CHAPTER 22: DARK WATERS
A/N: Please read this quick note before reading this chapter!
So, I changed Haming(Skyrim NPC) to be Loke(Fairy Tail Cameo). I did changes to chapters 1, 10, 12, 15 and 16 where he was mentioned. It was already mentioned that the lumberjack in Helgen had two sons, and now the older one is Haming and the younger one is Loke, and he was Lucy's best friend.
I know a lot of side characters could be Fairy Tail cameos, but I want to blend Skyrim and Fairy Tail so that there are Skyrim NPC's too as side characters.
I'm also trying to learn how to put the commas in dialogue "Like this," as it's proper in English instead of my mother tongue where the commas go "Like this", but it's probably going to take me a while to learn it.
Anyway, to the chapter! Enjoy!
The wind whistled across the stone roofs of Windhelm, blowing down soft flakes of snow to fall on the mage's blood-stained robes. His vaporized breath rose towards the starlit sky in short, bated puffs. Too weary to move around, shivering limbs and clattering teeth were his only effort to stay warm while waiting at the empty, silent marketplace.
If one had to summarize a man's frustration into one thing, it was getting dragged into an apothecary in the middle of the night instead of drinking some mead in a warm tavern.
"Come on, they're not going to open," Natsu sighed as Lucy knocked on the door for the fourth time. "I swear I'm fine!"
Gritting her teeth, Lucy paused for a moment before knocking again, hard enough to make the hinges rattle. "And I swear that I'm going to pick this fucking lock if they don't open. You've been poisoned, and I'm not going to rest before you're cured."
Natsu frowned, aware of the attention the noise would eventually draw. When they had arrived in the city a moment ago, the night watch had opened the gates for them before heading to solve a fight among the homeless. As most of the murders and burglaries happened at night, the guards didn't have much time to spare for the travellers passing by.
But at the rate Lucy kept banging at the apothecary's door, the guards would surely pay them some attention sooner or later. Just as if things couldn't get any worse, spending the next night in jail would be more than fitting.
"It was just a scratch. Scratch!" he emphasized, not hiding his irritation anymore. "There was barely any blood."
Lucy glanced at the torn fabric on Natsu's left shoulder, now stained by drying trickles of dark crimson liquid. The healing spell he had managed to cast had only stopped the bleeding, but the wound needed to be cleaned and bandaged soon. While he didn't want to visit Windhelm's court wizard again, he didn't want to lose his arm either. It had been through enough hardships already.
"A scratch is enough to let the poison in," Lucy answered, the furrow on her forehead deepening. "And yes, there was poison in every arrowhead I found. Even in the one with blood in it."
Natsu sighed again. If not for the shooting pain in his shoulder, or the exhaustion burning his legs, or the terrible hunger gnawing his stomach, he was feeling fine. Relatively speaking. He didn't feel anything that could be related to the poison, which he found as relieving as he found it scary.
They had left the murder scene quickly without any ceremonies, except for covering the girl's corpse with her cape. Burning the body would've drawn unwanted attention at night. The sabrecats and bears of that area would dispose of her remains through natural means.
The twilight had descended soon afterwards, and walking through the thick, dark forest with only magelight as their guide had been beyond exhausting. The movement had kept the cold at bay, but now Natsu was sure sensation would never return to his toes and fingers if he wouldn't get indoors right away. At this point, the cold would kill him faster than any poison ever would.
Natsu leaned his back to the stone wall. "I've said a hundred times that I'm just fine –"
"Some poisons are slow to act," Lucy snapped. "It might take hours, even days for the symptoms to hit. That's why we need an antidote, even if you 'feel just fine' now."
As he'd realized before, there was no way to talk her out of her decisions. 'You're as stubborn as a damn goat,' he thought but found it better not to say it out loud. Calling her a goat would be a guaranteed way to get slapped.
Or worse, yelled at.
In the dragon language.
Yet still, her determination seemed to cause more problems than it would eventually solve. If it had been Igneel who'd try to break into the Aretino residence to talk to that tormented boy, Natsu could've easily told him to back off from such a stupid, risky thing. Except that in the past, risk had equalled fun, but it no longer did. With Lucy, he couldn't say a damn word against her. At least a word heavy enough to change her mind.
He didn't really know why.
The banner swung in the wind, creaking a haunting melody to fill the silence. Natsu eyed at the mortar and pestle carved into the wood, unable to make sense out of the letters beneath the symbol. Whatever the shop's name even was, it didn't matter. The only place he wanted to be at was Candlehearth Inn.
"They're not going to open," Natsu stated again, calm but annoyed, causing Lucy to turn towards him and lock her fiery gaze with his.
"And I'm not going to find you dead next morning," she answered, her quiet voice shivering. Whether it was from the cold or the fading shock, Natsu couldn't tell, but he had to look away. Her stare persisted on him, as serious and stern as a stone.
Then, finally, the door opened.
"We're not open at this hour of the day," said a young man who peeked from the doorway, candlelight fluttering on his ridiculous sideburns. "Come tomorrow, please."
"No," Lucy told and put her feet in between the door before the man closed it in front of her. "My friend's been poisoned."
The man analyzed them both with his stare, and asked, "Really?"
It was easy to understand why the alchemist didn't quite believe them. A poisoned person would be vomiting on all fours, trembling like a fallen leaf and their skin would turn green. Natsu wasn't anything like that.
"He's been shot by an arrow dipped in this," Lucy said and pulled the small bottle from her pocket. "We have to find out what it is, and how to cure it."
