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With the darkened void of the blade so close to my eyes I couldn’t help but stare at it as he moved it closer to take my nose away. There was still some blood coating the gleaming blackness, but not much of it was my own. There was corrupted gore streaking the blade from where he had flicked it to his side, the gaping... |
The grin that I revealed to him stopped him for a moment with puzzlement, the look of triumph glazing over into confusion as he followed my gaze to the blades edge. |
"Oh no." he whispered, looking at the swirling lights as they spread and began eating away at the foul blackness of the sword. |
"I’m guessing that you bound the sword with your blood." I hissed, laughing through another welling mouthful of blood even as he stepped away from me with the look of utmost horror on his face. |
There was a glow in the blade now, like the first stars of an evening as the sun fell below the horizon, or fireflies in a predawn mist. Sparkling and dancing they crept up the blade, leaving silvery trails as they gnawed their way through the droplets of Volmyr’s blood like worms consuming a rotten tree. |
"No..." The fear coursing through him matched the glow as it continued to build and reveal his sunken, crushed and gashed features. "No. No. No! No! NO!" |
He began shrieking with pure terror, and I watched as he began to panickily attempt to wipe the blood off the glowing blade. Wiping such a keen edge with little more than his bare flesh didn’t succeed in doing anything more than gashing him palm open in a glistening smile and smearing even more of his tainted blood on... |
Bursting from the swords edge at random, the dazing beams of light baked the blood on the floor into dust, and wherever it touched his skin it left him screaming and horribly burned. Flesh peeling and blistered red raw he dropped the sword with a clatter before it sunk several centimetres into the marble, coming to a ... |
While powerful, the beams of light had no effect on me. Just like the sun shining outside of the desecrated ruins the light from within the corrupted blade did nothing to me except allow me to use my real eyes to see for a few moments. Distracted with the pain flooding his face and arm from the light’s sting Volmyr fa... |
Shrieking with the intrusion his hands dropped from his sliced and scalded face, grasping my hands in a crushing grip that crumpled my demi-gauntlets. Roaring, ignoring the protests of my wounded shoulder I heaved on the blade with all my strength, lifting him from the floor until the hilt was left pressing against th... |
Undone with the taste of his blood, the Nightkiss shuddered in my hands like a wounded animal as the original blade began shining through. Even as he began to combust with death the Light of Dawn sent his soul screaming into oblivion, stripping away flesh, muscle and organs and blasting his bones with waves of purity.... |
I fell flat on my face in his remains, feeling the choking ash of his demise force its way into my lungs and sinuses with every hacking breath as I struggled to rise. The warmth of blood from my shoulder trickled its way down my chest and back, sticking the leather underlayers to my skin that somehow managed to annoy ... |
Volmyr was well and truly dead, there would be no coming back for him even with some of the more outlandish stories and superstitions that surrounded our kind. The Nightkiss had died with him, being reborn from his ashes figuratively and literally once more as the gleaming Light of Dawn. Where the blade had once drunk... |
Groaning and jamming the hem of my blood-stained cloak between my teeth I pressed my fingers into the tiny slit in my armour. Barely three fingers wide, and slicing between two daedroth scales and separating and section of chainlink, the wound in my shoulder was right where the crossbow bolt had hit me in the Mythic D... |
With burning heat I closed the wound with bursts of magicka, knitting the flesh and muscles together again in the depths of my shoulder to ensure I wasn’t going to finish bleeding to death. The pain was extraordinary, but it was only through the urgings and rising assistance of the beast that allowed me to lurch to my... |
The pain of my wounds was almost crippling and after stuffing my pouches with everything I could get my hands on I again ran my hands over everywhere I could reach, healing as much as I could with risking mutation and cancers. It would be a few days until I would be fully fit, but I knew that it was far better than be... |
