Teresa of the Faint Smile, Adventures of a Stringy Bosmer Options

[SubRosa]

Hi all, welcome to Teresa 2.0. Some of you may recognize the stringy wood elf this fan fic is about from another forum. I am going to start reposting her adventures here. However, I have taken this opportunity
for a fresh start to go back over the story and do some work on it. Starting with an entirely new scene, which you see below.

I have decided to give up the idea of breaking things up into separate Acts like I did with Not A Hero and Moving Through Darkness. It was probably a little confusing. Instead I am just going to go with a single title and let it go on as long as it needs to, hence the new name.

You will also find that the first half of what used to be called Not A Hero has been heavily edited. Hopefully an improvement! The rest of the story will also receive a facelift, although generally not as great. There will probably be a few more entirely new chapters turning up between some of the old ones as well. So this is not the same story you might have seen on the other forum.


For people new to the TF, you might find it easier to catch up with the cliff notes version in the spoiler tags below:




* * *

Chapter 1 –Warning

12th Second Seed, 3E433

The harsh croaking of a raven prompted Teresa to raise her green eyes from the only slightly bruised apple that she was eating. The alley behind the Tiber Septim Hotel was narrow, a thin gouge cut between massive stone buildings that loomed high to either side and cast its depths into dim shadow. Sacks filled with trash dotted the length of the lane, clustered in small islands near the back doors of every business and home.

The pale wood elf stood at one such mound of garbage, filled with slops and other castoffs. Rich people threw away the best food, she knew, making the back streets here in the Talos Plaza district a practical gold mine for street urchins like herself.

Screenshot

Her scavenged lunch fell from suddenly nerveless fingers however, as she gazed down the alley and saw the figure of a man running in the shadows. He was clad in plain linens, the clothing of an ordinary plebeian. But there was nothing ordinary about the way he held a drawn sword in his hand, nor the blood that stained it.

Before the elf could bolt and run herself, the interloper was upon her. Now she could see he was an Imperial by his olive skin and dark hair. He reached out to her with his free hand, and as Teresa backed away she realized that it was not only his sword that was washed in blood, but the front of his tunic as well.

"You must warn them!" the Imperial croaked through the blood that flowed from his mouth. As she stared with wide eyes, Teresa was certain she could see tiny bubbles of air bursting up from the red flow. She had seen that before, from deep knife wounds to the chest. He was a dead man, she thought, he just did not know it yet.

His hand clutched at the shabby tunic of worn sack cloth that Teresa wore, grabbing a handful of the rough material. Teresa nearly jumped as his fingers pressed against one of her breasts. The sword fell from his other hand with a clatter of steel on stone, and the Imperial dropped to his knees, collapsing into her.

Teresa stared with wide eyes at the dying man, whose head was now buried in the valley between her small breasts. Her heart raced like a wild horse, and she felt her skin grow cold as Skyrim. Try as she might to flee, her feet seemed rooted to the spot however. All she could do was gape in growing horror as the man clutched at her willowy frame and spat blood over her already bedraggled clothing.

The sound of footsteps caused her to lift her eyes and gaze back down the way the Imperial had come. There stood a handful of figures wearing dark red robes, nearly black in the dim light. Hoods of the same material covered their heads, shrouding their faces in darkness. She saw blades in their hands as well. Not mortal steel, but rather monstrous, wavy knives, like the jagged teeth of some fearsome Daedra.

"They're going to kill the-" with that the Imperial's voice gave out, and she heard a rattling noise issue from his throat. It was like a dry breeze through an abandoned tenement. Then he fell limp at her feet, open eyes staring blankly back up at her from the pavement.

"Hey, what's going on back there!" came an iron growl from the other end of the alley. The clash of armored boots rang out between the high buildings, reverberating in the Bosmer's ears. Wrenching her gaze from the dead man, Teresa turned to see an Imperial Watchman charging down the alley toward her, dark eyes glittering like polished ebony within the 'T'-shaped slit in his full-faced helmet.

"You there! Put down your weapons and surrender." The legionary had his arming sword out now, and before the wood elf knew it, he was standing before her. He took a moment to first glance down at the dead man at Teresa's feet, and then the blood that washed her tunic.

"I didn't-" Teresa gasped, feeling her blood turn to ice with the understanding of how things must look to the watchman. Then the steel gauntlet of his left hand was reaching out for her, and the words slipped from her throat.

"You'll hang for this street meat!" the legionary growled.

With that Teresa finally felt her body come back under her control. Twisting away from watchman's grasp, she sprang for the other end of the alley. Her eyes saw that the red-robed figures were gone now. Then her view swam as her foot caught upon the corpse of the Imperial. She felt herself falling, and her head slammed against something hard as she came to a stop.

