnius of Passwall, if on somewhat of a larger scale. The two of them had spent the better part of three hours skirting the borders of a lake that the road ran alongside, and the village occupied a silted peninsula that jutted into its waters. Each of the houses were raised up on stilts, rising out of swampy soil, and beyond its borders the lake split into hundreds of miniature rivulets, mushroom trees raised above them on the pillaring of hundreds of roots.
“Mushroom mangroves,” Jayred remarked as they approached. “This place will be perfect for my herd.”
“Looks like as a good a place to stay as any, if there’s an inn,” Carnius said. “Would certainly beat camping.”
There were more than a few people out on the central square the village was based around, and the gladiator was quietly pleased when the Nord and his herd of Swattle drew more attention than he did. While Jayred managed to gather a small crowd of around a dozen of the village’s residents, Carnius slipped away to the largest building there, one which he guessed to be an inn; if Jayred decided to stay, he would bid the Nord farewell in the morning.
The inn itself was of the same sort of construction that he would have found in any place around Cyrodiil; the bottom floor was a single large, high-ceilinged room with tables spanning its length, a fireplace at one end and a bar running along a wall. There were a few patrons, and Carnius spared them only a cursory glance, and his gaze lingered on the young woman playing what looked to be harp made from fused together bones. The tune she was playing was a complex, quiet melody, fingers dancing over the strings.
There were words in her tune, and Carnius lingered for a moment as he tried to pick them out. After a few moments, he gave up; whatever tongue they were in, it was one he couldn’t understand, but he took a few moments more to listen before he headed to the bar.
“A stranger, I see,” the Argonian behind it remarked. “Somebody who I’ve never seen before. Which is, of course a stranger. If you were familiar, after all, you would not be strange.”
He harrumphed, and added with an accusing glare; “You unfamiliar strangers are not very helpful, you know. How am I supposed to know you if I do not know anything about you, eh?”
“I…I was just hoping to get a meal and a bed for the night,” Carnius said after a moment. “That’s all.”
“Then you are a stranger who is also a customer,” the Argonian nodded. “I can tolerate customer strangers. What do you want for food, strange one who engages in custom?”
“What’s cooking?” Carnius asked.
“Swattle stew with vegetables,” the bartender replied. “Will that be a good meal for the customer stranger? Or perhaps, in your strange ways, it will not be. I do not know.”
“That sounds fine,” Carnius said. “And a tankard of mead to wash it down.”
“Then that will be three of the customer stranger’s coins, then,” the Argonian said. Carnius placed them down on the counter, and the lizard-man bit one to check if it was genuine. Satisfied, he nodded and called into the kitchen; “Raddaz, a bowl of stew!”
“This one hears,” a hoarse replied, and Carnius glanced through the doorway that it came through to see a Khajiit with ragged, patchy fur ladle a thick liquid into a pewter bowl while the bartender poured out Carnius’ drink.
His meal and drink in hand, Carnius found a seat near the bard. He glanced at her occasionally as he ate, watching her play and simply enjoying the music. She was good looking in a boyish way, short-cut blonde hair turned orange in the light of the fire she played besides, leading Carnius to guess she was from Imperial or Nordic stock. Her voice was husky, low-pitched for a woman’s, but pleasing to the ear nonetheless. There was a pack by her feet, not unlike Carnius’ own, and she was wearing armour of hardened and padded leather. She looked like somebody who travelled a lot, and knew how to fight, but he couldn’t see a weapon anywhere near her person and judging by the fact that an Orsimer a few tables away had a pair of fearsome handaxes mounted on his back, that wasn’t due to the inn having a no-weapon policy either. She probably knew some magic or fought with her fists like he did, he guessed.
He was nearing the end of his meal when the door to the tavern swung open. Carnius glanced over at it, half expecting to see Jayred enter, but instead it was an Imperial dressed in steel warplate with a broad-headed battleaxe across his back. He surveyed the inn with a look of disapproval, one that turned to outright rage as his gaze fell upon the bard.
“What is that?” he asked, the question directed at the bartender.
“She is playing for the entertainment of the customers,” the Argonian replied. “Is there a problem?”
“Entertainment?” the man asked. “Entertainment? Entertainment, my dear Argonian, is a vile abomination more akin to the realm of Mania than it is to that of Dementia. Entertainment brings happiness, and happiness brings blindness, decadence and corruption! It leaves us open to the deceptions of the false Madgod!”
The bartender sighed as the bard’s music petered out. She turned on the stool she was sitting on to face the new arrival, fingers poised over the strings of her instrument.
“You have been hanging around with those Heretics too much, Lucius,” the Argonian said. “Go home and stop pestering my customers.”
“Blind fool,” Lucius snarled, stepping towards the bard. “You, girl, what do you think you are doing?”
“Playing music,” was her reply.
“Then I order you to halt your decadent act of sin, immediately,” the Imperial replied with a growl.
“I just have,” she pointed out. “Otherwise I’d still be singing, not talking to you.”
“Do not be smart with me, girl,” the Imperial said, stalking towards her. Carnius pushed his bowl to one side and swung both legs out from under the table, freeing him to rise. “If you have any decency you would take that implement of debauchery you have there and smash it at once.”
“I’m not doing that,” the bard replied. “Now please leave me be.”
“You won’t?” the Imperial said taking a few more steps towards her. Carnius prepared to move. “Then perhaps I should do it for you.”
Her response was to pluck a string and to say…something. The noise seemed to be confused to Carnius’ ears, chopped and warped despite the perfectly serviceable acoustics of the room. Whatever it was, the Imperial was flung back from her as if he had been struck in the chest by a giant’s club, sailing through the air to clatter on the floor.
“You sane little strumpet!” he cursed, he cursed, scrambling to his feet and loosing his axe. “I’ll smash your damn head for that!”
He managed a step forwards before the bard plucked another string and loosed another one of those half-words. The Imperial stumbled, swaying on the spot and blinking in sudden confusion.
“Why don’t you go home like Eats-His-Claws suggested?” the bard said, plucking the strings of her instrument as she spoke. Carnius was no mage, but even he could sense the arcane power contained within that order crackle through the air. “You look tired; some rest could do you good.”
The Imperial looked dazed for a few moments, before he nodded.
“Yes,” he said, tone dazed. “Perhaps a nap will sort me out.”
He looked at the axe in his hand with a look of bafflement, as if confused as to why he was holding it, and placed it in its harness on his back. After a moment, he stumbled back out of the door, and the Argonian shook his head.
“Damn Heretics,” he muttered.
The bard glanced over at Carnius, and she smiled at him.
“I noticed you just there, friend,” she said. “I might not have needed the help, but thanks for the thought in any case.”
“No problem,” Carnius said. “Never been a fan of his sort of person.”
“Not many people are keen on the Heretics,” the bard replied. She extended a hand. “Salyan Irrenius, by the way, bard.”
“Carnius Hackelt,” Carnius replied as he shook it. He glanced at the doorway which the Imperial had stumbled through. “I’m curious, by the way; what was that you just used on that Imperial, just there? Some kind of magic.”
“That’s right,” Salyan said. “Audiomancy; I use my lyre here to help me focus and cast my spells. It’s not the widest-known kind of magic, and it isn’t the easiest to use, but it works for me.”
Carnius nodded. That would explain the lack of weapons; she was a spellcaster, as he had guessed.
She sat down on the bench next to her, and called to the bartender; “Eats, have I earned my meal yet?”
“I suppose so,” the Argonian said. “Raddaz, get the instrument girl something to eat!”
“So what brings you to this part of the Isles?” Salyan asked.
“I’m on my way to New Sheoth,” Carnius replied.
“Really? You came from Passwall, then?” Salyan said. She looked him up and down. “That would mean you were blessed, but you don’t look blessed. How did you get past the Gatekeeper?”
“Killed it,” Carnius said.
“You killed it?” Salyan said, raising an eyebrow. “Really? I’m the one who tells tall tales here, Carnius, not you.”
“I’m not joking,” Carnius said. “I killed it. There’s a Nord outside with a herd of Swattle you can ask if you don’t believe me. But I’m heading to New Sheoth now to meet with Sheogorath.”
“So that call for champions he sent out wasn’t completely useless,” Salyan murmured, half to herself. “I’m heading to New Sheoth myself; I was around this part of the Isles to try and get some scrolls from some old ruins, but now I’ve picked those up I’m heading back there.”
Carnius glanced back at the small crowd in the tavern, before he said; “Might be a good idea to do a bi to adventuring on the side; this crowd doesn’t look all that interested in any songs, if I’m honest.”
“Most Demented taverns don’t have all that much time for bards and minstrels,” Salyan said with a shrug. “If this was a Manic crowd they’d be calling for an encore right now.”
Before Carnius could question what any of that meant, the Argonian appeared with the bard’s meal in hand. He set it down on the table along with a fork and spoon, and glanced at Carnius.
“Does the customer stranger wish for anything else?” he asked.
“I’m fine, thanks,” Carnius said.
Salyan was about to tuck into her meal, but paused and glanced up at the Argonian.
“Hey, Eats,” she said. “What was that you were saying about Heretics just a minute ago? Have they been giving you trouble?”
“They moved in a couple of months ago, started camping out at some old ruin about half a mile east of here,” Eats replied. “They haven’t actually gone and attacked anybody yet, but they’re causing trouble in any case. Merchants have started steering clear of here now, because of them; worried about being attacked and so forth. Plus they’re getting some of the folks in the village all stirred up, like Lucius, and they’ve started making a scene.”
“Carnius and I could sort them out for you, if you want,” Salyan suggested. “Just point us in the right direction and we’ll deal with them tomorrow morning.”
“Hold on,” Carnius said. “Since when did I agree to this?”
“You look like you can look after yourself in a fight, you’ll be fine,” Salyan replied. “Besides, it’ll be fun. And if you thought that Lucius person was bad, believe me, the actual Heretics he looks up to are even worse. And afterwards I’ll head to New Sheoth with you; there’s safety in numbers, after all.”
“I suppose so,” Carnius conceded.
“Great,” Salyan said. She took a spoonful of her meal and started chewing. Through the mouthful, she smiled and added; “This is going to be good!”
Carnius, the murdering ba$tard! Hehe, kidding. He did what he had to do! You set the scene quite well with Haskill and the sadistic Relmyna. I know she will cause Carnius some trouble in the future as she holds a considerable grudge against him, and of course, Sheogorath himself.
The details were great, once again, and the journey through the gates was wonderfully written. I did enjoy the tavern wench and her Audiomancy?
. Never heard that one before. And Carnius made a friend! Sort of, anyway. Potential love interest? You did say you aren't keen on writing love stories. Me either, since my romantic characters usually end up dying tragically. Anyways, I can't wait to see the arrival to New Sheoth!
I must say, I was always fascinated with life in another realm in the ES universe. Shivering Isles does open up new possibilities and such. Good read!
I like the bard already! She seems a little more functional than the others, is she ‘blessed?’ She must be if she’s there. Her magic sounds cool, a little like a singing dragonborn!
The Argonian must have been fun to write. The cooking Khajiit was a little worrisome, it sounded like he was sick. ![]()
Of the characters in SI, Haskill’s always been a favorite of mine. He’s better than Sheogorath in my opinion.
I love how well you capture the Dementian (Demented?) view of happiness. It's really well-done, at least I think so. That cynical, distrusting view really shows how the darker side of madness has touched them. Anyways, a great write! I can't wait for the next one
DE: You just about got the situation with Relmyna about right, yep; expect more of the Isles' resident mad scientist in the future, believe you me.
And really? I introduce a new character with tits and she's immediately a love interest?
To be fair, I've no real grievance against romantic subplots; entirely romance-based stories annoy me as character IQs usually seem to drop by about 50 points in order to spin out the plot and make it long enough, but if it's a subplot that isn't the main focus it's generally fine for me. In that case, padding it out to novel length is no longer necessary and the characters no longer act as if they're mentally subnormal when it's narratively convenient.
And the idea of Audiomancy was my own (at least, I sort of accidentally copied it from a Greg Keyes book, according to McBadgere, as I've never heard of Greg Keyes in my life before). I already had Salyan's character largely worked out, so she ended up getting herself an unusual type of magic.
KC: Salyan is blessed, alright, but her blessing* is somewhat more subtle in its nature than, say, the way the Argonion was. And I did in fact initially toy with the idea of her using the Thu'um, but seeing as Skyrim seems to present Shouts as being incredibly difficult to learn if you aren't a dragon or the Dragonborn I decided against it.
I'm more of a Sheogorath fan, personally, but Haskill does come pretty damn close; he certainly manages snootiness the best of any of the characters in Oblivion.
Zalphon: According to all the books you find in the Isles, I believe that the term is 'Demented' for those from Dementia and 'Manic' for those from Mania. And I really can't see the Demented being fans of music, not at all, especially the Heretics, who seem to be the sort to put Oliver Cromwell and his fellows to shame.
McBadgere: Well, the entire point of that part is to creep people out a bit. I'd be kind of failing in my aim to write a wierder and creepier version of the Shivering Isles if it wasn't wierd and creepy, after all! ![]()
I'll admit that the Argonian was a lot of fun to write, but probably not as much fun as Salyan was; her and her Audiomancy promise to be rather enjoyable indeed. I've never heard of this Greg Keyes fellow, though, or those books. I think I'll chalk that down to coincidence, perhaps.
Thank you for reading, and I love you all!
*I love that I'm suddenly using that term like some kind of airy-fairy overly-PC way to say 'she crazy' ![]()
Greg Keyes?...Wrote a couple of Star Wars novels?...B5 novels?...And a couple to do with that little game series...Oh what was it?...Oh yeah, The Elder Scrolls...
...
Nah, only joking...And I genuinely forgot to say that I believed that it was just a coincidence...And definately a decent piece of working out...
Nice one!!...
Nah, never heard of any of those.
New chapter alert, by the way, introducing a scary new villain character! Eek!
Chapter 11-Altar
“Remind me why we’re doing this again?” Carnius asked as they looked at the entrance of the ruined building. From their viewpoint, they could see two guards loitering around a few broken columns, the white stone pillars jutting to the sky like bared ribs. The rest of the building complex, one of tumbled walls, half-fallen roofs and overgrown courtyards, sprawled out beyond them.
“Because they’re a bunch of Heretics,” Salyan replied, crouched as she was in the shade of a mushroom tree next to Carnius. “They’re making trouble for the people over at Backbite, and they don’t like my music.”
“To be fair, music isn’t everyone’s thing,” Carnius said.
“I can understand if it isn’t to everybody’s taste,” Salyan said, tugging the cloak of tanned Swattle skin she wore on her back forwards a notch. “But I refuse to be called a bad person simply because of what I am and what I do.”
There was a look of quiet anger eyes, as Carnius glanced over at her, but that evaporated a moment later as she added with a grin; “Besides, you wouldn’t want to leave a girl like me all alone to deal with a bunch of dangerous sorcerers like them, would you?”
“Fine,” Carnius said. “Let’s get this over with, then.”
He glanced over at the two sentries, before he asked Salyan; “You know any frenzy spells?”
“Yes, I know one,” she said.
“Good,” Carnius said. “Hit one of them with it, then the other.”
“You realise his friend will just dispel it, right?” Salyan asked.
“Not if you hit the other one right away,” Carnius said. “One kills the other and then we finish him of before he can come to his senses. And it’s hard to cast spells quickly when you’ve got someone in your face trying to kill you, after all.”
“Good thinking,” Salyan nodded. She raised her lyre, fingers finding a certain string, and as she played spoke what Carnius could only call a note of power.
An angry dischord sliced through the air towards one of the Heretic guards, a thrown dagger of harsh sound. The man turned with a snarl towards his Dunmer companion, raising his hand and calling upon some kind of arcane energy, and with the sound of ripping leather some whipcord-thin creature of jutting ribs and claws appeared from thin air. The Dunmer gave a yell of alarm as he called together magic to stop what he guessed was a frenzying spell, but a second arrow angry noise from Salyan’s lyre halted that; the dispel turned into a crackle of lightning that hit the other Heretic’s summoned creature in the chest.
It stumbled back, but the Mer’s efforts were in vain as the other Heretic drew a mace from his belt and swung for him; it slammed into the side of the Dunmer’s head with a crack and a squelch and the unfortunate Dark Elf collapsed to the ground.
By then, Carnius was moving, bursting from the undergrowth towards the remaining Heretic. He ignored the summoned beast, who was clutching a badly burned chest and wheezing with pain, and he felt arcane energy sent from Salyan’s lyre speed past him and strike the Heretic. The man in question raised his hands to cast a spell, but his fingers just waved uselessly at Carnius as the gladiator approached.
Spitting a curse, he swung down with his mace over his head as Carnius came into his reach, aiming to crush his skull in one blow. Carnius crossed his arms before him, catching the haft of the mace on the vambraces of his gauntlets and halting its path. His front arm pushed up and across over his other wrist, pushing the mace away and leaving the Heretic open, before his back hand lashed out, cracking into the Heretic’s face. He stumbled back with a curse, clutching his broken nose with a free hand and swaying as blood dripped from it.
“Kill him!” the Heretic yelled at his summoned creature. “Kill him, I say!”
The creature charged with a pained shriek, one of its arms extended to strike and the other clutching its injured chest, and Carnius stepped into its reach, jarring it with his right shoulder and sent its swing off-target. He jabbed his elbow into its thin chest, and a moment later swung the back of his fist up and smashed it into the funnel that occupied where its mouth should be. It stumbled away, and he turned his attention to its summoner.
Seeing where Carnius was facing, the Heretic managed to raise his mace in a crude guard, blood still dripping from his crushed nose, and Carnius moved. Three steps covered the distance between them, and he slammed the back of his fist upwards into the haft of the mace, knocking it away before the spiked knuckles of his other gauntlet slammed into the cartilage of his throat. The Heretic collapsed, gagging and choking as he clutched his ruined windpipe, and the fading of the summoned creature that he had called into being marked his passing a few moments later.
“That was bracing!” Salyan remarked as she drew near to Carnius. “We make a good team, you know.”
“Guess so,” the Imperial remarked with a nod. It was true; without that silence spell, dealing with that Heretic and his pet would have been a lot trickier, not to mention that fact that Salyan’s frenzy spell had dealt with the Dunmer who had also stood guard. “Thanks for the help, by the way; reckon I needed it.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” Salyan replied. “Now come on, let’s go and kill these people.”
They made their way through the half-ruined entrance of the building, footsteps echoing on the cracked flagstones that paved it. The right wall had tumbled in on itself, allowing sunlight and plant life to interlope on the building’s innards, but the left one was still intact.
“What are those?” Salyan asked suddenly, and from his position a few paces ahead of her Carnius turned around to see the bard examining the still-intact wall. There were carvings on it, weathered and indistinct figures in movement. Carnius squinted at it for a few moments, sensing that the savage swirl of combat was depicted in them, figures wielding weapons, all made faceless by the wearing of time. Many of them seemed to be footsoldiers of some kind, holding swords, shields and bows, while winged figures duelled with what looked like flocks of dragons. Across the top, a pattern of rings was linked together in a long chain that ran along the cracked and water-stained wall. Faint indents that were carved along the bottom of the stone suggested writing of some kind, and Salyan crouched next to them, running her fingers over the carvings with a frown.
“I wonder what that says,” she murmured.
“We can look into it later,” Carnius said. “There’s still a whole group of Heretics around here, and I don’t want to get caught unawares.”
“You’re right,” Salyan nodded, standing up. Her lyre shifted into a different hold in her hands as she stood once more, gripped in the same way a soldier would grasp a weapon.
Carnius lead the way through the ruin, Salyan following not far behind. On occasion they would skirt tumbled piles of rubble or puddles that had formed in the floor, from which multifarious fungi of every shape and form imaginable would sprout. At one point, Carnius had to all but throw himself away from a patch of mould that reacted to him stepping on it by growing greenish teeth and attempting to bite his foot. The walls were covered in carving similar to the ones found by the entry hall,
“Where is everyone?” Salyan asked as they reached a long-neglected courtyard, now overgrown with plants of all kind. All of them were greyish things that looked halfway to death, rot and fungi the only thing that bloomed in any kind of abundance here.
“That’s a good question,” Carnius said. “You’d think if they had sentries posted up they’d be a big enough group to possibly warrant some attention.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll find them sooner or later,” Salyan said.
As they continued, the silence of the building began to press on them. It was deserted, graveyard-silent and the only sound they heard for a long while was their own footsteps echoing back at them. The further in they got, the more they expected to run across some band of Heretics, but all they found were more carvings showing some ancient war between unknown antagonists and nothing else. At one point, they came to a room, dominated by a statue of two figures. One, wearing some kind of armour that looked more like it was cut than forged, was standing over a second person who was on his knees and facing away from him; the passage of time had rendered their appearance indistinct, and the only facial features that remained were the faintest impression of a nose and a beard. The armoured figure held a chain in his hands, and it was wrapped around the neck of the one on his knees. Somehow, the erosion that had pervaded the rest of the crumbling building had left the metal of the chain untouched, and as Carnius peered at it he saw that each link was forged to resemble a snake biting its own tail.
“You alright?” he said as he saw Salyan frowning at something.
“Can’t you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
“That chanting,” she replied, taking a few steps towards a doorway on the opposite side of the room. “I can hear people saying something.”
Before Carnius could stop her, she went through. He followed, hurrying after her as she tried to track the progress of her mysterious sound. Not far along the corridor, the noise reached his ears as well; faint, repetitive noise, too distant and weak to pick up words. As they advanced, that too came into clarity, a cyclic call of some words whose meaning he could not decipher.
They found the source of the noise in a room that sank into the foundations of the building. Salyan and Carnius halted at the top of a stairwell that ran down into a large, square room, one ringed by balconies along either side. At its heart, a group of people were gathered around a solid block of some glowing white crystal, all in the blue robes as worn by the guards outside.
“Let’s get them,” Salyan hissed.
“No,” Carnius replied, voice lowered. “There’s too many for us to fight.”
“It’ll be easy,” she said. “Chuck a few frenzy spells in there and-”
“And they’ll dispel them,” Carnius said. “We aren’t fighting them, not when they’re all together. Besides, I want to see what they were doing.”
He stepped through a doorway to the side, onto one of the balconies where he would be hidden in shadow, and Salyan followed a few moments later. As they did so, one of the Heretic’s number stepped forwards; judging from the fact that her robes were more elaborate and her hair was grey, Carnius guessed she was some kind of leader or elder.
“Jyggalag!” she exclaimed, raising her hands into the air. “Ayat mran zia nasheggorath orotya! Iok threye olorias! Kayan zey yatania!”
“Any ideas what she’s saying?” Carnius asked Salyan.
“No,” Salyan said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that language before.”
“Ikiolyis nethren zayatianis ret!” the priestess cried. She lowered her hands, looking over her congregation. “Bring forth the sacrifice.”
Two of Heretics stepped forth, a third held between them with his hands behind his back. His hood was down, and Carnius recognised him as Lucius, the Imperial’s head held down in an expression of defeat and fear.