I left the bloodstained ruin of Nornalhorst behind me, walking out and into the sunlight and feeling the layers of gore strewn ash crackling in the winter sun. After the first kilometre through the forest, the blood had begun to flake and fall away in a maroon-grey dust. After the next six, the sweat cleared streams d... |
Clothing ripped and torn in places, a combination of my blood and that of several vampires and the dust of their fiery deaths covered almost every centimetre of my body. Upon crossing the threshold and successfully ducking the garlic and hourglass door arrangement I smiled wearily at how everyone in the room jolted fr... |
Bone-wearingly exhausted from an entire day of marching, several hours of fighting and the closest call to death I had ever experienced I was ready to find the nearest open space of floor and fall unconscious. At that point however, there was only one thought churning through my mind which had forced me to step one fo... |
"Is she still here?" I asked Abhuki, the Khajiit innkeeper who looked over me with suspicious eyes at my dishevelled appearance. |
"The dark skinned one is, yes." Her ears folded tight against her skull and there was hint of a snarl in her expression. "Been scaring away this one’s customers all day. Last I saw her, she was upstairs in the room." |
"So, you have a free room available then?" |
There was a narrowing of eyes from the Khajiit as she stared at me. Viconia’s mood had obviously not improved our relations with the village. "You have rented a room already." |
I slid a coin from the depths of my pouches across the surface of the bar which she picked up in a clawed hand and stared at suspiciously. "I want a separate room for the night, a mug of your strongest alcohol and a bath. Not necessarily in that order either." |
She experimentally bit into the coin and I watched as she realised that the coin was indeed gold. "That can be arranged" she murmured, and turned around to open a bottle from the others arrayed on the shelves behind her. |
"Master Desin?" there was a timid voice from behind me and I saw how a group of the locals had edged forward, afraid of the state that I was in and concerned for what it foretold for their community. |
"Glenvar is safe." I said simply, nodding my thanks to Abhuki as she gave me a mug of spirits distilled from local potatoes. From the smell alone, it was extremely effective as cleaning wounds, and probably paint as well. |
I gulped down the fiery spirit in one go, feeling the way that it burned all the way down and washed the taste of blood and my painkilling paste from my mouth. "There was a coven of vampires nearby." |
The ripple of fear through the group was obvious and once more they made various signs of the Nine. "Vampires?" |
"The key term here is "was’. I killed all that I could find and I don’t think that I missed any." |
There was a lot of suspicious glances between the group as they considered my words. Without solid proof of the vampires they were inclined to disbelieve my claims, but I drew out the enormous length of the Light of Dawn and placed it on the surface of the bar alongside a skull I had carried with me. Lord Volmyr’s bla... |
"There’s a bag just outside filled with another dozen or so skulls just like this one." Abhuki returned another mug of spirits as she stared disdainfully at the burned skull on her bar that had shed the tiniest amount of ash from within its cavities. The second mug emptied as quickly as the first and I felt the warmth... |
"Up the stairs you must go, to the first door on the right. I’ll send someone to you once the bath is drawn." |
I nodded my thanks, flipping a silver coin in her direction and acquiring the rest of the bottle of distilled spirits before climbing the stairs. The Light of Dawn in its priceless scabbard was dragged off the surface of the bar, leaving the haunting skull of the vampire lord to gaze accusingly at all who remained. |
In my new room I dumped my excess equipment, hauling off my travelling pouches and pack and leaving me dressed in my armour and clothing. For a moment I hesitated after leaving the room, standing before the room that Viconia and I had been sharing and feeling even more terrified than what I had when Volmyr had pinned ... |
Breathing heavily, I rapped my bloodied and bruised knuckles on the doorframe, hearing the sounds of movement within and opening the door anywhere when no response came. Viconia was alone in the room, sitting on the bed with her back against the wall, reading some mouldering book that had spent too many years within t... |