"Look, I'm just an apprentice here," the man said. "My master, Nurelion, is old and sick and needs his rest. He shouldn't be disturbed until it's absolutely necessary. He can be rather… ill-tempered."
For a brief moment, Natsu wondered what would've Igneel done? He would've laughed and dragged him to have a drink instead. There's nothing that mead wouldn't heal, and if there was, death was the only remedy. Igneel never made a fuss out of nothing. Even when Natsu was bit by that giant frostbite spider, Igneel had remained calm, consoling him he'd eventually make it.
And Igneel had been right. He made it through, despite at its worst he was just lying on the ground, spasming as the fever spiked. Natsu wasn't proud of that scar for no reason. He had never been so sick in his entire life, as if his blood had frozen up in his veins. He'd rather travel by cart for a month than be bit by a spider again.
"A dead customer is very bad for the custom, as I'm sure you know," Lucy said after a short silence, drawing him back to the present moment. "Because if he doesn't make it, I'll surely spread the word that –"
"Alright, alright," the man answered, submitting to her will, and stepped aside. "Let's… Let's take a look at it."
She truly had her way with the words, it seemed.
Lucy nudged the mage gently forward, urging him to follow the alchemist. Natsu stepped over the threshold into the dark store, the scents of a thousand herbs making him dizzy. Lucy followed him and closed the door behind her.
A fire burned in the hearth in the corner of the lower floor, and Natsu had to force himself to stay put. He'd do anything to jump in front of the flames, or even into the flames, but warming up too fast could have fatal results. As frostbitten, numb limbs couldn't feel any pain, it was easy to burn them by accident. Besides, warming up too fast would cause the freezing blood to rush straight into the heart, and stop it in the worst case.
Natsu wiped his nose into his sleeve, his cheeks tingling from the warm air. He stayed behind and gazed at the bottles and ingredients resting on the shelf behind the counter.
"Nurelion?" the apprentice hollered to the upstairs. "We've got customers."
Silence fell to the store, but then an elderly High Elf walked downstairs. He was dressed in a red tunic and long, brown wool socks.
"What is it?" Nurelion asked, turning his wrinkled face towards the mages. "Can't you read a sign? We're open from dawn to dusk, you fools."
"This cannot wait to the morning," Lucy told, her tone so commanding that it was almost a shout. "He's been poisoned with this."
The High Elf glanced at his apprentice, his glare as cold as ice by having his sleep disturbed. But as an elderly shopkeeper, he must know how important good manners were to keep the shop in the good light.
The master alchemist took the bottle from Lucy's palm, and harshly pulled away the cork. He brought it below his nose and sniffed aloud. Natsu couldn't help but wonder what kind of an idiot huffed poison, but then realized that as an alchemist he had to inhale them all the time anyway.
"Smells like… Gleamblossom, for sure. Impstool, perhaps, and definitely nirnroot," Nurelion listed, then closed the bottle. "A potent mixture. Expensive. These ingredients are often used in paralysis poisons. But since you're still walking, it's either a dud or then it lingers. Never heard of it -"
A violent burst of cough caught the alchemist out of sudden. He banged his fist into his chest, bending forward in an attempt to clear his throat as his breath twisted into a whistling afternote. The apprentice hurried to fetch water or tonic for his master. He put the mug on the old man's lips, urging him to drink.
"What are your symptoms, young man?" the apprentice asked while he rubbed the master's upper back. A sip from the mug eased the cough, and Natsu realized it wasn't just water, but something stronger. "Nausea? Numbness of limbs?"
The master alchemist sat down on a bench after the apprentice had given him his medicine. The apprentice closed the bottle he had poured from, a label titled 'Nurelion's cough mixture' signed on its side. From the way Nurelion got weary and the petulance melted from his face, it couldn't be just honey and anise.
Natsu was getting so pissed off that for a moment he considered asking for a sip.
"Incredible thirst for mead, if it counts as nausea," Natsu began his list and grinned. "Numbness? Sure, froze my dick off out there."
The master let out a chuckle. "Better let her warm it up, then."
The younger man sneered, finding the master's comment just as funny as Lucy – not at all. Almost waiting for her to whack him, he began to regret having said it in the first place. But well, shit happened. He couldn't always know what to say. And especially now, he couldn't really care less.
"So, he should've been practically paralyzed the moment he was hit, is that right? Then why didn't it work?" Lucy asked, clearly trying to switch the focus from the embarrassing joke to the actual problem at hand.
"It was just a damn scratch anyway -"
"If there was blood, it should've worked," Nurelion interrupted him, grinning again. The old man was high as a cloud. "Are you a vampire? Vampires are resistant to poison."
"What?" Natsu asked, half shocked how one could even suspect that. Vampires had gleaming redeyes, sharp fangs and sickly pallor. He couldn't look that bad. "Of course not. And when I was bit by a giant frostbite spider, I felt fucking horrible for a month. Was pretty sure that I'd just die."
"Spiders are venomous," Nurelion answered and laughed a bit. "But plants like gleamblossom or nightshade are poisonous. There's a difference between a botanical poison, which affects when ingested, touched, or inhaled, and animal venom, which is directly injected into the unfortunate victim's bloodstream. They are different kind of substances, though both are toxic, it could be that for some reason plant-driven poisons do not affect you. Conversely, you might be more vulnerable to venomous insects and other creatures. One shouldn't suffer a month from a bugbite."