“Please,” he managed to mumble to the priestess. “Don’t do this! I’m one of you!”
“I know,” the elder replied, her tone gentle and sympathetic. “This is why you have been chosen for so great an undertaking, brother. Do not be afraid; through your sacrifice, we will help usher in a new age for the Shivering Isles.”
Lucius’ pleas were ignored as other two Heretics forced him onto the altar. The chant began again as the priestess drew a long, straight knife from her belt, the blade cut from the same crystal as the altar, and raised it above her head.
“Ayake!” she cried. “Rathiak kayala Jyggalag zayat!”
Blood spilled upon shining mineral as the blade hit home. Salyan gasped and inched further back into the shadows.
“This is wrong,” she whispered. “Something is very, very wrong.”
The unholy liturgy of words repeated by the Heretics continued, a prayer to some god neither gladiator nor bard wished to comprehend, and spurred on by the unnatural power in the words and blood, the body of Lucius began to rise into the air. His skin began to turn pale and white as his body grew in size and stature. Muscle turned into growing crystalline plates covering a vaguely humanoid figure that hung in the air, turning into a standing position above the altar. In just a few moment, the dreadful transformation was complete, and what had once been an Imperial was now a massive statue of silver-white crystal standing before the armour, the mineral that made it cut to resemble plate armour. In the faceless helm, the blank eye sockets lit up with the dreadful white light of some ancient and cursed star, fuelled by some unholy life, and great crystalline wings unfolded from its back with a ringing, scraping noise, span so great their tips touched either side of the chamber walls. In one of its hands it held a pair of scales, the other a colossal sword, and it gazed upon the congregation before it with a look of dreadful contempt and malice.
Kneel, it ordered in a scraping boom of a voice, and the congregation did as bidden. In their hiding place on the balcony, Carnius and Salyan found their knees sagging on their own accord. Who summons Jyggalag’s Arbitrator of Judgement?
“We are the Heretics of the Isles, my Lord Judgement,” the priestess spoke from where she was on her knees. “Those who reject the lies of the Madgod, who have learned the truth of the Greymarch and Jyggalag and who seek the Prince of Order’s blessing, so that we may spread his will and truth to all the Isles.”
“Greymarch?” Carnius heard Salyan murmured by his side. “I thought that was just a story.”
Blessing? the colossal figure, Judgement, asked. What are you, mortal, to presume to ask for such a thing?
“A mere pawn,” the priestess replied. “A slave willing to serve the Tyrant of Tyrants. We petition with blood and chant and sacrifice, as laid down in the rituals of the Greymarch. We know that the salvation of the Isles is soon to be at hand, and wish to take part in this glorious endeavour, to serve the true ruler of this land.”
The giant took a step forwards, the flagstones cracking beneath its shining boots. The great blade it carried hummed as it whirled in its hand, coming to rest beneath the priestess’ chin, lifting her head so that she saw the terrible aspect of Judgement in full.
You speak your case well, it said. Receive Jyggalag’s blessing. Become priests and priestesses of order.
“Thank you, my lord,” the priestess said, still on her knees. “You have our eternal-”
The words were cut off by a gasp of pain and shock as she began to change. Her skin turned pale grey, as it did with the other heretics, their robes changing from light blue in colour to a deep, dark purple. Chunks of crystal began to grow across the cloth, swelling and linking to form a breastplate and belt as part of some hideous metamorphosis.
“We need to get out of here,” Salyan said. Carnius nodded; he’d seen more than enough of this.
They crept in silence to the entranceway and hurried through the door as the gathering of Heretics cried out in pain at their changing, using the distraction to get away. As soon as they were sure their footsteps would be out of earshot, they broke into a sprint, and did not stop until they were outside and well away from the crumbled ruin.
Carnius leant against a tree, panting for breath after the sprint and swigged from the fatigue potion at his belt, feeling the burn of a stitch that had begun to form fade away and the tiredness from that sprint wash from his muscles. He handed it to Salyan, who gulped down a grateful swig of it and passed it back.
“What in Oblivion’s name was that?” Carnius asked.
“I’m not certain,” Salyan said. “But I think I might have an idea. There’s an old legend in the Isles, of a war against an army known as the Greymarch. There are dozens of different tellings I’ve heard over the years, some of them saying that the Greymarch wins and conquers the Isles, some saying that it loses, others saying that they were locked in a stalemate or kept fighting over and over again, but all of them ended with the promise of Greymarch invading once more in the future. That creature we saw in there was one of the Arbitrators, and according to the stories they were the Greymarch’s generals or champions or something similar. And if they required a sacrifice to bring one of those here, then there’s no knowing how powerful that thing was.”
“So who do we warn about it?” Carnius asked.
“Well, it won’t stay for very long,” Salyan said. “That sacrifice will give it energy to stay here for a while, but not for long. But those Heretics are doing something more dangerous that just defying Lord Sheogorath; if you’re going to see him in person in New Sheoth, you should warn him, have him send a patrol down there to deal with them.”
Carnius nodded.
“I’ll get that done alright,” he said. “I don’t know what that was, but that wasn’t right; killing that man like that…”
“I was talking about that creature they summoned,” Salyan said. “The Arbitrator; that could be dangerous, if any of those old stories are true.”
“And the human sacrifice?” Carnius asked.
“So what?” Salyan shrugged. “The Feasters in Bliss have one every month for that Holy Banquet of theirs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Weepers did something similar too. Then there’s the annual Leap of Flame that the Sisterhood of Immolation have as well. Hardly a big deal, after all. I was talking about the Arbitrator.”
“Right,” Carnius nodded, deciding that was the safest course to take at the moment. “Of course.”
He shook his head.
“Anyway, the road shouldn’t be too far north of here,” he said. “Let’s go find it and then head to New Sheoth.”
Death to the Heretics! Death, I say!
“It’ll be easy,” she said. “Chuck a few frenzy spells in there and-”
Impulsive and intense mood swings. She's fitting in better I think. Loved the way she uses her magic though.
As long as Carnius can keep her under control (and I can see that being an issue) they do make an effective team. I was slightly surprised in the fight with the guards when she silenced the one as Carnius charged.
Cool description of the beginning of the Greymarch. The arbitrator reminded me of a character in Diablo III.
How lucky for me...Not being a goody goodie and all, that I actually have to agree with DE...I kinda saw The Arbitrator as more of a lieutenant than a villain so far...(or general/champion as she said)...
Unless, of course, you know better...
...
A brilliant chapter...Fantastic, as ever...Wonderful description of the ceremony...
Amazing stuff...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
DE: That wasn't quite Jyggalag that was being summoned there; Sheogorath is still kicking about, so it isn't actually possibly for Jyggalag to manifest anywhere in the universe, not even in the sort of limbo-ish place that the Greymarch's forces wait in for the intervals between each Greymarch. That was an Arbitrator, and is basically a bigger, meaner Order Knight who serves as Jyggalag's most senior leuitenants.
And I wouldn't say that either Jyggalag or Sheogorath are really good or evil, considering the entirely amoral nature of Daedra, and I'm not trying to play the story as a battle between the two, either; this is more of a clash between two extreme opposites of ideology than anything else, though if you define villain as 'primary antagonistic figure in a narrative' then Jyggalag is quite definitely the villain. That, and Sheogorath is just way more likeable that Jyggalag.
And yeah, that was meant to be 'mace', I'll go and fix that.
KC: I enjoyed playing with Salyan's Audiomancy in that chapter; it's a fun system of magic to use. The mainstay of the spells she knows are Illusion ones, with the only Destruction one she knows being that mini Unrelenting Force spell, but she's pretty damn good at Illusion stuff like Calm, Frenzy, Silence etc.
And I've never played Diablo 3, so I assure you that that was purely coincidental.
McBadgere: The Arbitrator of Judgement is one of Jyggalag's most senior commanders, yes, but he's one of four Arbitrators and he isn't the big cheese (that would, of course, be Jyggalag himself).
Pleased you enjoyed the ceremony description; I put a lot of work into that one. ![]()
Oh, thanks for the clarification. I reread it now, just to make sure. Damn. Need to be more attentive. I assumed it was Jyggy because the priests kept calling out his name, and then I read the Arbitatror of Judgement, which I thought was synonymous with Jyggalag.
DE: No worries, it's a pretty easy mistake to make if you accidentally missed one or two parts of the chapter.
mALXmeister: Thank you very much! I put a bit more effort than I usually do into writing those scenes, especially the summoning, and I'm glad that that paid off. And it's not that I don't usually put effort into my writing, it's just, well you know what I mean. Hush.
And the turkey-like gobbling is appreciated, and appreciated greatly.
Unless it means you're choking on something. That would be bad.
And now for Chapter 12! Whoo!
Chapter 12-The Wagon
They found the road long afterwards, and even though Salyan had seemed relatively sure that the Arbitrator that had been called would not tarry for long, both she and Carnius kept glancing over their shoulders every once in a while, and kept an ear out for the beating of crystalline wings. After half an hour or so of walking they began to relax, fairly certain now that they had escaped that ruin without being noticed. Soon enough, another sound reached their ears; a faint hooting and grunting noise, and as they neared, more than a few colourful curses.
They rounded a corner to see the back of a wagon, a rear wheels sunk into a ditch on the side of the road. There was someone wearing Daedric plate attempting to push it at the rear, and around the front there was the sound of a woman trying to cajole whatever pulled it into action with a mixture of equal parts gentle encouragement and profanity.
"You need a hand there?" Carnius asked as they approached. The figure in armour turned around to face them, and the Imperial saw the man's red-streaked grey skin and the small horns jutting from his forehead; he was a Dremora, of all things.
"Who's that, Kallix?" a middle-aged Dunmer asked as she looked out from around the front of the cart.
"Travellers," the Dremora replied, his voice a deep, harsh scrape of glass on granite. "Offering to help."
"Well praise Azura for that," the Dark Elf said. She looked slightly to the left of where Carnius and Salyan were and said; "As you can see, our wagon's had a bit of a mishap on the way to New Sheoth. If you give us a hand with this little problem then I can get you there without you needing to walk, if that's where you're going."
"Sounds fair," Salyan said. "Do you just want two extra pairs of hands to push?"
The Dunmer nodded.
"Just help Kallix, and I'll try and get our rayet to start pulling again," the Dunmer said. "Hopefully if we've got some more strength on the back we can get it out of this rut."
She disappeared around the front of the cart, and called; "Ready when you are!"
The three set their feet into the ground and pushed, grunting and straining with effort as they tried to move the wagon. With glacial slowness, it began to roll forwards up the slope of the ditch, axles creaking and rumbling as they pushed. At one point Salyan broke her hold on it for a moment to turn around and push with her back against it, digging the heels of her boots into the dirt. For a few moments, the pressure seemed to grow all the more before it released and the wagon rolled forwards on the flat of the road. Salyan shrieked with surprise as she nearly toppled onto her back, catching herself on the edge of the wagon.
"I don't think I thought that through entirely," she said, shaking her head as she righted herself. "Still, got the wagon up, didn't it?"
"That it did," the Dremora said. "Thank you for the help, travellers."
"I didn't catch your name, by the way," Carnius said. Part of him was quietly stunned at the fact that he was engaged with a civil conversation with a Dremora; the last time he had seen one of those had been three years ago, and it and its compatriots had been doing everything in their power to kill him.
"Kallix," the Daedra replied as they made their around to the front of the wagon. "My dear companion is Haella Theranni."
Carnius and Salyan introduced themselves in turn, and to the Haella as she appeared to greet them and thank them. Up close, Carnius could see her eyes were a milky red, lacking any kind of pupil, and from the way she didn't quite make eye contact with him he guessed she was blind.
"We'll need to give Indoril a few minutes to rest," she added once they had made their introductions. "He worked hard trying to pull this wagon."
She gestured towards the creature hitched to the front of the wagon, and Carnius blinked in surprised. He had been expecting a horse, but between the two tongues of wood off the vehicle's front was a bipedal beast, its back parallel to the ground and a long tail running from its spine, and towards its front there were a pair of arms protruding from its shoulders, ending with hands that looked disconcertingly similar to those of most humans, mer or beast-folk. Its head rested on the edge of a long, thick neck, and from that a curved beak ran. It turned to look at them with four eyes, two on the front of its head, two on the side, the iridescent feathers that adorned its whole body shining even in the overcast sunlight of Dementia.
"He's gorgeous!" Salyan exclaimed as she saw it. "Could I...?"
"By all means," Haella said. "Indoril likes meeting people."
Salyan approached the beast, and held her hand out for it to sniff from the two pitted nostrils at the bed of its beak. Satisfied, it let her run her hands over the colourful plumage it wore, giving a hoot at the sensation.
"He'll probably want a drink after that work," Haella remarked, more to herself than anybody else. "Kallix, be a dear and get him some water, will you?"
"Of course," the Dremora replied, hauling himself into the wagon. Carnius watched him go, and then glanced back at Haella.
"I can't say I'd have expected somebody to be travelling with a Dremora," he remarked. "Thought they had a reputation for being a bit hostile; not sure I'd do the same."
"Oh, you mean Kallix?" Haella asked. "It's not the most usual of situations, but I trust him implicitly. And they just get bad press for Mehrunes Dagon working them into a state during the Oblivion Crisis; they're really not that bad, usually."
Carnius decided not to comment on that, and decided to change the subject as Kallix reappeared with a water barrel under his arm for draft-beast.
"So how long have you been on the Isles, then?" Carnius asked.
"Oh, we only arrived yesterday from Moonshadow, Azura's realm," Haella said. "I'm a merchant, you see; I sell soul gems, trinkets, alchemical ingredients, that sort of thing, and then I pick up goods in New Sheoth to sell back at home. Kallix has been my companion in the business for the last twenty years or so; he's not much a merchant but he's good at hitting things with that sword of his, if not much else."
"You wound me, Haella," the Dremora replied from the front of the wagon, where he had set down the drink.
"Well, I suppose you're alright for warming a bedroll too," the Dunmer shot back. She turned her attention back to Carnius. "Thinking of coming to the Isles, are you from around here? I've generally got a knack for picking out whether somebody's Manic or Demented just from all the time I've visited; your young lady friend is certainly from the north, but you don't seem all that fitting for either of them."
"I only got to Passwall a few days ago," Carnius said.
"Oh, managed to slip in now that that Imperial everyone there was talking about killed the Gatekeeper?" Haella asked.
"Something like that, yeah," Carnius nodded.
"Thought so," Haella said. "Kallix and I have permission to enter the Isles for trade, so the Gatekeeper lets us past; commerce between the realms helps every Daedric Prince, after all."
Carnius nodded as Kallix called over; "I think Indoril is ready to go."
"Excellent," Haella replied. She glanced over at Carnius. "Climb aboard; you've certainly earned your ride."
She clambered into the seat of the wagon as Kallix took the reins, and Carnius followed a moment later. Salyan followed a moment later, and with a flick on the leather straps, the Dremora urged Indoril into motion.
"So if you're from Moonshadow, how did you get hold of a rayet?" Salyan asked as it rumbled along the road.
"We traded for him," Haella said. "A soul gem, trapped with the soul of a daedroth, in return for a good cart rayet."
Salyan nodded.
"Is it true about what they say?" she asked. "About Moonshadow being the most beautiful place in all Oblivion? That it's so stunning any mortal goes blind just looking at it?"
Haella gestured to the milky red orbs of her eyes.
"How do you think this happened to me?" she said. "It is quite honestly the most incredible place one can go to; we live in Unseen, the capital."
"And they say that she has the spirit of Taread Songblood staying in the Palace of Roses," Salyan asked, leaning forwards with sudden interest in her eyes. "Is that true too?"
"We've heard him play more than once," Kallix said. "I'm not the greatest appreciator of music but the performance was incredible."
"Who was he?" Carnius asked as the cart passed under an arch formed by the roots of a massive mushroom tree.
"He was the first bard," Salyan explained. "One of the Five Hundred Companions of Ysgramor, the keeper of their history, and he carved a harp from the bones of a dragon and made its strings with its guts. He was the first practitioner of audiomancy, too."
"So you've studied bardic history, then?" Haella asked.
"I am a bard," Salyan said. "Perhaps I'll travel to Moonshadow, and visit him one day. Though I might pack a blindfold."
"Apparently he's quite tired of bards going to him and asking for tutelage," Haella replied with a shake of her head and a smile. "I don't think you'll have much luck if that's what you want to go for."
"It's not a lesson I want," Salyan said. "I'm looking for something, and I think he'd be able to help me."
"Then maybe you should go there one day," Haella said. "If you do, let us know; you seem like a nice young woman, and we'd be happy to put a roof over your head while you're there."
"Thank you," Salyan said.
The wagon was passing by some ruins, and Carnius glanced at trio of weathered busts that sat on pillars on the side of the road, each one of the statues a good three metres tall. There was a grinding, scraping noise, and the heads on top of each bust turned to face them.
"What on Nirn is that?" Carnius asked.
"Those are the Three Watchmen," Kallix said, keeping his gaze fixed on the road ahead. "It's best not to stare at them; if you do, it can be...unpleasant."
The conversation was muted as the cart passed by under the unsettling gaze of the faceless statues, and once they were out of view Salyan muttered; "I hate this place."
Carnius glanced over at her with a raised eyebrow.
"It's just Dementia, that's all," she said. "It gets to you, especially if you usually live in Mania like I usually do."
"What were you doing here, anyway?" he asked. "You mentioned getting a scroll from some ruins a while back; what was that for?"
"I'm looking for something," Salyan said. "It's this...note, I once heard, in a dream. The purest and most perfect chord you can imagine, the Chord to end all chords, and I've been trying to track it down for years. Those ruins used to be the home of a famous audiomancer, and I was searching through his old records to see if I could find anything to help me; I've got a few friends who look at audiomancy in a more academic way than I do, and they might be able to help me."
"I see," Carnius said. "Well, if you ever need a hand with chasing up any leads on that, just let me know; I wouldn't mind helping."
"You'd do that?" Salyan asked. From where he was sitting at the reins, where the bard couldn't see him, Kallix shot him the look that is known to just about anybody male, regardless of culture, race, age or location, that meant 'get in there'.
"Yeah, I would," Carnius said. "Gods alone know, you're one of the first friends I've made in this place, and I could do with every one of them."
The lull broken, the conversation continued as the wagon rumbled on. The hours of travelling were interrupted only by a group of half a dozen of purple-skinned women mounted on scaled rayet, wearing segmented armour of dark metal and carrying lances and shields. The patrol gave them a brief greeting and carried on their way, but aside from that the road was unpopulated.
It was as the sun was beginning to set that they finally saw New Sheoth. The forest around the road cleared into flatter swamplands, and in the distance, rising up on a hill, turned golden by the light of the setting sun, the walls of the city emerged from the ground. The wagon drew closer, and in less than half an hour they were at the gates. Kallix dismounted and helped Haella down onto the road, where it widened into a small courtyard where more wagons were gathered.
"We'll need to deal with some bureaucracy," he explained. "There's no need for you to hang around if you have something to do."
They made their farewells, passed through the gates of the city and stepped into New Sheoth.
This story just keeps getting better. I loved meeting Kallix the Dremora through something as mundane as a stuck cart. Tremendously enjoyable, Mustard!
I'll have to come back and read this when I get a quiet house, it is Ball Game Day. The air is being pierced by shouts, hoots, barking dogs, the sound of grown men jumping like baboons, etc.
Grits: Thank ye muchloike! I wanted to explore how differently people in Obliviont treated Daedra to those from Nirn, and having it be in such an ordinary manner seemed perfect for that sort of thing.
mALX: Eh, it's; everyone gets busy days when they're not going to be able to read stuff, so don't worry about. Just enjoy Ball Game Day; it sounds like fun. Chaotic, spherical fun.
HOLY DAMN! A Dremora, a nice Dremora, of all things! Those raspy-voiced clan-like demons in the SI? Shouldn't they be marching over the countless piles of charred corpses in Dagon's Deadlands or is this one taking a vacation in the Isles? This is madness! Then again . . .
Thank you very much, DE!
I was trying to present Kallix the Nice Dremora (that so sounds like the title of a TES-style children's story) as a bit of an exception to the rule, and the implication is that, as he's been with Haella for the past twenty years and with the Oblivion Crisis happening 3 years ago in this story, he wasn't actually involved in it. Of course, bear in mind that Haella is probably going to be biased in favour of any Dremora she meets on account of Kallix.
And the Oblivion hopping idea is something that I really think would happen in the TES-verse. I remember when I first played the Shivering Isles and I found out there was an entire damn city, along with farms and villages, all across the Isles, my mind was kind of blown by the idea; until then, from what I had gathered from Morrowind and Oblivion (the game) the daedric realms were this hellscape like the Deadlands, but then with the Isles being populated largely by an entire civilisation of mortals it suddenly opened up a whole new perspective on the daedra for me. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me tha a great number of the princes would have their own civilisations in their realms, either to nurture and rule in the case of the more benevolent Daedric Princes like Azura (whose realm of Moonshadow is described Darkest Darkness as having 'silver cities' and being visited by Dunmer and Khajiit) or to control and be worshipped by in the case of more atavistic Princes like Boethiah or Molag Bal. And seeing as the barriers that separate each realm of Oblivion are much weaker than the ones keeping the Daedra off Nirn, trade between them struck me as entirely conceivable.
Pleased you liked the rayat, as well, though I wouldn't describe them so much as mutant horses as I would a deinonychus and a hummingbird.
Oh, indeed! Oblivion isn't only a wasteland like Dagon's realm. Even Dagon has buildings in his own abode! I really liked what you did here, though. Daedric Realms and those who inhabit it largely represents the Daedric Prince. Mania and Dementia obviously are the two sides of Sheogorath, hence the duality of the colors and the land itself. The people in his realm range from colorfully maniacal to darkly demented. Hircine's realm(I'm using this for Kraven's story) is nothing but a big wilderness with tributaries and rivers of blood, giant forests, african-style savannah's, huge canyons, etc. Molag Bal's realm would have civilizations, as it is a copy of Nirn itself, except most people are put into charnel houses and prisons. But if there were people running around, they would reflect Molag Bal's sphere; corrupted men and women, rapists, sadists, blood-sucking power-hungry vampires, etc. Its what makes the realms of Oblivion interesting.
Thing is, Daedra have a direct influence on the souls of their worshipers. Few times it was mentioned in the books that Sheogorath claimed a few souls himself when they died. I can give tons of quotes, but I'll leave it super short. From Skyrim, we know there are different afterlives for different people. Or even if they ally themselves to a Prince, their souls can be claimed. So instead of a Nord going to Sovngarde, he would probably go chill in some Daedric realm of Oblivion. Some of us had this conversation in the official Bethesda forums, but we came to the conclusion that some of the people we meet in the SI maybe already deceased. But since it is a Daedric Realm, they wouldn't walk around like floating souls
, but actual fleshy people.
