Svoboda stood, still as death, outside the manor window. His clothes were dark and he was deep within shadows. Only his eyes would have given him away, had anyone been searching for him. Yet, on this dark, cold night, no one was.
But, then, they never would be searching for him...no one searches for a dead man, after all.
His oddly luminescent eyes glowed brighter in the black of night, and the dim glint of sharp white canines appeared on his dark silhouette, as if evidence of a somber, perhaps malicious, grin. A strange, low, hollow laugh seemed to sound from the darkness, although it might just have been the rustle of the wind. Then it was gone, and the night was still again.
The minutes continued to pass slowly as the moon ascended her throne in the heavens, and light, fluffy clouds flitted about her playfully, like eager courtiers. And yet Svoboda did not move a muscle. He was a hunter, patient, unflinching, unforgiving, and the shadow enveloped him, ensconced him, and empowered him.
The wind was cold, dry and infrequent, occasionally gusting icy blasts across the snow-covered manor yard . Svoboda seemed not to notice it cut through his sparse mane, as his eyes were fixed on the lighted windows of his enemy's home. He was pressed close against the tall, wide trunk of a defoliated tree, watching and waiting, his eyes reflecting the light from yonder window. He had been here, watching, for some time now, his eyes ever on that distant window.
Then, all at once, the light went out. Like a fleeting shadow, silent and quick, Svoboda too was gone. His movements were light, rapid, and fluid as he bounded across the snow and toward the manor. He was leaving footprints in the snow behind him, but he did not care. If the occasional blasts of wind did not obscure them, what did it matter if the enemy's minions saw them? Perhaps those marks might serve as a warning to them and others of their kind.
He was agile, this strange Khajiit-like man. He did not hesitate as he approached the outer manor wall, but, with one powerful leap, propelled himself up and clung onto a foothold that, to any eye but his, would have been all but invisible. This done, he proceeded to scale the wall, so effortlessly that it might have been the easiest task in the world. Once, twice, thrice he bounded upwards, each time catching hold of some nook or cranny that was masked in shadow in the stone walls. Then he took hold of the window ledge, and hoisted himself onto it. A quick, fluid motion later, he had forced the window open and glided over the sill, as easily as a stream passes over a riverbed rock. Shutting the window behind him, he paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the lighting of the room, where there was no glow of the moon or reflected light on a blanket of snow, and only the dim gleam of dying embers in the fireplace.
He was close now, so very close to accomplishing the one thing he'd spent years planning...long, hard, cold, miserable, lonely years, when it seemed merely a distant, wonderfully malevolent dream that got him through one agonizing day after another. And then, when those days had passed, it had been the goal that kept the memories of blood and sweat and hunger away. Now, he was about to realize it. What he would do after it was done, he was not sure. He had never given much thought to his life afterward, because he had never imagined himself actually having a life outside of his dreams; and now that he did, his focus was the only one he'd ever known...vengeance.
Svoboda's hand toyed with the hilt of the dagger sheathed at his side, his eyes glinting with anticipation. He was close...so very close.
"Hello there? What was that?" a voice, laced with tones of drowsiness and perhaps inebriation, called.
Svoboda stood still in the darkness, watching the speaker fumble for a candle. He was a stocky man, with fleshy features that, if not so portly, would have been very pleasing. And yet, while fine living had taken a toll on the man, it had not ruined him. His ruddy countenance was not too off-putting, and his features still bore such a similarity to their original state that he would yet pass as a man of noble lineage and moderately good looks. And his eyes, even clouded with drink, spoke of keen intelligence and a shrewd mind.
Svoboda smiled grimly in the darkness, and stalked noiselessly to the fireplace. Taking an unlit candle from the mantle, he lowered it to the embers. He heard the drunk muttering of his enemy behind him, but he took no note. The wick, pressed to the ember, hesitated a few moments, but then erupted into a small yet powerful flame.
At the same time, Svoboda stood and faced his enemy, bringing the candle round with him so that the entire room was cast in odd, flickering shadows and peels of light.
The man on the bed blinked once, then twice, as if trying to comprehend what had just happened.
Svoboda's smile returned, and he walked toward the other man. "Master Favius," he spoke, his tone sinister in its softness and congeniality.
"Who...who are you?" the sleeper demanded of the hooded stranger. "How did you get in here? What do you want?"
"Calm yourself, Master Favius," Svoboda smiled. "I am come to pay a social call."
The other man's light eyes darted about his room, and they were clearer than a few moments ago. There were no weapons near at hand, however, and he likely feared to call out lest the stranger make use of the cruel dagger hanging from his belt. "At night? And cloaked and hooded like a bandit?"