Natsu wanted to point out that having his side opened by the spider's mandibles wasn't just 'a bugbite' but decided to keep quiet. He was quite impressed how the alchemist managed to maintain such a monologue in a well-drugged state.
"But how?" Natsu asked, brows furrowing.
Nurelion shrugged. "How could I know?"
"Because you're, what, like a very old alchemist?"
The alchemist failed to retort as another burst of cough wiped over him again. The younger man stroked the master's back again, paying Natsu a judging stare.
"Natsu, manners," Lucy scolded as she crossed her arms on her chest.
The mage sighed again. "Sorry."
They waited for a while until Nurelion stopped coughing. Natsu wondered if his sickness was caused by decades of smelling poisonous herbs. Every profession had a downside.
"There are still mysteries in this world to be unravelled, it seems," the apprentice said then. "Without further studies, we can't tell why the poison didn't work. But since you're still alive and walking, you'll most likely make it. Come back tomorrow if any symptoms occur, and we'll get them cured. I must get Nurelion back to rest now."
Natsu almost sprinted to the door, never been so happy to leave a place than now.
"Thank you for your time, and sorry to bother you in the middle of a night," Lucy said and pulled a coin purse from her bag. She poured around twenty coins on her palm and offered them to the apprentice. "Here's for your trouble."
Hesitantly, the man received the gold. They hadn't sold anything, but it would never be smart to refuse a coin. Natsu kept his hand on the door's handle, waiting for Lucy to follow him.
"Thank you," the apprentice said as he began to lead the master back to the upper floor. "Stay safe."
The wind slammed the door shut as they stepped to the cold outside. The alchemist's coughs echoed faintly through the stone walls, fading as they stood there collecting their thoughts.
"I told you I was just fine," Natsu said, taking a breath before he set forth. "Come on, the inn's that way."
He halted as he realized Lucy wasn't following. He turned around, seeing her still standing in front of the apothecary's door, her hand gripping her other arm.
"I just… I got worried," she whispered, and raised her gaze from the ground. "Very worried."
Natsu nodded. It was too dark to see her true emotions, but he was sure her worry had been genuine. But while her words warmed his heart, he couldn't help feeling like Lucy was only worried about him because she wouldn't survive on her own. If he'd die, what would happen to her? Would she survive this trial alone?
"It's okay."
Lucy didn't say anything back, and so they walked in silence through the empty, snow-covered streets. Though a thousand thoughts drifted inside Natsu's mind, exhaustion kept him from putting them into words.
Yet, an intuition of sort led his thoughts back to the nightshades his mother had eaten while expecting him. Mother had never spoken about it, but Zeref had told him what happened.
There was no way mother could've been immune to the poison because it had made her very sick. Zeref, even at that age, had been skilled enough as an alchemist to save her life with the right mix of herbs and spells. When Lucy had asked, Natsu had said he and his mother survived by a miracle, but it had only been half a truth.
He'd never admit it out loud, but Zeref, in all of his brilliancy, was almost like a miracle incarnated.
Whether his possible immunity to poison was a result of the nightshade poisoning, or a side-effect of Zeref's effort to save their mother, it couldn't be known. Since his mother was dead and gone, and his brother lost into thin air, the truth might stay forever unsolved. And even if some alchemist could figure it out by examining him, he'd rather not know. He wasn't a test subject, even though his case would be unique of a kind.
All that mattered was that it had saved them both this time.
The sounds of a fight carried over to them as they reached the plaza opening beneath the entrance. The hold guards were still trying to break apart the fight between the homeless. For a brief second Natsu wondered what they were fighting over for, but the thought disappeared as fast as he made it to the warm inn.
Lucy went to rent them a room, and Natsu stayed behind, too tired to talk. The joyful chatter and singing were beginning to fade out as the drunkest patrons headed to their beds. Natsu stripped his blood-stained cloak, worried that it might attract some unwanted attention. But, if soldiers and warriors and thugs could all stay in the same inn and nobody minded about the blood on their hands, why would anyone care about his?
The cold began to melt away, but he still couldn't relax. Maybe the impact of the ambush stuck in his mind, because he still couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched. How long had the attacker been following them anyway? For the whole day, and he hadn't seen anything?
Rolling the cloak into his arms, Natsu glanced over his shoulder to the smoky corner of the tavern. His heart skipped a beat. A figure sat there in the shades, their face covered with a hood, but Natsu was perfectly sure that their stare was locked on him.
"This way," Lucy said suddenly, gently pulling him from the sleeve. Natsu turned to follow her down to the corridor leading to their room. Her hand stayed on his shoulder for a moment as she studied the wound through the tattered fabric. "Gods, that's just a scratch to you? It has to be cleaned and bandaged. Don't want to catch another infection, don't you?"
Sighing, Natsu looked back one last time. The figure had disappeared as if they hadn't existed in the first place. Shaking his head, he blinked, wondering if he'd been just seeing things.
And no matter how tired he was, Natsu couldn't sleep an eyeful that night.
Three days later, Lucy was finally convinced that Natsu would live, but the strangling feeling around her throat still wouldn't fade.
The sun was setting over the vale, and the rushing waterfall beside her almost silenced her thoughts. They had made it out of the volcanic tundra today and camped near the Darkwater River, which cascaded down the famous cliffs dividing the holds of Eastmarch and Rift. The river drained far from Lake Geir, and Ivarstead was located on the western shores of the lake. By following the water, they'd eventually reach their destination.
