A Dark Dawn

When the carriage came I didn't head toward Riften or the farm that the couple who wanted to adopt Lynn called home. Without thinking about it I had hopped into the cart, turned to the man and had said, "Dawnstar."

"That's an extra ten, ma'm," the man had said and I handed him the coins.

He had said nothing about my change of direction which was unusual of the normally chatty drivers. I wasn't sure if it was my attitude that kept him silent or if it was just his way. Perhaps he had heard too many sad tales of people fleeing to and from the city due to the civil war, or the dragons, or the murders and didn't want another one to add to his collection.

It wasn't yet morning when I set foot in the town. I had changed my boots into those of the Dark Brotherhood as they were the warmest as well as the quietest I had. Underneath my commoner clothing (a plain set of pants and shirt) I wore the Dark Brotherhood armor that I had changed into before the carriage had arrived.

"I have a message to deliver and then I will need to travel to Golde Apple Farm near Riften, do you know the place?" I asked.

"It isn't on the way," the man said hesitantly.

"How far is it off the path? I would pay you for the trouble. If not then Irvastead or Riften, whichever is closest," I said.

The man thought about it for moment. "Charge for Riften from here is 30, for an extra 5 I will take you to the farm but I'll have to stable after to give myself some rest so you'll be on your own after," he said.

I nodded, handing him forty and telling him to keep the change in advance so he wasn't tempted to taken an easier job if someone in the village awoke and requested him. I decided to leave my bag with him, despite knowing the risks of having it stolen as I didn't want to be hindered by the two sets of armor, however light, held within. The driver then told me he'd be ready to head out in two hours. The horses needed tending to, possibly stabled and if so he would have to request different ones for the trip which would be a process (he assured me as I handed him three more coin). I knew the man thought I was an easy target to milk for money, but I simply wanted to get my business over with and I needed him to be compliant. As it was I knew I shouldn't have requested his services to take me to Dawnstar just in case something went wrong with either this contract or Ennodius but I hadn't wanted Vilkas to get suspicious and I had already paid for his services.

The town was small and cold, a light layer of snow already on the ground. To the north you could see the sea and to the east the mountains. Despite its harsh surroundings, the village seemed to be a sleepy sort of place. Quaint. Quiet.

Beitild lived on the edge of town, one of the houses closest to the mine. While all the buildings were small and simple, the ones here were somewhat larger with more outside touches to make them more appealing. The only exception to this was the woman's whose front door was unlocked as I entered it.

I had told myself not to think about it, to just get the contract over with so that I could move on. After Ennodius I had felt cold, distant, numb. In this state I had hoped that perhaps I could be done with the contracts. There was nothing saying I had to return to the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary afterward to collect the job or report that it was completed and if they listened as closely to news of their group about Skyrim as Astrid had hinted that they did, they would know I had done as they asked without me having to go back and risk receiving more. I knew eventually they would hunt me down and bring me back, but the longer I could avoid them, the better.

At first I thought no one was home, that she must have already headed to work despite the sun having yet to rise above the horizon. The place consisted mostly of two large rooms and the first was clearly lived in the most with a small fireplace, bed, and furnishings. As I headed into the back room, it was bare, some minor storage for foodstuffs on the wall, a stove next to a large hastily patched hole in the wall. The floor, however, is what drew my attention.

In the center of the bare second room was a woman on her knees, her clothes covered in soot and grime. She sat whispering, black candles laid out in a circle about her, bones including a human skull at the center of her makeshift altar. I silently stripped out of my common clothing to reveal the Dark Brotherhood outfit underneath and pulled on the hood that covered all but my eyes without her noticing, stashing my clothes in a nearby crate.

Finally she stopped her whispered chants to curse loudly. "Stupid Dark Brotherhood. Knew this was stupid."

She's summoning the Dark Brotherhood, does she want someone dead or does she also know that someone is out for her own life? I wondered. For a second I hesitated, wondering if it was worth it to reveal myself to her, if doing so would cause me to back out, to remember that I was Everlee of the Companions, that I didn't want to kill people who had done me no harm, that if I thought about that as well as the fact that I was standing in someone's home one second from slitting their throat that I would fun away or break down or worse, assassinate her and learn to forget that there were two distinct parts of me and that I could turn one off if I just let go.

I stepped up to her, my feet next to her hands and she looked up, shocked. She jumped to her feet, one of the larger bones in her hand as she turned.

"You – you from the Dark Brotherhood?" she asked, regaining herself. "I want him dead."

I said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

"Here, this is the payment. A thousand coin, five times what that jerk paid you," Beitild said. "I want him dead. Kill Leigelf and leave me alone."

