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]

Fort Farragut; Hearthfire 11, 3E411


Lily awoke in stages, drifting back to consciousness sense by sense.

The first thing she noticed was the cold. She felt colder than she had been during any winter she had weathered in Valenwood, but it was not the sort of cold brought on by a blast of winter wind. She had the sensation of being tightly bundled up, but even the wrappings around her did nothing to ward off the chill that permeated her body. Next, she became aware of a hard surface pressing against her back. It was brutal but flat, pressing into her shoulderblades, hip-bones, and the back of her head, and Lily dimly associated it with the cold flowing into her bones.

Lily regressed a step down the ladder of wakefulness and basked in half-conscious delirium for a moment before foggily realizing a sound was assaulting her ears. Arrhythmic and insistent, it shortly resolved itself into the scratching of a pen across rough paper. As she listened, she heard the scrawling pause, and there came a tinkling sound as the pen's owner tapped the nib against the vial of ink. The scribbling resumed, and Lily, resolving to open her eyes, slowly became aware of her surroundings. A far wall held a torch she could not see, casting shadows dancing over the flagstones of a hall that looked not unlike the older forts scattered around Cyrodiil. Her peripheral was blocked by the stiff folds of the dark hood she had been wearing in Cheydinhal, when she had ---

Lily's breath caught as her last memories caught up with her. Sharply she felt the bruises on her knees where she had landed on the stone terracing outside the Chapel of Arkay as her assailant swept her feet out from under her, the dull pain from the muscles she had pulled trying to defend herself, and the residual agony in her neck where her assailant's hand had jabbed into a vital pressure point, sending her into a blissful swirl of darkness. She writhed, making to spring up and draw her knife, but the motion was over before it started - tight cords bound her wrists, knees, ankles, and torso. Twisting defiantly on the stone slab, she looked toward the source of the earlier quill-scratching, which had abruptly ceased -- and froze.

Seated at a wooden writing-desk and wearing an uncharacteristically colorful pair of dark green pants and loosely tied white chemise, was Lucien Lachance.

He regarded Lily with a measured expression before breaking the silence, methodically lowering his quill to the desk. "It's about time you woke up, Murderer."

It was a moment before Lily remembered to breathe. "S... Speaker," she gasped through burning lungs, lowering her eyes to the floor.

Lucien stood and crossed the room, light footfalls resounding on the heavy flagstones. He bent and placed a finger under Lily’s chin, directing her gaze upward. The torchlight behind him seemed to set his ash-brown hair ablaze, and for a moment, Lily reflected on how normal-looking the shadowy man really was. His features were nondescript, at best, and his coloring average, even for a human. As he was, dressed in civilian clothing, Lily herself would not have given him a second look if they had met on the street.

She shivered, realizing that the Speaker probably cultivated that impression meticulously. A total lack of memorable qualities simultaneously made one difficult for a witness to describe and impossible for authorities to trace.

"It’s dangerous for little girls to be out alone after dark," he intoned, breaking into her thoughts. "Especially this near to the Morrowind border. You never know who might be prowling around, looking for an easy target."

Lily bristled inwardly. Little girl? Easy target? Tell that to the Khajiit...

Lucien ran a finger down Lily’s jaw, tracing the bruise on her neck. "Forgive me, little shadow. I jest." Lily winced at the nickname, wondering whether it was an innocent play on the normally-tenebrous traditional language of the Brotherhood, or something more familiar... and insidious.

Lucien smirked then, and poked at the bruised pressure point again, sending a flash of pain through Lily’s mind. Spots swam before her eyes, and she fought for the control to remain silent.

"In fact, you weren’t such an easy target at all. I myself might never have noticed you, if I didn’t know where to look," he continued. "You might be wondering why I brought you here," he said, taking a step back. "You have been making impressive progress, turning a few heads, as it were." He smirked again, showing more teeth than Lily thought absolutely necessary. "In fact, unless I’m mistaken, you’ve attracted your own... business, haven’t you?"

The measured cadence of Lucien’s words was unmistakable. Lily swallowed dryly, her mind racing with the memory of the offer the Sanctuary matron, Ocheeva, had made to her just a week prior. A "private contract", she’d called it, and one that Lily’s "fellow Murderers need know nothing about".

To Lily, it had sounded like a revenge job, rather than the Dread Father’s sacred decree. Quite aside from the questionable reliability of the source and the patent occlusion of the whole story, something in the back of her mind, that night at the Sanctuary, had told her to politely decline.

"I refused the contract," Lily whispered between suddenly dry lips. "Only Sithis sits in judgment on mor-" the thought ended abruptly, as Lucien savagely backhanded her across the face. Before her vision cleared, he had wrapped one large hand around her throat and half-lifted her from the stone slab.

"You refused the contract!" he barked, face inches from Lily’s own. "And as a result, the traitor Ocheeva’s damnable soul was laid bare to Sithis! Our Dread Father instructed our Mother, who informed the Listener, who came to me." Lucien’s expression changed fluidly from furious to ecstatic, and he abruptly dropped Lily back to the stone platform. She winced as she landed hard on her tailbone, and barely managed to keep her head from cracking back against the hard stone.

