NOTE: Here we go - this is not my first fan fiction (can't remember the old account for the life of me, probably don't want to with the quality of those stories) but I'm still pretty... let's say uneducated in the ways of fan fiction. This mostly comprises of my own characters in Tamriel, though some familiars will show up from time to time. Yes, Dark Brotherhood means Lucien Lachance, but he's not the main focus here, and he probably won't be a heartthrob. I'm sure I'll get those I should say sorry to and those I should say your welcome to for that one.
I hope you enjoy it and in return I'm hoping some good and critical comments will be made to keep me interested in writing it as much as you are (hopefully) in reading it. Whether it's content or just style, or suggestions for future installments, please let me know everything you think of.
M-RATING: I go with the moment in writing, and I write what I want, all graphics included. I'm not going to put T and say - may change, I'mma just put M now to save the trouble. And, even one measly paragraph in this chapter alone may earn the rating. XD
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A single candle floated along in the swirling dream of darkness. It flickered, in and out with the breeze from an open window, casting sinister shadows along the wall. The twisting menagerie of shapes cursed him from every corner and whispered evil things. The boy tried to sleep, but each time he closed his eyes the horrid things rolled out behind shut lids. Instead, he sat in silence at the only table in the room in one of two rickety chairs, watching the flame flicker from side to side in the black velvet night.
The door creaked open slowly on rusted iron hinges and a dark figure appeared there in the opening. It did not look up from beneath its hood and turned directly to shut the door and lower the slab of wood into place. The figure hesitated and faced around.
She promised to be home by sundown. He didn't lift his gaze from the flame.
"I brought you something," she offered, stepping further into the room. His jaw tightened, but he said nothing and never let his dark eyes wander from the light.
"Candied almonds," she said sweetly, raising up a small bundle of cloth twisted at the top. "Only a handful, but I remember how much you like them." She set the bundle on the table before him, close enough that the flame illuminated her face under the large hood. She looked old and tired, normally gentle indentations around her eyes and mouth made sharp by the low light. Her fingers were the most ruined, worn by both hard and meticulous work over the years. The hands of a difficult life.
"Sammael," she said quietly looking down on the boy as if he were still just that, a boy. Truthfully he was going on his eighteenth birthday in less than a month. He blinked, almost wincing at the sound of her lingering voice, but did not move a muscle or look up. "Sammael, my darling boy –" she started, but stopped as he pushed the wooden chair back across the packed dirt floor and stood.
"He did this," the dark haired boy said gravely, grabbing her arm and turning it over in his hand so she could see. So she would look at the dark swirling purples and blues that laced her wrist and slithered up her arm like a disease. "He hurt you," he said, softening, "And I know, mother, there is a better life for us east." She looked up into the fierce features of her boy. Whenever did you get so tall? she wondered. It was all she could do when she really wanted to know when Sammael started taking care of her instead of her caring for him.
"It's much more complicated than that, Sammael, I – "
"You promised," he said lowly, almost growling, surging with anger and passing her without even glancing at her sad features, escaping the tiny one-room home out into the night. The woman shuddered as the heavy wooden door fell shut. She lowered herself into the chair across from the one Sammael had occupied. Only the candle and the bundle of almonds sat on the table, a bubble of illumination in the darkness. She watched the warm light dance across the creases of the fabric for a few moments and then held her face in her hands and sobbed.
"My sweet, sweet boy, I can't…"
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Sammael returned in the morning, after his mother was sure to have left for the day. She would think he had left, for good. After all, he had told her so. If she would not come he would go himself. They deserved better, he'd said, and if she wasn't willing to find better, he would not wait. But that could not be true. Evadne Stallos raised her son alone, rejected by her family and unwilling to speak of whatever horrors the father committed. She could have stayed in Cheydinhal if she threw the boy away at birth, but she did not, instead traveling as far away from her family as she could, to Anvil. He could not leave her now.
Inside, everything lay as it had the night before and each night before that as long as he had ever remembered. Only the cloth bundle on the table sat out of place. They couldn't afford delicacies of any sort. She had either stolen them or they had been gifted to her, and he knew by whom.
