(A/N: I'm surprised at the number of reviews last chapter earned me, but pleasantly so. My thanks to everyone who reviewed; here's Chapter Two.
Disclaimer: Morrowind is still not mine.)
Seyda Neen is a small town composed entirely of ramshackle huts set in muddy ground; I'm not even sure if it can rightly be called be called a town. It's inhabitants wander to and fro, completing small tasks here and there, but mostly chattering with each other. The same ocean which buoyed the prison ship here laps at the shore but a stone's throw away. Just ahead, the marshland continues for what could be leagues, or perhaps less than a few miles. I cannot be sure. But I do not care.
My mind is weak and unstable, contradiction upon contradiction. It can do little but complain as instinct overwhelms my senses, and I bolt ahead, feet splashing through the puddled mud. The townspeople are a blur, so quickly I sprint, going in leaps and bounds over even the pettiest obstacles. As the Argonian heart which thuds in my chest takes over, I feel a momentary bliss. But the sweet adrenaline rush can only last so long. Shortly after, my racing heart and racing feet together slow, dwindling to a rough plod over the sodden ground. My indulgent grin falls back into a sour grimace, and the conflicting troubles which plague my hateful mind come rushing back.
I have left the town long behind, I see. Only dank, dark marshland surrounds me now, murky bogs dotting the sloshy landscape. Vivid greens and blues dart past my eyes as dragonflies zip by, whilst puny mosquitoes peck at my hard scales in futile hopes of finding blood-drink. A sigh shudders my emaciated, bleeding body as I climb knee-deep into a bog and sit on the stagnant pool's bank. My tail sinks down in the soft soil with me, barely twitching as the mud entombs it.
I do not know if I have ever been to marsh before. Perhaps once, long ago; perhaps the Black Marsh itself. Perhaps I was tended to by ones scaly as myself. If I was, though, it was long before I can remember. As it is, my earliest memory involves a man whose name would not strike me as familiar by now. He was urging me through a test of sorts; though the details are dead to me, I do recall running breathless through the night, poison my own and blood another's mixing in my mouth. This was undoubtedly one of the first in a series of trials that would train me to be a killer.
A sudden thought intrudes my grim reminiscence. That man, Socucius, was his name? He asked me for my name, class and sign... but in the note he wrote, he never once mentioned the sign he had asked for. What other use might he have had for asking? Verification, perhaps... I had given out such information before being boarded on the ship to Vvardenfell. Most likely, he had been told all about me already--all those fool officials knew, that is--and was only asking again to test my truthfulness. Pfah.
Another inconsistency occurs to me. I was to deliver a package. Did the man give it to me? I cannot remember! I search my being, stripping off the itchy clothing as I look. I finally think reasonably, looking inside the pack of gold coins and finding a bundle of paper tied up with twine, addressed to one "Caius Cosades". He--Antonius, that is--had assumed I would toss the letter away and keep the gold, so had packed them together. On the contrary, the gold bores me. Intrigued by the letter, I slit the strings with my claws and unfold the paper, smoothing out the creases as best I can and leaving dark smears of marsh mud. Scribbled on the letter is some sort of gibberish I strive to decipher, but fail. Muttering crossly, I fold the paper back up--crumple, more like--and return it to the money-bag. Now, if only I can find Balmora... But what am I thinking of this for? I have no obligation to serve this corrupted empire! And yet, part of me wishes to fulfill the command. Perhaps a lifetime of being ordered around has set me in a rut...
A distant scream breaks my ponderous thoughts. My eyes are drawn skyward, to a colorful shape hurtling toward the ground. The strange object appears to be a humanoid in a colorful garment. He has picked up a lot of velocity, shooting through the air as fast as the dragonflies and every bit as gaudy. He smacks into the ground--not a bog, sadly for him--with a great splash of fetid mud. Some of the mud splashes onto me, though I am not concerned with that. I wander toward the man hesitantly. He is a wood elf, garbed in a pastel blue robe, a green book nearly as large as himself tucked under his arm, a glimmering quill stuck between his stubby fingers. His eyes are glassy, his torso bent at an impossible angle. The fall has clearly killed him.
Just seconds later, something flutters down out of the sky and lands on my head. I remove and examine it. It is a hat, appropriately enough, yellow, triangular and undoubtedly his. I stand there in shocked silence for a long moment, hat limp in my hands, unsure of what to make of all this.
And then I notice the leather pack on his back.
