I love the smell of Thu'um in the morning. Smells like **sniff** hell breaking loose.
-)
The Bee and Barb went deathly silent. All eyes were on me and this Altmer who stood too close for comfort.
My face twisted into a wicked smirk, hiding my nausea from a moment ago. "If it took you this long to figure it out, Cyrano, then you're slipping. Besides, I prefer the term renegade. So much more badass."
"Tiberia…" Cyrano was shaking his head. "Why did you run? Was it not enough?" He embraced me then, pining my arms to my sides. "Was I not enough?"
"Get off me, you son of a bitch!" I screeched, attempting to wriggle out of his grasp. "And you know damn well why I ran."
"Afraid I don't, love," he said mournfully, planting a kiss on my forehead. "You know, I'd heard someone kidnapped you from the Embassy—but I never dreamed I'd find you here in Riften."
I couldn't break free, and it was pissing me off. "I was jailbroken! Didn't Elenwen bother to mention how well their new dagger rack was working out?"
His—admittedly handsome—countenance broke into a look of utter dismay as he held me at arms length (still careful to pin my arms to my sides, though). "Did they hurt you? No, no, no… those were not orders! You were not to be harmed."
If looks could kill, the rest of this evening could have been spent drinking mead and laughing at the dead Altmer in the corner. "Bullshit,"I hissed.
"Oh, Tiberia…" Cyrano was just shaking his head. "When did you get so bitter? Was there not a time when we were happy?"
"There was a time when we were obedient," I spat, still trying to break his grip on me. "There's a hell of a difference."
Something wasn't right, here. The Cyrano I knew was cunning as a fox—vicious as one, too. He shouldn't be desolately asking what was wrong with him—he should be dragging me by my hair back to the Summerset Isles. Time to do what I did best—aggravate, annoy, and annihilate.
When he leaned in to kiss me again, I clocked him in the jaw with my forehead. He let go of me with a startled yelp, and I whipped my leg up and around to compound the pain in his jaw. But, I forgot, this was an Altmer and they're all so damn tall. Instead, my whip kick lashed across his chest, which, at least, knocked him back far enough for me to draw Mehrunes' Razor out of my boot.
"Who are you?" he spat, massaging his newly bruised jaw. "Because you're sure as hell not my Tiberia."
"First of all," I growled hefting the dagger to eye level, "I was never yours. Second of all, I am the littlest Morwyn. The one born spitting fire." And then things came pouring out in a torrent of pent-up aggression. "So bloody sorry I'm not Neva—and don't give me that look, the whole damn Clan knew you fancied her—but you made the mistake of falling for a priestess of Boethiah." He looked visibly wounded at the mention of my sister, so what self-respecting Dovahkiin wouldn't continue? "And then, when that didn't work, there was Avalon—wait! Shit! Morag Tong!" I was laughing, now. Evilly, inhumanly, viciously—but Azura damn me, I was laughing. "So the mantle fell to the youngest sister. The one barely old enough to bleed, let alone join a faction. Perfect." The bitterness in that last word shocked even myself.
Cyrano just stared at me like he couldn't believe what was coming out of my mouth. "You have things so backwards that quite frankly, I'm ashamed of myself." He sighed. "Neva was a good friend of mine—never more. And even if she weren't consecrated, there are only ever two things on her mind: power, or Daedra. And I hardly know Avalon. It was you, Tiberia, that I found fascinating."
Caught like a skeever in a trap. "We'd never met before I got to the Isles."
"That is… I mean to say…" He was scrambling to hold the façade together.
"And you've hired the Morag Tong!" I reminded him, the laughter in my voice gone. "Clearly you know Avalon."
"I tire of this charade!" Fed up, he grabbed a vicious fistful of my hair, jerking my head up to face him. "You, woman, are mine!"
I burst out laughing—that same, inhuman laugh—even though he was close to tearing my hair right out. "Oh, there you are, Cyrano. Was beginning to wonder when you'd bother to show up." I slammed my knee into his gut, and he released me, grunting and spluttering curses all the while.
"You half-Dunmeri bitch," he growled as I leapt out of his range.
"Glad to see you're up to date. Aren't I breaking enough Altmeri breeding rules to have this idiotic idea annulled, yet?" I lunged forward to slash at him with Mehrunes' Razor. Yet he instinctively shied away, and I smirked. "You know this blade." I shook the implement in question to illustrate. "You know what it does."
He drew his sword, and the light glinted up the side like a brief ray of sunlight. "Come quietly and I won't have to harm you."
