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Chapter One
While it will do me no good to scribe these past events, to be found by someone who would hunt me down or discredit me with their contents, I nevertheless feel the need. Perhaps out of respect for fellow scholars, for if people didn't write down their mistakes and findings, my profession would be very dead. And there would be more burned down farms, probably.
I will begin where relevant things began, that led me down this path. A sanctuary, that I held dear to my heart, was ransacked through betrayal and blood by the Emperor's Penitus Oculatus. It's a long and tragic history of the Dark Brotherhood to be misunderstood by the foolish or ignorant, much like it is for many pursuers of magic in the dark times we live in. Perhaps that's why I felt at home within their ranks; the shared suffering at the hands of others who would hunt us for the arts we indulge in, that are no more inherently evil than smithing a fine steel blade.
The wind bit and clawed at my frame, fragile from the recent combat that left singes in my robes and scars on my skin, and I was in no mind to let it be victorious in beating me down, as I carried the limp and lifeless body of a sister of mine over my shoulder. Not a sister by blood, but by bonds and companionship, like what is shared between warriors who have spent long seasons with only each other to survive. The fury and panic that sped every step I took seemed to blind parts of my rational mind, and if I were more clear-headed, perhaps I wouldn't have made the decision. But, that's not what happened, unfortunate as that may be.
I gazed over Masser and Secunda and a humorless smirk spread across my visage. The moons were full, and my sister had always sad she enjoyed moonlit nights, but this was a walk in their light that she would not be able to enjoy. With a whistle, the harrowing hooves of my steed came galloping from between the wooden titans of Falkreath Forest and bowed her head in respect. Those crimson eyes wept, too, for the massacre of our family. I strapped my beloved sister to the saddle and sped into the night, tucking my hair behind my ears to help my flickering concentration that almost broke with every shake of the corpse that rubbed against my spine.
My first thoughts were necromancy. A useful tool for most, and, indeed, I'd used it upon first seeing the falling form of my sister to capture her soul in one of the many gems I carried in my satchel. Having her soul nearby would be far more useful than trying to retrieve it from the Aetherius, which I wouldn't have time for even were I to somehow preserve her body. But, necromancy was never a specialty or particular interest of mine except as a supplement to other schools. The idea of spending time around a rotting carcass, no matter how loyal, was offensive to my sensibilities.
My next thought was of the Daedra and Oblivion, which is fruitful for those who choose to utilize its powers, but I never took the risk. Everyone seems to sit on two opposite extremes. They are either too eager to make deals with Daedra and treat it like taming any wild animal, letting their pride overrule their common sense and ending up slaughtered, along with everyone else around them. Then there are the paranoid, who wouldn't touch a historical account about Daedra for fear of being possessed or sucked into one of the many realms.
I choose to stay somewhere between the two mindsets, because while Daedra may seem simple, such as in the forms of constructs or scamps, every one of them is incredibly devious. And so they should be, for they've had a very long time to practice. And the more experienced the Daedra, the worse they get, until you come to meet with a Daedric Prince and find yourself clutched in firmly in their madness. Some think the fact that their influence has been weaker in recent years as a permit to mess with the unspeakably complex beings these Deadric Princes are. Their champions, in particular, are something to be feared by themselves.
So I was not eager to form a pact with some Daedric Lord, either. And the next thought was the one that stuck, so I tugged on the reigns of Shadowmere and had her double her pace towards The Reach. It was a strange place to be for most, but I was somewhat exempt from being preyed upon by The Reachmen and Forsworn by being a Breton, although I could not bring and of my friends or companions with me for the trip, and I had to tread carefully to avoid being the next person decorating one of their tents.
I don't know for how long I rode upon Shadowmere's rocking back, but by the time I reached my destination, my body yearned for sustenance and the early beads of the sun burned against my pale skin. No, I was not and am not currently a vampire. I'm simply an indoor person and wear hoods often, like most other scholars who spend their nights studying countless tomes. I gazed across the mountains that loomed over the land like the teeth of some great best, waiting to claim all of the lands' inhabitants in its gaping maw, and saw the shrine set up at the very peak of the terrain. Two women with gnarled skin and bones sat perched around the site, muttering with their terrible tongues and spreading out their infamous feathers for the cool morning breeze.
I feasted on a sweetroll baked in Solitude and wrapped in cotton and took a swig of my waterskin before I ran my rejuvenated hand along Shadowmere's inky flank, pulling threads of energy through my body to coalesce on the tips of my fingers. And, in a puff of dull purple energy, we were invisible to all who would look, and my steed's hooves as quiet as a cowardly deer.
We rumbled down the rocky mountain without a sound, with a few small rocks tumbling behind us as we danced through the Forsworn warriors and straight to the peak of their camp, where the hagravens' beady black eyes suddenly shifted to where myself and my steed came to a halt, with long crooked noses sniffing at our scent, which the breeze carried with it.
I dismounted and dismissed the illusion that covered us, and held my hands to my side, but with them a flickering few fingers sent a wave to the minds of the twisted remnants of witches, who lowered their monstrous claws and stood in a more proper stance as they took in and understood my heritage. I began to pull my sister off of Shadowmere with the snapping of a few straps, and the hagravens' made a few uncomfortable snarls at the sight of a Dunmer in their camp. They only twitched their wrinkled faces more as I dragged her to the shrine that was covered in dried blood and alchemy reagents. Spells would only do so much to the canny creatures, and I still needed to request their aid.
I explained to them my plight; that a dearest sister to me, who had been my only companion who provided such comfort as their own extended family gave them. They still seemed to disapprove. If my studies had turned up with more information on the hagraven and the source of their magic, or the specifics of this ritual, I may have been able to do so myself, as the heritage remains in my blood, but they share their knowledge through word of mouth, and getting co-operation without divulging details out of them was difficult enough. Trying to get a hagraven to chat over a mug of ale would prove more than impossible, I think.
They were swayed by my words soon enough, and the ritual began as I stood to the side with my unfocused mind. They stripped her of her clothes and laid her body out on the stone slab, covered in engravings that meant something clear to them. With a crude blade they cut a deep hole through the skin of her chest and the ribcage below, and their claws extracted her torpid heart before placing it in another bowl and shoving an item of bark and magic into the opened orifice. It was at this moment that anxiety tugged at my stomach; I was no stranger to gore, but I was a stranger to tribal rituals. I decided that I needed to investigate the magic behind this act at some point.
As I came to that conclusion, the heart was strapped into my sister's chest and the hagravens were chanting in that foul-sounding language of theirs, with swirls of energy coming to form around the still corpse, a large portion of them coming from the soul gem I gave them at the start of the ritual. I phased in and out of focus as I watched the immense magic swivel to and fro in the air before me, with the camp of Forsworn looking up from the tents and chairs of their camp in awe at the magic being summoned by their beloved matriarchs.
Then, all of a sudden, my sister sunk and slammed back into the stone. One of the hagravens gave me a surly nod and I rushed over to the slab where my sister lay, my fingers beginning to lower over the gaping hole in her chest where the pulsing briarheart now sat. Her crimson eyes snapped open, and she grabbed my wrist with the speed of a viper.
"Gabriella?" I asked in wonder and fear, my lower lip trembling like a beaten child.
She groaned. "In the flesh, dear sister."
