The night had just spread out its bedclothes, velvety-soft and serenely blue, and as the city of Kvatch was stretching itself snugly, about to go off to sleep, a man whose destiny was a transaction, signed and sealed, sat down to a solitary supper, not knowing that every helping which he lifted on a silver fork to his mouth, every bit that he chewed, leisurely, rolling it over with his tongue, savouring the juice that spurted out into his mouth as he plunged his teeth deep into the succulent flesh, every mouthful that he swallowed, his eyes half-closed with pleasure, was closely followed by a stare, dark, intense, and unblinking, of two large, blood-red eyes that gleamed steadily like smoldering coals on a face shrouded in shadows. Long the man sat at his table, munching noisily, grease dripping down his double chin, and all the time the red eyes never left his face - watching, waiting. Finally, having washed down his hearty meal with a prolonged draught of Tamika's best, the man stretched his hand over a bowl of fruit, his fat, many-ringed fingers hovering over the glistening apples and oranges, his full lips making an unpleasant sucking noise - apparently, he was hesitating over a choice of dessert. The red eyes narrowed a little, betraying for the first time a sign of impatience. The man licked his lips and selected a particularly large red apple with perfectly smooth, waxen peel and a sweet, honey-like scent. The red eyes narrowed even more, but now the emotion that flickered in their crimson depth was satisfaction. With a tremendous crunch, the man took a bite of the apple - and the moment he swallowed, his face suddenly grew ashen-white, a thin film of perspiration covered his sloping forehead; he coughed violently, as if he was being smothered, and with a long, hoarse groan bent over the table, which creaked shrilly under his weight; his fingers, now strangely bluish in colour, scraped the wooden surface till the neat half-moons of their nails grew dark with blood; he drew a deep, raspy breath, saliva drooling out of the corner of his mouth, and finally lay still, his sagging cheeks spread over the plate out of which he had been eating, staring in front of him with the whites of his eyes.
Moments later, the owner of the two fiery red eyes stepped out of the dark corner where she had been concealing herself - for it was a woman, clad in tight-fitting clothing the colour of starless night, and so slim that her shadow, distorted by candle-light, looked like a black blade. She had skin of a dark, inky-purple colour, long, silvery-white hair combed carelessly behind her pointed ears, and a large burn mark warping the skin on her left cheek.
She made her way swiftly towards the bulky figure seated motionlessly at the little lopsided table, turned over the limp, blood-stained hand and pressed her bony fingers against the swollen wrist. No pulse. The woman's thin lips twitched in a small complacent smile; she picked up the half-eaten apple, muttering to herself, 'Oh, Lachance, you clever devil,' and wrapped it carefully into a piece of cloth.
She had barely straightened herself up and turned away from the dead man when the whole house was shaken by a sudden, inexplicable rumble, so violent that the window glass burst and came clinking down to the floor; the candle went out, and the room was instantly plunged into a strange, reddish murk. The woman, who had miraculously managed to keep her balance, run up to the window, making hardly any more noise than a shadow gliding across the floor, and looked out. What she saw made her draw back into the room with a puzzled frown and clasp instinctively at the hilt of her dagger.
The colour of the sky had changed. It was bright crimson now, with dark swirling clouds that looked like blood clods that a sick person spits into a bowl of water. Every now and then, a lightning bolt would flash blindingly in the bloody gloom, splitting the sky in two and casting a pale, unearthly gleam on the dark outlines of buildings which stood out sharply against another, altogether different light source. The city was burning.
As the dark-skinned woman lingered in the room, apparently undecided about her further actions, the night stillness, which after the rumble had grown almost unnatural, was pierced by a loud shriek that throbbed, strained and so loud that it hurt to hear it, and then ended abruptly, sinking in the sea of silence. It was soon followed by another shriek, and another, till the whole city became alive with cries of pain and terror, twisting with each other like thorny tendrils of some monstrous plant, thrashing against the night like a beast thrashes against the bars of its cage. The woman raced towards the front door, guided, apparently, by an impulse to leave the house, and the city as well, as soon as possible - but she never reached it. For the door was slashed into pieces by a fierce blow of a battle axe, which sent splinters flying in all directions like darts. And through the gap that appeared there came a huge hulk of a Xivilai, its broad shoulders hunched menacingly, with a particularly vicious-looking Daedroth trudging heavily in its wake.
The woman stopped in her tracks and waited while the Xivilai brandished its axe, growling what sounded like curses in its own tongue. As it thrust the axe downwards, clearly aiming at the woman, she jumped aside with cat-like grace, smiling contemptuously as the axe's blade stuck deep in the floor boards and the Xivilai struggled to tear it out. Seizing the moment, the woman leaped onto the Daedroth and clung tight to its gnarled scales, withstanding all its attempts to shake her off. Scissoring the creature's back between her knees, as if it were a horse she was trying to tame, she stretched out one hand and thrust her dagger, hilt-deep, into the flesh of the Daedroth's head, right between the eyes. The creature reeled with a roar of pain and then tumbled down, burying the Xivilai beneath itself. The woman, who had slid off the Daedroth's back moments before it fell, seized the battle axe that the Xivilai had managed to tug out of the floor, and with all her might hacked at the Daedra's head, visible just enough under the Daedroth's body.
