Agent, Ebonheart's finest Options

[jack cloudy]

Yesterday was my birthday so here's my belated gift to all of you. The start of a new fanfic! (Wings of Light will be continued as well.) You may notice a shift of focus compared to my earlier fanfics.




Agent.
Chapter 1: In training.

My knees were shivering. For a good reason, I might say as the Duke towering over me looked very intimidating in his heavy suit of Ebony armour. Just to compare the two of us, the helmet would have been enough to crush me. Also, being dressed in cheap rags has never been a good source of courage. As it was, I had more than enough reasons to be afraid of him.

Who am I? I no longer use the name I was born with. I changed it upon my arrival here on Vvardenfell. Now I finally I have a name I can spell. Anyway, my name is Ro-El Frost. Sounds Khajiit? Maybe, but I am really closer related to the Nords, though without the muscles, the alcohol tolerance, the noise and without the size. Go figure.

The Duke turned to a man wearing some sort of golden armour. Probably the boss of the guard who was blocking the only way out of the room.
,,Is this the kid you were talking about?” The Duke asked with a stern voice. This did not sound well.
,,Yes, that’s the one.” Was the equally stern reply. This was one of those moments that your life would start to fly past your eyes.

How did I get here? Well, I don’t really know to be honest. People claim I must have been on the Skooma to have forgotten how I ever found myself in that mine. I didn’t like it there. The slavers forced me to do hard labour every day. I could feel my life slowly seep away with every single egg I harvested. I had to get out.

My plan took time but it worked in the end, except for one small detail. I harvested some poison one of the Kwama warriors had been spitting at the wall and mixed it with my food for the day. The day after that, I dumped it into the lake that was somehow inside the mine. The food had been swallowed by the Slaughterfish before I’d stepped away. The next part of my plan was the hardest. I’d been warned that the smell of their queen’s blood puts the Kwama into a killing frenzie. This information was meant so that the slaves were careful not to kill themselves, but it could also be used to my advantage.

So as you might guess, tapping blood from the queen is a potentially lethal act. Fortunately, I knew that by tapping just a little through a tiny wound made with my fingernail, the Kwama would not even notice. I carefully kept the blood sealed away inside a bottle till after four days, I’d finally collected enough. That night came the last part of my masterplan.

I managed to convince the slaves to go swimming in the lake, after showing them that the Slaughterfish had died through my act of poisoning. Next, I sprinkled the collected blood on the clothes of the slavers. I managed to get out to the lake before the killing started. I’d never been so glad that Kwama can’t swim. Those things were completely out of control. Which leads me to where I am now.

,,You have caused the death of three Dunmer and would have escaped if my Legionaires weren’t performing a raid at the same time.” The Duke spoke directly to me. Remember the little detail that went wrong? Well two dozen heavily armed soldiers who found a whole angry bunch of Kwama in their face, that’s what went wrong.
,,I thought they would run when the Kwama went mad. I didn’t expect them to die.” Was the weak defense I managed to whisper.

My arm was brusquely grabbed by the guard. The slave bracers I’d been forced to wear clattered on the floor.
,,Ro-El Frost, you have closed down an illegal egg mine and punished those who were responsible. You have further freed their prisoners who are being returned to their families as we speak. All that without harming the Kwama themselves, my men are responsible for that. As such, it is my pleasure as a servant of the great Emperor, Uriel Septim, to grant you your freedom and to take you into my service as an agent in the order of Ebonheart. Serius will escort you to your room.” The Duke now said with a smile and pointed at the guard who had released me from the symbol of slavery.

In a flash of inspiration, I snatched the bracers from the floor before I was dragged out of the room by Serius. We ascended many stairs before he finally threw open a wooden door and pushed me inside. ,,Consider everything in this room to be yours. You’ll be summoned tomorrow at 6 am. Wait inside your room till we come for you.” Serius ordered me before slamming the door shut. Not the nicest guy in the world.

I sat down on the bed and looked around, still unable to believe what had just happened. Instead of being branded as the bad guy and possibly executed, I had been turned into some sort of hero. Not exactly something that happened to me every day.

After I finally admitted to myself that things had turned out alright, I took a look around the room they’d given me. Apart from the bed, there was a closet, a mirror, a desk with several books on it and a sturdy wooden chest. It wasn’t big, but not small either. I opened the closet with the intention of swapping my dirty old rags with something more comfortable. It was cold this time of the year. The closet did not disappoint me. It was filled with all kinds of clothes ranging from simple but sturdy to downright extravagant and fit for a noble. There were shirts, pants, robes, shoes and even a few skirts, though I did not know what I was supposed to do with those. Men don’t wear skirts where I come from. Finally there were a few gloves on a separate rack.

