Restless Soul - The New Adventures of Niamh & Looch Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

A Word To The Wise:
This story continues directly on from the end of what was the final tale: 21/09/13 - "From Darkness" - HERE. For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with the adventures of a certain Bosmer, a little background reading might help - (check my sig, or the link above) - for those of you who are, well it's nice to be back.
And yes, I *know* it's not Cyrodiil, but it will be, we just have to get there, be patient...
======================================================

-RESTLESS SOUL-
.I.

A soft lambency filled the apartment, from outside and far below the muted hum of early morning traffic filtered in through a half-open window. Lucinda awoke slowly, lay for a time under the covers, her head resting on the soft pillow, staring up at the smooth white ceiling. Beside her the woman from the night before slept peacefully on, her breathing slow and regular.

She'd said her name was Niamh E., just that and nothing more. She was the singer in one of the bands that played at weekends down at the waterfront bars. Luciana herself had worked in a grill bar on the front and had seen her about from time-to-time, had even stopped in Gracy's on the way home to hear her band once. Not really her thing, a bit too punky but none too shabby nevertheless. She had found the woman herself though more than a little intriguing; all tight leathers and colourful hair woven with red linen strips; piercings and heavy black makeup completed her look.

She'd come across as sassy onstage, giving hecklers and fans alike as good as they gave her, all the time following whisky with whisky, cigarette with cigarette. By the last song she'd stripped to her bra and knickers, skinny body jerking and weaving to the jittery beat of the music, hair lank about her face and shoulders, her liberally tattooed porcelain skin running with silvery sweat. As the final chords jangled out she was laughing and bouncing, dark eyes glinting under the stage lights, her body a blur as she spun around and around, arms stretched out, screaming at the top of her voice before finally collapsing onto the stage and crawling off on hands and knees to cheers and whistles and applause from the crowd. Lucinda remembered how jealous she had felt of Niamh's energy and life and how she had wished, and did still, that she too could be more like her.

Lucinda was not naturally attracted to women, but even she'd had to admit to herself that there was undoubtedly something about Niamh, she was a force of nature for sure and mysterious also, somehow, not just her manner or her looks on stage but, something, there was something about her that Lucinda could not quite place her finger upon; a look or an expression that betrayed something deeper maybe. Life moved on however, her job changed to another part of town and with it came a relationship with a guy who seemed - as they always do - to be The One.

He was not, as it turned out, and six months later she found herself single and alone, feeling sorry for herself in her apartment on the the tenth floor of a low rent block on N- Street. It was already dark and she had perhaps had a little too much wine when she found her thoughts turning once again to a certain mysterious and intriguing woman, in a band, on the waterfront.

-x-

So she found herself once again in Gracy's, standing at the bar sipping a gin and tonic and watching a whirlwind of life spin and dance across the stage and thinking, "why am I here? For the life? For the energy? Or for her..." in truth she did not know, but regardless clapped and cheered with the rest as once more, quivering with nervous energy, the real reason for her coming out crawled from the stage, a strange and spindly thing, dripping wet in dark underwear.

The performance over, the rest of the band left the stage and the audience drifted back to their seats and into their booths. A growing sussuration of whispered conversation and piped songs replaced the live music of only a few moments earlier. Around her the long bar began to fill up and Lucinda, still on her first drink and rapidly feeling more and more out of place and alone despite the crowded space, finished up and turned to go, placing the empty glass on the counter.

"Buy me drink?" Came a voice directly behind her. Lucinda froze, her blood draining into her feet. Heart hammering, she turned around. She was standing there, right there. Nodding her head slightly, she raised an eyebrow at Lucinda. "Hi, I'm Niamh E., just that." Lucinda froze for a moment. "Whu..." She said, her mind working furiously. Niamh chuckled, chewing at the silver ring that passed through her lower lip. Turning to the bar, she signalled the barman. "Whisky." She looked at Lucinda, grinned again. "She'll have the same, so she will."
The drinks duly arrived, and Lucinda numbly handed over the money. "Keep the change." She croaked when the barman brought back a handful of coins. "You have a voice, then." Said Niamh with a smile. "Don't mind if I do..." So saying she pocketed the change.

Niamh's long black hair was tied up in a high ponytail, and Lucinda could now see it was shot through with streaks of dark red and burgundy. "You have a name?" Niamh turned to face Lucinda as she asked, and it occurred to the latter later that it was quite possible that she had genuinely expected her to not actually have one. "Lucinda." She replied. "...Lucy for short."