Her vision narrowed, as if she were within a tunnel. She was vaguely aware of the thin, blue slit of the sky above her, flanked by the grey stone of buildings to either side. She thought she saw a dark bird spread its wings in that sliver of light. But then the shape dissolved, and turned into the steel helmet of the legionary, looming closer and closer. Finally, darkness consumed her.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 30 2020, 01:31 AM

[SubRosa]

D.Foxy & haute ecole rider: Thank you both. I used the opportunity of the re-write to tweak the description of the combat at bit.


Fiach: Thank you Fiach. I have the game on PC so I figure I might as well take screenshots. In fact, I have about a dozen different saves just for making them.


Winter Wolf: Thank you Wolf. They are lucky she did not rob them blind first!


Destri Melarg: Thank you Dest.


* * *

Chapter 3b - Masser's Light

The tunnel fell into a silence that was only pierced by the steady dripping of water and the sound of Teresa's own gasping breaths. The skin of her left arm ached where the bowstring had rubbed against it with every shot, and her fingers throbbed in pain from releasing it with her bare hands. That was what she got for using a bow without an arm bracer and a shooting glove, she thought.

Looking down at her hands, Teresa saw that they were trembling. A moment later she dropped to the stone floor, shaking all over. Her heart pounded like a hammer in her chest, and the pain in her arm and fingers became worse and worse.

Yet in spite of it all, she felt exhilaration coursing through her body. She was alive! she thought, she had faced three goblins and she was alive! She sat there, just happy to still be breathing, and waited for her hands to stop shaking.

Once they did she concentrated upon her healing spell, then released her magicka with a glow of white light that fell around her body. This time it only required a single casting for the pain in the scraped skin of her arm and fingers to stop.

The wood elf rose to take a closer look at the body the goblins had been fighting over. It was a man, an Imperial perhaps, and did not seem to have been dead for long. He was dressed from head to toe in brown leather, including a thick cuirass that could not be mistaken for anything except armor. His head was bare except for a curious-looking pair of goggles that he wore. An arrow had pierced his leg, and his throat was torn out in a huge gash.

The work of the goblins no doubt, Teresa thought. But who was he? He was not a legionary, or one of those assassins, that was for certain. Was he a thief? she wondered. She had heard that some of them used the sewers as an underground road, hidden from the eyes of the Imperial Legion. What about the goblins themselves? Was it normal for such creatures to live so near to the city? Just under its nose in fact?

Teresa shook her head. She would probably never know the answers to her questions, she reasoned. All that mattered right now was that she was still alive, and she had to get moving.

Still, her street instincts moved her to gather up the bag of coins the goblins had been fighting over. Likewise she pulled the leather cuirass from the dead man's frame a moment later and settled it upon her own shoulders. It felt heavy and uncomfortable, but if there were more goblins ahead it might save her life, she thought. His gloves followed soon after, and rifling through his belongings she discovered a dagger and a handful of lockpicks. Of varying shapes and sizes, there seemed to be one of the latter for every type of lock imaginable.

Looking over his boots, she shook her head when she realized that both of her feet could fit into one of them, and left them behind. She briefly considered trying to take his greaves, but the idea of leaving him laying naked in the tunnel just seemed wrong to her. Finally, she pulled the goggles from the dead man's head and settled them over her own eyes out of curiosity.

She was startled when the tunnel suddenly lit up as if it were under the noon day sun. She could see every individual stone in the walls, and every droplet of water that fell from the ceiling. A shaft of light from a grating in the ceiling ahead was so bright that it was nearly blinding, prompting her to turn her head away. Strangest of all, nearly all of the color had vanished from the world, reducing it to a grayish landscape broken only the occasional bits of muted red or yellow.

It was just like a Night Eye spell, Teresa thought. She had made enough potions of it for thieves in the guild to know. She knew that many of them preferred it to normal vision when they did their work, as it allowed them to see in the dark without making any light that would give them away.

A quick rummage through the corpses of the goblins yielded no great treasures as the dead thief had. They carried little more than crude iron daggers and wore filthy loincloths. The archer had a brace of arrows, but when Teresa inspected them she found they were smaller, shorter, and thinner than those she had found on the thief. They also appeared to be tipped with soft iron, where his were plainly of good hard steel. So while she strapped the arrow bag of the thief around her waist, she left the goblin's arrows behind, as she knew they would only make her misjudge her shots if she tried to use them. Once she got used to the heavier arrows of the thief that was.

That is when it occurred to her that if the last goblin had not been an archer, but instead had charged in at her as the first two had, she would probably be dead. The thought gave her a chill, and brought the tremble back to her hands. She had panicked when the second goblin was upon her, she thought. What would she have done if the third had been right behind with a knife or club? What should she do differently the next time, to be prepared for that? she wondered.

