A/N: Warning, brief mention of infanticide and attempted suicide.
PAVING THE PATH
The Dragonborn
The Night Mother stands at the edge of the world. She watches as her former self, a disoriented, weaker, younger woman, wandering the yard around the cabin. It's difficult to watch. The woman is inconsolable in her grief. Once the Dunmer stumbled out of the house, her hands were shaking, she fell to her knees and began to sob.
The Night Mother just watched from the field boundary. The wheat behind her was close enough to feel, she almost fell back into it. Anything to distract her from the terrible scene in front of her. After a good weep, the woman stood and began to pace. The Night Mother knew what was to come.
It was the hysterics. The woman began to laugh. So loud and long the Night Mother is just cringing at the sight of it. How foolish she once was. If she were to go back in time, this would have been more methodical. Less emotional. It was her first significant kill however, so she figures she would cut her former self a little slack.
"Mother?" She hears the gasp from him. Her nails curl into her palms, drawing blood. He is here.
She feels his arms around her and doesn't have to look down to know he's hugging her legs. "Oh, Mother! You're here! With me! Cicero survived! Cicero saw everything, how amazing that was."
She doesn't want to look down into his eyes that are no doubt brimming with excitement. She just watches the woman across from her regain her senses. Finally. This is what she would have done first. No doubt the word of what she's done would spread soon. Even living out in such an isolated area, there were people to come by who would know of her children. Miss them clawing around and screaming like imbeciles. They would no doubt know something was wrong.
If she were to go back to this time, she would have hidden the bodies quickly. Packed up all the necessary supplies and run off. If she stayed, as she is now, she would be cast out from society and forced into the arms of the Thieves Guild.
"Mother, what happened next?" He asks her in a conversational tone. His arms are still around her and he is quite strong. She wonders what kind of health potion the fool found.
She watches her former self race into the house to find whatever she can. How little time she had. "History is not kind to me." She finally speaks to Cicero. She hears wailing from inside. This was her first mistake, finding the bodies again. It hurt her so. It took a long time in the Thieves Guild before she realized what a gift Sithis had given her.
"Most books written of me were burned. What remains is disputed. Some say the Morag Tong was alive long before me. In reality, I was merely a fledging member. I remember when Sithis first came to my bedroom. I had my eye on him for a long time. I was young and foolish, but he told me his secrets."
She hears more hysterical screaming. The woman inside is absolutely beside herself. A crash sounds, the glass above breaks as the dagger, the cursed weapon, comes flying out. Cicero gasps.
The Night Mother continues all while ignoring the chaos around her, "He made love to me, whispered that the Void is empty. He needs more souls. I took that to heart." She smiles at that stolen memory, lost to time. One fateful night turned into many. "Sithis hid me away in this cottage after the Morag Tong was disbanded. I lived here with the children for a few years before this day."
The woman races out of the house and she looks no better than a daedra. The Night Mother watches her, red coats the Dunmer like a living second skin, something that coats her with all the horror of what she did. She throws things. Paintings, toys, blankets, anything that reminded her of her family. It soon goes up in flames with a quick fire spell. The woman's eyes are ravenous. Mad. Grief filled. She watches the pile burn, her own face smeared in her own blood that trails down her shirt. The Night Mother remembers this time well.
She tried to kill herself. After finding the bodies of her children upstairs, no longer breathing, she tried to kill herself with that knife. But Sithis would not allow it. She had a promise to make good of.
The fire continues to blaze. "I was lost on this day. I remember I didn't know of my surroundings. I couldn't believe I went through with it." She murmurs, more to herself than the jester holding her. "I didn't know how strong it would make me."
"What happened after?" He nuzzles his head into her shoulder.
The Night Mother grinds her teeth at this. She has a feeling that is what's going on. She is in some sort of a time loop, why, she has no idea. "We will no doubt see soon enough."
The rustling of wheat alerts her. Nearly faceless men race in through the fields on horseback. They were distinct from one another based on their hair color and shades of skin tone. But the Night Mother never wanted to remember them as they were, thus, they were only shown as indistinguishable, everyday men.
The Night Mother just merely blinked, and a few moments had turned into a few hours. The night sky was teeming with stars that stretched for miles and the fire was long gone. It thankfully didn't get into the fields. The woman, the Dunmer, a foolish person she wishes to excise from herself, had fallen asleep near the embers. One of the men went to aid her. The others went into the house.
Cicero is breathing heavily now. He watches with such intensity as the man near the woman begins to give her first aid. Shouting ensues from inside the house. "Pelallis!" A man yells to the other. The Night Mother watches what happens in the silence.
The man who helped her enters the house. She hears their cursing: short, curt, and dirty words spilled from their mouths. But their harshness is meant to mask their horror. Based on their reaction, the odds were always stacked against her. Due to this isolated land, there was no one else to attack those children.