Natsu's original plan was to visit Fort Amol and spend a night in the castle's warmth, but that plan was crushed when one of the necromancers turned out to be an undercover assassin. Though Felrys had been Igneel's cousin, Natsu's trust for his group was gone. Lucy never really trusted them in the first place. It didn't change much. It just meant they'd have to spend another night in the old, conjured tent, but Lucy had found it quite cosy.
Lucy sat cross-legged on the dry grass, swirling the quill in her fingers. She had written only a few lines for today's journal entry, and struggled to find more. Sometimes the words flowed to the paper on their own, but sometimes the barrenness consumed her and left her pages blank. And for the last days, barrenness was the exact word to describe the atmosphere she was in.
She glanced over her shoulder. Smoke rose from the campfire at a small distance away as the mage cooked the mudcrab they had caught earlier today. She had refused to let him out of her sight, still fearing the poison's delayed effects. It had clearly begun to piss him off, and he looked content to be there alone for a while.
He had conjured the tent while she had been away, and Lucy was so glad she had found the spell instructions in the nightstand. Erza's tent had taken half an hour to erupt, but this one took only a few seconds to be summoned. It was smaller than Erza's, but just as warm and comfortable.
The wind rustled in the bright, colourful leaves of the ancient oak behind her. Lucy closed the journal and leaned against the pale trunk, letting her gaze rest in the beauty of the sunset. The cliffs were spared little of the warmth of the volcanic tundra beneath them, as the wind kept whipping the old stones day and night.
She'd been listening to the wind so much lately.
Silence stuck in her throat like a spiky thistle. No matter how she tried, she couldn't find the right words to say. She knew Natsu struggled with killing the girl, and in some way, she understood what he was going through. Part of the blame was on her as well. Though she hadn't been the one to strike the knife through the girl's throat, she'd been the one to shot her to the back.
Missing the rabbit had been a wonderful stroke of luck, in an ironical sense. She had chased it for a while, and then heard the commotion in the forest, instantly realizing something was wrong. Things could've gone differently if the girl had shot her first, and Lucy failed to feel guilty about surviving. Guilt had struck her for other reasons.
As she'd watched how Natsu kept staring into the flames, quiet as if his conscience had muted him, Lucy couldn't help but blame herself for not listening to him. He had warned her about messing with the Dark Brotherhood, but she hadn't believed they were that good, that efficient, that cunning. She barely believed they even existed. If she just could've let that poor Aretino boy be, it could've spared them from a lot of mess, and a lot of blood. It seemed that mess and blood belonged together in the wild world outside Helgen's walls.
'What a bloody mess has my life become.'
Remorse wasn't the only thing that was weighing him down. Natsu was convinced that they were being followed, and it was driving him into a nervous wreck. Lucy wasn't sure if he had slept at all for days. When she went to sleep, he said he'd stay up for a while, but when she woke up, he was still awake.
There hadn't even been any trouble for the past few days, except for a swarm of mudcrabs Lucy had accidentally disturbed this morning, mistaking them for some riverside rocks. The crabs had been more of a nuisance instead of a real danger. Her arrows had deflected from their hard shells, but Natsu's fire spells had quickly finished them off, their protective carapaces turning into deathly boiling pots upon his flames.
The thought made her suddenly hungry.
Lucy took a deep breath, rose and stole one last glance at the landscape, knowing that the fall foliage would soon be gone. Today was the second day of Hearthfire, and winter was coming fast. And with the dragons flying in the skies and lurking in the mountains, it would be a dark, long winter. Possibly darkest in a thousand years.
Jumping over the smaller streams running in the stone, she made her way to the camp. The sound of gushing waters could still be heard, but not as deafening as closer to the waterfalls. Burning wood crackled in the fire Natsu had made, his face veiled behind the smoke rising skywards. Hollow parts of a mudcrab's shell piled up the ground at the rate Natsu threw them away.
"Steamed mudcrab is actually quite tasty," Natsu commented as he chewed the crab's meat. "Just slow as shit to eat. I spared some good parts for you. Here."
Natsu took some red-boiled crab legs from the small kettle they had found and offered them to her as she sat down. She received them with a faint smile, but put them down for a moment to release the bow from her back. The leather strap had chafed the skin on her shoulder, leaving behind an aching imprint she carried with pride. She opened the laces on her robes to let her skin breathe.
"I'll borrow this," Lucy said and picked up the glass dagger resting on Natsu's lap. He nodded as a reply.
Water splashed from the claw as Lucy tried to crack it open with the tip of the knife. Natsu had shown her earlier how to expose the meat from the shell, but it would most likely take her a few more tries to learn. Not minding his quiet chuckles, Lucy kept trying, eventually managed to have a few nibbles to eat.
"I've been thinking," Natsu started suddenly, causing Lucy to raise her head from the meal towards him. Awkwardly, she wiped the crab fluids flowing down her chin to her sleeve. "The alchemist in Windhelm said that the poison was expensive. She most likely didn't buy it herself. It just makes it more clear that she worked for the Brotherhood."
"Makes sense," Lucy mumbled and swallowed. A little moment alone must've helped him to sort out his thoughts, or at least to get him talking about it.
"When she realized that the poison didn't work as it was supposed to, she panicked. Her plan was failing. When she drew out that dagger of course I thought she'd kill me."
"It still doesn't change the fact that she would've killed you if –"
"That's the thing," Natsu interrupted and gazed at her, his eyes serious, "she wouldn't have killed me. Her job was to capture us. Not kill us."
