The Right Hand of Darkness
A novel
By Critical Tortoise

I
"Distance"
6 Last Seed, 4E 202

Above all, she was tired.

Yes, tired was the word. She was definitely tired – not in need of rest or sleep (though she wouldn't exactly complain about getting more sleep); her eyes did not close or falter, they did not waver from the skylight above her; but tired of all her circumstances. She could see Secunda and Masser, the two great moons, looming directly overhead. Sometimes, when she really ought to have been getting more rest, she would get out of bed and wander around outside without aim or destination, with only the stars to guide her.

Tonight was one of those nights, where the howling of wolves and chirping of crickets outside the walls of her manor would keep her awake. In this half-alert state, she stood out on her balcony, wearing little more than her bedsheet and bare skin. With no one out here on the far side of nowhere to bother her, she was free to do and be as she pleased, and she pleased to be free of her armor in the comfort of her own home, if only for the night.

It was the only way she could distinguish the night from the day aside from, of course, the dark. Who would be so stupid as to not notice the dark that enveloped them at night? Certainly not her, though she knew that everyone thought she was naïve enough that such things would not be a very far stretch. Even the courier that came by every morning to deliver the day's meaningless errand requests and correspondence thought so little of her. She could see it in his eyes both earlier that day and the next, long after she had gone back inside and bundled up in her bed, long after she had awoken to start the cycle anew.

This time, his eyes shifted between her face and the letters and it was so painfully obvious he was taking the time to try and peek at each miserable slip of paper. The morning sun was bright and shone through the paper, and she could see the familiar handwriting of several of the nameless villagers from some nearby nameless town. She never bothered to learn their names, because it seemed as if each one's plight was the same, or some minor variation of:

"Dragonborn, Dragonborn! My horse has been stolen!"

"My children are missing!"

"I need you to deliver this to my friend in the most inconvenient place possible!"

"Please, help me fend off the skeevers in my cellar!"

And on and on the list of complaints and requests went, largely the same as the ones that came to her in that instant. Most of the time, she would wander over to her stable and get on her horse and ride towards wherever the letters instructed her. Her journal that she diligently kept was an epic tome detailing the great adventures of the Last Dragonborn, Savior of Skyrim, Hero of the Empire, Slayer of Basement Rats.

What fun she had on these days.

"Is that all?" she muttered. Truth be told, she had received far fewer letters as of late, and while she so despised the nature of the tasks, it was at least something for her to do. No longer did Skyrim need her help, it seemed. The dragons still attacked cities, true, but by now the guards had seen how she fought (and killed) the mighty beasts. They were prepared now. And while there were still occasional vampire attacks or bandit raids in the countryside, for the most part, it seemed everything had slowly died down, and that wasn't even counting the death of her own spirit.

The courier's eyes drifted back up from the letters as he handed them off into the Dragonborn's ebony-gauntleted hands. First his vision dragged its way up her arms, the plates of armor polished as close to perfection as could be, then towards the soft curves of her breastplate, at which point he bit his lip in worry that she might see his staring (and she did, but she made no issue of it), and finally to her face.

Her face was always something that people had looked on with some combination of shock and awe; whether in her native High Rock, or in this strange, frozen land she now called home. She never saw herself as some model of beauty, though as a girl many of her peers had praised what Dibella had created on the day of her birth. Her skin was pale white and gleaming like porcelain, like the milky band of stars in the nighttime sky, and was soft and smooth. Those who had both seen her in battle and gotten the chance to see her closer than that would sometimes make jokes about this softness making her flesh so easily pierced by swords. Across her body, but invisible under the armor, were some countless scars and old wounds now faded with time and the power of restoration magic.

She wondered for a brief second if the courier before her saw this scars as he imagined her undressing, but dismissed the thought as she brushed a lock of scarlet hair out of her face, away from her eyes. The eyes were always what caught people's attention, and so most of the time she chose to hide them behind masks and helmets and visors and hoods. The courier had seen them many times over, but each day, with this day being no exception, he struggled to avoid them and their infinite, piercing blackness. It was both a blessing and a curse, how her eyes were such a solid tar color. At least, unlike with the courier, no one could tell where she was looking – but no lover would ever look into them as she so wished they would.

Her mind snapped back to the present, where the courier stared at her as if she were from another world. "Is... that all?" he echoed.

"Yes. That would be what I said. Is that all."

"Oh. Right," he stammered, flipping through the stack of papers in his arms. "Yes, that's it, Dragonborn."

By now the Dragonborn had lost interest in the whole conversation, if it could even be called that, and as he wished her a nice day, his scripted remark was cut off by a wave of her hand, shooing him off back towards whatever infernal plane of Oblivion from whence he came. Annoyed, he looked back up to his eye level a few inches above the Dragonborn's head, and pivoted away, sauntering off into the distance.

The Dragonborn turned back towards the door, slamming it behind her. Rifling through the stack of letters, she found little of consequence. Most of the letters were, as she had predicted, pleas for the aid of the Dragonborn in rather trivial endeavours. All of them were addressed to either the Dovahkiin or Dragonborn, the only two names she ever seemed to go by. Not once in many months had anyone in all of Tamriel called her by her given name. She often wished for her friends back to call her Brenna again – the same friends that had fought alongside her in her battles against the evils that had once threatened the land.

Sometimes, she got letters from them. No such letters had arrived today. Perhaps, Brenna thought, it was the distance between them all that prevented any interaction. Of course, she knew somewhere in the darkest parts of her mind that this was not the case. Everyone had moved on to bigger and better things, yet how far had she fallen? Perhaps it was time for her to venture forth into the world again. Yes, that was what she would do. She would go forth and find adventure. No longer would the happenings of the world simply fall upon her, no, she would go and make things happen. From this point forward, she was a woman of action.

