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Apotheosis II	By : OneMoreAltmer Category: +A through F > Elder Scrolls - Oblivion Views: 3007 -:- 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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Three � Turn to Stone

My next assignment was in Bruma.
�Does he choose the cities to spite me?� I complained.
As was becoming habitual, Vicente patted me comfortingly on
the shoulder.� �The Night Mother
chooses.� She must have great trust in
your strength.� Now � the target is an
old Bosmer gentleman named Baenlin.� He
seldom leaves his house.�� He regarded
the doubt in my face, knowing that I was not yet quite comfortable with this
kind of killing, and added, �The client implies that when he had the strength,
he was a pederast.�� I nodded in relief,
and he continued.� �Ocheeva would like to
see how far you�ve come from the grand theatrics of your wartime kills.� If you can make this look like an accident, I
will give you a bonus.�
As he escorted me out, Gogron was arriving from his own last
contract.� �I got her!� he chortled.� �In the middle of her fifth
birthday party!� It was so funny.�
I almost lopped her head clean off in one shot!�
As I raised a hand to my mouth against �
what? Would I have screamed, vomited, struck him? � Vicente stepped
between us quickly to work his diplomatic magic.� �I rejoice in your success, of course, but do
remember that our Sister is not yet as�hmm�as pure in her motives as you
are.� She is accustomed to being a weapon
of justice.�
�Oh.� Yeah.�� Gogron frowned
for a moment in thought.� Then he said,
in helpful tones, �She was a horrible
little girl.� She, um, ate kittens.� Without onions or
anything.�
I kept my mouth covered and nodded.� Yes,
that�s lovely, Gogron.� Please stop.
Finally he went off in search of a more enthusiastic
audience, and Vicente whispered to me, �To each the contract to which each is
suited, Methusiele.� Your target has ruined lives; your
contract is just.� Keep your focus.�
A message came to the house while I was preparing to
leave.� Ocato, telling
me that my dragon armor was ready.
Oh!� I could feel my
reason slipping just a little out of true, a veneer of calm denial over the
panic.� Well, how convenient:� I could just go to the Palace District and
pick it up on my way to Bruma, and leave it at my old house.� I could just trace the last two days we ever
had together backwards.� It would be no
trouble at all.
I forced myself to breathe, and then to practice the
meditation I had been taught.� I let the
ice wash over me and tried to draw strength from it.� I was not a slave to my past.� Sithis was the end of pain.� That was the teaching, and I clung to it for
support.
That was enough to get me to the Imperial City,
but the further in I went, the less it sufficed.� It had been one thing to go to the
University, where he had never been, and quite another to set foot in the
Palace District again and remember entering it as his herald and his right hand,
his champion and his lover.� As the last mortal to see him alive.
That memory tainted the whole city:� that made it all his, and not mine.� And that was not fair.� He�d spent mere hours
here, and I had made it my first home, the center around which my life had
revolved until the day I�d agreed to be a Blade and live at the cursed Temple.� It was my
city, and I did not want him to take it from me like he�d taken everything
else.
But now it was as if he haunted the whole town.� It was as if his voice followed me,
whispering, reminding me how he had loved me, coaxing me toward the Temple of the One to see
the terrible monument to my loss.
No.� I pushed the voice away with all my will,
mentally screamed to Sithis to drown it.�
It was not fair.�
Ocato was thoroughly himself, and the armor was
beautiful.� It looked just like
Martin�s.� I bit my tongue hard enough to
make it bleed.
I did not kill anyone in the Imperial City,
but I left feeling newly enthusiastic to kill someone.
The voice did not haunt me in my house in Bruma, but I was still
no happier.� Every keepsake from my other
life remembered his hand upon it, the story I had told him about it.� The bed remembered him, and scolded me for
taking solace in a murderer�s arms.� That
wasn�t fair, either:� it should not be
possible to be unfaithful to a memory.�
Still I laid down there for just a moment and tried to feel his
impression there, his warmth.� Of course
both were long gone.
Seeing the completed statue the Countess had ordered as a
monument to me was surreal.� They had
made a lantern of her staff, so that she cast a perpetual light over her corner
of the town, and her brave, fierce gaze was pointed upward.� I did not recognize her as any part of
myself.
Even the murder itself provided disappointingly little
distraction � though it was awfully convenient, as it came to light that
Baenlin was my next door neighbor.� I
made Vicente�s tidy accident by slipping into the crawlspace and loosening the
fastenings behind a minotaur head that hung behind the
old mer�s chair.� It fell on him and
killed him.� So simple that it was not
satisfying at all.� While I was drinking
that disappointment away at the Tap and Tack, trying not to remember drinking
there with my dead friend Baurus, I was able to hear the sad noises about what
a respectable citizen Baenlin the pederast had been, and what a pity it was
that his surly nephew (perhaps a former victim?) would inherit the house.
What a pointless, bitter lie the world was.
Meditations on the void were no longer equal to the task I
was setting for them.� I rode back to
Cheydinhal without passing through the Imperial City,
arriving at nightfall and shutting myself in with several bottles of expensive
wine and vials of skooma.� I�d never
tried it before, but other miserable wretches seemed to swear by it.
I spent the night and the following day in varying degrees
of delirium:� alcohol and skooma are a
potent and bewildering combination.� I
didn�t hear her come in, but of course I would not have in any case.
Ocheeva looked down at me sprawled across my bed.� �You haven�t come home for your payment,� she
said.
My head was hanging over the edge of the bed:� Ocheeva was upside down to me, and slightly
blurred and stretched.� �I don�t want to
be an assassin any more.� I don�t want to
be anything.�
�I see.� Bruma was unpleasant
for you.� Remember to meditate on � �
�It isn�t working!�� I screamed.
