3E417
Cey sat at the edge of a long, wide vine that twisted out over the bank of the shore. Her legs were crossed beneath her as she listened to the gentle waves of the sea. In her mind she was sailing down Azura's Coast with nothing but the wind at her back.
Not that she was a sailor by any means. She had never even been on a 'moving' boat. It was just that her childhood had been riddled with days spent listening to the stories of travelers. They spoke of a great many things. Of monstrous creatures that made Alit look like house pets, of the beautiful tundras of Skyrim, and most of all, of the freedom of the open road and sea.
She drank in these stories, as any child would, using them as fuel for her imagination. And it was all thanks to this very dock.
It had been grown by a local Telvanni mage - well, it and the tradehouse it was connected to, which also happened to be her home.
She ran a hand fondly over the ridged, leafy material. This spot was by far her favorite place to be.
She sighed, moving a leg over its side and kicking at the water, watching the harsh reflection of the sun stare back at her between breaking waves. It was hot, always too hot for her.
When the waves settled, she found her own reflection staring back at her and couldn't help but frown. Her hair and eyes were the color of ice, a stark contrast to the dark, ashen tone of her skin.
It was a jarring sight despite having had a lifetime to get used to it.
She often wished she could look like the rest of her people with dark, red or black hair and blood-colored eyes.
A traveler from Cyrodiil had once told her that he had known many Dunmer women with blue and green eyes. Her mother had confirmed it to be true. Many Dunmer with fathers from other races sometimes inherited their eye or hair color, she had said. She thought it fascinating, but knew it wasn't the same.
Despite her own Imperial father, she knew her appearance wasn't a matter of natural genetics. Her eyes weren't simply the color of ice. They looked as if they could be ice. Aryon had long ago concluded she did indeed have all the normal eye-parts, they were simply an unnatural color. It was as if a magical layer of ice had encased her eyes. The effect was unsettling.
She raised her palm, watching a fog of cold air emanate and evaporate from it. Yet another reminder of how unnatural she truly was. Most Dunmer were gifted with fire, but her gift - her curse - had always been ice.
*#*
There was a nudge at her side.
She turned, almost startled to find Seht sitting on his haunches next to her. She smiled. He always seemed to know when she was beginning to fall too far into herself. He would always come, even without her call.
"You shouldn't do that." She said, trying to sound angry but failing. "They'll think I can't control you. You know how easily they scare."
She was speaking about the townspeople.
Generations back - during the second era - her ancestor, a woman by the name of Astrid, was sacrificed by worshipers of Molag Bal. Somehow, she had been able to escape his realm and make her way back to Nirn. But she hadn't returned whole; her soul had remained behind.
It was said that the experience drained the color from her hair and eyes, changing them from their natural red into a frosted white. And like the winter frost she became cold and deadly. No pity. No remorse. Truly soulless.
Ever since then, her descendants were sometimes born with a similar appearance - always under the sign of the Serpent, as Astrid had been - as she had been. And those that were, inevitably proved to be heartless beings.
It had been several generations since the last "soul-shriven", but all knew the tale.
*#*
It was because of this that the townspeople were wary of her - to put it nicely. They feared her - to put it bluntly.
There were many accounts of the soul-shriven. Their lives. Their deeds. And what stood out the most was their inexplicable talent for magic from a very young age. A talent that overwhelmed them, controlled them, corrupted them.
She had asked Aryon about it once whilst using his study.
He had been sitting in his most comfortable armchair, as he was wont to do, reading a tome. He put it down as he regarded her. It was obvious why she wanted to know.
"That's a matter I've given considerable thought." He finally answered, setting the book down in his lap.
"Consider for a moment, magicka." He paused. "It is, as is obvious, easily manipulated and used for a variety spells, incantations, and the like." He waved his hand dismissively - this was basic information. "But do not forget, it is volatile at is very core - being the pure energy that it is." She nodded.
"Take, for instance, a young mage trying to perform a very advanced spell. What happens?" He eyed her for a response, but she recognized it as the rhetorical question that it was.
"It either fizzles out or it backfires. And why is that?" He asked. This was a topic they had covered extensively.
"Lack of control." She answered.
"A lack of control, yes." He repeated. "The caster either draws too much magicka or not enough. Although sometimes," He paused, "sometimes you get the opposite the expected effect."
"Volatile magicka." She repeated, looking back down at the words of her text and wondering why, if these soul-shriven were so gifted… "But why the corruption?" She asked.
"Hm?" He had gone back to his book. He sat it back down. "Ah, yes." He said. "I believe that to be a matter of emotion."
"Emotion?"
"Yes. You see," He faltered. "How best to explain…" He was silent for a few moments, rubbing at his chin, before continuing.
"As a mage matures in their abilities - after years of study and practice, mind you." Aryon, always the teacher, "they begin to get a feel for their magicka. A kind of intuition, if you will." He stood, striding to the spot in the middle of the room he reserved for his lectures.
