She had a body that shrieked "Look at me!", and a demeanour that growled "... and if you do l will kill you."

"terminally pretty".

"And you're very Ugly even fer a human, so ye are."

"Izzat so?"

"Yes." Replied the Bosmer, and kneed him in the crackers.

Any relationship with Niamh was never going to be a simple affair, Luciana had figured that out pretty soon after making the Bosmer's aquaintance. The Wood Elf was clearly, if not unhinged, then not fighting with a full quiver of arrows, and was deeply if not worryingly odd in any number of ways.
Still there was something about her though that the Breton just could not let go of.
If only she could put her finger on what it was.

That she was ferociously attractive was an absolute, but even that beauty carried with it an ambiguous darkness - her eyes were a very dark chestnut, nestled in deep, black sockets. Her skin was pale and smooth like porcelain, yet up close she was smeared with a layer of grime and dirt; her hair - which at first sight was lush and thick, long and black with deep red streaks, tied in a high ponytail - on closer inspection was revealed to be greasy and as dirty as her skin.
She seemed to Luciana to be at once like some darkly splendid forest-thing who had stepped out of one of her mother's stories and into her life and yet up close and upon further inspection she looked, and smelt if it came to it, like the complete antithesis.

A woman of immense contradiction then, a woman whose physical opposition was reflected very much by the fey and random nature of her mind and spirit, a woman whom Luciana had come to realise was at once as cruel and selfish and uncaring as she was passionate and possessed of a vigorous and overwhelming spirit of life and love.
She was an enigma to be sure and Luciana, enamoured of her as she was, wanted to find the key that would unlock her mysteries. She wanted to find out what made her tick and most of all she knew, she just knew, that somewhere inside was a bright and shining kernel that was yet hidden under layers of pain and sadness; themselves wrapped in a thick blanket of seeming bravado and studied nonchalance which Niamh wielded like a shield, to cut off the world from her and her from it.
She fascinated Luciana, at least at first.

Had she done the right thing?
Sometimes now she wondered, wondered whether she would not have been happier just walking away and never knowing what might have been; what actually was, was not what she had thought it would be.
But therein lay the problem, she had not thought about the consequences of what she had done until later, too late; but equally she could not have not done what she did if her very life had depended upon it.

She had let Niamh into her bed on a sudden impulse, though her mind had counselled against it her heart and her body had yearned to be a part of the lifeforce that streamed out of the Bosmer.
One night, some six months ago she had got her wish, and more besides.
++++
Niamh had been back in Bravil for about a week or so whilst Luciana had been out to Leyawiin on an errand for S'krivva.
She had returned that morning to find a note pinned to the door of her dwelling, on the floor above Niamh's. Unpinning it she had gone inside her house and lighting a candle - it had been getting on for six of the evening and the light was failing - she had held it up and read it, squinting as she did so. It was from Niamh, in her spidery hand and as usual terribly spelt and appalling written:
"Haye Loocheeyanna weare ar yoo meate mai atte th sooter"
She had grinned to herself, suddenly happy, even though she was tired from her journey; the country between the southern city of Leyawiin and Bravil was a little awkward in places and on more than one occasion she had been forced to ride hard to escape the unwelcome attention of bandits.

It was ten minutes later when she arrived at the Lonely Suitor Lodge, just along from their dwellings. It was on the whole a quiet inn, not generally known for trouble even given it's location in Bravil which was not the most salubrious of settlements, if one were honest.
She opened the door to the smokey, dimly lit interior and stepped inside.
The interior of the tavern was warm and muggy, especially after the dry, relatively chilly air outside. Luciana looked around and smiled when she located the Wood Elf.
"But of course..." She thought to herself and set off to the darkest corner of the common room, out of the firelight. There really wasn't any other part of the place that the Bosmer would be. Even in bright sunlight shadows clung to her.