Sammael waited out the sun, doing the work around their small plot of land he knew would be unnecessary. As the sun began sinking behind the trees he stopped and simply watched the path. The entire world stood still, and even though he knew she would not come, he waited.
The last sliver of the great star disappeared beyond the horizon and Sammael picked up the old rake he had been leaning on. He carried it into the tiny stable, only two stalls, one of which was filled only with tools and feed. He set the rake carefully in its place before heading back up to the house he lived in for what he could remember as only his entire life. Inside, through the darkness, he found the chest in the corner of the room, unlatched it gently and pushed open the worn lid. Set down inside the box, beneath a layer of folded cloth, was a worn leather cuirass. He pulled it on over his tunic, clasped the straps down the front, side and one shoulder.
They farmed their own food and bought the meat when they could. His mother didn't like him to hunt, or do anything that involved killing, truthfully. But when the winter cold drew on too long, Sammael took a simple bow and what his mother claimed to be her father's armor, and took it upon himself to bring back enough to keep them going until they could plant again. She chose not to ask where the meat came from in desperate times. He practiced his shot when his mother went off to work in town and after he finished the day's work; over the years his skill had become quite impressive. He never missed and no target ever saw it coming. He tread softly through the leaves and fallen twigs, never making a sound aside from a soft breath that kept him in pace.
Tonight, however, he would not bring back food to keep them going. The springtime had come and gone and the crops grew towards the sky in the field.
He felt the leather sink in around his chest and shoulders, supple and molded to his form. He thought once more about the decision he was making and bent back down to the chest. Beneath the cloth that wrapped the armor, on the bottom, was another swaddled object. Sammael picked it up carefully and held it in his hand, pulling at the cloth and revealing an ornate blade, hidden in its equally beautiful sheath. For hours before he had stared at it, wondering at the symbols and its purpose. Surely, it was unlike any blade he had ever seen. Kept with his grandfather's things, Sammael had thought it his, but according to his mother it was not. She seemed to dread each time he brought it up, asking about the owner or how she had gotten it; she refused to answer. What he had gotten was simply that at one time it had been an enchanted blade; and though the magic had long since run dry, the blade remained immaculately sharp.
Sammael pushed the weapon into his boot and stood one last time, facing the door and the darkness. He took nothing else with him, for nothing else mattered, and there was hardly anything to take besides. The outside air cooled his skin, his sweating forehead. He took the only horse, saddled her, and rode her down the Gold Road towards the city. The sky remained unguarded by the sentry moon and the way was dark, but he knew it well.
The guards at the gate knew him, or knew at the very least who he was and that he meant no trouble. They let him slide into the city without question or complaint. He moved through the streets, past guards who either took no notice of him or didn't care. The city was all sparkling white stone with red roofing in the daytime, but at night shadows stalked the streets and only the cool sea air seemed familiar. He moved between the homes, back against the alley and the darkness. The doors to the cellar of the house where his mother worked in the daytime were locked with a thick but rusted chain. He twisted the weakest of the iron links, found it crumbling through his fingers and pulled the chain gently from around the handles. Into the darkness he went.
The cellar air seemed to sweat with musk and mold, and it was rowed with tall shelves filled with various items he couldn't discern in such pitch blackness. Moving down the row towards the light that found its way under the door at the top of the stairs, he realized quickly that men and women slept down in this dank cave. Servants curled up on mats on the dusty floor, he might have only noticed for a great bear of a man snoring against the wall just where the light could reach him at the bottom of the stairs.
Sammael hesitated. The man slept slumped in a chair in the corner, blubbering occasionally but mainly snoring through a gaping mouth. It was now or not at all; he already stood inside the house, he had only to get upstairs and surely there would be no other obstacle. Sammael continued on past the shelves, and stepped silently around the man onto the first step. No creak of wood or off-breath sounded, but his heartbeat almost skipped a whisper. Slowly, he moved up the stairs and stayed crouched at the top in the low light that flickered beneath the door. He exhaled and twisted the knob, slipping out into the hallway lit by the burning flames of candles set into the wall. Sammael found his way quickly through the long hallways and large rooms of the decadent interior. He had never been inside, merely passed it with his mother on their way to the market on the barge. The outside spoke remembrances of a glorious past when the mansion was just newborn and had only recently fallen into its state disrepair, but past the outside walls the home bordered on extravagance comparable to Castle Anvil itself.
