Author's Note: I think this might actually be the longest one yet. Lol.
Obvious Disclaimer of Obviousness: If it's from the game, it's not mine.
Nobody Important
Chapter Nineteen: Stopover
In which disaster continues to strike. Or, Two Birds, One Giant, Flaming Meteor, on Fire.
By: N3k0
She ran.
Lyssi ran, and continued to run, pushing her unnatural body to its limits.
Her gait had a leaping, bounding rhythm to it. Step, step, jump, step – she didn't always stick the landing, but a tumble was still forward movement, and she felt the need to race to the far edge of Tamriel. To run away.
The Traitor still lived. The Traitor still lived and her Family was dead, had died in vain. Her murders since were lies, if Lachance was to be believed. She'd been killing Family – she'd known she was wounding the Brotherhood – but even her hope to reveal the true Traitor was a lie. Lucien was innocent – or he was sending her to die in his stead.
And at this point, she barely cared which.
Even with a body that rarely tired, even with the blood to replenish her and keep her moving long past the point a mortal should have died outright of exhaustion, Lyssi couldn't quite reach Anvil before dawn. She had to rest, and her rest took her into the smallish city of Kvatch, where she laid down in a smallish bed in a smallish, lightless room.
She did manage to fall into a fitful, dreamless sleep, hours after she actually stopped moving.
She woke to screaming.
It wasn't her own; even her worst nightmares couldn't elicit that kind of noise from her unwilling throat.
No, this scream came from outside the inn, and brought with it other screams, and the scents she'd become all too familiar with in these last two weeks, in such excess she felt she might gag.
Fire. Sulfur. Blood.
Someone was being gutted – someone close, probably still inside the building.
Someone had summoned Daedra, in numbers great enough to count as an army.
And, she was reasonably certain, someone had set the town on fire.
She got the impression these events might just be related to one another. She also had the sick realization that she might be the cause of all this. She saved that thought for later. Right now, she expected that she was in danger.
Terrible danger, as always.
She only removed a few pieces of gear when she forced herself to sleep, these days. It was the work of moments to tug her boots and gloves onto her feet and hands, and strap the more obvious of her blades to her form. The less obvious ones had never been removed.
She hugged the wall as she crept downstairs. Expecting the worst, Lyssi was not disappointed.
It was a kind of lizard. About the same size as an Argonian, but bulkier, and hunched forward, it had a long tail and a pointed snout made for ripping, tearing – not talking. It had some kind of frill across the back of its head. It was a sickly, pale, greenish color, she thought, and it didn't have the brilliant colors of a venomous reptile, something else that made it marginally different from the more humanoid lizards.
And it was naked. That was another important difference.
Most important, probably, was the fact that it was eating the innkeeper, and she got the impression from his twitching and pained gurgling that the innkeeper was probably still alive. She'd need to rectify that after she killed the daedra, if it didn't resolve itself.
A gut wound, she was given to understand, was an excruciatingly slow way to die.
She crept up behind the lizard-thing, blade drawn. Had to hit it just so, between the shoulders, likely.
At the last second, it whirled on her, latching its bloodied maw onto her arm, lashing out with long, deadly claws.
As she grunted in pain, Lyssi realized that she was in for a very bad night.
Like that was new.
Brother Martin knelt next to a wounded guardsman, wiping the man's brow with a cool, damp cloth. Something had torn the man's arm from its socket. Something had then, judging by the bruising and the shattered bones, thrown him bodily against a wall. Repeatedly. If this were an isolated incident, Martin might have called it a miracle that the man yet lived.
But no.
Here in the chapel, there were nearly a hundred survivors barricaded in. Only about a quarter of them were guards, and only half of them remained fit to fight. He'd be surprised if even fifty of those crowded within the building managed to survive the night. Most were too injured, living on borrowed time.
No one was unscathed, not even him, though he got off lightest. His rooms had shaken, even from the depths of the church, from the thunderous weight of the daedric onslaught, and he'd received some scrapes and bruises himself.
The Daedra battered at the doors. An army had overrun his home, filled with monsters Martin had hoped never to see again. He'd left that path behind, he thought – far behind.
A guardsman who'd taken a gut wound – probably from a clannfear, with his paralysis and the size and shape of it – died soundlessly under his care, and Martin moved numbly onto the next wounded he could find. He had to keep working – had to bury himself in his work, so he could try to ignore his own horror … his own outrage.
The worst of it was that, if the two "Blades" that had arrived last week were to be believed, this had all happened because of him.
No, tonight, Brother Martin did not believe in miracles. He actually found it rather hard to believe in anything. The Gods had let this happen. Who would devote their faith to such monsters?
The Breton woman's hand fell on his shoulder, and he resisted the urge to strike at her. She was wearing plate, he told himself; he'd only hurt his hand. The Blade was probably a better fighter than he was, too; he'd spent his free time studying magic, not combat.
"Martin – Brother Martin," she began. "We can't afford to stay here. You know that." There came an enormous, thundering boom from the door, to emphasize her point. It was ridiculous to think any of them would survive the night. The chapel could only stand against that for so long. The doors were sturdy, but they hadn't been built for this.
He could hear his own teeth grinding in his jaw. "Ariel. I didn't think I'd need to repeat myself. We are not discussing this in front of the others." He tied off the bandage, all the while reminding himself not to do anything stupid. Tensions were high enough; the townsfolk hardly needed to see their priest begin a fistfight.
And lose. He'd probably lose.
"We must discuss this. Brother Martin – Martin Septim – you are the heir to the throne. Your Empire needs you." She paused, looked around at the probably-doomed townspeople. "If you die here, all hope is lost. Everyone, everywhere, will die."
He glared at her, hands balling into fists. "These people need me." He stood to his full height – don'thitherdon'thitherdon't – and 'anger' did not describe his feelings well enough. He was … livid, yes. That was it. "Am I the heir? Fine. I order you to drop the subject. I am not leaving these people to die. And, in case you hadn't noticed, my escape is just as unlikely as theirs!"
He looked around. "If you can't abide my orders, then I must not be the heir you seek, and you are wasting your breath. My time. And the time of all these people." The screams and moans of the injured, the dying – the wails of grief. It was finally too much. He needed to rest.
"Ariel. I have watched babies I helped bring into this world die today. Children barely old enough to know what a sword is have been butchered by things they were never meant to see. I have watched the Daedra slaughter these people. You speak of the good of my empire, my people." He paused, for only a moment.
"These are my people. Make yourself useful. Take your Nord friend with you. I will be in my room."
It was fascinating to her, that none of the three seemed to notice the attention they'd gained. It wasn't like the common folk lacked ears, after all, nor eyes.
"That boy would make a fine Emperor," she heard one old man say.
The mood of the place shifted. For the better, she thought. People stood or sat just a bit straighter, some of the walking wounded seemed a bit further from death's door.
No one noticed her, small and injured as she was. All eyes were on Brother Martin's departure, at first. She wanted it that way, preferred to be ignored. And it wasn't like she'd forgotten how to become invisible.