A Conclave of Princes Options

[Colonel Mustard]

A Conclave of Princes

Part 1-The Call

Azura

Tick

Of all of the many secret places of Moonshadow, the meeting chamber that Azura stood in was the best hidden and least-known, so obscure and unknown it was not even myth.

Tock

Hidden from all prying eyes by spell and ward and ancient ritual, the room was built like an amphitheatre, a great tiered circle of white stone surrounding a single raised dais. Behind the dais was the clock, a ring of brass, silver and pearl, gleaming in the silvery light that illuminated the room. An engraved pendulum swung left and right with the passing of every second, delicate hands clicking as they moved, the cunning of its long-dead artificer and the spells he had laid upon it ensuring that it would keep time with perfect precision until Akatosh himself finally passed.

Tick

The chamber was empty but for one person, a woman clad in shining silver-white hooded robes, the garment woven from moonlight by blind seamstresses. Her face was three faces in one; that of a youthful maiden, of a kindly, smiling mother and of a wrinkled, wizened crone, all three of those at once and yet at the same time none. Her name was Azura, the Lady of Dawn and Dusk, and right now she was waiting and listening to the clock.

Tock

The timepiece itself had been a gift to her, made for her long ago by a Dwemer admirer, a clockmaker and timekeeper with skill beyond repair. She had honoured the generous donation by hanging it within this hall and, when he died, by taking his soul to her realm of Moonshadow that he might continue his craft forever more.

Ti-

The pendulum froze mid-swing, caught in the precise halfway point between one second and another. Azura took a moment to glance at it, and nodded. Her sacred time had come, the precise moment when day turned to a night of a crescent moon, a span of time so short that it could stretch to eternity. With a nod, the doors lined around the hall groaned open, and now that they had been invited to Moonshadow and into Azura’s secret eternity, the cats entered.

Untold numbers of them came, an uncountable army of the animals prowling through the doors. Fat, pampered lazy housecats trotted alongside scarred and battered strays who had lived every day of their lives on the vicious gauntlet of the streets, old cats wheezed their way in whilst kittens rolled and played around their paws. Short-haired breeds from Hammerfell came alongside the thick-haired cats of Skyrim and shared space with the elegant stock bred by the Altmer of the Summerset Isles, while the large desert wildcats of Elsweyr loomed over the animals around them. All of them had come by the secret routes known only to cats and the mistress they served, arriving in the time that was there only for them

Somehow, despite the millions of animals that entered the room, there was no struggle for space. The amphitheatre seemed to grow with its audience, expanding with its crowd as the cats went to their seats and waited. One or two greeted each other by tentative sniffing, and a few old friends that could meet only on this day; on one of the rings, a Hammerfell tom met the Valenwood tabby that he had bumped into in the last meeting, and was introduced to the litter of kitten he had fathered for the first time. There was no yowling, hissing or snarling between them, and even little in the way of normal, conversational mewling, the gathered assembly silent out of respect for their lady and mistress.

One by one, the cats began to form a line, and Azura took a knee as the first one approached. He was an Summerset breed, tall, lithe and proud, his white fur groomed with meticulous care, the tufts of hair on his ears twitching as he sauntered forward, as if speaking to a goddess were something he did every day. Azura bowed her head as he stopped next to her, and as she bowed it, the feline told of her of all the secret things he had seen. Once she had listened to his account, she nodded, and the cat trotted away, back home, and the next one took his place. She had the nervous enthusiasm of a newcomer, and her report was stammered out. As with the first, the Mother of the Rose listened to all she had to say, and when she was done, she dismissed it, briefly stroking her spy behind her ears before she went.

So it went on. Each cat gave their report, and each one was given equal time by Azura, and the lowliest of street cats was listened to with the same care and attention given to the sacred cats of the island nation of Laalket, bedecked as they were in their finery and jewels. Everything the Daedric Prince heard, she remembered and digested, and was added to her great libraries of knowledge, the books and shelves filling up as she listened.

Yet one cat, a feline who said she lived in a temple of the Nine as a mouser, told her something that gave her pause. After a moment, Azura instructed her to stay until her council with the other cats was finished, but all of the other information she heard was received with an uneasy frown. Even though the place she inhabited was timeless, the Lady of Dusk began to feel it drag, and she was glad when the final stragglers gave their news.

