A New Sun Rises - Maxical's Adventures, The Truth Behind The Oblivion Crisis Options

[mALX]

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A New Sun Rises

This story covers the daily events in the two years leading up to the Oblivion Crisis. It begins following the life of a semi-typical Khajiit girl who inadvertently finds herself the pawn of a powerful necromancer just as factions and forces begin moving into position.

When motivations are revealed it drives out the secrets of forgotten pasts, and another Khajiit girl whose life was an intertwined mirror of her own till both were altered irrevocably by the same necromancer in whose power they both found themselves.

The diverse paths their lives took merge once again in an explosive revelation that leaves one wondering how much of her skills and personality were ever her own; the other in a desperate struggle to keep control of her life, keep from being used against the Emperor as the crisis that will change Cyrodiil and the rule of Tamriel forever begins.

Maxical

Prologue

Sun's Dusk ( 3rd Era, year 432 )
Ma�Thjizzrini Qa
15 years after her parent's deaths

Fate is an invincible enemy in a battle you�ll never leave unscathed. It stalks you as prey and strikes regardless of shields or armor. The gods and other realms can find entertainment in manipulating your path on a whim; or ancient vampires dabble with your life, alter your mind without you even knowing it. Sometimes you don�t find out till it is too late.

I�d like to blame the gods for where I found myself, but the truth is that somewhere between the void and the Dreamsleeve lies fate; a place where time and space meet; where even the blackness of the void doesn�t reach, and the gods make wagers on the outcome of lives caught in the �tween.

Wedged into that fold are damned souls, souls that have been marked for paths they can�t change, to destinies they can�t escape. Ancient vampire's eyes see them as beacons, follow them as scents, control their minds without their ever knowing.

They are targets for revenge of an enemy they don't even know exists, pawns in a game they didn't even know was being played; whose contestants their worst nightmares couldn�t envision.


That�s where I found myself fifteen years after the game started. That was the day I found out that everything I�d ever known about myself had always been�her. Amiela.

Amiela was a 137 years old demon of a vampire that thrived on destruction and usurped whatever she could from others. She died a century before I was born, but the wars being fought over her didn�t end with her death. Her soul was marked�and inside me.

For me, fate was my parents bringing me through the heavy forested area of the Gold Road just outside Skingrad at the same time the second worst necromancer of our time was in a battle for the soul of Amiela. And there I was, a convenient hiding spot.

That was the day my parents died. All I ever knew of them was where they died and what killed them. I was twenty years old before I even learned my mother's name. I was twenty years old before I remembered Nisaba. Nissy.

*******



Nisaba

Nissy�s beginning didn�t just match mine, it was mine; though neither of us knew it before we�d both turned twenty years old. That was the year our paths crossed again and we learned the only scraps of our histories anyone was ever able to recover. That's when we learned our destinies were intertwined long before our lives began.

Nissy and I were born within a month of each other in the year 412, both born in the 'no-man's' land of wild mountain passes between Vvardenfell and Cyrodiil. Our parents were traveling together and we were born en route, but our histories began long before that.

From early childhood our parents were owned by Hlormaren, a Dunmer Stronghold on the Bitter Coast of Vvardenfell. Before that they were housed in the same children's slave pen on the mainland. Maybe our histories began long before that, but that was the furthest back any information went that we were able to find.

Nissy�s mother died giving birth to her. Her father dropped her off at the Imperial Legion Orphanage for the un-adoptable when she was two. Three years later a Legionnaire dropped me off there when my parents were killed in a minotaur attack.

Fate once again found Nissy and me four years later in the middle of the night, right there in our room at that orphanage. We were both nine years old when our destinies were wrenched into the hands of the worst necromancer Tamriel has known since the King of Worms. Both of us have been in his power in one way or another since. Dagoth-Malan.

That was eleven years ago, eleven years that Nissy waited for me to keep a promise to save her...eleven years that all my memories of her were stolen by Dagoth-Malan so I couldn�t keep that vow. Until fate brought us together again when we both turned twenty.

Nissy and me, we were both in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fate.

** The Beginning **



Where Memories Begin And End

Legion Office, Imperial City
3rd Era, year 417 (memories of events that occurred when Maxical was five years old)

The earliest memory of my lifetime begins and ends in the Legion headquarters in the Imperial City. I�ve never been able to remember a single moment of my life before finding myself in that office.

It was a coming awake. A dark void of nothingness, and then in a blink my eyes were open and there I stood in that office with no idea where I was or how I got there.

An odd putrid odor I couldn't name seemed to be clinging inside my nostrils and roiling my stomach, even the pungent stench of sweat emanating from the large man behind the desk was a welcome relief in comparison.

