Shade-Eyes, One elf's descent into Oblivion. Options

[kementari]

Hey, all.

So, long time lurker, first time poster. I've really enjoyed reading all the stories you guys have put up over the years.

I've been working on chronicling a group of vignettes on and off since 2006, and it's still a work-in-progress. Some disclaimers:

First, it's all quite long, so I sincerely apologize if anyone gets TLDR syndrome from reading it. Additionally, I tend to take a little free license with lore where Bethesda has been silent, so please don't crucify me for some of my inventions passed off as "world fact" in the story. Finally, I do draw some of my plots from game elements, but I change them where I think I can do better. Please don't let either of those admissions become the basis for hating me. Writing these stories is cathartic to me, and in some small way, I feel like fanfiction is the highest form of glorification I can give the story guys over at Bethesda.

I'd also really love feedback (CRITICISM! PLEASE!) on characterization, prose, pacing, or anything else, if any of you have the time or willingness to give it. While I of course appreciate even small affirmations, "hm, good work" doesn't really help me grow as a storyteller.

Anyway, here goes. Hope you enjoy it.

This post has been edited by kementari: May 27 2008, 12:31 AM

[kementari]

Smoke Hole Cave; Sun's Dawn 2, 3E411

Lily drew the bowstring back to her ear, dainty fingers gentle on the taut cord and feathered arrow-haft, took one silent, nearly motionless breath, and let go. The slim bolt of death whistled slightly on its short voyage through the dank air of the shoreline cavern, and impacted. There came a gruesome squishing noise as it penetrated its target. The ash-skinned elf toppled forward, face jerking to a halt inches above the table upon which he had just moments ago been carelessly dining. The arrow-tip, glistening with the priceless red sheen of blood that has very recently been living, protruded through the dunmer's throat and was presently lodged in the rough wood of the table.

With expressionless eyes the wood-elf gazed at the target of her unprovoked attack. She sat back on her haunches, giving her aching thighs a rest. After allowing the gentle nature-noises of the cavern to flow over her senses for a few moments, she was able to determine that no other beings shared with her the mossy stone haven.

Standing briskly, Lily deftly searched the outlaw's corpse and belongings, pocketing the small handful of septims and the tiny, dull ruby she found. Then, unconcernedly shoving the still-warm corpse off the table bench, the bosmer seated herself, glancing over the table's meager array with the air of one who has known intimately cakes and wine, but has only recently become a friend of hunger. Selecting a tired-looking carrot and a bit of traveling bread, the elf gazed into the nearby fire, mind drifting back to the whirlwind of events from the night before.


As Lily bit down on the hardening loaf of bread, her eyes wandered to the corpse of her victim. Shot through the neck - a clean, professional shot, arrowhead piercing larynx, jugular, and spinal cord all at once...

It was the way she had learned to shoot, decades ago in the forests east of Silvenar, the way the boy-elves had begged her to teach them to shoot. She had tagged along on their marauding parties, striking packs of adolescent suthay-raht khajiit and laying waste to smaller domestic settlements on the fuzzy border between her people's land and that of Elsweyr. The deadly silencing shot was the safest way to dispatch the feline beings, stilling them quickly to lessen the chances of a battle-roar bringing another khajiit - or several - down on top of her.

The shot was her signature on the trail of blood she had left behind when she was unceremoniously tossed on the Cyrodiilic shore north of Falinesti and informed that she would be killed on sight were she found within Valenwood's borders during the duration of her exile. And it was the shot she had fired at the Orc last night - the one who had roughly tossed her aside, spitting a racial epithet at the mer-girl who had had the audacity to stumble into him on a foggy day down at the docks of Cyrodiil's port city of Anvil - on the first anniversary of that exile.

The fog and the docks were his second mistake, after the insult. Turning his back and briskly stamping away was his last.

Lily closed her eyes, remembering the orc's almost-graceful tumble to the stones below the dock. She hadn't ever let her temper cause her to kill an innocent. It was always the hunters, the corrupt, those worthy of death. She had leapt from the site like a spooked deer, hesitating only to pluck her arrow from the corpse. Hiding herself in the ramshackle hovel that served only as a roof over her head in times of rain, Lily had fallen into a fitful sleep, maddening dreams haunting her all night long.

The worst nightmare had not been a dream at all. Around the chime of midnight from the dock tower, Lily had awakened to a whisper of fabrics, a chill like a winter's breeze, and the unmistakable smell of death. Though she was on her feet, blade in hand, in mere seconds, the unseen presence was undaunted, and Lily even fancied she heard a laugh dance through the rafters. Stepping out of the shadows - or had the shadows stepped out of him? Lily could not even now be sure - a handsome Imperial wearing robes of blackest pitch fastened his chestnut eyes upon her own slate stare.

He had teased her with threats, put her on edge with his seemingly endless knowledge of her own activities, and then offered her power - power, protection, and a place to belong.

He was a Speaker for the Dark Brotherhood, that infamous cult of ritualistic homicide, and his name was Lucien Lachance.

Lily somberly put an apple to her lips, and after a bite, withdrew a gleaming black blade, hilt inlaid with gold, from its place at her waist. She laid it on the table before her, Lucien's challenge ringing in her ears. Some part of her wanted to call him a nut, a crazy cult zealot... but even now, she trembled at the memory of his eyes. Was there something to the fire that burned in his sharp gaze?


Dusk that day saw the departure of a black-clad, lightly laden bosmer, traveling east on the Gold Road toward a place in the Weald by the unfortunate name of the Inn of Ill Omen.