Author's note: I owe a great debt to the late Adam Adamowicz, lead concept artist for the Shivering Isles, whose unique and inspired visions of Crucible and Bliss influenced my own writing of this chapter a great deal. If you've got some spare time, I'd really recommend looking over UESP's archive of the art, available http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Shivering:Concept_Art; it's some pretty exceptional stuff.
Also, I think I might have fallen in love with Cutter while I was writing this chapter.
Chapter 13-The Forge of Scars
The district of Crucible was quite possibly the dankest, most miserable strip of city that Carnius had ever laid eyes upon. Having lived in the squalor of the Waterfront all his life, he thought he had seen the worst of urban poverty, but Crucible managed to be even worse.
The roadways that wound their ways around the squat, ramshackle buildings were nothing more than dirt and the occasional cobblestone, small bridges of mud and backed clay arching over open streams of raw, stinking sewage. Buildings rose and fought for space, walls pressing against each other as they climbed over one another like a swarm of squabbling rats. Many of them leaned against each other or over the streets, looking ready to topple down upon the passers-by at any moment, while bridges and balconies jutted over and criss-crossed the roadways. Some of the buildings were made of stone, while others were slapped together from mud and half-rotten sticks in a wattle-and-daub construction, managing to tower upwards by clinging like parasites to other structures. The architectural anarchy, combined with the perpetual gloom that shrouded the entirety of Dementia, meant that a twilight was already in effect in the streets, and the only light was provided by braziers and torches that burned with blue flame.
They had entered a square of some kind, its dominant feature a statue of a bearded man cut from dark granite, wearing a set of ornate mourning clothes. Around the edge of it were market stalls, a number of customers moving between them.
“Poxes!” Carnius heard a merchant cry as he and Salyan stepped past a group of people in the ornate, gilded clothing of the upper classes, their finely tailored jackets and ornate dresses all dyed sombre shades of black and grey. “Pestilences and contagions! Diseases of all strains for the connoisseur, taken fresh from the pits of Peryite himself!”
“Nightmares!” another called. “Nightmares and night terrors of all kinds, all available on the cheap! Ones tailored just for you for a low, low price, all made by the best fear-smiths of Quagmire!”
“Rats on a stick!” cried a withered man, holding a tray before him. “Nice and hot! Get them them while they're fresh!”
“One minute,” Salyan said. She hurried over to him, and after a brief conversation handed over a few coins in return for a piece of cooked meat that, Carnius was forced to concede, was almost definitely a rat. The tail was a clue, if nothing else was. Salyan caught back up with him, chewing a mouthful of her meal, and caught his stare. “What? I'm hungry.”
Carnius shook his head. Of all the things he had seen lately, having a rat on a stick for a snack was pretty normal, though the stink of the place had put paid to any thoughts of food that he had been entertaining. He set out into the streets, Salyan following in his wake.
“Where are we going, then?” Salyan asked. “Are you heading to the palace?”
“Place has probably shut up for the night by now,” Carnius replied. “I need to find a smith, and a place to stay for the night.”
“Do we have to stay here?” Salyan protested, with a wary glance at the buildings that pressed in around them. “Can we go to Bliss, please? Bliss is much better than this place. You'll like it there, I'm sure you will, much more than Crucible.”
Deep and sonorous chanting came to their ears, and a few moments a man in drab grey robes rounded the corner. Parchments, most likely from sacred texts, were sewn into the cloth, and he held a banner with yet more words and scrolls upon it. Behind him, more followed, some of them chanting the same dirge he did, others wailing as if in mourning, several members of the procession beating their own raw and bloodied backs with whips and flails. Delicate feathers of frost spread out from where their feet fell, and many of them carried staves tipped with balls of jagged ice.
“Who are they?” Carnius asked.
“The Frozen Brethren,” Salyan explained as they passed by. “They're one of the churches that worship Sheogorath. They're doing it wrong, mind you, but everyone here in Dementia is so there's not much you can really do about that.”
Carnius shrugged.
“Sure they're wrong,” he said. Salyan gave him a look, but he shrugged it off. He didn't particularly care for the bard's prejudices. “Look, do you know if there's a smith around here?”
“There's a better smith in-”
“And there are nearer smiths here,” Carnius said. He raised his hand, to show one of his somewhat battered gauntlets. “I need this fixed.”
“I suppose Cutter is probably the best at repairing sharp things like those knuckle spikes,” Salyan said after a moment. The last of the small parade passed them by, a man swinging a censer that had once been a human skull. “But once we've gone there can we please go to Bliss?”
“Fine,” Carnius relented. “Let's go see this Cutter first.”
Pleased that she had won at least a partial victory, Salyan pointed southwards.
“Her forge is that way,” she said. “I think there's an alley we can cut through just over there.”
She lead the way, cutting through the back street. The stick that had once held her now-eaten snack was discarded on the remarkably clean floor as they headed through. Carnius glanced at the walls, frowning as he noticed triangular shapes beginning to rise from the crude plaster.
“Salyan, what's going on with the walls?”
The bard glanced back at them, and her eyes widened with alarm.
“Run!” she cried. “Quickly, run!”
Carnius complied as she broke into a sprint, the two of them dashing along as the walls behind them erupted into hungry fangs and slammed shut, a solid block of sharp, ravening teeth, closing upon them to crush and chew. They halted only once they were into the street beyond, the alley shutting up behind them in a wave of dark fangs. They closed behind them with a grinding noise, and after a few moments pulled back away.
“What was that?” Carnius asked, staring at the way they had just come. The stick that had carried Salyan's snack had now disappeared.
“Some of the alleyways try and eat people, now and again,” Salyan explained. “Like that one. Usually people put up warnings, but someone must have taken them away. Typical.”
She lead Carnius through a few more streets, making a point avoid of avoiding back alleys, until they found their destination; a large stone building with baleful red light glowing from one wing with a chimney drooling smoke into the air. Metal gargoyles were clinging to its sides, blue flames crackling in their jaws, and a desiccated, half-decayed corpse hung over the door from a large iron hook thrust through the back of its neck and out of its mouth, a placard hung over it with the word 'Thief' written on it in what Carnius hoped was red paint. Next to that was a sign, reading 'Cutter's Weapons'.
After a moment to remove his gauntlets from his hands, he tried the door, the latch clicking and swinging open. He glanced around the stone innards of the shop, seeing the decorations that hung on every wall; weapons of every kind, bows, crossbows, spears and axes, but most of all, blades of all varieties. There were longswords, claymores, daggers, scimitars, katanas, sabres, rapiers, all adorning the walls. Anything that gored or slashed was present on the walls of Cutter's Weapons. Bloodstains were scattered here and there, and his gaze was drawn to the figure at the far end of the large room, by the fires of the forge. She glanced up from where she was sharpening the edge of a sword on a grindwheel, and her scarred face, framed by brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, broke into a crooked smile. That smile extended past her lips along two cuts deep into each cheek, right to where the jaw rose up to the rest of the skull.
“Ah,” she said, leaving her work for a moment and standing. “Customers. I am Cutter, and welcome to my forge. What can I do for you both?”
Cutter was a Bosmer, short like all of her people, her build lean and wiry. Her bare arms, Carnius noted, were even more heavily scarred than her face, coated with gashes and cuts of all kinds.
“I need these repaired,” Carnius said, holding up his gauntlets. “Just had a bit of wear and tear, and need fixing up again. The normal sort of thing.”
“Let me see those,” Cutter said. Carnius handed them over, and she peered at them, intense eyes roving over them, a finger running along the dented and battered metal. There was a quiet purring noise, and after a moment, Carnius realised that it was the smith making it, a rapturous, intoxicated grin spreading across her features. “These are...these are some of the most beautiful weapons I have seen. They have drunk so much blood, ended so, so many lives, even brought about the deaths of friends. They are almost perfect.”
“Almost perfect?” Carnius asked.
“Their construction is good, and the inlay of daedric ebony is a good idea; it gives the steel strength without adding too much weight,” Cutter said. “But for a piece of metallurgy to be truly perfect, it needs madness ore in it; imbue it with the souls of dead heroes, give its steel life, give it hunger.”
Salyan had wondered off, and was looking at a blade that lay unattended on a bench, a straight length of unadorned metal designed to be wielded by two hands, one side edge and the other blunt and flat, the tip a right-angled triangle. The handle and hilt were ornate, dark golden metal moulded around a gem glowing with arcane power, the stone humming faintly.
“Is this made of madness ore?” the bard asked, lifting the weapon up.
“Put that down!” Cutter snapped, the ferocity in the words making Salyan comply in an instant. “The handle is forged from the ore. The blade is of steel and sorcery, one of the strongest I have seen. I am the only smith capable of working with a weapon like it, though that isn't surprising; blades are my speciality, and I make the finest in the Isles. I bless each and every one of them with my own lifeblood before any other wielder uses them.”
That would explain the cobweb of scars running across her skin, Carnius decided.
“Whose is it?” Salyan asked.
“It belongs to a missionary of the Feasters,” Cutter replied. “Normally I'd rather not do work for a Manic, but that blade there is so steeped in viscera and tragedy that I couldn't resist; it is the most perfect weapon I have ever performed my art upon, though I will give your gauntlets the credit they are due, Imperial; they do come close. Unwilling betrayal always gives metal the sweetest of scents.”
“Right,” Carnius said. “So, how much will it be to fix those?”
“Thirty septims, given that the damage done to them isn't too severe,” Cutter said. “And a promise.”
“What's that?” Carnius asked.
“No other smith touches them, especially that gender-confused freak Dumag gro-Bonk,” Cutter said. Neither she nor Carnius noted the angry glare that Salyan shot at her for that comment. “These gauntlets will be mine to repair and mine alone. If you get them fixed anywhere else, I will know, and I will cut your throat and drink your blood.”
There was no jest in the disfigured Bosmer's eyes, but Carnius handed down the coins.
“If they're in a good state tomorrow, I'll call it a deal,” Carnius said.
“Good, good, excellent,” Cutter nodded. “They will be finished in the morning; I cannot wait to set to work upon them. One more thing, Imperial; if you find any madness ore, I can use it to improve these gauntlets of yours, strengthen them, make them perfect. Grummites usually set up camps near deposits of it, and carry lumps of it on them. Bring me some, and I will make these gauntlets into weapons that will crush the life from all your enemies and drink deep of their blood.”
“Hard to refuse, an offer like that,” Carnius nodded. “All right Cutter, if I find you some madness ore, I'll bring it to you.”
“Good,” Cutter said. “You won't regret this, Imperial; I'll make these gauntlets into weapons any warrior would beg to wield.”
“Thank you, Cutter,” Carnius said. “I'll see you tomorrow.”
The two of them left for Bliss, to find an inn and rest, and to hold an audience with a god the next day.
Absolutely brilliant chapters matey!!...
Loved them...
Sooo, yet another spinoff story makes it's appearance!!...Off to Azura's realm we go!!...
...
And yes, I pretty much fell in love with Cutter meself when I wrote her...Um...Part in mine...But then again, she was naked...
...
Aaaamywho...
Amazing stuff...
Brilliantly descriptive and full of so many beautiful ideas (the alleyway, the monks...ooooh sooo many coolnesses) it's just amazing...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
Don't tempt me with more story ideas, McB. I've got enough of those whirring around in my head as it is...
Glad you enjoyed it, though, and I hope you find what I've got to show of Bliss equally enjoyable. And thank you, of course, for reading, good sir!
Crucible, never has there been a more wretched hive of scum and villainy! Though the rats on a stick do seem deliciously amazing! I loved the mention of some of the other realms! Quagmire's and Peryties(sp?) arm Pits.
The descriptions, as always, was great. You painted the demented side of the city! I freaking love Cutter! The bloody promises of a new gear has be dancing in anticipation! WOO! I did like how they escaped the fanged walls, that was something new and unexpected. Our gladiator is in for a hell of a ride unlike the which he has ever witnessed in Tamriel! But first . . . he needs to sleep at the inn, along with his lady friend.
. I kid, I know it is too soon. She's just a friend, after all!
The artwork is beautiful by the way, I remember checking them out months ago. RIP, Adam! He was such a talented artist!
Crucible, never has there been a more wretched hive of scum and villainy! Though the rats on a stick do seem deliciously amazing! I loved the mention of some of the other realms! Quagmire's and Peryties(sp?) arm Pits.
The descriptions, as always, was great. You painted the demented side of the city! I freaking love Cutter! The bloody promises of a new gear has be dancing in anticipation! WOO! I did like how they escaped the fanged walls, that was something new and unexpected. Our gladiator is in for a hell of a ride unlike the which he has ever witnessed in Tamriel! But first . . . he needs to sleep at the inn, along with his lady friend.
. I kid, I know it is too soon. She's just a friend, after all!
The artwork is beautiful by the way, I remember checking them out months ago. RIP, Adam! He was such a talented artist!
*
Indoril - great name!
DE (and your identical-in-every-way twin): Thanks to the both of you!
I'm still going for the whole inter-realm trade thing (Mania would probably be more likely to swap goods with Sanguine, for example) and that seemed like a prime example to show it off, and a rat on a stick seemed like quite a Shivering Isles kind of snack. I do believe it's Peryite, by the way, and while we're on the topic I've got some exciting strains of Ebola all for a very reasonable price...
And Cutter was great; for a self-harming, psychotic masochist she was easily one of the most fun characters I've written so far. The alley walls, on the other hand, were more there for a reminder that this is the Isles and here more than most places, things can turn violent at the drop of a hat. Even with the buildings.
And It's a pity Adam passed away; it's thanks to his sketches I've actually started to develop a bit of an interest in Surrealist artwork, and he was a truly talented individual.
mALX: Yeah, I'll admit Haella is somewhat biased in her opinion on the matter of the Oblivion Crisis, though I'm not sure most of the people in the Daedric Realms would have been that upset about the Crisis, really; better Mehrunes invades somewhere they don't live rather than try and muscle in on their territory.
The animal analogy doesn't really work all that well for Daedra, though, does it? They are, as a general rule of thumb, largely self-aware (I'm unsure about Clannfear's and Hungers), sentient beings who are as intelligent as humans and are entirely capable of making their own choices. That example then only really works if they suffer from anger management issues, and seeing as people suffer from them as well, I'm not sure it's the best one.
And enjoy the next chapter when you have time for it!
This was a great chapter; I loved the Marketplace of the Mad
Meeting the dunmer trader and her dremora was a really cool touch and a great way to show the rest of the journey to the city without just skipping over it.
The description of the Crucible was brilliant, and the random danger of the walls eating people very fitting for the realm of the mad. Cutter was certainly interesting.
Wow.Just read through this. And the only thing I can think to say is "wow".This is brilliant. I've never read an SI fan fic before, but this is excellent. I look forward to reading more of this.
KC: I wanted to do more than just have 'they then walked to Crucible' and having the trader from Moonshadow both let me do that and also explore the idea of what other Daedric realms might be like. And that carnivorous alleyway has certainly caused a bit of comment, hasn't it? I honestly didn't think it would cause such a stir.
TheBrume: Thank ye kindly, good sir! Do you hope you enjoy the rest.
To everyone reading, my apologies for this taking so long; I spent the last two weeks being afflicted by a case of epic writer's block, hence why this was so slow coming. I'm not sure this part is entirely up to my usual standards, and it was more written to try and break through the block than anything else. I might come back to it later and touch it up then.
Chapter 13-Lord of the Deranged
“So you’re telling me that everything in Crucible has an opposite in Bliss, and vice versa?” Carnius asked as a colourful procession from the Sisterhood of Immolation danced past them, chanting and crying in praise of what he guessed was Sheogorath. Fireballs arced from the fingers of some, while others whirled spheres of flame around them on strings and staffs, all the while accompanied with drumming. “Like there’s the Frozen Brethren in Crucible for the Sisterhood of Immolation, or the different breeds of Rayat I’ve seen.”
“It’s the case with the entire Isles,” Salyan replied, watching them pass along the street. She had said it was the best that he avoided getting in the way of their processions. “Everything in Mania has a counterpart in Dementia.”
“So you mean there’s an…an anti-Salyan somewhere in Dementia?” Carnius asked. “Somebody who hates music and is always miserable, that sort of thing?”
“It’s not always that specific,” Salyan said. With the procession now passed, she hurried across the street, Carnius following as she headed along a road lined with pillared and domed buildings of golden stone, decorated with flowers and flowing silk banners. “But the thing about the Islands is that they aren’t really so much of a place as they are a kind of metaphor for Sheogorath; they’re split down the middle, reflecting the same way he varies between manic and demented moods.”
The streets of Bliss that they were walking down were much more spacious than those of Crucible, but something about them put Carnius off; where Crucible was squalid and impoverished, Bliss flaunted its wealth and opulence, bright morning sunlight glaring off the ornamentation that decorated each house. For all its hostile strangeness and carnivorous architecture, Carnius had found Crucible more welcoming than Bliss; he’d felt more like he was at home there, while Bliss seemed to sneer at him all the time. And the golden-armoured guards that patrolled the streets certainly did as much.
“Is the palace that far?” Carnius asked as they passed through a bazaar packed with people of all races. The air here had an overwhelming stench of spices, perfumes, foodstuffs and other things that he could not identify.
“Not too far,” Salyan replied. She disappeared from view as she slipped around a figure covered in head to tow in sashes of red and purple silk, reappearing again as Carnius stepped around it. He knocked into it, and muttered a quick apology over his shoulder as the person in question let off a string of curses at him in a language he didn’t understand.
Salyan cut through a street leading out of it, Carnius following. The road they found was lined with buildings on one side, the other a thick wall of hard stone rising skywards, blocking the view of whatever lay behind it. Salyan lead Carnius up along the street, to a series of steps up to the wall leading to a gate. Two guards, women in golden armour, were standing on either side of it.
“What is your business, mortals” one of them asked, leaning forward on the spear she carried. Now that he thought about it, both of them looked familiar, but Carnius was unable to place them.
“We seek audience with the Lord Sheogorath,” Salyan said. “My companion, Carnius Hackelt, has been bidden to meet him by the Madgod’s Chamberlain, and we also bear news of a possible threat to the Isles.”
The two guards exchanged a glance before one of them said; “Wait here.” She opened the gate and stepped through, shutting it behind her and leaving Carnius and Salyan to stand under the stony, imperious gaze of the other guard. They were left to wait for a minute, before the gate opened once more as her comrade returned.
“Haskill says that you are permitted to speak to the Madgod,” she said. “Follow me.”
She lead them into a courtyard, two sides lined with pillars, walking along a pathway that cut through a carefully kept lawn towards large building that occupied the other side. The courtyard and the structure bordering, Carnius noticed after a moment, was split in two; lawn on the other half was untended and sported twisting fungi and moulds instead of grass, and the ornamental stream of clear, pure water that they passed over on their side was a stinking quagmire on the other. Even the building, a huge, vaulted edifice decorated with banners, gargoyles and statues, with a crystal-topped tower reaching high into the sky at its back, was half constructed from the golden stone typical of Bliss and the grey of Crucible.
The golden-armoured guard opened a door on the Manic side of the palace and lead them into a large entrance. Like its outside, the innards too were split, with a luxurious red carpet running along one side that was lit with braziers burning with a crimson flame and a threadbare blue rug along the other. She pointed at a set of couches and recliners on the right hand side of the hall.
“Wait there,” she said. “You will be called for shortly.”
She swept out, and Carnius watched her go with a shake of his head.
“Well she was nice,” he remarked.
“The Golden Saints can be a little superior with mortals,” Salyan conceded. “But they’re still better than the Dark Seducers.”
“I’m sure they are,” Carnius nodded.
They waited, the only other people in the hall a Golden Saint and a purple-skinned woman Carnius guessed was a Dark Seducer standing on either side of the doorway at the far end. Salyan leant back in her seat a little, and said; “You’re not much of a drinker, are you? You only had one ale at the inn, last night. I was surprised.”
“I’m a not a great person to be around when I’m drunk,” Carnius replied.
“Why’s that?” Salyan asked.
“Get angry, most of the time, try and pick fights or hit someone,” Carnius said. “Something I got from my dad. I find it’s better not to tempt fate.”
Salyan nodded.
“I wonder if Sheogorath will want to hear me play,” she said.
Carnius blinked at the sudden change in conversation topic.
“It would be good exposure if I played for his entire court,” Salyan continued. “I could earn some coin that way.”
She frowned, and added; “And we’re actually going to meet the Madgod himself. I didn’t think I’d ever do that, you know. Thank you, Carnius.”
“It’s not a problem,” the gladiator said. “I need to be here anyway, after all.”
The doors at the far end of the hall swung open with a creak and an pronouncement from an all too familiar voice of; “Oh, you brought a friend.”
“Haskill,” Carnius said, standing up. “I see you’re well.”
“Indeed,” the chamberlain replied. “His Lordship awaits you in the throne room, if you will please follow me.”
“Lead the way,” Salyan said, already on her feet. Haskill nodded and stepped back through, the two travellers heading along the hallway. Salyan glanced over at Carnius and grinned, hissing; “We’re actually seeing Sheogorath!”
Carnius nodded as they stepped through into the throne room of the Madgod. Like the palace’s antechamber, this room too was split in twain, straddling the border between Mania and Dementia. Its end was curved and domed, but that was not what caught the eye of Carnius and Salyan; what drew the majority of their attention was the throne, a pedestal of golden marble veined with grey, ten feet in height with arms and a back protruding from its top. From a spigot on either side, a stream flowed, one runnel a channel of clear, pure water, the other a thick brown slurry. A stone snake coiled around it, tip of its tail touching the floor and its head serving as a footrest for the bearded man in purple silk finery that sat upon the throne. Sheogorath; that was beyond doubt.
“Well look who has arrived!” the Daedric Prince of madness exclaimed in a cheerful tone as the two entered, clapping his hands together. “The famous slayer of the Gatekeeper. And a friend who is not, as far as I know, famous. Are you famous, young lady?”
“Not yet, my lord,” Salyan said. She attempted to curtsey, before remembering she wasn’t wearing a dress and converting it into a hasty bow. “I am merely a humble maker of music.”
“I see,” Sheogorath said, leaning back in his throne. “Well then, seeing as you are not yet famous, would you be so good as to tell me your name?”
“Salyan Irrenius, my lord,” she said, raising her head.
“Salyan Irrenius My Lord, eh? Hmm!” Sheogorath said. He stood, balancing without effort on the head of the snake that was coiled around the throne. “Your friend here has caused quite a stir, you know. Killing the Gatekeeper and enraging a very dangerous, powerful mage in the process too. Took away a rather important defence for my Isles, too. Bad news, that.”
The snakes head moved with a grinding of stone, lowering Sheogorath to ground level. He hopped off, strode up to Carnius, grabbed him by the collar and dragged him face-to-face with surprising strength.
“And what do you have to say for yourself?” the Madgod snarled, enraged amber eyes with slit pupils staring into the gladiator’s.
“You wanted it dead,” Carnius managed after a moment. “Otherwise you would have never invited people into the Isles but put it in their way. That was a test.”
Sheogorath was quiet for a few moments, squinting into Carnius’ gaze, which the Imperial kept as cool as he could while face staring down a Daecric Prince. His grip was released, and Sheogorath stepped back, clapping his hands.