There was an odd feeling of having forgotten something important that niggled irritatingly, a barb that probed against my mind to remember, but there was nothing to answer its incessant prodding. Nothing. It was like a journey through a maze with only dead ends at every turn. I didn't know where I had come from, where I belonged, or who I belonged to.

At first I barely understood what they were saying; strange sounding words spoken so harshly and rapidly that it was impossible to grasp even one to decipher. They couldn�t understand me at all when I spoke.

Somewhere deep inside me in a place as unconnected to me as the lost memories of my life before that office there was the oddest sensation; a stirring, as if that part of me was just now waking. Suddenly their words were striking a chord of recognition It almost felt as if I could speak their tongue, but when my mouth opened the words still came out in the only language I knew.

*******

The large sweaty man behind the desk pointed at me. "What is that?"

"Don't know, only that it's the get of some beasts killed by a minotaur up on the big curve of the Gold Road in County Skingrad. Couldn't tell what they were either. The mother was a bloody mess; but the male...fur black as coal soot, and the same flattened face as that one's." He indicated my face, then added, "Too big for a cat, never seen anything like him. Both bore slave tattoos so they can't be from Cyrodiil. No travel papers or identification on either body."

The large sweating man's chair groaned loudly as he leaned over and gave me an intrusive and extended eyeing. "That ain't no Khajiit, not with that white coloring. That face gives me the creeps, you said the male looked the same? This one must be an albino then. No telling what you'll find in those other Provinces, all barbarians." He spat a large wad of brown cud into the urn beside him.

"The male had been looted; they even took his clothes, naked as a jaybird he was. Found this in the brush near the female's body." He held out a blood spattered travel pack. "When I moved her body this silver dagger was underneath her, and this gold locket fell off her neck. Chain was broken, likely in the attack."

The rotund man tossed him a cloth to wrap the items in, then pointed at me. "How old do you think it is?"

"Too small to be very old. Can't be much more than a couple years. It walks well enough, though. And mark it as female, it squatted to relieve itself on the way here."

"Two year old female." The large man wrote something down.

"And a bad tempered one at that. She scratched me up good trying to get her on the horse." That was met with raucous laughter from the men gathered.

"It's that red hair!" Someone called.

The mocking laughter and insulting treatment I understood without the help of that strange place within me that seemed to know this language. I didn't know anything about myself or how I got here, I was confused and up till that moment terrified. But at that moment I learned that I had a temper. I could feel it building inside me like a fire about to go out of control.

In my rage I nearly missed that their odd contortions and rudimentary gestures to communicate were attempts to get my name. My name. That would be important to find out who I was.

�Ma'Thjizzrini Qa.� A girls voice squealed from behind me. I turned to see a Khajiit girl in the doorway staring at me wide eyed.

"Ma'Thjizzrini Qa!" She started running toward me, but one of the armored men grabbed her and pushed her back out the door.

As soon as she said it I knew that was my name, it struck a familiar chord immediately. I repeated it, imitating their miming gestures by pointing to my chest. �Ma'Thjizzrini Qa.�

"Name, Maxical." The rotund man wrote something down, then stamped his seal on the document.

*******

They said I was found beside my parents, was there when they were killed. I didn't remember any of it. It felt like they talked abstractly about strangers. The greatest shock for me that day and so many days since was that I didn't even know my mother's name; wasn't able to bring an image of her to my mind, or even a glimpse of a moment with her or the sound of her voice. It was like she disappeared into the void, taking every remembrance of her.

That day in the Legion office though, that I will never forget. The smell of pipe smoke and tobacco, male sweat and steel; those odors bring back the memory of that day as if it was still alive within me, still happening to me.

It has stayed fresh in my mind all these years; but not because I wanted to remember it. It was that haunting memory that was just out of grasp beyond it, the sheer number of times I�d come to that stopping point in my memory and tried to force beyond it to find something, anything of who I was; of my life before that Legion office. Of my mother.

That day, those men staring at me as if I were an insect as they tried to determine what I was, what I was saying...what to do with me. All through it my mind burned with trying to figure out who I was and how I got there. I'll never forget that day.

*******

This post has been edited by mALX: May 4 2019, 07:13 PM

[mALX]

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The Orphanage

Chapter 4: The Home Visit


Two guards escorted me for my probationary visitation, I probably looked like a prisoner to the people we passed...and felt like one. I was nervous...terrified, actually. I was terrified of failing, returning to the orphanage rejected by Alix. Terrified of seeing the look of rejection on his face, of knowing it would be the end of our practices together. I'd lose everything.

This would be nothing like seeing Alix at the blade practice. Everything about this felt wrong; unnatural...formal and stiff. Then there was the tension about meeting Alix’s wife. Probably a Breton like him. I didn’t imagine Alix wanting to bring a beast home and adopt it going over well with her.

