Author's Note: This was an exercise to find my character, Aloubard's, "voice" so to speak (no pun intended). I won't be doing regular updates because of the nature of it, and I'll probably only work on this only when I've hit a wall on a different project. If none of that bothers you, then have at it.
15th of Frostfall, 4E 195
It's been only a few weeks since we relocated to the sanctuary here in Dawnstar, but it feels like it's been a year. Making an icy hole in the ground livable is quite the task, as it turns out. Yesterday, Babette tilled the soil in the garden and planted some deathbell. She said she intended to make the area into a poisoner's nook. I think she should do whatever she can to make this place feel more like home.
And home it will be. Due to recent events (that I'll get to later), Falkreath is no longer secure. We are completely and totally alone this time. There are no other Sanctuaries. No other brothers and sisters. We are the last bastion of darkness out here in our snowy fortress, and now with the Night Mother guiding us, we are ready to carry that darkness out into the world with us. Sithis is ready, too. I can feel it. We all can.
This morning, I was doing my usual routine. It's Morndas, which means it's time for an audience with our mother. She gave me the usual list of names and places to relay to Nazir and Babette. After that she was quiet for a while, almost contemplative. I thought she was done, and then she spoke again.
"We will always have a need to remember what was" she said. "My children to come will do well to learn from their predecessors. Let your experience serve as a lesson for them all."
I asked her what she meant by that. She fell silent.
I discussed the matter with Cicero. He may not hear our mother as I do, but he knows her better than anyone else. He was not of much help initially, but he eventually suggested I should write things down. Then it dawned on me that she meant for me to make a written record of everything that has transpired. We have lost all of our records from before the betrayal. Not a single volume of our written history survives, save for the mad ramblings in the jester's memoir. Perhaps it's sad, but we have been given a blank slate. I intend to use it.
I will not lie, it is a daunting task. I'm not illiterate by any means, but writing has never been a passion of mine. I lack the flow and the eloquence that the bards wear on their sleeves. But the Night Mother has done so much for me. The least I can do is fulfill her wishes, no matter how inconvenient it may be to me personally.
I won't bother to give any preamble. Learn what you can from my experience. Do not make the same mistakes as your forefathers and foremothers. Do better, both for our unholy Mother and Father and for yourselves. Our survival hangs in the balance.
– Aloubard.
— — — — —
I've always had a talent for getting myself into messy situations. I was young and overzealous, as we all were at some point, but even then I should have known not to tread on someone else's toes. The job had trouble written all over it from the start. Looking back, that much is obvious. Hindsight is a cruel mistress, though, so I try not to pay her much of my time.
It sounded simple enough. Go here, kill so-and-so, retrieve the bounty. Such jobs are of course generally frowned upon, but not terribly uncommon even so. The wounds from The Great War still hadn't healed entirely, and the Empire was stretched thin as it was. Policing individuals for something as politically irrelevant as murder wasn't high on their priority list, and every mercenary in Skyrim knew it. Which made the idea that someone was having trouble finding a contract killer that much more mind boggling. Everyone south of Winterhold had heard about the job at least in passing. Why hadn't someone taken care of it already? Many aren't suited for murder, of course, but coin is coin. Surely there are plenty of people willing to end a single life for something as desirable as that, or so I thought.
I had never killed for money before. At least, that was never explicitly part of the deal. It wasn't entirely unfamiliar territory, of course. I had taken life in the past, but there was always a reason. Little excuses, like "he attacked me first," or "I did it in self defense". In the typical way people try to justify their actions so they don't get thrown in jail or become social pariahs. The only real difference between them and us is that we simply don't give into the need to sully ourselves with delusion. Killing is just that. Killing. Plain and simple and sweet. Death comes for us all, in the end. But at the time, I thought differently.
I admit I was wrestling a bit with the prospect of taking a life that I perceived to be innocent. My nerves had built up on the long journey to Windhelm and settled into a little tangled ball in my gut. As I knocked on the door to the Arentino residence, they threatened to overwhelm me. I pushed them down. I needed the money badly, and therefore couldn't afford to let emotion get the best of me.
No one answered the door. I hadn't noticed that it was ajar, and it seemed to crack open on its own, as if a phantom had invited me inside for a visit. That, combined with the nature of what I was about to do, put me on a knife's edge.
