"You belong to the Aldmeri Dominion," Radolmar declared, looking down his nose at the elven children who comprised his audience. The chamber they occupied resembled a chapel bedecked in Thalmor livery, and he stalked the main platform with gloved hands clasped behind his back. "Your bodies, your minds – never forget that your betters could have disposed of such refuse, but it is through our benevolence that you are granted the opportunity to serve. Your former lives mean nothing; discard them as you would any fanciful night's dream and face the reality before you. You must atone for the failings of those who produced you. You are filthy – but we will cleanse you."
A hooded minder loomed behind each child, hands resting on small shoulders to ensure there was no unseemly squirming or inappropriate behavior. Radolmar swept his gaze over the gathering, taking in their hollow expressions and defeated postures. They were undesirables, all of them the progeny of dissenters and heretics who had been purged from the Dominion. Their eyes were still haunted by the memory of death and loss; it would serve them well to fix that memory in their minds, Radolmar mused, and abolish any notion of following in their predecessor's footsteps. Diverting them from any thought of rebellion was precisely what he intended to accomplish.
"Your despair will give way to rejoicing," Radolmar intoned, opening his arms in a grandiose gesture. "Your uncertainty will be forged into purpose. For what purpose could exceed noble service to the Thalmor, the opportunity to assist in the perfection of our glorious society? We will be your family. We will give you everything you require to succeed in this life, and all we ask is one thing: your complete and total obedience in all aspects of your service."
Personally, Radolmar would have had at least half of these urchins killed as soon as they came out of their mothers' wombs. The bone structure, the coloring, the physical appeal was lacking. But there is still time to let natural selection have its way. Only the strongest and smartest would emerge unscathed from the training that awaited these poor wretches. He had no doubt that the weakest would fail and die, that the ugly and dull-eyed would meet miserable ends while their superior peers thrived. Perfection would win in the end. Nothing less was acceptable to the truest and purest of the High Elves, whose guidance preserved the integrity of the Dominion.
"You will become guardians, protectors, of the Aldmeri realm. Glory awaits those who strive to uphold the tenets that have sustained our people through calamity and strife. You shall inherit the legacy of those who defended us from the onslaught of the Oblivion Crisis. But first you must prove yourselves deserving of such a legacy. The days ahead will be fraught with tests of mind and mettle, but I have every confidence that the worthiest of you will excel. For that is the truth of things: only the worthy have the right to exist in this world."
A few of the children faltered and slumped, eyes moistening and lips quivering. Radolmar resisted the urge to slap them personally. Instead he nodded at their handlers, who jerked them and forced them to sit upright. But not all of them showed such weakness. A select few were listening keenly to his speech and watched him with dry eyes that gleamed with intelligence. With interest.
One of the females stared right at him in such a manner. A gangly thing, but her attributes were pleasing enough. Given the proper cultivation she might grow into a superb Altmer specimen. Flaxen hair, pallid golden skin, bright amber eyes, a face that showed signs of beauty even at such a tender age... Radolmar scrutinized her for a moment, then remembered the contents of her dossier. A humorless smile curved his lips. This one was the offspring of near-royalty, the byproduct of selective breeding within noble stock – and she had watched as both of her parents were beheaded for their seditious activities.
"You will become the best we can make of you," he added, adopting a more amicable tone, "but only if you perform to the best of your ability. Keep that in mind as you go forth into your new lives as wards of the Thalmor." He gestured and the children were forced to stand by their handlers. A few of them attempted to struggle but were ultimately kept still by the strong hands that gripped them. Not a single one of them cried, though there were more than a few misty eyes to behold. Already they were beginning to adapt, even if they didn't know it yet. Each child's hair had been cropped short and they were clad in identical plain white robes, barefoot and stripped of external individuality. Now it was time to apply that adjustment to their very souls.