'By Sithis, this thing is heavy!' she gasped, throwing the axe back to the floor and wiping the dark specks of the Xivilai's blood off her face, 'I wonder how Gogron manages?'.
The only reply she received to her question was a loud, confusing tumult of voices, shrill and incoherent, that burst into the house through the broken door like a wild river, almost knocking the woman off her feet as she was about to step over the jagged edge of the hole the Xivilai had made. The voices were soon followed by the arrival of new intruders - Scamps this time, a countless number of them, rushing past the dumbfounded woman through the door, climbing over the windowsills, crawling, bat-like, over the walls and ceiling, filling the room with their small, squirmy, rancid bodies, hissing and snapping at each other, breaking and tearing whatever they came across. They swept over the woman's head like an avalanche, clawing and biting at her whenever she tried to hit one with a spell. Overwhelmed, shaken, defeated, the woman retreated up the stairs leading to the dead man's bedroom, wading through the scamps as through a deep bog. Hardly had she done so, when a tall, hooded figure appeared on the threshold, so suddenly that it seemed that it had woven itself out of the surrounding blood-coloured gloom. Oblivious of the dark-skinned woman's presence, for she had used her skill to merge with the shadows, the figure lifted its hand in an imperious gesture and commanded in a high-pitched, impatient voice, 'Stop fooling around and do your duty'.
Grunting and growling, the scamps started casting fireballs, aiming at wall hangings and wooden furniture. After making sure that everything they had hit with their spells had caught fire, they scurried off almost as quickly as they had appeared. The whole of downstairs now turned into a raging fiery tempest, the woman hastily picked the lock on the bedroom door, her hands admirably steady, though the fire was dancing its enthralling dance of death behind her back, threatening to devour her if she lingered but a moment. She went inside, sprinted across the room to the window, and jumped out of it, the fire bellowing angrily behind her, enraged that its victim had escaped.
She landed roughly on a gigantic pile of debris that, but a few hours ago, must have been the neighbouring house. Her leg caught into a narrow crack in between two mis-shaped stones, and she winced uncontrollably. She pulled the leg out, but soon it became clear that she could not step on it without causing herself intense pain; grumbling to herself in the tongue of her kinsfolk, she slid, the best she could, down the side of the mound-like ruin, and limped off, looking cautiously about her, in what she believed to be the direction of the city gates.
Kvatch had become unrecognizable. The peaceful, thriving community where she had arrived that night with the instructions to eliminate a wealthy Imperial merchant, was now reduced to a dark, smoldering wasteland, illuminated only by he glare of the crimson sky and by the flames that were having a wild orgy in the street, engulfing anything they came across. And there were also the Daedra - marching through the streets, bold, victorious, striking down the trembling few that remained standing in their path. Reasoning that she, in her torn armour and with her fractured leg, was no match for the creatures that were massing the main streets, the woman decided to turn into a narrow passageway winding among the houses which were being destroyed before her very eyes. But she soon discovered that it was hardly the safest way, for, at every step she made, she risked being buried under a crumbling wall. Her weary wandering along the side streets soon ended, when she tripped over a prostrate body of an elderly Breton, wearing nothing but a nightshirt, with a hole singed in it where a Spider Daedra's shock spell had hit him. As she fell across the unfortunate old man, she realized that she would not be able get up again, not with her leg broken. She closed her eyes and listened resignedly as two buildings came collapsing around her on both sides, thus caving her in. 'Well,' she said quietly, addressing no one in particular, 'One can't deny that I completed the contract'.
She must have fallen into an uneasy doze, for the next thing she became conscious of was a ringing, childish voice, calling out pleadingly somewhere from above, 'I say... Oh, I say! Are you alive down there? Please, oh, please be alive! I can't bear seeing any more dead people! I don't think anyone has ever seen so frightfully many dead people - not even my Auntie Olwen, though she fought in the Five-Year War...' She looked up. Standing on top of the fractured wall, balancing herself with her outstretched arms, like a boy who shows his bravery by walking along a narrow wooden plank across a stream, there was a Wood Elf girl, barely out of her teens, with a round rosy face, flyaway copper hair and genial hazel eyes, which glinted joyfully when she saw the woman stir. 'So you are alive!' she exclaimed, 'How jolly! What about the other guy? Why doesn't he move? Is he unconscious?'
'He is dead,' the woman replied curtly, with apparent reluctance, 'And trust me, he isn't too comfortable to lie on'.
