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]

Cheydinhal; Hearthfire 10 3E411

Lily crouched beneath an overhang of the chapel of Arkay in the city of Cheydinhal. The meager outcropping of the roof, so far above her, provided little reprieve from the sheets of rain that bathed the city and set its streets awash. Pressing her back against the cold stone of the chapel wall, she crossed her arms over her chest, wrapping her long fingers around her shoulders. The weight of the heavy black cotton-and-leather combat suit she had acquired nearly a month ago, as a reward for her first assassination for the Dark Brotherhood and the Night Mother, kept her insulated from the winds, but did little to ward off the bone-chill of the wet Valus night.

Contemplatively, Lily gazed to the south, where the flickering street-lamps afforded her only the barest view of the misleadingly broken-down shack that housed the Brotherhood Sanctuary. The boarded windows and crumbling gate-wall were all the protection necessary, she mused, to keep the house's secrets safe. No one would step foot in the house, with its long history of rumors, from hauntings to Daedric cults to secret societies’ meetings. Lily smirked. Sometimes the best protection was the simple truth.

Morose, Lily turned away from the Sanctuary and resumed her unseen vigil. It was the second night of the week, and the man who had inducted her into his family of killers would be along at any time. He visited Cheydinhal every week, to inform the Sanctuary’s matron, a slippery and unfriendly Argonian named Ocheeva, of whom the Night Mother had chosen to die that week.

Minutes passed, and she shivered again, pulling her knees in tighter to her chest. She was fairly certain Lucien knew of her private sentry, and she could have sworn he had looked directly at her hiding spot the week prior, before continuing on. She didn’t mind. Far better a failure to acknowledge her private worship of this ivory statue of a man, who so richly embodied the Death she had come to revere, than his kind but disapprovingly firm rejection of the service the other Murderers in the guild so vocally offered. If Lucien had need of her, she knew, he would command it, and she would obey without question.

Besides... Lily glanced back at the Sanctuary again with a thought of foreboding. That vampire had been setting her on edge.

Vicente Valtieri, she mused. His smile was too gentle, the creases around his eyes too sincere, and the pale, blood-streaked organs themselves gazed at her too steadily for her comfort. More and more, she found, she was seeking sanctuary outside the Sanctuary – the outdoors, with its penchant for sunlight, was one place the unnervingly familiar vampire could not follow her. She suspected he wanted to turn her into one of his kind, and Lily... was fond of life.



It had been half a year since the dark Speaker had extended her an invitation into his family of killers. In that time, Lily had killed more frequently and more viciously than she had since before her expulsion from her homeland. She killed traitors, liars, deceivers, thieves, adulterers, and the terminally immoral. Her heart quivered with joy every time she drew back her bowstring, and her tense fingers on the shafts of her daggers tingled with anticipation of the righteous vindication that would follow.

She had found herself, Lily knew. Her purpose; that to which she had been born. She had played at vindictive execution before, but in every instance it had been her own, imperfect judgment that had led to the death sentence. Never the thrill of ecstasy she now drew from carrying out a divine being’s sacred orders.

For that was what the Dark Brotherhood was, Lily had learned. It was not a club of murderers. It was not a haven for homicidal maniacs. It was a solemn following of the Night Mother, and of the Dread Father Sithis, two of the true gods of Tamriel. Primordial; entropic, the gods ordered the world as they willed, and in their service, Lily had found her calling.


The heavy gate to Cheydinhal did not open, but Lily sensed an arrival. She strained her eyes to see the almost-outlines of the invisible black robe which she knew had just come over the city wall. Every combat reflex she had ever refined flared up – her breath stilled as she opened her jaw a bit to enhance her hearing, and she focused her eyes on the stationary post of a nearby home to allow her peripheral to alert her of any movement.

Nothing came. Lily’s eyes tracked from left to right soundlessly, and not a fiber of her being twitched in her tense vigil. As she silently exhaled the breath she had been holding, she glanced over to the door of the Sanctuary, wondering whether she had missed him.



And then, in a silent flurry of motion, a leather-gloved hand clamped like a vise over Lily’s mouth. Her feet were kicked out from under her, and she felt herself being dragged backward, out of sight of the guards that stood perennial watch at the city gate. A sharp pain speared her neck, and the last thing to go through her mind before her consciousness washed away was that her attacker smelled strongly of smoke, sweat, and blood.