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]

The first thing I remember after the screams subsided was the feel of cool water falling into my mouth. I had not the strength to swallow it, but the refreshment it provided was so welcome that I would not want to rush its journey down my throat. For the longest time all I could think of was the flow of water.

I could imagine the liquid. So cool and pure that it was completely invisible, save for the heavenly mist that rose and drifted from it. I saw it in my mind. A collumn of mist containing the silhouette of invisible water.

Sadly, conciousness began to take hold at this absurd thought. My first moment of reasoning came accompanied with the question, Where is this sweet nectar coming from? I immediately dismissed the question, though, deciding that it did not matter.

Moments later, the second rational wave, which was much more philosophically groundbreaking than the previous, reached me: How am I drinking water... if I'm dead?

This lead me to the third logical thought process in which another part of my bliss was lost when I realized that I indeed, was still living.

~~

I gasped; the first mistake of my new life. When I gasped I inhaled what water had not made its way down my throat, and jolted upright in a coughing spell.

"Hey, there. Take it easy," I told myself in a feminine voice.

And thus, the fourth reality check hit me. My voice... is not that of a woman's. With this final brilliant deduction came the end of my coughing. The voice rang, this time much clearer with concern and a hard-to-place soothing quality to it, "Please, rest."

I opened my eyes to see just what the source of the beautiful voice was, but the light of midday blinded them, for they were not long ago completely consumed by darkness. My eyes instinctively winced shut. I then began to feel light headed and passed out once again.

Years passed with only the mysterious voice to think about. A teenage girl-crazed part of me that persisted in the back of my head exclaimed "Such a pleasant voice must be paired with good looks!"

My usual self beat him back with logic and responsibilty, "I need to wake up and find out what's going on."

The wiseman Sadril who spoke in riddles raised his voice, "Why must I do anything? After a period of nothingness, something will indefinitely happen."

A period of nothingness passed.

These voices... Who are they?

They are different aspects of you.

"I think... I am going crazy."

"W-what?" the pretty feminine voice from before asked with a laugh. Her voice rippled through the darkness of my mind like a stone tossed in a pond.

It startled me awake again. This time, though, I managed to gasp without choking on water. I opened my eyes and was once more blinded, but more like being blinded after just waking up from a night's sleep; as opposed to being blinded after just waking up from death.

"Wha? What?" I answered her question with the same she asked, only in a frightened, dry whisper.

I looked around panickedly and could barely make out a figure lying on her side, facing me, propping her head up with one arm and holding a book in front of her with the other. My vision was blurred, unfortunately, and I couldn't make out her features, in fact, I was only assuming to was a her.

"You said you thought you were going crazy," the voice replied matter-of-factly. I could hear her smile on her words. It, as her voice did, sounded beautiful. "What did you mean?"

"I--" I stared blankley at her, blinking hard 3 times, trying to regain my vision. Obviously I didn't realize how stupid I must have looked with my confused gaze and gaping jaw, for she started giggling. The giggling turned to laughter when I asked, "What are you laughing at?!" but didn't manage to change my perplexed look.

"No--" she could barely get her words out, she was laughing so hard, "Nothing! Nothing! I swear!" she finally managed. I could hear her still trying to stiffle her laughter.

Realizing it was hanging open, I closed my mouth. As my vision steadily came back into focus I looked to her. All the predictions I had made had proved to be correct. Before me, lied the fairest Dark Elf I had ever layed eyes on. She closed her book and let her hair flow loose from the bun she had pulled it into behind her head. Her hair, flowing like a black river, consumed my gaze. She shook it loose in such a way that would drive most men insane. I, being trained to lack emotion, did not project such weakness.

Admitedly, she did cause a spark of something inside me. What exactly, I was not sure.

I looked down, sighed, and looked back up at her, "How long--" I lost my words.

She sat herself upright, cross-legged, put her hands on her knees, and made an attempt at a serious face that I dared consider cute. "I found you with four arrows sticking out of you, and a fifth wound on your shoulder, about three days ago. I took you here and dressed your wounds," she looked down, almost looking ashamed, skipping over parts in her mind she did not want to talk about openly, "You woke up two days ago, choked on some water," a smile broke through her stern look, she clearly wanted to laugh but supressed it this time, "Then just passed back out again." She continued to smile softly and sincerely, then shrugged, a look of concern in her eyes; which were a much a deeper ruby color than most Dunmer's.

I went silent, to which she interrupted by leaning forward and extending a smooth hand, "I'm Elle."