Just for a moment, something passed behind Niamh's big chestnut eyes. "Lucy." She repeated the name slowly, turning it over in her mouth as if it reminded her of something. Then she blinked and gave a brief little half-smile; raising her glass she said, "I'll call ya Lucy, then." Lucy nodded. "If you like." Niamh paused, her glass halfway to her lips, regarded the other from under furrowed brows. "I might, at that..." Lucy felt herself blush.

-x-

It was impossible not to get on with Niamh. It was like fighting with some inexorable maelstrom; no matter how hard you struggled, you just kept getting drawn in. Not that Lucy was doing a great deal of struggling mind, on the contrary, another whisky later and Lucy, who had already had two glasses of red wine before leaving the flat, found herself close in a booth with Niamh, who seemed almost totally untouched by what she had drunk, and regarded the other woman across the table with wry amusement as Lucy flubbed her words and giggled behind her hands.

Back in the present, Lucy smiled, and cast a glance to her side at Niamh's still sleeping form. From out of the window the street down below had grown busier and the room was definitely lighter. Never mind, she was content. Closing her eyes she let her mind drift back to the evening before, it already seemed so far away.
One thing she did remember was that, before the evening got a little... hazy, she had sat and looked at Niamh as they talked, taking her in, as if wanting to record every detail of that first time they had met, as if it were the first time she had ever met anyone.

They'd downed the first shot in one, in silence, and Lucy had somehow ended up paying for another and Niamh had again taken the change. Lucy, feeling like some awkward teenager on a first date instead of a thirty-five year old divorcee, stumbled over further introductions and obvious questions about Niamh's band. Somewhere along the way though the answers and the conversation drifted away to be replaced by a silence that seemed to enclose the two of them in a comfortable isolating sphere and cut off all sound, leaving only vision and that, it felt to Lucy, was enhanced, somehow.

Niamh's face was long and angular, yet somehow delicate, "elfin" might have been the way to describe it; full lips and a small nose and two widely-set eyes, large and chestnut coloured, set in deep and shadowed sockets. Within the pupils though there was depth, like they were two unfathomable pools. Her eyes were captivating and seemed to drag Lucinda's attention back to them every time she moved her own gaze away. Around her left eye a horseshoe of multicoloured circles had been tattooed, with a small blue star just beneath. Her ears seemed overly large in comparison to her head, and they were heavily pierced through with rings; in addition to these there was a ring in her lip and another through her nostril, they were all thick bands of silver, and she was constantly chewing at the one in her lip.

Lucinda remembered that her gaze had looped lazily downwards, past Niamh's mouth; her lips, coated in black lipstick, moving silently it seemed to Lucy as she spoke, and down over her shoulders. It occurred to her now, here in bed with sobriety once more crystallising her thoughts, that the other woman had been watching her, Lucy, looking at her, all the time...
Niamh had been wearing some kind of tight black leather affair that left little to the imagination, it was unzipped to just below her chest and left her long, slender yet surprisingly muscular-looking arms bare - (and she was indeed, as Lucy was to find out later, considerably stronger and more sinewy than she seemed) - her skin was porcelain white, and unmarked but for numerous swirling tattoos of many colours, consisting, it turned out, exclusively of various shapes; circles and squares, stars and crescents. The effect was to make it seem like she was wearing some kind of dazzle camouflage, like the ships that Lucy had read about had been painted with in the war. Later, in the flat, it had been difficult to keep track of her movements, or perhaps that had just been the whisky.

"...another." The sound of the bar and its occupants crashed back in on Lucy. Feeling as if she were falling forwards, she snapped suddenly upright on the seat. Niamh waited patiently for her to compose herself, her head cocked on one side, long fingers steepled before her, the nails painted a deep black. "I said, get us another, I have to pee." Except Lucy heard it as: "...Ai harv t'pee..." Niamh's accent had a curious Gaelic quality to it, neither Scottish nor Irish, but some strange mixture of both. There was an odd sing-song quality to it also, a kind of underlying musicality present in every word she said. It was a little weird but rather pleasant at the same time - (a lot like Niamh herself, Lucinda thought). "Whisky?" Asked Lucy. Niamh winked. "Aye, that's my drink." She got up from the table but then paused, looking at Lucy with that same curious half-smile, and again Lucinda had the oddest feeling that Niamh recognised her somehow. After a moment Niamh said, "Don't worry, you're doin' just fine." So saying she leant quickly across the table and kissed Lucy once on the lips, before moving off and away, smoothly disappearing into the crowd.

