Extenuating Circumstances
A Tale of Opposites Attracting
Ch. 1 From The Ashes
Her first real memory was of her house burning. She had some vague memories of her mother and father and knew somehow that they were kind and good. But her first clear memory was of fire. Fire and walking. She wasn't sure how far she walked. As far as she could she supposed. She had eventually collapsed behind a building somewhere in the city. She wasn't sure how long she had stayed in the city, stealing food and sleeping under eaves. No one had bothered to ask if she needed help. None of the local Altmer seemed at all perturbed by the little Altmeri girl in sooty rags wandering around. There were orphans and street urchins, they wandered around. At the time it struck her that that was wrong. But she was too afraid to ask for help. Too afraid to remember what she should ask. She had forgotten who she was before the fire, even forgotten her name. She didn't know why she was afraid but she was.
The Thalmor eventually sent Agents to the city. The fires spread, lit by the Legions' men. Their torches and the terrible Voices of their Nordic contingent were bent on tearing the city down. But the Thalmor Agents had fought them back and troops had arrived from Alinor to bolster the city security. Together the Agents and the Dominion troops beat back the Imperial forces and sent them into retreat. The Agents had received word that they were to remain in the city. The Dominion troops would stay as well, working with the city guard. Arenthia would not be troubled again by Imperial troops.
The Thalmor Agent that found her, huddled in a dark alley with a loaf of stolen bread, was old but strong in magic. She had earned her stripes in the effort to end the Void Nights, thus pacifying Elsweyr. She was a warlock and a formidable warrior, known for focus and calm in battle. No one had ever taken her as the mothering type. So when she walked into the Agent's barracks with a dirty little street-mer holding her hand and peeking around timidly, they were understandably surprised.
"This one stays with me." She said, her look daring anyone to challenge her. "She'll be my apprentice if she's got any real talent." The other Agents simply looked away. Olynenwen, Olly to her few friends, was not the kind who took well to arguing and they all valued their skins too much to bother. When the girl told Olynenwen her story, Olly gave the girl her new name. She would be called Ashavera, Born of Ashes. Asha loved her name.
•••
The training room was a large square attic with a cleared center and piles or even barrels of equipment along the rough wooden walls. A staircase led down to the main quarters from the back left corner of the room. There were scattered benches for sitting or stretching or other physical exercises. Training consisted of being awake for days at a time, either because the task given was just that intensive or because Olly was purposely keeping her up. Ashavera, Asha to her friends, was impatient by nature. The lack of sleep was certainly not helping but she was not going to let that keep her from success. Her task was simple in concept but difficult in execution. Balanced on one leg on a platform roughly a meter off the ground, a pile of small weights in each hand, Asha needed to use magic to move the weights in prescribed patterns in front of her using her magic. Olynenwen would name and describe a pattern and then ask a question from Asha's studies. Asha would have to concentrate on the magic while remembering the answer.
"Spiral formation over left palm; what is the primary function of an Alteration spell?" Olynenwen asked in a neutral voice. She rarely raised her voice. Asha had been training with her since that day she found Asha in the alley and had only heard Olynenwen raise her voice at her once in all those years. She had caught Asha stealing a sweet roll from the larder and had been quite cross with her. Thievery was not tolerated in the Agency. She was young and had been tricked into it by a Bosmer girl who'd taught her how to "sneak like a proper wood elf". But Asha was nearly grown now. In a few months she'd be old enough to be a full-fledged Agent of the Thalmor, then she could choose an assignment. Most Agents were simply told where to go but not Asha. When she'd been younger an Altmeri noblewoman had come to visit her and said she was a distant cousin of Asha's. Asha still wasn't sure she believed it but the noble woman had offered her a place to live and even marriage prospects. Asha, to everyone's amazement had asked to stay with Olynenwen and train as an Agent. The noblewoman had proclaimed that she would always have her family's favor if she wanted it. So when she learned she was almost ready to be assigned she had written to her cousin and asked for her favor: simply ensure she was assigned to Skyrim. Asha still remembered the Nords of the Imperial Army burning her city, still had nightmares about the flames. She would avenge her parent's deaths even if she could hardly remember them. She would have revenge for her destroyed home and she would become the most feared battlemage the Thalmor had ever produced. And she would make Olynenwen proud.
"The primary function of Alteration is to create a reality that everyone perceives and accepts. The reality we know is merely the representation of greater forces acting on us for amusement. A spell of Alteration is a suggestion of subtle change to one or more of these forces." Ashavera spoke clearly but anyone who knew her very well (and those were few) could tell the act of moving the stones was distracting her. The stones moved across her body to a roughly circular group over her left upraised palm. She visibly concentrated and the stones began to spiral over her palm in a vaguely conic form. They moved slowly at first before reaching a blurring speed and maintaining it.
"Concentrate Asha, you're doing well. Tell me the most important factor in choosing and casting a spell of Destruction."