"Oh, how remiss I've been! Do forgive me," Svoboda mocked, shaking his hood back to allow his head and face to be visible.
Favius gasped and recoiled as the Khajiit came face to face with him, seating himself on the edge of the massive bed. "Who...what?" the older man managed.
Svoboda smiled again. "Come, Master Favius, you look as though you'd seen a specter!" And, indeed, the older man might well have believed he was staring into the malevolent eyes of a specter or doppelgänger of some sort, for the man before him shared his large, light brown eyes, his pronounced, pointed nose, and his full, upturned lips. Their features, the oval-like shape of their heads, and even the shade of their hair might well have been identical; yet, together with these similarities, in a combination that made him seem not quite human, the creature before him bore a strange, mane-like growth, and sharp, terrible canines.
Fear paralyzed the older man's face, and he began to shake. Prayers, mostly inaudible, formed on his lips, and he made a movement to draw himself away from Svoboda. But the Khajiit's cold stare held him in place. "Your prayers are in vain, Master Favius," he told him. "It is no demon or spirit bearing your features that you face." Here, he flashed a sardonic smile. "Although he has come to you from hell."
"Then...then who…what are you?" Master Favius breathed, finding the courage to pull a bit further away.
"I am a creature of flesh and blood, a man like you," Svoboda answered, his eyes flashing with rage and loathing as he spoke.
Favius recoiled yet more. "What do you want with me?" he asked, his voice trembling. His fear was palpable, as was Svoboda's hatred. "Who are you? Why are you here?"
"To settle unsettled business with you."
Favius gulped, his eyes darting about the room. It was clear that he was contemplating crying out to his servants for assistance, but, so close to Svoboda, he was yet hesitant to employ such a course of action. Instead, he replied, "Business? But I've never even met you! I don't know who you are!"
Svoboda's steely gaze met his, and the older man fell silent. "Then let me refresh your memory. Nineteen years ago, you had business -- your sort of business -- in a small but prosperous town south of here. It was a town of Khajiit, mostly. You met a man there, a wealthy man. His son was engaged to a young woman...a beautiful, wonderful woman, but a poor one. The father didn't approve of the relationship, and hadn't been able to talk his son out of it...so he was looking for an...alternate method of ending the relationship..."
Favius' eyes widened in recollection as Svoboda spoke. "I...but...how do you know this? What does it have to do with you?"
Svoboda eyes gleamed with raw hatred. "The woman...she was my mother."
"Oh gods." Fear contorted the older man's features, and he hurried to explain his transgressions away. "You don't understand! I had no idea she had a child! He never said anything about a kid, I swear!"
"She didn't have a child," Svoboda returned, his tone even and malevolent, "until..."
Favius' eyes widened a second time, and he reexamined the face of the Khajiit before him. "You mean...I am...?" Svoboda nodded, his expression cold as death. Favius fidgeted nervously. "I didn't intend for that...I mean, you...she was just a slave, after all."
"Yes," Svoboda replied, his tone as icy as his expression. "Just a slave. And her son...your son...just a slave, too."
Favius' fidgeting grew more intense. "That was not my intention," he insisted. "I didn't mean for you...well, I had no idea she would end up pregnant."
Svoboda stared into the eyes of the man he'd hoped to lay hold of all these years, his own father -- the man who had kidnapped, abused, and sold his mother into slavery. For a paltry sum of gold, he'd stolen his mother's life, sold her into an existence of hardship and misery, and saddled her with an infant as well. He could still feel the hunger gnaw his bones, still see the exhaustion and agony in his mother's eyes as she struggled to do his work and hers, so that her son -- the son whose face looked so much like her attacker's -- would not be worked to the bone, as she was worked. He could remember her tears, her frailty, her beauty, her goodness...but nothing hurt him as deeply as the remembrance of her sacrifices for him. A slave's life was a miserable one, but the life of a slave attempting to shield her child from its cruelty was indescribable. It was a miracle that he had survived at all, and a miracle he owed to her and her alone.
And here...here, before his very eyes, was the man who had sentenced her to that life, who had forced her to bear a child she had never intended to have, making excuses. "As if the son of a slave would have meant anything to you," Svoboda returned. "As if, even if it had, that somehow excuses your crimes against her..."
The air was heavy with fear and hatred, and the expressions of both men mirrored their part in that tension. Favius' eyes roamed the room in desperation, and his gaze lingered on the door.
"Don't even think of it," Svoboda warned. "You'll be dead before you utter a sound or make it off the bed."
"Please, son," the other man started.
"Svoboda, to you," the Khajiit spit back at him.
"Svoboda," Favius corrected himself hastily, "I was just...just doing my job. I was hired to get rid of her...I did. If he hadn't hired me, I never..."