"What did you do?" The other man who ran into the house first storms out. The Dark Elf glances up at him. Her face crumples with emotion at the reminder.
She watches the woman shrink away from the man, but she speaks quickly, "Someone…they found us. They tried to kill us all. They kept me because they wanted to cage me…use me…you know how some men think of women. Especially the Dunmer. The Nords see us as playthings." The act was convincing. It should have been convincing enough for the men.
But the dagger soiled her ill-plotted attempt. The third man was toying around in the tall grasses and found it near a flowerbed teeming with yellow and blue pansies. "I found something." He approaches the others, with a torch in one hand. Only the Night Mother sees the woman's dark eyes widen. Then, she composes herself.
"That's what he killed them with. I was too weak to stop it. There was another with him. He held me down while they did it." The words came out fluidly, as if this were practiced but the Night Mother knew this moment was anything but.
"You see any men in these fields? Horse tracks?" The men begin to converse.
One gives a slight shake of his head. "I saw tracks but they're hours old, nearly a day."
"Did they run away? How did you escape?" The last one asks her.
Her eyes are vacant. Sorting out the plan. That's what the Night Mother sees. But the men see differently.
One gently lays his hand on her shoulder. "You were frightened, yes? You threw them in this fire? Used your magic?"
She nods slowly. "Yes." She whispers.
The Night Mother watches as the other men give a few silent glances to one another. "Inside." The taller man tells the others.
The next few hours were a blur. They never truly believed her. Knowing that she used to work with the Morag Tong, she should have been able to kill the imaginary men more efficiently and leave evidence of their bodies. More than the ash that settled under the dying embers.
She was a fool again. The woman sat in a daze as the men raced around her, in the house and scouring the perimeter. They had found out what she truly did.
The Night Mother remembers this moment well. The woman's eyes were vacant. Unseeing. She was barely listening as the men crowded around her, conversing in harsh whispers on whether to take her to Bravil to report her, or kill her on the spot. She just stared ahead at the ash pile. Where the fires blazed before.
"Burn her! I want no business with a child killer! The guards should not have to deal with it anyways. Bravil has enough crime as it is, not to mention dealing with the lot of her. Scum like this should be killed on sight." He spits near her. The woman doesn't even flinch. The man's face comes into clear focus now. An Imperial with sharp features, dark hair and eyes, his face is broad along with his chest. Muscles line his person, he was the tallest of the group and no doubt the dumbest.
"We need to bring her to justice, a kill like this doesn't right the wrong she committed." The only sound person in the group mentions. She remembers him now. He was a short Nord, fiery red hair and green eyes. Features that were, admittedly, hard to forget.
The last man comes to clarity. He was the only one wearing armor. He had soft brown eyes. Skin of a darker complexion. Hair cropped close to the head. The Redguard man just watched where the fire used to burn. Where all her memories of a happy life were in tatters.
"I, for one, don't want to have to drag her back to the city. If you remember well, I used to be a guard. I know they won't care. They might even let her go if she gives a good enough argument. We have all the evidence here. If anyone asks, we lead them to this house." His eyes burn when they brush over the woman. She doesn't remember this kind of hatred boiling under the surface with him. How nice it is to see it now. "I just wonder what to do with the bodies?" He nods his head to the house that now seemed to be screaming with pain from the past few hours. Everything inside was displaced in finding clues for what happened here.
"We can bury the bodies," The redhead says, "Give them a good sendoff." He says nothing on her fate.
The silence is deafening. Cicero slowly pulls away from her. "They wanted to kill you?" He nearly growls.
The Night Mother lays her hand on his shoulder, holding him. She recognizes his immortal scent now. Her hand tightens. "Patience."
"Patience, Mother." He repeats back to her.
The men share glances again, no doubt trying to decide who should make the kill. For such brazen people, they all seemed reluctant. But as expected, the bullish Imperial man with the broad features pulls his sword first. He moves behind the woman. Her eyes are still vacant. The sword comes slicing past her, she remembers the sound of it. Such a sharp sound.
The woman ducks just in time as the sword sears over her. Before the man can swing again, and before the others can intervene, she screams. It was like an inferno was cresting inside of her. Like all the pain from her children, all the hatred she had for the men, came boiling to the surface.
The men yell when it starts. The lighting races from her heart all the way down her arms and legs. She fell back to the ground and let the storm consume her. The men scream out in agony when the lighting races over them, consuming them whole.
The woman is screaming on the ground. So loud, her wailing would certainly bring more people to the area. She glances from one ash pile to another. Once clear and defined men were now nothing but dirt.
She keeps screaming. The Night Mother clenches her hand on Cicero's shoulder again. To keep him stable. She knows what happens next. It was a small spark. Part of the embers that took down the Redguard man with the soft eyes. It grew, more potent and higher than she would have thought. The woman is brought from her agony in time to see it. She tries to race to it, to stop it with whatever power she has, but she was too foolish to learn any ice spells.