"It's why Masters of a certain spell or school seem to cast so effortlessly. Some mages are born with that intuition." He eyed her for a moment, making sure his words were having the impact he desired.
"The soul-shriven?" She asked. He nodded.
"Remember, most don't show magical promise until about the age of five. Four, if your talented. Three, if you're gifted." She nodded. She remembered.
"Now, emotion normally has little to do with magic. Magic is concentration and willpower. But now we're speaking about infants. They may not show their magical ability at the time, but it's there. And it's beginning to develop on its own." She briefly recalled her own experiences and shivered.
"Children and even toddlers have learned varying types of control. They've learned to walk and possibly even talk by the time their magic shows itself. But an infant can barely control the movement of its own head let alone their magicka."
"What does that have to do with emotion?" As much as she enjoyed his wealth of information, she really wished he'd get to the point.
"For them everything is still new. And every emotion is large." He continued on as if he hadn't heard her. "When an infant is happy, it's very happy. When they are upset…"
"They are very upset." She said, frowning. He nodded.
"So their emotions, being all the input they have, end up taking the place of control." He paused. "That is to say, their magicka begins to become influenced by their emotions because that's all there is. And because it goes unchecked, uncontrolled, for so long, they become entangled in one another." He sighed. "So much so that out-bursts of emotion can be outbursts of magicka." He was pacing now.
"It takes years for this intermingling to happen, but it does. By the time the child is old enough to learn to attempt to control its magicka, it's like-" He waved his hand a few times, thinking. "Like trying to wrangle a guar twice your size."
She nodded. She understood that feeling too well.
"Of course, there's a lot of variability involved here. The effects could be at either extreme - even non-existent depending on the individual." He offered, almost as an afterthought.
So she really was like them…
"But what makes them go bad?" It was all she really wanted to know. And to her shock, he shrugged.
"Some might say it's an inherit darkness inside them that touches and taints their magicka, creating a sort of feedback-loop, eventually making the darkness all that they are." His eyes were apologetic. He sighed, heavily. "And some would say it's what happens when an individual with highly impressionable senses is forced to deal with a lifetime of being treated like a potential monster."
*#*
By that time she had long been learning to control her emotions, her magicka, her abilities. But the thought of ending up like the soul-shriven still terrified her. She knew what it was like to not be in control.
She had started showing signs of magical ability at around three years of age. She didn't have many specific memories of that time, but she did remember the overall feeling. Confusion and fear.
The early days had been fine. She had been a rather happy toddler. Her parents had told her stories of how she would run about the inn with small conjured creatures and how she'd, on hot days, bathe in snowflakes to their amusement.
She didn't remember much of that. For her, her memories began around the time she started attending school. Most of the other students had been kind to her at the beginning, finding her conjurings entertaining, even if they found her appearance a bit odd.
But the adults. Her teachers. They treated her carefully, too carefully, as if she were fragile. They seemed to keep a close eye on her at all times of the day, even when they had their play breaks. And when it was time for them to go home, they seemed relieved. She didn't know how to describe it at the time, she only knew it felt wrong. Her parents and the travelers who visited the inn, they had always been genuinely kind to her; she had never known anything like this.
It didn't take long for things to get worse. As the weeks went by, fewer and fewer students would play with her.
"Momma says I can't play with you anymore." One of the girls apologized to her one day.
"Why?" She asked, her voice small. So many others had already abandoned her.
The girl just stared at her eyes and Cey remembered how she was different. "She says you're cursed." The girl muttered before walking away.
She had difficulty summoning her spectral animals after that.
She'd spend her play breaks alone, sitting in the grass and pulling at the blades, trying to avoid the looks she'd get. It was difficult to see her former friends' pitying looks, and the worried looks of the adults. But the worse by far was seeing hatred in the eyes of some of the boys.
She remembered her surprise when they pushed her to the ground the first time. They did nothing else and said nothing, but the look they gave her was enough. She was different and they didn't like it.
She went home with tears in her eyes, unable to conjure anything to make her feel better.
"What's wrong?" Her mother had asked as she went to tuck her into bed.
She told her and her mother promised things would get better.
But they didn't. They got worse. And as the weeks went by, her tears turned into crying and her crying turned into wails and then screams. What had been an inability to conjure had suddenly become an inability to stop. Snow, hail, and a multitude of spectral creatures roaming free. She didn't know what was happening to her and it left her scared.
By this point she had been home a few weeks, no longer able to attend class. In that time her mother figured out a way to help her. She'd sit with her while she was in her troubled state and soothe her, not with words, but with her own magicka. It made her feel safe; loved.
After another month she felt well enough to go out again. She slipped out when her parents weren't watching and headed west towards Tel Vos, a place she figured the other students would be too afraid to go to.
She was wrong. On her way she ran into the same group of boys.
"The curse is back." One said, amused.
"We all thought you left." Said another.