But before she could do anything else, she sat down in the nearest chair by the fire in her bedroom, and took out her journal, charting out her day of attending to the needs of the citizens. It was a thankless job, no doubt, but her job nonetheless. Perhaps Skyrim's greatest challenge was no longer civil war or world-eating gods, but making sure nothing ever escalated to that point again.

Stepping outside towards her stable, she put the small, leather-bound book into her satchel and rode onward along the dirt road, towards the nearest city. There, she decided, she would find the excitement she was looking for. So resolved, Brenna spurred her steed onwards into the distance.

Normally, the hours passed by less than they lurched onward like dying oxen. Today, however, time flew at her pace - and that pace was like lightning. Over the course of the afternoon she raced past small town after small town, and she felt as though she could keep going the distance forever. Unfortunately, her mighty stallion did not have such endurance, and Brenna was forced to make a stop in Riverwood - not exactly the nearest major city, but big enough regardless.

She rode in through the old moss-covered wooden gate. By the top she could still see the scorch marks from a dragon attack nearly a year ago that she had been dispatched to deal with. What she loved to keep secret, though, was that the dragon had not left those marks - it had been her bumbling around with her then-newfound Thu'um. Of course, now she was a master of the Way of the Voice (or so people loved to tell her), and with the simple utterance of a string of words the world could be bent to her will as she saw fit.

Sometimes she took such delight in scaring the guards at night by throwing her Voice across streets and alleys. Perhaps a little fun could be had in the daytime as well? Glancing around, she noticed the guards had turned to face her as she entered the village. Unable to resist such a prime opportunity, she whispered towards the wall behind them, "Zul mey gut," and watched as the two jumped and drew their swords, only to turn back around in confusion.

She chuckled and stepped off her horse, walking it along to the nearest stable, where it happily whinnied and back inside, under the shadow of the roof. Taking a long look across her surroundings and breathing in the mountain air, she noticed Riverwood seemed to have changed little since the last time she had been there, at least physically. The map would still be the same. There were, as she remembered, a few dozen houses in any given direction besides the river, but Brenna had seen far bigger cities. Riverwood was definitely no Daggerfall or Solitude - in fact, it wasn't even like Falkreath, and she swore that Falkreath was one of the smallest hold capitals she had seen throughout Skyrim. The town only had one inn to her knowledge, the Sleeping Giant Inn, right down the main road, greeting all the travelers who never passed by. The inn indeed lived up to both of its names. It looked deserted and it looked like the biggest building she could so far see. She trudged over in the hot afternoon sun, lamenting her decision to wear heavy ebony armor. Wiping her brow with a cool metal hand, she stepped up to the door of the inn and crept inside, not really expecting anyone to greet her.

It had been far too long since she had been here. So many of her friends had moved on. Even the local inn seemed empty as she wandered inside to pay for a room. She could hear the clink of her coins as they were tossed onto the counter amongst the dead silence. No longer was the inn filled with the sound of Orgnar, the inn's owner, grumbling about his lack of help. There was no sound of Sven's lute - he had long since landed a much nicer position playing in one of Whiterun's many taverns. Nor was there the sound of guests shuffling about. Truly, the inn was a sleeping giant. Riverwood had always been a quiet town, this was something Brenna knew firsthand, but never had she expected it to wither away like this.

Time, it seemed, caused everything to fade, and Brenna cursed Akatosh's name as she pulled the covers over herself that night. It was the first time in months she had ever uttered a Divine's name, and she found herself doubting more and more that the gods even cared if she did; her doubt carrying her off into a dreamless, formless sleep.

The night was black. How black it was could not be counted or described, but she knew it was like death. She had seen such darkness many times before and for the longest time she had thought she would never see it again, but here it was, inescapable. Whether her eyes were open or shut, she could see nothing in the dark room as she awoke in the middle of the night just as before. Sleep was an elusive beast. In the dark, Brenna sat up in the bed, her armor still clinging to her body. She had been much more tired than she thought, if she could pass out like that. Clearly, she was in need of rest, in need of sleep. But what kind of person would she be if she slept at an hour like this? There were people depending on her! People she did not know the names of at all, but people nonetheless. Who were these people? How did their lives intertwine with hers? What needed to be done? Perhaps she should have set off into the night right then and there and headed off towards wherever she was needed. I don't even know where I'm needed, she realized. Chastizing herself, she held out her hand and cast a ball of Magelight into the air, where it hung over the bed. She took her journal out of her satchel and opened it, reading through her notes and tasks:

6 Last Seed, 4E 202 - Once again the courier has come by. He's been coming by less and less, but I suppose I do live a bit out-of-the-way. After a bit of an awkward exchange between us, he gave me some of the letters that (surprise) were requesting my help. Most of my business appears to be in Whiterun, actually. All for the best, I suppose. I haven't seen anyone there in a while and I'm sure they're all going as crazy as I am with such a lack of… anything at all happening. I should stop by and see what everyone has been up to since I've been gone.

There. Whiterun. A nice, bustling city, where she had many old friends and surely where there were new friends to be made. Maybe it was the countryside doing her in - she had never seen such expanses of wilderness in all her life before now, and it boggled her mind how all this space could contain so few people. She had chosen this solitude, but now it was time for something new again.

Yes, she had had enough of Riverwood, of Falkreath, of every damned forest and mountain to last her a lifetime twice over. It was time to head to the city for a change. She would go forth and get back into the world, and even if it were to be her one last song, she would have no regrets about singing it, and the world would behold her Voice as its protector.