Author's Note: One big update, cut into lots of little chapters so I don't kill you with a wall of text.

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Nobody Important

Chapter Two: Ashes

In which fire burns. Really.

By: N3k0

Lyssi eventually found it in herself to stand up, primarily because corpses didn't really provide good company, and actually started to stink a little after a surprisingly short amount of time. She walked through the blackness to find another whole handful of maroon-robed corpses, and an armored corpse. One of the guards, the lady-guard who didn't want the noble talking to her. Hnh. She kicked the red-robe away from the dead lady guard, surprised to see a sword beneath the corpse. Wouldn't they take valuable things like that?

Well, they hadn't. Nor had they even done the most basic scavenging tricks, like, looting potions and poisons from corpses. Then again, they probably couldn't tell the difference.

A sword and some poisons and some potions. Lyssi called herself fortunate, and continued forward until she found a locked gate and a busted open section of wall. Rats had begun their own scavenging work - two of them. Lyssi wrinkled her nose in disdain, but let them work, creeping past. She wasn't the sort to mutilate rats - or any other animals - just because they were there. It wasn't like she ate them, unless she really, really had to, and their meat contributed to none of her favorite concoctions.

The busted-open section of wall seemed to be the way to go, and so she followed it, lifting a number of lock picks from yet another corpse. She was pretty sure this dungeon-crawling experience was marked by the fact that the really-dead-for-good people actually outnumbered the dead-and-walking people and the living. Of course, she was actually crawling, so her pace was rather slow. She'd find more moving people if she was faster. It was just so confined, though, a far cry from her beloved outdoorsiness.

She tickled the tumblers of one of the Poorly Locked Treasure Chests that seemed to dot the subterranean landscape like the wayshrines of the surface world. They were inexplicably everywhere. Her giggles at the way her mind had phrased the tickled tumblers nearly made her snap her newly acquired rusty implements of DOOM. And lock-breaking.

She was really, definitely, maybe, possibly high.

Maybe biting Dreth hadn't been the best of ideas. She giggled. Oh well!

She attached the sack of gold to the belt that was also in the poorly locked treasure chest, then put on the leather armor instead. She contemplated swallowing the bag of gold, but figured it would probably be very hard to retrieve her wealth that way; she fastened the belt over the armor.

Why there was a leather shirt, and leather boots, and some gold in a poorly locked treasure chest, but no weapons at all inhabited the same, she wasn't quite sure. Maybe it just wouldn't fit. Or maybe it was the treasure chest for closet pacifists. Which would explain why everyone was dead? People who didn't fight often ended up that way.

And then a zombie attacked!

Well ... more or less, the zombie moaned in an angry sort of way behind her, and she turned around, and there was in fact a zombie. At first she thought it was Valen Dreth, raised from the dead and shambling around. That was, more or less, why she proceeded to cut it into little pieces with the sword she'd found on the dead lady-guard. At which point it turned out to be a more or less nondescript zombie, and not in fact Dunmer at all. Still, better to have hacked a corpse into little bits than ... not be safe?

She liked the katana. It wasn't a dagger like she was used to, but it was still bladed, which made it infinitely better than her fists, which were her only other weapons, really. Unless she wanted to jab lock picks into peoples' eyes. Except some zombies didn't even have heads, which really denied them eyeballs, too.

She continued crawling forward, opening a door which was also the only door, unless she thought the well would go someplace useful like the well in Cheydinhal did, which it did - it went to the Sanctuary.

But she didn't think this well went anywhere useful at all, so she didn't treat it as a door, and so went through the only door, using a key which she'd found on a dead goblin's corpse.

The dead, living and otherwise, definitely outnumbered the not-dead. Or undead, or whatever. She was starting to get a creepy, eerie impression of this place.

And so it went, into a larger cave with rats in pens and goblins everywhere.

That wasn't really a good thing. Goblins were weak, but some of them knew magic, and where people knew magic, people often knew fire magic, and fire magic burned. It was kind of a side effect of it being fire magic. Even blissfully drugged as she thought she might well be, except that she totally wasn't, because she was completely fine if just a little HYPER, she knew fire was very, very, bad, and, in fact, something to fear. Terrified of, even. Except she couldn't be bothered to be terrified, because fear really kind of sucked.