"Don't worry about that," Svoboda interrupted. "I've already...finished my business with him."
Favius gulped. "I'm a rich man," he told Svoboda. "A very rich man. I can make it all better. I can buy her back, and...."
"She's dead," Svoboda told him. "She died years ago. I should have been dead, too. But I lived...for one reason."
"Please," Favius pleaded, "please don't do anything rash. I can make you a rich man. Richer than you've ever dreamed of being! You can live a life of ease, of luxury, without a care in the world!"
Svoboda's lip curled with disgust. "Is that the best you can do? Attempt to bribe me with blood money?"
"Please, Svoboda, my son," Favius begged, "We can..."
But Favius the Slaver would never finish that sentence, or any other. Fast as lightning, and just as cruel, a razor-sharp dagger cut through the night air and plunged through his throat, in one side and out the other. Favius' expression convulsed with agony, as blood spurted from the wound in his neck before his very eyes. His hands moved instinctively toward the blade, but Svoboda wrenched it free before he could lay hold of it.
Favius collapsed forward into a pool of his own blood, gurgling and shaking. For a few moments, Svoboda watched the corpulent Imperial's feeble attempts to crawl away, but then he plunged the dagger a second time into the older man, this time through the back at an angle to bypass the ribs and go straight into the heart. The slaver's body convulsed a final time, and then ceased to move forevermore.
Svoboda stood over the body of his fallen enemy, shaking violently. He had dreamed of this moment his entire life. Now, covered in the blood of the one man he hated above all others, he found himself feeling both happily vindicated and yet oddly desolate. With Favius the Slaver had died the sole purpose he'd known in life, the one, enduring motive he'd had to push forward even when giving into starvation and despair seemed so much easier. With the two men who'd been responsible for his mother's enslavement dealt with, he was suddenly bereft of all purpose. He'd known one life, a life of fear and want and hate. His objective had pushed him to survive and escape when, at long last, the opportunity arose. It had driven away the demons of sorrow and shame during his long journeys. Until now. Until this moment of victory and completion. The glacial resolve his purpose had given him was gone now, melted away with its necessity, and he was left only with reality...terrible, cruel, and unchangeable reality.
Svoboda stared downwards, as though in a trance. The flickering candlelight, dancing wildly because of his shaking, added a yet more horrifying touch to the already macabre sight before him. This was victory. This -- frightening, dark, terrible -- was victory.
He put out the candle, and walked shakily toward the window. He'd killed a man who had spent his entire life profiting off of the misery and exploitation of others; he'd saved any number of people from meeting the same terrible fate his mother and he had met; he had done what the law, crippled by corrupt officials and bribery, would not. And yet, for all the justice of his act, his motivation had been nothing beyond revenge, revenge in all its contradictory facets -- base, callous, cold and still somehow justified. Now revenge was had, and so purpose was gone. Svoboda, the escaped slave, a strange cross between Khajiit and Imperial, a man wrestling with the demons of love, loss, memory, hate, fear and uncertainty, stood at the manor window, gazing blankly into the snow-covered courtyard.
He stared into the night sky absently, and saw the clouds drifting before a silver moon. Peaceful, tranquil, purposeful as they traversed the heavens, they seemed almost to speak to the trembling Khajiit. He could feel the wet blood of his enemy growing cold on his clothing, and the quivering of his heart lessening as he stood there, staring into the star-filled sky and listening with his soul to the peace of which their tranquility spoke. Those stars...that moon...how many tears had he shed to those distant bodies, to that cold, far-away rock? If their presence, dead things though they were, had provided solace to his wounded soul, why could he, cold, distant and beyond life though he would be, not be a light to other suffers? The dead Imperial, though a rarity here and among his race, was but one of many slavers. There were others out there; and there were others yet bound by the chains of slavery. Could he not be a light in their night sky, a hope that drove them to survive? And would they not be his purpose, the force that set his course and held him to it, like the moon in her heaven held to hers?
Svoboda's trembling had ceased altogether now, and a new light had settled in his eyes. That would be both his calling and his salvation, the cause that spurred him onward and the power that kept the demons of his past away. In helping those who needed help, he could avoid the scars that still sought to torment him. In a sense, he understood that; and in another, he only knew that this was more than revenge, or retribution, or even justice. This was redemption, redemption for anyone who suffered without hope -- and whether that sufferer was him or someone else was immaterial.
Svoboda smiled at the moon, and then pulled open the window. Leaving as he'd entered, the Khajiit slipped out of the slaver's manor house, his purpose fresh and his heart eager. Before him were lives waiting to be redeemed, and he did not hesitate to answer their call. Vanishing into the shadows of the night, he was gone, leaving behind him only a set of footprints and stillness, stillness as deep and profound as the grave.