Two women descended the stairs that led into his hallway. He could hear their quiet whispers and soft footsteps down each step. He ducked into a dark doorway indented into the wall and crouched low as they turned his way. Both passed, whispering words of jealousy into one another's ears.
"Perhaps once, but now – no more than an old broad, a whore," one said. The other promptly agreed and the two giggled quietly.
"He has her now. I hope he's rough with her, too rough. He only lays a gentle hand on me."
Their conversation faded into the darkness with their footsteps, but he could feel the cruel mockery slither from each syllable of each word. He closed his eyes for a moment, praying to the Nine they did not speak of his mother, but realized in another that the women had passed him oblivious and no others followed. An anger flowed through him and, standing, he moved quickly down the hall and up the stairs, quieter than the maids had. Candles lit the corridor upstairs and it was no less impressive than the first, but he did not know which way to follow to find the house's lord.
His steps were short and cautious as he wandered the upper floor, stopping to listen occasionally for the sounds of footsteps or voices. He'd never been in a house so large, and he thought if he lived in one he would find himself lost each day anew.
But it was not long before he heard a sound around the halls. The closer he found himself to the source the more he hated it with every piece of his being: a gasping moan or deep grunt, animalistic and disturbing to his ears. Sammael stopped at one large, hand-carved wooden door at the end of the hall. He retrieved the dagger from his boot, holding it upside down by the hilt behind his arm. He raised the other hand to the door, tensing at another pleasured moan, and pushed it open.
The room was well lit by a fireplace on an adjacent wall and the floor was covered by a large and elaborate rug. The bed was surrounded by drapes hung from an ornately carved oaken frame and they were pulled aside, the heavy furs askew, a man and woman in the bed. She lay face down in the plush with the great brute man straddling her with his knees, pulsing back and forth into her. She breathed heavily and her fingers grasped the furs with each grunt of the man. It was animal, disgusting, Sammael swallowed hard, gritting his teeth, but he held his head high as the woman looked around.
"Sammael," his mother gasped. The man hadn't noticed and continued throwing himself into her, but she reached around and grabbed his arm loosely where his great hands held her about the waist. He stopped and looked around, shining blue eyes searching for the interruption. He had a square set jaw and a pronounced brow, covered with thick blond eyebrows. A short beard and mustache, cleanly cut, surrounded wide lips. Large nostrils flared as he breathed in deep, and then he pulled his leg over her and stepped onto the floor. He came around the bed and stood in front of the trunk, arms crossed before his naked chest yet shameless of the lower half while his mother gathered a heavy blanket around herself.
In this light she looked young, her skin soft, and the gentle wrinkles barely noticeable. But he could see her shoulders and the beginning of her chest, some places dark purples and browns, bruised, damaged. He had only ever seen her arms, her neck, her face and now he didn't want to ever see the rest. The man before him snapped his attention back to place.
"So this is your boy. Sammael, is it? I would say it is grand to finally meet you, but under the circumstances," he started, glancing back at Sammael's mother, "I'll have to ask you to kindly escort yourself out."
"Gabriel, please," she said from behind him, sitting up in the bed.
"No, no, Evadne, your boy is a man, and he knows when business must be attended to." Gabriel smiled, almost warmly at Sammael, as if they shared a bond of this manhood and woman relations.
His mother looked desperately at her son, begging with her eyes for him to leave, but he refused. He let the dagger flip around between two fingers from behind his arm, and wrapped his hand around it tightly. Gabriel's eyes flicked towards the flash of metal and his full lips drew tightly together in a straight line.
"Sammael, you don't need to do that," she said surprisingly calm.
"Listen to your mother," Gabriel agreed, "She speaks sense."
He gripped the hilt tight with white knuckles. Gabriel, daringly, took a step closer. He had a few inches on Sammael, and more than a few pounds, but the boy didn't shudder.