She put her serious face on, trying to will herself sober. It sort of worked. She was still buzzing with nervous energy, but now it almost annoyed her, and she mostly wasn't suffering the delusions or the giddiness. Mostly.

Maybe.

She was very, very, good at passing without trace. Using a variation on the light spell from before, she snapped her fingers, attracting momentary attention, but magically altering her own form; she became invisible.

She walked forward about five feet, still being very serious. Seriousness was boring, she decided. On the other hand, paying little or no attention to her surroundings, she found that flinging herself to the ground so that she was lying flat on her stomach could be somewhat amusing, especially when it was a spiked barrel swinging down at her face that necessitated such an action. She adjusted her eyes, focusing. The heat, the lifeblood of small human-like creatures showed to her sight, the darkness seeming like day to her.

Creeping forward, using her hands for balance in her crouch, the katana slung carelessly across her back, she realized that the goblins definitely knew there was an intruder now. The guards, the ones in armor, started bounding in their silly little goblin way, checking their perimeters. She unsheathed the lady-guard's katana, popped the cork on one of the slimy, ichor-like poisons, and slathered the blade with it.

Then, she walked up calmly, her invisibility spell well and truly intact, and disemboweled one of the goblins, its blood spraying her. She snapped her fingers.

There was a high ledge going around the large cavern, and a pit in the center where they kept rats in pens. Lyssi circled the cavern, soundlessly, the goblins themselves hardly breathing as they tried to spot her. For several minutes, the only sounds were those of murder - the splatter of blood, the sickening noise of entrails smacking against the ground, the thump, thump, thump of bodies falling. Where her previous mental trick hadn't completely managed to dispel her earlier drugged cheer, the solemn work of slaughter completely killed it.

Goblins were sentients too. Not very bright, weak in every fashion, but sentient, and snuffing out lives wasn't something Lyssi did lightly.

One of them stood atop a pile of rocks, speaking high-pitched, rapid gibberish. A spell caster, or a madman. Mad-goblin? One or the other. She walked up behind it, the same as the other goblins, thrust the katana into the goblins back. Only, it wasn't his back anymore. He turned on her, seeing nothing, but shrieking the last syllable of his ranting. Fire exploded in her face as the sword pierced the goblin, who tumbled over backward.

The goblin apparently managed to tumble over his own, personal, slightly charred, poorly-locked, treasure chest. He proceeded to roll down the rocky hill into the pit of rats, which began tearing at his body, which was also slightly burnt, though not very burnt, and in fact more or less untouched by the fire.

Lyssi found this out well after the fact, having fallen back. Her scream caught in her throat as a matter of habit.

Fire! Fire, fire, everywhere fire! Her skin felt like paper, burning to ash. She was burning alive, until she died, and she had to put out the fire ... She rolled on the ground, writhing, helpless, and clawing at her face. The healing chants she chattered off in sunlight completely escaped her now. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt. She should have died instantly, she was sure she should have.

Instead, she curled up in a tight ball, shuddering, stuttering out the beginning of the most familiar spell she knew. It yielded almost bizarre results, this time, possibly due to the severity of this injury. She felt like her entire face disintegrated, skin creeping over it to replace what had been destroyed. She wasn't sure how long the process actually took - it felt like a torturous eternity. Eventually, it was complete, eventually she felt like she could move. She completely ignored the black, sludgy substance on her hands, on the ground. She didn't want to see that.

She crawled down the small mountain of rocks. Even though it wasn't a dagger, it was a high-quality blade, and not a resource she could justify lightly discarding. She made it to the little green bastard's corpse, noting that she'd added to the corpse / living and pseudo-living ratio of the excursion. She added further to it by ripping the katana from the broken body and slashing horizontally, catching a leaping rat and sending it flying. She then eyed the rocky hill, which more closely approximated a rock wall from this angle. Sighing, she sheathed the katana, muttered a curse, and began to climb.

