Black Wings of the Reach
A Skyrim Fanfiction
He didn't know what was happening, but he knew he wasn't going to like it.
A witch dragged him along by the arm on either side, the boy straining to keep up with their pace but forced to go along anyway. His blue eyes were wide and he hadn't the chance to ask what was going on, but their demeanors were enough to keep him silent in terror as they ascended the stairs to a room with a circular pit with candles around the entire edge. A black stone pedestal overlooked the set-up, with a metal bowl sitting in a stand of branches at the edge of the circle, tainted red with old blood.
He saw the hagraven matriarch, eyes silently asking if he had done something and now he was in trouble. Eyes soon shifted to a blade sitting on the pedestal that she picked up between her talons, and he didn't need to ask to know it was intended for him. For what purpose, he could only guess, since it wouldn't kill him anyway.
He let out a gush of air as he was thrown to the ground and his arms twisted behind his back and tied. Others were appearing - other Reachmen and witches - and he was getting an increasingly bad feeling. One of them climbed up to the stone eagle's head above the shallow pit and tied a rope to hang down from its lower beak, and the other end tied around his ankles so he ended up hanging from it upside down.
His breaths came quick and short in thinly suppressed panic and he squirmed in the air, watching one of them bring the blood-stained bowl to stand right beneath him.
"Wh-whatever I d-did... 'm sorry... I won't... won't do i-it ag-gain..."
He fell silent as his head was wrenched back by his hair, falling into a whimper. He could see the wicked grin of the matriarch as she came forward with the dagger he'd seen earlier, which glowed with a faint color that marked it as something more than an ordinary blade.
"Cry~ cry~ but no one is going to save you no matter how much you squeal. Maybe we can't kill your body, but we can always take your soul." It was at that point he noticed a large crystal that one of the Reachmen places in the center of the bowl, and then the movement of the dagger out of the corner of his eye, the sharp point pressing against the tender pulse of his neck just below the jaw.
The sharp edge sliced deeply from behind his ear all the way down to his collarbone, blood immediately flowing from the open gash to dribble off his chin. Blue eyes widened with a gasp that became choked. A hand kept a tight hold of his hair, keeping his head still, as the blade slid down the artery on the other side as well, before letting him go to squirm and writhe as pain branched out from the wounds and a panicked pulse pushed his life blood out faster.
A whimper broke past his lips and eyes darted around the room in silent plea, seeing only unfriendly, expectant faces, waiting and wanting for his life to expire. He couldn't explain why it was such an interest to them, but there was nothing that he could do about it, almost wishing for the same as them, if only to finally escape their harm.
His vision turned hazy, a deep cold creeping through his skin and breathing ragged, but his consciousness remained fully through it as did the pain. He struggled against the bindings on his arms to no avail, gasping and coughing. Trembling violently, he angled himself slightly to look as the Hag held up the bloodied dagger between both taloned hands skyward.
"Old Gods, hear us! We, the devout Forsworn, create for you an offering! Take this creature of soiled half-blood that mocks the gifted form of the Matriarchs! Dispel this abomination from our presence!"
He felt a hand roughly grab his hair again, yanking his head down, just before the glowing blade plunged into his chest.
He jolted in agony as it ran past his ribs all the way to the hilt, piercing directly into his heart, which heaved and fluttered at the intrusion. Instinctively he thrashed, choking out gasps and cries around the blood that leaked in his throat.
The initial stab was bad enough on its own, but he had been stabbed before, and it was never like this.
Crowding needle pricks like a hive of stinging, angry bees spread first through his veins outward from where the dagger impaled him, before feeling as though his insides were shredding themselves apart in unison, the anguish like he was being ripped in half quickly spreading from his chest and abdomen across his entire body all the way down to the tips of his fingers and toes and making his head pulse like it was going to explode. It felt like his lungs constricted and shriveled down in his chest and made it impossible to breathe, the boy rasping for air desperately and attempted screams coming out in short, sharp burst of the most horrible noise.
His eyes darted about the room in a panicked daze searching for an escape, fighting wildly to get free. He twisted his arms against the bindings, his arms and legs feeling like his bones and shoulders were splintering with every twitch, while his face felt as though someone was trying to rip part of his skull away from the rest. His skin itched and prickled, and everything felt hot. At some point he regained his voice, screeching a distressed a sound that was foreign even to his own ears, and saw several of the surrounding people take a few steps back, eyes going wide.
He heard something snap and fell straight down onto the bowl standing below him, knocking it over onto its side and spilling a deep pool of blood - his blood - all across the floor, while he himself landed on the dagger that jammed further between his ribs.
It finally seemed his struggles were worth it when the bindings on his wrist came undone, and he struggled to push himself up so that his weight was off of the weapon, floundering. He didn't get far, his arms not wanting to cooperate to support him, and he collapsed again, squirming and gasping like a beached fish on the red liquid in his airways.
Only now was he noticing something he hadn't before - something that had never happened before. He shifted his arm, but instead of an arm, it was something long and black with fuzz, like feather down, the limb misshapen and not quite human but also not quite bird, flames dancing off the dark feathers. He was noticing now that where his nose should have been was something closer to black and shiny, messily meeting flesh and more black fuzz partway down. He tried to speak his confusion, and instead what came out was a croak, something like that of a raven, but inherently wrong-sounding all the same.
The feeling like his very being was being shredded continued to assault him, but by now it was equaled by the weight of fatigue, and he could only lay there and try to breathe around the anguish, seeing the forsworn and Matriarch watching him with looks of hate and disgust, willing him to die.
He rested his head down and let his eyes roll back, not knowing to whom he sent it, but praying for the same. Anything to make it stop.