The house was a disaster. There was a thin layer of dust covering pretty much every surface. Used cups and plates and bottles were scattered about the floor, punctuated by a few rumpled piles of dirtied linens. There was no decoration save for the curtains that were drawn over the boarded up windows. If I hadn't just spent the last year of my life living in squalor myself, I wouldn't have believed that anyone could possibly have stood to live there.
As I crossed the threshold, I heard a voice. It was that of a child. His tone was rhythmic, like he was singing, or reading verse, or chanting. I drew closer, as quietly as I could manage, and then I saw something for which I had no comparison.
In a little alcove, I found a boy kneeled in the center of what I mistook to be a mage's circle. I knew little about magic, and I still don't know a damn thing about it, but his intentions should've been obvious. I was too distracted by the grotesque imagery to really think about it. The skeleton, the pound of flesh, and the human heart… It was all very shocking. He continued his hushed muttering, and it was then that I realized he wasn't reciting poetry– he was praying. It was the Black Sacrament.
It is true, what they say. What is sacred to us seems foul and barbaric to those who don't know Sithis as we do. As I stood on the threshold, watching as the little boy begged the Night Mother to send one of her children, I felt ill. The energy in the room was oppressive. He sank his blade into the heart, then. Once, and then again and again and over and over again. The muscle looked like it had suffered much of this treatment already. What little blood remained in it dripped off of the blade and soaked into the wooden floor below. The entire place reeked of decay.
He noticed my presence before I had a chance to announce myself. I expected him to scream when he discovered me, an intruder in his home. But he surprised me. His face lit up like he was at his first Wintertide festival. His mother, may she rest in peace, must've done a poor job instilling him with basic life or death principles like "stranger danger".
He got to his feet and ran up to me. "It's you!" he cried. He was ecstatic. "You finally came!"
I didn't know what to say. Had he been expecting me? I hadn't sent word ahead. Someone else, then? He didn't give me a chance to ask.
His tone changed in an instant. "It took you long enough," he said, and crossed his chubby little arms. Kids, you know?
I knew from rumor that he had been trying to contact the Brotherhood to no avail. The idea that people were avoiding the job because of this never even crossed my mind. The Dark Brotherhood are nothing more than an urban legend, or so I thought. An old wives's tale. Something mothers tell their unruly children about to get them to behave.
Unsure of what to do and desperate for work, I elected to play the part. I cleared my throat, and prepared to, for lack of better phrasing, bullshit my way through the conversation. I didn't really care what he thought of me so long as I got paid.
He went on to explain how his mother died. How the Jarl had him sent away to the nearest orphanage, which was a hundred miles away from the town of which he called home. Many clients have very good reasons for their murderous desire. Their reasons don't matter really, but it was of some small import to me at the time. Had Aventus asked me to kill the headmistress in cold blood, I would have declined, coin or no coin.
I won't go over it all, but here is the short version. Her name was Grelod the Kind. I assure you the name is ironic. She was a wretched woman who reveled in abusing orphans. Many have said that she had it coming. Maybe she did, or maybe she didn't. I don't particularly care anymore.
It wasn't a fair fight by any means. That's what made it a good kill. I walked right in the front door and slit her throat before she could scream. She bled as the saying goes. Like a stuck hog. That's maybe not descriptive enough, but murder is rarely graceful enough to warrant poetry. I held her as she died. Watched as the last spark of life drained from her body. She went limp all at once, and she fell through my arms. She hit the floor with a thud.
The clammer was loud. A few people came running, two little girls and a young woman who didn't appear to be much older. The children screamed at the sight of the blood, and the color drained from the young woman's face as she looked upon the scene. I expected her to run. To call for help, maybe. She did neither. Instead, she shoved the children behind her, inserting herself as a wall between them and I.
Apparently, she had a notion that I might harm them. I would do no such thing. The Aretino boy had specified that I was not to harm a single hair on their heads, but I wouldn't have bothered even if he hadn't. Killing adults for pay is one thing, especially when they deserve it, but killing children is an entirely different beast that I would not confront on that day. And I wasn't going to harm the young woman either. She was merely doing what she felt she had to, acting on a mother's instinct, and Aventus's quarrel wasn't with her anyway.
I backed away slowly. Although she was quaking in her boots, she stared me down until I was able to make my exit into the night. I fled through the streets of Riften and went out through an exit in the Ratway. Word of the hag's murder would no doubt spread quickly. I did not want to be seen by anyone else.