"The means and method of delivering the spell matters more in Destruction than any other school." Her tone was very nearly didactic. She was tiring but trying not to show it. Olynenwen had had her doing these exercises for four hours a day for as long as she had been able to cast a spell. Alteration for focus, Destruction for power and Restoration for peace and mental clarity. Olynenwen said using a particular school for too long would ultimately affect the bearing and attitude of the user and so her training would include elements of three of the major schools with dalliance in Illusion. She would also, eventually, school Asha in the ways of Enchantment. Ashavera looked forward to the day she would craft and enchant her first blade. But first, studies. "Methods include touch based spells and range based spells. There are also spells which can be cast once and triggered later or cast in concentric circles like Cloak Spells." The light cloth of her training clothes, a tight fitted pantsuit in the black and gold that was standard to Thalmor wear, kept one remarkably cool, but Ashavera was visibly sweating now. But she knew better than to ask for a reprieve. Olynenwen was kind and patient but she was not gentle, nor would she allow for weakness. There was no time for rest, Asha had to be ready for battle and the rigors of same.
"Very good" Olynenwen said, ignoring Asha's tone for now. "Demonstrate the use of a conductor in casting lightning bolts. Do not change the formation, but bring it directly in front of you one hand-spans' length from the center of your chest." The weights were essentially solid iron spheres. They weren't pure iron but the impurities consisted mostly of copper and tin. They would, with some effort, conduct a lightning bolt. Whether or not Ashavera could control the bolt and not send out a spiral of sparks from the formation was another question. It was training, it wasn't supposed to be easy. And besides, they had a skilled healer downstairs. Just in case.
The weights, maintaining both the spiral form and their current speed floated off Asha's palm and into the open air in front of her. The effort left her palms slick and her forehead shone with sweat. She took a deep breath and visibly tensed as the air around the weights seemed to crackle with static. A few tense moments passed before a flash of bright blue light lit the area. A small bolt of electricity lanced from the topmost weight through each subsequent weight until flashing to the floor from the last weight. Before it could burn the smoothed wooden planks below, Asha terminated the spell. She visibly relaxed as the energy dissipated, the weights slowing down but not stopping their constant orbit. Olynenwen clapped her hands once, the signal to end the exercise.
"Excellent. You're improving very quickly. One of these days I might actually teach you some real magic." Olynenwen winked as she said that knowing full well how difficult dual casting two separate spells (from separate Schools no less) was for a master mage, let alone an apprentice. Asha showed a preternatural ability to concentrate Magicka, even so far as to create lightning without first emanating the energy through her palm. Her abilities exceeded any sorceress Olynenwen had ever heard of save a few legends about the Psijic Order. And those were mostly heresy, leavened with lies and conjecture. Olynenwen had not the slightest idea how the girl could do such things, but they were dangerous and without training would surely doom her. Or so she told Asha as often as possible it seemed. Asha wasn't sure how Olynenwen had known she was special, and Olly was not inclined to tell her. She assumed she would learn when her training was complete.
The weights floated languorously over to a barrel full of identical spherical weights. The weights were organized both by size and content; metals for electricity, porous clay filled with cloth scraps for fire and, a barrel of water with empty wineskins stacked beside it for ice. When they had landed in their own barrels Asha jumped off the platform, landing lightly and nearly silently on the wooden planks. She always moved like that, quick but sure and with as little noise as possible. Her limbs had the fluid movement of trained muscle, more like a dancer than a warrior. She was also somewhat short for an Altmer. Most high elves were tall compared to men, usually just over two meters. So being hardly over a meter and two thirds was rather short for an elf. Among humans she would have simply been average but among the warriors of the Thalmor… Well runt was about the most polite phrase she had heard. Despite this (or perhaps in spite of it) she had developed a reputation as a fierce brawler, quick with her fists and with a fiery temper. More than one of her fellow apprentices had shown up at the healers' building with broken bones and missing teeth. A visiting Agent from the Thalmor Embassy in Skyrim had commented: "She fights like an enraged sabrecat, I'll bet 10 Septims on her…"
She had grown quite a bit since that day in the alley. She was strong, with distinct muscle tone, but not bulky. Well-toned arms and back showing distinct muscle groups, she had almost no body fat thanks to the constant exercise her training required. She had the thick calf muscles and defined upper legs of someone who spent a good deal of time running. She had also blossomed into her womanhood with grace, though she hardly noticed it. On an intellectual level she knew she was beautiful. But beauty did not increase magical ability and so she did not dwell on it. She had golden bronze hair which she kept swept back in a tight bun to keep it out of her eyes and to prevent it being singed during practice. Her skin was the pale gold that was common to Altmeri and her bright almond-shaped eyes seemed to shine like sunlight. Most mer had long cheekbones giving their faces a sharp swept back look and hers were no exception; though her features were somewhat less sharp than usual and her face was more heart shaped than the normal "v" that most Altmeri chins formed. More than one dashing Altmeri lad, and even a good deal of the local Bosmer boys, had found themselves knocked senseless after an offhand comment on her looks. Or in the case of the brave ones, trying to woo her directly, a firm telling-off. Ashavera was not a romantic nor was she the sort to "settle down, buy a house, have a few kids" as one older Bosmer woman at a local shop had put it. Ashavera had a mission, and as a good Thalmor Agent her mission was all that mattered.