Cearbhail: Finally! Jeez, that crappy Cearbhail and not posting things faster. I mean...really. Stupid college classes and midterms...distracting as hell. Well, I'm back and here's a new chapter. It wasn't really all about midterms. I had writer's block whenever I sat down to this so it was like a paragraph every time I sat down to it. but...tonight...done.

"Princess Nexauvia Frazviani. Please step forward." The Queen's voice quietly shouted over everyone's casual chatter.

The ballroom was filled with all the Argonian royalty, as well as all the graduates from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Regiment from the Shadow Sword Academy. Some of the most influential Argonians all from across Tamriel were present, as were some of our new Altmer buddies: the Thalmor. There were just a few of them, only a small group. Fiirnar waited up by the Queen, standing by her throne as if he was an advisor.

The room fell into a quick silence. I started to look around at all the eyes that were training on me. Me and my perfect purple dress. I found myself scanning the room for anyone I remembered from my childhood. I saw some of the fat cat Argonian politicians that my father tried to marry me off to. A few of them scanned my body like it was a prize. It made my stomach turn.

I held my breath as I started stepping forward to meet the Queen. Sitting in the large U shaped table that began at the Queen's throne and ended near the center of the room was the Council. All 13 the political masters of Argonia. 5 of them were elders, some of the oldest and noblest of minds, elected by their peers. They were usually retired shadowblades or shadowmasters. 5 of them were the five region representatives. You know; the five regions that Argonia split up into. The other 3 were shadowmasters. The three elected every year. Shadowmaster Julanza was sitting in one of the shadowmaster seats today. He watched me carefully as I stepped up quietly to the center of the table.

I finally settled to the center of the table and glanced up to the Queen. She didn't sit up on some huge throne that towered over everyone. No, she sat in a regular throne so that she could see me eye-to-eye. Seeing my grandmother should have been like a blessing, but she never really liked me. She was like that grandmother that looked down at her grandchildren as spoiled and useless for anything. That was our relationship. I tried to please her and she complained about the small things that I always did wrong.

The Queen glanced at me and gestured me to kneel. So, I kneeled.

"Princess Nexauvia. We all welcome you back from your training assignment. Your absence however has not gone unnoticed. Our training has taken a massive turn and as such your previous rank of Shadowblade has been taken from you. It is not due to any failure performed by you, only that your training is now less than that of our standard shadowblades. Your rank will be returned to you once you can convince us that you are still the standard."

Wow. That was quite the lie but it slipped so casually from the Queen's mouth that you'd think that she was being serious. She held her tone neutral like she was reading off of a piece of paper, but for her to create such a lie was impressive. Let alone to keep every Argonian within the room from busting out laughing. I wonder how long this has been set up for. How long ago they started silencing protests. This was something that was never done…unless I didn't know about any other cases. I wonder how many other Argonians became black ops like this.

The Queen blinked at me, allowing me to take in everything she said. "Now, Shadowscale Nexa. You have been briefed on your new assignment. You will go through training again until you can perform natural assassinations. Upon completion of your training, the initiates that we will discuss tonight will assemble for your first mission debriefing. It will still be a few months, however. The candidates are still in training and won't be graduating for quite some time."

"Then why not select current shadowscales?" Fiirnar asked from his little table. His fellow Thalmor all started nodding in agreement.

My father almost smiled as he stepped forward. "For obvious reasons. My squad is the finest of all. I want fresh recruits, not the lazy ones that stop their training only months after leaving the academy. Not to mention, it will take a while for Shadowscale Nexa to complete her new training. In that time, they'd become only weaker, older. Maybe one of them could break a leg. Then we'd have to select a new member, brief them, give them special training. No, we've already let all the academies know what we're looking into. They know the potentials and are preparing them now. Tonight, all the academies will get the final notice of who made it into the Shadow Squad. Those individuals will be singled out and given special training. That way, they're ready to go once they graduate."

Fiirnar only nodded. "Sounds reasonable."

"Training already trained shadowscales is harder than teaching a new mind that hasn't finalized their training. Less time consuming." My father finished with a shrug like it was obvious. I guess he had put a lot of thought into it.

Fiirnar nodded again, this time impatient. "Alright, I understand. You don't have to convince me of anything."

If only you knew the truth. I thought as I looked at Fiirnar over my shoulder.

I directed my gaze back over to the Queen as she started talking to me. "Shadowscale Nexa…eyes front." When she had my eyes focused on hers, she nodded lightly. "I understand you've had more down time than we should have allowed, but you must focus now." The Queen looked over to the Warlord and nodded. "Time to examine the recruits."