And spread quickly it did. I had hoped to be ahead of the news when I reached Windhelm, but a few of the regulars at one of the more popular taverns in town were gossiping in hushed tones about it when I stopped by. She was a do-gooder, they said. Slain by the Dark Brotherhood, commissioned by one of the orphans under her charge. It took everything I had not to choke on my mead. The truth was less dramatic, perhaps, but far funnier than the rumor.
I entered the Aretino residence without knocking. Aventus came running. He pulled me into a hug, which I was too shocked to reciprocate. I expected him to be grateful, but he nearly jumped for joy when I confirmed Grelod's death.
"I knew you could do it!," he said. He was filled to the brim with happiness. I said nothing. What was there to say? He was my client, and I had just killed a woman in his stead. And beside that, I had thought it unnatural for a child to be so joyful about something so sinister in nature. But that didn't stop me from accepting payment.
He scurried off into the house. I expected him to return with gold, or maybe a small bag of valuables. Instead, he presented to me a plate. As in the kind that you eat from. It was silver, and probably very nice when it was originally purchased, but it was dented in two places and obviously had seen better days. I stared down at it as he went on and on.
"This should fetch you a nice price." It didn't. "And thank you. I knew the Dark Brotherhood would save me," he said. It was then that I noticed the sadness in his eyes.
I drew in a deep breath. I couldn't just leave him alone. "Where is your father?" I asked.
"Oh," he said. He seemed startled by the question. "He went off to war when I was a baby. Mom said he died fighting to free Skyrim."
He had likely been lied to, but I resisted the urge to retort. This was a child, one who had looked death in the face and came out relatively unscathed. Part of his childhood had already been bruised. Whether or not his father was a war hero was none of my business. Especially not when there was a much more glaring issue to be dealt with.
Losing one parent is difficult enough. Losing both when you have no one else, no one to take care of you when you aren't yet ready to care for yourself? That is unfathomable to most. I understood then why the Jarl had him carted off to the orphanage. Even excusing the legal issues that would come from allowing a child to hold property, no child should be left to fend for themselves. Even one as headstrong as Aventus.
"You don't have any aunts or uncles?" I asked. He shook his head. "Any friends of the family who could take you in?"
He shook his head again. "Nope. It was just me and ma."
I knew what I had to do. The young woman I saw at the orphanage seemed protective. I do not know whether or not she worked there to begin with, but there was no doubt in my mind that she would stick around to care for the children now that Grelod was gone. People with instincts as strong as hers often have trouble ignoring them. The children in Honorhall were safe now. They would be cared for. And so would Aventus.
I made it expressly clear where we were going. He resisted at first, as any stubborn child would. But I threatened to turn him into the guard, and from then on he cooperated. Better me than an escort of strangers, I suppose. He didn't give me any trouble after that.
When we arrived, the young woman opened the door. She regarded Aventus with surprise. "Wh- Aventus? How did you-"
I removed my hood. Seeing my face again seemed to stop her in her tracks. She pulled Aventus from my side and ushered him into the orphanage. If looks could kill, I would not be alive to speak of it today."Leave," she said. It was a warning as much as it was a command.
I didn't want to make any more trouble for her or for the children than I already had. Intervening any further would've been unprofessional. I turned to leave, as she requested, and said, "Take care of him. He's been through too much already."
She gritted her teeth. She didn't say so, but I could tell she agreed. Then she slammed the door in my face. I haven't seen her or Aventus since.
— — — — —
Leading the Dark Brotherhood is not an easy task. All eyes, including those of the Night Mother, are upon you for better or for worse. Watching your every decision, judging you as they see fit. A good leader learns to take this in stride. There are certain stresses that come with the honor of being our mother's chosen. Her words guide our path through this world. The only thing we can do to cope is to cling to our brothers and sisters in darkness. When the world above misunderstands, they will be with us always. Bound not by the water of the womb, but by the blood of the covenant.
Astrid never seemed to learn this lesson. I won't pretend that I understood her fully, because I didn't, and I still don't. There are things she had done, things she had said that made no sense to me. Her treachery is something I find perplexing even to this day. But at our first meeting, I had no idea of her nature. No window from which to view the Brotherhood and its ways. Maybe it was because of this that I feared her.
I didn't know it yet, but in doing my little dance with death I had stepped on some toes. I would not learn of this until it was too late.
