The Contract

by Lilith-Hoshi

DISCLAIMER: This is a Skyrim fanfic. I don't own Bethesda. But I made Dispatos. So, umm, yeah.

Content warning: mild language, some minor sexual content, loads of violence. Yay~

Dispatos never particularly cared much for the city of Windhelm.

He walked past the city guards at a brisk pace, aware that they were wondering what a possible Thalmor-lover wanted in the city of racists, but even they knew not to mess with a man dressed in the black and crimson of the Dark Brotherhood. At eight feet tall, with yellowed skin and even more yellow eyes that unsettled all of his victims—he savored the look on their faces as they beheld the black skull that covered his face, only then becoming aware that he was Death, and their time had come—

Ah, but he could savor those memories for later. The task at hand was the most important bit, and besides, this would create yet another memory to savor. So, with a moment to regain a sense of professionalism, he pulled out a sheet of paper from the pouch on his belt, and he rolled it open. Calixto Corrium was the name the inept Initiate had scrawled on the parchment for him in large block letters, and below it was the neater handwriting of the female Initiate—he didn't care particularly for their names even though Nazir had told him about ten times by now—explaining that Calixto's House of Curiosities, where he also lived, was to the right as soon as he entered Windhelm. He folded the parchment back up and sighed, returning it to his pouch.

He had seen the Calixto museum before, come to think of it. It was a stop he had taken while on the way to investigate the rumor he had heard in Riften of the boy, Aventus Aretino. Before the encounter that led him into the Brotherhood, Dispatos had stepped inside the House and seen the several artifacts that the older Imperial man had out for display. The ancient Nord embalming tools interested him in particular, and he would have taken them if he wasn't going to seek out the Aretino boy as soon as possible.

Standing in front of it, he looked through a window to see that Calixto was, indeed, home, and was scrawling something into a book. But the curious thing was that Calixto paced around the house while doing this, massaging his forehead intermittently. Dispatos couldn't help but smile—a distracted victim meant that his entrance would be all the quicker.

"Hail Sithis," a vaguely familiar voice said. Dispatos turned around to see Niranye, the sole Altmer in the city. He recognized her in the marketplace, selling whatever she had gotten from foolish adventurers or enterprising tradesmen.

"You performed the Black Sacrament," Dispatos said, though he almost made it into a question. What in Sithis's name would an Altmer woman want with an old Imperial man with a meager museum?

"I did," Niranye said. "It's come to my attention that Calixto possesses items of certain merit in the museum." She looked briefly through the window, and Dispatos wondered what item she was coveting—the so-called Dancer's Flute, the supposed Book of Fate, or maybe she coveted the ancient embalming tools as he had.

"So you invoked the Night Mother," Dispatos said. "How will Sithis help you with obtaining your items?" He asked this not out of reverence for the Dread Father but more for his curiosity, as Niranye and Calixto were not close friends and he doubted he had anyone in his will.

"I've looked at his will, thanks to my various associates within the Thieves' Guild," she said in a whisper, and glanced over her shoulder. He would have snorted at her paranoia; everyone had a suspicion she wasn't exactly involved in a clean operation. "Needless to say," she said after a moment, "he has left his possessions to his dead sister, even though it was dated around the time he moved into Windhelm. Considering that she no longer exists, what will happen is that there will be an estate sale, and I have ensured that I will have first pick of his belongings." She smiled, though a corner of her mouth twitched as she drew it back—a nervous reaction, he recognized, as he had seen the same twitch on the face of a young man he had killed and left to choke in his own blood not moments later. He had told a lady he fancied—a married woman—that he rather liked her, and much to his delight, she told him she felt the same. Their brief affair lasted five seconds, as Dispatos butchered the woman's ugly face so she could never deceive men with her smiles again, and he slit the youth's throat in a clean manner that even Sithis would admire. He giggled to remember it, but only realized he was conducting business when the confused look of Niranye alerted him to his error.

"Sorry," he said. "I take joy in my business, and I would recommend you to return home. In an hour, the Guard will come looking for me. Say no word. If I don't come back to the city in ten days, have your compensation delivered to Morthal at the Jarl's home and inform her that it is for her Thane."

Niranye raised a brow, though he didn't know if it was for the reputation of the town, or for the fact he was Thane of Hjaalmarch. "Morthal? Is that where you live?"

Dispatos chuckled lightly. "No, where I live is where death lives. Where there is Death, there am I."