"You're not like him, Sam, you're not!" his mother cried desperately. But she did not move. He knew she meant his father. She rarely spoke of him except to say how horrible the things he did were. He didn't even know if the man were alive or dead, just that he was horrible. He did not know his name, first or family. Sammael knew how she raised him, against whatever doctrine his father lived by. Killing was wrong. Hunting was wrong. Murder was wrong. Even soldiers were wrong. But sometimes, he knew, excuses were made.
Gabriel put a hand on his shoulder, "See now, son, you'll get into a lot more trouble than you're looking for." The words were meant to be calming. Sammael fumed.
"Sammael!" she said again, trying an authoritative tone. He looked at her slowly, ignoring the hand that rested on his shoulder.
"How could you?" he asked hoarsely. "All this time, we could have been halfway to Morrowind but you – you're here with some animal."
"Now wait here, I'm good to her," Gabriel said, retracting his hand, "Who, might you think, pays to let you live on your miserable piece of land? Certainly not bushels you sell in the market."
Sammael ignored him, "This? Is this what you do while I'm at home tilling the field and feeding us? Is this what you do?" He nearly screamed at her now, and she drew herself up from the bed, moving around and coming up behind him. He let her, but didn't know if she was the enemy or the victim.
"Come, please Sammael, come," she said quietly, slipping her fingers around his wrist and gliding down the pulsing veins to the hand that held the dagger. He glanced over his shoulder, considered it. They could still walk out and leave Cyrodiil for good. They still –
Gabriel now held a sword, from where it had come from he did not know, but while he'd been preoccupied the man armed himself. Without hesitation he shoved it forward at Sammael, who, out of natural reflex, jumped aside. The blade dove straight through the old leather, penetrating his abdomen. Behind him, his mother gasped. She clasped her fingers around the blade that stuck straight through the heavy blanket and her naked stomach beneath. Gabriel drew the blade back through both of them and it cut her fingers as it slid across. Sammael and his mother both stood still, petrified.
"Evadne?"
She collapsed to the floor, blood pouring from the hole in her stomach and across the bruised skin. She sputtered, trying to spit up words and only bringing forth more blood.
Gabriel gaped at what he'd done, and in his moment of vulnerability Sammael turned on him, taking the knife in both hands and digging it deep under his left breast with a final rage. A look of surprise fell upon the man's features, and he stumbled back on the chest at the foot of the bed with the knife still buried in his flesh. He tried to focus his eyes on Sammael above him, but couldn't. He didn't breathe again.
He knelt down beside his dying mother and pressed a hand on hers over the wound.
"Sammael, my sweet, sweet boy, you aren't like him, you aren't…" She struggled with the last breaths, but eventually faded out.
"Mother, no. Mother!" He continued holding her hand tightly to the wound and pulled the other to his cheek, feeling the worn skin. Her blood had quickly grown cold, and he could taste the metal and salt in it drip down his cheek and onto his lips. He simply held her until he himself, saw darkness, and collapsed in the blood of his mother and his own veins.
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He blinked his eyes, once, twice, against the fire lit ceiling. He thought he might be dreaming, or in an afterlife, but the pain in his side was too great. He put a hand there and found the wound bound and bandaged. As he struggled to pull himself upright, another voice that was not his own spoke out.
"You sleep soundly for a murderer. That's good." The voice was deep and low, and for some reason all the more terrifying for some unexplainable quality. A hooded man sat in chair against the corner by a small fireplace. He was dressed all in black robes, sitting hunched over with his elbows on his knees, turning between index finger and index finger the bloodied dagger Sammael had last seen buried in Gabriel's chest. His back was turned to the bed, facing the fire, yet he knew that Sammael had awakened.
"You do not know how long I have waited for this night. It was sloppy and poorly executed, but you've done well, Sammael."
He exhaled and inhaled hard, partly from the added stress the wound placed on his body, and partly from the quickness of his heart like a jackrabbit caught and trapped inside his ribcage. "I don't know you," he said simply. The figure breathed deeply, back visibly growing and shrinking on the exhale.
"No, you do not," he said dismally, sitting upright and sheathing the dagger, "But you will, my son, you will. Now sleep." The figure stood and left the room, and Sammael realized he fought himself to hold onto just those two minutes of wakefulness. Back into the darkness, he went willingly.