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 17: Repercussions Of The Interview





Haki the Bold poured himself a steaming cup of coffee and sat down at his breakfast table. After selecting an orange and a sweet roll he raised the piping hot coffee to his lips while perusing the latest copy of the Black Horse Courier.

SPEW was followed by a deafening CRASH, then a stream of curses shouted loud enough that a passing guard ran in from the street.









******* Maxical


I had just finished using the bathroom by the main entrance and was about to start heading back to my mat where I was being confined till Owyn got over the urge to kill me for the things I said in that interview.

CRASH! The door of the Bloodworks slammed against the wall and stomping footsteps followed. If I hadn't just used the urn I may have lost control of my bladder at the sight of the huge angry Nord. His face and even his shiny pate glowed bright red, and if eyes could emit steam - his were. It was Blademaster Haki of the Yellow team, and he was livid about something.

"It's Haki the Bald! Someone get Owyn, it's Haki the Bald!" I yelled, scurrying back to my mat behind Andronicus.

This made him even angrier, if that was possible. He charged after me roaring.

Agronak stopped practicing and came right behind him, sword still in hand.

Owyn stepped towards Haki and shouted "Hey!"

"That fur-licking tramp called me bald!"

Agronak stepped up to him. "Take that back!"

Andronicus pushed Agronak back and Owyn gave him the Arena signal to step off. Agronak did, but didn't go far. He stood just feet away glowering at Haki and breathing loudly through his mouth like a minotaur.

"I'll handle this." Owyn growled in Agronak's direction, then turned to Haki. "You don't come in here threatening my fighters. So what if she called you bald? If you're trying to keep it secret you should wear a hat."

"She was making fun of my name!"

"You got a problem with anything my fighters do, you bring it to me. She was just calling it like she saw it. Have you lost your mind coming in here threatening like this?"

A verbal battle of major proportions ensued. They didn't physically fight each other, but it looked like they may any second. Their faces were both beet red and sweat began dripping off their brows and down their necks. They got their mouths fractions of an inch away from the other's face shouting at the top of their lungs. Spit flew and they were shaking as if holding themselves back from fighting was straining them. Their chests bumped repeatedly against each other. It was much more frightening than if they had just drawn weapons and dueled it out.

Then it got down to me saying Haki had been "housecleaning" in the interview. Owyn may have raked me over the coals for saying that to the press, but when Haki demanded an answer Owyn got right up in his face almost spitting in his eye.

"Hell yeah I told her to say that to the press! You were housecleaning, those men came straight out of prison and you know it!"

"So what? I broke no rules. You got a problem with it?"

"Yeah I got a problem, you're in my Bloodworks. Unless you're here to learn how to train a real fighter then I suggest you leave before Pork Chop smells you. He'll do some housecleaning of his own if he gets wind of you in here."


All the fighters had stopped practicing and were hovering in the vicinity of the doorway to the backroom so they could watch the fight. I had started to go over and apologize to Haki, but Andronicus stuck her arm across to stop me then pointed me back to my mat.

I was pretty sure Owyn would kill me after Haki stormed out, but to my surprise Owyn was strutting around like a banty rooster that had just routed a fox from the henhouse.

Andronicus gave me a very blunt and coarse description of exactly how what I said to the press could be misconstrued and went on to point out that all of Cyrodiil was going to be reading that over their breakfast table. I had a very red face when I apologized to Owyn.

Owyn pounded me on the back. "It's a good thing you are on medical leave for those injuries. Some will think you are trash over this like Haki did, not all though. I'm hoping most will think you were being deliberately funny like you do with your tail in the matches. That is what we want them to think. Either way this will all blown over by the time you get back fighting. Something else will happen and everyone will be talking about that and forget about this interview. It always works that way, no one stays front page news long. I don't want you to open your mouth to the press again though. I don't care what the circumstance is, you do not speak to the press again till I give you permission, is that understood?"

He laughed at me for calling the Yellow team Blademaster 'Haki the Bald' to his face. It turns out that is something they tell new Pit Dogs to see how stupid they are. I guess I should have won a prize for stupidity, having made it to Warrior rank without learning his correct name.

I remembered recently seeing his name printed in the paper and pointing it out to several other fighters that they had spelled Haki's name wrong. How they must have laughed at me behind my back. Humiliation isn't adequate to describe what it feels like to know you have been the subject of private jokes without your knowledge.


That edition of the Courier sold out and had to go into another printing. I took a lot of ribbing over it. Several men asked if I needed help thinking up a move and offering their longsword as a skewer.

Agronak tried to put a stop to it by glaring at everyone and telling them that their 'daggers' would be hanging off his sword if they didn't shut up. He was perpetuating the problem by doing that, but there wasn't any nice way to get that across to him.

Owyn and Andronicus stayed out of it till the Champion from the Yellow team started in on me. She had been practicing in our Bloodworks regularly since well before I came to the Arena. Owyn always said he thought Haki sent her over to spy.