Lucy raised her fingers to her mouth, the impression of Niamh's lips fading only slowly. Her touch, her closeness at that moment, her scent; cinnamon and sweat, whisky and something... exotic; Lucy took a deep breath, her heart was beating way too fast and for a moment she felt sure that the other woman had drugged her. "She's clearly not your type." Said her stern inner voice. "You've paid for the drinks all night and now she's poisoned you! walk away Lucy..." Nevertheless she found herself at the bar once more, and her second thoughts grumbled into silence, ignored for the moment at least.

It was very late by now and the bar, though still certainly lively, was nowhere near as full as it had been previously in the evening, and as such Lucy was able to get herself served fairly quickly. "I see you've got something goin' there with Niamh." Said the barman as he came over and took her order. He was a large man with a green mohican, a wide nose and a wider mouth, his name tag identified him as Boris. Lucy smiled and shrugged in a kind of "Maybe, sort of" way. "This is it." She thought. "This is where he tells me she's no good." Deep in her mind, her inner Lucinda sat up and grinned smuggly. Boris poured the drinks and waved away her money when she offered it. "Nah, keep it, it's on me. She'll fleece you that girl will, and you'll still love her for it." He raised a stubby finger. "Word to the wise though, be careful with 'er, she's more fragile than she looks, is Niamh." Lucy raised an eyebrow, squinting slightly from the whisky she'd drunk. "How do you mean? " Boris looked around him, then leant forward conspiratorially. "Just that she's been through a lot, that's all. Acts all tough and brash she does but she ain't as hard as she thinks that she is, I know." He pointed a finger at himself. "I've been like a father to 'er these past few years..." Lucy wanted to ask more, and it seemed Boris was about tell her something further, but other customers had by then arrived and, with a final glance at her and a brisk nod, he left to serve them.

Lucy was, as far as was possible given her increasing level of inebriation, somewhat more thoughtful when she returned to the booth. Niamh had already returned, and was slouched nonchalantly on one of the bench seats, toying with the silver ring that pierced her nostril. As Lucy sat down and passed her the whisky, Niamh gestured with her chin to the barman. "Boris collared you, did he?" She asked. "Yeah, he did..." She paused for a moment, took a sip of whisky. "He said, um..." It was her fourth or fifth of the night and the words in her head came only reluctantly to her lips. "I know what old Boris says." Interjected Niamh. "Now though, now's not the time for serious talk."

"What... is it now the time for?" Asked Lucy, suddenly breathless, her voice catching in her throat. Very deliberately Niamh drained her glass and placed it on the table. She licked her lips and stared directly at the other woman. "Well," she said, her curiously accented voice lilting musically, "I suppose we'll just have to see, won't we?"

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jul 22 2015, 11:36 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

Lucy awoke feeling rested, and opened her eyes to a sky of cerulean blue, the trees that ringed their clearing were a-twitter with morning birdsong, and a gentle breeze blowing across her face brought with it the scent of nearby woodsmoke and cooking meat.

Turning her head to one side, she looked across the clearing to the fire, where Niamh was busying herself with what Lucy chose to believe were strips of bacon, slung over flames from long sticks, themselves driven into the earth around the fire's base.

“Moarnin'...” Said Niamh, looking over at Lucy and smiling crookedly.
“Hi.” Replied the other, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?”
“S'past eyt.” Said Niamh. “Goe, dae yer thyng, an' thenne cum bak o'er heeyar frae tai gette sum scran.” She glanced back at the food. “Oanlee b'quyke; wi'v a lotte tae dae, noo.”

Getting up, Lucy padded stiffly across the clearing to the trees marking it's boundary. Finding a likely-looking one, she went behind it and unlaced her trousers – (still very much aware that their previous owner had more than likely died whilst wearing them) – sliding them down and squatting, she proceeded to relieve herself.
As she did so the feeling of incongruity which, along with her breathlessness, was constantly in the back of her mind, swept over her once again and reminded her that, not three days before, she had been performing this exact same activity whilst gazing blankly across a carpeted bathroom floor at a white-and-blue tiled wall, whilst off to one side fragrant steam drifted up from her hissing shower, and the cold seat upon which she had placed herself made her bottom tense.

