Listen To The Sound Of The Ashlands, Chapter 2-> Lock Options

[Fiach]

~ Time to start Chapter 2, as always, feel free to comment and give your opinions on the story so far ~
Chapter 1-> The Return


Chapter Two-> Lock


The wind was merciless that night as it lashed against the thick walls of Vivec, Abigail looked down at the waters below.
She enjoyed the view from up here, it helped her forget everything. The hardships, the battles lost and the people that abandoned her.
There was knock on the door. Abigail smiled to herself. Not this again…

“Come in” she sighed, the door opening with a shallow creak. “Roderick, Fathis…what do you want?”
The dunmer and redguard behind her both turned a bright red, she didn’t even have to turn around. “Our men caught some travellers up north, we were wondering if…”

“Are they spies?” Abigail cut Roderick short, making his blushing redguard face darken even more.

“Eh…no, we don’t think so miss”

“Are they Fugitives?”

“We...we don’t think so…”

Abigail turned around, her eyes fiery. “Then why are you wasting my time?” she growled. Roderick paused, speechless. Less than a decade ago they were in Suran, drinking, dancing and having fun.
But the last ten years did a lot to Abigail, at nineteen she was still a girl with a pretty face and mischief in her eyes.
But she had grown since then; her face now was beautiful, ladylike. Her emerald eyes were hardened from seeing her friends die and her voice was like tempered steel.

Once she wore dresses and loose fitting leather armour, now she was dressed in the attire that once belonged to an Ordinator, with a purple sash tied around her forehead to keep her lush brown hair out of her eyes.

Fathis smiled softly, “We are pretty low on men Abigail” he said slowly, “They could come in pretty useful…One of them is a Tsaesci.”
“A Tsaesci?” Abigail whispered, interest showing in her eyes for the briefest moment. “Whatever” she murmured, giving a shrug before pointing at the door. Fathis and Roderick gave a bow and left the room slowly.

Roderick took a deep breath, “I hate it when she gets like that!” he wheezed. Fathis nodded in agreement. “Lock should have come with us… he knows how to talk to her.”
“I don’t think she’s waiting for Lock.” Fathis whispered
“What do you mean? oh”

When I finally woke up my body was sore, my feet and hands were numb and there was a warm, coppery taste in my mouth. Blood. “Just perfect” I muttered as I looked around. I was lying on a wooden stretcher with a sheet pulled tightly over the frame, the room around me was windowless but dozens of shelves lined the walls, each one filled with vials and potion bottles.

“You took quite a beating my friend” muttered a wheezy voice.
“Haeil?”
The Tsaesci stood up from a chair that was dipped in the shadows at the edge of the room.
“You were talking in your sleep… sounded like a nightmare.”
I shrugged.

“I can’t really remember”
Haeil smiled, “It was probably the medication…these guys have been pumping you with the stuff”
“These guys?” I asked
Haeil laughed, “The resistance Furan…. I’m a member of it now”
I looked at him strangely, “When did all this happen?”

“You've been unconcious Furan...for a week. When they tried to capture us I ended up beheading a couple of their men…it seems that the people here are just as blood thirsty as they are back home.” His laughter rang across the stone room. Before I could open my mouth to ask something else the door opened and someone walked in.

She was a Bosmer, dressed in the blue robes of a mage; her hands were filled with dozens of pale grey scrolls. With a sigh she placed them on the table in front of her and looked at Haeil.
“Is he doing ok?”
“Of course Madeline…don’t you trust me?” The mage--Madeline gave a grunt before turning to look at me.

Madeline looked very young for a mage, no more then thirty; her copper red hair was tied back into a ponytail revealing a pair of slender pointed ears. She had a light smile on her face but there was intelligence in her eyes as she scanned my arms and face, her gold pointed fingers checked my pulse and bruises.

“I’ve been in Morrowind for nearly 9 years and I never saw injuries like the ones you had ...” She said. Her sharp blue eyes were flicking from me to the book that was in her hands.
“9 years…” she sighed, “I swear to Akatosh if I ever see that swit Traven again, I’ll make him wish that he avoided magic as a child!”
“Whos’ Traven?” I asked
Madeline looked at me, “He’s the Arch-mage of Cyrodiil or at least he was when I left….”