Suddenly she stopped and realized what she was doing. She was assessing weapons and tactics, as if she did this sort of thing for a living. As if she was going to continue doing so. She sounded like the legionaries did when they talked about fighting. She sounded like a warrior...

Her head spun. She was a nobody, she thought, a prole; just an orphan from the slum with no past and no future. Yet here she was alive and well, after fighting and killing an assassin and then three goblins all on her own. A curious sensation filled her chest. It was warm, comforting, and made her stand a little straighter. It was something she had never felt before, and it took a while for her to understand what it was. It was pride, she finally realized as a faint smile came to her lips. For the first time in her life, she felt truly proud of herself.

The smell of feces interrupted her chain of thought however. Proud or not, she was still in a sewer. It was time to go.

She started off down the tunnel, getting used to the weight of the leather cuirass. She did not like it at all. It was too big in the shoulders, too tight in the chest, loose in the waist, and tight again in the hips. Clearly, she thought, it had not been made for her sex.

In time the tunnel narrowed and turned into a round tube, while the dry ledges to either side vanished. With no other choice, Teresa waded into the mire and pushed on to what she hoped would soon be the exit.

Screenshot

Not very long afterward the light seemed to brighten in the tunnel ahead of her, prompting Teresa to stop and raise her free hand to her face. Carefully grasping the Night Eye goggles to avoid smearing muck over the lenses, she drew them up from her eyes and rested them on her forehead.

The tunnel was plunged into shadows that obscured everything in dark swathes. Yet in that near inky darkness she could make out a red glow ahead. It was steady, not the guttering of a torch or lantern, and her heart leaped at the thought that she might finally be nearing the way out of the dank and dark underworld.

She tried not to get her hopes up too high and drew the goggles back down over her eyes. Once again the colors of the world dissolved into a dull grey. Looking more closely ahead, she saw what she thought might be bars blocking the tunnel far ahead.

Gripping her bow tightly in hand, she slowly crept forward. She stayed as near to the wall as she could because the goo was not as deep there. It occurred to her that it would also prevent her from creating a silhouette in the tunnel, and she suddenly felt pleased with herself for being such a professional sneak, even if it was completely by accident.

She came to a gate of rusted iron bars that blocked the passage. She could smell fresh air now, and hear the lapping of water beyond. Fumbling through the pockets of her sack cloth breeches, Teresa produced the heavy iron key that Baurus had given her. With trembling hands she put it into the large square lock, but before she could turn it, she found the door swinging open under her hand.

She remembered the lockpicks she found on the thief's body. Perhaps he had picked the lock to enter this way? Or maybe the goblins had? She shrugged. It did not really matter, she thought, because now she was free.

Moving through the door, she found herself standing at the end of the stone tunnel, with the vastness of Lake Rumare spread out before her. Again Teresa pushed the goggles up on her forehead, but this time did not fuss about the lenses. The giant moon Masser glowed above her with roseate light, and the night sky around it glittered with a thousand silver stars.

Teresa looked down at herself. The sack cloth breeches that she wore were soaked with filth and blood, as was the leather cuirass and gauntlets that she had appropriated in the tunnels. Squatting down by the edge of the water, she stared at her reflection with disgust. Her pale skin was as grimy as her clothing, and her long brown hair was matted with blood.

Without a second thought she cast her bow and arrow bag aside and leaped into the water. It was cool, clean, and caressed her like the touch of the mother that she always wished she had. Staying under the surface as long as her lungs would allow, she rose up and took a deep breath of fresh air.

Then she set to pulling off her gloves, sandals, and cuirass. She knew the water would ruin the leather, but it was not like any of it had been in pristine condition to begin with, and there was no way she was going to put it back on her skin the way it was. Her sack cloth breeches and shirt followed, until finally she stood naked in the lake and let her body sink into the cool embrace of the water.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 12 2011, 09:29 PM

[Winter Wolf]

That chapter was awesome. The pick of the bunch no doubt. It had perfect pace and flow, great description and a top notch ending. Bravo.

The work of the goblins no doubt, Teresa thought. But who was he? He was not a legionary, or one of those assassins, that was for certain. Was he a thief? she wondered. She had heard that some of them used the sewers as an underground road, hidden from the eyes of the Imperial Watch. What about the goblins themselves? Was it normal for such creatures to live so near to the city? Just under its nose in fact?

Teresa shook her head. She would probably never know the answers to her questions, she reasoned. All that mattered right now was that she was still alive, and she had to get moving.

I really loved this part of the story. The style with which you write reflection is second to none.