Though they could only rely on their own assumptions, they had managed to form a clear picture of what happened and why. The Dark Brotherhood found out they had accepted a contract that belonged to them, and they didn't appreciate that. Then the Brotherhood had hired an outlaw who knew their faces to track them down and capture them.
What would've happened if she'd succeeded? Lucy didn't even want to know.
"I just killed her anyway," Natsu continued. "I had this one moral line to live by, and it was to never kill the innocent. That's what Igneel taught me. When I've killed someone, it has always been self-defence. Was it now?"
Lucy took a moment to finish her small meal. She wiped her face again and drank from her waterskin, swallowed before she answered.
"That was still self-defence, even though she didn't mean to kill you. You have a right to defend yourself, and me, from being dragged into some filthy dungeon for some brutal interrogation."
"Yeah, bet it's better to feel like shit than be tortured alive," Natsu said. "Because they didn't kill us right ahead, that's what they had in mind."
"You don't have to feel like shit," Lucy consoled. "You saved us."
"But if the Brotherhood's after us, they won't give up so easily. They'll try again with bigger weapons."
Lucy couldn't help but wonder why they hadn't already tried? Natsu had mentioned seeing someone shady in the Candlehearth Inn, but that could've been anyone.
"It's still possible that this isn't related to the Brotherhood at all," Lucy reminded. "Maybe she just wanted to sleep with you really bad."
Natsu chuckled dryly.
"All that effort just to get disappointed again? I don't think so."
"You know, women can be really crazy when they want something."
Natsu buried his face into his hands, a silence signing that he'd rather not comment on that subject. Still, Lucy thought it'd be better to be chased by a desperate girl than a group of assassins. Natsu probably didn't feel the same.
"One thing still creeps me out," he began, raising his head from his palms and resting his chin on his knees. "How did the Dark Brotherhood know we'd been in contact with the mages in Fort Amol? That was days before we talked to Aventus."
"They have little birds everywhere, it seems," Lucy answered. "It's just my speculation, but what if Aventus was one of those birds?"
"What do you mean?"
"He said he'd been doing the sacrament for a long time, and no-one had come. What if the Dark Brotherhood set the whole thing up to find out if anyone would actually pick it up? And we were unfortunate enough to fall for it."
Natsu stared at her for a moment.
"I don't really know," he sighed. "I don't really fucking know."
Lucy believed that things, even this, would solve out eventually. Maybe it was foolish to remain optimistic, but if her choices were optimism or insanity, she'd choose the first. Even if it took a little bit of forcing to convince herself that things would turn out for the better.
"We are safe now," Lucy said quietly. "It's going to be alright."
"You know that's a lie."
His answer forced her to swallow the consoling words she'd tried to form. She looked at him, the cost of pain dimming out the shades of green in his eyes. He lowered his gaze to fire slowly going out, and picked up some sticks from the pile of wood he'd gathered earlier. A question appeared on Lucy's mind as she watched him snapping the twigs in half and feeding them to the campfire.
"Just wondering, how was your first kill?"
Natsu froze for a moment. Flames licked the stick he was putting into the fire, reaching his fingertips before he realized to throw it in. He appeared focused, as if trying to remember when was the first time his hands stained in human blood. But then Lucy realized that he had also burned men to death, so it could've been ashes instead of blood.
"You mean who it was, or how it happened?" Natsu asked.
"Yeah. Both," Lucy answered.
"Well," he started and paused for a breath, "it was… was I fourteen, or just turned fifteen? Anyway, I'd been in the College for about two years. Igneel had gotten a hint of an artefact hidden in an abandoned castle. A powerful soul gem he needed for something. So, we went there and bumped into a group of necromancers performing some ritual to retrieve the artefact. They noticed us and attacked."
"Were there many of them?"
"Three. Igneel killed two and left the third one for me to handle. He was a High Elf who used shock spells. My magic depleted in an instant, but I managed to stab him to the neck with my dagger. He was arrogant. Underestimated me, I guess."
Lucy remained silent, able to imagine how a High Elf would look down to a young boy, with fatal results. Natsu didn't look that dangerous with his pink hair and soft features, but Lucy had already learned that looks were deceiving. As the girl's last words had been, he was a boy too pretty to be a killer.
But weren't killers supposed to be more like barbarian bandits, like Lucy had always been taught to beware? There wasn't anything in him which scared her. Not even the body count on his shoulders, whether it'd be high or low. She didn't care to know the numbers if he kept any, but how did he take it?
Maybe not so easily as Lucy had previously thought.
"How'd you feel then?" she asked softly. "You were so young."
He fell silent.
"You know, I had to watch my dad butcher our animals since I was, I don't know, a baby? And when I was old enough he taught me how to do it myself. Where to hold them and where to strike the knife to kill them fast and painless," Natsu said then. "In the end, it wasn't that bad to kill a chicken or a goat because it meant we got some meat on the table instead of the same old potatoes and carrots."
Feeling a twist in her stomach, Lucy looked down to the empty crab shells in her hands. "I could never even watch. Just hearing the pigs squeal as they were killed was horrible."
"My dad said that one has to know where the food comes from, and that slaughtering a pig is the same as picking apples."
"It isn't, really."
"Yeah, the apples don't bleed," Natsu said. "Have I told you about our dogs?"
"Mentioned them, yes."
"Well, we always had a couple of dogs, because dad used to sell their pups to hunters. As hunting dogs, you know?" Natsu asked, and Lucy nodded. "But sometimes the pups came out deformed and had to be killed. As well as when the older dogs became too old, got injured or sick, they had to be killed, too. That was different. Having to put down one of our dogs, damn, I cried every time."
