Tides of Oblivion, Running never solved anything, but it sure puts it off Options

[liliandra nadiar]

With the several other high quality fics floating around the board, I thought I'd give a shot at one of my own.


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1:1 - What do you do with a drunken sailor?
27th Last Seed, 3E33

The poundings pulled me from Vaermina's grip; sadly, I was familiar with each one. The pounding behind my eyes was the wages of stupidity for accepting Filch's challenge of a drinking contest at that cheap tavern behind the Docks. The pounding along my hands and arms would be from the brawl that Filch started after losing said contest to some brown-haired Bosmer girl. I think I saw her lift his coin purse as well. The last pounding was along my jaw from the fist of some guards arriving to 'restore peace'. I'd felt the first types of poundings several times in the year I had been aboard the Seatub Clarabella though not the last since I left Water's Edge.

Feeling the inside of my mouth with my tongue, I assured myself that the oh-so-important Imperial's steel fist hadn't removed any teeth while I sat up to look around. This is not a guard lockup, I realized with a hiss. From a narrow window set well above easy reach of all but the tallest of Nords, light danced along molding stone. Of course that could just have been an effect of the hangover that was making things hard to see. Across the room a rickety table, more like a stool with ambitions, held an earthenware pitcher, cup and plate. Rolling off what felt like hay under a coarse cloth, I got to my feet, very aware of the hangover pounding behind my eyes. I absently managed to notice I was no longer in the simple olive vest and leather pants I had on the night before. Someone had put some prison clothing on me, a thought I dearly wished I hadn't had. A metallic rattle followed a bump to my shoulder and, with growing feeling of dread, I looked over to see two pairs of very rusted chains hanging from the ceiling, an obscenely cheerful torch burned my eyes behind them, prompting a spin that also didn't help my head. Still, one thing managed to percolate up from my mead-soaked mind.

"Cacat." I exhaled. How, in the name of the Nine, did I end up in a fetching prison?

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"I must surely be dead, and in the halls of Azura to look upon such a vision." A voice sounded from beyond the bars that made up the door of my new room. I, slowly, turned my head and pushed a lock of flame-colored hair behind an ear. It seemed my neighbor was a Dunmer as well, between my blurred eyesight and the shadows he was in, I couldn't make out much. I didn't really want to; his voice was sending waves of revulsion down to an already rebelling stomach. "You are so beautiful, my dear Dunmer maiden," He cooed, which sent a fresh wave down, "One of the guards owes me a favor, you know. I could get us put in the same cell. Would you like that? You should have some fun before the end." This time I had to keep my mouth closed and force the nausea back down. Fun? With him? I'm pretty sure he's older then Minx, probably even dad. The idle thought of my elder sister helped settle my nerves some. Even though I hadn't seen her since she took off one night, memories of her had helped see me through the long days in the small village before I left myself. The mer's invitation, as well as any others, was something I had managed to avoid. It helped that the crew of the Clarabella knew I was a Witch, it was, after all, the reason I managed to get hired. It was also something they spread about at every port we stopped in. The reputation was good to avert unwanted attention, but it was also very problematic in getting wanted attention.

"Yeah, you heard me. No matter what the law says. No matter what they told you. You're going to die in here! You're going to die!" The hysterical, vindictive laughter brought me back to the present and I sent an irritated glare to the mer. Really, yelling around a hung over sea Witch was not the best of ideas. Or maybe it was, I certainly couldn't focus my thoughts well enough to do anything to him anyways. Deciding to ignore the perverted, crazy old mer, I trudged over to the stool and gracelessly flopped down and put my aching head in my hands. Maybe in an hour or so I'd be able to focus enough to cast some healing and recovery spells.

I had no idea how long I sat there, could've been hours or seconds for all I was aware of the rest of the world. I just kept practicing the mind exercises Gaspar taught me before he left for the Imperial City.

"What's this prisoner doing here?" A strident and very annoyed voice shattered what peace I had managed to gather. It seemed my cell had become a popular place, three humans in armor and a fourth in the over-embellished robes of a noble stood on the other side of the bars. There was a minor protest from one before the woman cut him off.

"Prisoner! Stand back, we won't hesitate to kill you if you get in our way!" The woman, a Breton if I was hearing her accent right, demanded. Wait... they're coming in here?

"You! Prisoner! Stand aside. Over by the window." One of the two armored men demanded as he slipped a key into the lock. Yep, they are. Just what I need. A rutting noble to deal with in addition to everything else. Never the less, I staggered off the stool, banging my knees against the solid wall as I pushed my back into the stone under the window. Apparently now satisfied a ragged teenaged Dunmer girl in equally ragged clothing posed no further threat to three armed and armored men, the procession filed in, the gate opener standing right in front of me with a further admonishment to not move. The noble, a white haired Imperial, passed by and what at first was an idle curious look, rapidly turned into such a razor sharp focus I almost jumped back from it.

