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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.

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Two � Cities in Dust

I brought home the carving, and the
Ancestor from Mackamentain into the bargain, and got myself a room across the
water at Weye.� I was in no mood to stay
at the Tiber Septim again, even though I had some money.� I spent it on a few pieces of leather armor
instead.� The work was getting more
dangerous, and apparently I had as much to worry about from my friends as from
my enemies.� But there was no going back:� I�d learned that my skill at making potions
was worth barely more than the raw ingredients, and I would never make a
comfortable living that way.� It was
treasure hunting or nothing.� Well, I
suppose I could have become a bandit, or prostituted myself on the
Waterfront.� But I didn�t really see
either of those as a viable option.� Even
now, certain things remain beneath my dignity.
I woke to an unseasonable chill.
My eyes happened to stray to the corner opposite the
bed.� Something was there, in the
shadows.� Something vague and undefined�like the edges of a chameleon spell.
I�d grown much more wary.�
I grabbed the dagger I kept beneath the pillow and leapt to my
feet.� The cipher in the corner didn�t
move, even though I could see now that it was of human shape.� Whoever it was, they were quite unconcerned
about whether I was lying in bed or standing with a dagger raised.
The voice that came out of the darkness was honeyed
frost.� �I am not here to hurt you,
Tintaviel.�
He knew my full name.�
The one I never told anyone.� That
did not help in the slightest.� I pointed
the dagger toward the voice and tried to look calm.� �Then state your business, and quickly.�
�I am here to deliver an invitation.�� The spell dropped and he stepped forward into
the light, but it hardly made a difference.�
He was shrouded in black from head to foot, only his pale, emotionless
face visible.� �From
the Dark Brotherhood.�
The
Dark Brotherhood?� I had heard
the stories, of course, as everyone had.�
I had heard rumors that they recruited their members this way, stealing
in and taking them as they slept.� I
hadn�t imagined that the truth of the tales would be so literal.� But I could not doubt this man:� he radiated cold and malice.� He felt like death.
�Why?� I asked, and it only came out as a cowardly
whisper.� �Why me?�
He smiled a little, and it did not warm his features in the
least.� �Because you
have proven capable.� You have
already killed in cold blood.�
I frowned.� �No, I
haven�t.�
�Haven�t you?� Is
Claude Maric alive?�
�That � �� I felt myself flushing as some of the fear
changed into indignation.� �That was not murder.�
He was going to kill me.�
�Really.� And yet his back was turned.�
�He had told them
to kill me.� It doesn�t count.��
Angry tears, now.� Ah,
brilliant!� Show your weakness to the
assassin!
He still responded without violence � but with a low chuckle
that was somehow even worse.� �As you say, then.�
Still, it attracted our attention, and I have come to make you the
offer.� You have the option of proving
yourself worthy to join us as a child of Sithis and the Night Mother. �It is as loving and faithful a fellowship as
you are likely to find in Cyrodiil.� All
you would have to do is to kill one more man who deserves to die.�
I shuddered.� �Who are
you to decide who deserves to die?�
�Who am I?�� He
stepped closer, touched a gloved finger to my hand as he whispered the answer
into my ear.� That he had to whisper
upward made him no less menacing.� �I am
a Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood.� I am
a finger of the dreaded hand of Death itself.��
His finger stroked mine, once, and I trembled.� �But I do not decide.� We answer prayer, Tintaviel.� The Night Mother herself tells us the names
of the chosen.� Shall I tell you whom she
chose to be your victim?�
I stood, and shook, and said nothing.
I felt his smile widen:�
it was too close to see.� �Silence
becomes you.� His name is Rufio, and he
is in hiding at the Inn of Ill Omen, down the Green Road to Bravil.� If you like, you may ask him yourself why he
deserves death.� You may decide for
yourself whether you agree.� And then,
when you have killed him, I will find you.��
I felt him press something into my hand.�
�You may use this.� Consider it a
gift.�
His fingers tightened around mine, forcing me to keep hold
of the thing, whatever it was.� �A gift,�
I echoed.� �From the
Dark Brotherhood.�
Even his breath in my ear was cold.� �A gift from Lucien.�
�Lucien.�� I took a
deep breath, steadied myself at last.�
�And what if I do not kill this man, Lucien?�
�Then he will live out his miserable days at the Inn of Ill
Omen.� He is your test, and no one else
will touch him.�
�And you�you will leave me alone?�
Another quiet laugh.� �You will not see me again until Rufio is
dead.�
The difference between yes,
I will leave you alone and you will
not see me dropped my stomach to somewhere beneath the floor.� �That is not quite the answer to my
question.�
�Is it not?� But it
will have to do.� Do not hesitate,
Tintaviel.� Your new family awaits
you.�� He stepped back, and in the moment
it took for me to regain my senses enough to move, he was already gone.
