Elizabeth: Yeah, one of Azura's problems is that she doesn't always know when to quit...
McBadgere: I always found the frustration aspect of Mehrunes Dagon to be the most interesting thing about him, and the whole 'impossible-to-fulfil potential' aspect to him made him almost sympathetic and pitiful at points. I'm pleased it worked for you, and that you enjoyed the rest of the chapter.
Ghastley: Thanks! That sort of behaviour certainly felt right for him.
As for the remaining Princes, we have: Malacath, Boethiah, Clavicus Vile, Naemira, Vaermina and Peryite.
H.E.R.: Thank you very much indeed!
Cats felt like the perfect spies for Azura; I'd originally thought of having her getting the information by weaving on a loom, but the more I thought about the more cats felts appropriate means to get the information.
I'm pleased you liked everything else, and I'm dead pleased that Molag Bal and Mephala were bone-chilling; that was exactly what I was going for with those two. I believe there will be 17 parts (the 16 princes figure doesn't count Jyggalag, I don't think) and there may be an 18th part depending on whether or not I decide to include the Ideal Masters or not.
I hope you enjoy the rest
Also, as a quick note to everyone reading this, my apologies for not reading and commenting on your own stories; the rest of August and early September promise to much of the same, I'm afraid.
MalacathThe only sound was that of Azura’s footsteps padding in ash and the sweeping of her cloak against the grey, dead ground. The Ashpit, the dead land of the Outcast Prince, was silent as a corpse as Azura proceeded towards the circle of rolling hills in the distance.
There were no plants or animals here, and no daedra patrolled these inhospitable plains. Nothing moved, nothing lived, and the air reeked of despair and death. More ash floated down from the sky like snowflakes, the clouds that dropped them so thick and dark that no sunlight shone upon this realm, if this place even had a sun. The one feature of the land was a huge spine, an arch of immense bones from which ribs jutted at random to curve into the ground, holding the realm together. She followed its course, to where the huge arc touched the dead soil.
The gloom of this place grated against her, the silence and the darkness heavy and oppressive. Nocturnal would have been at home in this place, Azura could not help but feel, but even then this was not the protective dimness of the Evergloam, a hiding place from prying eyes, but the blackest pits of isolation and despair given shape and geography.
“Our time upon Nirn is limited.” Azura half-murmured, half-chanted the Ashlander funeral hymn; the place and its oppressive, singular gloom begged for a breaking, but a song of cheer would have felt offensively out of place, while the hymn and its talk of death and ash felt fitting to the Ashpit. “Plants wither and livestock dies. We are born, and we age, our birth is but a precursor to our end.”
In her case, Azura reflected as she reached the foot of the ring of hills, such sentiments were completely untrue.
“The flower that is mortal shall wilt,” she murmured to herself as she climbed. “Our joints shall seize, our hearts shall still; we shall leave this world of flesh to join our ancestors. From the lands of ash we come, to the lands of ash we shall be returned.”
She reached the lee of the final vertebrae, and there she saw Malacath. The Outcast Prince, the Cripple Lord, the God of the Maiming and the Chaining, he looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. His face was like that of an Orc, wide-nosed and gnarled, broken and yellowed tusks gleaming dully in the nonlight of the Ashpit. Manacles encircled his wrists, chaining him to an anvil, and the skin around the bindings was reddened and suppurating. His form rippled with muscle, grey skin bulging with constrained might, immense form covered only by a ragged loincloth.
He rose awkwardly on and maimed legs and feet, where the bone had been shattered and had healed imperfectly, leaning on his anvil for support and grunting with painful effort of movement.
“It has been too long,” he said, breaths ragged and gasping. “Since I have been visited by you.”
“It has been some time, has it not?” Azura said “Who do you fare?”
This earned her a deep, bubbling chuckle, one tainted by deep bitterness and remorse.
“How do I fare? How do I fare? Hah! Well, I do not want for company, if you count company...as Boethiah coming to mock me and snap...my legs once more.”
“That still occurs?” Azura asked.
“Of course it does,” Malacath said. “Boethiah hated me in my days as Trinimac, and he hates me now. He will never forget a grudge, ever. So he comes to my realm, with mocking words and sneers, and delights in shattering bone once more. And what am I to do about such a thing?”
“I am afraid I have no answer,” Azura said.
“Pah, even if you did I would most likely...not hear it,” Malacath replied in his deep, wheezing death-rattle of a voice. “Not from the likes of you.”
He slumped against the anvil, struck by a hacking, gagging cough. For a few moments, he convulsed, a wheezing colossus who sent flecks of phlegm and blood spraying into the air around him, before he finally stopped, gasping for breath.
“I wonder, Azura,” he said. “Have you ever seen the statues my...worshippers have erected of me? They are greatly amusing, in some ways. I am shown as strong in them. I wear armour, I carry a weapon. I am the great lie of the Orsimer.”
He pointed a quivering finger at Azura.
“You...you are loved by your people for what you actually are, but me? If many of my worshippers could see...what I really am, I fear they would abandon me. They would not understand me. As all others have done, they would reject me. But do you know which orcs have...seen my true form and still held their faith?”
“Which ones?” Azura asked.
“The greatest. The most powerful warlords and...chieftains of the Orsimer. They saw me, and they were great because they...understand what I am. They understand why I, the cripple, the outcast, the unwanted, am strong. They understand why Boethiah fears me...enough that he cripples me again and again. They know that though I am crippled, I am mighty. Do you know why?”
“I can’t for the life of me imagine the reason,” Azura said.
“Of course not,” Malacath chuckled. “You have never been cast out. You are one of the beloved Princes, after all. One of the ‘good’ members of our ranks, as those limited mortals understand...such concepts. Worshipping you is tolerated even by the church of the Eight, after all. Perhaps not encouraged, but tolerated. What other Prince can claim such an honour? That is why you can never understand. You shall never be outcast. Yet being outcast is why I am strong.”
With a shaking finger, he pointed to his heart, grinning with his broken teeth.
“My heart is that of one who has been...cast out,” he said. “And in it burns the two things that...make me strong, two things that make me feared. The two things that only one who has been rejected, despised, abhorred, repeatedly...cast out by all can have left in all of the world. Hatred and hope. That is why I am strong. That is why my Orsimer are strong. And that is why the greatest of Orsimer can...understand me and know that my hatred and my hope are what...makes my people mighty, for hatred and hope are forces that can...topple empires. That is something you can never know.”
There was something fearsome in the eyes of Malacath as he said this, a light that was terrible in its intensity, burning bright with a long-suffering rage and fury. The other Princes, Azura included, had always spurned him, and any fool could see that those repeated slights had long ago burned a deep, bitter scar into the Prince of Outcasts’ mind.
In the distance, thunder rumbled. Azura glanced skywards, seeing the black clouds of the Ashpit stir and boil.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Boethiah comes,” Malacath said. Pushing himself up with the aid of his anvil and raising his arms as high as the chains would allow him to, the Prince filled his lungs and roared out; “Here I am! Here stands Malacath! Come to me!”
He broke down into another fit of coughing, hunching over himself and laughing even as he hacked blood and mucus onto the ashen ground. After a few moments he recovered, grinning as he slammed his fist on the anvil, a look of mad fury in his eyes.
“She comes,” he said. “And she will find me unbowed.”
“Malacath,” a voice rang out across the crater. “You have a guest, I see. No matter.”
Azura turned, glancing up at the figure who stepped into view from behind the bone.
“Azura,” Boethiah said. “Would you be so good as to explain to me exactly what you have been doing, lately?”