“Well said, well said,” he exclaimed with a grin. “Why, I’m so pleased with that answer of yours I could rip Salyan Irrenius My Lord’s hair off and make it into a wig. Didn’t see my dear Relmyna getting quite so upset about the whole thing as she is now, but that’s more my fault than yours. Well done, you passed the test.”
“So what now?” Carnius said with a slow, cautious nod. “I’ve come here like you asked; what did you summon me for?”
“Because I need you,” Sheogorath said. “Well, not you in particular, but somebody who is capable and not from the Isles. Preferably with a good head on their shoulders. You killed the Gatekeeper, and that’s a start, certainly.”
“And what do you need me for?” Carnius asked.
“I need your help,” Sheogorath said. “It’s all a little complicated, but there’s trouble coming on the horizon and it’s trouble I’d rather avoid.”
“You mean the Greymarch?” Salyan asked. “It’s coming, and you want to stop it.”
“What makes you believe in that old story?” Sheogorath said, turning on the bard.
“I…we saw an Arbitrator be summoned,” Salyan said. “That’s one of the reasons we were here, to warn you.”
“An Arbitrator, you say?” Sheogorath asked. The mirth in his voice had suddenly fled. “You’re certain of this?”
“Definitely,” Salyan replied. “It was only summoned for a short time, but it managed to turn a whole band of Heretics into…something else. It ‘blessed’ them, it said.”
Sheogorath was silent, rocking back on his heels. He turned about from them, stepping away, before he said, more to himself than anyone else; “An Arbitrator here already. Deary deary me, that isn’t good news at all. He must have been planning too, while he was away. Or maybe when he was here last time. Probably when he was here last time, I suspect.”
He glanced around at his two visitors, and said; “You two are still here, then? Good. Well, this does complicate things; I thought I could take my time but it appears that time has taken us. Not much to waste, for either of you. So on to your first task; we need to secure the Isles now that the Gatekeeper is gone. At the moment, all sorts of riffraff are going to come through, and we don’t want that. So the two of you are going to put a stop to that.”
“Why?” Carnius asked.
“Why? Why? Why why, eh?” Sheogorath challenged, rounding on Carnius. “I’m a Daedric Prince, you know. And you are a little squishy mortal. You have to do what I say, you know.”
“No I don’t,” Carnius said. “What’s to stop me leaving this place? I don’t have anything here, after all.”
“That is a very, very selfish thing to say, young man, and frankly I am disappointed,” Sheogorath said after a moment’s silence.
“That still doesn’t mean I have to stay,” Carnius said. “What’s here for me, then? Why should I help you?”
“Well, I could say fame, fortune and renown, but I’m not sure you really strike me as the type to be all too interested in that,” Sheogorath said. “But what I do see in those eyes of yours there is more than a little regret; you’ve something you’d rather you hadn’t, and now you want to make up for it. And if you helped me, you would save an awful lot of innocent lives, and perhaps even a few things more important than that, and that should probably absolve you of whatever crime you committed. You’ll have a chance to put things right. I won’t claim to be good, Carnius, but I won’t claim to be evil, either and I do have good people here in my realm. If you want, think of these errands as working for them, not me.”
“Besides,” Salyan added. “I could probably do with your help doing this.”
Carnius glanced at the her with a raised eyebrow.
“Well, this is my home,” she said. “If you won’t do it, I still will. I still should.”
“Fine,” Carnius said. “I’ll help you, then.”
“Excellent!” Sheogorath said. “Now, as I said, we need to sort out first things first; keep the Isles safe from marauders and ne’er-do-wells. And for that, we need Xedilian!”
“What’s Xedilian?” Salyan asked.
“A trap,” Sheogorath said. “Or alternatively, a rehabilitation facility where I can make the aforementioned marauders and ne’er-do-wells into functional citizens of the Isles. Of course, with the Gatekeeper about, I never needed it and shut the place down, but with him gone, I need something else and Xedilian fits the bill. So get over there and reactivate it, would you?”
“How?” Carnius asked.
“Ah, good point, good point,” Sheogorath said. “Haskill, do you still have that book?”
“It’s right here, my lord,” the chamberlain said, pulling a slim volume from a pocket of his dark velvet jacket. “Assuming, of course, that these two will be able to read it.”
He got a glare from Salyan as he held it out, the Bard taking it and flipping it open at a random page.
“So how do get there?” she asked. “And do we need to pick up this Attenuator of Judgement on the way, or there, or what?”
“The Attenuator is right here,” Sheogorath said, holding out a hand. A staff topped with a glowing white crystal shimmered into being in his palm, and he passed it to Carnius. “As for Xedilian it’s…it’s somewhere in Dementia, I know that much. Hmm. Ask Sentinel, he should know.”
“Sentinel?” Carnius asked.
“Oh, he keeps an eye on things for me, so to speak,” Sheogorath said. “He’ll know where it is. His tower’s just around the back of the palace, Haskill will show you the way.”
“If I must,” Haskill said.
“Well, off you go,” Sheogorath said. “Time’s wasting, you two. Go on!”
The two of them dithered for a moment, before Haskill said; “You heard His Lordship; follow me.”
Sheogorath stepped back up onto the snake head, where it rested on the floor. It began to rise, carrying him back up to his throne. Haskill set off, and without much choice, Carnius and Salyan left, the bard stopping only a moment for a hasty bow before she followed the Chamberlain. He lead them out of a doorway at the back of the throne room, through several corridors, coming to a halt at another door.
“He is through there,” he said. “There is only one opening at the top, so I’m sure even you two will be able to work that one out.”
He left as Carnius opened the door to a round room dominated by a spiral stairwell. He looked up, and shook his head. They had a long climb ahead.
Excellent! The Mysterious Sentinel is finally revealed.
I like your own additions to the isles, like the Frozen Brethren, Sisters of Immolation and inter-Oblivion trade. It's a nice little touch which adds a lot to the story.
I eagerly await the next part.
Sisterhood of Immolation. Sounds . . .dangerous. You made the Shivering Isles twice, possible thrice, as deadlier as the original concept of the game. Nice! You did tell the truth about the different sides; Mania and Dementia and explained how they contrast each other.
Quite the lovely descriptions of the courtyard and the interior of the palace as you went through, too. And at long last, we meet Sheogorath! This is awesome, indeed! You truly captured the Mad God's personality well, and added his natural dialogue. I look forward to seeing what is in store for Carnius and the Bard Lady.
Attenuator of Judgment, it is, huh! Let the adventure begin with the two! I foresee many insane things going to happen, some of might be troublesome for our duo! I loved this chapter!
What I enjoyed the most about this one was the portrayal of Sheogorath. His changes from cheerful and joking to angry and brutal was well done. Haskill was delightfully dry and sarcastic as usual. I’m not quite sure what Haskill is. He looks like a person, but is he?
Fantastic!!...
Loved the whole duality to everything...
Sheagorath was funny as the proverbial...Brilliantly done there...
...
Loved the way that Carnius was slightly uncomfortable in Bliss, I felt a bit like that meself...Odd place...
...
Aaaaamywho...Looking forward to much more questing...And then some Sentinel action too!!...
Aaand not one Mike Oldfield in sight!!...
...
Absolutely nice one matey!!...
*Applauds most heartily*...
When do we get another chapter, Colonel?
Hello everyone
Apologies for this taking so long, and for my general absence from the forum, but I should, hopefully, be able to stick around a bit longer this time and actually get a more consistent output of chapters, as well as catch up on all the updates for other people's stories that I've missed.
TheBrume: At last indeed! I took my time about it, didn't it?
One of the things I enjoy in writing fan fiction is adding extra detail to the worlds I write about, and the Isles is ripe with potential for all sorts of interesting factions, groups and practises. Not to mention details themselves are one of the most important things to add to a story.
DE: I've always imagined the Isles to be a very dangerous place, which is something I wanted to reflect in the story (and I hope I've done so already, too!); the Sisterhood of Immolation were actually one of the first ideas I had when planning the story, and I liked the idea of a pyromaniacal Hari Krishna-style religion so much I knew that it had to come in somewhere.
And I enjoyed writing Sheogorath a lot; he's one of those characters that is just pure fun to write.
KC: Thank you very much! I had a lot of fun writing Sheogorath, and the sometimes dangerous way he seems to jump between Manic and Demented moods; "Come back soon, or I'll pluck out yer eyes!" is one of my personal favourite lines to appear in any of the Elder Scrolls games and I wanted to reflect that kind of cheerfully psychotic insanity in him. As for Haskill, I've wondered much the same as to whether he's a person or not; I've got some headcanon for my own answer to that question, which I plan to delve into later in the story.
McBadgere: Thank you very much!
As nice and fancy as Bliss can be, it's probably not everyone's cup of tea, especially for someone like Carnius. Though I really have to point out that Crucible isn't much better, is it?
And it's finally time to meet Sentinel! I'd make a Mike Oldfield joke here too, but I'm not actually sure who he is! (I suck at watching movies...)
Zalphon: You get one right now.
Again, my apologies for the delay.
For those wondering, I based the piece sung by Salyan on an old Irish folksong, "Soul of a Harper", which I adapted somewhat to fit with the Isles instead of Ireland.
Chapter 14-The Watchman
The rapping of Carnius' bare knuckles against the underside of the trapdoor was answered almost immediately by a deep, genial voice saying; "Come in, please!"
He pulled himself up the top of the ladder through the trapdoor, into the great glass globe at the tower's very top. He stared at the figure sitting cross-legged a few feet from him on a cushion, and the eyes of the man stared back at him.
In a deep, rich voice, Sentinel said; "Ah, you're here. I saw you coming, you know."
The most distinctive feature of Sentinel was, without a doubt, his eyes. Some people had an unusual eye colour, or a piercing gaze, but this was not so with those of Sentinel. In his case, his eyes were distinctive because he had dozens of them.
Where his hair should have been, stretching all across his head, eyeballs of every colour gazed in all directions. Some where those of men or mer, while others held slit pupils and large irises, or were deep black orbs Despite himself, Carnius stared, and several of them swivelled around to look right back.
"It's rude to stare, you know," Sentinel said with a grin.
Carnius managed to break the sudden shock that the sight had knocked him into him, and nodded. The rest of the room that seemed to make up Sentinel's home was nothing more than floorspace, surrounded by a great ball of faceted clear crystal. Beyond that, the view crazed and distorted by the lenses, the Shivering Isles stretched. The floor itself was strewn with cushions and seats, a few low cabinets lurking on the perimeter, and there was a hookah of beaten bronze lying to one side, the pipe coiled around it like a snake.
"You're right," he said. "Sorry."
Salyan pulled herself up through the trapdoor and stared.
"Hello there," Sentinel said, grinning once more. He turned around towards a chair and slumped upon it, a disconcerting thing to see on account of him maintaining perfect eye contact as he did so. "Do you two know how many visitors I get nowadays? Not many. Not many at all."
He blinked, a wave of shutting and opening eyelids rippling across his head.
"Nice to have come company," he said. "Especially two of you. So what can I do for you both?"
"We're looking for somewhere," Salyan said. "A place called Xedilian."
"Xedilian, you say?" Sentinel asked. "Ah yes, I remember there. Used to be a busy place, back in the old days, before Relmyna finished off making that Gatekeeper of hers. I saw that fight of yours against that thing, by the way. Hell of a spectacle; usually I just watch it to see a bunch of adventurers get pounded into nothing, but actually seeing somebody beat it was something else entirely. Very impressive indeed."
"Thanks," Carnius said, wondering how this many-eyed peculiarity of a person had witnessed that. "But as we were saying; Xedilian?"
"In Dementia, if I remember right. Let me check where it is for you."
A few of the eyes on the top of his head swivelled to face a direction, and he announced; "Found it."
"How did you do that?" Carnius asked. "Magic?"
"In a sense," Sentinel replied. "It's a bit more complicated than that, you see."
"How so?" Salyan asked. "I mean, you're obviously a Daedra, so you did something, didn't you?"
"I am a Daedra, yes," Sentinel said. "Then again, I'm not, either."
Carnius shook his head.
"You've lost me," he said. "Surely you're either a Daedra or you aren't?"
"Of course not," Sentinel said. "There's an awful lot of middle ground between being a Daedra and not being a Daedra. In my case, I'm just a facet of Sheogorath."
"You mean like the angels?" Salyan asked. She saw Carnius' confused look and added; "I'll explains some other time." She glanced over to Sentinel and added in a conspiratorial tone; "He's new here."
"I know," Sentinel said, causing Salyan to blush slightly with embarrassment. "Though, I suppose I have something in common with the angels; in my case, I'm Sheogorath's omniscience."
"His omniscience?" Carnius asked.
"It's a bit of a tale," Sentinel said. "Have yourselves a seat, and I'll explain it to you. I wouldn't mind a bit of a chat before I send you off to Xedilian."
Salyan found a cushion and sat, Carnius following suit a moment later. Sentinel picked up the hookah, took its top off and peered into it before nodded. He flicked a finger, a flame dancing on its tip, and lit the small collection of hackle-lo leaf at its base. Holding the pipe, he leant back in his chair, the delight having an audience clear on his features.
"Now, in each of their realms, every one of the Daedric Princes is, for all intents and purposes, a god," Sentinel said, taking a puff and blowing out a cloud of scented smoke. "They know everything that happens there and can do anything in it, shaping and controlling it to their desires. You know what the problem with that is?"
Salyan and Carnius thought for a moment.
"I'm having a hard time seeing it," Carnius said.
"It's dull," Sentinel replied, shaking his head. "Boring, predictable, drab, uninspiring, call it what you want, but it gets tedious, quickly. Nothing surprises you, nothing interests you and you get tired of it. So, aeons ago, in order to actually have things in the Isles be interesting for him again, Sheogorath made me, Sentinel, the Watchman of the Shivering Isles."
He leant forward, holding out the tip of the pipe as an offering. Carnius shook his head, but Salyan accepted it.
"So you're just part of the Madgod?" she asked, taking a lungful of smoke.
"Exactly," Sentinel said. "As I said earlier, his omnipotence. Of course, even then he put a few restrictions on me; I can only see the present, and for some reason I can't look underground or through walls."
"Why'd he do that, then?" Carnius asked.
"It's the Madgod," Sentinel replied with a shrug. "Who knows? He always liked putting limits on people, though, just to see how far they'd go to overcome them. He said it makes things more interesting."
That, Carnius decided, made perfect sense when you considered the character of Sheogorath.
"So Sheogorath's still all powerful in the Isles, then?" he asked.
"I suppose so," Sentinel said. "He just chooses not to use that power. It makes things more interesting for him. The only thing he doesn't have the power to stop is something like another Daedric Prince, or an Aedra."
"Like Jyggalag," Salyan said, to which Sentinel nodded.
"Thinking of which, we need to get to Xedilian," Carnius said. "Activate it, help keep the Isles safe. Where is it?"
“I’ll tell you,” Sentinel said. “In exchange for one thing; your friend carries a lyre, and it’s been some time since I heard some music. You play me a song, Salyan, and I’ll tell you where to find Xedilian.”
Salyan nodded, pulling her lyre free. She plucked a few strings, hummed a few lines of a tune for a moment, and started playing a melody.
"Oh, they say 'tis a hanging that soon I will be," she sang. "My body twisting from yonder mushroom tree. For daring to dream that a harper could sing free, I now die, for Order's hands end me.
"Yet the strings of my harp will never be stilled, while the land of Mania lies over the hill, for the music of the Isles is their strength and their will, and the soul of the harper nought can ever kill.
"Oh the tyrant king on his cold crystal throne, fears song's freedom he never has known. Our bright Shiv'ring passion comes through in the tone, so he orders it silenced and broods all alone.
"Yet the strings of my harp will never be stilled, while the land of Mania lies over the hill, for the music of the Isles is their strength and their will, and the soul of the harper nought can ever kill.
"He'll string out my guts and drag me on the lane, blood streaming on out of my open veins. I'll kick and I'll scream in my terrible pain, and as I die my blood the ground shall red stain.
"Yet the strings of my harp will never be stilled, while the land of Mania lies over the hill, for the music of the Isles is their strength and their will, and the soul of the harper nought can kill.
"For one of the road, death holds no sting, 'tis another adventure, a wondrous thing. And I know that my music shall evermore ring, in the hill and the rivers of Mania's spring.
"Yet the strings of my harp will never be stilled, while the land of Mania lies over the hill, for the music of the Isles is their strength and their will, and the soul of the harper nought can ever kill."
There was silence in the crystal-walled room that Sentinel called home, before the quasi-Daedra nodded. He blew out a cloud of smoke that he had inhaled.
"Well, that's fair," he said. "You gave me my song, so I'll give you the location of Xedilian. You have a map?"
"Right here," Carnius said, slipping the folded parchment from his pocket. Sentinel examined it for a moment, before opening one of his cabinets and pulling forth a quill and a pot of ink. He wrote something on the map and handed it back to him.
"We have to go back to Dementia again?" Salyan asked, looking over Carnius' shoulder at the mark Sentinel had made, at a place called 'Madgod's boot'.
"I'm afraid you do," Sentinel said.
"It'll be fine, Salyan," Carnius said. "Dementia isn't so bad, anyway. Might be a bit gloomy, but it's alright."
"Says you," Salyan said. "But I suppose it needs doing."
Carnius stood and nodded to Sentinel.
"Thanks for your help," he said.
"A pleasure," the strange being replied. "Please come again soon, the both of you; I enjoy your company."
"We will," Salyan said. "And I'll play you another piece when we do."
They made their farewells and opened the trapdoor for the stairwell, bid sent on their way with a promise from Sentinel that he would keep an eye or three on them during their travels.
"Well he was nice," Salyan said as they decided down the stairwell. "Cheerful. Helpful too."
Carnius nodded as they revolved down the stairs.
"I know a place in Bliss where we can get some travel supplies, by the way," Salyan said. "And we can pick up your gauntlets from Cutter's, too. If we get everything together we can be on our way tomorrow."
"Sounds like a good idea to me," Carnius said as they reached the bottom of the stairwell. He pushed open the door, and glanced at the corridor they were in. "Which way was it?"
"Left, I think," Salyan said.
They made their way through the back rooms of the palace, the kitchens and laundry rooms and servant's quarters that the great building relied on to support its few rich owners, and they found an exit from the structure that was clearly meant for staff. Together, they made their way around the front of the building and out of the courtyard, into the cramped, twisted streets of Crucible. Finding Cutter's forge took longer than expected, but before long they reached it.
Carnius pushed open the door to the building and glanced around at the plethora of blades and other instruments of bloodshed that adorned its innards. The fire in the hearth was crackling low, but the smith was nowhere to be seen.
"Cutter?" he called. "Are you there?"
His answer was a husky moan and a low, breathy panting from one side of the building, from a room just out of his view. Frowning, Carnius and Salyan rounded the corner, and it was there they found Cutter. Her eyes were rolled back in their sockets as she twisted the tip of a dagger into the flesh of her arm, an expression of pure ecstasy on her features as the limb was worried by the blade, cheeks flushed and a light sheen of sweat dusting her skin.
It was one of the most disturbingly erotic things Carnius had ever seen.
After a moment of horrified enthrallment, Salyan cleared her throat. Cutter jumped, startled out of her activity, pulling the dagger free with a wet squelch.
"Madgod!" she exclaimed, grabbing the wound as blood began to run down her arm. "I wasn't expecting customers."
The tips of her fingers glowed with arcane energy as she shut the wound, giving them both baleful looks in the meantime.
"You're here about your gauntlets, aren't you?" the bosmer said, waiting a few moments for the injury to suture itself shut.
"I am," Carnius nodded, feeling acutely embarrassed despite himself. "I'll collect them, and then we'll go."
"Agreed," Salyan said. "We have things we need to do."
"Of course, of course," Cutter said. Satisfied that she was no longer bleeding for the moment and ignoring the ribbons of crimson that had snaked down her arm, she headed to another part of her shop, gesturing for Carnius and Salyan to follow as she flexed her fingers. She unlocked a chest, and drew the two gauntlets from within. She gave a quiet snort of amusement. "I'd almost like to keep these for myself, you know."
"They're not for sale," Carnius said, holding out his hand for them. A look of reluctant displeasure on her features, Cutter placed them in his palm.
"Remember our agreement," she said as Carnius examined them. "These gauntlets come back to me for repair and me alone. If any other smith touches them…"
She ran the tip of the dagger along her throat.
"I know," Carnius said, refusing to be intimidated.
They left, stepping out into the contorted maze of Crucible's streets.
"I know a few places in Bliss where we can get the supplies we need, by the way," Salyan said. "I could do with a few health and magicka potions, for a start."
"Lead the way, then," Carnius nodded.
The next few hours were taken up with scouting around shops and market stalls within Bliss, haggling over prices of food, potions and other supplies. Carnius couldn't shake the feeling that they could probably get them cheaper in Crucible, but decided against voicing that opinion for Salyan's sake. There was really no point getting into an argument about where they shopped.
The sun was setting by the time they were finished, and they made their way through the streets of Bliss for the Choosy Beggar, for a meal and a night's sleep. As they entered Raven Biter called them over to the bar, the proprietor of the inn holding an envelope in his hand.
"A courier left this for you, Carnius," the Argonian said as the two approached. "Not sure what it's about, but he asked me to pass it on to you."
"Thanks," Carnius said. He slid his finger under the wax seal and broke it, unfolding it. His brows knitted in concentration as he began to read, Salyan peering at it over his shoulder.
"I wonder who that old friend of yours is," she said after a few moments.
"What?" Carnius said, concentration broken.
"The 'old friend' who sent this to you," she said. "You know, at the bottom."
"I hadn't read that far yet," Carnius admitted. "I was only on the second sentence."
"Just give it here," Salyan said.
A look of wounded pride on his face, Carnius handed it over.
"'Dear Carnius Hackelt,'" Salyan read. "'I hope this letter finds you in good health now that you have arrived in the Isles, and I wish to extend my congratulations to you on defeating the Gatekeeper and gaining entry. I would not be surprised if you were finding this place somewhat strange, and I am sure that you would appreciate a helping hand in whatever you are attempting to achieve here. With that in mind, I would like to meet with you in order to offer any support that I am able to; if you are interested, please come to the Golden Baliwog this evening to meet me. Yours, an old friend.' Very enigmatic, certainly."
Carnius nodded.
"What's the Golden Baliwog?" he asked.
"A, ah, gentleman's club," Raven Biter supplied. "Very exclusive, very fancy. Caters for the high-ups, usually; Duke Thadon himself goes there, even."
"Might as well go there and see what this is about," Carnius said.
"Are you sure?" Salyan asked. "It might be a trap."
"Why would somebody want to ambush us?" Carnius pointed out. "I've only just arrived here and we've hardly caused a stir. Unless…"
"Unless what?" Salyan asked.
"Relmyna Venerim," Carnius said. "She didn't take kindly to me killing the Gatekeeper; swore revenge. If there was anybody who would want to do that, it would be her."