She did not raise her voice back to me.� �We can�t have this, little one.� You are too famous and too deadly to allow
yourself to fall apart.� Try again.�
�I can�t!�� I came up
to my knees, crying.� �I can�t do
it!� Make
him get out of my head!�
Ocheeva sat down on the bed next to me, pulled my head down
to her shoulder, and held me there.� As I
started to melt, she stroked my hair.
�I want him back,� I sobbed.�
�It�s killing me.� I want him
back.�
�Ssh.� There, there,
little shade.� I know your pain.� You are with your Family now.� Together we will make the world suffer for
what it has done to you.�� She let me cry
for a few minutes, and then pushed me back a little to look at me.� �You haven�t bathed since Bruma, have
you?� Perhaps that would relax you.�� She rose from the bed.
I was still both upset and a bit drunk.� I grabbed her by the wrist.� �Don�t leave me alone.� Everyone leaves.�
�I�m not leaving, pet.�
I�m just warming some water.� Come
with me if you like.�� She paused.� �If you can walk on your
own.�� I could, roughly.
I�d had the tub set up downstairs so as to be near the water
and the fireplace.� Ocheeva studied it as
she was heating the water.� �It�s a nice
size.� I suppose it will be easier to
keep you from drowning yourself if I get in with you.� Here, get undressed � tsk, not like that, you
poor thing.� Let me help you, then.�� She wrestled with both me and my unchanged
traveling clothes, then took off her own dark things,
and I stared at her.
She was a lovely banded red and green, with a sort of
chevron stripe emphasizing her lower belly.�
But the reason I was staring was at the confirmation of a rumor about
Argonian anatomy:� she had round swells
in the place of breasts but no nipples.
My intoxicated brain could not parse it.� Well, no, of course no nipples�but then why
breasts at all?� Just to fool the rest of
us?� I started to giggle, tried to stop
because I thought it rude, giggled harder for the attempt.� Happily, she took it for one more sign of my
hysteria and thought nothing else of it.�
She poured the warm water, stepped into the tub, and carefully pulled me
in after her.� We sat with me leaned into
her, with her arms around me and her tail wrapped carefully beside.� Her touch was like a mother�s or a sister�s,
demanding and offering nothing more, simply benign presence.� Her skin was like a snake�s, a layer of cool
smoothness behind me.
I rested my head back against her shoulder and sighed,
settling back into my more usual state of dull but survivable grief.� She was much more practiced than I was at
calling down the peaceful silence of the Dread Father, and it seemed as if she
was transferring some bit of it to me by touch.�
She teased my hair with her fingers, encouraging me to relax.�
Warmth and comfort and drink together put me half to sleep,
and it was effortful to lift myself out of the tub when she decided I had
better go to bed.� She helped me dry off
and creep up the stairs, and she lay down with me on the too-big bed, her cool
hand on my shoulder.
I was lightly asleep, still dimly aware of the world, when I
heard her speak softly over my head.�
�She was even worse than you said.�
Are you sure you don�t want me to wake her so she knows you were here?�
�No.�� Honeyed frost.�
Lucien.� �Let her love you for
this and not me.� She needs to connect to
the Sanctuary.�� A
pause.� �But the two of you do
look enchanting together.� I will have to
keep that in mind.� Come here.�
�I don�t think she�s quite deep enough yet.� She would wake up.�
�Then I will wait with you.��
I felt him lie down on the other side of me, and his arm draped over
hers.
�If she were a nobody,� she said,
�she could sleep in the Sanctuary with the rest of us and not be so lonely.�
�If she were a nobody,� Lucien
answered, �she would not be Methusiele.�
Then I stopped hearing.
Morning found me alone, of course, but with clothes laid out
for me and the empty bottles and vials (and even the ones that hadn�t been
empty) gone.� I had been cared for.� The pleasant numbness of my Family�s love
started to soothe me again, and I went into the Sanctuary ready to be less
lukewarm in my duties.
My bonus was a pretty elven dagger, and my next contract was
already making Vicente smile before he told me.�
It was back in the Imperial
City again, but he
stopped me before I could complain.
�No, this one should please you, I think.� The Night Mother must find great promise in
you to grant such a delicious opportunity.��
He paused for effect.� �Your
target is in an Imperial prison cell.� We
have learned that there is a secret passageway into the prison through the
sewer system: apparently it was uncovered by some ambitious prisoner who was
able to escape.�� He grinned as I blushed.� �You will kill a Dunmer prisoner named Valen
Dreth.� He has been there a long
time:� perhaps he will be familiar to
you.�
A Dunmer?...no, surely not.� Not the one whose cruel taunts were my first
memory of Cyrodiil?�
I set off at once.� I
was eager to please now, eager to show Ocheeva I appreciated her care and would
reward her effort.� Eager to show Lucien
he had been right to trust me.� Bought
and paid for by such a little gesture.
The way was familiar, of course, and haunted by its own set
of memories.� Going to Bruma I had traced
the end of my old path, stirring up all its grief.� Now I was tracing its beginning, back to the
source.� I walked back past the Mythic
Dawn, back past the ghost of Baurus, back past the infernal Emperor who had
doomed me, back to my old cell.

By the time I reached Valen he had become the origin of all my troubles, and by
killing him I was going to purge my soul of all its wretchedness.� The Night Mother was gracious and the
Brotherhood my salvation for allowing me such a cleansing.� I slipped off my ring so that he could see
me, and as his eyes widened in recognition I smiled and greeted him with the
words that had been his last to me.
�You�re going to die in here.�
Unlike him, I had the power to make it so.
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Apotheosis II