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]

I couldn't bring myself to look at her, though I could sense her eyes watching over me.

We simply waited in silence for the other to do something. Anything. Elle sat on her knees not six feet away from me, hands resting on her thighs. With a light breeze, I caught a stronger scent of blood; a harsh reminder what I did to her arm. I looked up slowly, as if any sudden movements might frighten her, just far enough to where I could see her wound. Uncountable streams of red flowed down her arm, seperating and rejoining until they finally dripped off her fingertips.

I surveyed my surroundings for the first time since I had fully waken up from death the day before. I saw a bag of supplies conveniently located right next to the tree I had backed against in my frightened retreat. I lifted the bag and brought it in front of me and gently dug through. I pulled out one of many flasks of water as well as what appeared to be left of any bandages that I had not already gone through. Of course I was only concerned with helping Elle and was thusly unaware that I was still half-wrapped in bandages myself before I subconciously attacked her.

"Come here," I said grimly, leaning forward and unraveling the white cloth. She obeyed and closed the distance between us until she was directly in front of me. "Give me your arm," I ordered again in the same tone. Halfway through the command her left arm was extended in front of me, trembling not from fear but from loss of blood. I pulled the cork cap off the flask, reached out and held her wrist to steady her arm. She seemed relaxed by my touch and stopped quivering.

I poured half the content of the flask over her arm. The water was almost as clear as I had imagined it in my dreams, but not quite invisible, nor did a heavenly mist rise from it. It did, however, work just fine for washing the blood away leaving only the five snake-like gashes visible. I reached for the dressing, but she protested and pointed to the bag of supplies next to me, "Grab the folded parchment out of there."

I dug through the burlap sack once more. Finding several items that could pass as folded parchment, I grabbed one at random and unfolded it with the hand that was not steadying her arm. Contained in it was a moist, dark green powder with such an aroma that it burned my able sense of smell.

I assumed it was the object Elle had in mind, and that I was doing the right thing by dabbing my fingers in it, then smeering them over her lacerations for she protested no further; except with a breath taken through her teeth, from the pain, I presumed.

Her arm began shaking again as I wrapped it in gauze, but upon noticing I realized it was my own arm that shook like a leaf. I didn't know why I trembled, or rather didn't want to admit it. But had I looked inside myself I would have found it was probably because I had never been this close to a woman before. I spent so many of my twenty years killing when I should have been chasing down tavernmaids like a normal lad.

I had never felt this way for a woman before.

"Are you okay?" Elle asked, noticing my nervousness.

"No," I replied jaggedly as I finished wrapping her arm.

"Why?"

I put my hand to my head, trying to center myself, "I just tried to kill you," As if that needed to be said. A silence fell between us, "Aren't you afraid of me?"

Another lull.

"You weren't in your right mind. I know yo--"

"How do you know?!" I interrupted harshly, removing my hand from my head and slamming it against the ground. Leaves scattered from the blast. "All you know about me is that I kill people! What if I don't even have a right mind?!"

Her head dropped, dark hair falling loose, covering her features. "Don't say that," she whispered.

"How do you know?!" I was yelling, louder and with more anger than I would have liked to, "I could be planning to murder you and you wouldn't even know it!"

"Don't..." she repeated weakly.

What makes you think otherwise?!" I interjected again as I stood up.

"Be--Because... I..."

I walked off before she could finish. Even if she did, I wouldn't have been able to hear her over the rustling leaves of Frostfall being kicked up angrilly under my bare feet. Bare feet? She must have removed my shoes in my time of dying to make me more comfortable... I didn't care though. I just kept walking away and she did not pursue me.

The midday sun bared down through the branches stripped of their green children. My sword, I realized was not even with me. Nor my shirt or cloak for that matter. I was simply a Dunmer and a pair of pants. They were not even the tight black leather pants most assassins wore, but flowing, thin, black cloth. They were louder and more visible than their leather counterpart, but much easier to move in; that's how I justified them, anyway.