Salyan nodded, before she said; "But knowing her, she would probably do something like build some kind of specially made Flesh Atronach creature just to kill you. So it's probably not an ambush."
"And yet all of a sudden I don't feel better," Carnius remarked.
"So I am assuming that you won't be eating or staying here tonight?" Raven Biter asked.
"Depends," Carnius said, to which the Argonian shrugged.
"I'll hold onto your rooms for a while, yet," he said. "Just don't stay too long or you'll need to find somewhere else to sleep."
The Golden Baliwog was easy to find, the building somewhat of a landmark that Salyan tracked down through Bliss' twilit streets with little trouble. It was a large mansion building, off the street up a driveway, surrounded by a small garden with the perimeter marked by an iron fence. There was a pair of Orsimer guarding the entrance to grounds, one of them leaning on the head of a heavy warhammer forged of some golden-coloured metal as the two of them approached he stood, suspicion in his eyes; they didn't look like the regular sort of customer, Carnius guessed.
"What's your business here?" the Orc challenged.
"My name's Carnius Hackelt," Carnius said, letter in hand in case it was needed. "I was invited here."
"You're him?" the Orc asked. "Good. Come with me, please. Gorak, keep an eye on the gate while I'm gone."
"What else was I doing?" the other bouncer said.
They were lead up the driveway by Orsimer, past the ornamental shrubbery that decorated it. At one point they had to step aside as a Rayet-drawn carriage clattered up the drive, pulling to a halt before the mansion's entrance. A servant waiting there pulled open the door and helped the carriage's passenger down and through the large, ornamented doorway as the vehicle headed around the rear of the building to wait.
The bouncer lead them through the doorway and into an atrium hall of some kind. The room itself was large and extravagant, decorated with velvet curtains, portraits, and a stairwell leading up to a balcony above, covered with a lush red carpet. From the room beyond the sound of conversation and music filtered through.
"He's here," the Orc remarked to a Bosmer standing behind a mahogany desk off to one side, nodding to Carnius. The Elf nodded and hurried off after a moment, and the Orc turned back to Carnius and Salyan. With a brusque "wait here" he left.
"Well, here we are," Salyan said, looking around. "Noble certainly know how to have a good time, don't they?"
Carnius nodded. He'd been in places like this before, a privilege afforded to him by his celebrity status as a gladiator and if there was one thing they could do, it was host a party.
The clerk reappeared back behind the desk, and said; "If you would be so good to wait just a minute."
"Fine," Carnius said.
"Excellent," the Bosmer said.
He began to say something else, but Carnius' attention was grabbed by the person who had appeared at the top of the balcony. His eyes widened.
"Carnius," Her Ladyship smiled as she descended the stairs. "I'm so glad you finally made it here."
Chapter 15-The Golden Baliwog
“You know,” Carnius said as he looked over the theatre below them. “You’re probably the last person I would have expected to see here.”
The room that he, Salyan and Her Ladyship were looking down upon was a large, opulent one, largely populated by groups of nobles. Dice were clattering on the tables that occupied its floorspace, while servants went to and fro with trays of drinks and foodstuffs. At a stage occupying the far end, women and men in varying states of undress were dancing and being watched by the hungry eyes of the clientele. Now and again a customer would point at one of the dancers and give a few orders to a servant; dancer and client, sometimes more than one of each, would disappear into a side doorway.
“These are the Isles, Carnius,” Her Ladyship replied. “I generally find that it’s a good idea to not expect anything except the worst when it comes to them; it’s the best way to avoid any nasty surprises.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Carnius nodded. “Still, my point stands; how on Nirn did you manage to end up here?”
“I was invited through quite some time ago,” Her Ladyship said. “Nowadays I move back and forth between the Isles and Nirn to accommodate business and to enjoy the occasional Arena match.”
“Business,” Carnius nodded, looking back down at the room. “Never pegged you as the sort to be working as a brothel madam. I always thought you were a noble of some kind.”
“I can be both, you know,” Her Ladyship replied. “I’ve own quite a large amount of land on the Laughing Coast and, if I do say so myself, have rather considerable political clout here in New Sheoth.”
Carnius shook his head.
“Impossible,” he said. “No noble would ever associate with someone in your job aside from personal pleasure; they’d sneer at you, wouldn’t they? New money, like me. And all earned in a low-down way, too.”
“In Cyrodiil, perhaps,” Her Ladyship said. “We do things rather differently in the Isles.”
“Can’t argue with that last point,” Carnius said. “So if you’re one of the noble types, what’s with the Golden Baliwog, then?”
“The Baliwog is just the tip of the iceberg, really,” Her Ladyship said. “This is the most expensive of the brothels I run, but it’s far from the only establishment I have; every whorehouse in New Sheoth and the Isles is owned by me.”
“Pretty impressive,” Carnius said. “How did you manage that?”
“Cunning, intimate knowledge of the business and the desire to do some good,” Her Ladyship replied. “The men and women working in my establishments are paid fairly, looked after and protected. Their children, who are all but invariable in this sort of job, are educated and if their parents wish to leave at any point they are allowed to; this business isn’t going to go away, so as far as I can see it might as well be regulated and have some standards applied to it.”
“So it’s philanthropy, then,” Carnius said.
“Indeed it is,” Her Ladyship said. “Come, I’ll show you and Salyan around the place.”
The two of them stepped away from the balcony, heading for the stairwell. After a moment, Her Ladyship glanced over her shoulder to where Salyan was still leaning on the rail.
“Salyan, my dear, are you coming?” she asked.
“What?” the bard asked, looking up in sudden surprise. “Oh, right, sorry. I’ll be right with you. I was just a bit distracted.”
“Of course,” Her Ladyship said as Salyan caught up with them. She lead them down the stairs, and into the bustling main hall. The staff parted before her with respectful nods, and she gestured to one of the gambling tables. “This is one of the Baliwog’s main sources of income, along with our prostitutes. We tend to be a little more generous in allowing people to win than most gambling den, though.”
“They spend the money on a girl or boy anyway, don’t they?” Carnius said.
“Exactly,” Her Ladyship replied. “Many of our customers have great success at the gambling table yet still seem to come home poorer than when they arrived.”
“Clever,” Carnius said.
“Your Ladyship!” one of the clients called, noticing the presence of the brothel’s madam. “I was wondering if I might have a word with you concerning some business.”
“I’m afraid I’m entertaining a guest,” Her Ladyship replied. “Perhaps another night, Kalran.”
“A shame,” the guest said, before he glanced at Carnius. “Perhaps him and I could share your attention?”
“Not tonight,” Her Ladyship replied. “Now don’t let me keep you; there are more than a few women here who I am sure you can lavish your attentions upon.”
She stepped away, and noticed Carnius’ raised eyebrow.
“Don’t give me that look,” she said. “It’s part of the job. And, I’ll admit, one that can be quite enjoyable at times.”
“Suppose I used to kill people for money,” Carnius conceded with a shrug.
“Indeed,” Her Ladyship said, opening a side door from the main room. “Through here, if you will.”
The room that it opened onto was a far plainer corridor, and its main occupants appeared to be staff and servants. Her Ladyship took a left, Salyan and Carnius following as she led them down one way. People stepped out of her way as before, and she stopped one of the women as she was walking by.
“Ysren,” she said. “Would you mind taking Salyan with you and showing her around?”
The woman glanced at Salyan, and that gave Carnius an opportunity to see her face. He started as he saw the too-upturned nose, the gaunt cheeks, pale skin and red-orange eyes.
“Is she new here?” Ysren asked.
“Just a guest,” Her Ladyship replied. “She isn’t working here.”
She glanced over at Salyan and added; “Unless you’d like to, of course.”
“Er, no,” Salyan shook her head.
Her Ladyship nodded, and said; “Very well, then, she’s our guest.”
“Of course,” Ysren nodded, smiling at Salyan. “Come on, Salyan, let me show you around.”
The two of them left, Carnius staring after them. Her Ladyship turned to leave, and paused for a moment as she saw Carnius wasn’t following.
“Aren’t you coming?” she asked.
“You do realise,” Carnius said. “That Ysren, who you just sent Salyan off with, is a vampire, yes?”
“Yes,” Her Ladyship said. “What of it?”
“A vampire,” Carnius repeated.
“She’s a vampire, yes,” Her Ladyship said, a look of confusion on her face. “Oh, right, of course. My apologies, I often forget the way Nirnians react to the undead.”
“And vampires are perfectly normal in the Isles?” Carnius asked.
“We rub shoulders with daedra on a daily basis here, and random acts of violence are a hallmark of our society,” Her Ladyship replied. “People drinking blood in order to survive is rather mundane for us.”
“Should have guessed,” Carnius said, shaking his head. “So why does she work here, then?”
“For a start, she does an excellent job of managing the place,” Her Ladyship said. “Which is especially useful when I’m not here to do it myself. And secondly, there’s quite a number of our clientele who enjoy a woman who’s cold and clammy to the touch, and her ability to lie as stiff as a board is quite often in demand.”
She saw the expression on Carnius’ face.
“Believe me, I had just as hard a time adjusting to this place,” she said. “But it can be hospitable enough in its own way, once you get used to its oddities.”
“Oddities like necophilia,” Carnius said.
“Among other things, yes,” Her Ladyship replied. “If I’m frank, that’s hardly the worst of it. Besides, it’s an alternative to digging up graves; most families find that rather upsetting, after all. There are certain bragging rights to be invoked with that, too; we are the only brothel in the Isles to have a vampire working there. The only other establishments that can boast such a thing are Sanguine’s realms and Coldhabour, and Bal’s realm is hardly that hospitable.”
Carnius shrugged. There was little else he could do in light of such information.
“So why did you send Salyan off?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?” Her Ladyship asked.
“You said you were going to show us around,” Carnius said.
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Her Ladyship said. “I was hoping to talk to you in private, though, and I realised that now is a good time to.”
“Fair enough, I suppose,” Carnius conceded. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“A number of things,” Her Ladyship replied, setting off down the corridor again. “We’ll have plenty of privacy in my personal chambers.”
“You don’t think people would talk?” Carnius asked.
“About what? A brothel madam inviting a man into her bedroom?” Her Ladyship said. “The Isles will be alight with the scandal!”
She reached an unadorned doorway, and pulled a key out from where it was tucked in the sleeve of her dress. She unlocked it and pushed it open, revealing a large, sumptuously decorated bedroom beyond; every item of furniture within it was well made and lavishly decorated, and at the end a large bed built to house more that two lay. Everything within, from the soft red wallpaper to the flowers arranged in vases was designed to lend it an air of comfort and sensuality.
“Please, take a seat,” Her Ladyship said. She clapped her hands together and the candles placed about the room flickered into life as flames danced on their wicks. She headed over to a cabinet. “A drink of any kind? There’s wine, brandy, whiskey, flin, matze, even some skooma if you feel so inclined.”
“I’ll be fine,” Carnius said.
“Suit yourself,” Her Ladyship said, opening its door and pulling out a bottle of wine. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to have myself a goblet of Surilie Brothers’ Three-Ninety-Nine; I have a terrible weakness for the stuff.”
She poured herself a glass and sat. The long pin the back of her bun was pulled out, and she shook her head as her blonde hair fell about her shoulders.
“So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Carnius asked.
“A few things,” Her Ladyship said. “Mainly, however, I feel I owe you somewhat of an apology.”
“What for?” Carnius asked.
“It’s somewhat complicated,” Her Ladyship said. “But the fact is that Sheogorath and we in the Madgod’s court have all seen the Greymarch coming for some time now. Jyggalag will march upon the Isles, he will crush the life from them and leave nought but ash in his wake; quite understandably, none of us want that to happen.”
“Hold on a moment,” Carnius said. “I’ve heard all this talk of Greymarches and Jyggalag but nobody’s actually explained any of this to me beyond Salyan saying some things about old legends and armies, and even that wasn’t all that clear.”
“Of course,” Her Ladyship said. “I should have realised that you wouldn’t know much of it. The Greymarch is an event that occurs on the Isles every few thousand years, an invasion of unprecedented scale lead by Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of order. Every time it happens, the Isles are razed, their population massacred and Sheogorath is forced to rebuild them. Naturally, I’m not particularly keen on that happening; this place is my home and it’s my duty to protect the people I rule.”
“But this is Sheogorath’s realm,” Carnius said. “Sentinel was saying to me earlier that Sheogorath is omnipotent here; he could stop the Greymarch easily, couldn’t he?”
“Unfortunately not,” Her Ladyship said. “The problem is the nature of Sheogorath and Jyggalag; Sheogorath cannot stop Jyggalag, or directly prevent his minions, because Jyggalag and Sheogorath are one and the same.”
“I’m going to have to risk pointing out the obvious here, but the two of them seem like polar opposites,” Carnius said.
“Indeed,” Her Ladyship said. “Before the Isles were created, you see, there was only Jyggalag and no Sheogorath; the Prince of order was a powerful force in Oblivion, and the other princes feared his might. So they cursed him into becoming Sheogorath, the embodiment of that which he despises, and Jyggalag only gains respite from this once every millennium when Sheogorath once again transforms into him. From there, he calls forth his armies and Arbitrators from the limbo realm they inhabit to march upon and destroy the Isles.”
Carnius nodded.
“I can see why you’d want to stop that, then,” he said. “But why does that mean you owe me an apology?”
“Well, around twenty or so years ago, Sheogorath gathered his court,” Her Ladyship said. “In a rare moment of lucidity, he told us of the Greymarch and the threat the Isles face, and gave us an order; ‘find me a champion. Find me somebody not of the Isles who is worthy of stopping the Greymarch and saving this place.’”
“So that explains why you visited the Imperial Arena,” Carnius said. “You were looking for talent.”
“Indeed I was,” Her Ladyship replied. “Though admittedly, I have always found something terribly exciting about watching two people try and kill each other for my entertainment. But a decade and a half ago, at the start of a match between two humble Pit Dogs, I saw a young man no more than fifteen years of age enter the ring. He fought with his fists, which was certainly a first, and even though his choice in weapons was unconventional, he won. And I saw something in him; potential, raw though it was, somebody who fought with their mind as much as their arm, who appeared to be a good man when I finally had a chance to speak to him and of noble character.”
“So your sponsorship and the funding that you gave me…that was just so I might one day come here?”
“You were a long term hope,” Her Ladyship said. “But I knew that were of the right sort of character for what Sheogorath needed, and that all that was required was to somehow get you to the Isles of your own accord.”
“And me becoming Grand Champion was all part of your plan?” Carnius asked. “You mean Agronak being killed by me was-”
“I had no idea that you were planning to enter the ring to fight for the title of Grand Champion until the Arena announced it officially,” Her Ladyship said. “Believe me when I say that I had no part in Agronak’s death. Yes, I’ll admit that it was useful in giving you the push you needed to come to the Isles, but it certainly wasn’t my plan, and the timing of him dying and Sheogorath opening his doorway was fortunate coincidence and little else. In fact, I don’t think the Madgod is even aware that I had a hand in getting you here; he opened that door out of desperation more than anything else.”
Carnius leant back and sighed.
“Are you alright?” Her Ladyship asked.
“It’s just…this,” Carnius said. “Just over a week ago I was Grand Champion of the Arena, and life was normal. Suddenly I find myself in a world full of insane people, where everything tries to kill me and the one familiar face here turns out to be in league with a Nine-damned Daedra, and who had been manipulating me for fifteen years!”
“Come now, I was not manipulating you!” Her Ladyship snapped. “The Isles needs somebody and I thought you might be that person. Yes, I realise that what I did was somewhat unfair, and I didn’t like steering you along a path that wasn’t necessarily the one you were destined for, but I did it for all the right reasons. I’m sorry if you’re angry about that and I can understand why you are, but please don’t doubt that I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“Right thing?” Carnius asked. “Your Ladyship, Sheogorath is a Daedra. Daedra are evil. Helping them isn’t doing the right thing.”
“Evil?” Her Ladyship asked. “Really? You’ve met Sheogorath, Carnius. Would you call him evil? And what about Salyan? This is her home; if the Greymarch comes then she’ll be killed. Does she deserve that?”
“I…” Carnius was thrown. “Well, she could leave.”
“And I suppose all of us could evacuate the Isles?” Her Ladyship asked. “Uproot ourselves from a place where we have lived for centuries and live as a displaced country, going where? Nowhere in Nirn would take us, not if we’ve associated with Daedra, and I somehow doubt the other Daedric Princes would be particularly accommodating for an entire nation of refugees.”
She shook her head.
“Our only real hope is to trust in whatever plan Sheogorath has to see the Isles through the Greymarch, and to hope that there’s somebody to stand and fight it when it come,” Her Ladyship said. “And when that day comes I’ll certainly be one of those taking up arms, but I’d feel better doing such a thing in the knowledge that I’m not fighting for a lost cause.”
Carnius was quiet for a few moments, before he said; “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” Her Ladyship said, smiling. “I’m sure you can do this.”
“It’s rude to stare, you know,” Sentinel said with a grin.
I like the Sentinel already!
He would be quite unnerving to be around however, no matter how friendly. A part of Sheogorath that explains quite a bit. I like the reason he was made too, I imagine it would be rather dull to just know everything.
He blinked, a wave of shutting and opening eyelids rippling across his head.
Like I said. Unnerving.
Cutter lives up to her name.
Carnius and Salyan are quite a pair. He leans dementia and she make it very clear she’s a maniac.
At first I wondered if his Khajiit friend sent him a letter from the Arena, but after reading the note for myself, I knew it was his sponsor. I expected her to turn up here.
“What?” the bard asked, looking up in sudden surprise. “Oh, right, sorry. I’ll be right with you. I was just a bit distracted.”![]()
I like Carnius’ concern about the Lady sleeping with clients, then remembers that he made his fortune killing people.
The Watchman:
Ooh, I like the Sentinel and his multi-eyed(in color, too!) face! And the idea that he's Daedra and not Daedra at the same time is wonderful and unique.
“It’s dull,” Sentinel replied, shaking his head. “Boring, predictable, drab, uninspiring, call it what you want, but it gets tedious, quickly. Nothing surprises you, nothing interests you and you get tired of it. So, aeons ago, in order to actually have things in the Isles be interesting for him again, Sheogorath made me, Sentinel, the Watchman of the Shivering Isles.”
This is so true about Daedric Princes! They are what they are and they can't change their stripes. Like Azura would never turn her realm into a Hunting Game or Boethia would never make Oblivion into a rose garden
. They do what it's in their power to do, and that power is always the same. It's why Daedra have such an interest in mortals, because they're different! I'm glad you wrote this part and added since it makes perfect sense.
And hehe, the "Golden Baliwog," clever name for a gentleman's club . . .in a Daedric Realm. So instead of placing dollars into boots they stick coins into . . .erh . . .hehe. That would be madness, wouldn't it? I like the trip there!
The Golden Baliwog:
Ahaha! I loved the moody atmoshpere you set here and the shady things going on about and all the horny men. I particularly liked the Lady and you probably know, I fancy Ysren already! ![]()
"We are the only brothel in the Isles to have a vampire working there. The only other establishments that can boast such a thing are Sanguine’s realms and Coldhabour, and Bal’s realm is hardly that hospitable.”
Hahaha, yeah, because the sexual favors that goes on in Bal's realm happens in Charnel houses . . .and he's not gentle when it comes to booty pleasures.
So, Carnius sees Daedra as evil, then? Hmm. Interesting! Superb dialogue, awesome details, great story and unique additional content not seen in the game and lore, too!
Hahaha
King Coin: Thanks very much! I was going for an 'amenable but unnerving' vibe with Sentinel, so I'm pleased I managed that. And I felt his origin would also make perfect sense when you consider the nature of Sheogorath; he seems probably the only being in Oblivion that would abandon local omniscience on a whim. And his nature also eliminates any potential plot holes of 'why don't they just call on their friend the insanity god?' with the answer of 'the insanity god is too insane to be bothered to help'.
And yeah, Her Ladyship turning up in the Isles had, as far as I understood, been taken as given by this point. ![]()
Darkness Eternal: The nature of the Daedric Princes and Oblivion, and the insane metaphysics that accompany them, are probably one of my favourite things about TES, and Sentinel was a good way to explore part of that.
And yep, Dishonoured reference right there. Awesome game; best stealth-em-up I've played since Thief 2. Though I'll admit that the notes into garters system wouldn't really work in the TES-verse, would it? Hmm, I'm going to have work something out, then.
Magnets, maybe? Hmm, I'll have to investigate further...
I'm reminded of the works of Patrick Rothfuss here, the description, the music, the absolute madness...ah, the Shivering Isles! I'm going to have to play Oblivion again soon.. and maybe learn that song that Salyan sung... I love the idea of the Sentinel, as well as the contrast between Carnius' preference of Dementia, while Salyan prefers Mania ( I can't help but suspect that she's going to die tragically though, she just seems so..alive o3o)
Definatetly going to follow this
… and had managed to get to know the rest of the staff in the space of one night.
Got to know them eh? ![]()
Carnius’ family background was interesting, especially his father. Now we know where Carnius learned his moves. Sounds like the father was a great guy when he wasn’t drunk, which also sounded rare. Then his mother dies and Carnius signs up for the arena.
I know I’ve said it before, but this pairing of Salyan and Carnius is great. They have very different personalities and she’s been in the Isles for a while. She’s very open where he’s kind of closed. And then their unique talents make for some very interesting fights. It was fun to see Salyan hold off the shaman long enough for Carnius to recover. I think some destruction spells are in order though. Where might she learn some?
I must say, I have been stalking this story for quite some time. I liked the character development you made with Carnius at the start after killing his friend, Agronak. I also like how you set up the scenes leading to the Shivering Isles and the humor, and of course, the descriptions of this alien land is vivid and entirely better than the ingame portrayal of it. We know lore and game world are both the same and different.
I'm a sucker for character development and backround and I enjoyed this chapter as it reveals about Carnius' parents. Tragic fate of his pops dying in a bar fight! Most tragic!
Additionally, the fight scenes here are truly vicious and amazing. I am hooked, dear sir, truly hooked!
Amazing stuff...All of it...
Loved Sentinel, loved the idea of him being part of Sheagorath that the DL was sick of and so cut him out!!...
Well done there!!...
I'm in love with Her Ladyship...
...Possibly something to do with her morphing into that gorgeous wench that was in Dexter, Warehouse 13 and Spartacus...But, shockingly enough, I've forgotten her name...Jaimie somethingorother...It'll turn up...But yeah, her...*Sighs*...
And then Xedillian...
Fantastic trawl through...Brilliant stuff...
Loving all of this tale, looking forward to wherever it doth go next!...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
Fiach: Thanks very much indeed!
I'll admit I've never read any Patrick Rothfuss, but I've heard a lot of good things about his work in the past, and I'm truly flattered for a comparison like that.
If you want an idea of what Salyan's song sounds like, then you can do worse than listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryvy2j7ZLdU and then just adapt the lyrics in your head into the rather more, er, visceral ones sung by the folks of the Shivering Isles. I'm pleased you liked the idea of Sentinel, and he was actually one of the first ideas for unique and wierd characters that I had for this story (him and Rage basically kickstarted Madgod) and a lot of fun to write.
