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 Arena

Chapter 16: The Gray Prince





Agronak explained, the Gray was the wrong color on purpose, it was a joke on himself being the wrong color. The Prince part was accurate, he was the son of a Lord. It surprised me to find out that he was of mixed race.

Something about that really struck home with me. My face shows none of the standard Khajiit features, and my fur is fine and sleek, almost like a skin. Most Khajiit have coarse thick fur. It wasn't the first time I had wondered whether I was the product of a mixed union.

For Agronak it had helped him to know there was a reason behind his odd appearance, and within myself I knew that it would be so much easier to accept it if I knew my appearance was due to a racial mixture rather than just a deformity of nature or a freak accident of genetics.





***

Agronak and I spent every minute together if we weren't in a bout or training. We usually ate together and sat and talked till 'lights out' when he would head across to his bed in the Yellow team Bloodworks. We knew gossip buzzed around both Bloodworks about us, but we were just friends, the thought never crossed either of our minds for anything other than that.

He mostly ignored the gossip unless he thought someone had cast a slur against me. I think how the gossip started in earnest was the fact that we held hands a lot. It was just an affection between friends and meant nothing to us, but obviously meant quite a bit to others. That and Agronak appeared to like my singing. Anyone who has ever heard a cat sing; well no explanation would be necessary.





***

"What the hell is that horrible noise? Is someone injured?" Owyn came flying out of the back room.

I stopped singing and dancing and looked around. "I didn't hear anything Owyn."

Was that the first time I realized my singing was not a pleasant experience for the listener? No. I could fill a book with the clues before that.

Adamus Phillida thought someone was torturing the prisoners. Irlav Jarol went into an apoplectic fit and had to be healed. Fathis would laugh himself into stitches. Alix said he loved my singing, but mysteriously always had something to do outside when I started. Arch Mage Traven said he was sure it could be used in battle as a form of psychological warfare, I could infiltrate and bring them to their knees with my voice and aim.

It never bothered nor stopped me from enjoying singing. I won't even begin to mention my dancing, but suffice it to say that on more than one occasion someone called for healers thinking I was having some form of walking seizure.





***

Owyn came charging up. "The Black Horse Courier is here. Agronak, you go talk to them while I prep Maxical."

Agronak squeezed my hand before getting up. I watched his carriage and facial expressions change from Agronak to The Gray Prince. Owyn's training is very strict on representing our public persona, how we answer questions and handle the public when we go out. It is especially important with reporters, because they know how to ask questions that can trip you up and get you to reveal something you shouldn't. The Bloodworks was closed to outsiders, especially the press. All interviews were held in the garden area outside.

"You remember everything I told you? They will probably ask..." Owyn began going over the drill. Before I went outside for the interview Owyn gave me a gate pass to give Hassiri and reminded me to tell him my fights were moved to the weekends now.

Hassiri from The Black Horse Courier always watches the promotion in rank matches and interviews the victor. A lot of odd things are pulled for rank matches, like how the Yellow team sent three men out to fight just me. They are the most interesting to watch other than the Championship fights. That last fight had been a rank match, I was promoted to Warrior at the end of it but was too injured to stand in the ring for my belt or be interviewed, Owyn was busy working on my injuries and so had sent Agronak up to the Arena to get the belt and talk to the press.

Owyn had always been with me for the interviews before, I was surprised and a little nervous to be handling it on my own. He had pegged exactly what most of the questions would be, though. Hassiri started off asking about my injuries. I gave the scripted answers Owyn had briefed me with, smiling and looking in his eyes as we are trained to. Then he started asking questions I had not been briefed for.

"Can you show me some of those fancy tail moves you made in the Arena?"

"I can do better than that, why don't you use this gate pass and come see me fight when I get off injured status. They've been moved to the weekends from now on. You may see me do something with my tail I haven't thought of yet." (smile)

"Moved to the weekend already? That is pretty good for a Warrior rank. Did you think it was a dirty way to do business when they pitted you against three that outranked you?"

