Niamh's Adventures in Nirn..., This is a thread featuring a digest of stories about... Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

NIAMH.
But first, who is she?
Well she's a character who I have been acquainted with for a very long time, and with whom I have travelled across many worlds.

She's a Wood-Elf, in Nirn terms - of about 30. She's very much her own boss, and not a terribly pleasant individual. She is, to employ a cliche, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". She's a hard drinking, promiscuous, authority-hating rebel with baggage enough and troubles enough to fill a volume of psychoanalysts' shelves.

She's maybe 5 feet 8 inches in height, very slender, with pale skin and long black hair and dark, chestnut eyes in deep sockets. She had a predilection for body-piercing and a bad-attitude to personal hygiene. She's a thief and an assassin and pretty much anything else that will garner her gold and a thrill.
In the Nirn universe - (Cyrodiil) - she lives principally in Bravil, but has a shack on the waterfront outside of the walls of the Imperial City, although she spends much of her time in a rather dysfunctional relationship with Jo, one of the local "courtesans", who you will not be reading about on here(!).
In Morrowind she was a loner who pretty much stumbled upon a destiny of sorts more by simply being in a certain place at a certain time than by design; whilst she arrived in Skyrim confused and somehow "altered", more feral and wild, as part of a story arc that started in Cyrodiil and ended back there amidst death and heartache.
Since then she has had a second chance, but is squandering it, reverting once again to type...

Throughout her adventures in Nirn - Morrowind, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim, her character has evolved and changed. She's taken on aspects of each of these variants to become something "other" than what she started as; more rounded, but far more complicated. The ultimate expression of that is in the world that she now inhabits - Varrius, a world created for her specifically, with it's own story arc and characters.
Anyway, that's by-the-by, for the nonce, this thread will have various stories and vignettes that I have written involving her, and the characters that she has interacted with, during the time that she has inhabited the Elder Scrolls universe.
(Only some of the stories are on here, as this is a 13-rated forum, and not everything I write is... suitable. For stories not on here, do feel free to visit Niamh's blog, in the signature.)

I hope you enjoy her stories, it's gives me a lot of pleasure to write them.

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jan 19 2013, 04:22 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

Well here's one from the vaults, I was playing around with pathos and wondered how a certain person's demise might play out.
Again, this is fairly early, before Niamh's character had really had much of a chance to develop.

This is "Possible Futures"

–

Niamh was dying.
There was no doubt, no possibility of error or confusion.
A fact was a fact.

She lay on the cool grass by the obelisk, curled into a tight ball, arms wrapped around her belly, eyes closed; mouth slightly open, teeth clenched.

The sounds of battle had faded into silence and all the other noises of the world had been quieted, replaced by the pulsing of her blood in her veins and the frantic beating of her heart as it pounded in her chest against her ribs. From somewhere at a distance she could not determine, she felt waves of shocking, exquisite pain. Perhaps mercifully, all her body was numb such that she could not tell where her wound was. Vaguely she recalled a Knight of Order, a flash of metal, an impact. She remembered dropping her katana and falling to the ground but little else after that.
Save for the sure knowledge that she was dying.
She lay still, and waited.

++++

So much blood…

Blinking back tears Vilja dropped her katana to the ground and cast away her buckler from off of her wrist. She ran to Niamh – a pale form against the green. She was curled tightly into a ball, arms around her stomach, legs pulled tightly into her body. The grass around her stained darkly with blood.

As Vilja came closer she could hear her panting, her breathing rapid and shallow.

Cold fear embraced Vilja’s body, raising the hairs on the back of her neck, pawing at her chest with wintry fingers.
“Niamh?” She asked, her voice shaking and thick with fright.

She knelt by her companion, the grass sticky under her knees.
“Niamh…?” She asked again, quieter now. She reached out and with trembling fingers laid them on Niamh’s arm.
Niamh’s skin was cold and damp. Usually pale to the point of whiteness it was now sallow and grey.

“Let me see, Niamh.” She said quietly, sniffing. Her eyes were cloudy with tears and she wiped them roughly with her free hand. “Show me where you’re hurt.”
Niamh did not respond; only lay curled up just so, her breath rasping in and out of her mouth.

…So much blood.

Vilja shook her head and put her hands on Niamh’s arm where it was clamped across her stomach, tried gently but firmly to pull it away.
“Please…”

++++

She thought she recognised a voice, barely heard above her pulse which like some giant forge hammer thundered in her ears.
Someone seemed to be calling a name. There was a pressure, a feeling of pushing against the numbness that cocooned her.
The voice came again, closer now it seemed.

“Niamh.” It said.
It was her name, she was Niamh. It was soft and feminine, this voice, heavily accented. Not like the harsh cries she had heard before she fell.

There was a sensation of pulling at first gentle, but then again more firmly.
The world flooded back, washing mercilessly over her.
“Please…”

++++

Oh no.

Vilja’s insistence had paid off but now if anything the situation was worse.
With a cry Niamh had come to as Vilja pulled more firmly at her arm. Her body had relaxed and unfolded. She rolled onto her back, her legs falling open; her free arm lying limp at her side.
Vilja, still holding Niamh’s other arm gazed in blank wide-eyed horror at her ruined body.

