Cyrodiil Options

[Alexander]

Ok, so for the unavoidable introduction babble, as most of you know I was rather pleased with Morrowind. I thought it was far better then the dribble I wrote prior to that, and most people seemed to agree with me. After I finished Morrowind I already had an idea for a sequel, I actually wrote the very first chapter of said sequel while I was posting up parts of Morrowind. Unfortunately though, after that first chapter I kind of lost interest. I didn’t think the ideas I had back then were enough to weave an entire story together, and I was probably right.

But as these things have a habit of developing themselves, over the past months I kept thinking back to the sequel, and kept adding ideas to the pile I already had. Now it’s done. I once again enjoyed writing this, and I hope you’ll have similar fun reading it.

As I’ve explained in the past, I’m not very good at making up things like titles, Akatosh knows it took me about as long to come up with the various titles of the chapters as it did to write the entire thing, so I’ve named the story “Cyrodiil” (catchy wot? )

Before I end my babbling and get on with posting the story, I once again would like to thank Treydog for agreeing to help with my story as editor, and for fixing the many, many, many grammatical and spelling errors, and placing every comma, semicolon and whatchamacallit in the correct place. And thanks to everyone who ever read Morrowind, and commented. I really enjoy the comments.


Now, while you don’t have to have read Morrowind, I believe in order to get the most out of Cyrodiil, it would be recommended.


So, enough babbling and on to Cyrodiil.

[Alexander]

Chapter 12. Betrayal.

Chancellor Ocato, Grandmaster of the Blades Jauffre, Captain of the Blades Steffan and Emperor to be, Dilbor Septim, previously known as Dilbor Mornard; were traveling back to Cyrodiil in the company of two dozen of the finest Redoran elite warriors. The last thing Lord Nerevar had done before he had to leave them was arrange for this escort. He personally vouched for all of them, so Ocato found himself traveling easy.

His first impression of the Emperor to be was that he was a very serious, intelligent young man, though he had a very colorful background. Apparently he had been a rising star in the Thieves guild of Cyrodiil. He had already made it to Shadowfoot, second highest rank in the guild, and was charged with leading the local Kvatch contingent of the guild. From what Ocato learned, he gathered he might even have been the person who had given Jauffre and him quite a scare several years previous.

They had, through meticulous work, finally found who they believed could very well be the successor to the Grey Fox. He was a cat burglar back then, and active in Bruma. They continued to follow him and, judging by the story Dilbor told, he was the one. They registered him becoming Shadowfoot, and achieve increasingly difficult thefts. They were certain he had been able to steal a precious artifact from the ancestor moth priests and were almost entirely certain it had been him that had been behind the theft of one of the Elder Scrolls, though officially no Elder Scroll had been stolen of course.

If the assumptions were right, then he was the man who had delivered the Elder Scroll into the hands of Corvus Umbranox, allowing him to cast aside his Grey Fox persona and return to his wife. But then all of a sudden, about a year before Kvatch was destroyed by Daedra and only days after the Grey Fox had once again become Corvus Umbranox, the man they had been following vanished. They always assumed somehow someone had found the tail they put on him, but apparently there was a different reason.

“Sir,” one of the Redoran guards called to Ocato, “Look ahead.” Looking ahead, Ocato saw a large band of riders closing fast. Good, he thought to himself; Evangeline has sent an escort. Turning to the lead Redoran, a nobleman himself from what he understood, “Balen Sarethi, I thank you for your trouble. I believe my guards will be able to manage the rest of the way.”

“Ah, Chancellor, I wish not to be disrespectful with this question, but is it often the practice for you to send an all-Argonian contingent?”

Looking back to the approaching horsemen Ocato found Balen was right. He used a spell of farsight to double check it, and he found the group in front of him was indeed all Argonian, not only that, two other groups of Argonian riders were approaching from both flanks.

“To arms!” Ocato shouted, then turning to Balen quickly explained; “Those are not my men; we believe them to be mercenaries, and seeing them here I can think of nothing but that they know we have the Emperor, and they wish him harm.”

“Then first they will have to come through me and my men,” came the reply. Balen quickly shouted orders to the other Redoran; one of them hurried away back to Morrowind, which was still in sight, while all the others dismounted, sent the horses away and got into formation.

The whole group formed a circle around Jauffre, Steffan and Ocato who in turn formed a circle around Dilbor.

The brave Redoran beat their swords against their shields as if daring the Argonians to come. Such a determined group of people was likely not what the mercenaries were used to facing, for they halted shortly before connecting with any of the defenders, and what Ocato assumed was their leader spoke;

“One greets the one in charge here.” Balen replied, obviously not wanting to give away Ocato and the others as more important, “Be gone with you, fetcher; you have no business here.”

“One does, one surely does. The rest of you need not die though; all we come for is the one called Jester. One and his will leave the others alive.”

Balen turned to face the other Redoran, “What say you boys, give up our charge or fight these N’wahs?” “Fight! Fight! Fight!” came the reply as one voice.

“Kill them all!” came the command from the Argonian. And the battle was on.

The Argonians tried to crush the Redoran, but many of the Morrowind fighters had long swords that could easily cut in underneath an Argonians cover, or bow and arrow with which they shot them from their horses. Still though, they were outnumbered at least seven to one. Ocato used a calculating look to assess the situation; whenever he saw an opening he sent through a spell taking down one or several Argonians. He also used his limited healing abilities to help the Redoran where he could. Despite all their effort and heart though, slowly but surely the Redoran were falling. Here one was lying with a sword still sticking out of him, trying to use his dying breath to pierce the underside of a horse. There a Redoran warrior was attacked by three mounted Argonians, while one dismounted and came unseen from the side and stabbed him.

Ocato realized the battle was going wrong. They could not win; during the past few minutes he’d already found several Argonians facing him, where gaps had appeared in the outer circle of Redorans. Still though, everyone fought with unbelievable courage. A moment ago he had seen Balen go down, but a bit later he was up again and battling two Argonians; his face was bloody and Ocato realized the blood was mostly Balen’s.