Lucien began to pace, gesturing grandly. "Your devotion has been noticed by the Dread Father himself, my little shadow! Such a thing does not go unrewarded! You are to be commended, little shadow, and have been charged with an honor and granted a boon!"

Lucien gazed at her expectantly. Lily, unsure of quite how to respond, ventured, "What is the honor with which I am charged?"

Lucien beamed. "The death of Ocheeva, of course! The Night Mother has selected her soul for the harvest, and upon hearing the circumstances of how such a treacherous heart was plucked out of hiding, the Listener has commanded that I myself see to the execution. But no, my little shadow... it is you who will hunt her and send her to the Mother and the Father. You, who will see the fear in her eyes and still the last writhes of her worthless, pitiful husk!"

Lily, for whom the trauma, pain, and shock of the last twelve hours had been nearly too much, was at a loss for words. Finally, she managed to echo the traditional vow of acceptance, which she had heard Ocheeva say to Lucien on many an occasion. "As... as the Black Hand wills, and the Dark Union directs, my Speaker."

The corners of Lucien’s eyes narrowed, and his smile faded to a smirk again. "Then go with Sithis, little shadow."


Lily allowed herself three full breaths’ time of assurance that Lucien expected her to simply leave before meekly offering, "Might you... cut my bonds, first, Speaker?" She nodded toward the tight, rough ropes binding her ankles, knees, wrists, elbows, and chest. Lucien, who had been in the act of turning away when she spoke up, glanced back over his shoulder. His profile was perfectly silhouetted in the light of the torch on the far wall, reminding Lily just how cruel his features could be.

"Yes... I think I might, at that." Lucien’s voice, joyous and fatherly just moments before, had dropped like a stone to a pitch that was nothing short of sinister. He turned, and in his hand was a short ebony dagger, similar to Lily’s own. She had never seen his before, but she knew from talking to the other Murderers in the Brotherhood that each recruit was issued his or her own dagger upon entering the Brotherhood. It was an enchanted thing, uniform in blade and tang, but whose gold overlays would magically evolve a little every time the blade was used to kill. In a few years’ time, each blade was completely unique – a work of art commissioned by the Night Mother and created by the dark arts of the Dread Father – and a miniature, personalized reflection of the killer whose hand it called home.

Lucien’s was intricate and twisted, indicating thousands of lives taken over decades of service to the Dark Union. As he loosely held it in his fingertips, Lily was able to see the hilt. Her eyes widened as she realized that it was covered in minuscule, razor-thin spirals of jagged gold, which no doubt pierced into its wielder’s palm every time he used it to take a life. Lily glanced back up at the Speaker’s face, and realized that the fury and pride in his eyes had distorted themselves into a pure, maniacal fire.

He reached down to her waistband, drawing her own ebony dagger from its sheath at her side. Deftly flipping it in the air, he caught it by the blade and examined the gold tracing.

"Mmm. Meticulous, methodical... my little shadow, you take more pleasure in the hunt than in the kill, do you not?" Lily nodded. "Of course. And you prefer to send them directly to the Mother, rather than letting them see who it was that sent them, or know how they were sent." She nodded again.

His voice took on a harsher edge. "But, Murderer, a part of our calling is to enjoy the last moments of the hunt, to allow the prey to look into our eyes and despair. It is on this, the primal fear and release of hope, the knowledge that death is imminent, that the Wrath of Sithis subsists. To be helpless, stripped of all possibility of escape... this is what the Dread Father and the Night Mother desire for the children they cull."

In a motion as fast as a crack of lightning, Lucien hurled a bolt of dark magic at the single torch in the room, extinguishing it in an instant. A residual limning of bluish light allowed Lily’s adjusting eyes only the barest of warnings before Lucien moved again, and when Lily’s consciousness caught up with her, her dagger and Lucien’s were crossed, in his hands, on either side of her face.

A trickle of blood crept down each cheek, and Lily was motionless. Were he to strike again, she would not afford the chance that he might miss. He won’t kill me, Lily thought, trying to swallow back panic. He’s just given me a commission. That can’t have been all a lie...

Slowly the blades drew back, and she heard a wet slinking of metal on metal as her bloody dagger slipped into the sheath at her belt. Lucien strode to the foot of the slab and lowered his dagger, tapping the toe of her left softboot.

"And now, my little shadow... I’m going to show you that fear."

Lily gasped as the black blade drove into the soft underside of her foot. A moment later, a matching incision appeared in her right foot. Then a pair of slices through the rough black fabric that covered her left ankle, and an identical set on her right. She set her teeth as the blade tore through the flesh of her calves and knees, reducing her clothing to ribbons. By the time Lucien’s blade was dancing up her thighs, she was whimpering a little with every cleave, and as he carved a sick imitation of a ritual magicka circle into the flesh of her torso, her head had begun to swim.

Lucien’s face was above hers, then, and his dagger slivered the skin on her arms. The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was his eyes, fierce and alight with a purging fire, and her own terror, reflected in them.