The Warlord nodded in return. He waved to the giant floating globe and said, "Recruit 1." Some shadowwraith waved his finger and the globe shifted. A face of a blue-scaled shadowscale with cropped green hair popped up within the clear globe. "His name is Ram-ku Olanda. According to his Drill Shade he is very fast but…soft. He has advanced reflexes and can escape any situation with little trouble. There is a draw-back, though. He's not enthusiastic about killing. Not innocent people at least. I'm sure he'll have no problems with Aedra or anything else we have to target."

The Queen nodded. "He sounds fine. Fast, evasive: those skills will come in handy when there are thousands of Aedra shooting energy bombs everywhere."

I nodded in return. "I agree. We'll need someone fast on the team. If he can move that fast, he'll make a great diversion."

The Queen sighed as she looked over the floating picture of Ram-ku. "I want to know more about who this Argonian is before I sign off on it."

The Warlord nodded. "Right. Ram-ku: born from the Shadow birthsign just like any shadowscale recruit. The first one from his family, in fact. But his family was from outside Argonia, in Hammerfell. So, when our operatives within Hammerfell tried to get the child at the collection age, there were…complications. Alik'r slavers found out about the child and what it could mean to them to have it as leverage so there was a massive inside war for him. When the arrows started falling through the family's farm, the shadowscales in charge of collection took him and ran. And they ran…and ran. It's why he's so good at running. He had to run all the way from Hammerfell to Argonia, while hiding from Alik'r soldiers. He does have some psychological problems with Redguards, but it won't stop him from operating alongside them. He has a 'mission'. He wants to reclaim his family's honor and kill the slavers that killed his family."

The Queen nodded. "We can arrange that. We have some Alik'r targets that the Shadow Squad would be perfect for handling. Fine…I agree to keep him for now."

Warlord looked over to Fiirnar and said, "Now you can see how we choose our candidates for our squads. We go over the finer details: skills. Not picked by numbers, nor gender. We pick based on skill and upbringing."

Fiirnar nodded. "That is good. I like the way you choose your operatives. I was born into my role as were most of the higher up Thalmor. I do wonder though. How many more of these operatives are we picking through?"

"12." The Queen responded. "We have 12 more to go through. Ram-ku is the first one I'd decided to keep on the roster. We go through and I select who's worthy of continuing through the process of elimination. Once we've reviewed everyone we 'like'. Then we'll start picking through the smaller details: test scores, progress reports. Only after we're done will the final three be concluded."

Fiirnar grabbed his eyes in exhaustion. "How long will this take?"

The Warlord shrugged. "12 hours, usually."

Fiirnar groaned. "If we're going to do this…I'm going to need a cup of coffee first."

Normal shadowscale squad screenings could take days and this was not just any normal shadowscale team. For all we knew, we could be here for a couple weeks just looking over the same information until we came to a solid conclusion about who would be on the Shadow Squad. But Father already told us...we wanted this done now, tonight. So that meant… "We're all going to need a lot of coffee before the night is done." I replied.

…

[Vatu]

Time: early in the morning. How early? So early that when my eyes opened up, my body screamed for me to pull the covers back over my exposed fur and close my eyes. When I pulled the fur sheets back over top me, I heard someone moan from not too far away. At first I thought it was my sister, moaning in her sleep, but then I remembered…she doesn't sleep in my tent. No one does but me.

My ears flicked up, ready. My body tensed. My breathing hardened. I was alert. Why? It was probably in the middle of the night and Primrose and Thomas were on watch detail tonight. I thought that it was because I was cold…and I was cold. I was shivering, but that was not enough reason for my body to be shaking like this.

I heard the moan again. It was louder, closer. It sounded resentful, hungry. My nose twitched and I felt the stench of decay fill my nostrils. Dirt dragging along the ground with one strong stomp filled my ears. As soon as I heard the one moan, I heard other moans. They were further away, different tones. My mind was still half-asleep. I was still in paralyzed stasis. I thought I was dreaming.

I had dreams of things like this. Zombies. I had fears of them chasing Nisha and I as we were running around ruins to find some treasure that I could use to keep the two of us alive for another day. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that I was dreaming. That there was a zombie standing over my bed, looking down at me. I could feel its gaze upon me, analyzing me like a piece of warm blood and stretchy meat.