"Hoped you died." Said the lead boy.
She ignored them, not breaking her stride. It's what her mother said she should do.
But they continued to mock her.
"Cursed Cey!" They chanted.
Try as she might, she couldn't help but feel hurt. She had read about this curse they talked about. They were calling her a monster.
"Soulless Cey!" They continued.
She tried to shut out their voices as they followed her, but she couldn't. She wasn't a monster, she wasn't. Why wouldn't they leave her alone? She hadn't done anything! Her hurt quickly turned to anger.
"Soul-shriven!"
Her anger turned cold in the pit of her stomach and she screamed for them to leave her alone. And with her words came jagged shards of ice. They grew outward from the ground around her. A ring of icicles, sharp and deadly.
Most of the boys were far enough away to avoid being hit, but the closest one found himself with a deep slash along one side of his face.
The two of them stared at each other. The look of anger and triumph on his bloodied face had been frightening.
"I knew it." He muttered.
*#*
It didn't take long for the townspeople to hear of what happened. She knew they only heard the boys' side of the story, but it didn't matter. It only reaffirmed their fears. Cey, the cursed one who could only conjure ice because that's what her heart was made of.
"No, don't say that." Her mother soothed as she held her. "The things they say aren't true."
"How would you know?" She replied, looking up into her mother's beautifully blood-red eyes.
"The things they say; the things they do - how does it make you feel?"
Cey felt tears run down her cheek.
"It hurts." She answered simply.
Her mother wiped at her face and tilted up her chin to meed her somber gaze.
"That's how I know they're wrong. You feel. You aren't without a soul."
She fell asleep, wrapped safely in her mother's magicka.
*#*
Soon after, her mother pulled her out of her classes altogether and instead enlisted the help of Smokey, a Bosmer mage who lived in their inn.
He was a talented sorcerer, his specialties being destruction and alteration magic. He taught her everything the teachers at her old school couldn't have and more. With his help she began to learn how to control her abilities, and how to soothe her anger and hurt.
It wasn't long before she began to show interest in other schools of magic as well. And while Smokey was a decent conjurer, he knew it best to refer her to Aryon for those lessons.
*#*
She remembered being so pleased with the summoning of Seht, her first actual Daedra summon. He had been no bigger than a chicken at the time, though for a girl of eight, that was plenty big enough.
Her parents had been delighted by the tiny creature. Smokey had been impressed. And Aryon, he had been intrigued.
"But Daedra don't have offspring. They don't reproduce like we do." Aryon had said, in awe of the small creature she had brought him. "I mean, it certainly has all the characteristics of a Clannfear - bipedal reptile with claws and a still-forming crest… but this. It's Impossible."
"How can you say that?" She demanded. "He's standing right in front of you."
"Daedra don't have genders let alone-"
"Offspring. Yes. You've already said that." It tended to bother her how he could be so condescending. She may have been his student for the past year, but he was still less than a decade older than her. And she was so very far from slow.
Aryon shook his head. "And you summoned him? You're sure?" He was back to examining the creature standing on his dining room table.
"Perhaps it's some previously unknown species of Alit-" He muttered to himself as he moved his head to the side, "or even Guar."
"Of course I'm sure!" Cey was growing annoyed of his incessant questions. "I'll show you."
She walked purposefully to the other side of the table. Climbing up a chair and setting herself on it she began to click her tongue at the small creature.
"Come here, little guy." She cooed, actually sounding her age.
The creature tilted its head as it watched her. Then, after a moment, it began to walk.
"No." She said, holding out her palm. It paused. "You know what I mean."
A moment later it disappeared in a purple haze from where it had been standing and reappeared next to her.
"See!" She said, triumphantly. She knew that Aryon, being the expert conjurer himself, would know what it looked like.
"That's astonishing." He murmured.
"Do you know what this means?" He asked her, motioning to the wall of books in the next room. "We don't understand the Daedra nearly as well as we think we do." His hand caressed his chin as he murmured. "Oblivion."
Cey's face contorted into one of someone who was unimpressed. Did he really not understand?
"Half the books on Conjuration are wrong." He continued. She could see his mind working, rewriting the books already, as he stood there.
"No…" She said, drawing out the last syllable. It was her turn to be condescending. "He's special. There are no other Daeda like him."
Aryon turned back towards her. "You can't know that." He sat himself in the chair opposite her.
"But I do." She said matter-of-factly.
"How?"
"Because I made him. He came for me. Only for me."
She didn't know if he believed her, but intrinsically she knew it to be true.
*#*
Seht, now half a meter tall, nuzzled her neck. He was damp.
"It's too warm for you too, isn't it?" He made a low chirp of a sound, agreeing.
She placed her arm over him and pulled him close as she lowered the temperature around them. Patterns of ice and snowflakes began to form on her skin, carrying frost with it as it spread from her to him. A throaty purr resonated within his chest. She smiled and laughed as she stroked his crest.