A New Sun Rises
This story covers the daily events in the two years leading up to the Oblivion Crisis. It begins following the life of a semi-typical Khajiit girl who inadvertently finds herself the pawn of a powerful necromancer just as factions and forces begin moving into position.
When motivations are revealed it drives out the secrets of forgotten pasts, and another Khajiit girl whose life was an intertwined mirror of her own till both were altered irrevocably by the same necromancer in whose power they both found themselves.
The diverse paths their lives took merge once again in an explosive revelation that leaves one wondering how much of her skills and personality were ever her own, and the other in a desperate struggle to control her life from being used against Uriel Septim as the crisis that will change Cyrodiil and the rule of Tamriel forever begins.
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A New Sun Rises - Maxical's Adventures
Prologue:
Fate is an invincible enemy in a battle you'll never leave unscathed. It stalks you as prey and strikes regardless of shields or armor. The gods, even Daedric Lords can find entertainment in manipulating your path on a whim. Sometimes you don't find out till it is too late.
I'd like to blame the gods for where I found myself, but the truth is that somewhere between the void and the dreamsleeve lies fate. Souls that have been marked for paths they can't change, to destinies they can't escape.
Marked souls don't just draw the one they were selected for, but the revenge of his enemies. You find yourself the pawn in a game you don't even know was being played, with contestants your worst nightmares couldn't envision.
That's where I found myself fifteen years after the game started. That was the day I found out that everything I'd ever known about myself had always been…her. Amiela.
Amiela was a 137 years old demon of a vampire that thrived on destruction and lived for what she could usurp from others. She died a century before I was born, but the wars being fought over her didn't end with her death. Her soul was marked…and inside me.
For me, fate was my mother bringing me through the heavy forested area of the Gold Road just outside Skingrad at the same time the second worst necromancer of our time was in a battle for the soul of Amiela. And there I was, a convenient hiding spot.
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Nisaba. Named for her mother that, like me she never had the chance to know. Our destinies were intertwined long before our lives began.
Nisaba's beginning didn't just match mine, it was mine…though neither of us knew it before we'd both turned twenty years old. That was the year our paths crossed again, and we learned the only scraps of our histories anyone was ever able to recover.
Our histories began when a slaver named Avon Ravel purchased both my mother and Nisaba's from the slave pen of children they lived in. He brought them to the Dunmer Stronghold of Hlormaren on the Bitter Coast of Vvardenfell to work underground as 'tunnel rats'.
Eleven years later a man claiming to be the Nerevarine cleared the Stronghold, killing the Slavers and freeing all the slaves. Six months later four Khajiit crossed the checkpoint into the Septim's Gate Pass together on foot. All had 'Freed Slave' identifications from Hlormaren. The names signed on the register were S'Vandra and spouse Shivani, S'Renji with spouse Nisaba. Both women were expecting a child. Twenty years it took me to learn my mother's name. Shivani.
Six months after that two Khajiit couples traveling together on foot crossed the checkpoint entering the Shadowgate Pass, the most dangerous pass in Tamriel. Their names weren't logged by the guard on post, he only wrote that "the blackest cat he'd ever seen couldn't show documentation for the baby he was carrying, and the other female looked like she might pop and drop before the border into Cyrodiil."
Two years later a Khajiit named S'Renji left a beautiful little girl he'd named Nisaba (after her mother) at the Imperial City Orphanage for the un-adoptable. He said his wife died giving birth to her on the Shadowgate Pass, and he could no longer care for her.
Three years later a Legionnaire dropped a female beast of unknown race at the office of the Imperial Legion. The Legionnaire reported that while patrolling the Gold Road east of Skingrad he'd come across the bodies of an odd looking couple he guessed to possibly be Khajiit. The male's coloring was nothing he'd ever seen on a Khajiit, nearly black. Both carried slave markings. He salvaged a pack that contained a silver dagger and a necklace from the female, whom the little beast appeared to attach itself to. No documentation was found on either body.
The report continues that a minotaur (likely the one responsible for the couple's death) appeared on the scene, possibly attracted by his presence or that of the beast child. The Legionnaire reported that after dispatching the minotaur he left his post to carry the beast to the Legion office.
The beast's age was estimated to be approximately two years based on its size. After numerous failed attempts to find placement, it was sent to the Imperial City Orphanage for un-adoptable.
That was me, and that three years they cut off my age became significant to the fate of Tamriel the year I turned twenty.
It was the middle of the night four years later, right there in our room at that orphanage when fate once again found Nissy and me in the form of that same necromancer. Both our destinies were wrenched into his hands that night. Both of us have been in his power in one way or another since. Dagoth-Malan.
That was eleven years ago, eleven years that Nissy waited for me to keep a promise to save her. Eleven years that memories of her were stolen from me so I couldn't. Until fate brought us together again when we both turned twenty.