"You made it back I see." She stated bluntly after several minutes of awkward silence. Annoyance flashed in her eyes for a moment as she met my expression, but it disappeared just as quickly. |
"And you stayed." I replied, stepping inside and feeling her eyes travel up the length of my body and take in the signs of battle and death that covered every centimetre. |
There was a snort and the book clapped shut. "Like I have said several times before wael, where else would I go?" |
"Anywhere you liked I should think." The chair creaked as I sat on it, placing the Light of Dawn on the table on top of the pile of armour arrayed on it. "And the way things seem to have been going recently you’d have a higher chance of not getting injured or killed." |
"It would help if your battle strategy didn’t rely on getting stabbed or punched all the time." |
The corner of my mouth curled and I could see the hints of humour returning to her expression. However, it was still filled with immeasurable melancholy, and the mood that had gripped her earlier in the day had not subsided by much. |
"Were you successful?" She asked after some time, and I nodded, lifting the Light of Dawn and handing it over to her by the hilt. |
"The Vampires are dead; the skulls are downstairs as proof of the contract and this is the Blade that Threnodir was seeking." |
I could see the way her eyes light up in amazement as she slid several centimetres of the blade from the scabbard, gazing into the gleaming metal as it swirled and flickered faintly like stars on a moonless night. |
"And judging by your appearance, I am to assume that you got yourself injured again?" |
Trying and failing to hide my sudden nervousness I could feel my heart racing faster as I remembered how close I had come to death and how it was only through luck that I had survived Volmyr. "It was a close-run thing." My admission did little to change her expression as she stared at me and handed the blade back. "I ... |
Another moment of silence stretched the evening chill and the sounds of muted conversation and renewed drinking began echoing up from the ground floor. She sighed, looking elsewhere in the room, anywhere but my eyes. |
"I... I apologise, for earlier this morning." Our eyes met each other’s for a heartbeat and I felt the familiar pangs of desire as I gazed into their yellow depths. "You must remember that I still have not been on the surface long and I'm still finding it hard to adjust to it all." |
"I’m also sorry." She looked at me with a strange expression at my words that left me chewing my lip nervously. "I know that my words caused offense, and I’m also sorry for my loss of control." |
The expression that she suddenly wore was indescribable as she shifted through several emotions before looking at me with the slightest hint of confusion. |
"We’re two or three days at least from Bravil." There was no change to her expression as I nervously attempted to change the topic, continuing to look at me with her predatory gaze. "Once morning arrives we can go and collect the contract and be on our way well before noon. That is, if we continue travelling together.... |
She thought for a moment and somehow that made me feel better than her having already come to a decision during the day. While she had obviously been doing little else but considering her options while I was killing vampires, now that I was standing there in person she was rethinking them once more. |
Finally, she looked me dead in the eyes once again "This arrangement is satisfactory." There was a muted hiss to her words after she mulled them over in her mind before speaking. |
Even after all my travels and experiences during my time in the legion, there were few places that the memories sat uncomfortably in my mind. Of all the slums and shanty towns I had resided in or woken up in the gutter of through the years in Vvardenfell, they had nothing on the city of Bravil. A suppurating wound in ... |
Bereft of strong leadership by an increasingly corrupt and indifferent linage of Counts, the city had fallen to ruin until only the callous and selfish remained. Crime was rampant, and there were only the handful of individuals who refused to fall into the deep levels of villainy that bubbled up from the underworld li... |
Shacks and shanties, built in increasing numbers and cramped conditions jostled and pressed into each other. The mutual weight and poor workmanship ensured that several a month would collapse or otherwise sink into the morass that flowed beneath the duckboards and jetties. Stone was an expense that few could afford an... |