My dagger was lying at my feet.� I could not remember when I had dropped
it.� In my hand instead was Lucien�s
gift, and this I lifted to investigate.�
It was another dagger, fine and lovely, silver with an ebony hilt.� But small.� Easy to handle in close
quarters.
I shuddered again and dropped the thing on the
nightstand.� My life in the Imperial City was taking a nasty turn, and I felt
an urge to be somewhere very far away.� (And not down the Green
Road.)�
I grabbed my map and scanned it for distant ruins.
There were some out toward Chorrol.� Yes�and there was still that debt to be paid, wasn�t there?� I
drew out the pouch where I always kept the Amulet.� Perhaps that was the source of this streak of
bad luck:� perhaps it was the debt
demanding to be paid.� A
simple thing, to take this trinket to the monks.� Doubtless that would be the end of my
involvement in lofty political affairs, and with my obligation cleared, my fortunes would have to rise.
I left the tavern, stopping to do a good turn for an old
fisherman � this was all about good deeds, after all, cleaning my luck � and he
repaid me with a magic ring that has always been among my most useful
possessions.� I crossed to the Red Road and
circled to the Black.� There is no point
along the Red Road
that lacks almost devastating beauty:�
various combinations of the gorgeous waters and trees of the Heartlands
and breathtaking views of the Imperial
City.� In many ways coming and going from the city
is better than actually being there.
I was new to the West Weald:�
it offered me another new set of herbs, which I collected happily, even
knowing now how little they were worth to me.�
I didn�t stop anywhere to sleep.�
Sleeping without a locked door between me and the world was starting to
feel unwise.� Then again, hadn�t I locked
the door at the inn?� I thought I
had.� I couldn�t remember for sure.� I wondered how little a trifle like that
mattered to someone like Lucien.� Then I
shook it off and kept walking, keeping myself alert by marveling at the
brilliant violet spray of stars.
I was fairly exhausted when I reached the priory.� The monks politely showed me up to the office
where Jauffre sat at his over-sized desk.�
He heard my story with a skeptical look on his face � some elven girl, and a prisoner at that, taken into
the last confidence of his Emperor?� (It
would not be the last time I thought I detected an air of sexism in the old
man, and in his Order generally.� I have
never found a nunnery dedicated to
Talos.)�
His doubts evaporated when I pulled the red jewel out of my
pouch.� And without pause, without any
acknowledgement that he had changed from a previous position about my
competence and worthiness, he started to insist that I must go and find this secret heir he had hidden away in Kvatch �
this Martin.� That I must rescue him from this great and
imminent danger.
Yes, I.� Not Jauffre;
not any of his order of warrior monks.� The elven girl.� The treasure hunter.� He, the warrior monk, would stay and
keep the treasure safe.� Completely logical division of labor.
He was indifferent to my concerns.� �It�s my hope that you can spirit him away
quietly; and that sort of affair sounds more like your skill than mine.� We will offer you any assistance we can, of
course.� We have some weapons and armor,
if you are in need of those.�� I said
that I was not.� He looked me up and
down, and I felt as if he finally saw me for the first time.� �You haven�t slept.�
�No.�
�There�s an inn at Chorrol.�
I will pay for the room if you can�t afford it.�
My voice was harsher than I meant it to be.� �I don�t want to stay at the inn.�
His face softened a little.�
�I understand.� These are troubled
times.� I�m sure it was a difficult
journey for a young woman, alone.�� That
was my relationship with Jauffre, at first:�
somehow he could assign me to great perils, and doubt my girlish ability
to survive them, and pity me for the necessity, all at once.� �And yet I don�t know how else to accommodate
you.� It would be most awkward to house
you here, even for one night.�
�I realize that.�� I
sighed, rubbed at my temples.� I really
was tired.� �I will go to the inn.� I didn�t mean to be unreasonable.�
�Do you need money?�
�No, I can cover it.�
�Go then.� Rest, and
conduct whatever business you need to in Chorrol. �But don�t delay too long:� I fear for Martin.�
As I left, Prior Maborel offered me something more
useful:� a horse.� A lovely old paint horse, which he fetched
with me from Eronor in the Priory�s stable.�
After the long, mostly uphill walk to Chorrol, I was immensely grateful.