And I find both Salyan and Carnius to be a very fun pair of characters to write, simply because they're both quite different personality-wise and yet complement each other quite well, as you said. Whether Salyan dies or not, well, wait and see.
KC: Oh god, creepy eyebrow smiley is back!
*Cowers*
Pleased you liked the bit about Carnius' background, though it wasn't so much Carnius learning his proficiency with his fists from his dad as it was him inheriting it. Though his mother was very much alive when he joined up with the Arena; she passed away a few years later. Probably should have made that a bit clearer.
And I'm quite fond of those two as a pair, and it's fun to have them both be so different and yet still sticking together. Though Salyan shouldn't have too much trouble learning some destruction at the College of Bardic Lore in New Sheoth; she's hardly the only audiomancer out there, after all.
LL: Thank you!
I'm pleased you're enjoying the stuff I'm doing, and it's nice to see the effort I'm putting in paying off with a reader liking what they read. And while part of this is just adding extra to the Shivering Isles we know, there are going to be bits that are completely different and unique that I'm adding in too, mainly because I the ideas are cool and because I can.
Thanks for the complement on the fight scenes, by the way; I've got a few years of martial arts so generally use my own experiences with sparring to help add a sense of realism to the fight scenes (admittedly, they're still done with a good splash of creative license in order to make things more exciting) and I'm glad it's working for you.
McB: Chyahs, dahlin'!
Part of the stuff I'm looking forward to doing with this story is playing around with the rather unique nature of the Daedra and Oblivion; believe me when I say that Sentinel is just the start of proceedings!
I'm afraid I've got no idea who you're talking about with the actress playing Her Ladyship, but I hardly watch any telly, so that's no surprise.
As for where it's going next, well, just scroll down and see for yourself...
Chapter 17-Trap
An old, cold heart shuddered into its first beat in an age. Blood that had dried into dust crept into a liquid and began to pump along veins. Musty lungs were purged of their dust and cobwebs by a hacking cough. Colour began to return to pallid grey-blue skin. Arthritic fingers curled into life with a groaning creak. Eyelids opened over dry cataracts that faded with every passing moment.
Kiliban Nyrandil, the keeper of Xedilian, woke once more from his centuries-long sleep.
Oooh...Niiice...
Pretty nightmarish stuff...
Ah! The man in the room!!...Yes, I remember him!!...
Loved the way you pretty much ignored the whole Xedillian "Let's torture some people even though you're a good character," thing...Well done...
...
And naked Ladyships are always appreciated...
...
Brilliant stuff matey...Looking forward to the next one...
Edit Nit:
A gritty and dark chapter this was. And I love it. Yes. Indeed I did. The nightmares and visions were creepy, well-written and of course, relevant to the story. It was nice seeing Agronak again, or his apparition, calling Carnius a murderer and that justice had to be repaid. It clearly shows his death still lingers in Carnius' conscious and subconscious and manifested itself in this place.
The mood lingers still even upon leaving that dreadful place. The cheery young woman remained silent, as you put it, acting out of character. This was a good touch! I liked it a lot! Shows you are indeed capable of setting the mood. I can't wait to see wha Carnius will do now. And what darker things he may come across.
*dances crazily. Applauds heartedly. Fair dues, yes indeed, fair dues, oh yes!*
The series of dreams were very creepy. Love it! Having the facility attack the two of them is brilliant, and makes more sense than having the hero torture people into either death or madness. I like how that part was skipped, would have made very little sense. I’d see Carnius and Salyan kill the keeper sooner than that. By the way, that bit at the beginning was neat; showing him coming back to life after his facility was now needed again. Not sure what the snake part was at the end of the dreams, but I assume that will be a talked about more at a later time.
McBadgere: Nightmarish was exactly what I was going for with this chapte, and good memory on the fellow with the room. He's rather important, all things considered, you'll see how...
And if I'm honest, I didn't really avoid the whole Xedilian torture/kill thing on any kind of moral ground, if I'm honest, and I did the hallucination sequence because a) I thought my own idea was nastier,
this allowed me to drop hints to some pretty vital plot points and generally make things wierd and disturbing and c) that in-game sequence never made sense to me simply because it always struck me as strange that the adventurers manage to somehow turn up the very moment that you activate the place. I mean, how did they get there so quickly?
But yes, that was why more than anything else. As you might have guessed from a story set in a place where things such as religions that practice human sacrifice are fairly run of the mill and people rub shoulders with Daedra and vampires and the like and view it as pretty mundane, this story is delving into rather subjective morality, and that whole 'kill or craze' quandry would have fitted quite nicely if I could have somehow made the adventurers turning up so quickly work (and hadn't radically altered the nature of Xedilian itself anyway).
Thanks for the nit, by the way, I've gone and sorted it.
LL: Agronak's death was a pretty key moment for Carnius, and it's impact was pretty lasting, even if he's beginning to get over the worst of it; seeing as Xedilian's attacks on the psyche are immensely personal ones, it's going to exploit a raw psychological wound like that one against Carnius.
As for what other things he comes across, well, one of those things is a new character. Read on and take a look! ![]()
King Coin: Like I said to McBadgere above, I wasn't so much bothered by the nature of Xedilian's kill or craze quandry (I love that term!) as I was by the question of how the adventurers got there quickly in the first place. I could see how Carnius could have problems with it, but considering that Salyan has lived the Isles almost all of her life and thus has a rather more lasseiz-faire approach to these things, I'm not so sure she'd be bothered. She'd probably find the ways the place drives visitors insane rather entertaining...
And the snake will return in due course. If you're clued up on some of the more obscure parts of TES lore (and I'm talking rather obscure indeed) then you've probably worked out what it is, but rest assured that it's a pretty important part of the plot later.
And that smiley is something I'm pretty sure the admins put in there to traumatise us all with its hypnotic, terrifying eyebrows. Suffice to say, my own Xedilian nightmare would probably comprise of an eternity of that and nothing else...
And new part time! Whoop!
Chapter 18-Feaster
A night’s sleep had done them both some good. Salyan was more talkative on the road, and now that he had slept on it, the worst of the shock had worn off on Carnius. The path they were taking was leading them through dense thickets of mushroom forest, trunks snaking over the road and plunging it into shadow, thick funguses and stunted plants fighting for light in the undergrowth.
“Salyan,” he said at one point, running a hand over the top of his head, grimacing as he felt the fine fuzz of hair that was creeping up from his scalp. “Is there anywhere in New Sheoth that I can get my hair cut?”
“Well, there’s Ghan Shi, in Bliss,” Salyan said, ducking her head to avoid a slick vine that was hanging over the road. “He’s a good barber.”
“Good,” Carnius said. “This stuff’s annoying me and I forgot to pack a razor.” He glanced over at Salyan, whose own hair was somehow clean and well kept despite the absence of bathhouses that was prevalent on their journey to Xedilian. “How come you’ve managed to keep yourself looking alright?”
“It’s a spell I know,” she said. “Just one for hygiene and so forth, that’s all.”
“Handy for you,” Carnius said. “Makes me wish I was good at magic.”
“Some have the talent, some don’t,” Salyan said. “To be fair, you’re much better at hitting things instead.”
That got a quiet chuckle from Carnius.
“I suppose it balances out in the end, in that case,” he said, smiling.
“And that’s why we work so well together as a team,” Salyan said, before her brow furrowed. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“There’s somebody shouting something,” Salyan said, hurrying forwards. “Just ahead.”
Carnius followed, the sound beginning to come through to him as the pair made their way along the road that wound through the dense mushroom tree forest. The sight they came to was enough to give them pause for a few moments.
The forest cleared to a bleak, flat moor. To one side of the, a crystal twice the height of a man jutted from the ground, a jagged silvery monolith, and surrounding that a small group of men armoured in plate cut from the same material. They had company; one of them a figure in dark blue robes and a helmet of that same crystal and the other, a woman wearing mail and light plating, was trying to kill every one of them.
“The Madgod watches over me, abominations!” she cried as she smashed the pommel of the two-handed sword she carried into the visor of one of the armoured warriors, knocking it back. In a movement to swift to follow, the blade whirled around and sliced down onto the top of its helm, cutting it in half from head to groin. It dissolved in a shower of silver powder, and as a heavy silver object thudded down on the ground, the woman turned on the spot with impossible swiftness to block a strike from another foe. “The primal hunger will see you consumed!”
She stepped out of the way of a stab from one trying flank her, jabbing the tip of her blade through its neck. Like its fellow, that one dissolved into a pile of dust, and as the other one hacked its blade towards her she managed to bring her own weapon around in a parry.
“She needs our help!” Salyan exclaimed.
“Really?” Carnius asked as he watched her fight. “She seems to be doing fine.”
That earned him a glower from the bard, and he shook his head.
“I’m not serious,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Salyan nodded as Carnius began his charge.
The first enemy he hit barely saw him before his gauntlet slammed into the side of its helm. It stumbled back, the crystal cracking under the impact, and in the corner of his vision Carnius saw the figure in the blue robes point the crystal-topped staff it carried towards him. Salyan’s silence spell killed the light glimmering within the stone a moment later, but the automaton had managed to recover. It stabbed at him with the blade, Carnius catching its tip with his left vambrace, a rolling motion deflecting it away and stumbling it. He grabbed its arm with his right hand, stamping down on the side of its knee, reversing his hold and smashing his knuckles into the side of its helmet once more. It dissolved into dust and he turned towards the enemy with the staff. He was backing away, the magical weapon raised to defend himself, and Carnius charged. The man turned to flee, but the point of a blade erupted from his midriff, the gore-slick tip lifting him into the air and letting him slide down it. The woman lowered the weapon after a moment, kicking the body off, and a moment later the tip of the blade, somehow now clean of blood, was resting against Carnius’ throat.
“Who are you?” she challenged.
“A friend,” Carnius said, taking in her appearance for the first time. Caramel skin, slight points to her ears, dark hair pulled back in a topknot. She was shaking with adrenaline, and Carnius saw that the pupils of her eyes were so huge that her amber irises were nothing more than a faint ring of colour around them. The tip of the blade pressed slightly harder against his throat, before she drew it back.
“No, Madsen, I believe him,” she said, seemingly to nobody. “Almeria Dranedil, Cleric of the Feasters. Who are you? Be quick, we haven’t much time.”
“Carnius Hackelt,” Carnius said.
“Salyan Irrenius,” Salyan added.
Almeria nodded as the crystal began to glimmer with light.
“There are more of them coming,” she said. “I don’t know how to shut this thing down but I won’t allow these creatures to roam this area unchecked. Help me fight them, I beg of you.”
Carnius and Salyan nodded, glancing round as the crystal began to hum with power. Blue energy arced from its core, striking the body of the man in robes, lifting him into the air and healing shut the wound in his midriff. White mist seeped from it, beginning to solidify and take form as more of those beings with blades of crystal in their hands.
Almeria pulled a flask filled with a glowing green liquid from her belt, unstopped it and emptied it of its contents in a single swig. She convulsed in a single violent movement, taking a deep and ragged breath, and righted herself.
“Sing praise to Sheogorath, and consume the flesh of his enemies!” she cried, before throwing herself towards the enemy. The robed figure was her target, and he didn’t have time to block before her greatsword descended and sliced across his body, a streaming sheet of delicate crimson trailing the blade like a banner as the man’s guts spilled on the ground.
As two more of the crystalline figures took form, Salyan sent a frenzy spell slicing towards one of them. As they began to fight, Carnius turned his attention to another one of the armoured beings that had just appeared. He stepped into its reach as it drew its blade, knocking the weapon aside before hammering a series of punches into it, the Daedric ebony on his knuckles cracking the crystal the protected it. It dissolved into dust and he parried a slash from another of the creatures.
“Kneel!” it screamed at him in a voice like the pealing of shattered bells. “Kneel!”
It withdrew and slashed at him again, and Carnius reeled back as a burning furrow of pain cut across his face. He cursed and stumbled back, hot blood beginning to seep from it, and barely managed to parry the next strike that slashed towards him.
He managed to push the next stab aside and open up its guard, and it screamed at him once more.
“Kneel!”
“Bugger off!” Carnius replied as he slammed his fist into its faceplate. It dissolved into silver powder, a heavy round crystal thudding to the ground from where its chest once was, and his next survey of the scene was enough to three of the things descending on Almeria. Her own blade was a blurred whirlwind of steel as she parried their strikes, turning and spinning on the spot, her movements those of a dancer as much as a swordswoman’s. She stabbed out once, ripping through the throat of one and leaving it to crumble to nothing, before she turned the weapon the spot and blocked a slash from another of those crystalline creatures. Both blades sang as they ran along each other, Almeria ducking under its blade arm and behind its reach in a movement so swift Carnius would have thought it impossible. Her greatsword swept around and parted its head from its shoulders and she barrelled through the dissolving body to feint at the remaining one and then bring the blade under its guard and stab into its armpit.
“Feast on the flesh of the unrighteous!” she cried in triumph.
More of the things were beginning pull through from the pulsing crystal, and the eviscerated figure in the robes was beginning to rise from the ground once again, his wounds healed.
“Sheogorath and the Isles are one and the same!” Almeria announced as she launched herself into combat. “His divinity permeates the land!”
She blocked a strike and the return stab killed her enemy in a moment. Salyan’s shockwave spell knocked a few of the foe away, and Carnius used the opportunity of them being stumbled to launch himself into their midst while they were stumbled.
“All living things grow from the Isles!” Almeria yelled as she bisected another foe. “All living things are of Sheogorath!”
She blocked a swing from another of the shining crystalline beings as she stepped to its side, swung her claymore under its guard and sliced into its armpit and out past its neck, head and arm sliding away from the rest of it body before it crumbled.
“To partake in that which lives is to partake in the Madgod!” Almeria cried. “To consume his living creatures is to consume Sheogorath himself!”
Carnius blocked a sideways slash from one of the creatures, pushing its arm away and stumbling it. He stepped after it into its reach, slamming both his fists into its midriff with a grunt of effort. It doubled over and he smashed both fists down on the back of its helm, sending it crumbling to dust.
“To consume the divine is to become divine!” Almeria called as she sliced down on another crystal soldier, hacking deep into its chest and turning it to powder. “Every living thing we eat makes us akin to Sheogorath!”
Salyan sent another Silence spell at the robed figure with the staff, and that was enough to put his staff and any spells he had out of action before the tip Almeria’s claymore tore up under his jaw. He hung from its point like a grisly pennant before a flick from the blade sent the top of his skull sailing away from the rest of his body.
“Let nothing remain unconsumed!” she cried. “Feed the primal hunger! We are the Feasters! We shall be of the Madgod!”
Carnius blocked a blow that one of the crystalline creatures sent at him and managed to step out of the way of a second’s swing. A third appeared on the edge of his vision, and he barely succeeded in avoiding the stab it sent spearing towards him. One of them exploded into dust as the point of Almeria’s blade tore from its chest, and she took advantage of its comrade’s confusion to stab the weapon through its midriff. Carnius grabbed the wrist of the remaining one’s sword arm and swung his free hand upwards, smashing it into the thing’s elbow. The crystal around it cracked and peeled away, revealing a core of white light as the thing screamed, and Carnius slammed his hand forwards again into its chest. The stone splintered, and a second blow smashed it into nothing.
“There is but one thing the true Feaster can do!” Almeria cried. “Sing praise to Sheogorath, and consume the flesh of his enemies!”
The fight went on, relentless waves of the crystalline beings forming from the monolith that created them, their commander rising once more whenever he was killed. Carnius was beginning to flag, his reserve of stamina potions running dry and Salyan’s magicka replenishment elixirs having been long since exhausted. If it had not been for the unstoppable whirlwind of pure violence that was Almeria, they would have died long ago, but even she was beginning to show signs of exhaustion.
They needed help, and they needed it soon.
Please. Morality in Daedric realms? There is no such thing. Daedra are what they are. You can't go up to Molag Bal and tell him to stop raping people. He can't. Because he is rape. The physical manifestion of rape. Sheogorath is madness and that's what makes them so interesting. Evil is just a little sad title used by mortals to label Daedric Princes. "Herp derp! Daedra are da bad guys!"
Nonsense. When one is in a Daedric realm, all concepts of "morality" is thrown out the window. There is even a famous quote in the ES universe that says: "When thou enterest into Oblivion, Oblivion entereth into thee."
The realm becomes a part of the individual and it rubs off into their psyche. They adopt the concepts of the realm around them if they stay for too long. Such as the Soul Cairn taking piece of the player, vice versa, in Dawnguard or the player mantling Sheogorath and becoming the heart of madness itself. Or simple men going into the Hunting Grounds and coming out Big Game Hunters/werewolves.
So, am I saying I expect Carnius to turn into a giggling loon, demented professional entrail-jump-roper Duke of Sheogorath's Nut House?
Hehe, not quite, but it wouldn't surprise me. It won't matter if a gladiator goes into a Daedric Realm, what matters is how he returns from the experience. If he ever returns at all. You're doing a good job so far and trust me, I've been reading this. Just haven't commented on it. It's my sneak mode.
Story:
A night’s sleep had done them both some good.
No
?
Haircuts? Puh-leeze! Gladiators don't need haircuts. And damn, Almeria went crazy yet her words seem to make sense as she fought the enemy. And some Mazken action ensued after that. Hell yeah! That was a hell of a battle between the Order Knights and the Hot Dark Seducers led by Kiskella.
Well, that's exactly the point I was trying to mak; the Daedra follow their own rules and transcend the limitations of traditional morality and instead follow their own definitions of what is moral in order to be Deadra; they're the ultimate example of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, defining for themselves what is moral and what is not. And that morality of theirs is subject to their own desires and whims, ergo their morality (and that of this story) is subjective. It's still a moral code, but just one that most people wouldn't recognise.
(Apologies if that makes no sense, I was tired when posting that).
Oh yeah!!...
Loved the fight, you have an amazing talent for the fighty stuff...Brilliant...
The new characters' introduction was superbly done...Easily got a handle on them straight away...Brilliant again...
Looking forward to more when you return...
Nice one!!....
*Applauds heartily*...
Oh, and btw...While I have no wish to spam up the thread with a morality debate...When I said the thing that launched the morality discussion...I was simply talking about my experience with the Xedillian thing...I am, and will always play the Good Knight character...So I did have many issues with the SI questline...
I understand other people's views on the Daedra and morality...And all that...
Although, going by the lore that I read on the official website, I will say that Molag Bal doesn't appear to be the physical manifestation of rape...Simply that he's an ordinary Daedric Prince (An Aedra who was lazy) who likes his hobby a bit too much...
And the argument that you can't hold the DLs up to our standards of morality seems like an excuse...If by my standards what the DLs do could be considered evil, then they bloody well are...Rape is evil, Molag Bal loves to rape, Molag Bal is evil...Whether that makes me a bit too black and white where this whole thing is concerned...I don't give two sh*ts...(Sorry Mustard)...
That said, I actually genuinely don't mind what happens - moralistically speaking - in any given story, (Even when I was reading DE's) just so long as I enjoy what I'm reading...
I'm assuming that whatever happens, Carnius isn't going to start wearing a tracksuit and calling himself Jimmy any time soon no?...
...
First of all, because I'm evil:
*cackles like a madman... appropriate considering the story.
Second, I share similar views as McB on morality.
Third, the story!
That was a neat fight you showed, and who is this new crazy we've met? Definitely dangerous with that sword of hers. I found it funny that she kept up that tirade throughout the entire fight. She's no vegetarian!
I was wondering when someone would come along and inform them of the proper way to destroy one of those monoliths. I loved it that it was a cavalry formation of Mazken. Whatever it was that they were riding, it seemed much more helpful than a horse would have been in a fight.
I apologize for my absence, but I would like to say the story is just as interesting as it was when I left. I am eager to see where you'll take it.
McB: Well, my point, as labyrinthine and unclear as it was (stupid fuzzy morning brain...) was more that the laws of morality simply can't touch the Daedric Princes. You can call them evil all you want, but they're Daedra. They don't care.
Anyway, back to the story, thanks for the kind words and I'm glad you enjoyed it, and that you managed to get a decent sense of what Almeria's like. There's a few other sides to her character along with the fanatical craziness, but yeah, that's a fairly major part to it.
KC:
Chapter 20-The Faith of the Feasters
As was tradition, Almeria prostrated herself before the statue of Arden Sul before she tried to gain entry to the Temple of the Feast. The flesh-sculpture of the holy Prophet glistened in the rain that had spattered on its sides of bare muscle; the beating heart that the father of the Feasters held in his left hand sent bloodied water spraying on the pavement around it with every convulsion.
After she had murmured the Words of Supplication before the blessed chosen of Sheogorath, she rose, stepping through the open doors of the Temple. The threshold was decorated in its usual ornamentation of bones, meat and organs, and thanks to the weather the blood that they dripped was landing on the red-stained flagstones around the entrance with even greater rapidity. A drop of blood spattered on her forehead and she wiped it away with the back of her hand and licked it clean; tasted like Orc.
Almeria took a moment to marvel at the glorious, gore-soaked magnificence that was the central hall of the Temple of the Feast. The pillars that supported its roof gleamed in the light of the braziers that dotted it, coated with a layer of reshaped bone from generations of sacrifices. Organs and cuts of meat decorated the room, kept alive and fresh by magic, each one a living relic given willingly by the heroes and martyrs of the Feasters.
Along the walls were the freizes of various significant moments from the history of the Isles and of her faith; the Contemplation of Arden Sul and the first Sacred Gorging, his battle with the unholy force that had been Silver Famine, the penning of the Book of the Feast, his sacrifice to the Madgod where he had consumed so much flesh and viscera that his stomach had burst, an offering of himself to his fellow disciples. She stopped a moment by one of her favourite decorations, a tryptich of the martyrdom of Saint Ilvis at the hands of the Starvers; the unfortunate saint had been locked away by them without food or drink, fated to perish from malnourishment, but to spite them and to glory the Madgod she had ripped her own heart from her chest and eaten it in front of her captors.
With reverent steps, she approached the centre of the hall, the flesh-sculpt of Sheogorath himelf, sat upon a throne of carved bone. At his feet was an altar, the top already adorned with offerings, and from her pack Almeria took two of her own; the cuts she had taken from the Order Priest, unwrapping the meat from the waxed paper that held it, and the silver heart of one of the Order Knights.
“Great Madgod, mighty and benevolent lord the feast, eater of flesh and organs, accept this offering from your humble servant,” she prayed, kneeling before it. “I give unto you offerings from two of your enemies, that by consuming them you might take their strength and weaken their resolve.”
She drew her blade, and lay it flat befre the altar and the statue.
“My lord,” she said. “In your mercy and your wisdom, I beg you to bestow Madsen with the blood that is worthy and release her from her torment.”
She was quiet for a few moments more, in silent contemplation of the Madgod and Arden Sul, then rose from her kneeling position, sheathing her blade. There was a man waiting for her, a Redguard with sunken, anaemic features and a sallow shade to his dark skin, dressed in the traditional crimson robes of Feaster priests.