I inspected my chest, somehow freed of bandaging, as I walked. The wounds in my chest and shoulder, four in total, had almost healed, though I couldn't decide to attest it to my own unnatural healing ability, or to Elle's soft, careful hands.

~~

I walked for some time before I realized I had begun to lose track of time as I used to; odd how the flow of it eluded me in the absense of Elle. I stumbled across a small stream. Stumbled, as in walked halfway across before even realizing my legs were wet up to my knees. I looked down at the water and was reminded of how many things I let slip by me in life. My adolescent years were almost gone, yet all I had to show for them was a taste for killing. I had abandoned my mother as my father did, though my reasons for leaving were different. My father disappeared for that is how he was; never staying in any one place for long. It was his nature to be untrackable. I left out of shame.

My sister. I let her die.

I was reminded of the moon-gazed man and of my hatred for him. Out of frustration, not just for the man, but for everything, how I wasted my life, my sister, I kicked at the water moving past my feet. "Damn you!" I cried, striking out at it more, throwing a tantrum like an infant. Though no matter how much I thrashed at it, it still fell back into place and continued to move without me.

I breathed heavily, exhausted by my futile act, and surrendered to sitting in the stream. The water felt nice on my back and reminded me of Elle, whose smile I could not remove from my mind.

Through the sound of water splashing over my shoulders, my ears, hyper-sensitive like the rest of my senses, picked up a foreign voice in the distance. "Did you hear that?" I thought maybe it was the water that spoke the words; it wouldn't have surprised me in light of recent events.

But another unkown voice replied, "Hear what?"

That is definitely not the water talking.

"I heard something by the stream." A Bosmer The other voice did not reply, but instead I heard two sets of feet moving towards me from the North, on the other side of the stream from where I had entered.

My instincts took hold. I felt the freezing grip of an assassin latch on to all of my joints and all of my limbs and move them accordingly. I stood and lightly, without removing my feet from the water, trudged towards the voices until I reached the short bank. I stepped up on land, and took four completely silent steps towards the nearest tree and leaned against it so the tree was between me and the two men.

They got closer. So close that I would have picked the wrong tree had they been more thourough in their investigation; one, the Bosmer went around the left side of the tree, the other, Breton, cricled the right. They both stopped at the edge of the stream, right in front of me, and looked up and down it.

They were both dressed in the same black outfit as the beings who had managed to 'kill' me, save for their cloth masks which were lowered and hung liimply around their necks. They also had similar bows, made of the same pitch black wood, as was their ammo. I doubted that these were two of the three people who actually loosed the very arrows that struck me, but I was sure they were part of the organization responsible for it.

"Nothin," the Breton stated glumly. The icy murderous grip urged me so forcefully to snap his neck, but I resisted for fear that I would have another episode like that with Ardarume. "What are we lookin' for again?"

The Bosmer replied, "A young Dunmer woman possibly with that guy we were shooting at a few days ago."

"Isn't he dead?" The Breton asked.

"When the woman was spotted in the area, they sent a party to check on his corpse, but what they found were four of our bloodied arrows, and no body."

"Well shouldn't we have checked him before we left him there for the wolves?"

"Yeah that was Jeande's job. They killed him for neglectin' his duty."

"Yeesh," the Breton shuddered.

They both turned around to continue on their patrol. Fortunately, I had the foresight to move to the other side of the tree, putting it between myself and the stream. In the same fashion that they had arrived, the two men walked right past me.

Once they were barely out of earshot I circled the tree, leapt over the stream, and began sprinting towards Elle's camp.

That's when things got worse.

~~

Running, as I was trained, is great for closing distance but if it cannot be done silently, like across ground littered with leaves, and cannot be done out of sight, like in the middle of day, in a forest with no leaves except the ocean of them on the ground, then it has little merrit for avoiding the attention of others. Getting to Elle before the search parties did--assuming there was more than one--was the only thing that drove me to sprint at my fastest; which was, as I previously mentioned, abnormally fast.

I felt kind of awkward running through the forest clothed only in a pair of pants. Though, I pushed it to the back of my mind when I managed to run square into a group of five or so black archers. They looked more menacing than the two at the river, with their faces covered and their fancy bows pointed at me as I jumped just over their heads in their neat formation.