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"You ... I've seen you...You are the one from my dreams..." Great, another perverted old man I thought, right before the gleam of red on his chest finally registered. Wait... that's the Amulet of Kings... he... this is... Cacat! It's the fetching Emperor! Oddly the fecthing Emperor(!) seemed to be waiting for a response from me. What did he want? Should I bow or curtsy? Oh I hoped not, if I bent over I was going to be sick on the ground and that would definitely be a bad move.

"W-what's going on?" I managed before a quick glance at the irritated face of the Imperial watching me had a tentative, "Sir?" added to the end.

"Assassins attacked my sons, and I'm next." Oddly, he didn't seem too bothered by the latter as I would've thought. "My Blades are leading me out of the city along a secret escape route. By chance, the entrance to that escape route leads through your cell." Of course it did. A cell I was apparently just tossed into a few hours before. Insanely, for a moment I wondered if Lord Orius had arranged this to get back at me before I cast the thought away. It was followed by an equally insane urge to ask the fetching Emperor(!) why I was in his prison. As if he would know, or care, about what some unnamed guard did to an equally unnamed sailor in the hind-end of one city in his empire.

Before I could have anymore 'bright' ideas, the Breton pushed at an apparently random stone next to the bedding and I felt a surge of magicka being released. I gaped dumbly as the bedding stone sank and the wall behind it ground open.

"Better not close this one, there's no way to open it from the other side." The Breton instructed the other two Blades; they had to be Blades, the Emperor's personal guards. The Imperial growled at me once more while the other man, a Redguard I noticed, said something about it being my lucky day. I'm pretty sure he was being facetious. I stood there, blankly looking at the hole in the wall before looking back, they had closed the gate out, and the pervert in the other cell was back at his and... Okay, not staying here to look at that. Down the hole with the heavily armed and nervous humans and the fetching Emperor(!) it was.

With only a slightly halting stride, I set off after the humans.

This post has been edited by liliandra nadiar: Nov 11 2011, 07:20 PM

[liliandra nadiar]

@SubRosa: Thank you for the welcome, as well as the advice. While the actual writing was only one draft (not counting the re-writing of a few paragraphs, mostly the first) I had been putting the script together in my head for the last several days. This is my first Oblivion fic, but not my first time writing so I've picked up some tricks, and bad habits too I'm sure. After deciding to go first person, it just poured out. Hope I can keep it up. While I rather purposefully left who the Bosmer thief was, I like to pretend it was Methredhel, I really grew to like her in the TG quests, and from Teresa. While Myrin's not a Witch like Teresa, it's less a religion but much more then a job, she worships the Nine, at least as much as any peasant/sailor does.

Nits fixed or (hopefully) cleared up.

@McBadgere:I appreciate it. And yes, I meant 'stupidity'. Fix'ed. Hope you continue to enjoy it.

@Grits: Farther then she expected.

@Acadian: Thanks for the kind words, and PoV advice. Nits nipped, it was the mead.

Last Time: Following a drunken tavern brawl, the Dunmer Witch Myrin wakes to find herself in prison. Company soon showed and rather then stick around with Valen Dreth for companionship, Myrin decided to follow down the rabbit hole.

Oddly, I had initially expected to already be out of the Tutorial by this point. Next one probably. I also didn't expect to have it pouring out quite as swiftly as it is. If only we all had that problem all the time.

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1:2 - What do you do with a drunken sailor?

The tunnel leading down wasn't too steep, it was also thankfully short as it emptied me into a hall festooned with cobwebs and dust. Clouds were slowly settling back into the scuffs left by the other party's steps. Following the humans was better then staying in the cell, and really, what would I say to any legionaries who came by and saw a big fetching hole in the wall of my cell? However, I was equally sure they wouldn't be pleased to have me tagging along. Probably make me hold a torch. I thought with a choked giggle. I took a careful breath and followed the path left in the refuse of... decades at least. I was quiet as death, ghosting down the stairs like a wind as I turned the corner... and met the eyes of the Redguard Blade. I gave him a weak smile and an inane wave, the Redguard was rolling his eyes as I ducked back.

"Form up! Protect the Emperor!" The Breton called out, followed very shortly by the sound of metal striking something... else. It almost sounded like stone, but not quite, bone maybe? But what bone could stand against the amount of clashing I could hear? Suddenly it was over, and the silence was nearly as deafening as the noise. Hearing the quiet voices of the Emperor and his Blades, I let out a breath I hadn't even realized I held. Peeking around the corner, I saw the hall now had a much more pronounced haze of dust as well as several bodies, one in the armor of the Blades, the others in plain red robes. The Emperor and his two remaining Blades were walking through a door on the far side. Once more, the Redguard's eyes met mine, his face pulled into a grim line, as he pulled the door closed behind him, the rather ominous click of a lock sliding into place sounding frighteningly loud in the dead quiet.