I don't remember being knocked out. I had enough liquor in me to kill a horse by the time the night was over, so it could've been that I passed out on my own. I suppose that it no longer matters. If Astrid had chosen to threaten my life, I can say for sure that I would've perished. She had the means and the skill to execute such a plan. She could've killed me right then and there and I would've been none the wiser. The fact that she didn't is testament to her sharp cunning, and her compassion. In our line of work, compassion is deadly.
I had no idea that I'd been taken from my bed. I only know that when I woke, my head felt as if it had been clubbed by a giant, and when I opened my eyes I saw that my hands were bound. This, of course, caused me to panic. What had happened? I fell asleep at the Bee & Barb the night before, and now… Well. Let's just say I wasn't in Riften anymore.
I struggled in my binds. It was fruitless, of course. No assassin worth their salt is going to go through all of that effort just to be thwarted by poor knotmenship or rotted rope.
I had been so caught up in escaping that the real threat hadn't even crossed my mind: my captor. As I thrashed about trying to free myself, I heard a woman's laughter. I looked up, and laid eyes upon Astrid for the first time. She sat atop an empty bookshelf, casually, as if her presence wasn't an active threat to my life. She pulled down her mask. Her smile looked as out of place as it felt to me then.
"Sleep well?" she asked. The question answered itself. I had been bagged and dragged, and probably drugged as well at some point. Despite this, I gave my muffled reply.
She made a face, mocking me and the predicament she put me in. I have no doubt in my mind that it was all very amusing for her. Eventually, we all learn to love the chase as much as the kill. Some, like Astrid, enjoy toying with their prey most of all. "Ooh," she cooed, mocking again. "Something wrong?"
Another rhetorical question. It was at this point that my annoyance had begun to outweigh my survival instincts. Had I been able to respond, she would've been in for quite the lashing.
She hopped down from her perch, having grown bored of watching me struggle, and drew her blade. She pressed the metal into the flesh of my cheek, teasing, a little taste of what I thought was to come. I had been brought here, to this strange place likely in the middle of nowhere, where no one would ever discover my body. I would become one with the soil before anyone ever thought to go looking for me.
It's strange how the mind prepares the body and the soul in the moments before certain death. It was something I had always been afraid of, but then, alone in that dark cabin at the other end of Astrid's blade, I felt strangely at peace. Not ready for the end by any fashion, but at least I would not go to my grave with indignity. All of that thought and effort, and she chose not to put even a scratch on me. She laughed darkly, and cut my gag with a single swipe of her blade.
As soon as I was able, I let her know exactly how I felt about my situation. "I don't know who you are and I don't care," I said. "Let me go or I'll kill you where you stand."
That entertained her. "Oh really?" she said. "And just how do you plan to do that with your hands tied?"
It was an empty threat, of course. Maybe it would've scared off someone lesser than her or I, but she stood her ground without even flinching. By that point in her career, she had probably received more death threats than she could count on both hands. I know I have.
She hummed. "Didn't think so," she said. She cut the bindings on my hands as well. She set me free, but there was a silent understanding between the two of us that she was not yet finished with me. No. She had brought me there for a reason.
"There. Now we can talk on equal footing." She relaxed up against the shelf.
There was, of course, one question that had been burning on my mind ever since I woke up. It was no doubt tedious to her, but I couldn't help but ask. "Why did you bring me here?"
"Straight to the point, then. Good. I don't want to waste my time anymore than you want to waste yours," she started. She reached into her pocket and pulled out something wrapped in cloth. She handed it to me casually, so that even though I was wary of her I wouldn't think anything of it.
I opened the parcel carefully. I don't know what I had expected it to be, but that was not it. A finger. A real, actual, severed human finger. It was paler than I was, which is a feat considering I haven't technically been alive for just over five years now. I stared at it in disbelief. "Whose finger is this?"
"You don't recognize your own mark?" She tutted at me. "How unprofessional. But what else can you expect from someone who managed to butcher such a simple kill so horribly?"
I almost balked. I hadn't thought I'd done too badly. She went down clean and without a fight. But then again, I had been caught red-handed. Maybe…
It dawned on me then. It was Grelod's finger. Of course it was. That would explain the wrinkles and the slightly decayed appearance. Which meant that I had left a trail of some kind, one that had likely led her to the orphanage, and then straight to me. The young woman. She had squealed on me, probably at knifepoint. Considering what was at stake, I can't say I blame her.
My distress must've been outwardly apparent. "Don't worry," Astrid said. "I didn't lay a finger on the little Arentino boy. It's bad business to kill your own clients, after all."