"Took yer toime." Grinned Niamh when the other sat down. "Got ye a drink." She gestured to an ale, alongside a plate of meats, cheeses and a couple of slices of coarse, nutty bread. Simple fair but filling.
"Thank you." Said Luciana, and set about the food with gusto.
"S'nuthin.'" Shrugged the Bosmer, taking a swig of her own drink. "Just figgered you'd be starved after yer journey an' all." The Elf's voice, although outwardly rather harsh had an underlying lilt to it, an almost musical, rich brogue that made Luciana tingle when she heard it.
She stuffed a heroic chunk of bread and cheese into her mouth and took a swig of her drink, she grinned at Niamh, who shook her head and smiled.

It was funny, thought Luciana, for all of the other's studied detachment, Niamh cleared liked her; and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that it was as if she had been befriended by some wild creature who could turn on her at any moment, whose favour she was in only for as long as the wind blew in the right direction.
She finished eating, pushed the only half-emptied plate away, took a swig of ale to wash out her mouth.
"Best make the most of it then..." She thought to herself.

"I missed you, you know." She said.
Niamh looked round at her, her eyes deep pools of black, dotted with faint points of light much as a fathomless lake, when seen at night, might reflect a twisted image of the moon or stars.
"Did ye?" She asked, sitting forward, leaning on the table. "Did ye really?"
Luciana's heart suddenly began to pound in her chest, it felt as if someone were hitting her on the breastbone with a hammer. She took a deep breath.
"Yes."
Leaning over the table, she slid her hand around the back of Niamh's head and pulled the other woman's face to hers, their lips met and Luciana kissed her, hard, pressing the Bosmer's mouth firmly against her own even until she felt the other's unfeasibly sharp canines draw blood from her lip and felt the metal ring that pierced Niamh's lower lip grate against her teeth.
Niamh's breath was hot and sour with ale, Luciana's tongue thrust inside her mouth and Niamh, whose initial surprise at the other's sudden and impulsive behaviour was rapidly disappearing, responded in kind.
The two women kissed each other hard, breath snorting from their nostrils, tongues entwining, saliva mingling with blood from Luciana's cut lip - the iron-sharp taste swapping back and forth between them.

It was never, from there, going to end any other way.

Don't worry, I'm pretty sure reading on this site, and the mods, can read a tasteful scene of two people kissing each other without their heads exploding. We're a group of Elder Scrolls fans here, not Amish.

Phon, no worries here from a mod perspective.

You did a fine job of creating the erotic atmosphere you wanted while controlling the specifics. Fortunately, imagination often conveys that better than more detailed prose and you, along with our other writers, clearly get that.

Luciana Galena is a very neat NPC and I can well understand Niamh’s attraction to the sultry and worldly Breton.

At the southern end of the long hall was a tumbled pile of broken stones and smashed blocks, fallen long ages past from the ceiling that, high above, arched over her head in a spectacular vault of white marble and limestone, shadowing into inky blackness as it approached it's apex; beyond the reach of even the ethereal glow of the Welkynd stones that dotted the walls of the place at regular intervals, nestled in elaborate sconces fashioned from some strange dark metal.

She was sitting cross-legged behind one of the largest masonary pieces, her back against the smooth, still plastered wall of the mighty chamber. The dry, chill air was very still with only dust motes, drifting lazily in the Welkynd light, revealing the presence of vague currents.
A great silence weighed heavily upon her such that even though she knew that the place wherein she found herself was vast, she nonetheless felt oppressed by the sheer mass of soundless gloom that the hall held within its space.
Indeed, it was as if the darkness within the ancient hall, above the level of the Welkynds, seemed to be possessed of a fearful weight; and it seemed to her that it was only by the intervention of those strange crystals and their eerie glow that she was not crushed utterly.

She was breathless and overwhelmed, particularly after the frantic activity of... when? It could all have happened mere moments ago, or hours for all she knew. Time in this place was meaningless, so much of it having passed within its walls that only a span on the order of a century or more would have any significance at all.
She tilted her head back and looked up at the darkness above her, straining to see the apex of the vaulted ceiling. She took a few deep, slow breaths to calm her heart, the dusty air had an ancient stale taste to it, and she stifled a cough; nervous in the brooding silence, wincing at the accompanying pain in her chest from where she had been bundled roughly over the blocks and into cover.