As the final cat made her way out, herding her kittens with her, Azura returned her attention to the feline that had given the news to her earlier. She asked the mouser to expand on what it was she had said, to give as much detail as she could remember. Azura quizzed her on where she had heard it, how the overheard conversation had gone, asked her to repeat it word for word to the best of her memory.

Finally, once she was satisfied that she had heard everything from it that she possibly could. She permitted it to leave. She watched it scurry out of one of the doors, back to the warmth of its basket by the hearth. For a few moments, Azura lingered in the chamber, debating her options. There only really one to take, she knew, but though it was necessary it did not make it one she wished to do so.

A gesture of a hand and a doorway appeared before her, gnarled oak in a white frame. She turned the knob, stepped through it, and disappeared. There was work to do on this night.

-ck

Behind her, the pendulum of the clock swung into motion once more.




So what's this? A 3-part story, each part divided into 18 chapters, each chapter following a Daedric Prince and one other mystery entity. Each part is a short one, between 900 and 1500 words (so I can hopefully update at a reasonable pace) and if you think of it as something like a shorter version of the Canterbury tales set in the planes of Oblivion you've got something akin to the right idea.

Do enjoy, do leave any comments or critique that you think are useful and do have a lovely day, my dear readers.

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Mar 10 2013, 10:28 PM

[Colonel Mustard]

Elisabeth: Oh yeah, you aren't a fan of him, are you?


Mephala

The wire burned against Azura’s skin as its noose cut into her neck, a line of stinging heat just out of her view. She considered her options, shifting form or splitting her essence to escape, rally her power and fight back, or rub the black diamond given to her by Nocturnal and call on her sister for aid.

She reached for the pocket that it was in, before another hand grabbed her wrist, skin cold and smooth as chitin or crystal.

“Don’t do that,” a voice hissed in her ear. “And don’t think you can escape this little noose so easily, either; I forged it from the souls of some of my greatest and most devoted assassins, and it will constrict anything.”

“Release me, Mephala,” Azura said. “I have no quarrel with you.”

That gave her assailant pause.

“How did you guess that, I wonder?”

“Luck and good judgement,” Azura said. “Now let me go.”

“I don’t think I shall, not yet,” Mephala said. “My brother wants his book back, Azura.”

“It’s not on me,” Azura said. “I’ve hidden it in Moonshadow. He can have it back after the meet.”

Azura felt the constriction of the cord loosen a little.

“You plan to meet with him?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you that?” Azura asked. “He used his dear sister to do his bidding without actually telling her why, didn’t he?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mephala said, voice turning to a hiss of suspicion.

“What that means, Mephala, is that you’ve been used,” Azura said. “Some Prince of Deceit you are.”

“Be quiet!” Mephala snapped, and in her distraction, the noose loosened just a little more. That was all Azura needed.

A painful lance of dim twilight burned into Mephala’s hand, and she shrieked in pain and fury. Azura ripped herself free of the noose’s grip, pain flaring a few chunks of essence caught on the wire before one end of the cord was dragged from Mephala’s grasp. She went formless for a short way, and rebodied herself a safe distance from the Lady of Lies.

There was an expression of fury in the eight smooth, black orbs that were Mephala’s eyes. One hand was rubbing the injured one, the three other pairs of arms from her torso splayed in readiness for combat, each one holding their own unique implements of murder.

“Bitch!” Mephala snapped, lower jaw splitting at the chin as she spoke like the mandibles of a spider.

“Self defence,” Azura replied.

Mephala snarled at that, before she asked; “What meet was this you spoke of?”

“I’m gathering the Princes in Moonshadow. Something has come up.”

“What is that, then?” Mephala asked.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until the meeting,” Azura said. “You’d take advantage of it, and I’d rather not have that.”

“Tell me,” Mephala ordered. “Or else.”

“Or else what?” Azura asked. “You can’t kill me, Mephala, you know that.”

“No, I can’t kill you,” Mephala nodded. “But trust me, if you don’t tell me now, I can make you wish you could die.”

“That won’t be necessary, Mephala,” Azura said. “Once you come to Moonshadow, you can find out everything you want. And your brother will get his book back as well.”