As Lucy had noticed how he cared for Happy, the conjured cat, she couldn't even imagine how horrible it must've been to kill one of his dogs. Even if they were lingering in pain.
"Shit. Your dad put you do that?"
Natsu nodded. "He called it a responsibility. Dad said that once he'd be dead and I'd be the man in the house, I'd have to take care of the animals. It included finishing them off when the time came, whether I'd like it or not."
Lucy stayed quiet for a moment, his words making her former life sound so easy. Clean, sterile, at least. After a workday, she used to go to the market with her mother and buy whatever food they needed. She never paid a thought for those who'd produced it.
"Back then I had always thought that killing a man would be as bad as killing a dog. I was wrong. It was much worse," Natsu told and paused. "Killing that High Elf, I pretty much freaked out. It was over quick. I remember looking down, realizing that I'm standing in a pool of their blood, my shoes soaked red. It was in my hands, too."
Lucy paid him an empathic gaze. "I know… That's just a terrible moment. It can't be washed away, and it doesn't fade either. It just sticks until you get used to it."
Natsu chuckled, but there was no joy in it.
"I'm glad Igneel was there with me, reassuring me that it's better to kill than be killed. That it was a time for the young boy to learn the rules of the world. He had learned that a long time ago."
Lucy nodded slowly. As Igneel had been a Dark Elf, life must've been rough for him. A lot rougher than it needed to be.
"How old was Igneel?" Lucy asked, trying to recall the brief moment she had seen him alive. "He looked young to me."
"Around thirty, but that's young for an elf. And he always acted like a damn fourteen-year-old brat with his pranks and crazy ideas," Natsu said, smiling. It was good to see him smile again. "Maybe that's why we came along so well."
Lucy stayed quiet for a moment. The talk about young boys brought back memories of her former life, especially one person in particular.
"Reminds me of Loke," Lucy whispered, a wistful smile on her lips. "That lad never matured past fourteen."
"He's that friend of yours?"
"Was."
A fleeting silence fell between them again. Lucy felt the mage's eyes on her, but didn't dare to look up from the flames. As always, the memories made the tears well up behind her eyes – it would probably take a lot of time until they wouldn't. But she remembered how crying made him uncomfortable, and she didn't want to cause him any more distress by her own sadness.
"I hope he died a hero's death and ended up in Sovngarde," she said, voice cracking as she tried to maintain the faked smile. "Picking up a fight against the dragon or sacrificing his life to save someone else. That would be like him."
"Are you sure he's dead?" Natsu asked suddenly.
The question froze her.
Lucy collected her breath and wiped her eyes. "He walked past the store that morning, but I didn't see him after that."
"What'd he look like?" the mage inquired. "I remember that a young guy with long, dark-brown hair released me from the bindings, and then ran off."
Lucy swallowed, trying to cast away the lump in her throat. "That could've been Haming, his older brother. Loke was a gingerhead."
Natsu shrugged as an apology.
"Don't think I saw him then."
Lucy shook her head. "He isn't alive. I know it. When we returned to Helgen the next day… the demolition was just so complete." Her voice faded into a whisper. "I keep thinking how my parents and everyone must've felt when they just… burned... to death…"
As Natsu turned his gaze into the campfire, Lucy remembered that he also burned men to death. In Embershard mine, he'd fought the bandits with fire until nothing but ashes were left. The men had screamed in excruciating pain as the flames consumed them, and there hadn't been a single hint of remorse in Natsu's eyes back then. But considering he had just lost his best friend, maybe he hadn't felt anything at all, thus being able to remain so calm.
"I like to think that," Natsu began, but paused for a moment, "that fire's a merciful way to die. There's no blood, and the shock kills you fast. It hurts a lot for a short while, but then you just fall into a warm sleep. The hotter the flames, the cleaner the death. Being killed by dragonfire must've been so quick they didn't even realize it before they died."
A vision of her parent's scorched bodies holding each other flashed in Lucy's mind. They had seen the dragon, they had been afraid. They had died afraid, just as everyone else in the town.
"I hope so. At least one thing is sure, that they're not in pain anymore."
"Yeah, surviving with a body burned in half is much worse. Healing the burns is the agonizing part."
A small smile twitched on Lucy's lips, the consolation of knowing her loved ones weren't suffering anymore. Maybe he was right. Death was almost a bliss compared to surviving the horrors of that day, and Lucy, despite still grieving the loss, felt glad that her family and friends didn't have to carry that burden.
The sun hid behind the faraway mountains, the warm colours of sunset disappearing as the night descended. Lucy glanced at the fire mage as his eyes slipped closed while he rested his head to his knees. Though the discussion hadn't carried them far from the things keeping him awake, Lucy hoped he could finally get some sleep. The journey ahead of them was still long.
"You really need some rest," Lucy told him. "You look like you'll pass out any moment."
"Thanks."
"I mean it. I can keep a watch for tonight."
Natsu sighed. "Okay. For a few hours. Wake me up when you get tired, okay?"
"Sure."
"Goodnight," Natsu said and crawled into the tent. "Don't eat all the crabs."
"I won't."
When he was gone, Lucy finally let the tears fall, but to her surprise, they no longer poured down like a waterfall. Only a few were enough to dull the sharpest ache of her grief.