She put on a high pitched voice, like what little girls did when they insulted someone. “Go to Morrowind Madeline the guild needs your leader ship there, it’ll be an adventure, think of all the spells you will learn…” She spat on the ground, “But noooo, one year I’m in Balmora and then I’m being harassed by argonians for being a witch. A WITCH! Can you believe it?”

“It happens a lot, just agree with her and we’ll be fine” Haeil whispered softly. I nodded with a smile.
Madeline gave a sigh and wrote some thing down in her book. “I think it’s time that you went down to Lock” she said, gesturing toward the door.

Haeil nodded and pulled me out of bed. “Where are we going?” I whimpered, the cold air nipping at my feet.

“To see Lock.”

“Who’s Lock?”

Haeil looked at me with a smile, “Oh, you are going to love this.”

This post has been edited by Fiach: Mar 30 2010, 03:08 PM

[Fiach]

Free
the autobiography is in, the school work is finished and I finally had the time to get back on track. The next post is an introduction to a character who I has not yet gained that much attention in the story. It may be a little poor seeing as I havent ventured into Morrowind in close to two weeks and if so I'm sorry
But none the less I hope you enjoy it

oh and thanks everyone for the happy birthdays, I had a lot of fun


From the day I was born I knew I was destined for great things.

It was the third of second seed nineteen years ago I was born, the only hatch from six eggs, such things were not unheard of; but it still was rare enough for the cities shaman to keep their eyes on me for the majority of my young life.

I still remember the day I met him, although it has been a decade it still runs cleanly through my mind as if it had only just happened.

Eight summers old, I had pulled myself from my chambers and snuck near the great hall, when I leaned my ear close to the mottled wooden doors I could hear voices, although they were little more than a whisper.

“….but he’s too young”

“Silence woman, it has already been decided…”

“But just one more summer with him, I beg of you…”

“The son of a scale….”

I leaned my ear closer into the door, hoping that I could make out more until a calm voice came from behind me, a voice that both woke me up and set me asleep, that struck fear into my soul yet pumped love into my heart, a voice that even now I can hear when I close my eyes…

“Eavesdropping should be done with a more delicate hand my child” the voice whispered. I turned around and I did not know if I should run or stay.

He was a human, or at least that was all I could make out. He was hidden behind thick black robes that moved quietly even though there was no breeze or wind in the halls to move it.

“I wasn’t eavesdraaaping” I snarled, my cyrodilic accent already hampered by my argonian tongue.
The man smiled at this and took my hand. “Come my child” he muttered.

“We have much to discuss”
He pulled me along, up the stairs and past the areas that I had explored when I was a child. I began to get reluctant to keep moving when we reached my grandfathers library.

More than four hundred years old it was his pride and joy, telling me from a young age that if he caught me here I would spend the rest of my life in the swamp mines. “Why are we going here” I whispered, terrified but exhilarated at the same time.

The man simply smiled and nodded to the floor, to a trapdoor that was half hidden by an old rug.

Dust and cobwebs long since disturbed broke and scattered into the air when I pulled up the latch, the door opening with a shallow creak.

The man watched me carefully as we walked down the thick stone steps beneath as if gauging the expression that tried to hide from him. But there was no way I could hide my reaction when I reached the foot of the stairs.

It was a massive room, easily four times the size of my bedroom, there was…
“Sixteen practice dummies, one hundred and fourtey six different types of weaponry from Tamriel and beyond.” The man said “

A bed if you wish to sleep here as well as a small pantry, filled with plants that are grown artificially in this same room.”

He began to point out the different parts
“Melee training ring”
“Archery Range”
“Library”
“Garden”
“Enchantment studios.”

Placing his hand on my shoulder the stranger looked into my eyes and glared. His icy stare putting a shiver down my spine.

“Markit ba’Teinaava, you are a shadowscale and the son of another shadowscale as well. Such lineages are rare and thus the night mother has taken an intrest in you.”
He waved his hand in front of me, as he was showing me a wonderous gift.

“I once trained your father and your aunt here, what was once his is now yours, until he dies and you are to take his name…. and his profession.”
With one last smile the man turned and began walking toward the stairs.

“Wait!” I screamed
“What is your name?”
The stranger turned and smiled

“My name is Lucien, Lucien Lachance.”