Her leather britches were torn and her tunic was missing some buttons. She made a face and shifting uncomfortably, grasped tightly at the hilt of her short sword where it lay in her lap. She directed her gaze downwards towards the faerie-glow of the stones on the wall away to her left, not far from the opening.
After a moment, she felt as if a velvet cloak of stillness had closed about her, stifling her senses and pressing her, as it were, down into the hard marbled floor. Unable seemingly to move or to perform any action at all, she closed her eyes and concentrated on keeping calm, running back over what had just happened.
---
she'd elected to visit this particular ruin more out of curiousity than anything. It was reasonably close by and she'd always had a fascination for the ancient Ayleid structures, the opportunity to visit had presented itself and so obviously she had jumped at the chance.
What could go wrong?

The trouble had started almost as soon as she was through the door, she had spotted the bandits almost at the same time as they had spotted her and a frenetic period of cat and mouse had followed, accompanied by the clash of blades, the twang of bow strings and the whine of arrows; added to that the shouts and screams of the wounded and dying and she had come very rapidly to regret her decision to play tourist and to question the wisdom of ignoring the repeated warnings that she had been given.
Eventually staying safe had become virtually impossible and she had ended up behind the pile of rubble. Bruised, battered, breathless and terrified she had remained as silent as she could, listening to the sounds of combat and running feet ebb and flow not ten feet away and fearing that she would be discovered and slain horribly and violently at any moment.
Finally it was with a certain relief that she heard the noise disappear off down a side passage, through the opening in the wall that she could see from her hiding place.

It did not help at all that she was perfectly aware of the fact that not that far from her hiding place were several corpses, additionally she herself was not exactly proficient with a blade being, as it were, more of a non-combative cat burglar as much as anything and that was not something she had done very much in the last few years.
Worse though was the fact that she was alone with no idea what had happened or, if the worst had happened, what she should do next. Try as she might to ward it off, the spectre of fear was climbing up her back with cold hard fingers. Her stomach suddenly became heavy and she felt as if her heart were pumping ice water around her body.
"Breathe!" She commanded herself in a soft whisper.
Slowly she regained some control of herself. She should, she supposed, be glad it was only bandits. It could have been much worse.

Suddenly, her breath caught in her throat.
Right at the edge of hearing she could have sworn she heard a noise, the sound of a single, soft footfall. Just one.
Her eyes widened in fear and, her heart pounding in her ears she sat as still as she could, desperately trying to hold her breath and straining to hear any sound at all.
She scanned what she could see of the hall that she was in, but all looked as it had and certainly she had not seen anything come out of the passageway.
For a moment all was silent and stillness, as it had for centuries beyond count, reigned supreme.
But then...

...To her right she caught a movement in the shadows by the wall. Almost against her will her head turned towards those shadows, she could almost hear the tendons in her neck creaking, her breath trembled in her throat, perspiration beaded on her forehead.
There was something moving stealthily towards her.
Placing her hands on the cold stone of the floor she started to shuffle away to her left until she was pressed up against the unyielding rubble that surrounded her.
Still the shape came on, she could see it - a darker shadow against the blackness of the corner behind it. Any moment now it would move into the light.
At least she would face her destiny, that was something she supposed.

The figure came on, into the light of the Welkynds, it was holding a sword, jewelry glittered in it's long ears, it opened its mouth. She closed her eyes and turned her head away, holding up a hand.
"Gods! Make it quick..." She thought.

...and...

"Looch!" Hissed Niamh impatiently. "Stop muckin' about!"
Luciana opened her eyes and looked up into the Bosmer's face, HER Bosmer's face.
"Come on. " Said Niamh more gently, "sorry I took so long, place is bigger'an I thought. It's best we get back home, d'ye think?"

Luciana was so relieved she didn't know whether to hug the Wood Elf or slap her. In the end she did neither, and just burst into tears.

PATRIARCH

Well, Jenseric had tasked her with clearing out this particular nest of Wampyres and by Azura she had done just that, or almost.
There was one left, just one.