And now? She laughed quietly to herself as her mind's eye closed once more and revealed the actual view; a leaf-strewn grassy slope, stretching down into the dark shadows of the deeper forest, her feet cold and wet with dew, the rough bark of a gnarled and ancient tree at her back.
She realised, as she cast about for one of the broad dockleaf-like plants she had employed previously, that she was actually homesick more for the feel of a cold plastic toilet seat right now, than practically anything else...

-X-

Niamh turned and stood as Lucy hove into view around the broad base of a tree at the edge of the clearing, she was relacing her trousers as she approached and, having tightened them around her waist, wiped her hands upon them, grimacing.

The Elf chuckled. “Heh, ye'll ge' yoos'd tae tha'...” She bent down and grabbed a stick, held it out to Lucy, the meat impaled on the end of it sizzling and popping. “Durt uz durt, an' ye'll b'ge'in' tai noo ytte az a fren' afor loang.”

Suddenly hungry, Lucy took the stick from Niamh and tore at the meat with her teeth, hot fatty juices running unheeded down her chin.
“Guid, ye tuck ynne.”
Niamh broke the fire down then, having pulled up the stakes with the rest of the meat on them and laid the rashers to one side to cool.
“Theez'll cum ynne yoosful fer oan th'rode...”

Lucy watched her, chewing over a final mouthful. She was very aware that Niamh had cooked breakfast solely in a bid to give some small sense of normality to their situation. Lucy was glad of the gesture, even though at the same time she saw through it.
“Thurs a crik, aloang awaiz.” Said Niamh, gesturing eastwards across the rise. Lucy followed her hand, squinting into the sun which hung still relatively low in the sky. “Ye kin hae a wosh, 'n' gae yersel' a drynke.”
She looked at Lucy, and once again Lucy realised, as she looked back into Niamh's dark eyes, nestling in bruised sockets, just how much there was to this strange creature that, beyond the seeming normality of her conversation – (however strange in context) – she, Lucy, simply did not understand.

And yet for all of that, for all of her immediate exotic inscrutability and weirdness, in a world composed of stranger tides masquerading as rolling hills and countryside, Niamh had got under her skin and lucy realised, not for the first time, that she'd been doomed from the start, from that first night in another world, her world, seemingly so long ago even now.

“Tis nae fah, an' theyar wul gae o'er oor nex' moov.”

-X-

The water was icy cold and Lucy, breathless, splashed her face and swilled out her mouth, letting the chill, clear water run over her chin, down her throat, and between her breasts.
On a whim, she took off her trousers and sat, gasping, in the creek, letting the water's icy touch refresh her, shivering as it washed over her, yet also warmed by the bright sun that glared down upon the hillside from the cloudless sky. She squinted up at it as she splashed water over her legs.
“It looks like my sun...” She said softly to herself, and turned away from it, suddenly sad and missing home, wherever it now was.

Niamh, conspicuously not taking part in the bathing opportunity was instead staring out across the view, seemingly spying out the route ahead.
“Wun yur dun, Looch,” she said, “cum o'er heeyar, an' ai'll shoe ye wur weeyar hedyn.”

Lucy stood up, and wiped the excess water off from her lower half with her hands. Stepping out of the creek, she retrieved her trousers and pulled them on, making a face as the material stuck to her wet skin. No matter, the sun would dry her eventually.
She crossed the grass to where Niamh waited and watched.
“Show me, then.”

Niamh paused for just a moment, looking at her, then turned away and cleared her throat.
“Wul hed fer Bravil, ai thynke 'tis th'onlee thyng reelee.” Behind her, Lucy nodded, although Niamh could not see. The cinnamon scent that seemed to pervade the air around the elf appeared to be stronger at that moment, maybe it was the wind or maybe...
...it had been like this before, under other circumstances. Either way, Lucy shook her head as if to clear her mind, it was difficult to concentrate.

“Tis waer ai kaym frae, lees' th'las' plais ai renemba.” Continued Niamh. “Mebbee yffe ai goe bak tae th'ende, wi kyn wurk oot...” Her voice trailed off once again, and she turned to Lucy chewing at her lip uncertainly.
Lucy, her brain full of spice, had to force herself to speak; “Work out what, Niamh?” She laid a hand gently on Niamh's arm. “Me? You?”

“Us?”