All the orphans that had been through this themselves warned me off getting attached; and how much worse the rejection felt when someone that had gotten to know them slammed the door on them. They'd all been through the Legion trying to place them too, but called this the ultimate rejection. I could see it in their eyes while they talked; humiliation and the kind of pain that cuts deep and doesn't go away.

Several advised me to deliberately blow it, take the pressure off. I wasn't sure if it was because they had bet on me to fail, but to be honest a part of me wanted to follow their advice. As they said, at least then I'd hold the power over whether I was rejected, it wouldn't come as a knife in the dark after trying my hardest.

I hadn't slept and had barely eaten in days, dreading this trial visit. I wished we could have gone on just the way we were; that Alix never applied to adopt me. I've never felt so much pressure, was physically ill from it.

My only firm plan was to watch Alix, gauge what he was thinking. I'd decided to run away straight from his home if I thought he didn't want me, never return to the orphanage and face them knowing Alix had rejected me. Maybe they'd assume he'd gone through with adopting me.






***


The guards stopped at an Inn, I thought for a meal. My stomach was in knots, I had no desire to eat. As they were lifting me down from the horse, the door of the Inn opened and Alix came out. It turned out he lives there.

It felt completely different than meeting him at the quad for blade practice. I felt shy and awkward, nauseated and slightly faint. I had a strong urge to burst out crying and didn't know why or if I could stop it. I just stood staring at the ground, fighting to keep from bawling or vomiting. One or the other felt imminent.

“It feels strange for only a short while, then they will leave and we will practice. Will that make you feel more comfortable?”

Alix's voice, but speaking in my own native tongue broke through my intense focus on my shoes, startling me into looking up. I breathed in relief and nodded, somehow comforted by hearing Ta'agra coming from Alix.

When Alix introduced me to his wife it was a welcome shock that brought an instant easing of the tension in my stomach. She was Khajiit.

Not even Alix could have made me feel more welcome than S'Jirra did. She chattered incessantly as she took me up to my room, mostly about how long they had prayed for a child. She said I would fit into their family just perfectly. I hoped they would still feel that way after they saw how I behaved.

S'Jirra had taken a lot of care in setting up one of the guest rooms for me, and proudly showed me every alteration she'd made to turn it into a room that would suit a little girl about to turn seven.

A princess could have stayed in it and not complained. Pink ruffled curtains tied back with ribbon hung in the window and off an arched thing on top of the bed. I pointed to it, wide-eyed.

"What's that?"

"That's a canopy, dear. Alix added these tall posts to the bed, but it looked too severe for a little girl. I made him get right back out there and build the canopy. This will be your room from now on."

A doll made of rags rested on the pillow. I grabbed it up and hugged to my chest.

S'Jirra beamed. "I made that for you."






***


A silver dagger lay angled on the dresser along with a travel pack that wasn't made like the Cyrodiil packs. There was an odd pattern of discolored brown spots that looked like someone had recently tried to scrub off, the leather was still wet. It struck a chord of recognition in my memory and made a sickening knot form in my stomach. Those spots had been red when I'd seen them. This was the same pack I'd seen that day in the Legion office where all my memories stop.

"How did you get this?" When I looked up S'Jirra was watching me, her eyes looking like she may cry any second.

"That pack and dagger belonged to your mother, dear. Commander Phillida gave them to Alix yesterday."

"My mother's?" I sunk down on the bed in shock, fingering the pack carefully. How could I remember a pack, but not my own mother?

S'Jirra picked up a gold locket on a chain from the dresser and sat down beside me on the bed. "This was hers too. The locket opens up, see? You can put something you treasure inside it." She clasped the locket around my neck for me, then held me gently.

I cried, but the tears and ache inside me were for not having any memory of my mother. I fell asleep cradled in her arms, clutching my mother's pack and the ragdoll.

When I woke S'Jirra was still there holding me. The pressure and worry I'd felt all week was gone. Everything felt right here, like I belonged already. I had no doubt Phillida was pushing this adoption through if he'd already given my mother's things to them. Everyone had warned me not to get attached, but...there was no way not to.






***


Alix kept his promise and took me out to practice, teaching me several new moves while S'Jirra watched from the porch. He said that everything he knew of blades came from here, pointing to his head. He said with me it all came from my heart, and that was a gift.

The weekend flew by. I talked a lot about Nissy, but never mentioned adopting her too. I won’t lie and say I behaved the whole weekend, though I did try to. Some things got broken, and I did some things wrong, mostly pranks. Most weren’t deliberate.

