Chapter 17: The Apathy in a Well-Place Arrow

Nim sat with her feet in a shallow pool at the edge of the Great Forest south of Chorrol. She was half-way into a week-long spiritual cleanse before she was to leave the wilderness for the Imperial City. While she loved her new manor and although it was looking scores better now than it had just a month prior, the sudden focus on material possession was weighing heavily on Nim. All this waiting for a letter from Traven, the talk of necromancers without any active movement, the rush of stealing she felt compelled to satisfy, and the lingering thoughts of Raminus were not conducive to her productivity.

She'd face them all soon enough. But for now she prayed in silence.

She had been travelling in search of Wayshrines and inner peace, a reconnection to Kynareth's fertile lands and Cyrodiil's natural beauty. Her path took her north of the Gold Coast and through the imperial reserve where she had prayed at a shrine of Mara and Arkay. She marked them off on her map.

Nim spent the previous night at the humble farmhouse of her two close friends, Guilbert and Reynald Jemane. She had met Reynald while having a somber, defeated drink in Chorrol on the night Teekus had first turned down her application to join the Mages Guild. The drunk Breton offered to pick up her tab as long as she sent a message to the fellow trading on his name in Cheydinhal. As it turned out, the doppleganger he had heard about was his twin brother and they were united at last all thanks to Nim. Though she hadn't been out to visit in many moons, they always welcomed her with open arms.

Weatherleah, the Jemane's homestead, was nestled between two crumbling shrines, one of Julianos and one of Kynareth. Having gotten an early start on her next objective, Nim took the late afternoon to relax among the quiet woods and breathe deeply. The air was fragrant with moss that grew from the moist soil and coated rocks around her. She laid against the bank of the pond with her bare feet sinking into its fine mud and listened for the call of the cat-birds in the branches of the sugar maple above.

The yellow glow of the sun peeking through the canopy warmed her eyelids as she held them shut against its rays. She focused her minds eye on the rustle of the fauna through the underbrush. A lizard or two in a territorial dispute, a rabbit scurrying back to its burrow. This calm she felt embrace her could never be recreated by illusion magic. Hours could have passed and Nim would not have known. She sighed.

As twilight fell across the sky, Nim skirted closer to the forest edge near the Black Road. She was looking for spiritual retreat, not looking to get herself killed. There were bandits and trolls about in these parts, and she had heard the rumors from Seed-Neeus in Chorrol that strange town of isolated denizens occupied these woods. Nim did not care to meet them tonight.

The sound of hooves against the cobblestone alerted her to approaching travelers. She dove behind a dense patch of privet and laid on her stomach as she peered out on to the road. Her heart skipped as the travelling party grew closer.

There, riding a white steed, was Countess Alessia Caro. She was accompanied by her hand-maiden, Hildara Mothril, and flanked by two guards in iron cuirasses that bore the crest of Leyawiin County. Nim's blood turned electric as the Countess's face became clearer.

She hadn't seen the woman in nearly three years, not since she watched her smug smirk amongst the rows of Leyawiin's citizens at J'rasha's trial. Gruesome memories of her lover's dead body left to rot in torture chambers of the castle invaded her mind.

The room was red. The floor, the walls. All of it streaked by bloodied handprints whose owners last screams would echo against the stained stone for time immemorable. She spied J'rasha's body in the corner beneath another Khajiit, one she did not know, one who would never be claimed or seen again. Evidence of her lover's torture remained all around him.

His index and middle finger, cleaved from his left hand, carelessly strewn across the floor of the dungeon. The fangs and bloody forceps on the table nearby. She ran to him and threw herself across his remains. For the remainder of her days she would remember the feel of him like this. The fur of his forehead, matted with dried blood, against her cheek as she held him and wept. His cold, rigid body pressed against her small frame as she willed it to return to her, as she begged Arkay to breathe life into him once more if only just to say goodbye.

And here rode the woman responsible for all the death in that room, for all the innocent lives now withering away in the dungeons of Castle Leyawiin. How could she continue her existence unhaunted by her crimes? Nim's heart collapsed and shattered all over again as the Countess's party passed by. Watching her breathe was an insult to J'rasha's memory.