“But as you said, I can use this to my advantage,” Mephala replied. She smiled, and the smile looked lost, frightened and lonely on her mirthless, pale face. “And woe betide that I let an opportunity slip through my grasp.”

Mephala slipped closer towards Azura, the Lady of Twilight scudding backwards through the aether of Oblivion in response.

“Tell me what you found,” Mephala said. “And I will let you go.”

“I’m not doing that,” Azura said. “Let me be, Mephala.”

“Not until you tell me,” the Mistress of Murder insisted, features twisting into a snarl.

“I will tell you when-”

“You will tell me at once!”

Mephala lunged upon Azura, and two Princes fought.

It was not a battle fought with weapons or hands, as two warriors would conduct combat, nor was it one conducted with hurled spells or hexes as with a duel of mages. A mortal viewer who would somehow be able to survive exposure to the raw fundament of Oblivion would have seen nothing but two indistinct shapes writhing around one another and nothing else. The two did not fight in any way a mortal could understand; there were no armaments drawn, no spells cast. Instead, the raw matter of their essences clashed in a single, deathly embrace.

The unreality of Oblivion around them shrieked and screamed as the two did battle, their beings wrestling against one another in a struggle that would have immolated any matter around them. Gouts of pure arcane energy blasted from their struggle as they tore at one another, sending the void rippling and rending around them. Screaming, formless concept-beings of mindless magical sentience were birthed from the battle, flailing blind with ethereal limbs in desperate search for form and purpose before their existence used up the energy that powered them and they faded from being.

On Nirn, the side effects of the battle were seen across the globe. As Mephala shredded a chunk of Azura’s being with barbed energies, the Ka’Po’Tun of a coastal village of Akavir were shocked to see the setting sun scream aloud as they brought their fishing boats in for the night. Azura stabbed at Mephala’s form, and in Narsis an assassin of the Morag Tong gasped as his throat collapsed, choking and grabbing his gullet, dying whilst utterly ignorant of what killed him. A blow sent Azura reeling and the people of Bravil were baffled as every cat in the city laid their ears flat and yowled at the night sky. Another sent a shrine of Azura built in Mournhold bursting into flame, and a third caused the High Twilight of Elsweyr to fall to her knees, bleeding from her eyes and screaming portents of doom.

Azura was losing the fight. She was strong, but Mephala was a personification of bloodshed, violence and murder, and Azura had been mauled, could feel chunks of her essence leaking away, spread thin, ethereal mercury over impossible glass. Her strikes against the metaform of Mephala were growing weaker, whilst the Mistress of Murder continued to scrape and tear at her being.

Azura fled, rolling up her essence into a single dart and speeding away. Mephala followed, snapping at Azura’s contrail as she bled filmy energies that slicked into Oblivion like dilute oils. Azura’s path was not towards Moonshadow; even in her realm, she would not necessarily be safe from Mephala in her mauled state, and she had to go somewhere where her enemy dared not follow but where she might have some degree of refuge. She could think of only one, one that was little safer than her current predicament but one that would have to suffice.

She found the realm, jumped into it, and came to a halt outside a riven set of gates in walls of grey stone. Gibbets and iron hooks displayed a grisly menagerie of severed rotten bodies and severed limbs, lit by weak sunlight filtered through an ash-choked sky. The ground was a dead and cracked sludge, the air chill, and the scent of death and misery was an all-pervading omnipresence.

Azura gasped as she took physical form once more, falling to her knees and bleeding from dozens of wounds torn across her person. Mephala followed, leaking brackish black blood from scratches of her own, and the eight chitinous orbs of her eyes seemed to widen with fear as she saw where she was. She spat, the gobbet of phlegm hissing as it struck the ground, and roiled inwards on herself in a cloak of cobwebs and shadows. A moment later, a humanoid figure, a semi-bestial giant with horns curling from his brow and a whipping tail covered with scales and fur alike, landed on the ground where Mephala was, hooves sending up a puff of dust from the impact.

His gaze turned upon the battered goddess, and lips slid back to reveal yellowed fangs in an approximation of a grin.

“One of my sworn enemies is brought to my realm along with your wounded self. You picked strange company for a visit, Azura,” Molag Bal said.