Hearing that was a weight off my shoulders, but I couldn't shake off the fact that she had made no mention of the new headmistress. But I knew that just asking may endanger her life, so I remained silent on the subject.
I began to grow tired of playing cat and mouse. I wanted to get as far away from that place as I possibly could, as quickly as I possibly could. "What do you want from me?" I asked.
"How kind of you to ask," she said. "Grelod was, for all intents and purposes, a Brotherhood contract. One that you," she poked me in the chest, "stole. Aventus Aretino performed the Black Sacrament. He was looking for us."
Us? That was a very specific word choice, I thought. Surely she didn't mean…
I sighed. Apparently I had been a little too hasty in accepting the job. If she was to be believed, and she was, then I had crossed the very last guild on the face of Nirn that anyone in their right mind would want to cross. "So I take it you're with the Dark Brotherhood then?"
"Oh yes," she said. She grabbed her dagger, the very same one she used to free me, by the blade and handed it to me. A bold move, I thought, but then again if she was as well-trained as she implied herself to be, she had very little to worry about. Or maybe she knew, somehow, that I wouldn't try to kill her. The best assassins learn to listen to their gut first and foremost. "You owe us a debt. It's time for you to pay up." She gestured behind me.
I turned around. I was greeted by the sight of three bodies, all with identical hoods pulled over their faces and bound as I had been. I thought them already dead until I spotted the subtle rise and fall of breath. Evidently I wasn't the only one who'd been bagged and dragged.
"Someone in his room has a contract out on them. That person cannot leave this room alive," she said.
"You want me to kill again?" I asked. It seemed too simple a task.
"Obviously," she said. "One of their lives in exchange for your own."
I removed one of my victims' hoods. It was a Nord man, a few decades older than I, who gasped when the cloth passed over his features. The victims weren't drugged as I thought they had been. They'd been put to sleep, subdued by some sort of enchantment on a simple piece of cloth. Clever.
He panted and struggled in his binds just as I had, and when he finally got his bearings he began to beg for his life. I grabbed him by his collar and dragged him to his knees. "Think, man! Is there anyone out there who would want you dead?"
The weight of the night's events and the anger I felt because of it had begun to take its toll. He flinched as I screamed in his face. "I'm a sellsword! You don't make it far in my line of work without stepping on some toes," he said. When I questioned him further, he repeated himself. Even with Astrid's blade pressed to his throat, he knew nothing.
When I questioned the other victims, they told me the same thing. That they had enemies, of course. Who didn't? But none of them could tell me definitively whether or not someone would want them dead enough to take action. None of them had anything to give me, nothing that would save their life, anyway.
I looked back at Astrid. Killing Grelod was different. She deserved it, and I was getting paid for my services. The nature of the job aside, I had viewed it more as a business transaction than a personally motivated assassination. But this felt entirely different. I could tell that she had a personal stake in it, somehow. Surely she didn't actually expect me to go through with it. Or maybe I was being tested, I thought. I wouldn't find out until later that I was right on both accounts.
"Who is it?" I asked.
The way she contemplated her nails suggested that she was growing tired of my indecision. "Who knows?" she said. "They all seem like likely candidates, don't they?"
I tried harder to get her to fess up. She kept her silence, almost daring me to ask more. I didn't know much about the Dark Brotherhood at the time, and had no way of knowing which of the victims was to be condemned to an eternity in the void, but I knew I didn't want to leave my name in their ledger, no matter what the cost. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth risking my life.
I drew a deep breath. Steadied myself for what was to come. No matter what I did, I would leave a changed man. The thought of taking innocent life is something that should have bothered me. But as I sunk Astrid's blade into the heart of the Nord, I felt only relief. He sunk to the floor, blood seeping from the hole in his heart.
I turned around to face my captor. She still seemed neutral, a fact that bothered me more than the murder ever did. "Well? Did I guess correctly?"
She shrugged. "You tell me. The blood is on your hands, after all."
I groaned. It was infuriating. I killed all three victims, just to be on the safe side and even then she refused to tell me who the intended victim was. It was one of many things that she would take to her grave.
I handed the blade back to her, bloody side first. I wanted to make my irritation as apparent as I could without endangering myself further. "Are we done here?"
She took the blade, mess and all, and sheathed it. Most humans are squeamish when it comes to the sight of blood, but she didn't even flinch. I should have expected no less from someone as experienced in the trade as Astrid, but still she surprised me.