She boldly grabbed my arm and placed the coin into my gloved hand. I didn't have to think about her offer, about whether or not her life was safe now. The Dark Brotherhood was a guild of assassins, not mercenaries to be hired in whatever affairs their patrons took. I had no doubt that one contract did not cancel another they had already deemed worthy to commit themselves to.

And she hadn't just paid me to try to save her life. She had wanted to end someone else's as well. Perhaps it wasn't any better than what I was doing then, but she wanted me to kill. She was giving me coin to hire a job so that I would be the one to do her dirty work and take his death on my conscious.

You, and your kind, are the reason I have to do this. The reason I am here in your home, concealed dagger in hand to kill a stranger. I felt the pain and anger inside of me build, the cold feeling of detachment snapping. I felt a bubble of panic in me rise, reminding me I didn't want to kill and on top of that a warm anger that seeped through me. This is her fault. I don't want to do this! I want to be home.

And I realized that "home" no longer referred to Cyrodiil, but to Jorrvaskr. I wanted to be back in the meadhall, eating beside Vilkas as Aela told us her latest adventure or Njada bragged about how she could take on any one of us milkdrinkers. I could handle the Thieve's Guild, Brynjolf's own precence enough to ease my reluctance about the concept of being the sort of person who stole for a living. He was a thief, and he was a good person, and that wasn't contradicting.

But I wasn't ready, I wasn't willing, to accept that one could kill people they did not know for money without remorse and still be a "good person." Veezara and his 'brothers' and 'sisters' were still a contradiction I had yet to understand, that I hoped I never fully understood. I had reached a place where I had decided that I liked him as a person, despite his profession, but I had not yet reached a point of understanding how he could do this job, or worse, if he were one of those that had come to enjoy it.

I had only assassinated twice now and for each one I felt despicable, I loathed myself and the Brotherhood for it, for bringing me here.

And she was the very reason I would have to, that the Brotherhood could continue to exist and function. Perhaps I was no better than her, doing the dirty work. But in that moment I felt as though for the first time I came close to understanding what exactly hate was. This is her fault.

Tenuous though it was, I latched onto that thought as I launched my dagger across her throat. I stood there, her coin in my hand as she fell to floor and I felt both relief, pain, anger, and guilt well up in me.

Part of my brain made me realize the coin in my hand meant I had accepted the Contract, that I would have to go back to the Brotherhood personally now when I had hoped to avoid them. I reasoned I could leave the coin, that I owed the Dark Brotherhood no real sense of loyalty or obligation, that accepting a contract, accidentally or not, didn't mean I honored them enough to take it.

But then I remembered the notes on the paper that warranted I take her life. She was in a feud with her estranged husband, the same person whose lips she had uttered when telling me who she wanted me to kill. The contract itself had indicated that he was the reason I was here.

And a twisted part of myself wanted to take the Contract. He was the reason the room seemed to spin around me as I felt the emotions inside me well up, contradicting and painful. If I had to kill, I would rather murder the people ordering the hits, not their intended targets. I knew that more killing didn't make it right, that I shouldn't want revenge, but I wanted it anyway.

I put the money with my clothes and headed back into town. I had one more job to do.

I sat on the carriage numbly as we left Dawnstar that morning, Leigelf's scream echoing in my head as it had when he'd fallen – no since when I had pushed him into the mineshaft. At the time it had been nothing, I had felt nothing save the anger Beitild had caused in addition to the adrenalin that built every time I had to fight. Like Ennodius, he hadn't seen me before he died.

I was gone before news would hit the town. Leigelf dead in his own mine, Beitild tragically having set a fire so hot it had consumed her and her home so that there wasn't even a trace left of the woman save ashes. I had timed the blaze so that it would start slow and end suddenly using what little I knew of alchemy and magic and could only hope that I hand done the job correctly so that her neighbors would have time to evacuate in case it spread to their homes. I hoped that I had left the town with only two less lives in it, killed by their own feud with the mystery looming over exactly how much the Dark Brotherhood was involved.

Nadine would be pleased. I felt sick.

I tried to separate it, to remind myself I hadn't wanted to kill either of them. That it wasn't me that had made those Contracts, that had formed the Dark Brotherhood. The blade was mine, the hand was mine, but the will was not mine.

It didn't change the fact that I was the one to kill them. Knowing that if I had never joined the Dark Brotherhood that some other assassin or mercenary would have done the job didn't assuage the feelings of responsibility. For whatever reason, I could not compartmentalize this the way I did when I had been a Companion and taken lives. And the fact that I couldn't remain in that cold place where I didn't feel the weight of what I had done was the only thing that comforted me. I wasn't a complete monster. Not yet.

Author's Note: Ok, so I knew I didn't want to leave this week on yet another dark note, so I was going to make this chapter longer but it didn't quite fit here so this week I'm posting two short chapters instead of one long one.