A sharp pain heralded the realization that another rat had latched its teeth into the seat of her pants, and had no intentions of letting go. Which ... really wasn't a good thing. It would be worse if the animal were diseased, though not much. She didn't get sick.

Instead of turning to dislodge the creature in such a precarious position, she finished the climb, and then reached behind herself, squeezed the sides of its jaw, so its mouth opened, and quickly tossed it back down into the pit. It ... probably wouldn't die on impact, anyway. Holding her maimed ass with one hand, she yet again mumbled a healing spell, almost hearing a tiny series of pops as the bite wounds closed.

She knelt in front of the mad-goblin's poorly locked treasure chest, snapping the first two lock picks the rammed into the lock before she calmed herself down. After that, the lock was ridiculously easy to tap open.

She found some gems, this time, small stones that twinkled with light. These, she swiped into the pouch of coins. Some looked flawed, all of them were tiny, but each was usually worth at least a gold Septim. Not a bad haul, though it'd be worthless if there wasn't actually a way out of here. She scanned the cavern again, spotting a door, this time. Nodding to herself, she walked over to it, kicked it open.

It opened to an old elf-ruin. Ayleid ... Eyelid. Another quiet giggle. The heartland high elves, the elves nobody ever saw anymore. There were Dunmer, and Bosmer, and Altmer - the newbie high elves who were the most-good with the magic ... sort of. She didn't really visit the highly trapped, highly magical, ruins often. Though, really, everyone knew the Imperial City was built on Ayleid ruins. Its crown jewel ... so to speak, other than the actual crown jewels, and the amulet ... was the White-Gold Tower, which was huge ... and also a standing, fully functioning, ruin. It also housed the real, true, honest-to-Sithis Elder Scrolls. That would make a person go blind and also very, very, much insane, if they were stupid enough to read them.

Ayleid ruins usually were infested with the walking - and floating - dead. And sometimes bandits. With that in mind, she drew the sword from her back, clutching its hilt with both hands. Ghosts sucked. Lyssi only knew one spell to harm ghosts, and it was a fire spell. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be ghosts. She snapped the katana out horizontally, knocking an unwary skeleton's head down the corridor. Another rounded a corner, attracted by the noise, spotted her. It drew the bow clutched in its bony fingers.

Fire flared in her shoulder where the arrow pushed through, but she ignored it, running down the corridor as fast as she could. She hacked at the skeleton, slashing diagonally. It took a handful of cuts, rather than one massive swing, in part because she hadn't caught the dead thing off-guard, but in part because her shoulder flared with pain on every strike. When the bony bits lay at her feet, she snapped the arrow off, hearing the head drop off behind her. The damn thing had really hit her, and she punted its skull a little ways farther in annoyance.

The healing spell was rapidly becoming her most useful, but as soon as the incantation was complete, she snapped her fingers again, darkness claiming her form, since light wouldn't touch it. Invisibility was next to godliness. Sort of. To Lyssi's mind anyway. Still, the healing spell held the wound together so she didn't drip out a trail of blood leading right to her poor, unguarded, back.

Shouts echoed before her, familiar shouts. Past recognizing that she'd heard them before, she ignored the meaningless screams about the dawn, listening instead to the people shouting about protecting the Emperor. Emperor? That couldn't be right. He was just some noble escaping the city to avoid some ....

The real, honest-to-Sithis Emperor?

She rounded a corner, registered several facts at once.

It was bright, she was forced to rely on her normal vision.

The guards were about to be overwhelmed.

A sword was swinging downward at the noble, who was (maybe) the Emperor.

She might have teleported, she reacted so fast, gritting her teeth as the back of her borrowed katana cut into her palm. The smell of blood, the startled-looking cultist, behind the mask. He'd had a clean strike only seconds before, after all - of course he'd be surprised to find a sword blocking him, and a frail little girl behind that. She grinned, shoving backwards, throwing him off-balance, and drove the sword into his stomach. Then, she kicked him off of it, looking around for another victim.

Finding none - they were mostly dead or dying - she relaxed, sheathing the katana.

In time to find a sword point at her throat. Hells.