The female who had caught his eye continued to stare at him. What was her name... ah yes, Aredhel. Soon her name would be little more than a combination of numbers. Radolmar savored the defiant spark in her gaze, relished the thought of transforming it into a fire that would burn out of devotion to the Dominion. I will be watching you, little one, he thought as the children were ushered out of the meeting room by their handlers. Their silhouettes were small and fleeting in the torchlight as they went. I expect you'll give us quite a show.
At first turning children into secret assets of the Dominion had seemed a ludicrous idea. The public would surely recoil at the notion of keeping children captive and indoctrinating them to become steadfast believers in Thalmor ideology, no matter how much support the faction had gained in recent years. But Radolmar had come to understand the value of using these leftovers, converting them into useful tools instead of killing them outright or waiting for them to grow up and resent the Dominion. The correct application of force would deter them from resisting; seducing their minds through education and enlightenment would ensure their unfaltering loyalty. By the time they matured, they would be peerless enforcers equipped to carry out orders flawlessly. That is, if this little project succeeds at all...
But it wasn't his job to carry out the actual conversion process. His was to oversee, to observe and report, to make grand speeches and keep secrets. Few outside the Thalmor inner circle knew of this project's existence. And they never will, Radolmar thought as he strode down the narrow hallway to his quarters, but they will witness its results and be awestruck. These will be the finest Justiciars, the most faithful and deadly of us all.
A draught of spiced wine led to sleep in his bed of fine silks, but it was a restless sleep plagued by strange dreams. In the most bizarre of these dreams he was standing on the stage as before, addressing his charges, but there was an ominous chanting that assaulted his ears and chilled his heart with dread. One moment he was facing the fair girl-child with her uncanny piercing stare, the next he was looking into the eyes of a monstrous wyrm with fire emanating from its fanged maw. A dragon, as vast and terrible as the legends claimed. Unable to speak, unable to move a muscle, all Radolmar could do was despair as the beast lunged forward to devour him whole...
When he awoke he threw out the remainder of the wine and cursed his imagination for ruining a good night's sleep. Rubbish, he thought to himself as he prepared himself for the new day. Utter rubbish. But he paused during his morning rituals and fetched a certain dossier from his desk, unable to restrain a nagging curiosity.
There was little to be found therein but a record of the House Ar-Feydhel bloodline, a few documents regarding the treachery of Garanco Ar-Feydhel and his wife Arie, and a journal that had belonged to Threnandil, the family's steward and personal wizard. Radolmar had barely perused the journal during his first overview of the dossier, but now he felt a strange compulsion to search its pages for some elusive answer to his uncertainty. He flipped past notes on alchemy, theories on transmutation, scribbled spells and jotted experimental results – and then he found a spread of two pages covered in what appeared to be unintelligible gibberish. Writing and drawings, symbols, a rash of scrawled lines connecting a few of the drawings. References to a "nightmare," then the familiar image of the Serpent sign heavily altered to possess horns, legs and wings. Some sloppy text: Serpent-born? No. The sign is right, but the portents are off. Would the Psijics know? Dare I ask?
As Radolmar read on he realized that Threnandil was referring to the birth of his lord's first child. With fascination forming despite his unease, he studied the erstwhile mage's increasingly erratic script. Suspicious references began to surface, namely moth priests and mention of a Scroll. The Thalmor agent's eyes narrowed as he continued to read, then widened as the rambling abruptly stopped mid-page. Below, in neat and crisp hand that contrasted with the above scrawling, a few lines of verse, though the first four were crossed out:
when misrule takes its place at the eight corners of the world
when the brass tower walks and time is reshaped
when the thrice-blessed fail and the red tower trembles
when the dragonborn ruler loses his throne, and the white tower falls
when the snow tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding
the world-eater wakes, and the wheel turns upon the last dragonborn.
Radolmar snorted loudly through his nose. "Nonsense," he muttered, closing the journal and returning it to the dossier satchel. "Pure nonsense." Threnandil had been executed along with the traitorous couple, a dead man whose dead words meant nothing. And what a silly word, dragonborn. A word Radolmar associated with the lesser races of Men and their perverse superstitions. A word that had no place among elves or in the collective consciousness of elvenkind.
