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Apotheosis I	By : OneMoreAltmer Category: +A through F > Elder Scrolls - Oblivion Views: 2266 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I didn't create and do not own Elder Scrolls: Oblivion or its characters (except for Tavi, within game format). I make no moneys.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
Fourteen � Step
Lightly Over Me

I met no resistance as I sleepwalked into Talos Plaza
and through to the bridge to Weye. �Those
not still hiding in their homes were fussing about the last fires or asking
each other, dazed, if they had really seen the dragon.� The sky continued to clear, and had come
around to a perversely lovely blue as I went out onto the bridge and climbed up
onto its rail, looking down into the deep waters.
I remembered the water-breathing ring the fisherman had
given me, and took it from my finger (I wore it by habit) and set it down on
the ledge beside me.� It would have
rendered this a pointless exercise, and perhaps up here someone else would find
and make use of it.
I stood again and pondered the rippling blue far beneath me,
the promise of the dark silence I wanted.�
But that gave me pause, and I stood there, frozen.� I had seen too many spirits and too much of
the Daedric realm to cherish any illusions that I could simply slip away into
nothingness.� I might very well continue
to be � and I would still be without Martin, who had ascended into the highest
halls of Aetherius alongside Talos and the rest of his holy lineage.� The soul of an Altmeri grave robber would
never ascend half so high�and the daedric soul of Mephala�s creature would land
somewhere even more distant.� He had gone
to a place where I could never follow.
I could not end, and I could not join him.� I screamed with all my breath.� I screamed at the horrible injustice of it,
at the Daedric Lords, at the gods, at Martin.�
My tortured sounds echoed back up at me from the Rumare.
When I could no longer muster another scream I stepped down,
took back my ring, and began to walk, not knowing to where.
I wandered aimlessly for some number of days, purposeless
and adrift.� I took to wearing the Ring
of Khajiit all the time, because every joyful welcome and flattering remark on
my heroics was salt in my wounds.� I did
not feel like a hero:� if anything,
perversely, I was coming to feel like the least of my fellows, the one who had
failed to manage an honorable death alongside everyone else.� I was becoming a ghost.
It was by no conscious design that I found myself outside
the inn beneath Azura�s dusk, and thought to stop for the night.� It seemed a small, quiet place, unlikely to be
filled with well-wishers trying to disturb me.�
I read the sign.
The Inn of Ill Omen.
I remembered the name, and frowned.� Someone I had been, back before I had
withered, had meant never to come here.�
But she was sad and quiet and passive now, and I walked in the door.
The place would have fit well in Bravil; it was a ramshackle
wooden hovel, a glorified shack.� The
owner, Nord I thought, stood at his bar and rubbed at it mindlessly with a
towel, pretending that this made some difference to the appearance of the
place.
He did not respond to me, and it took a moment for me to
realize why and remove my ring.� Then he
startled, and smiled, and welcomed me in a bit too friendly a voice.� I paid him for a room.� �There are not many other people staying,
then?� I asked.
�No, not most nights.�
I think the name intimidates people.�
I suppose I should change it, but then, I�d have to change the
sign.� It�ll probably just be you and
Rufio tonight.�
�Rufio,� I echoed, trying not to sound like the name had any
familiarity or interest.
�He�s been in the downstairs room for months.� Sleeps most of the time, I guess.� Anyway, his money�s good.�
�Sleeps most of the time?�
Is he sick?�� How ironic if all
along, the Dark Brotherhood had intended to send me out on a mission of mercy.
�No, I don�t think so.�
But he never brings women down � men either � doesn�t have any wine or
books down there, so I don�t rightly know what else he would do.� But like I said,
his money�s good, and it�s not my place to pry.�� With that, he looked at me a little more
closely, and his face started to light up.�
�Say now!� Aren�t you the � �
�As you said,� I interrupted, trying not to snap, �it is not
your place to pry.� I would like to pass
a quiet night.�
�Of course, ma�am.�
I had a beer before I went upstairs to my room, but it did
little to soothe me.� Rufio was still
here, after all this time.� I found
myself wondering about him.� What kind of
man was interesting enough to be assassinated but uninteresting enough to sleep
months away in a bottom-class roadside inn?