It had remained hidden, secreted away in the cold dark depths of the fort.
It had been quite a trial, and had taken her some considerable time; but Niamh had found the entrance to the inner sanctum eventually.

She'd finally located the way in at the end of a flooded, downward-sloping passageway barely taller than herself and only just wider.
The water at the end of the passage was cold and slimy, about thigh-high on her. The passage itself was pitch black, so dark that even the enhancing properties of her hood only provided vague red-tinged shadows and a generalised sense of her surroundings.
Far back uphill was flickering yellow firelight, from greasy torches burning in sconces in the room beyond the opening.

The passageway to the sanctum had been hidden behind a wall in the corner of the room, an old common room for the troops by the looks of it. The trigger mechanism for the secret door was located a fair distance up the wall in the opposite corner.
Niamh, having cleaned up the Wampyric guards and vassals whom she had found in the common room had found it necessary to pile up the, in some cases still twitching, bodies against the wall in order that she could climb onto them to reach the switch and thus trigger the door.
She'd winced at the screech from the ancient mechanism and dived into the shadows, unsheathing her wakizashi, as the sound echoed around the room and away down the corridor from which she had entered.

After a few moments, when it had become evident that she was to all intents and purposes alone, she had snuck up to the newly exposed opening.
The air in the passageway beyond was stagnant and still, smelling of mildew and wet decay. From somewhere far below came the thick sloshing of oily water in the darkness of what she could only presume was the end of the passageway, as some benighted cave-dwelling thing went about it's business.

Nevertheless, she grinned darkly.
"Gotch'e." She whispered under her breath, and taking only a moment to check the room again she drew a deep breath and gripped the hilt of her blade more tightly.
"Brace yersel'..." She said to herself, and plunged on down the passageway and into the thick, dank shadows.

----

And so here she stood outside of what she presumed must be the final door. It was evidently made of several thicknesses of solid, heavy dark wood, tinted darker still from hundreds of years of exposure to the filthy water that had pooled before it, and not least also from the permanently damp atmosphere of the passageway.
As far as she could tell the wood of the door was reinforced by rusty iron straps, rivetted in place and in the false light of her night vision, glistening sullenly.

Obviously the door was locked.
Closing her eyes she held out a hand, gloved palm facing the lock but not touching it, her long, bare fingers spread out in a fan-shape.
A moment of concentration...
...Nothing happened.
"Did'nae think so..." She muttered to herself. Belatedly she thought of how she should perhaps have practiced the whole "Opening Locks" thing a little more.

Pausing for a moment, she chewed at the ring in her lower lip and scratched absently at herself. Finally she rummaged in a pouch at her waist and dragged out an elaborately detailed key made from many tines and prongs.
As quietly as was possible she inserted it into the lock and slowly rotated it until she heard the thunk of the stubborn tumblers falling reluctantly into place.
Removing the skeleton key she stowed it carefully away once again - it had become possibly one of her most valued possessions.

Crouching behind the door, so it would provide some kind of shield, she oh-so-very slowly turned the handle and pushed it open. She was at once relieved at the apparent smoothness of it's hinges; but equally a little frustrated at the unavoidable sound of water running into whatever space was beyond it, from her side.
As the door opened, she detected a glow, flaring in her enhanced vision and when the gap was large enough she cautiously peered around the door, conscious that at any moment her reliance on subterfuge and stealth to keep her brains inside her skull could turn out to be terminally misplaced.

She had to squint. The light in the chamber that opened out beyond the door, amplified by the effect of the hood, was intense.
She grabbed at the hood and pulled it off of her head, stuffing it inside her armour for the time being. Immediately the light dimmed to a lambent red glow that wavered and pulsed slightly, almost in waves, like ripples in a bay or a lake.
Once she had become more used to the light, she took in the chamber.
"Well, there's interestin'" She murmured, raising an eyebrow.

