A/N: Some info I didn't put in the summary, because those things are so short, it's hard fit everything in:
- This story will contain romance later. If that's not your thing, feel free to toddle along.
- If romance is your thing, but M/M romance isn't, I'm sure there are plenty of other stories in this fandom better suited to your needs. c:
- The Dohvakiin (aka Leif) is not the focus of this story, nor is the main quest, or any of the factions. This story is about the charming little fella you'll be meeting about halfway down the page. An OC. I promise not to make him a Stu. I've been told I'm good at that. C:
- The beginning of this story will contain spoilers for the Frostflow Lighthouse misc. quest.
- And finally, don't feel pressured to review. I adore reviews of course, write chapters faster when I know I have an involved audience, and do my best to reply to all of the signed ones, but I'm just as happy to receive favourites or alerts.
Now then, on with the tale.
Leif was not a Nord native to Skyrim. His deeply tanned skin was testiment to that. He had been raised in the Cyrodiilic town of Anvil, a little coastal paradise that brought new excitement on the waves in the form of new ships and new sailors every day. A brisk wind came in off the ocean with those ships, of course, but it had been no more than a cool breeze. Enough to raise the hair on his arms, but not enough to make him hurry inside to huddle around the fire.
It could never have prepared him for the kind of brutally cold winds that came lashing in off the Sea of Ghosts.
As Kogaan, his horse, struggled against the wind and blizzard east up the road from Dawnstar to Winterhold, Leif hunched up in the saddle, lowering his head towards the horse's neck to try and protect his face from the elements a little. He couldn't feel his cheeks anymore and his lips were cracking. His hood and dark, shoulder length hair kept his ears somewhat protected, though even they had long since stopped feeling anything.
It was dark, night having long since fallen, and Leif could barely afford to look at anything but the trail in the snow in order to find his way to Winterhold. He could only see the trail for maybe a few feet ahead of him at any one time, and each time he glanced up to make sure nothing had snuck up on him, the usual tell-tale signs of an ambush hidden under the storm, he would momentarily lose sight of the road.
Because of this, he very nearly passed the lighthouse as he crested the hill. The only thing that stopped him, was the dead horse lying beside the road. Startled, he pulled Kogaan to a stop, then looked up to survey his surroundings. He expected to see a dead or injured traveller nearby, but instead, his gaze rose to take in the lighthouse beside him.
It only took him a few moments to decide. "Ugh, to Oblivion with this," he grumbled, before urging Kogaan past the dead horse and towards the small stable built into the side of the lighthouse. The horse had probably died from exposure. Hopefully Kogaan would survive the night. At least the high stone walls would give him some protection from the wind.
Once Kogaan had settled in, Leif dismounted, landing in the snow with a crisp crunch that he didn't so much hear as he felt. Drawing his sword, he stabbed at some of the layer of ice over the water in the trough, breaking it up enough so that Kogaan would be able to drink.
Satisified that Kogaan would be fine for the night, Leif sheathed his sword and trudged over to the dead horse, folding his arms around himself to try and conserve some heat. He dropped down on one knee beside the horse and touched it lightly with the tips of his fingers, prodding at its muscles then tugging at one of its legs, bending it at the knee before laying it down again. The horse was ice cold, but there was no surprise there. Rigormortis hadn't set in yet, however. The horse had died recently.
He stood up and turned on his heel, hurrying over to the door of the lighthouse, no longer interested in the cause of the horse's death and very interested in warmth and human company. He knocked on the front door, hard enough to be heard over the howling wind. The wood made his stiff, cold knuckles scream at him in agony, but he ignored it, stamping his feet as he waited for an answer.
When nothing came, he knocked again, this time with the other hand to spare the knuckles of the first any more pain. Again, there was no answer. "Enough of this," Leif hissed to himself, before pulling the door open and heading inside, univited. He could explain himself when whoever lived there stopped yelling in prote-
He didn't even make it far enough into the lighthouse to step off of the snow drift before he stopped dead in his tracks. Blood, everywhere. It stained the stone floors and the rugs and as he slowly eased forward, he found the source - a poor, dead Redguard woman. A war axe of an unusual style that Leif wasn't familiar with lay buried in her flesh.
Worse than that, however, if such a thing was possible, was the huge bug-like creature that lay dead by the fire. Leif edged closer to it, wary of the possibility that it was faking, then gave it an experimental kick. It didn't react, and Stephan sighed a breath of relief before crouching beside it to get a better look.
Its chitin was black, but down the front of its neck pale pink flesh was visble under the layers of natural armour. It had four legs that he could see, but none of them had anything that looked capable of holding an axe. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't solely responsible for the woman's death.
Rising to his feet, Leif looked around, ready to begin his search for clues. A small journal caught his eye where it lay half hidden under the woman's body. A chair was also near her, and Leif strode over to it, sitting himself down and laying his sword across his lap before he picked up the red, leather bound journal.
He flicked it open to the first page and began reading.
It didn't take him long to glean enough information from the book to be able to take a stab and guessing the identity of the woman. A family had lived here. The parents and their two children. A son and a daughter. The mother, Ramati and the daughter, Sudi, were the only women mentioned. Looking again at the dead woman's face, Leif decided that she was far too old to be Sudi.