I'd discovered you could access the roof from the hill behind the Inn if you ran and then leaped. S’Jirra has hundreds of Jumbo potatoes around that she uses to make the best potato bread I've ever tasted. It was only natural for me to play with the potatoes on the roof because they would roll down it and drop off.

A Legionnaire was riding up for the luncheon just as a potato was rolling down, it was too late to stop it. The potato hit the ground behind the horse and rolled quickly under a bush. The horse went into a frenzy, dumping the mounted and taking off at a dead run. The Legionnaire didn’t see me and blamed Alix, cursing him. I thought I was going to see a fight for a minute.

While on the roof I found a birds nest with baby birds in it. I brought it in to show S’Jirra, and an angry mother bird flew in behind me and disrupted the lunch crowd.

The worst thing I did was truly an accident. A Forester that frequents the Inn was trying to teach me archery with an old training bow Alix found in the basement. The arrows went everywhere but where I was aiming. I accidentally stuck the Forester with an arrow. That was the end of my archery lessons. He finally accepted my apology, but I didn't get the feeling he forgave me for it.

It was the last day of my probationary visitation when I tried to slide down the steps on a serving tray and crashed into Abhuki, knocking her down. She was carrying a platter of orders that flew out of her hands. Several things got broken and the orders had to be re-filled. Abhuki owns the Inn.

“It’ll be a miracle from the Gods if we ever see another customer. These past two days have cost more than the entire year before.” Abhuki grumbled.

Somehow between S'Jirra's doting fondness and Phillida giving them my mother's possessions in advance I'd forgotten that Alix and S’Jirra could still change their minds about wanting to adopt me. With a sickening twisting of my stomach it suddenly struck me forcibly, the realization that they could. That they might.

That realization, the fear; I know it showed on my face, I could see reflections of their reactions to it building in their eyes. I'd planned to gauge their thoughts, but here was the moment for me to do it and I couldn't. My mind was frozen in the fear that I'd lost everything. No amount of being sorry would take back what I'd done, what I'd cost them.






***


My mind was churning a flood of images, the universal rejection on all those faces as they slammed their doors closed to me. I couldn't stand seeing that same look on Alix and S'Jirra's faces, not from them.

My breathing constricted in my chest with a choking sound. I ran, blindly pushing through the door and out the gate.

At Alix's practice field I ground to a helpless stop, not knowing where else to go. A thick forest ringed the clearing of the Inn, with only a rutted dirt trail winding through the brush leading to it. The dark woods terrified me, Abhuki said it was filled with wild beasts. My mother's dagger lay on the dresser in my room, I'd have no defense if animals attacked me. I turned first one way then the other, not knowing what to do.

The sound of the creaking front door was followed by a footfall I recognized as Alix's. My arms and legs felt rigid with fear that if I turned and looked he'd be carrying my things. I couldn't bear hearing Alix say he'd changed his mind, wished he'd sent S’Jirra...no. I couldn't take her not wanting me either.

Alix's hand touched my shoulder, but I couldn’t turn to face him and kept my face averted. My heart was pounding in my chest and it hurt to breathe. His hand slid down my arm and turned my shaking hand palm up. I expected my mother’s pack, or the dagger. Instead Alix placed his silver longsword in my hand.

The sword warmed in my hand, comforted. An old friend that is beside you when everyone else is gone. A tear slid down my cheek in spite of my effort to hold it back, and then Alix spoke.

“There is nothing you could ever do that would cause us to stop loving you, or wanting you to be our daughter. You need never be afraid again. You are as much a part of us as that sword is a part of you. That is my silver longsword, I’ve had it since I was your age. I am pledging it to you as a vow that I mean this from the heart. You need never doubt our love again.”

“I can’t behave, no matter how hard I try.” My voice was raw.

“Then I guess our lives will be that much more exciting for you being with us."

The air released from my chest in a rush, breaking the hold I had on my control. Alix lifted me up and held me tightly while I cried.

Alix said he believed some children just had more spirit than others, like some horses were more spirited than others. He didn't believe in breaking a child’s spirit by punishing them for ill deeds. I told him I hoped they were on good terms with the Gods then, and he laughed.

Almost five years in an orphanage that even its name tells you there is no hope that you'll ever have a home and family, ever be loved. It was over. I thanked all the gods whose names I could remember for Alix and S'Jirra, they couldn't have picked a better home for me. Alix and S'Jirra doted on me, even after they saw how I behaved.

I had to leave the dagger there when they took me back to the compound at the end of my probationary visitation. Alix said Commander Phillida wouldn’t sleep nights if he knew I was armed. He lay the dagger on my dresser and said it would be there waiting for me to come home. They escorted me back and then went immediately to start the adoption proceedings. I'd forgotten to ask them about adopting Nissy.



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This post has been edited by mALX: Jul 22 2013, 12:33 PM