My eyes started opening up and I could see the zombie looking down at me. My body reacted before my mind did. I was up on my feet, snatching the zombie by the neck before anything else could happen. The neck of the zombie snapped in half as I pushed my hand hard against it while feeding Frost magic against it. The zombie's body crumpled underneath me, his head already a solid block of ice.

I stood there for a second, allowing my sight to return to me. I was breathing heavily, my body starting to pull me back down to sleep. But I wasn't done yet. I could hear more of them further behind me. Because I was the scout, my tent was further away from the rest of the tents. If I detected any trouble, I was supposed to shoot up a flare. I don't know if that would attract more of them of if it was too late. Protocol was clear. I had to fire a flare.

I heard heavy boots running towards me and I spun to face the opening to my tent. The front flap flapped open and Primrose came rushing in. "Vatu! We've…" She looked down at me and her face blushed over. She spun around and screamed in a high-pitched wail, "Vatu! Put some pants on!"

I looked down remembering that I tend to take my clothes off before I climb into my bed. Primrose, being who she is, would be easily startled over seeing me without any coverings. She does have strong feelings for me and she is very shy. I tried to hold in a chuckle but it escaped. I continued laughing as I grabbed the pants sitting near my sleeping mat and slipped them on. I finally caught my breath enough to turn to face her. "Primrose, I'm dressed now."

She snaked her right eye around, carefully glancing down at me and my pants. When she confirmed that I was decent, she spun around and grabbed my hand. "Vatu, come on. The camp's under attack. Necromancers have decided to take this opportunity to attack us before we get to Cloud Ruler Temple."

I looked down at the headless zombie corpse. "So, that explains the zombie invasion."

"Yeah. The Worm Revolution. That's what they are calling themselves. They are the remaining necromancers from the King of Worm's army. According to what we've figured out, they've had a field day with this war: collecting all the dead bodies from all the devastated cities…making zombies and thralls. They have an army and they're growing their numbers every day. They feel confident that their army is now big enough to attack what left of the Mages Guild. And they're beginning with us…"

Primrose began pulling me out of my tent and the cold bitter air bit me hard. I groaned as my exhausted body fought against it. As I started pulling myself back into my tent, Primrose started pulling me back. "Vatu?" She called in surprise. "Get out here! We have a war to fight."

"No!" I called from my tent. "It's cold out there."

"Then use your fire magic to put up a shell of fire energy around you." She screamed to me.

At first I scoffed at that idea, but it was a simple enough thing. And I didn't even need fire magic to do it. All I needed was a ring and my spirit energy. Looking around my tent, I didn't find anything so I thought I'd improvise this time. I pulled a shoelace from my old iron boot that I never wore anymore and wrapped it around my wrist. I fed some of my spirit energy into the 'bracelet' and made it take the form of cold-resistance. My new bracelet held the energy nicely and I felt all the cold banish itself from my body.

I pushed myself out of my tent, already smiling at Primrose. "Ok, I'm ready."

She started sprinting away and I followed from behind. "Just remember something: I don't have my ring anymore. If I get too enthusiastic about shedding blood…I'll lose it." I screamed to her. "If I do lose it, just run away. I doubt I can control it."

Primrose smiled and glanced back to me. "I saved you once, I will do it again."

The sight in front of me was amazing…from a certain point of view. Magic explosions left and right, zombies moaning out in the hundreds. I could see my comrades sending everything they had into keeping zombies at bay while the civilians being transported with us huddled in a singular group in the middle of the camp.

I could see my sister among the younger children, all huddled together, screaming at the zombies. It made me growl to see her so terrified. I vowed she would never need to be scared again. I was going to protect her.

Just like that, my claws grew numb, my heart skipped every beat. My eyes became useless. I stopped thinking overall. I stopped seeing things as they appeared. I only saw threats and non-threats. Attachments and non-essentials. Things I loved and things that needed to die. I saw only death. My claws latched out at anything I hated. My breath roared out into a massive fire and frost that tore through bodies in front of me. Electricity flashed off my claws, helping me rip through things that were not in front of me. My ears helped me track all the movement I could afford to not see.

Images of my sister trapped in a zombie's body filled my thoughts. Images of seeing my father's corpse lying in front of me, massive tears in his flesh, his fur stained with blood. My mother's corpse next to his but she has no head. I can see it further away, smashed up against a wall. Images of my sister crying as she curled up into my chest, asking me to bring them back, to make her pain go away. This was all I could see: pain, death, things I wanted to change. Things I needed to fix. Things I could have fixed if I had this gift earlier.

