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]

Anvil; Sun's Dusk 23, 3E414


Playing with a thick black feather she had clipped into her hair, Lily sat on a hill overlooking the city of Anvil. The sun had nearly set in the Abecean Sea, and Lily had watched the shadow of the city walls creep closer and closer to her outstretched feet for the past hour. Now she could touch the dark line with her bare toes if she stretched, having pulled off her softboots hours ago and laid them to dry on a rock after splashing across a stream at the base of the hill.

It had been three years since last she had visited the port city on the narrow spit of western shore that allowed Cyrodiil to dominate the trade routes on the seas. It boasted the second largest harbor in the Empire, with just the great jewel of Wayrest in High Rock offering superior facilities. The docks at the Imperial City, where Lily had been living during the first year of her exile, paled in comparison to Anvil's great harbor. Here ships brought the bounty of the Colovian Highlands and the West Weald to the rest of the Empire; here great and powerful magickas arrived from the Summerset Isles; here the tribute of the other provinces began their long trip to the Imperial City down the Gold Road.

And here, four years ago, one elf had come ashore in tattered leathers, banished from her homeland and grudgingly admitted by the Empire that could not prove her crimes.

Lily knew the darkness in her heart was for the memories of that time and not the city itself, but she couldn't help feeling a twinge of the bitter ferocity she had repressed during that first year. Memories of dreams waking and sleeping came unbidden, and she found herself re-imagining blazes of fire licking at the red-shingled rooftops of the Gold Coast architecture so uniformly enforced in the city below.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. The searchlight beam of the great Anvil lighthouse suddenly flared to life, and she blinked at the sudden brightness. The last corona of the sun was receding over the horizon. Lily stood, gathering up her things. She padded over to the rock where her boots lay in the last of the sun's glow and tugged them on, gazing down at the darkening city below.

It hadn't changed at all. More ships were in the harbor tonight than she remembered from her last visit, but the commerce of the Empire had been doing well in the past year, so she wasn't surprised. The houses were still the same, uniform bricks under uniform shingles; the walls were unchanged down to the broken crenellation on the east outer wall; the grass beneath the lighthouse still had that sickly yellow-green tinge that warned of bad soil. She closed her eyes, listening to the call of seabirds on the water, and when she opened them again, the sun had disappeared completely.

Time to move.


***********************************************************


Hasn't changed at all, Lily thought to herself as she hauled herself up the last inconspicuous handhold on the east wall and slipped behind the broken crenellation that greeted her, with a smooth surface and protective shadow, like an old friend. The guard at the northeast tower was still a lazy drunk, unaware of the weakness on his walls, oblivious to the way it welcomed thieves and catspaws into the rich port city's most affluent section. She stole across the battlement to the inner wall and slipped down to the decorative ledge beneath it. From there it was a short jump to the shingled roof of the second story of Anvil's fabled “haunted house”, which could always be counted on to have no inhabitants to disturb with the sound of a landing. She swung herself over the balcony ledge and dropped lightly onto the soft grass behind the house, masked from view by the massive manor's breadth and its proximity to the outer wall.

There she caught her breath, listening closely for the sounds of guards or late-wandering citizens. Satisfied, she slipped around the city wall, behind the fountain gardens facing the temple and through the shadows to the temple courtyard. Ducking behind the low wall of the temple graveyard, she carefully watched the upper windows of the large house that backed up against the temple walls like a devout zealot for signs that its inhabitants had turned in for the night. She clambered silently over the low wall and crept carefully through the garden, aware that the backs of the next two massive buildings belonged to the Guilds, who might yet have members awake and would certainly have guards posted out front. Crouching behind another wall, this one separating the mansion's garden from the Fighters' archery yard, she let a full hour pass by the temple's belltower before creeping across the stretch of open field.

Lily paused at a chokepoint between the city's outer wall where it followed the bay and the corner of an abandoned shack that marked the edge of Anvil's lower-rent district. She glanced up, and her breath caught in her throat.

There was a lit candle in the upper room of the shack. The flickering glow radiated out the window, illuminating far more of the territory between Lily and her target residence than Lily liked. She briefly wondered what down-and-out beggar might be using the tumbledown shanty as a residence, but refused to let herself become distracted. She silently watched the window from her hidden vantage point for a handful of minutes, and when no shadows moved inside the room, she began to slowly edge toward the row of townhouses in the distance. She kept an eye on the window, and by the time she reached the shadowed darkness of the nearest townhouse overhang, her worry had evaporated. Certainly no one had seen her.

Glancing upward, Lily took a deep breath and began to count houses. Arriving at the backside of the correct house, she inwardly cursed her three-year-old memory of the city's layout – this was one of the models that substituted an upstairs fireplace (and resulting external chimney) for a back door. Quickly she considered her options. The front door would be lit, and guards patrolled the streets constantly, so that option was out. The roof, she saw, while terraced, lacked the support beams that indicated a crawlspace between it and the neighboring houses.

Lily chewed on a gloved finger and pondered, stymied, as the minutes dragged by. Several times she heard the mailed feet of guards in the street out front, and she shrank into the shadows each time they passed. The bells in the cathedral rang again, and Lily realized it was midnight.

The candle in the upper window of the abandoned house flickered, and Lily's eyes instinctively flicked toward it. She saw no one, but still she stood motionless for a long moment, pressed against the city's inner wall. Then her eyes widened, and she glanced up at the townhouse again...

...and the tapered chimney leading up to the darkened window of the house's second floor.

Lily smiled.


********************************************


Before the temple belltower could ring again, Lily was back in the shadow of the haunted house near Anvil's east wall. Sheltering herself in the house's cellar alcove, she readied herself for sleep. No one would bother her here; months of living as a vagrant in the town had taught her that the guards as well as citizens of Anvil feared the house's reputation more than they feared itinerant drifters.

The woman died well, Lily decided. No screaming or protest, just a quiet realization that her life was over. She knew the woman to be something of a hermit from her days in Anvil. Rusia Bradus' husband was away on a military campaign, and the woman rarely left the house. Lily wondered how long it would take the citizens of Anvil to discover her death. She fingered her ebony dagger, proud of the new whorl of gold that had traced across its hilt. Lately the golden evolutions had begun to take nearly recognizable form, and the newest addition to Lily's dagger was clearly in the shape of a tiny mask, the sort that would cover face and head, leaving only the eyes and mouth visible. Perhaps she would be so decomposed as to be unrecognizable. Lily smiled at the thought.

She nestled her head against the stone, glad the feather was gone. Even its light weight had become a noticeable presence during the evening's work. Ever since Lily had begun to leave crows' feathers at the scenes of her murders, a subtle signature to her craft suggested to her by Lucien, she had been trying to figure out how best to bring them to the target locations without damaging the delicate vanes. Pinning it into her hair was working for the feather's sake, but Lily worried that someday the conspicuous plume would give her away.

Tomorrow's troubles for tomorrow, she thought, referencing one of Vicente Valtieri's favorite maxims. Content, Lily closed her eyes and slept.

This post has been edited by kementari: Feb 28 2009, 09:31 AM