I choose for a simple blue shirt with matching pants and a pair of shoes fit for indoor use. As the last action of the day, I picked up the book lying on top of the pile. ‘History of the Empire, part 1’ it said on the cover. If my idea of an agent was somewhat correct, these books had been placed here for a reason. I had some reading to do.

[jack cloudy]

Rude awakenings? Maybe yes, maybe no. Just read on.




We were hovering high above the ground. Even if the guards somehow felt it necessary to look up, they would only find a tiny black spot in front of the moons. The Wing bobbed up and down gently, its fans whispering as it kept itself stable.
,,Now I remember. I’ve felt a presence similar to this when I last visited Cyrodiil. It was in a shrine of the Nine Divines, I believe.” Zarador mumbled, actually stroking his beard again. His fear of falling had almost completely vanished. I looked down on the plantation and counted the moving torches. There were about a dozen. More than I’d expected. I closed my eyes for a moment as I struggled with an internal conflict. Slavers, I had no love for them. Part of me wanted to simply barge in and stab them in their rotten heart. The other part told me that it was suicide, even with the element of surprise and a powerful mage at my side.
,,I’ve felt this too, in Ald-ruhn. A Redguard who claims to be the Nerevarine. I wonder what he’s doing here. Ah well, I’ll find out soon enough.”

I brought the wing back around and landed it behind a hill. I whispered a few words to the machine before dismounting.
,,Ok, here’s the plan. I want you to stay behind and watch for any trouble. If you see that I do get into trouble, say the following to the Wing.” I told Zarador and whispered the command in his ear.
,,So I should say….” I quickly covered his mouth with my hand.
,,Not now. The moment you say it, that thing is going to barge down the hills and drive a bolt through every guard it sees.”

I made sure my rapier was secured and wouldn’t make any noise before descending the hill. I deliberately moved along slowly, crawling on all fours. I avoided the gate and instead chose to mover around the east side of the wall surrounding the plantation. Till now, no one had even a clue that I was nearby.

I was hoping to catch Dren unaware, preferably while the monster in mortal form was sleeping in his bed. How wrong I was, to expect the Dunmer to be off-guard. If anything, the Nerevarine’s spirit should have been the sign that made me realize that Dren was definitely not sleeping. I’d seen the signs, I didn’t listen to what they said.

Once I’d figured I’d moved far enough, I invoked my special scroll of clinging and began to scale the wall. The moment I popped my head over the wall, I knew that this would not go as planned. This was just my luck, to climb the wall right where I’d end up next to the guard house. And to make matters worse, a guard was standing on the roof, with a torch, and two crimson eyes looking at my direction.

,,Who are you? A tourist? There’s nothing to see here. Now get out of here.” He snarled, fortunately keeping his voice down. I realized that I was dealing with a really dumb guard here. My opinion of my luck had changed drastically with that realization. I hopped over the wall and landed lightly next to him.
,,Beautiful weather, don’t you think?” I told him with my hands casually in my pockets. The guard finally noticed the weapon at my side and decided to get suspicious.
,,Don’t draw that sword if you want to live, kid!”

The ‘kid’ reward made me laugh on the inside. Somehow, this was one of the first things everyone said to me. Kid. If only they knew my true age. I bet they would be scared.
,,Just because I have a sword doesn’t mean I need it.” I answered casually and hit the guard against the helmet with a foot. He flew off the building, screaming till he hit the ground. There was a loud ‘ow’ when he landed. So much for a stealthy entrance.

I turned to the hills and gave Zarador a thumbs up to reassure him before he would intervene. My plan had fallen, but the drop had not been fatal. I dove into my collection of scrolls and produced two. A jumping scroll and an invisibility one. I invoked the jumping scroll first and had already begun my jump to the roof of Dren’s villa before I’d used the other. The guards all rushed into the guard house, probably with the plan of catching me on the roof. Too bad for them for they were moving towards the wrong roof.

Once they’d vanished from sight, I swung down through an open window and landed inside a dimly lit room. The silence was disturbing. I crouched down behind the cover of a plant. When my fingers touched the floor, I withdrew them instantly. I held up one of my hands in front of my face. My hand was covered in a warm liquid of a red colour that could mean only one thing. Blood.

My eyes trailed the path of blood on the floor till they reached the armoured Dunmer who lay against a rack. A few broken bottles of Mazte accompanied him. I needed no explanation this time to read the signs. Orvas Dren was death. And I bet the Nerevarine had something to do with it. I felt the cold touch of a blade on the back of my neck. My opinion of my luck had turned for the worse again.
,,Fancy meeting you here, kid.”