Author's Notes: My birthday is coming up on the 18th, so it encouraged me to write this short but dark story. It takes place prior to To The Void, obviously since KaNack is still alive. Traven, Brelyna's husband, is not entirely what he seems.
It was a special day for Traven; he had just turned a hundred and fifty, a fine age for any Mer. The Dark Elf smiled to himself as he dressed in his finest robes. He was going to be having a wonderful daylong outing with the beautiful Dunmer that he had become smitten with over the years. Nothing could possibly ruin this day for him, nothing except…
"Well, don't you look prim and proper?" a feminine voice sneered. "I am guessing you are aiming for more than just a slice of cake, hmmm?"
Traven's shoulders slumped and his lips thinned. He realized that she would show up at some point, she always did on this day. The Mer slowly turned around and scowled at the she-elf sitting on his bed.
"Must you always show up on my birthday?" he hissed.
"Our birthday, sweetie," she corrected him. "Don't tell me you're mad that your twin is here to give you her best wishes?"
Traven snorted at her and looked back into the mirror, rubbing a hand along his neck and wondering if he should shave before going out. He stiffened as the Mer wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her weight against him.
"You are always so cross every time I see you, but if anyone should be mad it's me," she muttered into his ear. "You should not be associating with the people in this school; you know who the Arch Mage is." The female Dunmer scowled at Traven's reflection. "He tore our family apart."
"No, our father tore the family apart!" the Dark Elf snapped as he pulled away from her, sat down on the bed and hid his face in his palms.
She always found him. No matter where he was on his birthday, his sister always managed to find him. The meetings were never pleasant either. "You both were so arrogant," he growled. "You thought you could change everything."
"Maybe if you had helped us…"
"I was going to have nothing to do with your obsession with the past!"
The Mer grunted as his sister pounced onto him and pinned him down onto the bed by his shoulders. Her crimson eyes burned right through him, unblinking and unsympathetic. He tried to throw her off, but she had always been the stronger one in the family, even with him being bigger. As a mage, his strength was in his magicka not his muscles.
"We were all the family you had left!" she snarled angrily. "That Argonian ruined everything for us and yet you sit here, enjoying the comforts of his school," she grinned wickedly, "and the leftovers of his shattered marriage."
"Leave Brelyna out of this," he warned her. "KaNack is a member of the Imperial Legion; he was simply doing his job." He tried again to struggle free, but that only caused his twin's smile to broaden. "I tried to warn Father his plan was doomed from the beginning, but he would not see reason."
The she-elf sighed and released her grip, allowing her brother to sit up. The Dunmer cupped Traven's chin in her hand. "Perhaps if you had been with us we would not have failed," she said gently. "Your magicka was so strong, Tray Tray, just like our father."
The mage grimaced and pulled his head away.
"I could never forgive him for what he did to us," he choked. "We were so close as children. Do you remember how we used to go to our special place by the shores of Solstheim and swim? We would tell each other everything; we were the best of friends."
"We could have remained so," she insisted. "You were the one who turned me away."
"He changed you." Traven gave her a sideways glare. "You stopped being my sister and became something cruel."
"When Mother died, our father saw his opportunity to begin training me to be a killer," she answered simply. "Just as he shared his knowledge of destruction magic with you."
"I accepted the lessons in Arcane Arts, but I wasn't going to use my gifts to hurt people," he hissed in disgust. "You had such promise and he twisted your soul. He was a sick man."
The Mer clenched his teeth as he thought back to the horrible days with their father. With their mother gone there was nothing to stop him from training the twins to become tools for his own means.
"You loved life so much. Those animals you and I befriended in the woods? The ones we were able to feed by hand because we had earned their trust? Father made you start killing them," he groaned.
"You sobbed and begged for their lives, but he wouldn't allow you to come home until you had them gasping their last breath. Soon you stopped seeing them as your friends; they were now your prey. Their deaths rewarded you with the trophies that permitted you to be able to pass through our doors each day." He glared at her. "The ones who had been foolish enough to trust us all fell to your bow and blade. I hardly ever saw any creatures in the forest because of your hunting. The animals saw us as the bringers of death and they were right."
