Okay party peoples! This is my next story and if I do say so myself,I think it is my best work yet so far. x3
I would like to take a moment to thank my awesome Red Bacon friend for helping me come up with a title. :DDDD THANK YOU RED!
And without further ado, the story.
"Thea! Thea you have to wake up!" Someone shouted shaking Thea's shoulder, roughly wrenching her from her dreams.
Thea groaned and slowly opened her eyes to find the face of her best friend, Bodil, hovering over her, her long blond hair tickling Thea's cheek. "What did you wake me for?" Thea snapped at her, ignoring the hurt in the other girl's blue eyes as she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her own eyes.
"We are going to be late! And you know how Mistress Arteria hates it when we, especially you, are late. Remember she said if you are late one more time for a Gathering that you would get the flogging of a lifetime?"
"Mistress Arteria can go rot in the pits of Oblivion for all I care." Thea muttered under her breath as she put on the dirty rags they called clothing and ran a brush roughly through her mahogany brown hair.
Bodil's eyes grew huge as she watched Thea go through her morning routine. "Thea! You mustn't talk like that! Do you want to die?"
"Of course I don't want to die but I also don't want to spend the rest of my life in slavery... father wouldn't have wanted that."
"Come on we do not want to be late like you said now do we?" Thea said before Bodil had a chance to reply, pushing her through the door of their quarters ahead of herself.
Once outside, they run through the streets and try to keep their eyes low as they make their way toward what was once known as the great palace Dragonsreach, but is now known as In Macellum or as nicknamed by the humans, The Slaughterhouse. As Thea and Bodil run up to the steps that would lead them to The Slaughterhouse, they notice a fellow slave, a youngman their age, struggling to drag a cart full of dead bodies. It was mired in the mud near the steps, his dremora handler whipping him mercilessly... there was no way he could manage to move that cart by himself.
But did Thea and her friend stop? No, because in doing so they would be late and being late could mean their death. "Do you think he will manage to get that cart unstuck?" Bodil asked her companion looking away from the tragic sight as they continued on by.
Thea slowed down for a moment and her eyes met those of the poor slave before she quickly looked away and sped up again. "No... I don't think he will."
This was a cruel world that they lived in, a world ruled by the daedra of Oblivion.
Allow me to explain, this happened about two hundred years ago when the world of Nirn was first invaded by the daedric lord Mehrunes Dagon in what would have been known as the Oblivion Crisis, had he been foiled. His plan was to assassinate the Emperor and all his heirs, the humans tried to stop him by returning a long-lost heir, Martin Septim, to the throne along with the help of the human champion, the Hero of Kvatch. Sadly they were slain and along with them any chance the mortals of this realm had of fending off the invasion.
With the way now clear, Dagon along with a few other daedric princes, Boethiah, Malacath, Namira, Mephala, and Vaermina, proceeded to crush down the mortal races and enslave them. A few of the other princes, namely Azura, Meridia, Hircine, Sanguine, and Sheogorath, over the years have routinely intervened and saved several mortals from death while the remaining princes choose to stay neutral and out of the way in their own planes of Oblivion. Now in the province of Skyrim, dremora from the ranks of Kynval to Markynaz live in the cities as the mortal races once did, using them as their servants and food while the Dremora Valkynaz replaced the Norse jarls as the rulers of the cities.
Every month the Valkynaz jarls hold these Gatherings to celebrate and gloat about their Lords' victory all those years ago and to remind their mortal slaves of how easily they were defeated by killing off a number of them and eating them at the ceremonial feast they have after the Gathering. That is what that cart stuck in the mud was for, Thea knew this as well as Bodil. It was common knowledge that if you didn't belong to a Dremora or were particularly disobedient that it was highly likely that at the next Gathering you would become the main course.
Thea and Bodil arrived just in time, just before the doors closed, and they walked slowly to stand beside the dremora they knew as Mistress Arteria, a cruel daedra that took great pleasure in the whipping of her servants. Minutes later the Valkynaz jarl of Whiterun, Improbus, appeared and began the little history lesson that always preluded the feast and resulting festivities. This went over the details of the invasion and in particular the defeat of Martin and the Hero. Strangely enough the Hero is hardly ever mentioned. After their defeat in the Imperial City, where Martin was tortured into insanity and slaughtered, his body put on display for all to see, the hero disappears and it is never mentioned exactly what happened to him or how he was killed.
Thea had a theory about this. She figured that the reason the Hero is never mentioned is because he escaped somehow after that battle at the Imperial city and therefore was not punished along with Martin. This must be why he is never mentioned because the daedra are ashamed that he escaped from right under their noses and so are afraid that if the mortals knew the truth, they would all rebel and overthrow them. Something they wish never to happen so naturally they would cover-up the truth.
Before she even knew it, the 'history' lesson was finished and Thea, along with the other slaves, moved towards the kitchens of the palace to finish the preparations of the feast while their lords moved to sit down at the two long tables in the great hall.
It was rather sick really, making them prepare and serve up their brethren as food to these demons. It made many go insane. Sometimes, every few Gatherings or so, one of the workers in kitchen would suddenly drop to the floor screaming or attempt to attack one of the daedra over-seeing them or even they would occasionally try to attack one of their fellow slaves. Whenever this happened, the poor soul or souls would just be killed on the spot and added to the feast.
It may make you wonder how the hell they never ran out of people would it not? They don't run out because in this place when you turn sixteen, you are considered fertile enough to begin breeding. At the end of each year everybody, boy and girl, are tested for fertility and those who score high are taken away to what is known as the "breeding farms". The only way you can get out of this is if your dremora lord holds you back because they need you for a specific reason, you're not fertile enough or you are too injured/scarred to be of any use.
