Authors Note: Another late night strangeness written for no other reason than my muse shoved it into my brain.
Standard disclaimer: I do not own Morrowind, or any of the other wondrous creations of Bethesda Softworks, however I certainly lay claim to misspellings, mistakes, tweaks, spells and characters of my own invention. I play with a number of mods, and when something specific appears in my story based on a mod, I will do my best to give the mod author credit.
Brevia woke with an aching head and a dry mouth. She was dusty. covered with sand. struggling to get up, she realized it was more than that. She was half buried in it. Reddish sand. Ash? That was strange enough that it ought to have triggered some sort of memory. She crawled forward, pulling herself free of the pile of sand, dust. She stood, and turned. Maybe dune would be a better word. She looked slowly all around.
Reddish-grey dunes, as far as she could see in any direction. Grey clouds above her that gave no hint as to time of day. She was warm. She looked down at herself. Unfamiliar pale armor clad her arms, torso and legs. She made a fist and rapped on the cuirass. A softer sound than metal would make. It seemed sturdy, though. She put a hand to her head, and realized fully that part of her odd vision was that she wore a helmet. She reached up, struggled with the unfamiliar fastenings and managed to pull it off.
There most have been some kind of filter over hr mouth and nose, because now with the helmet off, she could smell sulfur in the fitful wind that came from ... well, turning around several times she had to admit that with no landmarks and complete cloud cover, she had no idea what direction the breeze was coming from.
She felt about her person. No weapons. No pack of any kind. She went back to the dune she'd been half-buried in, and realized that even in the short time she'd been standing up, the indentations where she'd pulled free of the ash were filling in. If she'd had any supplies, any weapon, that was surely where it would be. She started digging.
She burrowed until her arms were tired and she was covered in sweat. Nothing. Not a branch, not a blade, not a bit of anything but the damned endless dust.
Dunes of ash. White lightweight armor. The smell of sulfur. Other than tales of what particularly nasty levels of Oblivion were reputed to be like, none of it seemed familiar.
So what did she remember?
Oblivion. Place of the ... Daedra. Immortal beings. She wasn't immortal. She was ... she was ... nothing. She knew her name was Brevia. She had come from ... still nothing.
Try something else. She'd looked for a weapon. What kind of weapon? The first thing that came to mine was a gleaming translucent blade, curved and some color between gold and red. Jagged and dangerous to the untrained wielder. It was ... special. She was sure it had a name. Had she named it?
She shook her head. This wasn't getting anywhere.
She couldn't just stay here in the desert or whatever it was. She had to pick a direction, and the only guide she had was that scent of sulfur on the wind. So she started trudging forward.
As she walked she kicked up puffes of the red-grey dust.
She spent her time trying to trigger some kind of memory. Asking herself questions. What was her mother's name? Nothing. What was the last book she'd read? Nothing. Was she dedicated to a god? That brought a flicker of something. Fear ... maybe anticipation? What was her profession? That brought a wave of emotion; she clenched her fists and bared her teeth. She wanted to yell, but had no idea what she would yell, or who she was so angry with.
After a bit the anger faded.
Now her footsteps sounded more harsh. The dust was harder packed. The dunes less regular, and the underlying stone was more visible. Mottled grays; a very slight change from the reddish ash. In the distance between tall stones, she could see what looked like steam rising at irregular intervals. The source of the smell, she hoped.
Her stomach rumbled loudly.
When was the last time she had eaten? No idea. Somehow she rather thought it had been a long time. What had she eaten? Meat, of course. Then she wondered why the 'of course'. It had sounded sarcastic and angry even inside her head. As if she was replaying her part in a longstanding argument.
An argument with ...?
Nothing.
Then a distant shriek and she looked up. In the distance she saw something that wasn't quite a bird. Tail too long. Didn't circle properly - so it wasn't a vulture, which is what she would have expected iin a desolate place like this. Whatever kind of beast it was, she was sure it wasn't friendly. Quickly she put her helmet back on.
The thing sighted her and paused, wings moving just enough to keep it aloft. She saw a jagged beak, and raised her right arm, hoping that the strange pale armor would protect her from a bite.
Instead the thing pulled up sooner than she'd anticipated, and lashed out with a spine-tipped tail that arced forward like some flexible spear. It thudded hard against the middle of her chest. Had she not been braced for it, the damn thing would have knocked her over. As it was the tip of it actually dug into her strange armor.
"Y'ffre take you!" She reached inward, fueled by a surge of anger, and foced energies through her hand. A swirl of reddish energies poured out of her fingers, congealing into the ornate blade she'd seen in her mind's eye. It felt familiar, it felt right and she swung it up and across, catching the Cliff Racer's tail with the jagged projections of the blade and yanking it lower in flight before the blade ripped free.
Yes - Cliff Racer - that was definitely what the featherless jagged beaked thing was called.