The knight’s sword had rent Niamh’s belly asunder, butchering her midriff as surely as one of the market traders in Imperial City would carve up a chop.
Where the perfect skin of Niamh’s stomach had once been was a ragged bloody gash from which her lifeblood flowed onto the grass, soaking into the uncaring earth.
The wound yawned massively, extending the full width of her belly. Her chest, groin, and thighs looked as though they had been painted darkly crimson; the freshly spilled blood sparkled harshly in the sunlight dappling through the canopy of trees above them.

Vilja was for a moment unable to move, transfixed by the destruction before her. Grasping Niamh’s hand in both of hers she squeezed her partner’s fingers.

They were cold, twig-like.

“Oh Niamh…” she gurgled, her voice was wet with tears, too full of sorrow. “Oh, my dearest one.”

It was a moment or two before she looked at Niamh’s face and when she did she saw that it was grey and glistening with an unhealthy sweaty sheen.
Niamh was watching her, her dark eyes bright now, a reflection of the pain betrayed in her face.
Vilja gazed at that face, unable to comprehend the hurt that it conveyed, unable to speak.

++++

Vilja.

Her partner swam into focus. She was not looking at her, but looking somewhere on her body; looking perhaps at the small sun which, radiating knives and razors, was burning in her stomach and lighting the edges of her vision with pure white pain.

Vilja would make it better; she would know what do…
Niamh coughed, bringing up gobbets of bloody phlegm that bubbled up out of her mouth and ran thickly down over her cheeks to the ground.
…Except she couldn’t.

Niamh knew Vilja lacked the skill, but it would not have mattered anyway.
No one could fix her, she was broken beyond repair.

Vilja’s head turned, and their eyes met.
The sunlight shone and glinted off of Vilja’s long blonde hair, tied up in its usual pony tail. The skin of her face was freckled.
Niamh had always liked Vilja’s freckles.

Vilja’s silvery eyes were pools of heartache and tears flowed in rivers down her cheeks.
Her lips moved.

++++

“…can’t fix you Sweetie.” Croaked Vilja at last. “I can’t fix you.”
She shook her head, her lips trembling. “I’m so sorry. I wish…”

Niamh took a deep breath, wincing as fresh pain flared in her guts.
“It’s ok, V.” She said, her voice little more than a whispered breath, “It’s not your fault. I think I got broke too much.”

There was a silence between them for a moment then, a deep, profound silence. Vilja could not bear to look at her partner’s face as her life melted from her, but could not turn away lest she missed the briefest flicker of hope in those deep, twinkling eyes.
Niamh fixated on Vilja’s gaze; hung onto it as a mariner, wrecked in stormy seas, would to a barrel or a plank, keeping himself afloat and taking some hope from its presence, however false the hope or doomed to failure that course of action may be.

After a few moments an understanding passed between them.
“Hold me,” Breathed Niamh.

Vilja lay down on the grass next to her companion, shuffling closer she raised Niamh’s head with one hand and slid her arm under her. Placing her head down gently, she pressed herself tightly to her, maybe hoping that the warmth and vitality of her own body would communicate itself to Niamh’s cold, dying flesh. Had Vilja been able, she would have surrendered half her remaining years for but one moment more of Niamh being alive, and unhurt.

Niamh’s hair was matted with sweat and plastered to her forehead, with a shaking hand Vilja brushed it away and, lowering her face, kissed her gently.
Niamh smiled weakly; her breathing though still ragged, had slowed now and was slowing still, Vilja could feel the thudding of Niamh’s heart in her chest.

“We had some good times. Didn’t we?” Again, a paper-thin whisper.
“The very best.” Replied Vilja, every word filmed with tears.
She drew in a shuddering breath. “You are crazy, but I Love you.”

“I Love you, too.”
There was nothing more.

There were no more words to say, nothing to be done; no thought, action, imprecation or abjuration would change anything now.
Vilja clung to Niamh then, heedless of the blood that covered her, as if holding her tightly would stop her from leaving but it was too late as, with a sigh, Niamh’s breath left her body for the final time, her heart slowed, faltered, and stopped.
She slipped away, and left Vilja all alone.

A dead weight of despair pressed down onto Vilja as Niamh’s vital spark went out. All the world and all of its pain and its sorrow beat down upon her shoulders. With a strangled sob she gathered her partner’s lifeless body into her arms, squeezed her to herself, and wept; wept for Niamh, for her, and for the life that they would now never have together.
Great wracking sobs they were, and she paused only to draw deep shaking breaths, snot and tears coated her face as she pressed it against Niamh’s neck before turning it to the heavens and wailing her anguish at them, now cursing them, now pleading with them.
But for nought, there was no response. The heavens went on their way, the stars wheeling unceasingly in their paths above Vilja, seemingly mocking her even as her world had come to a stop.

She cried until she was beyond tears, cried until it felt like there were no more tears in all of the Shivering Isles to cry but even when she had nothing left beyond gasping, breathless sobs she would not let go of Niamh, could not let go of her and so as the day wore on she knelt, holding onto her tightly, rocking her gently and whispering softly to her.
“Oh my dearest Niamh, I wish I could have saved you.”

But there was too much blood.

---