"Yes. We're even. You may leave now…" she trailed off. "If that's really what you want."
I laughed in her face. Just what the hell had she meant by that? After what she'd put me through, I could think of nothing else that I'd ever wanted more. The implication that I was expected to stick around was borderline offensive. "Fuck you."
She laughed right back. "I like you," she said. "Which is why I have a proposition for you."
I didn't like the sound of that. "Save your breath. The answer is no." I turned to leave, and then realized that I was missing all of my belongings, save for the clothes on my back. I could replace most of it, but I wasn't about to leave without my bow. "Where's my shit?"
Astrid gestured to a chest in the corner. Sure enough, everything was there. She had kidnapped me and ordered me to kill, but she hadn't stolen a single septim. Curious.
My bow stood upright next to the chest. I cringed at the sight. I didn't care who she was or how many people she'd killed, if she bent the limbs I'd skin her alive.
"It's a lovely piece," she said. "Very unique."
I picked it up and examined it– the limbs seemed fine, and there wasn't any damage to the string or the grip as far as I could tell. She may have stored it improperly, but it didn't seem like she'd done so to prove anything. Actually, it seemed like she had gone out of her way to be careful with it, and with me. Despite what had transpired, I hadn't discovered any unusual aches or pains. I doubt that she'd done so out of the kindness of her heart, but it was intriguing nonetheless.
I also found it a little jarring that she went from demanding bloodshed directly to small talk. If she thought it would put me at ease, she was sorely mistaken. I hadn't taken my attention off her for even a single second, not even when I had my back turned to her. But I wasn't about to let her know that. "Thank you," I said. "It was my mother's."
She hummed. "Was she a hunter like you?"
"No." My mother barely had the spare energy to care for herself, let alone venture into the woods. Her father gifted it to her on her sixteenth birthday, she said, and she fell ill soon after. She shot it ten, maybe twenty times total in her entire lifetime. Maybe that's why it held up so well. I didn't know then and I don't know now. But I do know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Astrid was prying. Profiling me, maybe. Trying to see if I was a good fit for her plans without being overt.
"She wasn't," I finished, my voice barely above a whisper. I'm glad I kept my lips shut tight.
"Interesting. Talent like that usually runs in families," she said. She hopped down from her perch once more, and stood in front of me so that we were face to face. Eye to eye. "If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to contact us," she said. Fat chance, I thought. She offered me the key to the front door.
I huffed. "So that's it, then?" It seemed too easy, and I felt I had every right not to trust her.
"That's it. Take your leave, if you wish," she said. "I've got some cleaning up to do."
I wrinkled my nose at the thought. It's nearly impossible to get blood out of untreated hardwood. "You have fun with that," I said. I turned to leave.
I put the key in the lock. She called out after me.
"You seriously don't want to hear what I have to say?"
"Not even a little," I said. I was lying, of course. Curiosity was eating away at my insides, but I know a mess when I see one. It was the only time I've ever managed to not let it get the best of me.
The sun blinded me as I stepped into the light of day and the murky water tainted the air with its stench. I ignored both of these things. I had my freedom and my life, which is more than my victims could say. I felt very much like I'd pulled one over on Astrid, and on the Brotherhood as a whole. It was hilarious.
"Goodbye," I said. Astrid tried not to show it, but she was a woman who had many tells. She clenched her jaw. After seeing that, I felt like adding insult to injury. "I hope you have a wonderful day tending to the corpses!" I had established what would become our repertoire with a single sentence.
I laughed, and slammed the door. I didn't bother returning the key.
— — — — —
It took me several hours of trudging through the marshes to find my way back to civilization. The sun was high in the sky, and it beat down on me as I moved along. Sun exposure can be an ugly thing for a vampire. I was fortunate that it had been cold on the night of my capture– I fell asleep with my cloak and hood still on. If it had not been for that, I wouldn't have had the strength in the days that followed to pick up as much work as I did. A few odd jobs here and there, "go here and do this" or "find this man and make him pay up". The usual line of work for your usual mercenary. Everything went back to normal.