“You’re back ealier than I expected, Almeria,” he said as the missionary turned to face him.
“Feast Lord Dranden,” Almeria said, bowing her head. “I had to cut my mission short; I come bearing important news, and need to make a request.”
In truth, now that she was back in New Sheoth, she wanted to see Cutter, but it was more important that she gave her report to the Feasters.
“What news?” Dranden asked, frowning.
“The Final Starvation,” Almeria said. “It’s upon us.”
“Sacred Madgod,” Dranden murmured. “You’re certain?”
“I am,” Almeria said.
“I see. Come with me, missionary, we will need to discuss this.”
With Almeria in tow, the Feast Lord left the main hall of the temple, pushing open a door to the building’s living quarters tucked away in the corner. They headed down some of the corridors, stopping at a doorway which Dranden pushed open. The room within was musty with the smell of old parchment and vellum, the only light the glow of a few crystals on a desk, where a bearded Dunmer was hunched over a desk with a quill and a heavy grimoire.
“Feast Lord,” he said, looking up from his work. “Do you need something?”
“We need to speak to you in my office immediately, Camelran,” Dranden said.
“Could it wait a little while, Feast Lord?” Camelran said. “I’m in the middle of something at the moment.”
“I’m afraid it can’t,” the Feast Lord said. “Bring a copy of the last prophecy of Arden Sul, as well.”
“If you insist,” the Dark Elf said, rising from his seat and heading to a shelf. He ran a finger over the parchments stored away on it, drawing one free. “Here we are.”
Dranden nodded, leaving with the lore keeper of the Feasters and the missionary follow him. He headed to his office, a spacious room dominated by a large desk; when he stood behind it and motioned for Camelran to set the text had taken down on it, looked over by the skulls of the previous Feast Lords and Feast Ladies that had come before him, set into alcoves on the walls above.
“Almeria,” the Feast Lord said. “What makes you think that the Final Starvation is upon us, then?”
“Just a few days ago, I was forced to fight at the foot of an obelisk that was creating crystal beings called Order Knights,” Almeria said. “I was aided by two others, a Manic named Salyan and an outsider from Nirn who came here through Sheogorath’s doorway, and managed to destroy the obelisk with the help of a Dark Seducer patrol.”
“That’s rather unusual, but I’m not sure how that relates to the Final Starvation,” Camelran said. “It sounds more like the Church of Mania’s myths of the Greymarch, or the Sisterhood of Immolation’s stories about the Extinguishing.”
“I know, but ther’s more to it,” Almeria said. “There were things I saw which related to the final prophecy of Arden Sul, links to it.”
She unrolled the parchment, and pointed at one of the lines on it.
“‘Kneel shall the crystal call, armoured silver stone of the starvation dreadful,’” she read out. “The Order Knights I fought, they kept shouting kneel at us, like it was a war cry of some kind; that’s all they would say, kneel. And they were made of a silver-coloured crystal as well.”
“That sounds rather like what those lines of the prophecy were describing,” Camelran nodded.
“Exactly,” Almeria said. “And there’s more.” She pointed to another line. “‘Up shall stab the obelisks of the antithesis, Isle’s headstones sustaining hunger’s servants eternal.’ The Order Knights we fought were lead by someone called an Order Priest; every time we killed him, he would simply get back up again, resurrected by the crystal.”
“You think this is the Final Starvation, then?” Dranden asked.
“And the Greymarch and the Extinguishing, and every other story that’s ever been told about the end of the Isles,” Almeria said. “These are the end times, there’s no doubt about that.”
The room was silent, Dranden giving a giving a sober nod.
“I’ll send word out to all of our missionaries and have them recalled at once,” he said. “We shall gather all of our people and face the Final Starvation together.”
“That was the other thing I wished to see you about, Feast Lord,” Almeria said. “The outsider I mentioned, the one who came here through the doorway, he’s trying to stop it; I want to help him. That means I can’t be with the Feasters, though.”
“If you think it’s for the best that you stay with him, then go with him, by all means,” Dranden said. “I turst your judgement, Almeria.”
“Thank you, Feast Lord,” she said.
Dranden nodded, before he said; “Camelran, you can return to your work. If you could stay here a few moments, Almeria, I would be grateful.”
“Of course,” the missionary said as Camelran gathered the parchment and left.
“How is Madsen?” Dranden asked after the Feasters’ lore keeper had departed.
“She’s as well as she can be, I suppose,” Almeria said. “I’m still looking for the right person, though.”
“Perhaps this mission of yours will be what brings you to them,” Dranen suggested. “Averting the end of the Isles is worthy cause, after all, and you can’t deny that Madsen would be of great use to you in that cause.”
“I’m not letting my sister stay the way she is just because she’s useful,” Almeria said, sudden anger slipping into her voice. “I’m going to make sure that she dies, that’s what matters.”
“You’re right, of course,” Dranden said. He decided ot change the subject. “What of your supply of Madgod’s Blood?”
“I was forced to use it all in order to deal with those Order Knights,” Almeria said. “I need to speak to Brewing Mistress Lucia about getting some more.”
“Of course,” Dranden said. “One last thing, and then you can go; this outsider you’re travelling with, may I speak to him about this mission of his?”
“I’ll let him know that you wish to talk, of course,” Almeria said, standing up. She bowed her head. “Until we meet again, Feast Lord.”
“Until we meet again,” Dranden said.
She made her way through the corridors of the temple, exchanging a few greetings and words with the fellow Feasters she bumped into as she went. She went downwards, into the basement of the temple where the vats were kept. She sniffed at the sweet scent that wafted towards her as she opened its door, and headed down the stairs.
The vat rooms were lit by glowing stones in order to minimse the risk of any fires, and and the soft white light they cast left long, deep shadows stretching across the room. Almeria headed through the room, eyes in a slight squint against the darkness.
“Anybody here?” she called out. “Lucia?”
“Who’s that?” a voice replied, and a moment later an Imperial woman stepped out from around a corner of the cellar. “Oh, Almeria, I wasn’t expecting to see you here; I thought you were still out on missionary work.”
“Something came up and there’s something else I need to do,” Almeria replied. “And I need to resupply.”
“What happened to the last lot that I gave you?” Lucia asked.
“I used it all up,” Almeria said. “There was a fight that I was part of, a big one that went on for a while, and I ended up using it all up then.”
“Right, of course,” Lucia said. “Let’s see about getting some more. Come on, then.”
She stepped back around the corner, Almeria following to the area where the final stages of preparation for the Madgod’s Blood were made. The potent drug was the greatest weapon in the asenal of any Feaster missionary short of their unwavering faith in the Madgod, an elixir developed by Arden Sul in a fit of divine inspiration to boost the strength and speed of any who took it to remarkable levels. Over time, those who took it would grow stronger than most, muscular power boosted by the Felldew, Greenmote and other potent substances, along with alchemical sorcery within it. It was also highly addictive, and after a hwile caused the body and mind to break down and fail; the lift of a Feaster missionary was not a long one, and if the people and creaures of the Isles did not kill them, the Madgod’s Blood would.
“Here we go,” Lucia said, handing over a carrying case packed with small glas vials, each one filled with a dose of the potent substance. “Good luck with this mission of yours, Almeria.”
“Thank you,” the missionary said as she tok it, pushing aside the craving that began to rise at the sight of it. She’d have some Felldew later, she decided, that would allay the worst of the rising need for the drug she was currently feeling. She’d go and find Cutter as well, get her blade attended to as well as some other matters.
She bowed her head to Lucia, and left, heading up through the temple and out into the steets of Bliss. She set her course for Crucible, abandoning the notion of finding Carnius for the moment, instead heading through the town to the forge.
She pushed open the door to the forge, and called out; “Cutter? Cutter, it’s me.”
The Bosmer was bent over an anvil, hammering a blade, and she looked up from her work. She was wearing goggles, and with the soot on her face she looked like a in insect of somc kind. She pulled them up, a ring of clean skin surrounding her eyes, wide in surprise.
“You’re back already?” she asked.
“Something came up,” Almeria said. That was enough for both her and Cutter, and they kissed. The smith’s lips tasted like blood, steel and smoke.
“I missed you,” Cutter said.
“I was only gone a few days,” Almeria said. Cutter gave her a grimy smile.
“They seemed longer when I thought you were going to be a few months,” she said.
After that, she slid the bolt on the door shut and flipped the sign in the window to say that the forge was no longer open. They went upstairs on the pretense of Almeria washing away the dirt of the road and Cutter cleaning off the forge’s soot. For a while, Almeria allowed herself to forget about the oncoming threat of the Final Starvation, about Madsen, about the cravings for Madgod’s Blood she was feeling, about the work she had ahead of her. For a while, she simply celebrated the fact that she was back in the arms of the woman she loved.
TWO JUICY CHAPTERS!!!
"Chapter 19-I can’t think of a bloody title!"
LMAO.
Tulfis is old! Goodness! Grey March happen every millenia, and this guy's been around for all of them?
Almeria truly is something else, isn't she? The Starvation of the Isles? Count me in to help stop it! I loved the trip to Sheol and the argument between Carnius and the "brat,". Too bad he left in the cold rain
, but he's a gladiator. He toughed it up. I can see why he got upset though. He lived in the Waterfront District in Cyrodiil, where it was old and grimy and simple. He was offended by her words, I'm sure.
And we get to meet the Creme De La Creme of the Isles . . ,Lady Syl and her rather large . . .paranoia :lol.
Sheogorath, though my least favorite Daedric Prince, makes me laugh all the time. Even more when you write about him. I chuckled when Carnius got "shoed" from the palace. And it's off to some Angels, huh. I will post for the next chapter when I read it, but I'm tied at the moment and need some sleep!
Good post!
Edited.
How gruesome. Blood, viscera and all manners of oily remains! Chapter 20 was full of it! It had a cultish and religious, almost sacrificial feel to it. And this was a different chapter indeed! No Carnius! WOAH! At least we got some love at the end aside from all that blood and gore . . .nevertheless it was a juicy chapter. The Grey March is upon them!
Nits: The Madgod she had ripped her own heart from her chest and eaten it in front of her captors.
Surely you meant "ate," or is eaten correct in this term?
Bloody hell...And, most definately, Wow...
The sheer imagination gone into this story makes it one of my favourite things I've ever read anywhere...I love it!!...
The depth to all the characters and things like the Feasters, and the little details like the living statue by the doors to the temple...Brilliant...
Oh, and a lesbian Cutter too?...Awww, monsieur you spoil us...*Punches skyward...causing air traffic control no end of trouble*...
But then, that's just me...
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Absolutely loved both sections...Also loved the fact that Carnius really doesn't care about standing up to Sheagorath...
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Brilliant stuff matey...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
The scene with Cutter was tastefully tackled here, despite the shudder I got at the kiss tasting of blood, lol. Awesome write as always!
I rather enjoyed the previous chapter. I especially liked the "blood" aspect of that kiss. It was interesting and well-done.
Christ almighty, this took a long time to write...
Apologies for the delay, everyone. January was a pretty hectic month in terms of work and so forth, and it probably didn't help that I got distracted by a case of writer's block, an exam resit and writing a couple of original fiction pieces this month as well (you can find them on my blog; there's a link in the signature. No this, isn't a shameless bid for bumping up my traffic ratings, that's a silly idea. Stop being silly). I'll try and get the next chapter done quicker.
LL: Well, Tulfis is a Daedra, and one under Sheogorath's authority, so she's been around since the creation of the Isles, and possibly earlier. And when your soldiers just keep respawning after they die, you're going to get some real hoary war veterans out there.
Heh, Almeria is swiftly becoming one of my favourite character that I've made up over the years, and she's a lot of fun to write. But yeah, Salyan's words hit home pretty hard, even if she didn't mean for them to, so it's no wonder Carnius took it badly.
And you'll get to meet the creme de la cream in...one chapter's time, after this one. Maybe two. I have a lot of stuff going on here, I know.
DE: Yep, new POV time; I figured that looking at things through Almeria's perspective was the best way to explore the Feasters, and I just felt that the story had been stuck in Carnius' own viewpoint for perhaps a bit long, so a change was a good way to spice things up.
I think the 'eaten' is correct in this case; technically speaking, the 'had' from earlier in the sentence is still applicable to it, and so the grammatically correct way of writing it would be 'had eaten' instead of 'had ate'.
McBadgere: Thanks! ![]()
I had a lot of fun playing with the Feasters, and I'm pleased you like them; I've been itching to include them for a while, but until Almeria came along I've been limited only to passing references. I'm pleased you liked them. Plus they're also a good way to challenge myself as a writer by making a sympathetic character out of somebody who practises cannibalism.
And yes, lesbian Cutter. I should have figured that would push your happy buttons.
mALX: Why old bean, I'm British. Good taste is what we do, eh wot?
*Puffs pipe whilst contemplating tea and scones* ![]()
But more seriuosly, I was trying to go for something that felt more loving and intimate between the two than just a 'ZOMG lookit the lesbinans!' angle. Though the whole taste of steel, smoke and blood was meant to be a sort of microcosm of Cutter herself, so to speak.
Zalphon: Thank you very much, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
And now for Chapter 22! Finally...
Chapter 22-The Barber and the Brothel Madam
Carnius left the palace by the Crucible Gate, stepping down the steps into the dank and labyrinthine city below. He traversed the streams of sewage that trickled down its lanes, squinting through the gloom and fog that still covered the streets from the now-abated storm. There were a few more figures on the streets now that the rain was gone, emerging from the crumbling and corpse-like buildings, and one or two lounging on the bridges, balconies and overhangs that shadowed the roadways.
Carnius stopped at one point to stare at three corpses hanging from a walkway over a street, blackened with rot, rain still dripping from their bloated toes. People were passing under them without comment, as if bodies being left on display in nooses above the road was nothing abnormal. Considering that this was Crucible, perhaps that was the case.
“Wanna stick, mister?” a wrinkled Bosmer who had appeared at Carnius’ elbow asked. “Good sticks, not a leaf on ‘em, great for pokin’ bodies! Just one coin!”
“I’m fine,” Carnius said.
“You sure? They’re the best sticks in all Crucible,” the Bosmer insisted.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Carnius said. “Actually, I do have a question.”
“Is it about sticks? I know a lot about sticks. I’m an expert on sticks, y’know.”
“No, not about sticks.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll see what I can help you with.”
“You know any good inns in Crucible?” Carnius asked.
“Well, I suppose there’s Sickly Bernice’s Taphouse,” the Bosmer said. “I gave her a good stick a while back, to help her walk. Very grateful for it, an excellent stick, she said.”
“Where’s that?” Carnius asked.
“Oh, just near the main gate,” the Bosmer said. “You sure I can’t interest you in a stick? Be good for prodding one of those bodies, and they’re nice and rotten now; poke ‘em hard enough and the neck might go, and then splat! That’s always funny.”
“No thanks,” Carnius said.
“Fine, fine,” the Bosmer said, rolling his eyes. “Nobody has time for sticks any more.”
He turned and shuffled away, muttering about the state of sticks, and Carnius headed on. It didn’t take him long to reach Cutter’s forge, but for some reason the door was locked when he tried it. He knocked on it a few times, but got no answer, and shrugged; she must have been having a day off, or was occupied with some other business.
He made a note of where Sickly Bernice’s was before he went through the fanged maw of the gate to Bliss. He blinked at the sudden transition into glaring sunlight, holding up a hand to block out the worst of the rays and where it gleamed off the gaudy ornamentation of the buildings.
His destination wasn’t hard to find, the sign ‘Ghan Shi’s House of Body Ornamentation’ hanging in the street. He pushed the door open, stepping into an antechamber as a bell rang above him. The walls were painted red, aside from a single thin white one, beyond which he could see vague silhouettes moving. A panel on the wall slid aside into a doorway, and Carnius stared at the figure that stood within it.
He was seven feet in height, lantern light glistening off golden scales, looking down at Carnius with slitted pupils over a blunt snout. Two pairs of arms were visible under the white coat he wore, one hand holding a comb, the other a pair of scissors, while a long tail was where his legs should have been, coiled up around him on the floor.
“Greetings,” the snake-person rasped, bowing low to Carnius. “I am Ghan Shi, and I bid you welcome to my shop. How might I assist you on this day?”
“I was just hoping for a haircut,” Carnius said after a moment. He became aware that he was staring and shook his head.
“Of course,” Ghan Shi said. “I am currently occupied with another customer, but I will not be long if you wish to wait.”
“That’s…that’s fine,” Carnius said.
“Then please, have a seat,” Ghan Shi said, gesturing to a small gathering of chairs in the corner. “I shall be with you shortly.”
Another bow, and the snake-man slid the panel shut. Carnius sat, looking around the room; there were a few paintings on the walls on some kind of parchment, depicting more of the four-armed snake people wielding katanas and spears battling what looked like orange Khajiit with black stripes in their fur. Here than there were what looked like small banners, decorated with strange characters that Carnius knew he hadn’t a hope of reading.
He didn’t have to wait long, and the panel-door slid open once more.
“And it shall be a pleasure see you again,” Ghan Shi was saying as he opened the door for his customer.
“For the both of us, I assure you,” a familiar voice said, as Her Ladyship stepped through the door. Her hair had been coifed upwards into an elaborate whirl of curls, held in place by a pair of pins through it. “Oh, Carnius. I didn’t expect to see you - Madgod, what happened to your face?”
It took Carnius a moment to realize what she was talking about; the line of pain that had been slashed across his face by the Order Knight had faded to a dull, almost invisible throb that he had now grown used to and paid no heed.
“I was attacked,” Carnius said. “There was a group of Order Knights which I had to deal with. One of them gave me this.”
“I see,” Her Ladyship said, a look of concern crossing her features. She became aware of Ghan Shi hovering behind her and added; “Come and see me in the Baliwog when you’re done, Carnius, we can speak then.”
She stepped out into the street, and Ghan Shi turned his attentions to Carnius.
“Come on through, please,” he said, his four arms pointing Carnius through to the partitioned room. The main feature was heavy, padded chair before a mirror, and beside it was a basin, along with cases of razors, scissors, combs, lathers and other things Carnius couldn’t identify. Ghan Shi gestured for Carnius to take a seat, coiling behind him. “So what can I do for you today?”
“I just want a shave,” Carnius said, running his hand over the fuzz on the top of his head and over his chin. “Get rid of all of this.”
“Ah, be as bald as myself,” Ghan Shi hissed, baring long, needle fangs in what Carnius hoped was a smile.
“That’s right,” Carnius said.
“Of course, of course,” Ghan Shi said. He turned away, flicking open a case. Two razor blades whirled between deft, clawed fingers, while his other pair of hands began to rub together soap into a thick lather.
“I can’t say I’ve met one of your people before,” Carnius said after a few moments, deciding that would be the most tactful way to broach such a subject.
“I’m not surprised,” Ghan Shi replied, turning to face Carnius’ reflection in the mirror. “Our peoples have had very little contact during the course of Nirn’s history,” Ghan Shi said. “But we go by the name of Tsaeci; perhaps you have heard of us? I would not be surprised if we are mentioned in a few books here and there, perhaps.”
“Maybe you were,” Carnius said. “I’ve never been much of a reader.”
Ghan Shi shrugged, before he began to massage the lather across Carnius’ scalp. The sensation of the foaming suds being rubbed into the top of his head and across his cheeks by the Tsaeci’s pointed claws was surprisingly pleasant.
“I suppose that not all of us can spare the time for reading,” Ghan Shi said rinsing his hands and taking up another pair of razor. “Now, I must ask that you hold still; I will have to answer difficult questions from the guards if you do not.”
Carnius did as asked, and four sharp blades rose and fell, edges gliding across his skin, controlled by the deft hands of Ghan Shi the barber. Hair was sliced through, trapped and harvested in the foamy suds, and rinsed down the drain of Ghan Shi’s basin.
“I really have to ask,” Carnius said as the Tsaeci ran one of his razors over the top of Carnius’ head. “Where did you learn to cut hair?”
“I picked up the art from an Imperial who did the same,” Ghan Shi said. “I found myself in the Isles, entered this shop and saw him cutting hair and said to him; ‘Teach me how to do that.’ And he did. When he passed away, I inherited the shop.”
“I suppose four arms probably lets you do twice as much work,” Carnius said.
“It certainly helps,” Ghan Shi replied. “And I had a little knowledge of some Tsaeci body decoration techniques which I gave him in return for his teaching.”
“What are those?” Carnius asked.
“Tattoo magic,” Ghan Shi said, rinsing one of the razor blades of foam. “An old type of spellcraft from my homeland; trap a spell in a tattoo and cast it without needing training.”
“I can see that being useful,” Carnius said.
“Very much so,” Ghan Shi. “It’s not as a effective as proper magic, and you can only use it one or two times every day, but if you need a quick spell or a way to give a weapon a temporary enchantment, there is little better.”
Carnius was tipped back in his chair, the remaining lather rinsed off his head and he was tipped forwards again, cleaned of the soap.
“And we are done,” Ghan Shi announced, folding away the razors. “What do you think?”
Carnius ran his hand over the top of his head, feeling smooth skin all across his scalp.
“That was just what I wanted,” he said. “Thanks.”
“You are welcome,” Ghan Shi said. “I can show you some the spell tattoos I can give you if you would like.”
“Maybe another time,” Carnius said.
“Ah yes, there is no use delaying when a beautiful woman has asked to meet with you,” Ghan Shi said, grinning with those terrifying fangs. “In that case, ten gold pieces for the shave.”
Carnius handed over the money with a promise to return, and headed back out to the streets of Bliss. It didn’t take him long to find the Baliwog, and the two guards at the gate simply nodded him through.
Inside, the building was bustling with activity. There was no greeter at the desk this time, and Carnius made his way into the main hall, where several of the staff were busying themselves with readying the room for an evening of drinking, eating and expensive debauchery.
“Carnius, over here!” Her Ladyship called from the side of the room, waving him over. Carnius headed towards her, where she pulled up a few spare chairs and table for him to sit. “Apologies for the chaos, but Thadon has announced that he’s going to be turning up tonight so that means we’re laying on a little extra for him. Hence all of the work, and me needing to go to Ghan Shi’s in order to get my hair touched up in the way that Thadon likes. And happens to be rather high-maintenance and inconvenient, but he should spend enough coin here to make it worth it.”
She nodded at Carnius’ shaven head.
“I should have got it cut like that,” she smiled. “I’m sure it’s a great deal easier to look after.”
“I suppose it is,” Carnius said with a shrug. “But yours definitely looks better than mine.”
“Oh, you’re just saying that,” Her Ladyship said with a quiet laugh. “But thank you.”
Her gaze flickered to Carnius’ scar.
“You say that was Order Knights who did that?” she asked, voice becoming more serious.
“That’s right,” Carnius said.
“I see,” Her Ladyship said. “Tell me, was there an obelisk of some kind with them?”