Two of the smarter of the five increased their odds of hitting me by waiting until I was on the ground before firing. Though right when I touched down, I cut right, avoiding the shots and kicking up a cover of browned leaves and dirt as I went.

I left the archers behind me, though a horn blew through the woods from where I had left them. A warning call. Finally, after moments of sprinting and without anymore incidents, I reached Elle's camp to find that it had not yet been reached by the enemy.

Nor had it changed at all, for that matter. I was surprised to find that she was sitting in the same position, head still hung low, hair still covering her face. "Elle," her named flowed from my mouth as if it yearned to be spoken, "We gotta go."

She looked up with a perplexed look on her face, "What?" she asked with a remaining hint of despair from our previous conversation.

I steeped towards her, put a hand under her right arm, and forcefully lifted her to her feet, "We've got to get out of here right now," I said again sternly.

"I don't want to leave," she replied, now with anger on the edge of her voice.

"Too bad," I said with slight frustration. I pulled the drawstring on the burlap sack and slung it over my back, thinking that we may need the supplies.

"What is going on?" she asked in a raised voice.

I took a large step towards her, and hushed her, my face inches from hers. "People are out here looking to kill you and me," I informed her in a quieted voice. Her ruby eyes widened and a bit of color faded from her face. "Where is my sword?" She pointed at the tree the sack had sat next to. Behind it, my katana leaned. I took it up and slipped it under my belt.

"Let's go," I demanded as I grabbed her hand and pulled her behind me. She did not protest.

We walked in a rushed fashion east, towards Skingrad, but dared not run. I figured our enemies were coming from the nearest city, Kvatch just south of our location, to the north there was little but forest, and west lead to the ocean so east was our best bet. I kept my head on a swivel, something deep in the pit of my heart warned me of danger getting closer. It tried to weigh me down more than our bag of supplies did, but I pressed on, keeping only Elle's safety on my mind.

I sqeezed her hand tighter and quickened our pace, feeling each rock and twig dig into my bare feet. Eventually, I could hear the men approaching us from almost all directions. Again my heart sank and warned me that my final moments were drawing nearer.

The crunching of leaves had become recently easily associated with impending doom. Now I heard the noise all through the forest which certainly did not help the doomed mood I was put in. I stopped, we stopped, so I could gather my thoughts.

How well they have tracked us; these are no ordinary assassins. They're much more advanced and greater in number than those of the Dark Brotherhood.

We were trapped, I concluded. All of these men I had encountered were armed with bows and head pinpoint accuracy. If that stayed true for the ones closing in, then Elle and I would surely die in a rain of black arrows before I had a chance to draw my sword. For the first time I looked at Elle's equipment rather than her soft features, hoping perhaps that she carried an arsenal of bows and arrows on her that I had not noticed before.

I had grown to think of her as a ranger of sorts, but her clothing suggested otherwise. She wore a very plain, very poor skirt, worn drab with wear, and an equally unnoticable blouse. She looked to have been a city woman yet we met in the wilderness. It pained me to think that I would be unable to admire her further.

I ignored the thought, and turned my concentration to the situation at hand. The circle of archers surrounding us had grown close enough that Elle, with her unaided ear, could make out the dull roar of their march. She tugged at my hand, but my gaze would not be diverted from the terrible thing I saw, or rather, didn't see.

Both Elle and I were fooled into thinking this army, as the number of them had been built up by my pessimistic attitude, of dark archers were further off and that their sound must have simply carried very far through the desolate woods. In contradiction to this idea, I could make out in the very near distance, nearer than the sound might have suggested, the odd sight of leaves being thrown into the air and settling again. It were as if a giant wall of wind was slowly approaching us from all sides, though I knew what this phenomenon was really being caused by.

The wall of wind ceased its approach. The noise, the leaves, the hum of danger suddenly subsided.

It was deathly quiet.

This post has been edited by ShogunSniper: Mar 12 2007, 06:34 AM