Unknown Shores
Unknown date
Unknown time
IIt was an unknown shore, for he did not care any more.
His long and straight ebony sword stood bloody, dug halfway in the sand.
A dozen corpses, all brutally mutilated, writhed in the sand, the blood from them poured out, and the golden sand was rendered pink. Freshly decapitated heads blinked, their mouths agape, hardly believing their fate. Cut off arms still clutched their swords; pierced hearts still kept beating, slowly failing and skipping. Dead bodies had shed their loads, of the soul and of the body, and so the shore reeked of faeces.
He stood tall and frightening as always. His long black hair shaved at sides extended past his shoulder blades, and his beard, wet with the blood of others, clung to his neck. His spotless face was not cruel; it did not display the joy he felt at murdering over and over and over again. His large, mismatched eyes sat over his long, sharp nose and a grim slit of a mouth, his lips almost covered by his unruly beard. One of his eyes was grey and the other blood red. Both of them were tired, jaded, but at the same time, peering into them, many mystics over many years had found different things, some of them had found nothing but a stone wall, while more talented ones had either gone insane or committed suicide.
Once he stood straight, now he was hunched. And his body was used to this hunch; he could not stand straight without consciously thinking about it.
His face was impassive, he did not care anymore.
His spotless body, black trousers and unbuttoned robes were sticky with blood and sweat, his hair was matted and dishevelled.
Sometimes he felt like he was getting old, and then laughed hysterically at the very next moment.
Him, getting old. That was a good one, a very good one indeed.
He could not get any older. He was destined to roam the world in the body of a twenty seven year old forever.
But who was he really? What was his name?
He glanced down at his left arm, with the ebony gauntlet covering everything from the elbow to the tips of his fingers under the sticky, wet and tattered black silk robe. Did he ever remove the gauntlet?
How long had it been since he had seen his left hand?
How long had it been since he had seen his own reflection? But did it matter? Was it, in the end, his face?
When he thought about his own face, nine different faces came to mind, most of them elves, and two that resembled his outer covering.
But he knew, deep down, what he looked like inside the facade.
He was a monster. With a revolting, rotting face completely charred, with no remains of the nose, no lips, and exposed, rotting sharp teeth, devoid of humanity.
But what was his name?
Many called him by different names for as long as he lived.
Kingslayer, Hortator, Warkhan, Fiend, Monster...Wraith.
A name pricked at the back of his mind, trapped under years and years of faded memories.
Marcus Whoreson.
How he detested that word!
"Whoreson"
Cheydinhal
Marcus had often wondered who the wretches were that gave birth to him. He knew his mother had been an independent streetwalker on the streets of Cheydinhal.
He had often drawn many conclusions, but two stuck.
When he felt like he hated his mother, he decided that he was born of a cowardly, perverted, irresponsible father who was probably so stupid that he never understood what 'protection' meant, and a bitch whore of a mother who died so early he never even looked at her face properly, and all she had left him was a name.
But when he thought deep and hard about it, he imagined that perhaps his father had been a nasty sexual deviant who had forced his will on a powerless prostitute who would never be able to even complain to the guards about it. And that was also one of the reasons he hated rapists.
He was a scrawny runt on the streets of Cheydinhal, lower on the food chain than the stray dogs, for his four year old body would be too weak to fight them for scraps of food.
For stray dogs got food to eat, but not the son of a whore.
He was always treated like a mistake, as far he remembered. But whose mistake?
Because as far as he remembered he had nothing to do with the choices the rapist of a father and his mother had made.
When he was four years old, he was slapped by guards if he asked them for food.
Even the beggars would hit him if he tried to beg.
So he hung around dumps, searching for bones with a little flesh still attached to them. When he was lucky, some people would give him their half eaten fruits for food.
As he got older, he would always be attracted to the boys who played in the parks, and enjoyed the sweetroll, or the honey treat. He would stare, with his thin, long arms, and pronounced ribcage and his privates hidden by rags.
He always thought of approaching them.
Once he did. But how did it end for him?
Even after years of memories, he remembered that day as clearly as possible.
They had seen him long enough to understand how hungry this whoreson was.
Whoreson. They probably didn't even understand what that word meant, but they knew it was an insult, and so they called him that.
They offered him a sweetroll.
His eyes brightened up at the sight of an unexpected delight, and moistened with gratitude, as he took steps to get it, the boy threw it to another behind him.
"Come get it whoreson!"
For an hour straight they threw the sweet over Marcus' head, and laughed as he ran from person to person trying to get it. And they kept jeering as the little underfed boy would run from one boy to the other.
Marcus vividly remembered their voices.
"Whoreson, come and get it!"
"Here, whoreson! Oh, where did it go, it's over there!"
In the end, when Marcus discovered jumping was a viable option, he snatched it high in the air.