As Lucy sat in front of the dying campfire, her thoughts circled around Helgen once again. Somedays the past was like a field of deep mud she kept dwelling in, unable to move forward, but if she did, she'd forget. She didn't ever want to forget. She didn't want to forget the lessons her father told, the songs her mother sang, the laughter of her friends.
Because when she'd forget, they would all disappear.
Lucy looked up from the flames. Through her clouded vision, she saw movement in the bushes and heard steps rustling on the fallen leaves. Instinctively, she grabbed the bow resting beside her, but before she even managed to stance herself and draw an arrow, a deer family emerged from the vegetation.
Frozen at the sight, Lucy locked her gaze with the mother deer, majestic antlers crowning its head. Two fawns followed their mother, staying close to her legs as they walked to the pool of water for a drink.
Lucy put down her weapon. Though they had already run out of bread yesterday, and the mudcrabs weren't a filling meal, she couldn't find it in her to kill those creatures. In silence, she watched as they disappeared back to the woods.
'Never kill the innocent.'
And as stars lit on the darkened sky and the fire finally went out, Lucy was sure that the mage had fallen asleep. She peeked into the tent, and she'd been right. Wrapped into his bedroll, Natsu slept tight in the other side of the tent, the rest of the space spared for her.
"Natsu, I ate all the crabs," Lucy whispered. There was no answer.
If he didn't hear that, he'd truly been the very definition of exhausted. Some sleep wouldn't hurt them both.
Deciding he wouldn't wake up, even if she tried, she sneaked inside and settled down an arm's length away from the mage. She burrowed into her bedroll, closed her eyes and was lulled asleep by the wind.
Even though he'd said otherwise, right now she felt safe.
Safe enough.
As always, rain whipped the walls of Riften when a man in a dark, tattered cloak arrived at the city gates, his journey drawing into a circle.
This was where everything had begun years ago, when he had found the study his father had left behind. The questions born during the long voyage were still left unanswered, even intensified by the current events, but if something held any answers, it had to be those documents.
He raised his eyes to the sky – he had kept an eye on it ever since the dragon attacked him in the Jerall Mountains when he returned to Skyrim. Each rumbling of thunder reminded him of the dragon's roar, and each hustle of wind in the trees was like the beast's wingstrike. Ghostly limbs now replaced the ones he'd lost to the dragon's teeth, for he was a master of Alteration, and would alter his body to any limit and beyond.
Relieved that the stormy skies remained free of flying beasts for now, he lowered his gaze to the two guards standing before the closed gate. He sighed.
"Halt! Before I let you to Riften, you need to pay the visitor's tax," said the other man, stepping in front of him as he walked closer. "Say, a hundred gold and I'll open the gates."
A grin twitched on his lips. A lot had changed while he'd been away, but the corruption hadn't gone anywhere. Why would it? It was the rock the city had been built on. Perhaps the whole country, too.
"You're obviously a thief," he answered, his voice rasp like saw on dry wood. "I kill thieves."
The guard took a long, silent look at his torn body. He stood tall above the pitiful guard's head, his face scarred and grim enough to scare any fool into submission.
"Alright, alright, there's no need for any… violence," the guard admitted. "I'll let you in."
Riften's wooden structures gave off an old and run-down feeling as he walked into the city. Though the walls were familiar, the faces weren't. Only a few citizens stayed outside at the late hour of the day. When the sun went down, the people of Riften withdrew to their houses and locked the doors tight. It was usually because of the thieves raiding the town at night, but now there was another thing they feared.
The word of what happened in Helgen had spread across the land, and everyone was afraid it would happen to their hometown next. And there was no guarantee it wouldn't.
He had witnessed the utter devastation himself. Helgen was the first settlement after Cyrodiil's border. He had headed there in search of help, only to find the whole city burned to the ground. The scenery had been so haunting he'd never seen anything as terrifying in his entire life.
The only thing more frightening than the dragons was the demolition they left in their wake.
From Helgen he had travelled to Riverwood. The small village had been growled by soldiers sent by Whiterun's Jarl to protect the place from another dragon attack. It had been ridiculous – what could have those mere men done to a dragon? There had been plenty of men in Helgen, and only ashes remained of them now.
Ever since then, questions had been burning inside of him, but there weren't many answers to find. The rumours he heard from the inns and the streets were beyond insane. Some said that Ulfric Stormcloack turned into a dragon right before the headsman chopped off his head, and wreaked havoc as revenge on the Imperials.
The only thing he could believe was the devastating death toll, and the lack of surviving witnesses, which explained the amount of imagination used to describe the events. There had been as many bodies as there were citizens in the city.
By the time he reached Whiterun, another news arrived. Kynesgrove had been hit this time, but the word said that the dragon had been killed. That must've been when the Greybeards had called the Dragonborn for sure. He had felt the call in his bones, a call of hope, as well as despair.
The Greybeards up in their mountain were just as afraid as anyone else, but they were also afraid of the Dragonborn's power – so afraid that they wouldn't let them use it to the fullest potential. They had plenty of power themselves they refused to use. A single word from them would be enough to end the civil war raging across the country, but what did they do? Nothing.
Nothing but sit on the peak of that tallest goddamn mountain, safe from the reach of flames sweeping over the land down below.
Whether the Dragonborn would even answer the summons or not, he couldn't know. But if they would, he knew damn well what the Greybeards would task them with – and that was his chance to strike. His father's study, hidden in the Ratway of Riften would help him with that.
The man went down the stairs into the canal beneath the city, the catwalk by the water rickety and traversed. The path led to the darker side of the town, to the home of lowlifes and thieves. He was familiar with the route indeed, for he had grown up right here, knowing the canals better than his own pockets.