The flame leaps. With the coming of autumn and the end of summer meant drier conditions. Ripe for a fire. The woman screams again when they go up in flames. It should not have been that fast, would not have been, if the wheat were still new and fresh from a rainstorm. Instead, the fire spreads quickly, taking up nearly an acre in a matter of seconds.
The Night Mother stands, holding Cicero back and watching the woman race from one part of the flames to another before realizing: This field never meant anything. It was only cover. It was better, truth be told, for the house to burn along with everything else.
She remembers she looked at the house, thought about burning it, but that foolish heart of hers kept her from finishing it. She ran. Let the house be and the let the fields go up in flames.
"Come Cicero." The Night Mother reaches out for the jester. He grasps her hand, and they go to follow the frantic woman, through the vast fields and out of this cursed land.
The Dunmer tripped many times. Her emotions were getting the best of her once again. The Night Mother watches her with an assessing eye. How she wishes to shake some sense into her. This would not be the worst or the most traumatic thing to try and take her down.
Cicero kept his hand in hers. He watched with a sort of empathy she tries to beat out of new initiates. Cicero never was keen on anyone, except for her. "Who did this to you?" She asks him, conversationally. It's not like they could do much else while the woman untangles herself from one of the towering rocks they were traversing over.
"Cicero's new state as a vampire? Why, Listener did! She brought us here to talk to Sithis too!" The jester squeals.
The Night Mother nearly breaks his hand. For one, the most annoying person she's known has finally been granted immortality. A fool never does well with eternity. And to learn that Eve is a part of this. She should have known from the start.
"How? How did she bring you here?" She watches the woman fall from a large stone only to cling to another. This side of the mountains was harder to traverse now that she chose this path. The one Sithis took was well trodden. Her younger self never had enough foresight.
"The Daedric Lord of Knowledge. He gave us this path." Cicero says. As if nothing were the matter with that statement.
She drops his hand and has to resist the urge to shove him down the rocks and into one of the great ravines opening up. "How dare you? You worked with them?"
"No, Mother! Cicero would never! Never, ever! He just wanted to save you! Listener said you are lost!" He cries.
The silence returns. She watches him with a new hatred brimming in her heart, listens to the soft steps the woman takes over the rocks and down into the vast plains beyond. "You would betray me in such a manner?"
"No, Mother! Cicero would never betray you! Never hurt you!"
"But you did, you fool. You want me dead? Want me sitting in a corpse?" She takes a step towards him. Watches his eyes. They are glowing with the golden embers below, showing this change has brought him newfound strength.
He stands there, waiting to take all the aggression she is showing to him. "Cicero will take your punishment. But please, listen to your Child!" He cries, "Listener told me. Sithis told me. Said the wolf and the others would kill you, send your soul to the Daedric Princes. They would not be kind to you."
"You think I didn't know the risks?" She steps towards him. Her hands are brimming with electric power.
"Cicero knows! But Sithis sees all! He knows his bride won't last long. She won't be around to help his plans when she is no more but a Daedric plaything!" He sinks to his knees. Bows to her.
She watches his sobbing form. She should kill the pathetic jester here. Rip his still beating heart out. But she doesn't have to. The scene changes. Instead of a night covered plain that stretched for miles, she finds herself in a small room with a stone lining. A green rug spreads down the path to a desk. A large fireplace burns nearby.
Her jaw sets. She knows what this is. Cicero scrambles up to stand near her. On the other side of the room stands the woman. She had been cleaned up. Given new clothing, tight clothing with many pockets, a hood to cover her battered face. Her eyes remain on the ground. Her confidence in the world shattered.
"You are a wonderful pupil, you understand that right? You understand what this job means?" A confident male voice asks her from the chair near the fire. He was one of the first nameless fools to lead her in the Thieves Guild.
"I do. I know the risks." The woman repeats back. Her voice is still hollow. She still carries the burden of what she did in those fields.
The door creaks open. The Night Mother glances back and has to hold her tongue when Eve and the Shadow walk in. He towers over her, has to duck very lowly to get through the door. The Night Mother pins him with her gaze.
"It's you." Eve gasps.
"Of course, it is! Who else would I be? I heard of that deal you made with that fool." The Night Mother strides over to Eve. Instead of tearing her heart out, she gives her a hard slap across the cheek.
Eve's eyes water. The Night Mother looks up to the eyeless face of the Shadow. "I know. I cannot interfere. What else is there to see? Are we going to watch every insignificant detail of my long life? If so, there will be no province of Skyrim when we return from the Void."