Crimson blood spattered her pale armor, the drops that landed on the ground were instantly absorbed by the thirsty dust, leaving no trace. She shifted position and used the backstroke of the swing to arc higher into the base of the tail. Once again she pulled hard, and her blade bit into the tough hide. She ripped another jagged wound, and more blood flowed.
The thing swung its tail at her again, but the wounds she'd inflicted robbed the beast of some of it's strength. The tip skidded against her armor, not even a scratch this time.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she was sure that it hadn't been this easy last time. She ignored that thought, swinging again and again, ripping open the belly of the beast and finally laying it out on the sands. As she sighed with relief, and wondered what the thing would taste like raw, she felt the weapon fade from her grip, returning to where ever she'd called it from.
Promptly she called the blade again. Knowing that she wouldn't have it for long, she hastily gutted and skinned the Cliff Racer. She left the entrails for whatever scavengers might come, and made short work of slicing the choicer cuts in long strips that she could make a braid of sorts to carry them with no pack or string or tools. She ate one of them raw, savoring the sweet flesh. The blood of this creature was the most liquid she was likely to get any time soon.
Yes, she'd definitely had this before. Dressed more than one of these beasts.
She jogged forward now, following some half-familiar thought that drove her onward toward the puffs of steam.
Past the monolithic stones, she could make out circular ridges; the insides filled with reddish-brown mud, slowly bubbling in some terrible heat. She could feel sweat trickling under her armor.
Twisted branches with thorns larger than her fingers grew near the fumaroles; and thorn wasn't completely accurate. They had sharp slightly curved surfaces that faced the direction of growth. It would never do to use those as handholds to climb these plants. Closer in she spotted patches of reddish and blackish lichen, and some sort of smallish thin-leaved fern. She stared at them, looking at each one in turn. She knew she'd seen these things before. She was sure of it.
No names came to her. Not even a sense of if they were edible or not. Slowly she walked to the nearest of the twisted shrubs. The branches were as thick as her thigh. Branches and huge thorns. Bare hints of buds above each thorn. No leaves. Was it even alive? She wasn't sure.
Calling forth her blade again, she sawed through one of the smaller branches, then split it down the center into three slender lengths. Using stones to anchor them, she carefully arranged and pierced the lengths of meat. There was certainly enough heat coming off of the fumaroles to cook them, and they'd last longer that way.
She split several thorns, ending up with thin pseudo blades she could use to scrape the worst of the remaining bits of flesh from the Cliff Racer hide. While her meat cooked, she rubbed the hide with dust and ash, and repeatedly scraped it clean. Not the best choice, but it would do. By the time the meat smelled more than done, she'd gotten a decent start on curing the leather.
She would have liked to climb one of the tall monolith type stones that dotted the landscape, but they were all too smooth. What a strange and desolate place this was. For a moment there was a name on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't quite recall it.
Reluctant to give up the one landmark she'd found, she slowly made a circut of the area, keeping the steam from the fumaroles in sight.
Halfway around, the sky started to darken and the wind picked up.
Three quarters of the way around and she saw a curved shape; not just more of the endless stone or dunes, but a door of some kind. Red dust was reducing her vision as the wind howled louder and she ran for it.
The door stuck at first, and she put her weight behind it and thrust. For a moment she wondered if it might be locked. Then it opened so abruptly she fell forward into the darkness.
No, not complete darkness, as some feet along a carved but smooth corridor there was a lighted torch.
An oddly top-heavy dark shape loomed over her.
"You come bearing food, so I'll offer the hand instead of the sword, traveler". The voice was hoarse and gravelly and ... familiar. The language was one she knew - one she had struggled to learn.
She hastily pulled off her helmet.
Yes, a crimson eyed greenish-black scaled warrior in austere sleeveless ebony robes towered over her. Instead of an argonian's horns, he had a dual pseudo crest; the right side of it was damaged. Almost as if something very large and dangerous had taken a bit out of it.
He tilted his head as he looked down at her. "Ahhh." It was the sound of recognition. He parted his jaws in the gesture that passed for a smile among both Daedroth and Argonians.
She smiled in relief. Finally someone she knew. "Menta-Na." she said.
"So, Brevia blade-dancer, what brings you to Morrowind?"
Her mouth opened, and then closed. Morrowind. Dunmer. Newest of the Imperial provinces. Ash storms. Blight.
"Ah," she finally managed, "That my friend, is a mystery I have not yet solved."
Still looking at her with that curious intensity, he said. "Let us start by cleaning your wound."
She looked at him blankly.
He knelt and took her hand. Gently he removed her left gauntlet, and raised her palm to her head, above her left temple. Rough scales? A skullcap? No, she realized, it was blood. Long dried blood, and a great deal of it.
Well that explained some of the problems she was having with her memory.