A small gate on the side of the building led into the tunnels, the air smelling of moisture, moss, and fish guts – the smell of his childhood, always making him feel so much younger than four decades. Almost like a boy again, he threaded the narrow tunnels with a magelight guiding him through the darkness until he reached a tavern, hidden from the common folk of Riften.
The Ragged Flagon.
Water dripped from the stone ceiling, and torches burned on the walls of the circular hall. The place hadn't changed at all since he'd last been there, four years back, right before leaving for his journey.
The man eyed the patrons of the dark tavern. A few new faces had appeared, and some familiar were gone. A blue-haired woman in black, skin-tight leather armour caught his attention for a second, but then he remembered seeing her among the orphans a few years ago. He could as well be the girl's father, so it was better to let it pass.
Besides, he got more important things to do – but if he had a weakness, it was certainly women.
His gaze moved from her chest to the towering tall man with long, black hair who stood beside her. He couldn't remember seeing that guy before, but the nasty look in his eyes told him to back off. Taking the hint, he walked to the counter desk, reminding himself of the duty he had.
But first, he'd drink some mead.
"Well, well, look at you," said a red-haired, laid-back man who appeared behind him. "Clive! It's been a while since I've seen you around. You've certainly lost some weight."
Brynjolf, the man he'd known since they'd both been little brats, patted him on the shoulder where his arm had been cut off. Grimacing from pain, he mumbled a silent curse. He had almost forgotten the name he went by in here – the mages in the College knew him by another name.
"And you've certainly gained," he grinned to his friend and took off his rain-drenched coat. "Your purse getting as fat as you?"
"Not at all. The business's not going too well. We've had a run of bad luck," Brynjolf said, snorting as he poured himself a mug of mead. "But what draws you here, my old friend? What happened to you?"
When he'd said that he kills thieves, he had lied. He befriended them. The Thieves Guild had protected his father until his very death, and they still kept his quarters well hidden from the rest of the world. Brynjolf was second-in-command in the organization, but even he didn't know what they were actually protecting.
For all these years, he had kept the knowledge tightly for himself. These secrets couldn't be spilt to the rest of the world, and no one could ever be trusted. Not even his friends, not here in the Riften or in the College of Winterhold.
Father had taught him a thing or two about paranoia.
"This?" the man asked, turning around his ghostly arm. "That's just a scratch."
Brynjolf laughed.
"No kidding. Seriously though, what happened? What kind of a beast could do that to the great mighty Clive?"
He sighed, taking a long gulp from his drink.
"What if I said it was a dragon?"
"Isn't that nothing new. Already got new recruits who claim they survived Helgen. I don't quite believe them. It has been said that no-one made it out."
He spat out his mead with such a force it sprayed all over the counter.
"You've got what?"
"Yeah, these two lads arrived a few days ago. I caught the younger one trying to break into the vault. A promising case. It seems there isn't a lock in the world which won' t yield to his skill."
Sure his eyes were as wide as the moons, his interest piqued. He'd been searching for survivors, all in vain, until now.
"Let me talk to them," he requested, urgent enough to forget his mead. Brynjolf nodded.
"Aye. Come on then, this way."
He followed Brynjolf as he walked across the dusty tavern, leading him to the furthermost corner of the hall where two young men sat at a table. The older boy's dark brown hair was tied on a ponytail, while the younger's ginger locks were as wild as a sabrecat's mane.
"So, lads," Brynjolf said and cleared his throat. "If you really were at Helgen, this old guy would like to talk with you."
He flinched as the boys looked up from the table. An eyepatch covered half of the older boy's face, and half-healed burns adorned the younger's neck and arms. Their blank eyes stared at him hollowly, as if terror had wiped out all the life in them.
There was no doubt they'd seen the same thing as him.
A/N: Hi guys, hope you enjoyed the chapter! Got a glimpse of a few new characters who'll eventually show up ;) And hey, I finally managed to do the cover art for this story! You can see the full photo in AO3, in the beginning notes of this story.
Btw, Hearthfire is Skyrim's equivalent for September, so they're living around autumn here. The story started of 17th of Last Seed(August) and now it's 2nd of Hearthfire.
A special note for "PARADISE LOST – Darker Thoughts" for giving me a lot of inspiration and insight for the themes of this chapter.
The rest of this note contains some very slight spoilers, so feel free to skip if you don't want any, but its sort of an answer to review I got in the last chapter.
Anyway, you don't have to wait 'til the end of the third book for romantic development. There's gonna be gradual nalu development in the first book already, but it will a long rocky road between those two.
Personally, I want this story to be strong and interesting enough EVEN if there wouldn't be any romance at all. I want romance to be just the cherry on top of the cake - it's nice to have, but it would be good enough without it. And yes, this story will definetely have it, but it won't circle around it.
I want the relationships in this story to develop naturally at their own pace, depending on where they start and where they are going. I don't think that getting together will even be the goal of every pair. Some pairs drift together and some will eventually drift apart. Some are already in love and some will eventually be. Some will fall out of love. That's life, and I think that there isn't a moment of being completed when it comes to relationships. Usually I see it in (slow-burn)stories that getting together is the whole climax of the story, and what comes after it? I instantly lose interest when a couple finally becomes 'official' if the story itself isn't interesting enough. I don't want to lose interest in this story. And I hope my readers won't either.
That's all for now, see you next time! Thanks for all the support!
