A/N: Hoo! Double feature! I'm on a roll~

Hope this will make up for being absent for like... a year :P


Chapter 2


The blue sky turned a somber shade of amber as the swollen sun hovered close to its death upon the horizon; its hot and humid terror over the lands of the Nibenay Basin had all but ended. The breeze now carried a chill, a hint of Cyrodiil's night air that was cold all-year-round no matter how hot the days were. Vicente's first day of walking had led him closer, yet nowhere near close to Leyawiin — but it was progress. He could've taken a stop in Bravil, but he refused himself the luxury of rest, remembering that in his earliest days of being a vampire, he never felt the need for slumber. Vampires do not age, he reminded himself, yet his body had never been so weak, nor has it longed so much for the comfort of a bed. Perhaps it was because he had already suffered well past the threshold of pain, for now he could barely feel anything with his numb feet. They were bloody and bruised after the cowhide soles of his boots had been sanded away on the road, but it wasn't like that thin layer of cheap leather ever did anything to ease his walk on the rough cobblestones.

The setting sun cast long shadows everywhere in the land; Vicente had just gotten out of the shadow of one of Castle Bravil's watch towers as he clambered down the slope of a hill that Cyrodilian roadworkers weren't competent enough to tunnel through. Imperials, he cursed under his breath. He was sure that given a Breton emperor, Cyrodiil wouldn't still be wilderness and undeveloped land after two eras of settlement. There were more cities and towns in High Rock than he could count that were within walking distance to each other, and here there were only eight spread far apart and the Imperial City — though Kvatch didn't really count: it was already smoking ruin by the time he had returned to Cyrodiil months ago. He should've stayed and died in High Rock being that lonely lord's squire, but he just had to make that one stupid decision to head the expedition in Vvardenfell and get himself stricken with torturous immortality. And it was worse still that he foolishly agreed to join the ranks of the Brotherhood's assassins, for now he thought he would have been better off prowling in the Breton cities for his meals than having to wait for a new contract each time to get his monthly feed in the "cosmopolitan" center of the Empire. Regret was starting to wear away his resolve, as the stones had with his shoes.

The glowing light of a campfire in the distance stood out from the cooler colors of nightfall. Bandits? Rogues? Vicente suspected, but he spied from a distance that their tents were made of fabric too finely-woven to be the patchwork material that most rabble's tents were made of. And Cyrodiil's banditry was opposed to dancing, because here were tall figures that danced in the light of the fire, casting taller shadows that reached for Vicente as he approached their camp. Vicente wondered if they would welcome him. The thought of bandit or skooma-addled madmen had gone from his mind, and his body was all too sore and worn to consider any other dangers he might be getting into wandering into some strangers' camp.

Coming as close as a stone's throw, he stopped to watch the encampment through a delirious haze. All he could see in the light of the campfire was a band of tall revelers joining together in raucous, jovial laughter and singing that pained his head to hear. He hadn't realized that as he held his head in his hands, he had been completely rapt in their music, to the point that he was marching in their rhythym closer towards their campsite. He like he had come into the midst of the revelers, yet they did not seem to take note of his quivering presence, as he saw between his fingers the same shadows dancing as wildly and possessed as they had before, shifting larger and smaller before his eyes and taking the shape of beings inhuman. The beating of their drums and the ululating song of their singers reached a deafening volume in his ears, and soon Vicente lost himself to the delirium, not knowing whether he had just joined them in their dance or if he had slipped into the darkness unconscious, left in the mercy of the shifting shadows.


Teinaava's destrier proved a harder beast to ride than Marie had ever thought. The great horse had a temper that would've been great in the fields of battle where it should've been rode on, but on the sloping hills of the Nibenay, it could barely get on good footing. Both she and the horse were frustrated by the difficulty of the roads. She wished it had been a palfrey of High Rock, bred to be suited for long strides and uneven terrain like that of the Nibenay Basin. She remembered when her father gave her a swift white one for her birthday when she still lived in High Rock with her family, and it turned out to have been stolen from a local lord, who then had her father tried and hanged for being a horse thief. Her father's death was the first she'd ever seen, and she thought it funny how that same lord's son came back to their little farmstead later that night and tried to do with her as he pleased. She had to use a candlestick with all her might to subdue him, and it took very little on her part to beat a barely conscious man's head silly with the same wooden candlestick. When she took a good look at what she had done, she realized that the lecherous prat's father would come looking for him, and her family's farmstead would be the first place he'd come to in his search. Marie thought of running off to Skyrim in the east, which was within a couple of days' worth of walking, but she couldn't imagine leaving her mother and brother behind in the hands of a grief-stricken, soon-to-be vengeful lord. So the little Breton girl came up with her best plan and set their simple homestead ablaze while her only surviving family still slumbered, unaware of their doom.

"Seven years ago..." she whispered to herself. It's been a long way she'd come to being an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood's Cheydinhal Sanctuary. Things could have ended much earlier for her had Lucien not found her in the gutters of Cheydinhal's chapel, though she would have much preferred having Vicente find her. "Lucien's not bad-looking," she told Teinaava's destrier, walking alongside it now rather than riding on its back. "But he's not my first choice in men. I like the pale, hairless types, you know? The ones who are like, 'I'm a killer and you should stay away from me, because I'll only end up hurting you,' when I'm all like, 'I know what you are,' and this manic, unhealthy circle of a relationship keeps going and going and yet it goes nowhere at all." In reply to her chatter, the destrier merely looked at her with the same blank expression it had been carrying since they left Cheydinhal. "Oh what do you know, you're but a horse! Not a palfrey like the one my father got me, but you've still got nice thick legs for roasting," she joked, and the horse whinnied.