My brow furrowed as his sword lowered, and I then realized: Brynjolf had his trusty Orcish dagger up against my opponent's neck. "Leave the lass alone, and you may just walk out of here with everything intact," he growled. "But no promises."
"Cyrano Feliciano, I challenge you to single, open combat," I called, waving Brynjolf off. The Nord knew that phrase, at least, and slid back into the shadows, off to go help Delvin and Vex hold down Ondolemar. They'd already knocked out Rulindil.
"Tiberia Morwyn, I accept," he growled back, sheathing his sword to call upon his magicka. "When you lose, you're coming back the Summerset Isles with me."
"I don't do failure," I growled, sheathing the razor for now, and calling upon my newly-healed magicka.
At first we circled each other in the open, table-less portion of the Bee and Barb. The first few moments were like watching two Valenwood jungle cats prowling. He caved first, sending a fireball my way, which I quickly absorbed with a hastily cast ward. I sent several ice spikes his way, but each shot was either absorbed by a ward or slammed uselessly into the wall behind him. Damn, I thought. The boy's pretty fast for a High Elf.
After those first few wary spells, we attacked each other head on. The specialty of House Morwyn is, among other things, hand-to-hand combat laced with magic. Each punch, each kick, each flurry of elbows and knees was augmented by frost, fire, or shock on my end. I was trying to keep Cyrano from drawing his sword, since I was unarmed but for the Razor in my (inconveniently placed) boot. I slammed an especially well-executed stomp kick into his solar plexus, and Cyrano slammed painfully into one of the (blessedly sturdy) pillars.
He peeled himself off the wood with a sound like paper tearing, growled, "Enough games!" and drew his sword.
Shit; shit; shit; shit, went the voice in my head. Run; run; run; run, went my common sense. But I was tired of running, tied of being forced out of my current home by the man standing across from me. I drew Mehrunes' Razor as he came at me, and braced for impact.
"Dragonborn!"
My title forced my head to whip around, only to discover Mercer tossing me his golden, Dwarven sword, hilt first. I caught it and whipped it around just in time to clash with Cyrano's elven blade. The resonance made my arm quiver. Damn, Mercer's blade was heavy! Reminded me why I never used Dwarven… wait. "What did you say?" I called to Mercer.
But I never got an answer, being forced back into the duel. We hacked and slashed, thrust and parried, trying to keep up this deadly dance. My usual two-handed smash—where I sent each blade whirling up and over my head to slam into my opponent in rapid succession—was proving difficult to accomplish with a dagger in one hand. He could time his parries just right to knock me off balance, given that I had to lunge forward to make contact with the dagger.
But then, the situation deadlocked. Our swords were grinding together—the Elven and the Dwarven—being held in place by our brute strength. However, given that I'm a woman, I don't have deep reserves of that. Cyrano's simple strength won out in the end, and he broke the stalemate, sending both the Razor and Mercer's sword clattering to the ground. He slammed me up against one of the pillars, pressing the blade against my neck. "Do you yield?" He hissed.
Now, I've my fair share of stupid ideas over the years. My share of brilliant ones, too. Lots of hard decision I've had to make, and lots of easy ones. And this? This was a tough one. I was down to nothing. My magicka was spent, my blades on the ground, and none more hidden on my person because stupid me didn't go to a wedding armed to the teeth. That left me with two weapons—my wits, and the unthinkable. Sigh—the things I do to survive.
I forced a tremor into my lips, my eyes to water, and sniffed daintily—for all the world, I knew it looked like I was crying. And this sniveling messwas the Tiberia he remembered. "Uhm, Tiberia…?" he sheathed his sword, my yield forgotten. "Dear heart, don't cry." He encircled me with both arms again, awkwardly patting my back, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few of my Guildmates—Thrynn, Vekel, and Sapphire—look confused as all hell, but a few more—Brynjolf, Vex, and Tonilia—smirk because they realized I'd never yielded.
I fake-sobbed into his chest, my hands going to the lapels on his Thalmor robes. "There is something I have always wanted to say to you," I sniffed, "since I first realized I could."
I felt his heartbeat quicken. "And what would that be, love?"
In that moment, I made the hardest decision of my life. I drew in a huge breath, raised my head, and Cyrano realized his mistake when my eyes were dry. But it was too late:
"Fus."The first word of power was no more than a whisper.
"Ro." The second word of power was a bit louder than my speaking voice, and the aura of power beneath it grew.
"DAH!" The final word of power was a glorious roar.
The force of my shout sent Cyrano flying across the room, and crashing not into, but through the double doors that led to the marketplace. Howling with that same inhuman laughter from before, I scooped up the Razor and Mercer's sword and pounded out the doors after that bloody, bloody Altmer.