The black hand motions to the end of the room. The woman trudges forth, down the hall to complete the first of many tasks for the Thieves Guild. Her form walks straight through the band of people. As if she were nothing but an illusion.
"What happened? I didn't see." Eve whimpers.
"The Night Mother had been taken into the Thieves Guild. After her flight from the plains, she fell into their embrace. Needing a home, food, water, it was the only way." The disembodied voice booms from above.
"Enough!" the Night Mother yells up to it. "If I am to watch this, then I will tell the story. No one else." She walks forwards to grab Eve by the forearm. She doesn't squirm as she's pulled down the way to the fireplace. "Look." She shoves Eve forwards to see the pretentious Nord man curled up with a book by the warming flames.
"This is the first of many terrible people, Eve. Many terrible people in my life. I'm sure you didn't see, but after I had slain my children, men came for me in the fields. I had to kill them before they killed me. Once they were dead, I wandered the plains until finding this haven. I thought I was safe. I was not. I was a plaything for this man right here." She points to him. Remembers how he ordered her around. How he liked to have nightly visits to the female members, whether they wanted it or not. Remembers how he took more than his fair share from the goods they brought in. He took advantage of everything. It took someone so manipulative to know one.
"He's like Mercer." Eve finally says, and it's not only the physical resemblance. It's the way he watches the room. The air of distrust around him.
"Yes." The Night Mother says softly. In truth, the man was never much of a nuisance, he was dead in a matter of weeks after she entered the Guild, but she needed this foolish Child on her side.
"What happened?" Eve asks again.
"Let us go see. If we are to endure this hell, then we are going to live it to the fullest." She shoves Eve ahead of her. Signals to Cicero to follow, and glares at the Shadow. He slithers behind them.
Hermaeus Mora was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, as they follow the Night Mother across the way to the bunk house. The woman was just entering the premises. A man and a woman were waiting for her. Two Dunmers. "What did he say?" The girl asks.
The woman just keeps her head down. "We need to enter the house and take what we can. We have to sneak, we cannot kill."
The others nod with these directions. "Then, let us go." The man urges.
The scene shifts below their feet. Eve gasps when their surroundings now show the interior of a modest house with many treasures brimming inside of it. All four of them stand and watch as the thieves sneak around. Taking any and all they can find from drawers, cupboards, tables and any hiding places.
Eve breaks away from the Night Mother, to follow her former self up the grand staircase. "Go with her, she no doubt needs the help." The Night Mother says to the Shadow. The towering beast opens his mouth to her, showing his teeth before he too slithers up the stairs.
The Night Mother moves back, to the far side of the room, feeling for anything solid among the cupboards she can find. Most things here were a mirage but she was bound to find something to help her.
"Mother? What's going on? What are you doing?" Cicero creeps up to her.
A scream sounds in the upstairs bedroom. This was the time it happened. The first time. The Night Mother watches as the Argonian who owns this house tumbles down the stairs. A bloody knife sticks out of his chest.
That might do. She moves to where the corpse is now cooling. Plucks the dagger from his heart to hide in her dress. "Mother-" Cicero whispers near her. Much like her flesh and blood once was, he never left her alone. Always asked too many questions. She finally slams him against the wall with her hand over his mouth.
"If you should know, this was the first time I killed in the Thieves Guild. I have patience now, but back then I did not. I didn't want to sneak around like a fool in the shadows to gain what little coin there was in this disparaging place." She whispers to him. Her eyes burn when they find his. "Furthermore, this dagger I will be using. I forgive you, I will not forget, but I will forgive this…altercation. Stay loyal to me and I won't turn against you either."
His eyes widen. She knows the question he is asking.
More sounds come from upstairs. Eve asking the Shadow and Hermaeus Mora some inane questions. The Night Mother releases her hold on Cicero. He falls to the ground before scrambling to his feet. "Follow me and make no sound of this." She whispers.
She hears his sure footsteps behind her as she ascends the staircase. The dagger held tightly in her hands. She is not sure when the opportunity will present itself, but it surely will. When she has the time, she will kill the most disobedient of her Children. Leave her in the Void for Sithis to absorb and bargain her way out of here. It will be difficult, but as they have all seen, she has built eons of patience to pave the path to this moment.
Cicero's Journal Entry
Cicero thinks Mother has gone mad! Just like him! Something in this land broke her. She wasn't supposed to act this way…Sithis needs to be here!
But maybe he is. He is always watching. He is waiting for something…maybe she is right. Maybe Listener has taken things a step too far. This might be what Sithis is waiting for. After Listener is dead, he will reveal himself.
Cicero will keep close to Mother. But this house holds many ghosts, Cicero shudders at the thought of giving it more.
A/N: Unrelated to this story but I wanted to let everyone know I just posted my first oneshot, A Story of Elsweyr, today! It's in the Skyrim world and you'll be able to find it under my profile if you're interested! :)