I told myself, as I slipped on the Ring of Khajiit, that I
was only going down to look because I�d had so little else to occupy my mind
except for my own misery.� I told myself
that I was bringing a weapon with me in case the man was dangerous.
Did I still have � yes, of course I did.� The Blade of Woe was there in my bag, as
always. �I brought it to hand, cradled it
and felt its weight there.� There was
something strangely comforting to its feel in my hand:� one familiar thing that had not abandoned
me.�
I quietly slipped down into the entry and then through the
little door leading to the basement.� There
was a cellar for supplies and on the right, divided away only by shelves, a
room with a poor bed on which Rufio, I presumed, lay sleeping.
He was an unassuming little man asleep.� Late in his middle age, or else prematurely
aging from an unwholesome life. �Balding.� He reeked of�of smallness.� I wondered again what such a small spirit could have done to provoke
someone to invoke the Dark Brotherhood against him.
I stood there and watched him sleep for several
minutes.� At last he stirred, gradually
realizing that someone was present in the room with him.� �Ungh.�
Hello?� Who�s there?� he mumbled.� I stood and said nothing.� Untrained eyes would not find me in the dark,
not with my ring on.
He lit his lamp, turned and saw the shimmer.� And then � he did not reach for a weapon, did
not call a spell into his fingertips, did not even make a break for the door or
call for help.� He leapt up, scurried
into the back corner, and begged for mercy.
He was cowering.� I had never seen such a thing.� Even sewer rats did not cower.� The sight evoked more
anger than pity in me.� I was so outraged
that I actually removed my ring as I stepped toward him.� �Stand and face me.� Don�t be pathetic.�
�I didn�t do anything!� he whined.
�Didn�t you?�� It was
an honest question, although it sounded accusatory.� I didn�t know.
He crouched and cowered, and I watched his sniveling with
growing disgust.� He began to whimper.
�Please!� I�I didn�t
mean to kill her!� I only wanted her to
be still�but she fought me, and she kept crying�.�
The world turned a different color before me, and I felt ice
flow through my veins.� For you Martin gave up his life to the
dragon?� I am torn from my love forever,
for you?� I was almost panting for
air.� Every
good man I ever knew is dead and I am left the last of us, for you?� For
a little coward who is only even a murderer because he failed as a rapist?
No.� Not for you.�
You are not worthy.
I could have turned and gone, recollected my senses.� I could have screamed.� I could have lain down on the floor next to
the pathetic creature and died.
I cut.� The first
stream of crimson bloomed across his throat.�
I cut again in the same place, pressing until I felt the windpipe crack,
so there would be no crying out to summon aid.�
I brought the little Blade of Woe down to his sickly belly, and there I
cut again.� Again.� Again.
I do not know how long it took before I calmed down enough
to be aware of myself.� I looked
down.� I was kneeling next to�if Rufio
had surviving family, they would never be able to recognize and claim the
body:� there was little left of him but
scraps and fluids.� Absently I wiped the
blade on my robes � pointless, as there was just as much blood on me as on the
knife.
There.� The deed was
done.� Now there was only the wait.� Procedure to be followed, before my damnation
was official.
I got back on my feet and staggered toward the door and up
the steps, slipping on the chameleon ring as I went, so as not to be seen going
about soaked in blood.� I cannot thank
anything but luck for the fact that I did not drip a trail of gore behind
me.� I was not careful.
I returned to my room, supposing that would look less
suspicious than vanishing when I had already paid for the night.� And I was tired, and if he was going to find
me, perhaps it would be easier and faster if I was still at the scene.
I was right:� as I
closed the door and took off the ring, I was greeted by a low chuckle, honeyed
frost.� �Finally, Tintaviel!� You do like to keep your men waiting.�
And so it was that I joined the Dark Brotherhood, and
allowed cool, patient Lucien to catch me at last.� But their stories are not yours for the
asking.
I have come to collect the armor that Tintaviel earned when
she was still a girl smitten with a god-man and they were the darlings of a
desperate Cyrodiil.� I will take it up to
her house in Bruma with the rest of her lovely keepsakes from those times, and
seal them up as the tomb she deserves, in the place where her statue stands in
tribute.
But Tintaviel is dead.�
I am Methusiele.
- 13
- 14
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Apotheosis I