"Elle?" I raised an eyebrow at her, ignoring her outstretched hand asking for a greeting, "That's a weird name."

She scrunched up her face, crossed her arms, and looked away indignantly; flirtatiously.

I grinned gently, then went wide-eyed realizing I had just smiled for the first time in years. The surprise passed, and the smile returned. "My name's Pooka," I said in the most convincing voice I could muster, extending my own hand for her to shake; a way of making ammends for making fun of her name.

I saw a smile creep across her expression at and broke out into laughter just before she did.

~~

I lost rack of time, as usual. We could have been laughing for hours or seconds. It would have felt the same to me. As cold and heartless as I tried to make myself seem, it felt good to laugh again. I had no doubt, that I was still cold and heartless, but this girl, this Elle... She inspired something in me that I had never felt before.

The laughter died, and she finally asked, "What's your name? Really?"

"Sadril."

"Sadril," she repeated. She put her hands together behind her head and our eyes locked. "What were you doing that got yourself into so much trouble?"

I averted my eyes quickly. Something stopped me from lying to her, yet I couldn't let her know the truth. A long time passed. Too long. Elle would know now that anything less than a horrifying answer would have to be an outright lie if it required this much thinking on my part. "I," I began slowly, "am an assassin." My head hung low. Never had I been so ashamed of the title, and I could not for the life of me decide why.

Her expression remained unchanged, as if waiting for that horrifying answer, or the punch line. A cool breeze blew through the woods, reminding me that I was still in the wilderness, sitting on an outstretched, worn, green blanket with the most beautiful girl I had ever met. "And?" She probed, confirming my prediction of her expecting more.

"What do you mean: 'and'? That's... all there is to it. I kill people for a living. Aren't you scared? Worried that I might kill you?" Again I asked myself why I poured my secrets out to this person who I had just met. It just felt natural. It seemed as though I had been with her forever, though it must have only been minutes.

"Do you plan to kill me?" she answered with the same aura of calm she had held through the entire conversation.

"No."

"Then I'm not worried."

Those words... stayed with me. They were not forced out of her mouth. They did not linger in the air with the stench of lies or fear. They were light, free, fearless. She had me completely convinced that she was not afraid of me. It was a humbling feeling. I had been able to scare anyone I wanted, yet she was so calm and sure of herself. Sure of me, and my supposed true intent. Hell, she could have easily convinced me that I didn't kill anyone.

Being with Elle reminded me of so much that I had lost to my life as an assassin. My age. I always saw time move by so slowly, perhaps attributed to my Cursed Blood, but I had begun to feel ancient. Elle reminded me of my true age, though. I was only twenty years old. Wow. It hit me. I was so young and yet so highly respected in my order. I was blessed with the ability to kill instinctively, yet I had so little experience. I was beginning to feel so old, entranced by the life of an assassin. Something had freed me from it.

Ardarume.

Suddenly I felt as if my head had just exploded with memory.

Ardrarume, it called again. A feminine voice, different from Elle's. The one I heard spoken in memories.

Her final moments flooded back to me. I clutched my head tightly and hunched over, as if trying to keep my skull from falling apart.

Ardarume

All the memories she passed on to me rushed back.

Ardarume. Her name, her dying breath, it haunted me.

I let out a roar of pain and Elle came to my side. She put her arm around my back and called out to me, "Sadril! Are you okay?" Her golden voice pierced through the depths of my mind, like a holy arrow of light, shattering the veil of darkness that Ardarume induced.

~~~

When I awoke, the sky had turned orange and purple with the falling of dusk. Elle sat over me, her lips pursed with concern, her hair pulled back up into a hasty bun; a few strands of her bangs still hanging loose and dangling down into my face. "What happened?" She asked abruptly.

"I... don't know," I replied. Questions raced through my own mind. Questions I would have preferred forgotten. Why did I witness Ardrarume's life when I killed her? Why was I attacked? Who attacked me?

"...Memories just keep coming back to me. It feels like a waterfall in my head..."

She ran hand across my forehead gently, pulling my silver hair away from my eyes.

Elle's shoulders slumped with both relief. Relief and concern. She sighed, her face deepened with worry.


Seeing her elegant complexion in the fading sunlight and the single tear well up and roll down her cheek, glowing orange with the setting sun, I found I was finally able to name the emotion she sparked within me...

This post has been edited by ShogunSniper: Mar 11 2007, 05:10 AM