Chapter 4: Continuing the March, Day:4
The next morning, I woke to the sound of the Commander shouting at us. He was shouting to awaken us and telling us to get our butts ready to march again. I dragged my self up and dressed in my armor again and put my claymore back in it's proper place in it's scabbard on the back of my Curiass.
After I dressed, I exited my tent. When I exited, I almost ran face first into Amakos, for he was coming in. He stopped and handed me a Plasma fruit – a vampiric fruit, it's juice has the same nutrients that vampires need in it. It's like fruit and blood combined. I LOVE plasma fruit! With me being a Daedra, especially a Dremora, I eat flesh and drink blood – usually from the mortal races, though. The plasma fruit helped me, somewhat, but for some odd reason, I could not shake this depressing feeling away. I think it maybe because of last night, poor Sunazi, he was such a good person, and a good friend.
After I ate my plasma fruit, I headed over to where the soldiers were already starting to train. We must be getting our heart rates up before moving on, no need to start getting soft. Our drilling is going to last about a half hour, less than the average physical education class. We did six different movement activities which were, jumping jacks, push ups, curl ups, lunges, and plank/milk jugs. Each drill took about five minutes each. After the light drills, we did another half hour of sparring.
For the sparring, I was paired with Mendrike. I don't really know who Mendrike is, but I have seen him around the Sigil keep every now and then. We usually passed by each other though, we have never spoken to each other.
I have to say this, Mendrike is one tough Dremora! I was barely able to get a few hits on him. He must be a master of two-handed weapons. Every time I advanced, he was able to evade my attack.
After our sparring, we all grouped back into our line formations. Our formation is five wide and ten deep for each group, we had about twenty different groups. My group is the fifth group back. That may seem far away, but it is close for my rank.
While we were traveling, we eventually ran into a bandit clan. When they first seen us, they must have thought that we were just a small unit, but as we got nearer to them, they took off running and screaming, "Daedra! Daedra!" Well, no dip! I mean of course we're Daedra! We are certainly not humans, and we would be really weird looking elves – who ever heard of elves with dark brown-black skin, horns, and fangs, fully armed coming out of a portal?
We sent a small search party after them. I was a part of the party. We were a small group of four, me, and three others that I barely know – Novaradi Morada, Sanguine-named after the Daedric prince of debauchery, and Ziranor Tiraith. Okay, I do know Novaradi pretty well, we used to hang out a lot when we were kids, but now our positions kept us busy and apart.
The bandits left a pretty easy trail to follow. They ran through the mud, broke branches, and pushes away brush, and some even dropped their stuff. We found some coin purses, and ripped cloth that have been caught on trees that they had ran into.
We eventually caught up to them, but that just seemed to serve to make them run faster. One poor soul managed to gather up enough courage to fight back. He stopped, he was a young Imperial man, he had bright blue eyes – similar to the woman we seen in Oblivion. His light brown hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. He wore light leather armor and carried an Iron Bow with some fairly good quality glass arrows.
When he stopped, he just stared us down as he loaded as arrow onto his bow. But before he could draw the string, Novaradi charged right up to him and hacked him in half, vertically. When the body split, the two brain halves fell from the skull to the ground. One-by-one, all of the internal organs fell from the corpse, spilling into a gruesome, bloody pile. Novaradi walked away from the corpse, cleaned his claymore in the soil and sheathed it, then re-joined us. We just stood there, stunned, we never thought that it was possible to do such a feat – to cut someone apart in that manner.
"What?" Asked Novaradi, in an annoyed tone.
"Nothing," Sanguine, Ziranor and I answered at the same time, hurriedly. Novaradi just rolled his eyes at us.
"Well, don't just stand there, get a move on!" He yelled back at us after he walked a few paces away. We nodded and followed his lead all the way back to our group.
When we arrived, our Commander stopped me.
"Did you catch them?" He asked me.
"Yes, sir, we did," I answered.
"Did you find anything good on their corpses?" He asked me.
"Not much, just some gold and I took their hearts, for me to eat," I told him.
"That's all? No good weapons or armor? What about parchment or orders?" He asked, kind of annoyed and disappointed.
"No, sir they were just your traditional bandit, not soldiers."
"Fine soldier, go back to your position, then."
"Yes, sir!"
When I was walking back to my position, Ziranor stopped me.
"What did the Commander want? Are we in trouble for something?" Ziranor asked.
"No, he just wanted to know if we caught the bandits and if we found anything on their corpses," I answered.
"Did we find anything?"
"Not really, but there was some gold and I took their hearts."
"Oh, well, maybe the gold will come of use at some point."
"Yeah, maybe, but I seriously doubt it."
With that answered, he stopped speaking, waved good-bye and turned away. I then went back to my spot next to Amakos.
We marched for several more hours, until Tamriel's sky began to darken again, I still find that a bit strange. Because it was dark, we stopped to make camp.
"Hey, Amakos," I called Amakos over.
'Yeah?", he asked once he got over to me.
"Let's make a deal, you go get the food, I'll set up our camp and get a fire going, seem reasonable to you?" I asked him.
"Sure, what do you want to eat? Rabbit, bear, deer?", he asked me.