Nissy and me, we were both in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fate.
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Chapter 1: The Beginning
A Legionnaire dropped me off at the Legion headquarters in the Imperial City, and it is there the earliest memory of my lifetime begins and ends. Other than knowing my name, I've never been able to remember a single moment of my life before finding myself in that office, not even how I got there.
The Legion couldn't find any documentation on either my mother or the Khajiit that died with her, they assumed it was destroyed in the minotaur attack. What that meant to me was that I never knew my own mother's name till decades later, or any family I may have sought for shelter. No travel papers to say what she was doing in Cyrodiil, since she bore slave marks and it is banned here.
As badly as I wanted to remember my mother, no amount of straining my brain could ever bring up an image of her, not even a glimpse of a moment with her or the sound of her voice. All I know is that the dark Khajiit the incident report said she died with was not my father.
Why I'm sure of that had nothing to do with my coloring, which was odd enough to begin with. How many white Khajiit are there? I've never seen another. Everyone assumes I'm albino when they see it, which brings out every superstition they've ever heard; curses to the family that bore them, a jinx to those they are close to…other Khajiit gasp when they see me, and I've heard them muttering "Vaba" under their breath. Translated literally it means, "It is;" but when spoken by itself it means "Bad omen." Maybe some of that is true, because bad luck seems to touch a lot of lives connected to mine.
What became quite obvious as I grew was that I was the product of a mixed union. My face shape and features don't look like any other Khajiit I've ever seen; and instead of the usual heavy rug of thick fur, mine has always been so fine that throughout my childhood it spiked out in a perpetual bushed state.
Maybe that's why the Legion didn't know what race to list me as. I found out later they listed me as "Albino beast of unknown race or age." They estimated my age to be two years old, I'm guessing due to my size which even now is smaller than the average Khajiit.
The memory of that day has stayed fresh in my mind all these years, not because I wanted to remember it. It was because of the number of times I'd come to that stopping point in my memory and tried to force beyond it to find something…anything of who I was, of my life before then. Of my mother.
Standing in the Legion office while they tried to determine what I was, and what to do with me; the odors of pipe smoke and tobacco, male sweat and steel. The jeering voices and laughter of the men as they tried to figure out what I was, what I was saying. And I tried to figure out where I was and how I got there.
Not speaking Cyrodiilic well didn't help. I barely understood half what they were saying. They couldn't understand me at all. After several attempts they spoke in front of me freely as if I didn't exist, and the communication degraded into them miming out what they wanted even though I followed their words better than they did mine.
After a while of watching their odd contortions, I realized they were trying to get my name. It would have been comical in any other situation; rudimentary gestures to their chests like primates, and over-emphasized drawling of their own names followed by pointing at me with blankly questioning faces.
"Ma'Thjizzrini Qa." I kept repeating it, and finally they wrote down "Maxical."
When I later learned that my real name roughly translated meant "What the hell did we do to deserve this child," I never used it again, and from that day on was grateful that by all intents and purposes I was legally renamed Maxical on the day of my mother's death.
"I'll bet it's got a temper with that red hair!" was met with raucous laughter by the room in general. That I understood, and they were actually right about that. I do have a temper, and it was building listening to them.
I finally broke down and mimed back. I needed to relieve myself or would be leaving a puddle, and I feared they would cage me if I did.
The Legion made their regulated period of attempts to find an adoptive home for me before I was transferred to the orphanage in the Imperial City Prison Compound. That's where orphans considered "un-adoptable" were sent.
All the beast races end there, or any human too old to be considered cute. I wasn't cute, and that "albino beast" stamp on my papers would have scared off anyone who might have thought I was.
The Khajiit were the worst, "Vaba" followed by a slamming door was a repeated theme with them. They could have placed a mudcrab before I would have found a home. I'm not going to say that didn't hurt at the time, it did.
Eventually anger carried me through that kind of pain; but below the surface, deep inside me the scars remain of that time. Maybe it distorted my perspective of myself, I don't know. You hear something enough times and begin to believe it true, especially considering the meaning of my given name. What could my mother have been thinking sticking me with a banner like that?
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Chapter 1.2: The Orphanage
Three good things came of my time at the Imperial Legion compound. The first was that the Legion practiced with their swords on the lawns of the quad that housed the orphanage. I would watch the practices with such an intensity that eventually they thought it would be fun to teach "the beast" swordplay. It turns out I had a natural ability.
The feel of a sword in my hand was like none other I had ever experienced. It became a part of me, an extension of my mind and heart. The metal warms to the touch of your hand as a lover would; the blade sings to you, and as your skill increases that familiar sound becomes a part of your senses. I would spar with my eyes closed, listening for the song of the opponent's blade, knowing just how to respond to it.