"I don't mourn those animals; they were means to an end to prepare me for much larger and deadlier prey." His twin gave him a sideways glance. "You mourn the lives of those stupid creatures but not our Father," she observed, before pulling out her dagger and running her fingers along the flat side of the blade lovingly. "Admit it; you were thrilled the day you learned he had died."
"I hated him for killing the sister I loved," Traven remarked as he paced before his bed. "He destroyed her and created a merciless and manipulative killer with a heart as empty as the Void. He tainted your soul to the point where you began seeing everything in a different light…even me."
"Awww, you're pining because I played with you a little too rough that one day when we were teenagers?" she sneered as she swung her legs over the side of the bed.
"You know damn well what you did!" he spat venomously. "By the Eight, you were my sibling! What you did to me was beyond reprehensible! Beyond sickening! After that day things could never be the same between us. I realized that I had lost you as a friend and a sister."
"Father made me stronger."
"Father made you insane."
"Tray Tray," she purred, embracing her sibling to touch noses with him. "You should know better than to call me crazy." She ran a finger down the side of his cheek that had a light scar on it. "Remember when you questioned my sanity before? You weren't even able to fight back, you fetcher."
"I simply refused to hurt one whom I still considered my sister," he retorted, staring sadly at the floor. "I had to fight to retain my sanity and my sense of common decency until I had grown old enough to survive on my own. I got away from that man and managed to escape the same fate as you."
"Escape? You abandoned us." The she-elf took her twin's hand. "I had given up on you; I thought you were too weak to be of any use to us. He still wanted to give you a second chance and allow you to return to the family."
"You weren't my family," he declared bitterly, pulling his hand away from the Mer. "You were a pair of elves obsessed with the past who thought they could destroy an entire guild. That man thought I would be so happy to see him again, that I would leap at the chance to once again stand by his side. Blood ties or not, I turned him away."
Traven sat before the mirror, staring at his reflection. He was so relieved that most of his facial structure had come from his mother; he didn't think he could bear staring his father in the face every time he looked at himself. "I am sure that if I had been foolish enough to join you both, I would have suffered a similar fate." The brother's eyes narrowed. "I hope his end was an agonizing one. I hope he suffered the way he made us suffer."
The mage gasped as he felt an arm wrap around his throat and tighten, closing off his windpipes. He pulled at his sister's arm and tried to pry it away, but she refused to release her sibling this time.
"How dare you!" she screamed. "That man was our father! He gave us life! He took care of us when our mother succumbed to the Crimson Plague! We never would have made it without him and you speak of him in such a way?!"
"I can't breathe! Stop!" he wheezed, struggling to break free.
"You were my brother! You were supposed to be there for us!" she howled. "It's your fault that we failed! You should have been there to look out for me! You could have kept me safe but instead I was taken to Solitude! Where were you, Traven?! Where were you when I needed you?!"
The lack of oxygen and the rush of emotions running through the caster's body caused a vicious and abrupt reaction. A powerful burst of frost erupted from his hands forcing his sister to leap away from him, shocked by the piercing bite of the cold.
Traven held his throat, coughing and wheezing, trying to recover from the assault. He squeezed his eyes shut, tears threatening to spill.
"I'm sorry, Dinya! I'm sorry I wasn't able to stop our father when we were children! I'm sorry I wasn't there to save you from Solitude! I'm sorry you died, but there is nothing I can do to change that!" The mage hid his face in his arms on the table, wishing that his sister's spirit would stop haunting him.
The memory of his twin always seemed to be so real that it played with his psyche. Since she had been executed, Dinya always showed up on their birthday and she never let him forget that she died because he had decided to leave her alone with their father.
Traven groaned and looked up when he felt his hair being lovingly stroked. His sister smiled sadly at him as she continued the kind gesture.
"Oh, Tray Tray," she cooed before embracing him and resting her head on his shoulder. "Why do we keep doing this to each other? Why must we fight each time we meet like this?"
"Why can't you just stay gone?" he asked, refusing to look her in the eye. "You died, Dinya. I can't do anything to change that. Why must you keep haunting me like this?"