So I went into the city proper, and fell in love with its
grand houses, and its great oak, and Dar-Ma, the Argonian girl who greeted me
like a sister the instant I set foot inside the city walls.� And I got a cheap room at the Grey Mare, next
to a room that was being rented long-term to Earana, who was as arrogant and
condescending an Altmer woman as I had ever met.� Over dinner she disdained my pragmatic travel
clothes and scoffed at my hedge-wizardry.�
She also dropped several hints about her scorn for the Mages� Guild
chapter in town, and particularly for a fellow named Teekeeus.
Naturally, given the tender warmth I was developing for her
myself, I felt a desire to meet her nemesis.�
He was an amiable Argonian gentleman � I was beginning to have a soft
spot in my heart for Argonians � who invited me to join the Mages� Guild, and
promised me a recommendation if I would�thwart a desire of Earana�s.
Well, naturally I
would, even though it meant having another conversation with her in the
morning.� First I slept.� Tried to sleep, anyway, after locking the
door as many times as it was built to allow, and propping a chair against it.� Still, it was better than no rest at all.
It was a book she wanted, of magic
I was �incapable� of understanding.� She
promised to teach me the spell once she learned it.� The job of getting the book itself was an
easy one for someone of my background; and flipping through it, I realized to
my eternal shame that she was right, and I couldn�t read it.� So I decided to split the difference:� I gave her the book, let her learn the spell and teach it to me, and then I stole the book back out of her room and gave it to
Teekeeus.� He suspected me of it, but
still, he had the book, and he gave me my letter.� Something for everyone,
everybody happy.
And that was my noble entry into the Mages� Guild.
But of course I was stalling.� I didn�t really want to go on Jauffre�s fool
errand, especially if he was right about it being a dangerous fool errand.� I finally left after one more night of bad
sleep at the Grey Mare.� Then, still
stalling, I swung through Wendir to collect another Ancestor, although by now I
wasn�t sure when I�d be getting back to the Imperial City
to get paid for it.� For all I knew,
there was another jerk like Claude out there who would move in on my territory
if I didn�t keep bringing home the goods.
I rode down through the Colovian Highlands.� Yes, nice and obscure, far from the cities
and roads.� There couldn�t be any spies
from the Brotherhood way out there, nobody watching me to see if I was going to
do their bidding as a professional murderer or not.� The worry actually started to fade a little,
and with it my worries about the unfriendly nature of the world in
general.� I was doing my bit, after
all.� Maybe I would look up the Mages�
Guild in Kvatch, get another letter, another step toward admission to the Arcane University.� They�d know all sorts of secrets about
alchemy and big blasty spells there.� I
could live there safe and sound, exploring ruins in my spare time.� That would be marvelous.
I can�t describe what it was like to ride up into
Kvatch.� I suppose I don�t need to:� I suppose that almost everyone alive now can
remember for themselves what it�s like to watch the sky slowly turn red above
them, and feel the world slip dangerously off kilter.� The guards who watched helpless outside the
walls told me the story I was to keep hearing across Cyrodiil:� the Gates, the daedra, the destruction.� And also this:� that Martin was not among those who had come
out of the city before this particular Gate had blocked the way.
People call it heroic that I went into the Gate.� That was the day the word �Hero� began to be
applied to me.� But it was as simple as
this:� I was responsible.� I had dawdled, first in the capital and then
in Chorrol, knowing that a Daedric cult had gone mad and was plotting against
the Empire.� I had put off fulfilling the
dying wish of the man who had ruled the known world.� If his beloved secret child was already dead
somewhere in this city, it was my fault.
There are not sufficient words for the awfulness of
Oblivion.� The very land and air writhe
and scream in torment.� The few plants
that grow there � yes, even then, I took the time to collect samples, ever
committed to my craft � are either poisonous or unnaturally active.�
Of the lesser daedra and their devices, of course, people know all too
well.