The questions hung in the air above them like some huge and lumpen weight, swollen with dark uncertainty and doubt. In truth neither woman knew, and perhaps would be no nearer to knowing, how to extricate themselves from the circumstances in which they had become mired.
Niamh, apparently back from the dead, striving to find her purpose and herself; and Lucy, dragged across space and probably time, to an alien world, confused and conflicted and bound to the – now, or always – Elf, by...
what...?
Love?
Loneliness?
A need for meaning and companionship?

Maybe all of the above, she thought for perhaps the hundredth time, certainly the spice-scent was having a not unpleasant, if entirely inappropriate given the circumstances, effect upon her. Maybe that proved the first, or maybe it was just meaningless passion brought on by their closeness.
Lucy shook her head; who knew, really – they had been two lost souls in another world, and they were just as lost here. Whatever the emotion, the one was all that the other had, and in fairness, it could be a lot worse.

And then there was The Other – The Thing, the creature that had precipitated their flight, causing Lucy's appearance in this place. Her heart missed a beat in her chest and she felt her blood chill as the being's nightmare image flashed in her mind.
It had hunted and found either Niamh or her or both of them for reasons neither understood and it was, somewhere, still searching.

Who knew?
In the absence of anything else, maybe Niamh's plan was best. It was certainly more constructive than standing on this breezy hillside with her trousers still damp and clinging to her skin.
“Ok,” she said, her fingers still lightly resting on Niamh's arm, “which way is Bravil?”

Niamh, who had watched the passage of thought and emotion across Lucy's face as one might watch the clouds travel across the sky on a windy day, cleared her throat and smiled lopsidedly – (and actually quite adorably) – by way of acknowledgement. Maybe now was not the time, she seemed to say, but there would be time, and they would have each other, if nothing else.

“Hokae, wul.” She said at length. “Wu'll hed sooth an' eest, roond th'boattom o' yon layk.” She gestured at the glistening expanse of water below them and looked meaningfully at Lucy.
“Er... Rumare.” Replied Lucy.
Niamh grinned and nodded, and Lucy smiled broadly back, feeling ridiculously pleased with herself at having remembered the name.
“Ai, Rumare,” continued the Elf, “wu'll karree oan heddyn' eest thenne, frae theeyar, keppyn' oaff o' th' rodes, an' stykkyn' tae th' kuntree 'smutch 's poas'bwl.”

Lucy was watching Niamh point out, at least notionally, their route as she described it, and it occurred to her that although she herself was nodding and – (as far as she could tell) – looking as though she was taking everything in, Niamh might as well have told her that they would head to the sun and then turn right towards the next nearest star, for all that she, Lucy, really understood the directions.

“Wee kyn hed yntae Bravil bye a dyffrunt root, th' bak wae. Tis onne th' watta.” Niamh went on. She paused for a moment, gazing out at the far horizon. “Thenne, wu'll sea.”
Lucy could only hope that by the time they arrived, there would be at least some sense of what they would actually do.

Niamh appeared to have read her mind, as she turned to Lucy and placed the fingers of one hand lightly upon her shoulder.
“Dinnae wurree, Looch, Wu'll wurk ytte al oot...”
But she didn't sound convinced...

-X-

Despite her doubts, Niamh was for the moment evidently done with spying out the route and their immediate travel plans. Appearing to relax, at least a little, she crossed to the stream and bent over it, scooping water into her mouth with a cupped hand. Having drunk it down, she clamped her teeth together and rubbed a finger briskly and firmly over them before hawking and spitting into the water.
“Gi'yuz a sek.” She said, winking at Lucy.

Standing up, she moved her hands to the front of her jacket, evidently preparing to undo it, presumably she was going to take it and the rest of her clothes off so that she could bathe in the stream as Lucy had more-or-less done.
Lucy realised that Niamh's outer clothing was actually dark-blue rather than the black she had previously thought. Niamh's jacket, only ever loosely buckled, was hanging open now, revealing the porcelain, if grubby, skin of her chiselled belly and above that, the dark-green linen strip that wrapped about her torso, binding up her modest breasts.

Lucy noticed all of this, and later was very glad that she had, because it was, up to that point and for a while beyond it, the last pleasant thing she remembered.

The world, and everything in it then, went completely to pieces as The Other caught up with them.

