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]

It seemed there was no stopping the zombies. Riddled with arrows, they still came on. Burning from a fire spell, they still came. Balen had even decapitated several and hacked off limbs from others, but the severed limbs came on, and the headless zombies somehow still knew where to find the living.

It seemed all they could do was keep the army of living dead at bay; those who had come here to attack the city were now desperately trying to defend themselves. It seemed as if some work of evil kept the zombies animate even after they had been hacked to pieces.

Obviously nothing they could do could stem the tide of living dead. Corvus looked about him, trying to find of some way to escape, but with the great flow of zombies, their force had quickly become surrounded.

Lord Sarethi was saying something, pointing, it was hard to make out among the many moans of the living dead. Corvus looked at the place where Lord Sarethi was pointing, and saw… zombies lying down, and not getting up? Surely his eyes must be mistaken. But no, looking over the other way there too lay some zombies who had moments ago been trying to get past the hastily erected barriers.

Now he actually saw a zombie fall over. And some more there, and to the right. What was killing them? Surely nothing they were doing.

Some zombies now turned back to the city as if to answer some unheard call for help, but none got further then several feet in front of the gates before they too fell down. Nearly every zombie was now either lying still or falling down.

A great cheer came from those of the defenders still able to cheer.

Corvus did not have to wait long to find out what had happened because soon the gates of Kvatch opened and out came a group of people robed in black. None of them had the black skull and bones of a Necromancer on their apparel though, no these robes were a very dark black, as dark as the night sky with no stars.

Corvus saw Count Janus move towards the group, followed by Lord Sarethi, so he walked after them. Standing in front of the apparent leader Corvus took a step back when the figure dropped his hood. It was Lucien Lachance, the infamous Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood.

During his time as the Gray Fox, Corvus had done his best to keep his guild out of the way of the Dark Brotherhood, hoping that by doing so, he would keep them safe. He knew thieves, as skilled as they may be, could never hope to go toe to toe with the Brotherhood.

Lucien must have sensed his trepidation, for he spoke in an almost kindly tone; “Relax my brother of the shadows; today is not the day we claim your life for our mother.”

Turning to someone standing beside him he continued, “Well, I trust this settles our debt to you, Filben.”

“It does,” came the reply “And thank you, Lucien.”

“You’re welcome, my little pet.” Turning to the three men standing before him he continued, “And may I hope, gentlemen, that we never meet again? For to meet again would likely mean our mother claims your life.”

Turning on his heels, Lucien and his followers walked back through the crowd and into Kvatch, surely returning by the same shadowy route by which they had entered the city.

Corvus looked questioningly at Janus though. “I thought you told all of us Filben here died at Skingrad.”

“Ah, but she did my dear Corvus- in a way. I fear there was no way for me to save her life, not her old one, but I was still able to give her a new one. And after I proposed it to her, she accepted.”

“True,” Filben interceded. “While I might have been hesitant once, my many talks with Janus here allowed me to see there really isn’t too much difference between this life and my old one. At least not so long as I don’t allow there to be.”

“And the look on Falcar’s face right before I sank my teeth into him was more than worth any downside I might experience down the line. I’m not sure what shocked him more, the idea of a semi-dead creature not under his control, or seeing me again.”

“Sank your teeth into him?”

“Yes, but don’t worry, I chopped off his head afterwards; we wouldn’t want someone like him to sour the good reputation of us Vampires, would we?” Filben said with a wink.