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Enough Myrin, I berated myself, creeping out into the new tomb, (I said stop it!) I looked over the bodies while trying to swallow with a suddenly very dry mouth. I recognized the Breton woman, with the large gash across her neck, there was no question of how she had been killed. The robed assailants lay scattered like macabre leaves in their own spreading pools of crimson. The coppery tang in the air was too much for me and with a hurk, I dove to a corner away from the bodies and deposited last nights festivities. Wiping at my mouth I, surprisingly, felt a lot better. Cautiously heading back, I toed around the pools and bodies on my way to the door. As I had expected, it was locked tighter then Captain Patneim's coin purse. A half smile pulled at my lips as I recalled the one method to get the captain to spend his coin, while a streetwalker wouldn't do me any good here, I did have something that could work just as well.

Closing my eyes, I wrapped the Stillness around me. Part breathing technique, part mental exercise, it was the first thing Gaspar taught me to reach into the pool of sky blue light I always saw my magicka as. My thoughts calmed and the questions and confusions of the day receded to the outskirts of my awareness, I drew a sphere of power and fixed a rune in my hand. With a toss, I plunged the sphere down my arm and through the rune, watching as a white nimbus drifted lightly down from my hand as a barely visible gold light impacted the door before spreading across it in a soft ring of light.

My Orisimer crew-mate, Genrik gro-Kalmik, often scoffed at my Open spell, insisting it was cheating to use magic. Yet he never failed to be first in line to get a healing spell cast on him after a night out. I smirked, remembering the time I told him using magic to cure his hangover was cheating, oh the fuss he kicked up that day was worth the dock in my pay for a month. Shaking the memory back into my mind, I was about to reach out to the door when I caught a flicker of reflected light from the shadows. Before it had completely been seen, I was launching a blast of fire into the shadows. The flames splashed against stone, trying desperately to burn something before fading into the air, but the moment of light did let me see what it was. The curving, single-edged sword of the Blades, my eyes darted back up the stairs toward the Breton's body. It was her Akaviri katana, I realized, the symbol of the Blades, all but impossible to find anywhere but on a Blade. I should know, the Captain spent enough time complaining about it.

In the calm of the Stillness, I found I was picking the blade up before I realized it. As the peace faded, I frowned at the blade. I was familiar with short swords, long blades like a katana would be awkward to use which was dangerous in a fight, so why did I pick it up? An even better question was, why couldn't I put it back down? With an irritated sigh of my own, I wrote it up to my sometimes fickle mysticism talent. It was always 'clearer' when I was Still. For what ever reason, I had to carry it for the time being, but there was no way I would do so with a naked blade. With a grimace of distaste, I toed up to the Breton's body and just as gingerly as I had approached, I took the empty scabbard by her side. The elegant blade slid into the leather with a soft, mournful sigh as I left the Blade's body behind.

The Emperor and remaining Blades were still just as easy to follow, and apparently had no further encounters with more robed assassins. In passing, I wondered about the not-bone sounds I had heard, unless it had been under their robes, the assassins were unarmored and they were certainly unarmed. Yet the Breton had been killed by a weapon, the others had struck at something, but it wasn't there when they died. I stopped and tilted my head as I looked at the scuffs before me. Of their own volition, my eyes cased to the right and to a recessed door on a loose hinge. The other side had a short, very steep stairwell going up to a hallway that, at least appeared, to run along the path the others were using.

Following what I rather hoped wasn't a dead end, I cast the recovery spells I had intended to before I met the Emperor. In a prison cell. In my prison cell. Sometimes I wondered if the Nine had a sense of humor, with days like this, I was sure of it.

"Help? What makes you think help is coming?" The voice wasn't too familiar, but I was sure it was the Redguard Blade's. Up ahead the hall opened into what looked to be a balcony over another room, it was from there I heard the voices of the Blades. Voices that were shortly followed by the sounds of combat repeated from the earlier chamber. Even as I broke into a dead run, I wondered what it was I thought I could do. Armed with an unfamiliar sword, with only a weak cloth shirt and pants between my skin and danger I would just be a moment's irritant to the assassins. Yet still I ran.

Both Blades and the Emperor were still standing as I skidded to a halt by a column, or into a column, either or.

"Do you see the prisoner?" The Emperor's voice, soft and melodic, shouldn't have reached me from where I was, yet it was clear as the noon bell. The fact that he was asking about me put an odd tingle in my chest.