For reasons unknown even to me, I slip it off the Bosmer's shoulders and over my own, after emptying it of any contents. I drop the bag of gold coins in the pack, then kneel down and examine the small man. Further confusing myself. I slip the robe off his small frame, bundle it up and stuff it in the pack after the coins. For good measure, I add the hat in as well. Pushing buttons through slits, I secure the flap closed and continue on my way, casting the naked, broken Bosmer carcass lying in the mud not even a second glance.
Guars are odd creatures, aren't they? Close relatives of the kagouti and the alit, from the looks of it, with those humongous heads, pebble-like skin and just two limbs. They have such an unwieldy way of walking, you would think for sure they would topple over, but they don't. Such thoughts cross my mind as I survey an enraged guar charging at me in its ungainly manner, mouth opening wide as it prepares to deliver a crushing bite. Snatching a thick stick off the ground, I spear it through the guar's soft underjaw and thrust it into the air, where it cries and struggles pathetically to free itself. The stick slides deeper, piercing through the roof of the guar's mouth and finally connecting with the creature's brain. Its movements grow even more frenzied at this; taking pity, I tilt my arm downwards and the let the beast slide off the stick, whereupon I stab its body full of holes with said stick. Oozing blood and other fluids out numerous openings, the guar groans and dies.
Standing triumphant over my victim, I am aware of a panging hunger in my gut. I stroke my protruding ribs absentmindedly. How many months has it been since last I ate? Three? Four? Six? The small rat I swallowed whole onboard the ship hardly counts. My kind can go far longer than the warmbloods without eating, but we must eat some time. Touching a cut on my side and half-accidentally reopening it with my claw, I urge myself to inflict more damage upon myself and go still longer without food. The smell of fresh blood whets my appetite with a vengeance, however, and next I know my jaws are clamped in the corpse's flesh, tearing out meat and wolfing it down to sate my famished body. When I have eaten my fill, I at last withdraw, wiping my snout with my arm and licking out the bits of flesh caught between my fangs.
"I hope you're pleased," I growl at myself, tail twitching irritably. "I am," I respond a second later with a self-satisfied smirk. I groan at my weak resolve and storm onward, sinking in marsh sludge up to my calves. My stomach twists unpleasantly, and I wonder if the Bosmer's flesh wouldn't have gone done easier. I am restless, though, and have no wish to turn back, so I trudge on.
I slosh through muck and cattails for quite some time, wading through small bogs and scrabbling up the small, drooping trees that sprout up in my way on occasion, scaling the tip and dropping off the other side to continue my dreary path. Something in my Argonian nature is thrilled to be here, while the rest of me moans and groans for some reason or another, averse to pleasure.
I know not for how long I wander, but by and by I encounter a voice to my left, far enough away that the speaker is out of sight. The hoarse nature of it indicates a male Dunmer is speaking; pausing to listen, I recognize that he is cursing as he endeavors to reel in an ornery slaughterfish. He wins out in the end, and the dry sound of him sloughing off the fish's scales with a knife follows soon after. Intrigued by this--and, admittedly, bored out of my skull by everything else--I draw closer. A tall tree stands in my path as I close in on the source of the sound. Without a second thought, I sink my claws into the rough bark and shimmy up the trunk, coming to a stop on a thick bough at least twenty feet off the ground. From here, I can see the Dunmer man, wrinkled and gray-haired. He sits on a squat wooden stool, busily shucking off the fish's scales with a small knife, his pupilless red eyes downturned at his work.
The Dunmer is on a dock, and the dock branches off, extending over the ocean and connecting to the marshy shore. Ramshackle wooden huts sag atop the leaning docks and on the shore, people walking in and out of them to prove there is life in that slipshod town. From my perch atop the bare tree's highest bough, I have a bird's-eye view of the whole dump. Likely, they would also have a perfect view of me, should anyone bother to look up. But they don't.
The Dunmer man finishes stripping the slaughterfish, scooping its irridescent green scales into a cloth sack and pushing the raw red corpse back into the water. The slaughterfish's meat is worthless, but the scales make a good meal. Just beyond the old mer, three Dunmer children play a game that involves setting down a rock and running a precise distance away from it. If one child goes too far or not far enough, they're chided by the other two and then it's someone else's turn to play. Turns rotate rapidly as none of the three are very expert, but that does not stop them from enjoying themselves.
"No running on the docks!" the old mer barks, waving a leathery blue arm at the youngsters. "What've I told you? They could collapse if you keep that up!"