Nim's hands were moving into action before she had registered the motion. Her long copper-hair was now up in a loose bun at the back of her head as she slipped the Gray Cowl over her head and cast invisibility. She strung her bow as she stalked along-side the road behind the thick vegetation. Only five hunting arrows remained in her quiver. They were legionnaire steel that she had stolen from the Northwest guard tower in the Imperial city, tipped with a poison of drain fatigue to prevent her prey from escaping. None of that mattered now. If Nim was equipped with only a length of twine, the Countess would still not live to see another day.

She let her arrow fly. It struck Alessia Caro in the side of her neck. The Countess choked back a scream as she lurched forward in the saddle. Nim shot again and ran forward. Refreshing her invisibility spell, she stepped into the road just close enough to watch the Countess's face contort in shock. It was streaked with blood as a red trail flowed across her pale skin from her mouth and the wounds in her neck. Hildara Mothril screamed as her horse lifted its forelegs off the ground and took off running down the road. One of the guards ran to the Countess, carrying her body down from the horse. The other drew his sword and prepared himself for a fight.

Nim could not hear the shouting over the thrum of blood racing in her ears. She stepped closer, closer, closer until the Countess's head was right at her feet. The woman gasped and sputtered below. Her eyes, brown as a red oak's bark, were wide in shock. Nim touched the neck of the guard beside Alessia and released a paralyze spell. She gave him a shove and he fell forward onto his face. Nim directed her next shot at the wandering guard with his weapon drawn who's back was fortunately turned to her.

She wondered if the Countess knew she was about to die, if the terror of her nonexistence was realized. Was Alessia praying to the Nines to forgive her? In these final moments before the darkness consumed her, was she sorry for anything she had done?

Nim reached down and pressed two fingers to the Countess's lips. Her blood was thick and warm as she rolled it between her fingers. Down the road, Hildara had finally regained control of her horse. The Altmer dismounted and came sprinting toward the Countess's body. Falling to her knees, Hildara cast a blue light of restoration magic over Alessia's body. Nim stepped back into the forest and watched through the eyes of the cowl as the Countess's aura dimmed.

Splitting the skin of her cheek open on the thorns of berry bushes and jagged tips of shrubs, Nim sprinted through the forests of Chorrol with fresh blood drying on her fingertips. She didn't stop until she reached the Waterfront District. Under the cloak of nightfall, the Bosmer slouched against a tree across from the abandoned shack and stared into her pack. Her hands trembled as she sifted through her belongings. The gray cowl stared back at her. Nocturnal could not have intended its use for this. The blue runes running along the eye sockets shimmered in the moonlight as though winking at her.

The bitch was slain, she whispered. She would by lying through her teeth if it did not please her. And a witch remains.

For the first time, she had taken a life not in self-defense. Alessia Caro was a vile woman, but she was not a necromancer or a bandit. She was a noble woman, a Countess. The roads would be swarming with legion guards by now, all looking for her. Alessia Caro was not a skooma runner. But she was not an innocent.

Nim thought she'd have felt something by now. Regret, disgust, at least a sense of unease. She thought she would have retched or dry heaved or cried out to the Nine to take her miserable life now before she harms anyone one else on Nirn. All she felt was the sting of thin cuts along her face and an empty churning in her gut. The indifference was almost worse than shame.

Nim stood to her feet and kicked the dirt furiously, choking back a scream as she envisioned strangling herself and then Count of Anvil.

This was the recklessness she had been wary of after donning the cowl for the first night. This was exactly the kind of power she feared would fall into the wrong hands. She had tried to tell Corvus. There were far worthier thieves with experience in leadership to take possession of the cowl. Such a powerful artifact should be returned to the Daedra, not passed between the hands of men to steal shiny trinkets and slink in the shadows. No one knew she was in possession of it, not Armand, not Methredehl, not Amusei, and no one had to know if that's what she decided on.

She had stolen a life with it. Not a soul, but the spark of the flesh.

Oblivion take her, she'd cast it into the fire and everyone would assume the immortal Gray Fox was finally laid to rest. She took a few deep breaths to soothe the bloodlust raging within her. Killing Corvus wouldn't change her situation in the slightest. Cowl or not, she knew it wasn't the Gray Fox who had fired the arrow into the throat of Alessia Caro, and the Gods knew it too.

