Sun's Height 20

(Fights-up-close): The Gold Road

I panted as the memory of the old Draconis woman finally released its grip on me. I knew I had been mumbling to myself some incoherencies, but I barely realized it at the time. I got nervous as I wondered if any of the others heard. I wanted some way to cover that up, so I wouldn't draw more attention to myself, but all I could do was act like it never happened.

Cleaver was probably staring at me again, but never once on this trip did I turn to confirm it. I just watched him out of the corner of my eye without any conclusion. Still, I got the feeling he was studying me, and I wasn't sure he was trying to hide it.

I still didn't know how he lived through the Purification, but I was more afraid to speak than I was curious.

I looked into the starry sky above. It was a vast world, and I was really starting to see my place in it. I was one person. I should have expected its currents to throw me around like this.

For me the trip had been drenched in guilt and a sense of loneliness. I hadn't helped to fend off any of the creatures on the path. I had walked slowly. I had been holding back tears the entire time.

Memories of Summitmist Manor and the Draconis contract were constantly sending waves of guilt through me, making me clench my fists and teeth, shudder, and sometimes nearly collapse. I fantasized about sinking my dagger into my own flesh during them, cutting myself, but never followed through. If I was to die, I wanted to give the traitor his revenge.

And when these intense attacks of my conscience weren't enveloping me, I thinking about two subjects that were crushingly depressing.

I was either in intense quick spurt of agony, or prolonged states of depression.

One of these subjects was suicide. Though it crushed me to acknowledge it, being lifeless had to be better than the life I was living.

Then there were the ones surrounding me. My former family. I'd turned on them already, whether they knew it or not. Now...when they least expected it, I could do to them what I did to my other enemies: kill them. I knew I could take one of them down at least. It seemed so easy at certain times, when I thought back to all the deceits Learns-fast had taught me. But then when I thought about all the memories I had back in the swamps, and acknowledging I now had no one left to love, and signing my own death warrant at the hands of my brothers, it seemed so unbearably hard, especially when the other two Shadowscales didn't know what they'd been deceived into. It was used to killing those who I saw as greedy or wilfully blind. It would be hard to kill someone I knew was just living under misconception.

I didn't need to do either until the last minute, when the traitor would need to be revealed to Lucien Lachance. I could plan for now. Plan and decide. But I had been doing that for hours, and gotten nowhere.

I walked slowly, fear pushing my forward, guilt pushing me back, and logic trying to pick which emotion to welcome.

I thought about my odds of survival if I killed one of them, and my odds of escaping if I ran, and exactly what it would mean if I just followed orders.

But as I thought, I noticed there seemed to be a happy-medium between abandoning or killing them and being completely complacent. And in that current state of reasoning, I decided to act on it. I hesitated to speak, but it might be time to muster up the guts to do so. I felt like the two Shadowcales they had the right to hate me with what they knew, just like the traitor, but finally I pushed to words out.

"Learns-fast," I finally said. The break in the sleepy silence felt like it made my head vibrate

"What?" he grumbled

"Why..." Suddenly I realized I didn't know exactly how to phrase the question.

"Why what?" He inquired grumpily after a couple of seconds of silence, obviously wanting to get this over with.

"Why didn't we help the tribals?" I finally said, but I knew it was a dogmatic statement. Yet I was hesitant to tell him what I'd learned. I was hesitant to hint at my...research.

He stopped in his tracks and turned to look at me. I could see agitation on his face. At once I was nervous, rewinding and rushing over my own words for their implications.

"What could you possibly mean!? What do you think was the purpose of your entire career!?" He shot back. It hurt me to argue about these sort of things with my family when I previously knew nothing but complacency.

"Its just they...they don't seem...they don't seem to be getting any better." A world of hurt was right beneath the words, and I knew the more I talked the more I risked tears. I began quivering with emotion again. I knew I was 'treading on thin ice' (as the Cyrodiillic expression goes) with his emotions to: his anger. I was choosing my words carefully, giving him more of an opportunity to make statements than me.

"How could you possibly make that assertion!?" He asked. I knew how I could, but I was afraid of what he'd do if he found out I'd been reading the very same books that turned "Scar-tail" against us. That was another issue to stress my mind with: whether I should tell him the facts I learned or not.

"Its just...they aren't living mu...can't we keep them under control and still let them live a bit more like us?" I said, still dancing around what I really meant, but getting more nervous, and feeling more and more hurt as hate and cynicism flowed amongst my family.

"Put them in cities?"He scoffed.

"I..."

"Do you have any idea what happened when Cyrodiil did that!? When they forced them into the cities of the coast? They were endlessly vilified for it by the other provinces!"

"That's because they had to kill to do it!" I protested.

"And what makes you think we could go about it any differently!?" He shouted.

There was silence. I really didn't have a good answer for that. He was right...the book I'd read spent as much time vilifying the wars that Cyrodiil fought to annex the coasts as anything else. Yet it wasn't really my point...I was creating fake arguments to get at the truth from another angle.

Finally, after a bit of silence, in an attempt to gain what iota of ground I could from the ruins of my argument, I spoke again.

"Why didn't you tell me that in training?" I asked again. I wasn't even sure I was being coherent any more.

"Tell you what?" He asked dourly, less focused on inquiry than finishing the argument.

I dodged the question. Maybe I should just try to confuse him enough he'd just start spewing information.

"They...they just seem to be getting worse..."

"You haven't been to Argonia in months, and yet you begin to think this now!?" He shouted, throwing his hands apart in a gesture of outrage.

The internal debate of whether or not to tell him what I'd read still raged on. It was a debate between the fear of repercussions of my research, and the ability to hear his case. There was no real reasoning going on, though, just battling impulses. It was another struggle between two feelings, and might become another struggle between courage and cowardess that constantly added to the burden of my marred existence.

"I just..." then I realized, my voice was once again eroded by oncoming tears "...nevermind."

I declined to say more. I'd done nothing but mar my relationship with them further, but I wanted time to regain some of my composure.

I knew that wasn't the end of my inner struggles, even the ones pertaining to this argument. These breath-taking Cyrodiillic landscapes had their adventurous beauty replaced with an alien hideousness, and it saddened me that finally being reunited with my Marsh Brothers only made me feel bitter-loneliness to fill the gap where love should be.

I tried formulating new ways to get the conversation going again, but as much as I pulled my mind to come up with something, it was slow and thoughts were dropping out of mind with every spurt of sleepiness, leaving me with only a yearning to recover their enlightenment like waking from an epic dream

I wanted to see him wash away my suspicions so I could return to some form of happiness. The world was frightening and lonely when I distrusted my own employers. Yet I was nervous about the truth because I was worried he couldn't make his case at all. I was scared of being disappointed.

A/N: Getting pretty close to the end now. I already finished first the draft of the last chapter, which will be one of many. It may end up being two more chapters to go, if I decide to split the last chapter in two for the sake of suspense. Anyway, I stopped here so I could get any last minute advice before the grand finale.

Oh, and by the way, once I'm done with this story, I'm probably going to go back on make revisions to earlier chapters based on advice I've gotten over the past months, so even when this story is "finished" there will still be some use for constructive criticism.