And then the days seemed to bleed together. Jobs became more of a slog as time went on. Normal tasks seemed bothersome. At first I thought perhaps the sun had gotten to me after all, and that had caused me to come down with some kind of common illness. Such things are very rare for the undead, but not entirely unheard of. And when enough time had passed for me to safely rule that out, I began to fear that my mother had passed her condition on to me. But the symptoms weren't the same. The physical pain wasn't there, and the only fatigue I felt was mental. There's no hard evidence for this, but my mother had mentioned when I was a child that illness of the mind also ran in our blood. I had, for a short while, held out hope that that would be the case. It was something I could handle, I thought, much more so than the truth.
Astrid had remained true to her word. She had left me alone, just as she said she would. A part of me expected her to return, and I had plenty of time to contemplate her character while I waited. Over time, it became increasingly apparent that I was waiting for something that would in all likelihood never come.
I had made a mistake. I had no love for her whatsoever, but it doesn't take a genius to guess what she was going to ask of me that day. The idea that I had squandered what would in all likelihood be my only chance to join them was hollow. Even worse was the realization that I actually wanted that.
I mean, how hard could killing for money be? After a fashion of working on my own after the fact, I realized that it was really no different than what I had already been doing. Sure, my clientele usually didn't say outright that they wanted their foes dead. But when you return victorious, with a bag full of plundered goods and a man's life wrapped up in a little shiny bow, they grovel. The really nice ones even double your pay. Those are the ones who truly understand things; human life is, without a shadow of a doubt, precious. But when it comes to you, life, death, and murder for hire, few of us are worth more than a few hundred ill-wrought Septims.
Filled with regret, I took to the streets of Riften. It was familiar territory, the first place I had drifted to after wandering north. I dropped in on my old mercenary friends. It was fun for a while, but parties can only go on for so long before they become tiresome. I stayed at the Bee & Barb. Drank the world-famous mead. Visited my old haunts. Rekindled things with a few paramours. None of it was as I expected. Like ordering a hot meal and receiving lukewarm porridge. It was baffling.
I had fallen in with a group of revelers on a Fredas evening. We drank and spread merriment until the sun went down, and then we kept going. Eventually, Keerava threw us out of the tavern, so we took to the streets. Say what you want about the city, but Riften is never short on entertainment. There's always ale to be drunk and pockets to be picked. Or, if you suck blood for sustenance, plenty to be had.
You see, Riften is unique. They say that the Imperial City never sleeps, but it pales in comparison to the near constant clamor that hangs over Riften like a fog. It wards off plenty of newcomers, and honestly that's probably for the best. If the rumors are to be believed, the city plays host to the Thieves' Guild. On top of, or perhaps more accurately because of this, the crime is endless. So endless, in fact, that most people don't even bother reporting them. Who is going to go looking for a beggar when there's been three other missing persons cases already? The corrupt guards? The Jarl herself? Don't think so. It's a perfect hunting ground.
I had broken off from the main group intent of finding somewhere to clear my head. I elected to take a turn down an alley, away from the rabble of the market district. I leaned against the wall and breathed deep. The cool air was sharp in my lungs, but the liquor was doing a good enough job at staving it off that I didn't mind. The sky was clear, and the night was still enough to give me the solitude I needed. I would not have it for long.
There was some commotion at the opposite end of the alley, closer to the city walls. Footsteps. It was nearly too dark to make out what was happening. If I had been human, it probably would've been.
It was a single man. Not much of a threat if he chose to start something, but still. He had interrupted my alone time. Which was reason enough for him to become my next meal.
No sooner had I pushed off the wall that I saw the child. She rounded the corner, her little footfalls hitting the ground with fierce intensity. "Mister!" she cried. "You have to help me, please!"
The man stopped dead in his tracks. He whipped around, obviously startled, and rushed to protect her. Paternal instinct at its finest. "What's wrong?" he asked. He took a quick look around. "Are you hurt?"
The little girl sniffled. "No, but… a mean man took my knife away from me."
The man visibly relaxed. He patted her on the shoulder. "You should keep your belongings closer to your side," he said. He leaned down. It was the last mistake he would ever make. "What did he look like?"
The little girl smiled. Wickedly. In a way no child should rightfully know how. "Well, he was tall," she said. "With glowing red eyes. And fangs."
"What? Do you mean he was- oh, gods!" He stopped, but only to scream. That, too, was silenced as the little girl lurched forward and ripped out his throat with nothing but her teeth.
Now, I was no stranger to violence. I had seen my fair share, even at the tender age of nineteen. But the sight of a feral child was undeniably disturbing. Instinctively, I took a step back. Which was a blunder. I stepped on a twig, immediately alerting the child of my presence.