The room itself was unremarkable, the door through which she was looking was upon a ledge at one end of it, this ledge dropped into a dip or gully, relatively shallow, before climbing steeply again up the other side to an area as equally rough and rocky as the one upon which she found herself.
Shadows were harsh in the glow within the chamber and the contours of the rocks that were strewn about the space were outlined in sharp relief.
But for one thing the chamber would have been utterly deserted; however this one thing - it's sole occupant - came to demand her full attention.

----

Suspended above the barren floor of the gully, maybe twenty feet in the air, was a man-like figure. It was facing towards her and was naked. She could that it was very obviously, and had she been of a different persuasion, eye-wateringly masculine.
This, then, was the Wampyre Patriarch. Tall and slim, yet well-muscled, his body toned and tight as a drum, his skin smooth and clear.
His face was directed straight ahead of him, the features angular in strangely animal sort of a way, the lips thin and hard; the nose long and narrow, matching his chin.
His eyes were closed, and were set deep in their sockets beneath dark brows. Long and thick, his hair fell around his face and shoulders in luxuriant black tresses.

Even to Niamh, a woman for whom men were a largely undiscovered and unnecessary addition to an already complicated world, he appeared outwardly perfect, and yet...
...underlying that perfection; his arms were rather too long, they hung down by his sides depending, almost at his knees, in large long-fingered hands the palms of which were turned forwards, facing her.
He had only two fingers and a thumb on each hand, each digit terminating in a black-coloured sharp-looking nail or claw.
Likewise his legs, slender and smoothly-muscled as they were, seemed too long and ended in large feet each with three, clawed, toes.

She realised also that his body was the source of the lucent red light by which she studied him, and which in turn illuminated the chamber about them both.
She noticed also that there was a curious scent in the room; vaguely floral in nature but with an underlying sickly carrion sweetness to it.

With her eyes fixed on the figure before her, suspended within a light of it's own making, she crept stealthily into the chamber, ensuring that the door by which she entered was not fully shut.
Cautiously she sheathed her wakizashi and with exagerrated slowness unshouldered her bow and silently plucked an arrow from her quiver.
The arrows that she favoured had a virtue of Shock placed upon them and she felt a pulse of energy run through her hand and up her slender arm as she set the arrow to the catgut string of the bow.

Taking in a deep, quiet breath and holding it, she drew back the bow.
"Nice an' slow, keep it neat..."

The Wampyre opened his eyes.
They looked At Her, Into Her.
"Gah...!" She gasped.

The arrow dropped from her nerveless fingers and clattered onto the floor of the ledge. Her bow likewise slipped from her grasp. Unable to help herself, she sat bonelessly down cross-legged on the rocky floor with a thump, her arms lying limply in her lap.
She tried to move her body but seemed to be unable to control her limbs.
All she could do was stare at the creature, suspended in the air before her. Her mouth was hanging slackly open and she felt a thin trickle of saliva run out of it and dribble down over her lower lips and chin.
"Unh..." She said.

The Wampyre Patriarch regarded her, his eyes a deep and rich purple. They were not cruel as such, but they were piercing and hard and flint-sharp.
She felt the temperature of the chamber drop, a wave of frigid air seemed to wash out from him. Her breath steamed from her nose and mouth, the small hairs on her arms stiffened and came erect.
Desperately, in her mind, she fought to release herself.

The Patriarch raised his long arms until they were straight out from his shoulders, perpendicular to his tight body, the palms, now sideways, still directed at her.
The red glow flowing from him became deeper, its pulsing more insistent and pronounced. Niamh's head began to ache.

He moved silently through the air towards her, his body descending until he touched lightly down upon the rocks of the ledge some ten or fifteen feet away from her.
As he had moved closer to her, her sense of paralysis had seemed to increase, but to alter also, such that it now felt as if she were being crushed into the chamber's stony floor by some massive implacable weight that radiated outwards from him.

He stood before her for a moment; silent, still.
Then he smiled.
His mouth widened until it seemed as if it would split his face clean in two, the corners of it spread up almost to the long fleshy lobes of his ears, half-hidden as they were by his thick hair.
His lips pulled back revealing teeth, far too many teeth; marble-white, long and needle-sharp. A thin black tongue flickered out between them for a second, and was withdrawn.