And with that, Niranye turned around and walked away, disappearing down the alley that led to the Dunmer side of the city. He wondered for a brief moment if she fraternized with the darker of elvenkind, but then chided himself for a useless thought. What mattered was that there was to be a killing at hand, and it was to be…For lack of a better word, delicious. He savored his art as if it was a meal, and indeed, his art gave him meal after meal.

At that moment, Calixto donned a black hood and robe. Dispatos noticed this, and he ducked behind the porch of a house next door. He whispered a word, and a flash came from his gloved hand. With that spell, he disappeared into the background, invisible. Calixto was unaware of Dispatos's skill with magic, as he sighed as he left the house and drew a key from a pocket that appeared to be sewn into the robe. He locked the house and returned the key to his pocket. After a moment of smoothing out his robe, he broke into a sprint past Dispatos, toward the district of town with the bevy of homes. When he rounded the other side of Candlehearth Hall, Dispatos reappeared in a shimmer, like he had done a thousand times before. He bounded to the door in seconds, and he touched the lock. Another light shimmered from his fingertips and the door opened in a smooth motion. He noticed that Calixto hadn't added a thing to his exhibit since his last visit to Windhelm, and he wondered if the museum was just a method of living for Calixto, who had boasted of his explorations with his sister.

He perched himself on top of a chest that Calixto had hidden onto a pseudo-second floor, and waited for Calixto to return home. From outside he heard a scream of a woman and the sobbing of more. He wondered if it was a mugging, as he remembered a beggar woman asked him if he wanted to learn the art of pickpocketing from her for the low price of three-hundred septims. What he wanted to say to her was that his preferred form of theft was looting bodies, but the guards were nearby and he liked to think he had a better sense of professionalism than to go boasting of his art to those who might not understand. But the screams from outside were desperate wails for help—and finally he heard a voice scream of blood on the pavement. For thirty minutes the clamor continued until some intrepid guard ordered everyone to move out of the area.

Dispatos was thrilled with the spectacle. He had always enjoyed the screams of women as their husbands were butchered in front of their very eyes, and even sweeter was silencing their shrill voices. Yes, some would ask for only the husband to be butchered, but where was the fun in that? The mystique of the double fatality sent that sort of sickening delight into the pit of his stomach, as it seemed only proper for a partnership bound in matrimony to end by one hand—

The door slammed open. Calixto locked the door and slammed his body against it. He sunk to the ground and he began to laugh. "Hjerim, Hjerim!" he giggled, and he stood up from the floor. "Oh, Lucilla, it won't be long…"

Dispatos dropped from his hiding place and seized Calixto by putting him in a chokehold. In his right hand he conjured his ever-familiar bound sword. "The Dark Brotherhood has come a-calling, and you're stepping on our domain. I assume that murder was yours?"

Calixto, much to Dispatos's surprise, did not move an inch—he was being unreasonably calm for a man who was just laughing on the floor. "Yes, it was, but what are you going to do about it? And who performed the Black Sacrament on me?" he asked, with some measure of the lunatic giddy he had before.

Dispatos gave Calixto a good swipe on the cheek, which would have permanently scarred him if he intended on letting the Imperial live. "I am the hand of Sithis himself, you miserable wretch! I am a necromancer and a conjurer; if I so wanted I could burn you and the house too!"

"No!" howled Calixto, who turned around and shoved Dispatos. He quickly went for the door, but the click of the lock let Calixto know he was dealing with the real deal. Dispatos flashed a grin, and he sent a spark of lightning at the Imperial. Calixto yelped in pain and stumbled to the floor. He attempted to lift an arm to get up but instead dropped to the floor with a moan.

Dispatos couldn't help but chuckle; the game was finally beginning. "Do you like my lightning spells? It's a more elegant manner of entrapment, not that a third-rate ass like you would know anything about that." Dispatos tossed Calixto onto his own bed and smiled, examining the older man's limp body, arranged very intentionally like a ragdoll. "It's too bad you're so old," Dispatos said with a thread of regret. "I have a thing for Imperial boys."

"Sick fuck," Calixto rasped. Dispatos slapped him across the face with his metal-plated glove, only to elicit a grin at the old man's howl.

"All of your years of living and you spit in the face of those more powerful than you? What a pity." Dispatos took a book off of the desk in Calixto's room. "Oh, what's this?"