Marcus sunk his teeth into something he had only seen before, the honey coating outside was mostly gone, but nevertheless it was an unexpectedly delicious taste he had savoured.
The tall boys surrounded him, and snatched the sweet from his hands, then threw it high, into the trees.
Then they kicked the whoreson for ruining their fun.
"Sarding whoreson", they had called him.
Indeed, Marcus had savoured the taste, because that was all he had that night because he was too hurt to hunt for food with the beggars.
Marcus never repeated the mistake of approaching those boys again.
Marcus vividly remembered how on Harvest's end, shopkeepers would donate to the Orphans.
Marcus stared as the others were given new clothes, some food, and some money, and some of the luckier Orphans would be taken to the Orphanage.
But nobody spared anything but tattered rags and stale food for the Mistake with the hungry grey eyes that looked almost piercingly into their souls.
How they hated those eyes! Those eyes, they belonged to a king, or a noble, and not a sarding flea-bitten whoreson.
He had slowly started believe that all men were bad, and the women probably had more pity and love in their hearts.
That belief changed soon.
He remembered. It was Sundas, about an hour before sundown. He was looking at the sky and the birds that were free to do what they wanted to, trying his best to ignore his grumbling stomach.
It had been a bad day; the dogs had reached the dump before he had, and so he had very little scraps, when he tried to approach the dog's share, he found canines to be extremely territorial, thus he ran. He hated dogs more than anything else in the world. Over the years Marcus found that a lot of people disliked his hatred for something so 'lovable', and so they decided that they disliked him altogether, without even knowing him properly.
If they only knew how he had to fight the dogs for food day after day after day.
As he looked at the slowly darkening sky he heard somebody approach from behind.
It was a girl, about as old as he was.
She had some treats in her hand, and she held them out to him.
At first Marcus was confused; he thought that it was another attempt at cruelty by the others. So he looked at her eyes. She was still holding the treat out, her radiant smile was slowly dimming, and her look was one that held confusion.
Marcus understood that she wasn't like the others, so he smiled.
Then he devoured the treat.
The girl was puzzled, Marcus looked at her sheepishly, and then smiled broadly.
She said that she would bring another treat for him the next day.
They chatted for some time. The girl kept on talking about her toys while Marcus told her how you could find small round stones outside the city gate, by the river.
The girl was curious; she said she had never been outside the walls.
Then she had requested Marcus to take her.
He had agreed.
By then the sun was setting, and the rays of the setting sun touched their faces with bright orange on its way down.
Marcus felt like it was the happiest day of his short life that was riddled only with pain, but his happiness was cut short as soon as the Girl's mother rushed there, hauled her off to the distance, and slapped her.
Marcus had always had sharp hearing; he could make out one word. One word that was enough.
"Whoreson"
Marcus' shoulders slumped. He wasn't old enough to understand what the word meant, but whatever little he understood, it meant that the only person who treated her well would no longer do that.
He was correct.
The next day she was there, but she had only one treat with her.
When Marcus approached her, she got up, coldly dusted her skirt, and walked to another part of the field.
He never why everybody hated him so much, why nobody ever talked to him kindly, and only treated him with disdain and hate.
He turned to the skies, with tears in his eyes.
He directed a question to the Nine Divines, to Akatosh, Arkay, Dibella, Julianos, Kynareth, Mara, Stendarr, Talos and Zenithar, to those stained glass images outside the chapels.
"What did I do wrong?"
He wanted them to help him, to absolve him of whatever crime he had committed, and to convince others that he was not different, he was just another child, not whatever 'Whoreson' monster they had thought him to be.
He cried.
He was not a monster.
The Divines are evil!
The rough hand of an old man suddenly came to rest on his quivering shoulder.
He said his name was Caius; he was a priest who had come to stay at the Chapel.
Caius had taken him to the inn, and despite the objections of the innkeeper, bought him a hot meal.
Marcus cried, because he felt as if the divines had finally answered his pleas.
Caius stroked his head.
Marcus was happy, content.
The Divines are merciful.
He thought his life had changed for the best. He did not know how wrong he was.
It had taken many years, many betrayals, many pains, many tomes of knowledge and metaphysics but the truth had finally seeped in.
"The Divines...are DEAD"
The first of those betrayals had started that very day.
Now, I know, you are probably thinking, "What is AEsob doing with a third person point of view?"
I don't write much third person, but I wanted to experiment.
Now I would like you to leave me a review, and unless it is complaining about the darkness of the subject matter I assure you that I will correct it in the next chapter.
If you want to know who Marcus is, you have to read my other story, 'Nerevar Reborn'. And please read it!
Special thanks to JM38LACK, Vanillathunder215, Countess Z and Leitis for talking to me, inspiring me, giving me stuff to read and giving me ideas.
Thank you people from the bottom of my heart!