A Skyrim tale - Vengeance and Redemption, Eilidh MacAuley's Tale Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

HELGEN

"What's your name, Elf?"
The shouts of soldiers and the clatter of weapons echoed around the windblown courtyard. Someone's discarded linen shawl blew between the legs of the small group of guardsmen standing lazily to attention beside an old and scarred desk set up in the middle of the wide space.

Behind this desk, holding a quill pen poised over a ragged sheet of parchment, sat a hard-eyed and angular woman of maybe 50 summers, bedecked in the regalia of a captain of the guard.
She sighed, and waved the quill at a soldier standing behind the prisoner.

With a grunt of acknowledgement the soldier lifted his spear and slammed the butt end of it into the small of the captive's back.
She fell to her knees on the hard dusty ground, sucking a pained breath in through between dirty, clenched teeth.
"Your name." Demanded the captain once again.

After a moment longer, the prisoner looked up at the captain behind her desk; regarded her with large, nearly black eyes set in a gaunt face framed by lank, straw-coloured hair from which protruded the pointed tips of distinctive Elven ears.

The Elf opened her mouth and said in a low, cracked voice; "Eilidh."

The Captain regarded her a moment longer.

The Bosmer - (who, incidentally smelt... well she smelt terribly, but she also smelt like a wolf or a bear; slightly "meaty" and "musty"; sour and rotten. All her kind did, it was as distinctive as it was unwholesome; a result of their twisted diet. And yet, the Captain had to admit to herself, she found this one more than a little fascinating) - The elf's face and body betrayed no small degree of history and hardship; thin she was and yet beneath the ragged sackcloth shirt her body was nevertheless sinewy and bowstring taut, the compact muscles hard and surprisingly powerful; at least one of her men had found that out the hard way when they had attempted to capture her.

Her skin was heavily freckled, beneath a layer of greasy filth, and marked by innumerable abrasions, pocks and marks of all shapes and sizes. She was heavily tattooed with any number of vulgar designs.
But it was her face, more than anything, that told of the hardness of her life until now, it's end.

The left side of the Bosmer's face was a mass of scarring, the damaged skin pale and livid against the dirt that covered her. Dark warpaint was smeared across her cheeks and the sockets of her eyes, which were black and moist; vastly deep like some animal's and rimmed with a livid red as of an incipient infection.
The woman's mouth was set in a thin hard line, the lips bloodless.

But enough of this.
She sighed, waved the quill again and once more the butt of the spear connected with the kneeling Bosmer, hitting her shoulderblade with a crack barely muffled by the thin material that covered her.
"ALL of your name, bosmer." She said, spitting out the last word like an insult.

"MacAuley, Eilidh MacAuley." Said Eilidh finally, her dry voice heavily accented.
The captain grunted in satisfaction and carefully wrote down the name on the parchment, poking out her tongue in concentration.
When she had finished she looked up at Eilidh again, saying; "So, bosmer, have ye anything to say in ya defence, afore I pass my judgement?"
It was a pointless question, and she knew it.

Eilidh knew it too.
"Téigh gnéas féin agat soith..." She hissed through yellowed and gritted teeth.
"Speak Imperial!" Snapped the Captain. Eilidh winced as the guard behind her applied his spear to her back once again.
She glanced hatefully at the woman behind the desk and then, a cold half-smile flickering across her lips she said; "Go **** ye'sel' *****."

There was an audible gasp from the men around her at this display of blatent insolence, and for a moment even their leader looked taken aback.
The Captain gathered herself.
"Even if you were not already dead, bosmer, now you are for sure..."

Silence held sway for a moment and Eilidh, naked but for the thin cloth shivered a little in the chill air blowing through the garrison's courtyard.
She ached all over, or at least more than usual. Her brains were pounding in her ears and her mouth had a dry and phlegmy taste in it. Her condition was not helped in any way by the fact that she had not had wine for some 3 days now.
More though, was the pain of what that pig of a legionary had done to her.

Hers had been a hard life, she had had to fight every inch of the way barring a few brief patches of respite. She looked, she knew, every one of the 173 seasons that she had spent on this Gods-forsaken world.
During her time she had committed... dubious acts, both physically and morally, and yes amongst those had been the auctioning of herself, when money had been tight and survival the only factor.
But that was different, she had been in control; calling the shots she had run the game and come out the victor in those encounters.
Yesterday though, that had been something else entirely, that was evil even by her standards of behaviour. There had been a wrong visited upon her the likes of which should never happen.
Ever.