“There was,” Carnius said. “It’s definitely a sign of the Greymarch, if that’s what you’re thinking; the only reason Salyan and I survived was because we met a Feaster missionary fighting them and a group of Dark Seducers charged in to save us.”
“My word,” Her Ladyship said, shaking her head. “I’m just glad you survived.”
“That makes two of us,” Carnius said. “Though you said something about Thadon just a minute ago.”
“Yes,” Her Ladyship said. “He’s visiting us. Why do you ask?”
“Sheogorath wants me to introduce myself to the Duke and Duchess,” Carnius said. “You seem like the sort of person who would know about them.”
“Is that so? I can certainly help you with that,” Her Ladyship said, leaning back in her chair. “Let me see. For Thadon, I’d say he’s the sort of person who likes to…live well, so to speak.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“He indulges himself, and in the eyes of many, indulges too much,” Her Ladyship said. “The Dukes and Duchesses of Mania have partaken in decadence and debauchery ever since the days of Arden-Sul, but Thadon is losing more and more focus on his duties as time goes by; he’s jaded, addled, spends more time feasting, drinking, taking Felldew and Greenmote and sleeping with all sorts of men and women than he does ruling.”
“I see,” Carnius said. “What about Syl?”
“The best advice I can give you on that is to be very, very careful around the Duchess of Dementia,” Her Ladyship said, her face darkening for a moment. “There’s an old Nord saying I once heard that always made me think of her; ‘a hanging man will kick at anything when he feels the noose start to tighten’. She’s always been paranoid, imagining plots and schemes against her, but as time goes by she’s become more and more rash and inclined towards locking people up for torture on the slightest suspicion. And all that does is cause more and more people to start turning against her.”
“You don’t think she’s going to last long?” Carnius asked.
“Even without the Greymarch coming I’m fairly sure she won’t survive to the end of this year,” Her Ladyship said. “Frankly, I can’t help feel that the pecking order of both halves of the Isles could do with some alterations for their own good, especially with Jyggalag on his way.”
Carnius was silent for a moment.
“Are you alright?” Her Ladyship asked.
“That sounds like politics,” Carnius said.
Her Ladyship shrugged.
“Those at the top stay at the top stay at the top until those beneath them kill their way upwards,” she said. “Such is the way of things. It’s just like the Arena, really. It’s strange, when you think about it, how society condemns murder and yet uses spilled blood to grease its wheels. Makes you wonder what the difference between a murderer and a hero is.”
“Scale,” Carnius said. Her Ladyship raised an eyebrow. “You kill somebody in front of no witnesses and they call you a murderer. Kill somebody in front of thousands of witnesses and they say you’re a hero.”
That got a quiet laugh from Her Ladyship.
“You might be right,” she said. “Though thinking of heroes and killing, I have been thinking of something we might use to help combat the Greymarch.”
“What’s that?” Carnius said.
“I’m planning to raise a militia,” Her Ladyship said. “Start training any men or women in my lands who might wish to volunteer. If there are obelisks beginning to appear then we’ll need to deal with the problem; otherwise Jyggalag can use them to cripple the Isles before the Greymarch even begins in earnest.”
“Do you think you could get the other nobles on board with that idea?” Carnius asked.
“I intend to try,” Her Ladyship said. “I might even mention the idea to Thadon when he comes here tonight, though considering he probably won’t remember the conversation in the morning doing it then may be somewhat of a wasted effort. Speaking of which, do you want to stay for that? There’s going to be an orgy.”
“I’ll be fine, thanks,” Carnius said.
“Oh,” Her Ladyship said, something flickering across her face for a moment. “I was rather hoping you’d say yes.”
“Not really my sort of place,” Carnius shrugged. “I don’t think I’d fit in. What was that look, though?”
“What look?”
“When I said no, you got a look just there,” Carnius said, a slight grin on his face. “You were pouting, weren’t you?”
“No I wasn’t!” Her Ladyship protested. “I do not pout!”
“Really?” Carnius asked. “You look like you’re pouting now.”
“Oh stop it,” Her Ladyship said, smiling as she rolled her eyes. “You’re sure I can’t change your mind, though?”
“I’m sure. Don’t think I’d really fit in.”
“Your loss,” Her Ladyship said. She looked disappointed. “Why not?”
“Well, haven’t got much to offer, have I?” Carnius said, gesturing to the livid scar running across his face, his nose that had been broken and reset by clumsy hands more than once and cauliflower ears.
“I don’t think you’re doing yourself justice, personally,” Her Ladyship said. “But if you insist.”
“You’re too kind,” Carnius said. “But, I’m afraid I need to go. There’s some business I need to sort out.”
“Of course,” Her Ladyship said. “I’m going to be heading to my estate in the Laughing Coast in a few days, to see what I can do about raising this army to fight the Greymarch with, but if you want to see me here before I go, you’d be welcome; I enjoy talking to you. Though not tomorrow; I probably won’t be at my best then.”
“Thank you, maybe I will,” Carnius said, rising from his seat, Her Ladyship doing the same. “And thanks for the help, by the way. I appreciate it.”
“You can thank me after we’ve defeated Jyggalag and the Isles are safe once again,” Her Ladyship said. “And we’ve still got a way to go yet. Come, let me show you to the door.”
As they stepped through into the atrium of the Golden Baliwog, Her Ladyship asked; “So what is it that you have planned to do now?”
“Make amends,” Carnius explained. “Salyan and I had a bit of a falling out. I’m hoping to patch it up.”
“I see,” Her Ladyship said as they reached the door, held open for them by a servant. “Oh, before you go, I’ve got a little something to give you.”
She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him on the cheek. Carnius blinked.
“For luck,” she said. “I’ll be thinking about you tonight. Now go on, off you go.”
Carnius stepped out without another word, surprised at the move. He headed down the driveway, Her Ladyship watching him as he went, and into the streets of Mania, off to make things right.
Bosmer with a stick!!!...
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Oh hells, I did not stop laughing for ages...Loved that...
...*Applauds heartily right at the start...Realises he still needs to type and gives up*...
There really was so much to love in this chapter...The Tsaeci was amazing, loved the tapestry with the "tiger" on it. And, yet again, the thing with the tattoo magic sounds amazing...Looking forward to seeing how you use that...Yes you will, you know you will...
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And again with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Murray...*Sighs*...I think I'm in love with her...
A truly excellent chapter, loved it!...No sign of any trouble there matey!!..
Nice one!!...
*Applauds most heartily*...
PS...There really are better pictures of Jaime Murray out there...
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Welcome back to writing bloody tales, dear friend! Glad to see Carnius and his adventures in the Shivering Nut-House return!
...Oh yes...I remember her very proudly displaying her talents to great effect...
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I absolutely loved the entire section with Carnius and “Her Ladyship,” what a personality you have developed in her!
Gotta love this line:
Gah, sorry this update took so long to come, everybody, but for some reason writing it was really, really, painfully slow. No idea why, but I'll try and be quicker with the next one.
McBadgere: Wanna stick? Sticky stick stick!
Jaime Murray as Her Ladyship! Bloody perfect! I'd been trying to work out my dream team of actors in the insane off-chance that this should ever be made into a film, and she'd fit quite nicely with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Fiennes as Carnius (I always imagined Carnius looking rather like Mr Fiennes did in his adaptation of Coriolanus) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomie_Harris as Almeria. Still need to work out somebody to play Salyan, though.
And combined with Cutter's Madness Ore modifications for Carnius' gauntlets, Ghan-Shi's tattoo magics promise to be a lot of fun. You'll enjoy it a lot, I'm sure.
Darkness Eternal: The Elder Scrolls series does have a lot of mental Wood Elves. To be fair, the fellow in that scene was one of the Shivering Isles' NPCs making an appearance, a fellow by the name of Goolorolos (or something equally long and difficult to spell like that) but he helps increase that rota quite nicely.
Yep, one of the famous Snake People of Akavir, in the flesh and cutting hair! I figured that it would probably be a good way to wind back after the violence of Almeria's introduction and the rather gory scene in the Feasters' temple, so that haircut and the chat with Her Ladyship were there to wind things back a little. The flirting between Carnius Her Ladyship was a lot of fun to write, though she'd insist that she didn't pout and that she never pouts! ![]()
mALX: Thanks! I had a lot of fun writing that scene, and Her Ladyship is an enjoyable write; glad you're having a good time reading her, too, as I find her kind of tricky to write properly at points. Pleased it worked! ![]()
Thank you for reading everybody, enjoy the next instalment of Carnius' adventures in the Shivering Isles!
Chapter 23-Fire, Steel and Song
The gates of the College of Audiomancy were open as Salyan made her way through them, grumbling under her breath as she went. Her shoulders were hunched against the drizzle, the water slipping off the cloak she wore, hood pulled up to ward away the weather. It rarely rained in Mania, only when Sheogorath was in a bad mood; something must have upset him.
The College was a large construction; three buildings of golden stone arranged around a central central courtyard. The largest one in the centre was the main performance hall, white marble pillars sweeping up its façade into its domed top. Salyan ignored it for the moment, taking the leftmost building, a much smaller one which housed the College’s students.
She pushed open the main door, and hurried across the hallway and up the stairs to the third floor, found her bedroom, unlocked it, dropped her things on the floor next to the bed, sat down on the thin straw mattress and swore.
Why was Carnius so damn defensive about Dementia? It wasn’t as if he lived there after all, and the place was disgusting. She couldn’t think of any reason why he would want to be that way unless…
She froze, searching through her memory, mentally recounting their time together. Had she accidentally given it away? Had he worked it out or suspected it somehow? After all, if he had then it was no surprise he had been like that with her; the merest pretence and he would be rid of her, of course he would, anybody would. Most people wouldn’t even bother with pretending, they’d just hate her, reject her and throw her out into the emptiness and wildnerness where she belonged. No, he didn’t know. She would know if he knew.
Salyan gave a quiet sigh of relief and lay back on the bed as she decided that no, that couldn’t have been the case. There was no way he coud have found out, so the only conclusion she could reach was that he was being a stubborn and irritable idiot. It was his problem, she decided, and if he didn’t want her help saving the Isles then he wouldn’t get it.
For a few moments, she was quiet. She didn’t want to dwell on Carnius, she decided, and it would be a good idea to find something to distract herself with. A new spell; even if she wasn’t travelling with Carnius any more, a destruction spell would still be useful. She would take some time to rest from the road and get some of her affairs in order, she decided, and then she would head to the rest of the college and see what she could learn.
*Applauds*...
Truly beautiful and excellent work right there, that is...
I was worried you had given up on this story. Glad to see you are back in action! So Salyan pays a visit to band camp the College of Audiomancy.
Yeah, this part took forever to write. No idea why, it just did. Guh.
McBadgere: Thanks very much! I had a good amount of fun working out the details of how Audiomancy would work, and I pleased that you enjoyed reading it. Cheers!
DE: Oh no, it wasn't dead, it was just very slow and difficult to write. Like this chapter was. Huh.
I figured the weather would be affected by Sheogorath's moods and whims seeing as the Isles themselves are him to an extent. It raises some interesting worldbuilding questions at points.
And yeah, there are Madgod missionaries; that was only mentioned about five chapters ago! ![]()
Chapter 24-The Grand Inquisitor
The building before them could be called no other word but monstrous. A huge, brooding tyrant of a structure hewed from grey-black stone, it loomed before the three, façade adorned with gargoyles and freizes of misery. The black iron gates, adorned with carvings of ancient runes the very meaning of which could not be pronounced, were surrounded by regular spikes of jagged stone, and in opening seemed to be the invitation from a hungry maw for vulnerable morsels to step inside.
A pair of Dark Seducers stood on either side of the doorway, wearing the black hoods of executioners and carrying immense two handed axes, and as they approached one of them asked; “What business have you at the court of Lady Syl?”
“We were sent here by Sheogorath,” Carnius said. “He wanted me and my friends to speak to her, to introduce ourselves to her.”
“I see,” one of the Daedra said. “Wait here, Madgod’s champion. I will bring word to the Duchess that you are here.”
She stepped through the doorway, and was gone only a few minutes before she returned once more.
“She will see you and your companions immediately,” she said. “Follow me.”
The room she lead them into was a high-vaulted hall, built of the same sooty black stone as the building’s exterior. It was a gloomy, funereal place, lit only by guttering candles of black tallow, while snarling maws and weeping faces protruded from the walls and vaulted ceiling, shifting across it in utter silence, following Carnius, Salyan, Almeria and their guide as they progressed. In alcoves on either side of the hall were crosses, men, mer and beast-folk nailed to the wood, naked and thin, skin criss-crossed by lacerations, eyeless sockets glancing across the room. Carnius and Salyan avoided looking at them, but Almeria was merely indifferent, instead clenching and unclenching her fists with such force that her knuckles turned white.
At the far end of the hall, on a throne of tarnished brass, moulded into the shape of gnashing teeth and grasping hands, a Bosmer woman sat, flanked by two more axe-bearing Mazken in hoods. Her face was veiled and she wore a black mourning dress, its collar an immense, magnificent ruff of carven bone. She examined the small group before with piercing, intense grey eyes, leaning forward on her throne as they approached.
“I bid you welcome, champion of Sheogorath,” she said, her tone devoid of any warmth. “As is custom, I extend the hospitality of the court of Dementia to yourself and your companions whilst you are here.”
“You honour us, your ladyship,” Salyan said before Carnius could speak, stepping forward and bowing down on one knee. “You have our deepest gratitude.”
“Get up and be silent, little Manic girl,” Syl snapped back. “I will entertain you and the Feaster only because the Madgod’s champion is with you; otherwise your presence within my court would not be tolerated. As for you, Carnius Hackelt, I will allow you this one erring in etiquette. But let me be clear that displeasing me will not bode well for you, Sheogorath’s champion or not.”
She gestured to one of the crucified individuals lining her hall.
“And that is the consequence of displeasing me or moving against me,” she said. “These crosses were enchanted by Relmyna Venerim herself and the magic within them can keep a man alive in agony for weeks; their bodies begin to degrade but they do not die, and sooner or later, the wood will absorb its victims and be hungry for more. I always have more crucifixes upon which to hang those who attempt to double-cross me.”
Hearing her, one of the victims raised his head.
“Please, my lady,” he managed to rasp through cracked lips. “You must understand; I am a loyal subject and innocent of any plot against you.”
“A plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time,” Syl snapped back at him. She turned her attention back to Carnius. “Do you understand, champion?”
“I do,” Carnius said.
“Good,” Syl nodded. She rose from her throne, and gestured for Carnius and his companions to follow. “We must speak in private, away from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears.”
“Who’s going to eavesdrop here?” Carnius asked, looking around the hall. “It’s just, your bodyguard and these poor sods on the crosses.”
“And you don’t think that these betrayers would take any chance they had to stab me in the back once more?” Syl said. “They will take any opportunity they get to whisper secrets they overhear into traitorous ears if I let them. The conversation I wish to carry out must be conducted in private. Follow me.”
One of the Dark Seducers pushed open a side door in the main hallway for the Duchess, and without much choice, the three of them followed, uncomfortably aware that, aside from Salyan’s lyre, their weapons were all at Cutter’s. They were lead down a grey stone corridor to a private room, the heavy door pushed open by one of the hooded bodyguards who checked its innards before nodding an all clear. She entered first, and the Dark Seducer at the back waited for them to enter before she shut the door behind them.
“Any listening charms?” Syl asked her remaining bodyguard.
The Daedra raised a crystal and swept it across the room before staring into its surface.
“None that it can detect, milady,” she said.
“Good,” Syl nodded, before she turner her attention to the three companions. “Do you know why I’ve called you here, Champion?”
“Indulge me,” Carnius said.
“I’m under attack,” Syl said. “Everywhere I’ve looked, I’ve found conspirators, traitors, scheming backstabbers, all of them planning my undoing. One or two, perhaps, could be dissidents or insurrectionists or individual malcontents, but the numbers I have found point to a conspiracy of a scale I dread to imagine. None of the traitors I’ve brought in have been willing to confess who it is, but there must be someone, somewhere, who is orchestrating it.”
She glanced at Carnius.
“You’re new here, so that makes you marginally more trustworthy than the rest of them,” Syl said. “I am appointing you as my Grand Inquisitor; I want you to find these conspirators and bring them to me.”
“Any leads?” Carnius asked.
“Go speak to Herdir,” Syl replied. “He’s my torturer, and he can help you track them down. He’s in the dungeon.”
“I see,” Carnius nodded. “We’ll be going then.”
Syl nodded, and the three left. They headed through the corridors, going downards in the hope of finding the dungeon.
“So are either of you two surprised that she finds conspiracies everywhere?” Salyan asked once they were out of earshot.
“No,” Carnius and Almeria said in unison.
“Thought not,” Salyan said. “I mean, we could just drag somebody in here from the street and tell Syl that they’re the mastermind behind this supposed conspiracy and she’d probably believe us.”
Carnius glanced over at her.
“I’m not suggesting that we do it!” Salyan protested. “I’m just saying that she’s likely to buy it.”
“She’s right, you know,” Almeria nodded. She wiped a finger underneath her nose and frowned at it.
“You alright?” Salyan asked.
“Nosebleed,” Almeria replied. She shrugged and pulled a kerchief from her pocket, dotted with small red stains, and held it underneath her nose. “They happen sometimes, I just need to wait for it to subside.”
“If you’re sure,” Carnius said.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Almeria replied, a snap in her voice.
“Hey, you two,” Salyan said, stopping outside a havy door of wood and iron. “I think we’ve found the dungeon.”
She raised her fist and thumped it against the door a few times. After a few moments of waiting, there was the sound of bolts sliding and locks rattling, and it groaned open. On the other side was a middle-aged balding Imperial, and he looked at the three of them with a look between curiosity and some kind of hunger.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Are you Herdir?” Salyan asked.
“I am, yes,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Syl asked us to find you,” Carnius said. “We’re trying to track down the mastermind behind all of these conspiracies, and she said you could help.”
“Ah, of course,” Herdir nodded. “Yes, you look like you could be of some use to me. Come in, come in.”
The room he ushered them into was a large box of dark stone, occupied by a table and desk scattered with parchments. Along one wall was a large chart, different words connected by writing. A few moments of staring at them, and Carnius realised that they were different names.
“Are these all conspirators?” Salyan asked.
“They were,” Herdir nodded. “And while they might have been uncovered there are always more out there.”
“I’m sure there are,” Almeria said. “So what leads do you have?”
“I have reason to suspect that the Duellists, or at least members of their group, are plotting against Lady Syl,” Herdir said.
“The Duellists?” Carnius asked.
“They are a group of Crucible’s citizens who meet periodically on the rooftop of Sickly Bernice’s Taphouse,” Herdir said. “As their name suggests, they fight each other in organised bouts whenever they meet. They’re highly secretive about their meetings, though; they will avoid talking about the group when not in their meetings, and are suspicious of any outsiders.”
“So what makes you think they’re plotting against Syl, then?” Carnius asked.
“If they had nothing to hide, they would not be so secretive,” Herdir said. “As they’re being secretive, they must be up to something, and more likely than not, it’s a conspiracy against the Duchess. This is where you can help, though; you three have no connection to Syl, so they may be willing to let you in. At least they’ll let you in, Imperial; your two friends are Manics and most likely they’ll be rejected.”
He frowned.
“The only issue is how to get into the Duellists themselves,” he said. “Joining them is supposed to be notoriously difficult.”
“That’s easy,” Almeria said. “I’m a member.”
“You’re a…what?” Herdir asked. “How?”
“Well my girlfriend of six months is a member of the Duellists and I was made an honorary member not too long ago,” Almeria said.
“But how did you get in?” Herdir said, almost in protest. “You’re a Manic.”
“I’m really good at fighting things, apparently,” Almeria shrugged. “So they let me in.”
“I see,” Herdir nodded “Perhaps I could question your-”
“Lay a finger on her and I will hurt you,” Almeria said. Her tone was flat, but the threat on it was evident. “We can ask around at the Duelists and see what we can find out. You stay here, that’ll make it easier for us to keep our cover.”
“Of course,” Herdir said. “I hope to hear from you soon.”
The three took it as their cue to leave, and as they shut the door behind them Carnius asked; “So when are the Duellists meeting next?”
“Tonight,” Almeria said as they set out along the corridors of Syl’s court to the outdoors. “Getting both of you in should be pretty easy seeing as both myself and Cutter can vouch for you. After that, you can ask around all you need to.”
“And are there any burgeoning conspiracies against Syl there?” Salyan asked.
Almeria glanced around for a moment making sure they were alone.
“Outside,” she said in a low voice. “I can explain more there.”
They hurried out into the streets of Crucible, and Almeria lead them a short way away. She stopped by an alleyway and ushered them into it, Carnius dropping a few coins to an old Dunmer beggar sitting by its mouth.
“Go and get yourself something to eat,” he said to the mer as the septims landed in the wooden bowl held in his wrinkled grey hands.
“Of course,” the beggar said, his voice cracked, harsh and scraping. He rose to his feet with the aid of the staff he carried, and tucked the bowl into a fold of his tattered robes. “Madgod smile upon you, kind sir.”
Almeria shot him a glance as Carnius stepped into the shadows with her and Salyan.
“Just making sure we aren’t eavesdropped on,” he said. “So what was it you wanted to say about the Duellists, then?”
“There is a plot,” Almeria said. “And they do plan on taking down Syl. I don’t know the full details, and you’d have to ask Muurine about it, but the Duellists are just part of the plan against Syl. Crucible hates her, and Muurine is one of the people heading up the fight against her.”
“So how did you get involved in this?” Carnius asked. “I mean, it’s not as if that’s going to affect Bliss, is it?”
“No, it won’t,” Almeria said. “But Cutter’s part of this and she could potentially get hurt; somebody could inform on her and the next thing I know a squad of Dark Seducers have knocked down her door and dragged her off to Herdir. I can’t let that happen.”
“We’ll help,” Salyan said. “I don’t like Syl anyway.”
Carnius nodded.
“From what I’ve seen of Syl, this Muurine might have the right idea about getting rid of her,” he said. “I’m in.”
Almeria nodded.
“I’m pleased to hear that,” she said. “Thank you, both of you.”
She smiled.
“I’m sure Syl doesn’t stand a chance.”
Excellent stuff!!...
I went to Thadon for my runthrough, so this is all going to be a bit different for me...I've no idea of the Syl side of things...
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Absolutely loved the description of her palace though...Beautiful imagry...The crucifictions were disturbingly excellent!...
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I thought it was a bit risky for Almeria to reveal that little snippet about Cutter though...
...Hope that doesn't come back to bite her...
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Carnius seemed a bit subdued in this one...But then, he was having to be polite
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Absolutely loved it matey!!...You talent for inventive descriptiveness and witty dialogue is a pure joy...
Long may you continue!!!...
Nice one!!...
*Applauds heartily*...
Ah, I remember visiting Syl frequently. I just sided with Dementia, because well, I can relate to that sort of madness. And because we can all agree that Syl's http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120816204344/elderscrolls2/de/images/1/1d/Lady_Syl.jpg are a sight to behold.
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