After dressing, Radolmar traveled to the courtyard where the initiates were already beginning to learn basic combat techniques. Still clad in plain robes, the children were wrestling with one another in an exercise meant to discern which of them were physically superior to the others. The combat trainer, a dour elf whose arms rippled with muscle, watched silently as the children tore into each other with wild abandon over whatever prize had been promised to the victor. The weakest of them were already slinking away with black eyes and bloody noses, while the rest grappled and fought in a cluster at the center of the courtyard.
It was then that Radolmar realized the fight was hardly a free-for-all and instead several children were fighting together against one. The Ar-Feydhel girl punched and kicked and clawed, deflecting blows with deceptively thin arms and delivering blows of her own as the others ganged up and tried to overwhelm her. He watched as she knocked down one, then two, then three of her attackers – and finally, after the screaming and crying died down, she was the last one standing. The others crawled away sniveling and bloodied. The combat master uttered a grunt of approval and gifted her with a red apple, which she bit into greedily. Bruised, beaten, covered in marks but victorious.
Truly exceptional, Radolmar thought. As the combat master dragged the other children to their feet and ordered them to clean themselves up, Radolmar strolled into the courtyard and approached the tiny champion with his arms folded. "Continue to perform like that and you'll do well here," he told her, watching as juice trickled down her chin from the apple. "The Dominion needs strength and drive of such caliber."
The girl merely continued to chew her mouthful of apple and stared up at him with those gilded eyes that still held a gleam of resistance. They were almost accusing, the way they seemed to gaze upon his very soul. It was an uncomfortable sensation. Radolmar held no special affection for children, least of all for children whose eyes were those of ancient sages, always taunting with their enigmatic stare.
"But do not think it will save you should you disappoint me," Radolmar added with a sneer, realizing in that instant that, even if the child was exceptional, there was something about her inherently hateful to him. Perhaps it was the way she refused to acknowledge his praise. Or maybe it had something to do with the mage's nonsensical ramblings about her birth. Either way, Radolmar wanted nothing more than to see her break now, to push her until she reached her limits and was forced to admit his mastery over her. It was a wicked idea that amused him greatly.
"I always win," the girl stated matter-of-factly, dropping the apple core. It landed at Radolmar's feet. "You'll see."
Radolmar hissed through his teeth. The back of his hand struck her across the face at enough speed to send the shock of it up his forearm. The momentum sent her reeling and she fell against one of the alabaster pillars, eyes bulging and mouth agape from the pain and humiliation. Good, a voice sneered in the back of Radolmar's mind. There's a lot more where that came from, and your time here has only just begun.
"I don't know what privilege you enjoyed in your previous life, but you shall have none of it here. Your parents are dead because they were stupid and dared defy the Aldmeri Dominion. You should be dead along with them, but through great compassion you are permitted to survive as long as you are useful. You are nothing."
Tears leaked from those uncanny eyes, but they were hardly tears of sorrow. They were angry tears, and the way she set her small jaw told Radolmar that he had struck a nerve. Blood ran from her split lip. Such a pleasing sight, defiance in spite of punishment. It meant the future held even sweeter possibilities.
"I own you, body and soul," he added in a soft voice that reeked of self-assured glee. "Oh yes, my little dragon."
Somewhere in the back of his mind the dream-dragon snarled at him. Radolmar pushed all memory of that nightmare as far down as he could. I am the master here, he affirmed, his mental heel grinding down on the wyrm's neck. I have control. As the children were shepherded from the courtyard by their trainers, Radolmar clenched his fist and felt the lingering aftershocks from the blow he had delivered. It was a satisfying sort of pain.
It was exactly the sort of rare and exquisite satisfaction that a superiorly-bred mer of his station could afford to indulge in – and oh, how he intended to do so in the days ahead.