It became a beautiful dance; beginning by feeling the cool grass and clay beneath my feet, the smells around me so intense and distinct - old leather, steel, glycerin soap, neatsfoot oil, the sweetness of male sweat. I would close my eyes and take deep breaths, letting each scent linger in my nostrils like a friend…a familiar; each aroma a muse in its own right.
My senses attuned, honed; waiting for the moment…and then I would hear it, the sword leaving the sheath. As it releases from the confines that suffocated, the blade cries out as if to say, "I'm free!" There cannot be a sound more beautiful than that.
I never draw my sword first, or I may miss that symphony. The feelings it arouses in me are as powerful as a soldier may feel on hearing his comrades battle cry; or a patriot may feel on hearing his country's anthem sung.
Each movement of the blade creates a different vibration and tone, so even with your eyes closed you can tell what your opponent is doing, where the blade is at all times; whether he intends to thrust or sweep a limb. And there the dance is. You dodge or block, you can step forward to meet your partner in a parry of blades; the brief embracing of swords before the dance separates you once again.
I love fighting with blades…and it is there on the lawn of that prison that I knew; something deep inside me told me that I must be a warrior. It is in my blood, in my heart; It beats in me as surely as I breathe.
Alix Lencolia was the BladeMaster that came to give lessons to the Legionnaires when a new flock of recruits was brought in for training. I used to watch him from the window of the orphanage. That was before I was allowed out to practice with the veteran Legionnaires. Alix was teaching the recruits in the next quad when I came out to practice, and he must have spotted me. He came over when his blade instruction ended.
"I almost got stabbed by a recruit because I was watching you instead of what I should have been. Did I see you practicing with your eyes closed?" Alix sounded astonished. It was funny to see an adult gaping just like I do.
"Yes, I always do."
"How do you do it?"
"Do you want me to show you?"
He nodded, and I showed him. He even took his shoes off and closed his eyes, trying to do it with me. When he finally was feeling the clay beneath his feet and distinguishing the different scents in the air I said, "now stand perfectly still and be very quiet."
I drew my sword from my sheath slowly, savoring the sound of it.
"I've never heard it like this before!" His voice reflected awe.
Alix was still unable to distinguish the movements of the blade, and asked if I would practice with him so he could watch me do it with my eyes closed. Of course I did. He started off with all the moves I was used to, then did some I had never even seen him do in his training classes. I stopped him and opened my eyes.
"What was that you just did? And the one before? I've never seen those done in your training, why?"
"Those are moves only the masters know."
"Will you teach them to me?"
"Not today, but I promise I will."
My eyes must have shone with excitement at that, he laughed. He sat down on the grass then, and I knew my practice was over for that day.
"Is your father a Legionnaire? Does he work here?" Alix asked, it was the first time he had spoken to me as if I were a child.
"I don't have parents, I live in the orphanage over there." I pointed.
"They have an orphanage in the prison? I didn't know about it."
"We aren't usually allowed out when people are around. This is where they place the unadoptable children."
"Why are the children unadoptable?" His voice had softened.
"Beast races like me are not desired. Some are too old, people always want a baby. Once a child is old enough to get into trouble…"
"Do you get into trouble a lot?" Alix asked, his eyes lit with amusement.
"Oh…cough, cough…yes." I said in a mock discreet voice, covering it with a fake cough.
I was practicing my letters and a shadow fell across the parchment. I looked up to see High Commander Adamus Phillida standing in front of me.
"Pack your things, you are going for a home visit, and I expect you to make a good impression, is that understood?"
Alix had applied to adopt me. They were allowing him to have me visit his home for a weekend to see if he would still want me after getting to know me. I found out that is the law, they have to let him see what he is getting himself into. Commander Phillida wanted rid of me badly, I doubt he would forewarn Alix what I was like if given a choice in the matter.
It's not that I mean to misbehave, other than normal childhood pranks. Things just always seem to happen when I am around. There was never much for children to do in an orphanage based within a prison compound. I spent quite a bit of time prowling around seeking something to do.
Commander Phillida probably dreamed nightly of my adoption, or maybe even my demise after a few particular incidents. Then Hieronymus Lex removed himself to the South Watch Tower after being embarrassed and maybe a few other pranks. He refused to return while I remained. Then too, quite a few repairs needed were due to me. I have a tendency toward clumsiness. Yes, they were anxious for me to be adopted.
Two guards escorted me for my "probationary visitation." I was very nervous. Seeing Alix at the blade practice was different, it felt natural. Everything about this felt unnatural, formal and stiff. I felt like a prisoner being escorted by guards, and probably looked like one to people we passed.
The worst tension was about meeting Alix's girlfriend. He is a Breton, so I didn't picture it going over well with her, me being Khajiit. Memories of doors slamming in my face echoed through my mind the whole way. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of being adopted by Alix, who loved blades like I did.