-----------

The years were good to me, training was difficult but after a while I discovered that I liked the training and after a while longer I discovered that I had reached a stage that it was as necessary to me as breathing.

Lucien came often but only briefly, to test me and if need be help me with my excercises. He arrived without warning but when he returned to me one cold suns dusk night, I knew that something was wrong.

Lucien arrived with a limp, his pale but sharp face was sweating as if he had rushed to be here, a fresh scar ran down his cheek. “Don’t” he growled when I sprang up to help him,

His scowl softened,
“I have simply had a trying week…” I nodded in compliance.

His age seemed to have finally caught up with him in the last few months; I remembered when I was younger and marveled at his pale skin.

I said it was like paper and asked if there was more like him. Lucien laughed and said there was and promised that he would take me to the great cities of paper with him one day so I could see its paper people myself.

We talked for a few hours, like we normally did when he arrived. I told him about my weapons training and we had a few small conversations to see how strong my grasp on foreign languages had become. But still he bit his lip as if he was holding something back from me. It took him until the end of the night to tell me.

“I have some bad news” he whispered.

“You father has been killed. You aunt has as well.”

Is it possible to mourn over someone that you have never met? It is possible to weep over a face you have not touched or a breath you have not smelled? It matters not for on that moment I broke, allowing the tears to run freely from my face. Lucien simply sat there, waiting for the moment to pass.

“Why?” I demanded, “Why would someone kill him?
He was loyal to the night mother and Sithis most of all!”
Lucien opened his mouth to say something, but it was at that moment his eyes softened. I think it was looking at me that forced him to lie that night; I think it was me sobbing like an infant that forced Lucien
Lachance to care for me like a son.

“I do not know” he muttered avoiding my gaze.
“But it is ok Teinaava, it is ok now.”
I bowed my head and allowed the words to hit me.

Teinaava

“Does that mean?” I asked,
“Yes” Lucien muttered,

“You are ready to become one with Sithis.”

He pointed to a small ornament on the wall; it was golden and hung from a low rafter.
“When that lunar clock chimes six times I will have returned and I will take you with me to Cyrodiil.” He smirked.

“There is a certain individual who has recently come into my employ that I would like you to meet, someone who may very well bring the Black Hand power that they have not wielded since the days of the night mother herself….

He got up to leave and nodded again to the wall, “When the clock chimes six” he whispered, before wrapping himself with a chameleon spell and vanished into the night.

---------

I waited eagerly for Lucien to return. I looked forward to leaving with him, visiting places I had never heard of before and seeing people I had only read of in the books I have read.

The clock ran four times, five times, six times… Lucien did not come.
Seven times, eight times… I was beginning to get worried.

I was greeted on the ninth ring, although it was not Lucien who had come to me.

She was a high elf, a thick black cloak was wrapped tightly against her frame showing curves that I tried my best not to notice.

“I am Arquen” she whispered, “Speaker for the Dark Brotherhood…”
“Where is Lucien?” I asked sharply,
Arquen looked surprised at that,

“He has been dead for more than a week” she growled, looking at me with a sudden leer in her eyes,

“You loyalties belong to me Murderer”
Tears came to my eyes but I tried to hold them in as Arquen walked through my quarters, sneering at my tools and equiptment as if they were nothing more than common toys.

“There is a task the black hand demand of you” she said, pointing to a map of Tamriel on the wall, more specifically the land of the dunmer,

The land of Morrowind.
“An invasion has begun” she whispered.
“Shadowscale are needed.”

“No!” I spat
“What did you do to Lucien?”
Arquen’s eyes filled with a dangerous fury.

“Before I leave I must show you discipline it seems” she growled.
My screams ran through my training room that night. I never spat at her again.

-------

I pulled myself away from the rubble around me with a grin. The dunmer who I was sent after was strong.
No, the Nerevarine was strong.

But I was stronger.

With the last of my strength I pushed myself out of the Sithis forsaken tomb and into the sunlight beyond. Umbra lazily dragging along the ground behind me.

He would be difficult to track and I would need to report to the Black Hand of course.

But he will be found and will feel the sting of my blade.

This post has been edited by Fiach: May 24 2010, 10:49 PM