She had always been overly rude to me right from the start. All the Pit Dogs are picked on by the experienced fighters, that is just an initiation we have to go through. It usually tapers off as we gain in rank, but she had never let up on it with me. Owyn and Andronicus don't step in on stuff like that, we are supposed to learn to handle it on our own. That was why it was such a surprise to me when Owyn jumped all over her this time.

She wasn't five foot from Owyn when she said I needed to go to the Yellow team Bloodworks and do some housecleaning. Owyn got right up in her face and shouted at her to get back to her own Bloodworks, that she was no longer welcome here. She stormed out.









******* Varnado


Varnado looked up irritated when the loud Nord slammed into The Feed Bag. Her voice carried above the crowds long before she plopped herself down at the table behind him with a group he recognized as fighters from the Arena. He was considering moving to another table when something she said in that brassy voice caught his attention.

"That white fur-ball knew exactly what she was saying in that interview. How can you still think she is innocent after reading those things she said? I'm telling you she has Owyn eating out of the palm of her hand and that blue Orc tries to fight anyone that looks at her! He would have stabbed Haki this morning if Owyn hadn't stopped him. Owyn and Haki got into a huge fight too, they almost killed each other over her. She is trash, just pure trash. She's sleeping with them all, they wouldn't be fighting over her like this if she wasn't. Owyn threw me out today over her."

"If she was sleeping with Owyn, Andronicus would have killed her by now. You're off there."

"You idiot, they don't do it in front of her. Use your head."

"Nothing happens in the Bloodworks that don't get around, if she was sleeping with Owyn we would have heard about it."

"You're hearing about it right now, you numskull!"

"She isn't sleeping with everyone down there, that Blue team Gladiator has been trying to tap her since she started the Arena. He said he'd lay his winnings that she's never been touched. Said she had never even seen a man's sword when she first came to the Bloodworks."

"Key words there, when she first came. Do you really think she could have lived there this long and stayed pure? Get real."




***

Varnado watched the Nord and her teammates as they filed out of the restaurant. There was some confusion at the doorway as a group of guards were entering at the same time, shortly followed by all three Verus brothers that ran the 'Three Brothers Trade Goods'. Varnado hailed them over to his table.

"Sit with me, I've got to tell you what I just heard."

Cicero, Sergius, and Tertullian Verus all pulled up chairs and Varnado signaled the proprietor Delos Fandas over.

"Give me another stout Delos." Varnado said, waiting till Delos took the others orders before beginning.

"Did you see the interview with the white Khajiit in the Courier today? Let me tell you what I just overheard about her. She is the same one that got Fathis Aren steaming mad over that Golden Armor we've got hanging on display."

"I read it; that Fathis Aren is one cold character. Looks down on the working class, I doubt he would have anything to do with a fighter in the Arena." Sergius said, imitating Fathis by looking down his nose at Varnado.

"Delos, bring us a copy of the Courier if you've got one."

Delos handed him the paper as he lay the frothy stein of ale down.

"Read that." Varnado pushed the paper in front of Cicero. Tertullian leaned over and read it too. Loud guffaws followed, and they began elbowing each other and making jokes.

Sergius reached over and took the paper from them, scanning it quickly. "This is that white Khajiit we saw fighting? The one with the tail?" Sergius asked, still scanning the article with the interview.

"All Khajiit have tails." Tertullian said with a snort.

Sergius lowered the paper and gave him a look. "You know what I mean, the one that made us laugh by doing tail tricks. Remember? She is the one that cut that guys head off, and when it rolled her face turned green."

"That was my favorite part of the fight." Cicero said, becoming animated. "That and when she gored that guys crotch and twisted the dagger. I hurt just watching that, but couldn't take my eyes away. I hope she makes that one her signature."

"I worry about you sometimes Cicero." Sergius said shaking his head.

"Well you should hear what has been going on down in the Bloodworks with that same white Khajiit." Varnado brought the conversation back under his control before they got off on fight techniques. He hesitated till all eyes were on him.

"Here, let me pick up your tab for that ale." Tertullian said, pulling the tab over in front of him.


When he reached the part about Haki fighting over her two of the guards stepped up to the table.

"I can verify that. I heard shouting coming from Haki's house this morning and ran in. He was in a burning rage and holding the copy of the Courier in his hands." One guard said.

"I had to write a report on him crashing into the Blue team Bloodworks this morning. He busted their door latch." The other guard said. "Here, let me buy you another stout, what else did you hear?"

Urbul gro-Orkulg from the Slash 'N Smash came in and hailed Varnado. When he found out what the conversation was about he joined in, grabbing Varnado's tab for dinner and ordering him another ale.

"I know the Gray Prince is hitting that fur."

"How do you know?" Several asked in unison.

"He's an Orc." Urbul said with a grin.

"Let's move to a bigger table." Varnado said, tucking his Septim pouch in his pocket.






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This post has been edited by mALX: Jul 29 2016, 09:14 AM