"Aww, Grampa," the smallest frowns pleadingly. The elder two seize the younger by the arms and drag her back onto the shore obediently, though shooting their grandfather dirty looks behind his back. The old mer grumbles to himself about his snide grandchildren as he winds the fishing pole's line back up, baits the hook and lets it drop into the murky waters once more.
"'Patience is a virtue'," he quotes to no one in particular. My attention shifts back to the children. They have changed games, now racing each other around tree trunks, collapsing in the mud and squealing excitedly when caught. I wonder what it must be like, to know such a time of peace and innocence, the world yet so pure. What must it be like, to have the reassurance of someone there to protect you from the monsters beneath your bed and in your closet? Even in my youngest years, I was used as a tool of murder and corruption. No one cared enough to comfort me when I was distressed, frightened. A morose sigh shudders my body as my eyelids droop closed, though the sun is only beginning to set. Before long, sleep overwhelms...
I know this dream far too well. The skies are black and the waters red, no land in sight as I bob like a lost toy ship in the crimson sea. Inspecting my surroundings, I see mountains. At least, I think they are mountains; but as my eyes adjust, they prove to be corpses, mounds and mounds of corpses. Some have rotted to bones, others clung to by fetid clumps of flesh. Others still are recently slain, their eyes rolled up in their heads and mouths agape, fatal gashes covering their bodies, parts of them absent. Gashes slashed by my claws, body parts rended by my hands. And then there are those, who would have lived, but for the green poison filling their mouths or injected into their throats by my own fangs.
These are my victims, plentiful over the years, and there is not a single sallow face among them that I do not recognize, that I do not remember slaying. Even now, they rot to fill the earth; but in my dreams, despite their mutilations, they are still very alive. Their bones clank and move together into recognizable forms, walking on water as though it were solid ground as they lurch toward me. Green venom spirals from where they touch the water, mixing with the red water in disturbing shapes. As the enlivened carcasses reach their rotten arms toward me, I twist my head frantically, looking for an escape, and take the only way out: ducking beneath the water. I swim down, down, down into the scarlet depths, taking in the bloody water and breathing it out the gills on the sides of my head, body fluxing with the motions of swimming. I shiver violently with each breath, racked by pain, fear and guilt.
Normally, I would swim for the remainder of the dream and then awaken, in dreary spirits as always. Here, however, the dream takes a new course by devising new means of torture. My gills disappear, and I find myself filling my lungs with sanguine water, desperately trying to breathe it. At the same time, my scales lift and peel away, leaving only soft skin for the acidic water to bite and burn at. My feet are shrunken, my tail is gone, and I begin to scramble rather than swim. Suddenly the surface is right beneath me, and through it I fall, slamming backfirst on the hard floor of a dry room. My breaths are labored as I cough up water, blood and poison, until I stop breathing altogether, though I live yet. Looking up, I see the ocean of blood is gone, a dark and dusty ceiling having replaced it. Moving pains me too much to look much further, but I do notice that I cannot see my snout. Then, what little view I have is blocked by a strange sight: a golden mask, fashioned after a fiery sun but decorated by vaguely human features. I could swear it is smiling. A voice echoes from within the mask.
"You have returned at last," it states boastfully. "It took you long... but no matter, so long as you are here now." I am paralyzed, unable to lash out. Frustration and confusion fills me, and I try to give voice to my indignations; but without breath, my tongue only flutters in vain.
"You have been dead for a long time, my friend," the masked one continues, unable to hide the pleasure in his voice--it is a he. "You're confused, aren't you? Not to worry... I'm here for you. When things become clearer, we will meet again. But for now..." A long-fingered hand passes over my face, then lowers and clamps down on it. Though infuriated, I still notice that I cannot feel my snout. The hand's grip tightens, and blackness is all I see...
I burst into consciousness in a frenzied rage. I grab the nearest thing and sink my teeth into it, letting poison flow out of my fangs and into the stricken. Ripping my mouth away, I attack with my claws and rip apart the foe, too blinded my anger to see my opponent. Red and black flash before my eyes, but once the fury has finally drained from my system I see that I have successfully eviscerated a tree trunk. Feeling the straps of a leather pack digging into my shoulders, I remember where I am. Reason comes flushing back, along with humility and I am mildly embarrassed. I push the dream out of my head as best I can, but the fear and unsettlement of the nightmare does not leave me. Shivering with fear more than the chill of the night around me, I notice the stars overhead and the dormant collection of shacks below. Sighing with slight relief, I dig my claws into the ruined trunk and slide down it, feet stamping into swampy ground.
I sniff the marsh-tinted air, gather my senses and continue on.
(Chapter Three will continue the tale.)