Shades of Red Options

[ShogunSniper]

this is my first attempt at a fan fiction. i wrote this in school while i was bored, and spoofed it up for my submission here. im not sure if i will continue it, and this isn't really a complete entry. it feels quite like an unfinished intro but just deal with it.



I wait in darkness. Tme flows through me like a river without substance. Hours pass. Minutes. Seconds. All meaningless to me. Most would say my career, my reason for shrouding myself in shadow, is to kill. Though, the wise understand my job is to disregard any number of things. I disregard my fear of darkness. I forget my guilt. I turn my head to moral reasoning. I shrug off questions, comments, compliments, insults. I ignore the passing days, and they ignore me.

When time moves without you, no natural end to your life can be seen. This is the case with me. I don't bother myself with the concern of dying of old age or passing away in my sleep, less it be by poison. A cold, dark blade through my chest, or an arrow lodged in my throat are things I must keep an eye on in nature's stead. These are the instruments through which death will reach me. And since such forms of mortal awareness are all inflicted by men, it is only logical that if I need not fear age, then all that is left to cower from is the wraith of man.

With only human ambition to be done in by, I have concluded my life and my purpose to one simple truth: Serve those more powerful than myself.

If you hold swords against a man who you cannot kill, you will not kill him. This is my logic, yet scores of aspiring heroins do not grasp this idea, and ultimately die by my steel. No matter how you look at it, see me as a killer or a disregarder, I serve the powerful. The powerful need jobs done. They pay the Black Hand. The Black Hand pays me.

I am an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood.

I make my living off of disregarding, forgetting, head turning, shrugging, and ignoring. End's meet is made by killing. I kill people like yourself. I kill the intelligent. The stupid. The big. Small. Strong. Weak. Brave. Cowardly. Among all the diversities of Nirn, I sow a common trait. They all die silently in the darkness.

~~~

They call me Sadril. I was birthed in the Nordic town of Bruma. My skin is ashen, my hair silver. I am a bastarde. One would assume, however, that since my mother is of the racial majority of my hometown, that my father would have to be Dunmeri. In fact he was.

Long lost bedtime stories tell me that I share my father's name. They tell me of his cunning and wits and of his cursed blood, which he also blesses me with. Though a father who abandons his own kin and crimson is not worthy of the few thoughts I keep on the tip of my mind, and so he remains among the things that I am paid to forget daily...

[ShogunSniper]

Chapter 1: In the Air of Death


The blackness embraces those who embrace it...

Quietly, I waited, cloaked in the dire shadow within the home of a man I did not know and did not wish to know. All was silent. A silence so pure and soft that it seemed to deafen me. Even the air around me dared not move, for fear of playing the slightest whisper to my ear that may disturb me. The small specks of dust, visible in the painted blue moonlight that shone through a nearby window, did not even stir. They hung, motionles, as if stopped by time itself.

I crouched in the dark corner of a shack in the middle of the wilderness, north of Kvatch. This is where I was informed my target would dwell, and this is where I waited for him. The sun had disappeared for hours, and yet the Altmer man who I was to submit to the void remained away from his home.

Away, until, loud as thunder, through the still air came the sound of a key greeting the only lock within miles. My sword, a simple steel katana, glided out of its sheath with a satisfying slither as I instinctively readied a lethal lunge towards the door.

The latch clicked.
My stance raised slightly into a more mobile one.

The door cracked open, and the once still dust particles stirred and buzzed to life; as if foreseeing the doom to come.
My muscles tightened.

I said no prayer to Sithis asking for protection as I took a single leap--half step, half jump-- for that was all it took to cross the shack and get to the door still in mid-swing. The timing of my attack could not have been more perfect. The thrust slipped just past the opening door and plunged deep into the chest of whoever was on the other side.

My dance of death was choreographed so flawlessly that only a sliver of my figure was visible from outside the door. Even then, that sliver, my right shoulder, was still cloaked in the blackness of the hovel. My target probably did not even know that he had been slain. After an eternity of supporting my blade and my kill's lifeless body, I peaked around the door to inspect the corpse.

Rather than being satisfied, I was disturbed by what clung to my grey steel. An Altmeri man was my target, though I found the terrified expression of an Altmeri woman on the end of my sword; her face twisted and distorted by the pain and fear of the end.

Most Dark Brotherhood assassins lack compassion toward their kills. Any honor they may have is saved for their brothers and sisters; and even then, they are quick to betray in the name of the Night Mother and the Dread Father. I was different from most, but not by much. Yes, I was the embodiment of the cold murderous persona of an assassin, simply lacking in other areas of the Dark Teachings.

Yet, for reasons that were at the time beyond me, I felt a ping of sorrow for the accidental death I caused. A feeling i had never experienced before then. However, the emotion was shallow and fleeting for a glint of moonlight caught my eye just beyond the dark veil of the treeline and brought me out of my trance. The moon, being low in the sky and behind me, on the opposite side of the house that the entrance was on, had fatefully cast a gleem of light on the broadhead of an arrow racing towards me. I quickly withdrew myself behind the door, though was not fast enough. The arrow struck through the left shoulder of my most recent victim and stuck into my right shoulder.

The shock of being hit surprised me to the point of dropping my weapon, though any sound it may have made was deadened by the cadaver that still held lifelessly, even vengefully, to it.

I pressed lightly against the door for cover, trying to compose myself. It may surprise you to know that I, working with the Brotherhood for years, had never been wounded while carrying out the will of Sithis. This explains why I went into some amount of shock at the arrow protruding from my body. After a few deep breaths, my mind snapped back to reality and my left hand, without even being told to do so, ripped the arrow from my shoulder. I cringed, but did not dare make a sound. Silence and darkness were my only true allies, yet I had just been betrayed by them both.

I went back to doing what I had been doing all night. I watied, and listened. Each passing moment, each spark of thought illuminating my head seemed to last hours, yet I knew it took me only seconds to decide to reach around the door and feel for the handle of my sword. An assassin is nothing without his tools. I had been told this, and dutifully ran it through my brain, though I did not strongly support it.

At this point, I was sitting against the ajar door. It was being held open by the corpse now stuck in the doorway. I reached behind me, to the other side of the door with my left hand and slowly felt around for the unmistakable hilt of my katana. Slowly, my hand inched.

Further...

Further...

My fingers pulling it slowly like a blind, crippled spider searching for its web. My arm began to cramp and ache as I stretched even more. Finally, I lifted my hand for one final reach, one final grasp at the air; though I did not find my weapon.

Instead my hand fell upon the face of the Altmeri woman, still warm and full of emotion; full of pain. The feel of her smooth, creamy skin under my fingers flashed the bone-chilling image of her young, beautiful, dying profile in my head. Her gaze of death struck me hardest; deep black pools of innocence, staring into my own. Asking: "Why me? What did I do?" It came upon me violently; my mind's eye unable to avert itself from the paralyzing waves of pain her horrified face caused in me.

Though her death was not all I relived...


This post has been edited by ShogunSniper: Mar 9 2007, 01:22 AM