"You can choose, I have some hearts, just bring some seasoning and some fruit, maybe a few vegetables," I told him.
"Okay, I'll be right back," he told me as he walked off towards the food tent. While he was gone, I went into our tent to change out of my armor. Taking off armor is quite a lengthy process.
First one has to remove their gauntlets or bracers. To remove those, you have to pull the tabs, pins or buttons, whatever it is that secures them on, once you pull them off the arm guards should just drop off.
Then, to remove the curiass, you must remove the various pins, tabs, bolts, and straps that are on the curiass. They are located on the shoulders, collar, and sides. After those are removed, the curiass should just drop off.
To remove the greaves, you must first take off your boots. Armor boots come off the same way as regular boots. But greaves are different from regular trousers. To remove them you must take out the bolts on the sides of the metal plating that coats the chain mail pants. There are usually two or three of such named plates on your traditional greaves. After you remove those, you must un-clip the main hook at the waist. Once you remove all of those, you should be in either your under armor or under tunics. And from there you can proceed to change into your preferred attire.
After I went through all of these steps for removing my armor, I went all over the tent – in just my underclothes- looking for my pack, which should contain my robes. The robes that I usually wear are the same style as traditional Dremora Caitiff robes. The robes are black, lined with red or just black, but mine are lined with blue instead.
Pulling the robes from my pack, I realized that I have not worn these in quite a long time. I wonder if they still fit, I believe they will, I haven't grown for a couple centuries.
Putting on robes is very simple, you just simply wrap it around you like a traditional shirt or tunic. Then you, of course, put your arms in the sleeves and button the button or brooch at the neck. And then you tie the belt at your hips.
My robe is very soft, it is made of this Tamrielic plant called Tundra Cotton. I think it grows in the tundra areas of Skyrim – Skyrim is located north of Cyrodiil, we are in Cyrodiil- I know all of this because I've seen maps of Tamriel, but that was a while ago, and Mortals tend to be indecisive, their world never stays the same for very long.
After I pulled on my robes, I walked over to our mirror, my hair was a mess. My hair is not the traditional Daedric hairstyle. The usual hair style is, for two horns, long straight hair to the shoulder – black colored- And for the four horns, short, usually to the middle of the ear or shorter. And for the rare three horns, they usually tend to stay bald. But Sunazi – he who was eaten by wolves, was a three horn with medium length mahogany colored hair- Sunazi had two horns on his head and one horn growing out of his chin. He had some war paint around the corners of his eyes and two claw mark shaped paint on each cheek. His eyes used to be red, but they became purple after all of the battles he fought in, the blood went up into his eyes and stained them forever. But anyhow, My hair is to the shoulder at my back and had short bangs in the front. I also have blood red highlights.
I grabbed my comb and started to straighten my hair. While I brushed, my eyes caught sight of my curse mark. I never used to have one, but after the battle that knocked my memory out, it appeared.
After I combed my hair, I went and retrieved my mouth cleaner, for sure, my teeth must be dirty, it's been a while since I could clean them. As I was cleaning my mouth, I inspected my fangs. Dremora do have sharper teeth than Mortals, but not fangs. I really don't know why I have them, maybe I am a Dhampir- half vampire, half other-.
Just as I finished cleaning myself up, I had the snot scared out of me by Amakos. He returned a few seconds before I finished cleaning my mouth. He was standing there, behind me, waiting for me to notice him.
When I finally turned around, he greeted me cheerfully with a simple "Hi". And I screamed my face off. He burst out laughing. Blushing, I greeted him with a simple, shaky "Hello". To be honest, I was kind of embarrassed.
"Hey, I see that you didn't make the fire yet," Amakos pointed out.
"No, not yet, I was cleaning myself up first," I answered.
"Oh, well, I brought back a hunk of bear meat, you like bear, right?" He asked.
"I do, but I have hearts, remember?" I asked, pretending to be annoyed.
"Okay", he said pretending to be sad. But then we both started to laugh.
"Hey, lets go build the fire."
When we reached outside, I heard a loud, "Grraah!" And, again, I sceamed. Looking around, I could not see who did it. But then someone from above told me to look up.
Looking up, I saw Novaradi flying, Oh yeah, I've never mentioned the fact that he's part demon. He has wings, a curse mark, and spikes coming out of his shoulders, he even has a tail! He is about a million years old. He has all white hair except for his red highlights that are similar to mine. His eyes are neon orange and his spikes and horns are gold.
Laughing in his evil sounding laugh, he landed.
"Ha! You should have seen your face!" He said in between chuckles. I answered him with silence. He just shrugged and walked with us to Amakos' and mine's camp fire spot. Lighting the fire took a while. I had to scrounge up some flint. And it didn't help that all the fire wood that we had was rotten bark. After a few tries I managed to light the fire, (not without the help of magical flames.) I took a metal tray and put the meat and a heart onto the tray above the fire. Then I sprinkles some spices on them, and put some potatoes on the side, to roast. After around 45 minutes, the meat was done. I passed the bear to Amakos and gave the roasted human heart to Novaradi, knowing that he likes Mortal meat. I just ate a heart raw.
After we finished our supper, we bid Novaradi good night, and went to our tent. Amakos and I chatted until we were tired, and fell asleep.