"You Have Done Well, To Get To Me In This Place." He said.
His voice seemed to come to her ears from far away, down through some vast gulf of time; breathy and sibilant, empty of warmth and dismal as a winter wind soughing through lonely pines on some snow-dusted hillside.
"Urg, uhh." She struggled to speak, her mind screaming at her body to respond, tears starting from her eyes with the useless effort.

The Wampyre-thing regarded her intently for a long moment, seeming as he did so to lean impossibly forward towards her, until his hard, perfect face appeared over hers.
"You Are Strong, Little Elf." He said at length. She looked up at his face, into his purple eyes. She had no choice.
He bared his teeth at her again and the pressure holding her down increased to near unbearable levels, she slumped backwards onto the ground, the back of her head thudding painfully against it, her back bent awkwardly over her quiver.
She wheezed, struggling to draw air into her aching, compressed lungs; unable to take her watering eyes off of him, they felt dinnerplate-sized in her skull.

"Move! Curse Ye!" Screamed her brain, but her body was as a dead thing. There was no response from it.

Above her the Patriarch chuckled, his laugh the dry whisper of dead leaves on barren ground.
"I Applaud Your Efforts, Little Elf." He sighed. "But They Are In Vain. I have Lived Long Ages Past."
His face pulled back away from her, the pressure on her slim body lessened slightly and she drew a deep, hoarse breath down into her air-starved lungs.

The Wampyre cocked his head to one side, observed her as a cat might look at a bird or other small creature that it has caught for it's pleasure.
"You Will Not End My Time, No." He hissed quietly, snake-like. "It Is Not My Time."
His eyes burrowed into her for a long, long moment.
"I Have Foreseen The Manner Of My Death, Little Elf, And It Is Not By Your Hand." He continued at last. "But Neither Will You Die By Mine. No." His mouth spread in a wide, half-amused grin. "Your Time Will Come, Niamh Esher, But Not Yet."
Again a pause.
"Not In This Place."

He turned his face away from her then.
The scent of flowers grew stronger in her nostrils.
"Leave..." His voice was the faintest susurration, a suggestion of a word.

Still with his face turned away from her, the Wampyre Patriarch extended one large hand towards her, palm outwards, three fingers spread wide.
"Leave..."
The floral smell became hugely cloying; a sudden intense crushing pain closed around her body, finally forcing a shriek of agony from her dry throat.
The world went black around her and a feeling of being dropped as from a great height lurched in the pit of her belly.

----

She landed hard on cool, grassy earth, birdsong painfully loud in her ears.
She stumbled up onto her feet but dizziness and nausea immediately overwhelmed her and she fell forwards onto her hands and knees, jolting her shoulders painfully.
For a moment she breathed raggedly, and then was violently sick into the grass between her hands.
Head down and spitting out sour bile, she stayed staring at the ground, breathing harshly through her nose.

At length she sat up, kneeling on the grass, hands on her thighs.
She shook her aching head and looked across some three hundred yards of bare earth to the door of the fort whose dark foundation she had only moments ago been within.

Wiping her mouth with the back of a still-trembling hand she looked up squinting into the clear blue sky, and at the bright, shining orb of the sun.
"Gods, " she whispered to herself, "but was somethin' different, so 'twas..."

Then, thoughtfully, she directed her gaze back to the door of the fort, narrowing her eyes.

"I'll decide when 'tis my time to go, thank ye. " Then she grinned and looked around for her bow.

"And when 'tis yours, too."

--END--

OK, I've really enjoyed these last few pieces, but I have a burning question: where did Niamh get her Dwemer power armour, can we have a picture or two, and where can I get my own? Because that idea sounds awesome.

Heh, thank you.
If you check out some of her recent screeneez, it's the tight-fitting black armour with the blue pipes.
(It's *actually* - (OOC) - from a mod called "Ghost Armour" but in Niamh's world, as many things are, it's a bit different...)