And then, out of the corner of her dark eye she saw him, standing just behind the guard Captain's entourage he was.
He was a big man, broad of girth; fat, sweaty jowls, and sallow oily skin. He was wearing a helmet and facing slightly away from her but she knew him; his stinking greasy body, his breath hot and sour against her, his little piggy eyes.
Oh, she knew him alright.
The blood in her veins ran cold as ice, her heart pounded against her ribs.

He turned then, and saw her.
His plump mouth spread open in fat grin, the thick lips pink against his pale cheeks. He pointed at her with a stubby finger whilst with his other hand he made a sign, the meaning of which was only too clear to the Bosmer.

The sound of the Captain's voice droning on - a litany of her crimes, chief amongst which was simply of having been born a Bosmer - had long since faded into the distance, to be replaced by one repeated thought:
"HE MUST PAY. HE WILL PAY."
Over and over and over, a cold and hard nugget of vengeance.

Had she been able, she would have leapt at him then and there even though her hands were bound.
Indeed, even as she thought it, her body moved of it's own accord, her mouth twisting into a snarl...

...Then hands grabbed her and lifted her roughly to her feet, through a red haze of bloody murder she vaguely heard the Captain's voice; "...for the crime of being an unwelcome element in the Imperial Province of Skyrim, for numerous

breaches of our laws, I hereby refer you for summary execution."

Her captors walked her across the courtyard to the block that sat lumpen and solid; bloodstained and chipped, in the centre of the courtyard. A mute symbol of oppression and arbitrary justice.
She passed him and their eyes met - his, mocking and leering and hers, hate-filled.
She kept her eyes on him as she was led away, maintained contact even as the tendons in her neck began to creak and ache.

Finally she faced the front, faced her future.
173 years.
He Would Pay. Even if in Death she made a pact with all of the Daedra themselves to send her back, He Would Pay.

173 years.

They forced her roughly to her knees, pushing her head onto the block.
Rage boiled within her.

173.
He Would Pay.

She sensed the headsman raise his sword.
1...
7...

The world exploded into roaring fire, and everything around her went insane.

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Mar 10 2014, 08:42 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

RALOF

Ralof picked his way through one of the tunnels of the underkeep. A Stormcloak sergeant, he had been detained for questioning and had been on his way to be "interrogated" when whatever had happened, had happened.
He had in fact no idea at all as to just exactly what had occured on the surface. At the first sign of trouble the two imperials escorting him had left him and headed at speed towards the surface.

In the ensuing confusion, with further Imperial troops pounding past, he had thrown himself into the nearest room and waited for the sounds of running iron-shod boots to pass. An airy silence, down there in the keep's vaults, held sway with the passing of the troops to aid their comrades in whatever calamity had struck the fort and the surrounding settlement; a silence broken only by muffled thumps and cries.

He had tried to convince himself it was a Stormcloak raid but something just didn't feel right with that line of reasoning. Whatever was going on he needed to be somewhere other than where he was, and he needed to be there fast.
Casting around some nearby rooms he turned up a cache of confiscated weapons and was able to more-or-less equip himself to at least a reasonable standard; although the loss of his own sword was more than a little bothersome.
Still, no help for that now.

Having taken a sustaining swig from a discarded ale flagon, and without more ado, he set out further into the now deserted complex looking for the door that he knew existed, a back door; as far as was possible from the courtyard above him and whatever was happening there.

++++

And so here he was, in the corridors under Helgen keep.
After no small amount of searching and backtracking, he had finally found a downward-sloping corridor that seemed familiar to him. The passageway was dark, away from the main body of the castle; the light fading along with the sounds of conflict and strife.
At the far end however there was light, bright and yellow-flickering. He headed for it.

The air was chill in the narrow passage, and the rough walls were damp against his fingertips as he traced them over the stonework to either side of him.
He had recognised where he was now, from the stink of faeces and stale urine, the rusted and pocked iron bars that passed with a certain regularity under his fingers, he knew he was in the deepest cell block, the one in which the "Special Prisoners" were kept; important ones, political ones, or simply ones who needed to disappear.
The room at the bottom, to which he was inexorably heading, was reserved for the questioning of these particular prisoners, questioning that might require certain... rather more "emphatic" methods.
He knew this was the case because he had been brought down the passageway to the interrogation chamber as a threat - (or a promise) - of what would happen to him if he did not cooperate. The chamber, he also knew, did indeed have a set of doors leading outside, it needed them; it was how the bodies of those who were no longer required were thrown out of Helgen and into the grateful maws of the waiting wolves.