-X-

There was a crackling sound, growing rapidly in intensity. Eyes widening, Lucy looked round behind her, further up the slope. From the corner of her eye she became aware of Niamh beginning to run the short distance to her, one arm outstretched, her mouth opening.
“Lu...”
Was all she heard, before the crackling sound resolved itself into a grinding roar and a slit, roughly six feet from top to bottom, began to form in the air just above the ground, thick and soupy light flowed out of it as it split open in a disturbingly anatomical fashion.
The hairs on Lucy's arms and neck stood stiffly to attention and she backed up slowly, barely noticing Niamh's hand touch her shoulder as the Elf ran in front of her.

Accompanied by an unbearable stench a black, chitinous leg emerged from out of the slit.

Lucy collapsed to the ground, her eyes saucer-wide, fixed upon the opening in the air and the creature, emerging implacably from within. Turning her back on it, Niamh knelt before Lucy and placed her hands on Lucy's shoulders, shaking her.
“Lucy! We hae tai runne!”

But it was no use.

Lucy, her hands clamped upon either side of her face, her mouth hanging open, and from it coming a gasping, hopeless, yodelling wail, was beyond thought and action, she was utterly and completely mindless, stricken with Fear.
Niamh shook her again, roughly, and Lucy's head snapped back and forth on her neck, her eyes, unblinking, never shifting their gaze from the spider-thing as it tore and murdered its way into the world, out from the void beyond the portal.

“Ah Fukke!” Screamed Niamh. She pushed Lucy backwards, hard. The other woman fell onto her back, her body stiffening. Her hands clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists and she held them against her ears as if trying to shut out her own constant, insistent screaming, now taking on a desperate, hopeless, breathless note, Lucy's face was a fixed rictus of fright, and a stain spread from her crotch, darkening further her still damp trousers.

Niamh turned from her companion and spun, crouching and tense, to face the Daedra. The Daemon was now fully resolved into her world, standing huge and malignant upon the hillside above her, the grass in its shadow withering and dying.
Throwing off her jacket lest it got in her way, Niamh slid her knife from its scabbard upon her hip, and held it out lightly in her hand, the tip aimed towards the creature.

“Ye leev uz bee!” She shouted. The noise of the Daedra's arrival had diminished now, and Lucy's pitiful screams had become weak, shallow sobs. Had Niamh been able to look round, she would have seen Lucy, her eyes blankly staring into nothing, curled tightly into a ball, her breeches soaked and reeking, and her hair wet with sweat, slathered across her scalp and forehead, her skin grey and and clammy with the onset of shock.

“Ye cum nae cloasa! Growled Niamh, her dark eyes flashing, the muscles in her sinewy frame standing out like knotted rope; tendons slid like snakes beneath her skin.

The Daedra turned its masked visage towards the Elf. It was, as before when Lucy had first seen it, an imposing and terrible sight; eight legs, tipped with iron spikes which dug into the hillside, the earth hissing and steaming where they penetrated it. Its abdomen, now roughly armored with spiny chitinous plates was, beneath them, flabby and exuded a heavy greenish miasma that flowed slowly to the ground and moved like some oily river downslope, withering the plants in its path and turning the clear and fresh water of the creek into a foul and brownish sludge.

Sprouting from the front of its heavily-armored thorax was the grotesquely muscled upper half of a thing that was only passing female. Its torso was bare and twisted and a pair of massive breasts depended from it, heaving and quivering in time with its husky, gurgling breath.
Its skin, blue-grey, was covered in arcane tattoos that seemed almost to flow and glide in a nauseatingly sentient fashion over the dull flesh.

As for its head, Niamh could see only its mouth and lower jaw beneath the massive helm that it wore, itself marked, incongruously, with a delicate filigree of sparkling and complex patterns.

As Niamh crouched before it, her knife at the ready, poised to fight, the creature raised its chitin-encased arms above its helm and flexed its huge and taloned hands.

It opened its mouth, revealing several rows of cracked and yellowed teeth. Milky-white venom dribbled from between its dark lips and down over its chin, smoking and steaming upon it. It hissed loudly at Niamh, and she was forced to turn her face from it, and the sewer-stench of its breath.

The Daedra took a step forward and Niamh, glancing briefly behind her at the now virtually catatonic Lucy, turned once again to face her foe. She ran her tongue across her lips and cricked her neck from one side to the other. Taking a deep breath, she tightened her grip on her blade, her dark eyes narrow and focused.

There was a momentary pause,

a stilling of

motion,

and of sound.

Then:

“Cum oan thenne, ye Bytche!”

And Niamh leapt.

-X-