She looked up from her kill, her eyes piercing through the dark just as she had described. She was a vampire, one who preferred to toy with her food before eating it. If I was but a man, if she had chosen to stalk me instead… I cannot say I would have noticed the difference, even in the daylight. "You," she growled. Her voice was still that of a child's, but something about it was off. "Don't move."
I threw my hands up in surrender. "Relax. It's your blood now. I'll just go find someone else," I said.
"Oh." She dropped the man's body, and he hit the ground, completely limp. Killed by an eternal child. What a way to go out. She stood, and wiped the blood from her face. "I had not realized there were more of our kind in Riften." She stuck out her bloodied little hand in invitation. I took it. "Babette."
The way she treated me before and after learning of our shared nature was like night and day, but the conversational whiplash was the last thing on my mind. As she stepped into the moonlight, I got a closer look. She was, for all intents and purposes, exactly as you would expect a child to be, except for the fangs, and the eyes, and her clothing. I recognized her uniform for what it was immediately, and froze. The dyed red and black leather was unmistakable.
A million things crossed my mind. The first and foremost being "no fucking way". I had no idea how to react, so I didn't. I'm sure the look on my face was quite amusing.
Babette laughed. "Relax. If there were a hit out on you, you would already be dead."
She was probably right– she was a learned assassin, and probably far, far older than she looked. When it came to brass tacks, if we had fought that night I likely wouldn't have made it out of that alley alive. I swallowed the laugh that swelled in my chest. In present company with a man lying dead only a few paces away, it hardly seemed appropriate. It wasn't in my intention to come off as rude, though. I took a deep breath and forced my muscles into slacked submission. Now calm and composed, I reached into my pocket.
I never returned the key that Astrid had given me. The fact that I had kept it was an endless source of amusement for the first few days after she set me free. I'd wondered if she had more than one copy, or if she was in need of another. Perhaps she would have to go to the evil locksmith, and ask for him to make her more evil keys so she could get into her dark and broody murder shack.
Suppressing a laugh, I handed the key to Babette. She took it, but not without a fair amount of confusion.
"Oh, no," she said. "Don't tell me you're inviting me back to yours. If that's the case, I really will have to kill you."
Gross. "No. It belongs to your mistress."
Her expression changed in an instant. "Well, well, well. You're him."
"Him?"
"Yeah. You're the man that told Astrid to go fuck herself." She laughed. "She didn't put it exactly that way, but I can read between the lines. I haven't seen her that angry in decades."
So I really had managed to pay back the inconvenience she caused me. What a fascinating development. I smiled in satisfaction. "Glad to be the one to deliver what she had coming to her."
She broke up even more at that. When she settled, she looked up at me again. "Wow. You've got some nerve."
"I try my best."
"Yeah? Then why in Oblivion did you turn her down?"
I mulled over the question for a moment. The irritation I felt towards my captor had spurred my decision to leave. At the time, it seemed like the logical thing to do. And besides. Killing is wrong. Everyone knows that. Right?
But I had never cared much what other people thought of me. And I must admit that there is a great wealth of social conditioning that I never had the chance to experience in childhood, most of which I never made up for. The common sense morality most people spend their entire lives touting never did come naturally to me. Killing is only as heinous as the intention, the reason for the swipe of the blade. Many people have it coming. But I had had much time to think since I departed Astrid. Enough to know that deep down, I never really cared.
So why, then, did I say no? The answer left me as soon as I'd thought it. "I… don't know, actually."
Babbette eyed me for a moment. "Seriously?"
I shrugged. "Yeah."
She looked around for a moment. No one else was around to hear us. She pulled me down to her level, and leaned in to speak in my ear. "What is the music of life?"
That was… not what I had expected. "I dunno," I said. Was this some kind of trick question? A test maybe? "Is it screaming?"
"No," she said solemnly. "It is silence, my brother."
She seemed sure of herself. Even so, I had no clue what she meant by that.
She backed away, and gave a polite smile. "Come find us in Falkreath. East of town, just off the road."
I clammed up. I hadn't thought she'd actually give me a second chance. "Okay."
"Good." She waved, and returned from whence she came. When she reached the wall, she called back after me. "See you around," she said.
Author's Note: I wrote this a little over a year ago, and it's definitely not my best work by any measure. If I'm being honest, I hadn't intended to share this with anyone else, but I ended up liking it enough to post it, haha.
Until next time.