Owyn had not schooled me for that one. "The Yellow team lost three good men in that match, Owyn thought they were just doing housecleaning." (smile)

"You did a couple moves out there I hadn't seen done in the Arena before, I'm referring to the beheading and goring, are these specialized moves, and where did you receive your training?"

I was getting in over my head, he was asking questions I hadn't been schooled to answer.

"You'd be surprised what moves you can think up when skewered on a man's longsword. My Arena training comes from Owyn and my Blade training from Alix Lencolia. The tail tricks come from Azura." (smile)

"Will you be making any of them your signature move?"

"Right now my signature is staying alive out there, but so far I haven't seen any other tails in the Arena." (smile) Oh thank goodness, here comes Owyn. If the interviews last too long he knows they are asking questions he hasn't schooled us on.

"There has been a lot of talk about you and The Gray Prince, can you confirm for the readers what your relationship is?"

"Oh, we are not related. He is an Orc and I am a Khajiit. But we are friends, all of us Arena fighters are friends. There is no Blue or Yellow teams in those Bloodworks, but one family unit until we get into that Arena. Out in the Arena there are no friendships, no family. Any thoughts you have in that Arena other than the fight will get you killed." (smile) Come on Owyn, hurry up!

Owyn signaled me and I thanked Hassiri for the interview while Owyn slipped him two more gate passes and gave him a run down on my injuries and the upcoming fights for the article. I hurried back inside hoping I had answered correctly.

The debriefing with Owyn went well, surprisingly. I told him what had been asked and what I could recall of my responses.

"You did better than expected under the circumstances." Owyn was beaming because as he walked up he had heard me quoting his training in my last response. "That was quick thinking. You did well."

I heaved a sigh of relief. "Owyn, Hassiri said those three men outranked me. Is that true?"

"They were ringers, couldn't you tell?"

"I never thought about it." I really hadn't.

"You've got the Yellow team scrambling to find fighters to pit against you. They are trying to get rid of you. You're good with that sword Maxical."

I flushed, Owyn does not give out praise easily. Then again, he may be throwing me a bone hoping I won't give up. And being good with a sword almost didn't save me in that last match. I still needed to think about it.




***

That there was gossip about Agronak and I within the Bloodworks I knew, but I thought it was odd to be questioned about it by Hassiri. That had stunned me a bit, how could silly gossip from our Bloodworks have reached the ears and imagination of the press?

It is true Agronak was protective of me, mostly without realizing it. When you are an enormous Orc with a reputation for merciless slaughter in the Arena it doesn't take much for someone to back off and feel threatened. With Agronak all it usually took was a glance.





***

When the Black Horse Courier arrived the next day I was startled to hear the sound of some liquid being spewed and Owyn roaring. "MAXICAL! GET YOUR [CENSORED] IN HERE!"

I hurried in and was shocked to see Owyn's face a bright red color. My eyes fell to the coffee drenched edition of the Black Horse Courier in his hand. The floor was dotted with sprays of it. Had he called me in here to clean up his spill? My eye caught sight of a towel on the cabinet. Glancing up at his steaming face I snatched the towel and quickly started cleaning the coffee off the floor with it.

"DID YOU SAY THESE THINGS TO THE PRESS?" Owyn bellowed.

"But ... you said I did well in the debriefing; did I say something wrong?"

Owyn's hands were shaking as he pointed at a place in the paper. "Housecleaning?"

"But; I heard you say that..."

"That is not something you repeat to the press!"

I saw him scanning down the page and his eyes suddenly started from his head. Uh Oh. "I didn't know Owyn; er ... I think I may have received a head injury in the fight."

Owyn's hand was shaking and he was pointing at a place on the paper. His mouth kept opening and closing like a fish, but no sound came out ... at first. Then it was just a roar like a raging minotaur. I glanced at the page where his finger was.

"But; I was skewered on his longsword, I don't understand..."

Andronicus hurried over and pointed to my mat behind her chair. "Git, NOW!"

I was confined to my mat so Owyn could get over being mad at me. The worst part of it was, I would not have made him mad on purpose for anything.


***




******* Agronak:










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This post has been edited by mALX: Jul 29 2016, 08:01 AM