"I'm not doing this," the Mer answered still stroking his hair. "I'm not some ghost or conjuration. I am a figment brought forth by your own sense of guilt." Dinya squeezed her brother tighter. "You claim that Father didn't make you crazy, yet here you are, talking to your dead twin. One cannot be this affected by their imagination unless they were a little touched in the head."
"I'm not crazy," the Dunmer insisted, more for his sake than anything else. "Yet, I do regret finding out what happened to you too late. I would have tried to get you away from the Imperials, Dinya. You know that?"
"But you didn't," she sighed. "You were halfway across Skyrim when I was marched to that chopping block. Now your remorse overwhelms you because deep down you realize that Father and I might still be alive if you had simply returned to us. Why else do you think I come to you on our birthday?"
She nibbled on his ear which made Traven flinch away from her in disgust. The mage scowled at her, clasping a hand to his head. "Don't do that…That change in your behavior was one of the reasons I could no longer see you as my sibling. You looked at me not as your brother, but something else. It sickened me."
"If I'm doing it now, that must be telling you something about your subconscious, Tray Tray," Dinya giggled. Resting her palms on the table, the she-elf looked at both her and the mage's reflections in the mirror. "You do know that the lizard has officially named your lover as the next Arch Mage when he passes on?" A wicked smile crept up her face. "If something were to happen to him, it would leave the college in Brelyna's hands."
"Dinya," he warned her.
"Keep up your charming personality, win her faith and devotion," she insisted. "Then soon she will name you as the next in line to be Arch Mage. Of course you could not do anything right after the announcement, you'd have to bide your time…"
"Dinya!" he snarled, pulling away from his sibling. "I'm not like you or Father. I don't kill innocent people."
"Arch Mage Traven," the Mer continued unfazed, "just seems to roll off the tongue, doesn't it?"
"I'm not like you," the mage repeated in a shaky voice.
"No?" she snorted. "I keep telling you that I am a part of your own psyche, Tray Tray. This is your manipulative plan; you merely wanted to hear it coming from my mouth in some desperate attempt to absolve you of this plot."
She smirked when her sibling turned away from her.
"You can try and fight it all you want, but you have the same bloodlust as Father or myself. The more you give into it, the more you will see of me." Dinya grasped onto the mage's shoulders, lovingly rubbing them. "I am your darker half, dear brother. I am that which you thought you had escaped from Father's training." She leaned down to rasp in his ear. "You were cursed before you even left our little island."
Traven slowly turned his head and trembled at the sight of his twin's piercing red eyes. He didn't want to admit to it, but he knew damn well that she was nothing more than his own mind playing tricks on him. Her words were his words, her actions were his actions, and her violence was his violence.
"I don't want to hurt anyone," he whispered in desperation.
"Fine," she huffed. "You want to become Arch Mage by playing the waiting game? That's your decision, but you will more than likely have to wait centuries for those robes, brother. Think you can be that patient?"
"I'm not obsessed with recognition like you and Father were, Dinya."
"Of course, you became close to Brelyna merely because of her personable nature," she rolled her eyes.
"I love her!"
"Skeever droppings," the Mer growled cruelly. "If you truly love her, then why haven't you told her the truth when she asks you about your family? Afraid that she might see you as a risk and quash all hopes of you running this school one day? True love is about always being honest with one another."
"No, it's not!" he snapped. "It's about saying what the other person wants to hear in order to keep them happy." Traven froze when he realized what he had just said. His sister's wicked laughter did not help matters in the slightest.
"Well, you didn't even need me to say it. Your shell is starting to crack, Tray Tray. It's only a matter of time before you come to realize that in the end you are no different from our father. One who is willing to endure anything and do whatever it takes to get what he wants." She kissed him on the top of his head and beamed proudly at their reflections. "Oh, we're soon going to be seeing a lot more of each other, brother. The more you embrace your dark half, the more often you will see me."
Traven grimaced as he reached up to rest a hand on his sister's arm. "Is once a year not enough for you?"
"Never," she snickered. "We're going to do great things together, Tray Tray. Terrible things. It will be like it should have been, the two of us working together to make a name for ourselves. Once you become Arch Mage, you will have a legion of mages at your disposal. It took only five to defeat Stormcloak's army; can you imagine what an entire school would be capable of?"
