Elisabeth's Short Stories Options

[Elisabeth Hollow]

Writing short fics like this keeps me sharp. There's no continuation for any of these. These will be one or two chaptered stories. I won't be concerned with word count, only the content and editing.

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A hiss of pain was all that escaped her lips before her skull cracked against the rock.

Soft shoes padded against the cobbled stones of the darkened streets as the brown-haired man fell to his knees, hand shaking. Tears sprung to his eyes as the only woman who had ever loved him lay dead in front of him, a pool of what was left of her blood creating a blackened halo around her head.

He stepped in it. Gods forgive him, but he stepped in her blood as he ran away. There were no guards chasing him, no angered shouts of mobs, voices roaring with rage as they burned down his cabin. It was quiet.

Too quiet.

Roland Jenseric hid out for several days, he thought, though it had been weeks. The nightmare of finding Relfina clutched in the grasp of a vampire was toying with his brain. Nightmares of what he might have done to her haunted him. He wondered more, what did Seridur do with her body?

He had combed the beaches of Lake Rumare, finding nothing. No guards were after him, and she was simply…missing. He would not be missed because of his isolated ways. No…Seridur would attempt to find him, he knew it. Roland was only a simple man, but he would fight to the death.

The days stretched on, with him writing furiously in his journal, re-reading the silly love notes Relfina would write to him and stick in strange places in the cabin. Under a pot was a bit of parchment with a simple heart drawn on, in a cup there were several love notes, each one stuffed in hurriedly. His favorite one was a note tied to a branch of dried lavender that simply said “You’re always in my dreams.” She stuck that beneath his pillow and left it there.

Once, in a frenzy, he decided to find all of them. He tore the cabin apart, determined to find every scrap of paper her lovely fingers had touched. In the short few months they had been seeing each other, Reflina had managed to write nearly fifty separate love notes to Roland, sticking them in odd places. The last time they had visited the cabin, she had sneakily rigged a note to fall when Roland opened a cupboard door. He wept.

He was re-reading another particularly saucy love note from her, the paper creased and smeared from him folding and unfolding it, when the knob jiggled. He was lost in the words, the echoes of her intent leaving him breathless. When you pressed your lips against my neck…

A sword unsheathing caused him to jump up, crumpling the letter in his fist.

“Wait! I know what you’re here for!”

And thus begun Roland’s revenge.

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He thought about burning them. He knew that with each piece of paper that turned to ash and smoke, a little more of his soul would be released. A little more of himself would be ready to heal. But he wasn’t ready to heal quite yet. Instead, he cleaned out Seridur’s drawers and gave them to Cylben and tucked the letter away in the side table next to the bed.

It was hard to act noble in front of The Hero; the same man who killed Seridur would also bring him the ashes of the other vampires he had killed. Roland paid him straight from Seridur’s coffers; an act he felt was justified. Stepping into Seridur’s house didn’t fill the void Relfina had left, but left him with a righteous, victorious indignation. She would be avenged wholly.

Despite what he thought, he was chagrined to see he wasn’t the only one who had lost someone due to Seridur’s vampirism. Roland had found Cylben Dolvalos, Seridur’s bodyguard, hunched with his own scrap of paper on Seridur’s bed several weeks after The Hero brought Seridur’s ashes to the Order. Roland left him in peace, though Grey-Throat commented on what Roland already speculated on, nodding towards a solemn Cylben.

“They were close,” he hissed in Roland’s ear. “Seridur was his Relfina.”

Roland didn’t feel victorious after that.

Still, no amount of scrap paper would convince him he wasn’t where the gods destined him to be. He may be just a man, but he would fight with the tools the gods gave him. And the gods gave him The Hero.

[Elisabeth Hollow]

Debating on reviving this for Fallout.