Built into the marshes, the only industries able to survive in such a place were those who used the bogs for its supply of peat, or those that used the bubbling sources of tar and pitch that stained the surface waters black and sticky. Handfuls of fishermen plied the deeper depths of the Niben, proving a supply of foo... |
Protection rackets, muggers, thieves, smugglers, highwaymen, moneylenders, gambling halls, skooma dens and countless other lowlifes lived, plied their trades and usually died violent deaths within the festering boardwalk suburbs and lean-tos. The guard were inefficient or corrupt or both; ignoring the plight of those ... |
Our boots shuddered the boardwalk threateningly as we made our way through one of the many districts clustered like a cancer in the heart of the City. Wet rot, mould, effluent and decay clogged our sinuses as we travelled; a horrid stink that would take days, if not weeks of bathing to completely scrub from our skin a... |
"By Shar, what is that stench?" Viconia snarled as we moved through a portion of smell so powerful I resisted the urge to draw Sunchild to cut a passage. "Is that you, or something rotting?" |
Whatever she could smell, I was uncomfortably aware that my enhanced senses were not a blessing in such a place. Increased several-fold I could pick up individual scents in the plague-strewn streets not matter how hard I tried not to. The taste of a weeks-old bloated corpse surfacing in the mud and sewage below the pl... |
"Something dead." I replied honestly, stepping to one side as a beak-masked plague doktor made his way with his bag of instruments and smouldering censer hanging from a wrist. The smell of burning rosemary and sage was a pleasant relief from the constant assault of the city on the sinuses despite what the hooded and c... |
Viconia’s expression of interest didn’t change until the doktor in his long beaked, potpourri filled mask turned around a corner and vanished from sight. Even in a place such as this, her interest in the surface world wasn’t dimmed despite the best attempts of the city to dampen it. In the days since leaving Glenvar a... |
"This looks like the place." She said simply, looking up to the sign that dangled from the overhanging roof by a single rusting chain. The name of the establishment was burnt into the wood with a piece of heated metal many years ago, and I paid it little heed as I pushed the door open, stepping inside the gloom and al... |
The Lonely Suitor Lodge, while technically an Inn or boarding house was like everything else in Bravil; a poor front for other activities. As a combination of a gambling hall, skooma den and brothel; it smelt and looked as such and our appearances drew the attention of nearly everything within. |
Roughly hewn walls of various marshland and mangrove forest wood, the walls, floors, ceiling and furniture appeared little more than ruined scraps washed downstream hammered together into vague shapes of furniture and structural supports. There were dozens of tables and chairs scattered about everywhere and few placed... |
Armoured and carrying everything of value we possessed we cut an unusual sight within the lodge and immediately upon entering two of the Orc bouncers tensed and watched our every move carefully. Gang violence was a common enough occurrence in the city, and although it was usually in the form of back alley stabbings, i... |
Striding through the press and ignoring the way that several individuals hurried out of our path we walked over to one of the shadowed alcoves, spotting the one person who we had travelled to this den to meet. |
"Kurdan gro-Dragol?" I said simply, seeing the heavily muscled Orc lounging behind a table with his back against the wall look over Viconia and I with the faint look of annoyance. |
"Well, well." His voice rumbled out of a barrel chest that would have put most legionaries to shame. "What brings the "eroes of Kvatch to these "umble walls?" |
"We’re looking for someone." I said simply, seeing the way that his jaw rolled back and forth as he gnawed on a fat stick of chewing tobacco. "Word is it that you are the one who knows where he is." |
"Oh?" Sickeningly he twisted his head and spat a dribbling stream of black juice in the vague direction of a spittoon. Most of it splattered down his chin and the front of a heavily stained tunic from a tusked mouth not made for spitting. "An’ just who might this feller be?" |
"Aleron Loche." Viconia’s eyes were hard glints of light in the flickering twilight of the lodge and her voice was as cold as a Skyrim glacier. |
The dark expression palled the brute’s face as he glowered at the both of us. Angrily he wriggled in his chair, making some vague motion under the table before shuffling backwards. |