Be that as it may, I plucked the first of the moaning black
orbs from the pinnacle of their horrible towers, and the Gate was shut.� Reality trembled around me, cracked, and
reshaped itself again into the wastes surrounding Kvatch.� The soldiers cheered and ran into the city to
fight the remaining demons and search for survivors.� Without thinking, I volunteered to help take
the castle back from the enemy.� The
threat I�d been trying to philosophize away since Uriel�s death was real to me
now, real and personal, and I was swept forward by the outrage.
The Count was already dead when we found him.� And that brought my mind back to my real
objective.� Martin!� How easily distracted I was, first by
selfishness and then by misplaced heroism.�
I rushed back to the ruined temple.
I gazed at the charred walls, the broken spires, the absent or blackened glass of once-lovely windows.� This had been a temple to Akatosh himself,
who my people call Auri-El.� The great
dragon, so holy that even the war between elves and men had not tainted his
worship.� Anger swept through me again,
and I strode into the temple as if looking for more demons to kill.
Instead I literally ran into a quiet man in a blue robe as
he was ministering to an injured soldier.�
He turned and looked at me with bright, unquiet eyes.� The color of the robe complimented them
splendidly.
I did not need to be told.�
If the Emperor had been a young, handsome priest, he would have been
this man.� �You�you are Martin?� I
stammered out, in lieu of any apology.
�Yes,� he said.� �I am
Martin.�� His voice was rich and golden,
another inheritance from his father.
Somehow this turned me into an idiot.� �You are the priest of Akatosh.�
He sighed.� �Yes, I am
the priest.� Do you need a priest?� Of course you do.� Because clearly the gods stand ready to help
us � � He stopped short, forced himself to take a deep
breath.
He was as broken by this as I was.� That wasn�t hopeful.
�I�m sorry,� he said.�
�I�m having trouble understanding the gods right now.� What�what do you need?� Are you hurt?�� His eyes swept up and down my body for
injuries.�
I had to get a hold of myself.� It didn�t matter how haunted his eyes were or
how beautiful his voice was.� �I need you
to come with me.� Jauffre has sent me to
fetch you.� You�re in danger here.�
He raised his eyebrows at me.� �How does that make me different from
everyone else in Kvatch?�
Well, now, that was not information that everyone left in
the city needed to have, was it?� �Most
of them aren�t the Emperor�s son,� I whispered.�
�What!�� I saw the
sneer of disbelief starting to form.
�This is a conversation I would prefer to have in private,�
I added.
He frowned, gave a curt nod, took me by the elbow, and
walked briskly with me down the steps to the priests� quarters.
�I am not the
Emperor�s son,� he growled.� �My father
was a farmer.�
I almost laughed at his denial.� Peasant stock, obviously.� Thence the carriage of
princes and the voice of a god.�
�And that is why the Grandmaster of the Blades took a personal interest
in your upbringing.� Of
course.�
He looked puzzled.�
�Jauffre is the � no.� No, it�s
not possible.�
�The daedra were here to find you.� We have to get you to
safety.�
Puzzlement into horror.� �To find me?� Why would they come to find me? �Because I am the Emperor�s son�.�
He fell back a step, mortified.
I�d just made the destruction of his city and his temple
into his personal responsibility.� I�d
just broken his unwittingly regal heart.�
There, excellent!� �I�m sorry,� I
said, touching his arm, like that was going to fix it.� �But I need to get you away from here.�
But just then soldiers blustered in to find us.� They wanted Martin to get back to healing
people, and me to hear reports of what was going on in the castle, because now
I was the Hero of Kvatch and they assumed I should be apprised of that kind of
thing.� Martin�s eyes widened as he
watched them report to me, and I realized that I�d never gotten around to
giving him the first idea of who I was.�
I�d been asking him to follow a total stranger into the wilderness.� I
wouldn�t have gone with me.
Martin promised we�d be along shortly and waved them
away.� �What is your name?� he asked
quietly.
�Tavi.�� In my head I kicked myself again.
�And you are the Hero of Kvatch.� You�ve given them hope.� I�let me make sure there are enough healers
left to take care of the survivors.� Then
I�ll come with you.�� He bowed his lovely
head like a meek lamb, locks of his dark hair falling into his face.� �My life is in your hands.�
And that, in all honesty, was the most terrifying moment of
my life.
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Apotheosis I