"That's a horrible thought," the caster muttered. "Dinya, the students of Winterhold have been trained to never use their gifts against the innocent. This notion of yours is impossible."
"Not if you embrace the right students," the Dunmer purred, nuzzling into the crook of his neck. "Poison a tree at the roots and its fruit will be rotten to the core."
Traven's teeth clenched, hating himself because he knew the only reason his sibling was telling him these things were because he had already been contemplating them. He had hoped that by leaving Solstheim and his father that he would have avoided becoming a manipulative killer like Dinya. It was obvious that he had left far too late; the damage had been done.
The mage jumped when he heard a knocking on his door. It was the Arch Mage, the Argonian. He approached him with a smile, it was not awkward for the reptile at all; he did not realize that he had brought the Dunmer's sister to her death.
"Traven, I hope I am not bothering you." The conjurer moved to where Dinya was standing and the she-elf was forced to move out of the way. She snarled at him and withdrew her daedric dagger.
"No," Traven uttered, glancing nervously at the Dunmer beside KaNack. He knew Dinya couldn't hurt the headmaster, but seeing that blade in her grasp still made him uneasy.
"Well, as a birthday present I wanted to share something with you." The Arch Mage pulled out a map and handed it to the Dark Elf. "I marked a place on there; it's called the Eldergleam Sanctuary." The Arch Mage smiled sadly. "Brelyna always loved it when I took her there and she hasn't gone in ages." He winked at him. "It would really make her happy if you started to take her there every once in a while. Plus, barely anyone outside of the worshipers know of its location, you'd be given plenty of privacy."
"How sweet, he's trying to help you bed his ex-wife," Dinya sneered.
"Quiet," Traven hissed.
"Excuse me?" KaNack blinked.
"Uh, I said…Why it's…Why it's perfect," the Mer stumbled over his words as he looked over the marked map. "I have to say, you've been more than understanding. I had always thought you were bitter of me because of your and Brelyna's past."
"Things happen, life moves on, love is lost and love is found," the Arch Mage responded with a shrug. "After all, as headmaster of this school it is my duty to make sure everyone here is well taken care of."
"Shut up, you fetcher! You aren't half the wizard Othrelos was!" Dinya snarled as she swung her blade at the Argonian's throat, the weapon moving right through the mage and him none the wiser to her presence. Traven clenched his teeth and was very much grateful that his violent sibling could only be seen or heard by him.
"Anyway, I was sent up here by the lovely, Brelyna. She is very impatiently waiting for you by the stables to begin the day with you. Don't keep her waiting."
"I won't. Thank you for your gift, KaNack," Traven said as he pocketed the map in his satchel. The Argonian bowed politely to him and left the room. Dinya snorted in his direction and sheathed her blade.
"He's still obsessed with the girl," she snorted. "He's even trying to make you go to the same places he took her. Freak."
"You're one to talk about having sick relationships, my dear," the caster grumbled as he fixed his clothes that had been disheveled by his interaction with his twin. "Father was always telling you not to play with your food." He couldn't help by smile wickedly at the thought; his twin was smirking as well.
"Hah! That he did." The she-elf returned to her sibling and grabbed a brush to help smooth out his hair. "I miss this," she said quietly. "Us just being together and talking civilly. I always look forward to our birthday, because I get to see you again, Tray Tray. We fight, but isn't fighting common between brother and sister?"
Traven frowned as he finished straitening his tunic and reached up to take the brush from his sibling's hands. "We will talk later tonight, I promise," he insisted.
"Don't lie," Dinya muttered, turning from him sadly. "You will be with that other Mer all night. I will be gone the next time you are alone. This is the only time we can be together until you learn to embrace your true nature."
"I'm not ready yet," he confessed.
"Soon," she soothed as she gently wrapped her arms around him once more in a loving embrace. "Soon we will get to see each other outside of our birthday." She gleamed at her brother's reflection. "I love you, Tray Tray."
"I love you too, Dinya." He stood up from the chair and started for the door. The mage turned back and looked at her sadly. "See you next year?"
"You always do."
With that, the Dunmer left his room to enjoy the rest of his birthday with Brelyna. One day his darker half would rear its ugly head, but for now, the wolf was going to remain in the sheep's clothing.