The young Wood Elf frowned thoughtfully, 'I say! Why are you lying there in the first place?' she asked, a little puzzled, 'I mean, it's rather an odd thing to be doing, isn't it? Not unless you like it, of course... My Auntie Olwen always says that you have to make allowances for people who like doing odd things. You wouldn't believe how many people liked doing odd things in the town where I grew up, back in Valenwood... Then one day there came two men in weird clothes, one of them was bald, with a sour face, and another was bearded, with funny eyes and even a funnier accent - and what do you know, they took half of the town away with them! Oh, wait, I get it! You're wounded, right? You can't move because you are wounded! How very silly of me not to notice it right away! I say, may I heal you? Pretty, pretty please? Because I'd totally love to heal you - I'm good at healing, well, not as good as my Auntie Olwen, and I am definitely far better at baking than at healing - I gave the nice lady at the Gray Mare in Chorrol a special sweetcake recipe; now she is gonna lure away the customers from the Oak and Crosier - but though it will be good for her, it will surely be bad for that Khajiit lady - I wonder if I can give her some recipe too? You see, I just adore helping people, because...'
The woman cut short the girl's artless soliloquy with an ill-tempered 'Well, if you are so kind-hearted, why don't you get down here and see for yourself?' It seemed that, though exceedingly irritated by the girl's demeanour, she regarded her as her only chance to get out of the current scrape.
'Sure thing,' the young Wood Elf beamed, tumbling down the debris to the narrow space where the woman lay sprawled awkwardly over the old Breton's body.
'Where does it hurt then?' she asked, kneeling beside the woman and trying hard to imitate the cooing intonations of a healer - her Auntie Olwen perhaps? -addressing a sickly patient.
'I broke my left leg. This one. Don't tell me you can't tell left from right! I could have healed myself without any assistance from anyone - especially from any nincompoops like you, - but Restoration magic just happens to be my weak point... No, let me take off the boot - you are tugging at it the wrong way, you brainless little n'wah!'
This time the woman spoke so rudely that it finally dawned on the cheerful Wood Elf that something was amiss.
'I am sorry if I made you lose your temper,' she apologized hurriedly, passing her small, neat, dimpled hands over the woman's throbbing, swollen flesh, 'I know I talk too much - and I am clumsy, and careless, and distracted... 'Nimrodel,' my Auntie Olwen always says to me (my name is Nimrodel, by the way, but friends can call me Nim), 'Nimrodel, you are such a little scatterbrain!' And she is right, because... Well, what do you know - it works!'
This time the young Wood Elf's stumbling, wordy speech was interrupted by a sudden flash of bright blue light that burst in broad, blinding rays from beneath her fingers and twisted itself, ivy-like, around the woman's leg. The woman's dark, strained face relaxed, as pain, little by little, ebbed away from her; and Nimrodel broke into a fit of wild, ecstatic joy, leaping up from the ground, clapping her hands and whirling round and round in a triumphant dance, raising a cloud of dark dust as she stomped her chainmail-clad feet. 'I did it, I did it, I did it!' she cried out at the top of her voice, 'I cast my Auntie Olwen's super-duper-extra-special-broken-bone-mending spell! Oh my, oh my, oh my, I never thought I'd actually... I mean, it's such a super-duper-extra-special kind of spell! And I pulled it off! It was so totally awesome of me - wasn't it? I am so excited! I've never been so excited! Are you excited?'
'Nimrodel,' the woman said slowly, getting to her feet and starting to climb up the pile of rubble in order to get to its other side and out of the trap she had found herself in, 'You are so... random!'.
'Fancy!' Nimrodel exclaimed, following closely in the woman's wake, 'That's just what everyone else says! Why, even that nice Emperor fellow...'
'Excuse me a moment,' Nimrodel's newly healed patient turned away from her and with a swift, well-aimed spell knocked down a Clannfear that had been hovering on the topmost edge of the debris mound, sniffing around for living mortal flesh, 'You were saying?'
'Wow!' Nimrodel gasped, awestruck, 'That was pretty impressive!'
'I did say that Restoration magic was my weak point - I am quite familiar with all the other schools,' the woman replied complacently.
'I say!' Nimrodel began, blushing a little, 'Could you - pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please! - help me out with a teeny-weeny quest? You are so awesome, it shouldn't be much of a problem. The thing is, I am supposed to fetch a guy called Martin from here to Chorrol, but he won't budge unless all the survivors here are safe - and they can't be safe until guards clear the streets of the Daedra - and the guards won't do their stuff because there is a ginormously huge gate thing outside the walls that keeps coughing up more and more Daedra! It's like in that old Dunmer nursery story when the Nix Hound won't bite the Guar, and the Guar won't cross the foyada, and no one can get home before midnight. And I am supposed to get inside that gate and get it closed so the story can move on! And I am kinda unsure if I'm up to it, because everyone relies on me, but I am not that good with fighting, really - but I do want to help everyone out, so...'
By the time Nimrodel paused to catch her breath, the two had already clambered over the rubble and were standing in an open space that had once been a street and now resembled a picture in a geography book labelled "Typical Ashland landscape".
'Let me guess,' said the woman, half-closing her eyes with weary resignation, 'You won't leave me alone until I agree to do whatever it is you want me to do, though I didn't understand half of what you just said - am I right?'
Nimrodel nodded, grinning broadly.
'Well, let's go and see that ginormously huge gate thing then. I do owe you a favour, after all. Incidentally, should you suddenly feel inclined to address me by my name - it's Etanni'.