Nim turned to Lake Rumare and undressed down to her underclothes. She shivered violently from the surge of adrenaline. A gust of Mid-Year wind lifted off the water and passed over her. She dipped her head below the surface. The frigid water of Lake Rumare was certainly no better than standing near naked on the beach. She scrubbed her arms, her legs, her face until she felt the skin tingly raw and abraded. After 10 minutes, she emerged blood-free and blue in the lips but satisfied with her cleansing.

She had no doubt that there would be a party looking for her within the next few hours but knowing that evil woman would never again take pleasure in the torture of 'lesser races' set her thoughts at ease.

Nim took a large green cloak from her pack and wrapped it around her body as she made her way to Methredehl's door. The dark-haired Bosmer answered and immediately pulled her friend inside upon seeing the dripping girl's colorless face.

"What on Nirn? Get in here, you lunatic!"

Nim didn't need to be told twice. She ran toward the fireplace and sent a large burst of flame shooting from her palms. She sat down on the floor as close to the fire as she could without catching her cloak aflame. Methredhel took a seat beside her on a small wooden stool and offered her friend a blanket and half a bottle wine. Nim took both gratefully.

"Should I ask?"

"Give me a few minutes. I can't feel my lips."

Nim stayed in the Imperial City for two days and by the end, she felt much more herself. Even better than she did before leaving Anvil, she realized. Was it the fresh air of the Great Forest? Her truncated pilgrimage and self reflection? Was it whispers of Alessia Caro's death passing through the lips of the city-dwellers wherever she turned?

Whatever it was, Nim proceeded on with her life without so much of a blink, as though the entire incident had been a simple blip. The apathy alarmed her at first. Was she repressing her guilt?

Once or twice as she lay awake at night, she had imagined what both her and Alessia Caro's life would have been like had she chosen to swallow her seething anger and let it bubble and spit in the base of her belly for the rest of her days. Nim imagined herself sitting in one of the pews of the Chapel of Zenithar, watching as Marus and Alessia Caro strolled through the grey stone rows, perhaps with a fat, young child waddling in front of them and a pair of guards close behind. They'd pray at the altar and call themselves good Gods-fearing men before returning to their secret dungeons to torture another soul guilty only of being born the wrong race. Well, she'd be miserable in that life, she conceded, and thus she slept each night with great ease.

Good men, bad men, everyone dies, she told herself. Why burden myself with regret? It wasn't her first kill, only the first one she had committed without being provoked into a fight. And quite frankly, It was best the Countess got what was coming before she had the opportunity to strike again. She had done Cyrodiil a favor. They should be thanking her.

While in the Imperial city, Nim decided to meet with Armand to see how her favorite doyen was doing, and more importantly, to see if he had received word from Corvus informing him of a change in leadership. From what she gathered through experience, the Gray Fox seemed to lead from afar, only calling on individuals when he had specific self-serving reason. The guild was fairly autonomous and Armand was more than capable of running the local chapters without the aid of daedric magic.

She still wasn't sure of the power the cowl granted it's wearer. Was it safe to pass off? Did it know who was worth?

Although she wasn't rejecting the role of guild leader, Nim didn't feel right about disclosing the nature of her new appointment. Maybe she'd check in next month. Maybe planning a heist here or there wouldn't be so hard. It's just that… nothing seemed particularly worthy of stealing anymore. The thrill of slinking across the shadows, listening for the rattle of the tumblers in a locked door, and running off with a shiny new trinket had dulled compared to what she felt out on the Black Road. What had robbed her of her drive?

Methredhel had mentioned making a trip up to Bruma to off load some loot onto Ognar. Nim decided she would tag along. From there, she'd head south-west to her home in Anvil, passing Chorrol to say hi to Teekus and stopping by the Jemane brothers for a second visit. They were running low on soap and thread earlier that week. She'd be sure to pick some up for them along the way

Nim certainly preferred the privacy and extra space of living on her own, but she was still a social animal. She liked the idea of being old and surrounded by people to share strong drink and rich stories with. Best she started building and maintaining extensive networks when she was young. The whole trip would only take a few days, a week at most if she went out of her way to stop at the nearest way shrines or hunt for mushrooms along each stop. Maybe a little bit longer if she decided to murder anymore countesses.