The road wound around the bank of a dried riverbend, ahead of which was a house or farmstead much like her own back in High Rock that was entirely consumed by an unearthly green inferno. What in Oblivion is that? she wondered. It was such an uncannily familiar scene barring the green flame, and her curiosity was driving her to watch closely by, but Teinaava's destrier was acting up in protest. "If you're not coming, then you're staying right here," she told it, tying its reins to a slender-limbed tree. "I'll be back in a minute."

She came to a jog and stopped at the gates of the burning establishment, which was an inn if the sign that hung lopsided on one remaining chain was indicative of anything. She spotted what could've been a stable off the main building's left now churning at the heart of the fire, while the first floor of the inn itself seemed to have yet been touched by the flames. She thought she'd seen the face of a young man pressed against a window by the inn's front door, red hot and covered in a sheen of sweat, begging to be saved, but just as quickly as she thought she'd seen it, the face disappeared behind the thick black smoke which quickly filled the lower floor. Bandits, she thought, blaming marauders and ill-willed brigands for what had happened today to what might have been quite a serene place by the banks of the River Niben.


The doors of the White-Gold Tower had been wide open that night to welcome the arrival of guests attending the opening event of Emperor Martin's inauguration gala. Attending was the high citizenry of the Empire's capital, as well as the nobility from the surrounding towns within Cyrodiil, and other pillars of Tamrielic society who had come to witness the officiation of Martin Septim's position as the current Emperor of the Third Empire of Tamriel, as well as being the successor to his father, Uriel VII. It was a joyous time for the people of Cyrodiil, as their previous emperor was a prude who barely left the doors of his Tower to share the wealth of the Empire through lavish and extravagant events such as the one being held that night. Martin won no more of his people's favor through this than he did through his valiant efforts in warding off the daedric invasion that had nearly doomed the known realm.

Though Chancellor Ocato had advised against such profligacies during a time when the Empire should think heavily on rebuilding, Martin was determined to carry on with that night's festivities, reasoning that such events would be necessary in rebuilding the spirit of their people.

"I will not sit idly by, enthroned behind the doors of the White-Gold Tower and give the people of Cyrodiil the impression that I will make for an emperor quiet and uncaring exactly like my father," he told the Chancellor, standing still as several squires helped him into his ceremonial dragon-plate regalia. "If anything, I will only be closer to my people now than I was before I came here."

Ocato furrowed his high brows and found no soundness in Martin's logic. "Your Sovereignty — begging all your pardons, but if memory serves, did you or did you not simply hide behind the safety of Cloud Ruler Temple's walls and your Blades for the most of the daedric invasion?"

Martin was incensed by Ocato's remark, but his time amongst the Blades in Cloud Ruler Temple taught him to stay his fury. A mad emperor was as good as none at all, as the Grandmaster of the Blades had taught him, mentioning Pelagius the Mad, who was supplanted by his own Dunmeri wife, who made for a better ruler as Empress Regent than her husband ever did. But he realized that they may have been speaking of a different sort of mad — the condition and not the emotion — but it was a good lesson all the same. "All that I do, I do for the good of the Empire," he answered vaguely, which was exactly the language that Ocato spoke.

"Better to be vague than to be wrong," Ocato reminded him, nodding in agreement.

Once the squires had fastened the dragon-plate onto their Emperor, Martin turned to Ocato another time, and asked whether the Chancellor thought his opening speech should be solemn or invigorating. "You know yourself how I felt about... her."

Ocato could only manage the best of his smiles, and feeling indecisive himself, he told Martin, with a hand on an Imperial dragon-plate shoulderpad, "Do what you feel is best, Your Sovereignty."

Martin gave Ocato one last approving nod before the doors to the balcony overlooking the plaza in the Green Emperor Way came open by the hands of his squires. "For the Empire," he said to the placid Altmer.

"For the Empire," the Chancellor returned coldly. Though there was much mentoring he found Martin was much in need of before he would ever make an emperor greater than his father was beyond and behind the doors of the White-Gold Tower, Ocato appreciated that he had a more charismatic base to work on to give the people of Tamriel the ruler they deserved. Watching the dark-haired son of Uriel VII step out onto the balcony and into the cheering and embrace of his people, Ocato couldn't help but see the similarities that he had with his father, despite all the former's insistence that he was so far separate from the latter. Uriel VII was much like his son in his youth, but then, Ocato remembered, he had not yet fully grasped the immense responsibilities and burdens that an Emperor must bear above power, glory and everything else. The elven Chancellor worried that Martin would crack underneath the pressure, but made a vow to himself that he would mentor him better than he had mentored the late Uriel VII. "For the Empire," he repeated, following Martin onto the balcony.


Chapter 2


A/N: Yes yes yes, Martin's still alive in this fic in place of the Champion of Cyrodiil because the character of the CoC is just so painfully boring and Mary-Sue-ish. So I made her sacrifice herself during Dagon's attack on the Temple of the One ala the Warden and the Archdemon in Dragon Age: Origins. But I digress. I'm probably going to feature the Hero of Kvatch in a later chapter, but that's just who he/she is: the Hero of Kvatch. The CoC and the HoK are two different people in this fic's headcanon, m'mkay?