Calixto blanched, and once more tried to get up but found that he simply couldn't lift his legs, or so Dispatos gathered from the tiny wiggles and gasps of frustration. "Don't touch it!" he whined after a moment of pathetic whimpers.

Dispatos opened the book. "Oh my, it's someone's journal! Isn't this special?" He cleared his throat and read, "'I continue to collect your new form from the ragged bits around Windhelm! If they only knew what destiny would soon grace their bodies, with your spirit imbuing them with higher purpose, they would surely thank me for the great gift I give them. I reserve for them a place of beauty alongside your heart.' Oh my, and someone called me the sick fuck!" Dispatos tossed the book onto Calixto's face and smiled. "So that's what the embalming tools are for. You were going to resurrect your dead sister, weren't you?"

"My sister was—"

Dispatos slapped him across the face. "Shut up. Your sister is dead and I imagine she's all the more grateful for it. Now, I've spent entirely too long playing with you, and there's nothing more dissatisfying then all foreplay and no intercourse." Dispatos grabbed the embalming tools off of the shelf and giggled madly. Calixto saw the dulled, rusted edge of one of the tools and gasped.

"You wouldn't dare, you monster—"

Dispatos put a finger to his lips and said, "Shh, my child, and look!" He took a hook-like instrument and smiled at Calixto, who was sweating profusely by then. "Do you know what this is for?"

"I-It's for extracting the… the…"

"The brain! Good!" Dispatos laughed and patted Calixto on the head. "And despite your age, yours appears to be in working order! So I'm going to begin the honors."

"No! No, you can't! NO—" Calixto's words turned into screams as Dispatos coaxed the hook up Calixto's nostril. He couldn't help but laugh as the screams got louder, and the hook made its way up the nasal cavity til he finally reached something very soft and very fragile. The rest was a blur of pure ecstasy as Calixto screamed and the hook went back in and out, much to the delight of Dispatos. Finally, Dispatos pulled the hook out and observed the grisly, bloody mess he had made all over the bed of the formerly brilliant Calixto Corrium and the embalming tools.

Dispatos made a note to himself to have someone forge a more modern set, as this was his best and most artistic method of killing yet. He stepped away from the bed, and he picked up the book again. He noticed in the corner of a page, there was a note: "Hjerim—Friga Shatter-Shield's home". He tucked the book under his arm and made sure he would hand it to a guard on the way out of the city. Sure, he was a Dark Brotherhood assassin, but that didn't mean he believed the process of judgment shouldn't go down on killers—just that he was exempt because it was all in the name of Sithis, who, being older than creation itself, should have had some clout in the world.

It was nearing one in the morning. He would have to make his way to Niranye quickly and ditch town as soon as possible, before the House of Curiosities normally opened, and Dispatos preferred not having to butcher an entire city's worth of guardsmen—too much effort, no real value in the murder itself.

With that in mind, he went to the front door, but he felt clever at that moment. So he took one last look at the corpse and snorted. "What an amateur. You deserved it."

And at that, Dispatos left.

Cicero waited at the stables. He had been sighing for a long while, and kicking rocks. Not even Shadowmere made for good company—he snorted at all of his wonderful jokes about killing bakers, and snorted even louder when Cicero realized that he had missed the crook behind sweet Mother's neck in the last oiling session. What a bad Keeper he was, poor Cicero! What a—

Ah, but in the distance, he saw the ever-so-wonderful Listener running back to him. Cicero ran out to Dispatos in the middle of the bridge, and he hugged him tight around the torso. "Oh, my Listener! How was the kill? Did you stab him!" he shouted.

Dispatos chuckled and ruffled the jester's hat. "No, my little Cicero," he said, with a kiss on the forehead. "I tore his brains out with an embalming hook."

Cicero laughed and kissed Dispatos on the cheek. "Oh, you are so cunning! Cicero is so glad he left Cyrodiil with Mother to meet you!"

Dispatos walked with his jester and smiled. It was one in the morning and he had a good kill. He was sad that Cicero had to stay behind, but Cicero wasn't good at these personal assassinations. Besides, it made the occasion all the more intimate and special, and that was something Dispatos understood, in two ways.

Cicero swung himself onto the back of Shadowmere, and gave a hand to Dispatos, who certainly didn't need help getting onto Shadowmere, but accepted his lover's gesture nonetheless. Dispatos smiled as he got on, and felt Cicero's hands wrap around his waist. "Let's go kill someone!" Cicero shouted.

Dispatos laughed. "Of course, my jester."