"Do you think she followed us? How could she?" Growly asked as I frowned toward him.

"I know she did." It was a simple statement, just four lousy words from someone who didn't know me just as I didn't know him. So why in Oblivion did I suddenly want to jump for joy? Trust, it struck me like a Shock spell. The Emperor knows I can come, knows I would come. He... believes I will be there with the same assurance people put on the rising sun. I was smiling as I jumped down to the floor below, even the charging form of Grumpy didn't shake me. It was like being Still, only enveloped with positive emotions. I walked calmly to the Emperor even as he called off the Blade.

"S-sire." Suddenly in front of him, the feeling took flight like a startled water fowl and I was back to being a barely old enough girl in front of the most powerful fetching man in the fetching Empire. Cacat

"They do not understand why I trust you." His voice washed over me, caring, lightly amused, a bit worried and above all, powerful. Amulet or not, there was no way anyone could doubt this wasn't the Emperor. "But they do not see what I see. What you see as well at times, do you not? Glimpses of thoughts that can't be yours. Impressions and knowledge you didn't have a bare instant before." He smiled at me, and suddenly a tension in me faded. A tension I had been carrying since the moment I first accidentally used magic, no... since I saw the horror on my father's face afterwards. The Emperor's arms closed around me, and I realized I was crying into the purple robe, the Amulet of Kings pressed lightly into the side of my face. A deep rumble sounded behind my ears, like being inside the throat of a great beast, but I felt no worry, the growl was comforting me, easing a hurt I never really knew I was carrying.

"You are touched by the Nine my dear, called to walk road long and hard, with pain and sorrow in equal measure to joy. They have given you the strength to stand against anything, and you will find friends to shore against the loneliness. Much rests on your shoulders my dear girl, but you can do it. The gods never ask for more then we can give."

I stepped back, suddenly embarrassed to be bawling on the Emperor like a toddler. The Emperor let me take the time I needed to wipe at my eyes, though I heard the Blades shifting from their places on either side of us. "What do you need me to do, your Majesty?" I asked, knowing, beyond any doubt, that I had just swung the rudder of my life hard to port.

"I can not see what lies beyond my fate, the stars are capricious in that." His head cocked to the side, the Emperor nodded as he looked at me. I couldn't imagine what he thought, a Dunmer girl, with bright red hair atop a Morning Glory tinged skin, both dirty and unkempt. I had the terrible urge to try and comb my hair before he noticed it, which was stupid because he had to have seen it, twice in fact. Stupid girly impulses.

"You are familiar with the Nine, how they guide our fates with an invisible hand?"

"I'm not on good terms with the gods." I mumbled, keenly aware I had not been to any chapel or way shrine in a year, and even before then rarely.

"I think you would be surprised." I shot a glance at his amused expression, "I have spent my life in service to the Nine, my life charted by the stars. The same stars you guide your own boat by." I gave a twitch at the phrasing, and gave the Emperor a suspicious eye, maybe he did know about me after all. "But, almost as needed as a goal, one needs to know where you started. Tell me child, what sign marked the start of your course of life?"

His words rattled in my head, he couldn't be... I mean he's... his sons were... I decided the Emperor was actually interested in my birth sign and was not just using the oldest pickup line in Nirn on a girl young enough to be his great-granddaughter, if only to save my sanity. "I was born under the eyes of the Lady, sire."

I guessed it was the right answer, (Really Myrin, you expected there to be a wrong one?) because the Emperor gave be a wide smile. "Ah, the Lady's maidens are known for their kindness and tolerance. Useful traits to cultivate."

"What do my stars say for me then?" I ventured, hey, any advantage in life is good.

"I do not know. Your stars are not mine." Cacat, "I know you will follow me, for a time, until the path of my life ends."

That doesn't sound good. In any way. "S-sire...?"

"Majesty, we must keep moving." Grumpy intruded, the Emperor nodded and started to turn from me. "Come Myrin, not much further." Even as he stepped away, I boggled, did I give him my name and forget? Or did he just... know? A stick was shoved into my hands in order to bring me back. I looked from the unlit torch to the Redguard. Oh no, he did not just..

"Take this. If you're coming along, you might as well be useful." He did. Hoping my eye wasn't twitching too much, I casually snapped my fingers next to the tinder, a pulse of magicka and the torch was blazing merrily. No shoving a burning brand in the face of the nice, heavily armed man. With a grunt, I turned to follow the Emperor.

I swear I heard the Redguard chuckle behind me. I'm going to get you for this, I vowed silently.


This post has been edited by liliandra nadiar: Nov 11 2011, 07:20 PM