Thea looked away from the bloody livers she was supposed to be dicing, her stomach twisted into knots, how could anyone do this and not be affected by it? It was completely revolting yet somehow they all manage to carry on, the ones who don't die in insanity. Thea took a few shaky breaths, trying her best not to puke, for doing so would mean a punishment like forty lashes in front of the whole populace. If only there was some way to escape... anything, anything to get out of this waking nightmare.
Of course she had heard the rumours. The rumours that not everything was lost, that not everyone was enslaved. There were whispers among the slaves that out there, somewhere in the wild of Skyrim that there was small groups of mortals living free of the daedra oppression and not only that but they were also rebeling. Ambushing convoys and freeing slaves as they traveled along the roads. This was wishful thinking though, how could Thea ever escape the city to reach these places? She couldn't, not without help and no one here had enough backbone to even talk about the possibility of an escape.
Later that night after the horror of the Gathering was long gone and everyone but her was fast asleep, Thea laid awake staring up at the rotting floorboards of their quarters. Her mind was swirling around with thoughts of escape and freedom, useless and pointless thoughts if she didn't have anyone to come up with a plan with. Her eyes strayed over to where her friend Bodil lay sleeping peacefully as if her life wasn't a waking nightmare. She would be no help. She was too soft, too docile and just plain dim to be able to come up with any ideas with her, did anyone here have the nerve to stand up to these daedra? Thea's thoughts drifted to the slave with the cart she had seen getting whipped in the streets for not being able to move the cart.
The look in his eye... he didn't seem to be as beaten down as the rest of them, more the opposite, his eyes seemed to burn with a special hatred for the dremora whipping him that no other would dare allow to show. Too bad he was probably dead. That is what happened if you couldn't perform the tasks you were set, you were put down like a rabid dog if you could not. He probably could've helped her, he certainly had a look about him that made you think he was a natural born fighter but he was probably dead and entertaining such thoughts of what could have been would only do more harm than good.
With these thoughts in her mind, Thea rolled over and tried to get some sleep. The last thing she saw imprinted on the back of her closed lids before sleep took her was of the dark eyes of the young man looking into her own green ones.
…..
Thea stood behind a young khajiit child, a boy, in the line; waiting with her tray for the slop the dremora gave them as their lunch. It had been a hard morning for her, Mistress Arteria had lashed her ten times and worked her down to the bone hand washing clothes until her knuckles bled. And the latest in a long series of hellish days was only just half over.
On the menu for today was stale, moldy bread with a soup so thin, it was practically water; Thea watched as boy in front of her took his ration, which was pitifully small. The boy looked down at it for a minute before looking back up at the dark elf server who wore a pained expression common among the folk around here. "E-excuse me? M-may I have s-some m-more?" He asked his little whiskers quivering.
"More?" The server asked blandly, staring down at the small, horribly thin boy.
"Y-yes... I-I'm so hungry s-sir... I-I was bad y-yesterday and d-didn't get s-supper."
The server looked at him for a few more moments before surreptitiously slipping him an extra roll and looking away like nothing had just happened, the boy looked grateful and began to walk away with his food. Thea stepped forward for her own ration when she heard a cry and turned to see a dremora overseer had the khajiit boy by the scruff of his neck and was shaking him. "Boy! You are not aloud extra food! What do you have to say about yourself?!" It screeched in it's horrible spine-tingling voice.
The boy did not answer. Tears streaked down his face; matting the fur there into wet tangles. "P-please! I-I'm so h-hungry." He finally managed to choke out.
The daedra just growled and threw him to the ground, the boy landing in such a way that you just knew he would have broken bones. The daedra lifted its foot to stomp down on the kids ribs. What happened next was this.
Thea unthinkingly rushed forward as the dremora brought its boot down and shoved the boy out of harms way, getting a boot to her right forearm as a result. Thea cried out as a result but she didn't have time to dwell upon the pain before she was being hauled up by the front of her shirt and came face to face with the angry dremora. "Foolish mortal! How dare you interfere!" It shouted in her face, spit flying from its mouth as it spoke. "You shall be punished for this!"
Before Thea even knew what was happening she found herself being dragged away through the streets towards The Slaughterhouse, the boy forgotten. Minutes later she was tossed into one of the dank and filthy cells of the palace dungeons. "Your fate shall be decided later." The daedra that had dragged her there hissed before turning and stalking away back up the steps of the dungeon.
For a few minutes everything was silent as Thea breathed loudly, trying to get a grasp on the situation that had happened all too fast for her to even think about. Why would she do that? Why would she risk almost certain death for a little boy she didn't even know? It was ridiculous, she might as well have spat in Mistress Arteria's face; the result would have been the same, this she was certain of. She would die here and all because she couldn't stand by and watch something she had seen a million times before. "Well... look what we have here. Looks like I got myself a cellmate." A voice spoke from behind her.
Thea spun around and strained to peer into the gloomy corner of the cell the voice had come from. She narrowed her eyes and straightened her back as she tried to appear strong before this unknown person. She didn't know who was there but if they were some sort of psycho the daedra had stuck down here to deal with later, he would regret tangling with her.
But as the stranger moved forward into the light she realized she did know him or least kind of did.
It was the slave with the cart stuck in the mud. The one with the dark, hate filled and defiant eyes that had been imprinted on her mind.
So did everyone enjoy that? I hope you guys did! I'm going to try and have the next chapter up by sometime next week because I'm going away for the weekend so I won't have as much time to work on it. :c Hopefully I don't get too distracted and forget to write, if I do, you guys have my permission to give me a swift kick in the rear. xD