He supposed it was fortunate that the cells were empty, Following an official decree - (of which there had been many during his incarceration) - the high level prisoners, including a number of Bosmers who had been picked up in the Cleansing Operations, had been taken out and executed topside, the last of them had gone that very morning - presumably.
The only inhabitants of these cells now were their ghosts.
The thought was an unpleasant one and Ralof was just superstitious enough to say a small and silent prayer as he passed onwards and downwards to the lighted room at the end of the passage, the site of so much suffering and pain.

++++

he arrived at the entrance at the bottom of the passage and sticking to the shadows that abounded at its threshold he waited silently outside and to the left of the doorway, back against the wall, ears straining to pick up any sound, one hand gripping tightly the hilt of his sword.

At the very edge of his hearing he could just detect muffled noises, crashes and thumps; impressions of heavy objects falling or being thrown down.
They were not healthy sounds and whilst he was not in the least bothered about the death of the Imperials there was the small point that there were still many of his comrades-in-arms being held in the fort and that, potentially, a large proportion of them had now perished.
He needed to get away, to rejoin his unit if he could; to see what had happened with the perspective of distance. There was a worry in the back of his mind however, that he had no clear idea where his unit actually was - it being a number of days since he had been captured.
This concern was exacerbated more than a little by the knowledge that his family; a wife and two sons, were in the caravan accompanying the troops...

There in the silence and the shadows he found himself hoping that they were far away from Helgen, and whatever unknown force had visited the place.

Finally satisfied that all was clear, at least where he was, Ralof cautiously moved out into the corridor and within it's narrow confines and sticking to the darkness, performed a small arc from one side of the doorway to the other, sword half drawn, investigating the room beyond as much as he could; eyes jumping from morbid detail to morbid detail.

The room was brighlty lit, evidently the Commander's Chief Inquisitor was a man who liked to be able to see what he was doing.
The floor and walls were whitewashed, to make cleaning them easier Ralof supposed; that being as it may, the old stains still showed through, adding macabre shadows within and around the more recent marks, the remains of Gods Knew what.
Spaced along the left wall were three cages, one of which contained a skeleton, ragged clothing still partially covering the dirty bones.
The wide double-doors that opened onto the charnel pit - (and his ironic salvation) - took up most of the far wall, whilst to the right hand side his gaze swept over several tables covered with numerous implements and bottles containing liquids of various shades and hues.

There were chests, one of which was open and into which had been cast several swords and a mace. Some coins and a little jewellery were scattered about a small pile of armour that had been deposited carelessly in one of the far corners.
The room itself was brigthly lit still by many candles, in stands on the floor and in sconces on the walls. Between two of the tables on the right a brazier glowed with a sullen red. The ceiling was darkly coated with soot.

Cautiously he moved to the doorway and peered inside, his sword half-drawn. He did not trust Imperials further than he could throw them and would not put it past any of them to be hiding in the chamber. A coward he or she might be, but a cornered coward is a dangerous one.
In the near right hand corner were two corpses, a man and a woman, both naked and covered in blood and filth; a fair amount of which had pooled around their bodies, coagulating to form sticky puddles.
The male appeared to be missing an arm, Ralof noted.

The place was clearly devoid of life, but still Ralof could not shake the feeling that something was... not quite right.
The doors were there in front of him however, and rebuking himself for acting like a mewling infant, hand on his sword he strode into the chamber.

++++

Something fell on top of him.

It wasn't very heavy but it was, as it turned out, extremely powerful as the startled Stormcloak discovered when a pair of long muscular legs wrapped themselves around his waist, and an arm closed around his neck.

Ralof could not have been more surprised if the Goddess Dibella herself had shown up with her t*ts out.
He opened his mouth to shout but his cry was strangled in his throat by the tightening of the sinewy arm around his neck. Further, a greasy long-fingered hand clapped itself over his eyes, completely blocking his vision.
Arms pinned to his sides, his sight cut off, choking, and surrounded by a noisome fug of stale body-odour, he staggered blindly forward into the chamber lurching like a ship in a stormy sea.
Then, from just behind his left ear, came a grunt of effort and a sharp intake of breath; a momentary pause followed, and then he found himself jerked violently backwards.

The next few seconds were a blur, quite frankly. Ralof was aware of falling, of hitting the stone floor of the room with a crash, the back of his head bouncing off the flagstones.
Dazed, he was conscious that something had climbed around his body even as he fell to the floor and was now, as he lay on his back staring blearily up at the ceiling, sitting astride his chest, pinning his arms to the floor with its hands.

There was a shifting of weight, and a shadow appeared in his field of view that resolved itself in the brightly flickering light into a gaunt, filthy and warpaint-smeared face from which with extreme inscrutability, two large, moist black eyes regarded him unblinkingly.

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Mar 13 2014, 09:25 PM