The images fueled my will to shred and rake. I ran through rows and rows of meat-sacks with every intention of killing the next thing behind it. For every life I took, that was one less life to threaten my sister, my friends, my family. I slashed and slashed, feeling blood gush on my face, hearing screaming and moans fill my ears. The entire time, I did not breathe. Then, suddenly, my claws didn't find anything to tear through. I stopped feeling threatened. I stopped seeing targets. I only tasted blood and I could only smell guts. The images of the past started fading away. My pain faded away. My sight returned.

Looking around, I could see that the entire camp was lying on the ground. I was the only one standing. I looked around for any movement at all. I didn't see any. There were nothing but bodies littering the ground. I could see zombies, civilians, soldiers, necromancers. Did…did I kill everyone?

My body seized up in terror as I looked around closer. I didn't recognize anyone within the camp. This wasn't even my camp. How long had I been out? How many people had I killed before I didn't feel threatened anymore? I didn't know.

"Vatu?" I heard Davilia scream from a distance behind me.

I spun around and looked for her. She was sprinting through the dead bodies as fast as she could to come find me. When she spotted me, she held her hands out carefully and said, "Vatu…it's me…Davilia. I'm your friend, remember?"

I nodded. "I'm back to normal, Dav." I rushed up to her, screaming, "What did I do?"

"You killed everything." Davilia started to say but then she looked away slightly enough to make me worry. Then she shrugged. "Well…except us and the civilians. But anyone within a mile radius of our camp was slaughtered by you. We couldn't stop you because we knew that attacking you would only trigger our own deaths as well."

I looked down at the ground. "So…I did all this?"

She nodded. "Yes, you did. Well…that's not true. The necromancers did this. Everything you killed was either already dead or enslaved by mind control. You saved everyone's life by going all crazy Khajiit."

I looked down at the shredded bodies of all the children and animals littering the floor. I did this…I did this. The lifeless children lying near my feet, the women and men holding hands as I ripped through their throats. I killed them. My fists clenched up. Those damn necromancers. They controlled all these people just to attack us, to provoke us. And I killed them all like an animal. I needed to control this better. I needed to become more emotionless.

Davilia looked back over to me. "Vatu. We need to hurry. We're only a few hours away from Cloud Ruler Temple and if we don't hurry, we might be looking at an Aedra strike force. The last thing we need are you and Aedra killing each other above our heads."

I nodded to her, actually smiling. She had a point. The last time I was in the air with Aedra, there was a massive explosion that killed every last one of them.

"Ok, Dav. But one more thing before we return. Every time I go out of my mind, it lasts longer. How long was it this time? How long was I out of control?"

…

[Nexa]

Fourteen hours. That's how long it took us: fourteen hours. But now it was over. We had our list. The final three recruits selected from the 13 we originally picked.

The room within the fourteen hours of this process was always changing. The Queen would pass out in her chair every few hours, my father would leave to go pee. I would leave too, as did everyone at least three times. We had four pots of coffee going off every few minutes. We had meals delivered. Most importantly to make all this finalize, the adults all had to get heavily drunk. What started as a civil discussion about statistics vs. personality became a loud scream-fest that sounded something like this:

"Well, think about it. She has dark purple scales and she specializes in poisons. She obviously has some family issues to boot. I say…what the hell. So what if she killed another student over a sweetroll." That was my father.

"Well…I think…I think…" That was Fiirnar. "I think I…need another glass of wine before I drunk that I concede."

And then there was the Queen, who was too busy spinning around in her chair to remember what we were doing. The shadowmasters and myself all stood in our spots, keeping our heads as level as possible while the drunk adults screamed to each other. As it turned out, I got my father to select the candidates that I thought were the best: Ram-Ku the evasion specialist; Meesei, the poison specialist; and Vistha, the most convicted cutthroat we could find. All together it was a pretty good team. I was glad my father was plastered. It was easy to convince him with my logic vs. his drunken demeanor.

And now, I was lying in my bed, happy that tomorrow…there was no training. Shadowmaster Julanza has decided to take tomorrow off…to let his head clear. Love adult parties…I always got the next day off.

Cearbhail: Man, I thought about having Vatu imagining slashing a zombified Primrose and then feeling a very warm embrace of pure love. Then he would have woken up to find a bleeding Primrose in his hands, his claws embedded in her stomach. And then...cut off to Davilia. But...We all know she's alive anyway so I decided a more civil route so I can get back to the real story. But...who says I won't do that scene later? 0_0