"Never "eard of "im." He snarled, staring at us even as one of the women of the lodge crawled out from under the table. Jamming another chunk of stinking tobacco into his mouth before proceeding to chew loudly he tossed a copper septim to her. "Make yerself scarce darlin’." |
"Word has it that he came to see you to discuss his debts a few days ago. Now he’s missing, and you were the last person he saw." |
"People go missin’ in this city all the time. It’s Bravil for fuck’s sake." |
My smile was terrible and the threat wasn’t lost on him. "But you are the local moneylender, are you not?" |
His hands slapped down on the table loud enough that eyes were drawn to us before being hastily adverted elsewhere. "That’s none of yer damn business. I’d tell yer if I liked yer... an’ I don’t." |
A towering shadow of green muscle and leather armour appeared behind us and I glanced back at the sight of a hundred and thirty kilograms of orc bouncer. He stood taller than all three of us and I only just came up to his forehead in my minotaur leather boots. |
"I think you two need to leave." The threat hung in every word as the orc gripped Viconia by the shoulder, the meaty green paw encompassing her entire pauldron, shoulder and collar. |
Mistakenly identifying me as the greater threat and thinking that threatening Viconia would make me more pliable, the orc and everyone else in the vicinity was utterly unprepared for Viconia’s sudden explosion of activity. She twisted in his grasp, wrenching his wrist around painfully before reaching up, gripping him ... |
She casually stepped to the side where the orc was left stretched out and I turned as several more shadows began moving closer as they looked to their employer. The owner, staring in amazement at how Viconia had floored one of his employees waved the others off with a curt gesture and a shake of the head, choosing to ... |
"Which is?" I asked carefully, crossing my arms and ensuring that he and all the others could see the way that my armour twisted and bunched together with an archer’s strength. |
"I just learned that a family "eirloom; the Axe of Dragol, which one of my stupid relatives lost, is located on Fort Grief Island in the Bay." |
"And let me guess, you want us to find it for you." |
"Exactly..." Purposely drawing the word out, his grin grew even more threatening and calculating. "Yer with the Fighter’s Guild, doin’ jobs fer coin and all that aren’t yer? Yer do a job for me and yer get paid... |
I glanced at Viconia and she merely sneered, shrugging her shoulders and looking completely disgusted with remaining in such a place. Kurdan continued talking, choosing to ignore us for the moment. |
"My informant tells me it's "idden in the main keep at the centre. Dunno what's guardin" it, but I'm sure yer can "andle it. If yer go there and brin’ it back to me, I'll tell yer exactly where Aleron is." |
Interest immediately piqued and knowing that my instincts on him were accurate I returned his grin with one of my own. "And what’s stopping me from letting my companion here have her way with you?" |
There was the tiniest hint of fear in his eyes as he glanced at the Drow by my side, but he squashed it with remarkable willpower. "Then Aleron may not be comin’ "ome from "is... ahhh... journey, for a very long time. Like permanently." |
"What do you think?" I asked Viconia, seeing her foul expression only deepen. |
"Razing this hovel to the ground would be pleasurable." |
"But unfortunately, that won’t get us anywhere." I turned back to Kurdan and nodded. "We’ll get your axe." |
"Ha!" He rubbed his stained hands together and rose to his feet, momentarily rummaging and rearranging the front of his trousers before walking around the table. "Tat’s what I like to "ear. Whenever yer ready, and it better be soon if yer catch my meanin’, I'll "ave a boat waitin" for yer to get to Fort Grief Island. ... |
I shrugged, non-committedly as he briefly told us where to meet him with his boat. With nothing else keeping us in such a place we made our way back to the door, ignoring the way that all the patrons and staff gave us a wide berth. |
"How can you trust srow like him jaluk?" Viconia hissed as the door slammed closed behind us. Ever since Glenvar she had fallen back into her old terms and insults when talking to me and for the most part I ignored it. |
"I don’t trust him as far as I could piss him." I said simply, my hand finding its way to Sunchild as I nervously ran my fingers up the ruby red hilt. |
"Then why do this?" |
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