The last entry was the one that caught his eye the most, however. The scribbled hand writing and the hurried tone of the words of the writer - Habd, it was signed - after finding his wife dead didn't surprise Leif at all. What did surprise him was that the man had bothered to write anything down at all. Although, considering the situation and Habd's fatalistic attitude going down there, perhaps he just wanted to write something, anything, to mark his final, heroic acts.
Something was nagging at him though, and he had to read the last entry a few more times before it clicked. On the last page, Habd wrote that he was going to lock the cellar door behind him. Leif turned his head, slowly and stiffly, to the right. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the cellar door.
Wide open.
Someone had either been here before him and followed Habd down, or someone had come back up, using Habd's key. There was no sign of Habd anywhere, and with his horse dead and his wife's blood still fresh on the stones, Leif doubted he would have left the lighthouse already. Not without giving his wife a proper burial.
Placing the journal back down on the floor, Leif gripped the hilt of his sword and stood up, heading for the basement stairs. There was more blood by this door, and pools of it continued down the stairs. Dropping into a crouch, Leif crept down the stairs, easing past the untriggered bear traps as he went. As he followed the curve of the stairwell, and the snowy basement floor came into view, the stark redness of yet more blood, more than he'd seen elsewhere, at the bottom of the stairs made his stomach clench in fearful anticipation.
He reached the bottom of the staircase, and readying his sword, he leaned past the wall to look out into the basement-
-only to freeze in shock at the sight of a person standing perfectly still in the centre of the room, the carcasses of two more creatures burning on eitherside of the androgynous figure.
Leif stared at the strange creature before him. It had its back to him, but it stood as still as a statue, barefoot in the snow, only occasionally lifting its feet to curl its toes and restore circulation. Its hands hung at its sides in an almost relaxed fashion, flames still curling in the palms of both hands. Its clothing was unusual, a far cry from anything that could be considered appropriate for the climate - tattered robes reminscent of the ones worn by the College of Winterhold mages. They were old, however, and in the kind of state Leif imagined even a mage with no care for his appearance would turn his nose up at.
In the few seconds Leif had wasted taking in this strange sight before him, he'd failed to notice the tension in the air as the creature began to sense his eyes on it. When it turned, suddenly and yet completely silently, Leif stepped back into a defensive stance, raising his sword in front of him.
Now he could see its face, and though its gender was still difficult to discern, the sharper, broader features put him in mind of a male. The boy, if it was male at all, had short blonde hair, matted with blood and his eyes were such a pale shade of grey that for a moment, Leif thought they were pure white. If he was a boy at all, and not some kind of fledgling male hagraven, Leif guessed he was either a Breton or a very slender Nord.
They stared at each other for a long moment, Leif recovering from the shock and the cellar boy glaring at him with a kind of bewildered malice, before Leif found his voice.
"You!" he snarled, pointing his blade at the other. "Are you the one responsible for that?" He pointed at the ceiling, signalling the carnage upstairs.
To his surprise, the boy rolled his eyes and sneered slightly, in blatant disdain. He didn't answer though; he didn't say anything at all. Instead, he leapt away, kicking up snow behind him, before bolting through a hole in the wall and down an icy tunnel.
"Hey!" Leif yelled after him, before giving chase, albeit moving far slower than the deft little witch had. Running on snow was as difficult as running on sand - evidently his prey had had practice.
The tunnel was icier than he'd expected, and as he began the descent - the boy already out of sight - he slipped and skidded to the bottom. The urge to hunt was overpowering though, and any thoughts regarding how he'd retreat if he needed to didn't even cross his mind.
He went bounding into the small cavern at the bottom of the slope with all the grace and elegance of a mammoth in a potion shop. He had all of a few seconds to look around before something thick, black and tar-like struck him, coating the right side of his body. His armour saved most of him, but where his upper arms weren't covered, the black fluid burned, making his arm feel heavy and lifeless.
Panicking, Leif looked over towards the oversized insect scuttling towards him, and without thinking about it- "Yol Toor Shul!" -shouted the creature down. Its chitin armour fractured under the heat of the flames, and it was blasted back against the stone wall, ending its venomous life. Breathing heavily, Leif began frantically trying to wipe the poison off of his arm with the gloved palm of his hand, when an arrow skimmed bast his head, just barely missing him.
His head whipped up to look, and he caught only a glimpse of the pallid looking, pointy-eared creature with the bow before it was engulfed in flames - these ones not of Leif making. He looked over to his left as the boy emerged from the tent he'd been hiding in, jets of fire billowing from the palms of his hands. The creature with the bow hissed as it died, writhing as its charred body hit the snow. The boy approached it warily, then stood over it, watching it squirm with a perfectly blank expression. Only when it stopped moving did he reach down and grab its ear, tugging its head into the air. He looked at Leif, then shook the creature at him by its ear.
This, his lips said, though no sound came out. The boy frowned a little, obviously frustrated by his own silence, then shook it off and took it in his stride. This killed them.
I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. c: