"Foolish mortal, caught on the web but which web? Whose web?" The woman's voice came through the wave of blackness to Sera. It was a voice that was becoming annoyingly familiar and Sera was starting to detest it.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"I told you once before, I am the webspinner, I founded the Morag Tang and when my murderous children were banished to Morrowind and forsook me for that pretender Vivec from their bloody fall a brotherhood was born. I thought you might be a spider upon the web but it seems you are just a fly waiting to be devoured."
Sera returned to consciousness at those words and immediately wished she hadn't. She was tied to a chair facing the long, rectangular wooden table. Upon it Heriah lay whimpering and crying as six fiendish people dined upon her flesh.
Sera wanted to scream a protest but she found her mouth blocked with a dirty cloth that acted as a gag. It had a strong metallic taste akin to blood and the sensation of it had her swallowing down a mouthful of vomit. This could not be happening! She strained against her bonds, they were rope rather than chains but it was no advantage given how tightly her hands had been bound up in them.
Sera watched in horror as one man sank his tusk like teeth into Heriah's right thigh and worried at it like a dog with a bone. She flinched as blood sprayed out in all directions as he leaned back with a large chunk of flesh in his teeth.
Women lapped at the blood like cats at cream whilst others chose to use their clawlike nails to strip off layers of skin, sucking them down like they were shreds of chicken.
'What in Oblivion is this?' Sera wondered in horror as she continued to strain at her bonds in vain. She was desperate to look away but she couldn't, this was her friend, this was Heriah!
Heriah gargled on her own blood as her vision span and the pain finally subsidised to numbness. The end was near. She thought she could see a spectral form waiting out of the corner of her eye and she was ready to welcome it. Was it Nocturnal come to claim her thief or perhaps Arkay, the Aedra of life and death? Maybe it was neither but Heriah was long past the point of caring.
The vomit finally came for Sera when someone snapped up a bone from Heriah's arm. It was Aldrin who dug out the bone after much burrowing through flesh, muscle and blood. He carved it free with a small axe and held it up like a trophy. When he turned to Sera with it offering her a mad, bloody smile as he did she lost her sanity. Vomit rushed up her throat only to be blocked by the gag, it pooled in her mouth and she choked on it as she screamed and screamed.
Aldrin ignored the woman's struggles and sucked the blood and flesh of the bone like it was a rare delicacy. After chewing some of the marrow he tossed the bone to one side and grinned as it clattered amongst goblets. His taunting grey stare returned to Sera and his grin widened as she trembled.
Sera bowed her head from the grisly scene at last and wondered at her own fate. She flinched when her head was brutally forced back up and she was forced to meet Aldrin's stare.
"Soon breakfast," he whispered to her before planting a bloody kiss upon her brow.
Sera let out another subdued shriek when his teeth suddenly sank into her right ear and he tore off a piece.
"No samples!" a woman snapped crossly. "Wait for the dawn as is proper."
The dawn? Sera's eyes flickered up to the windows anxiously as blood ran down the side of her neck instantly turning it sticky. Through the high, broken, narrow windows she saw that it was still dark. How late was it? How long did she have to endure this? 'No,' she corrected herself, 'how long to make an escape?' She could not go out like this!
As time trickled by painfully slow to the blonde her mind wandered to darker territory. The assassin that Lucien claimed was within her should surely be capable of dealing with this. No, it might find the violent edge to cut down these horrid fiends but it could no more figure a way out of the ropes than the thief. She needed strength she did not have and weapons she could not reach. Her eyes danced along the table looking for anything useful that might be within reach. There was nothing.
The hours passed by accompanied by the sounds of crunching, slurping, snapping, gargling, burping and belching, and the eerie tones of Indyk's lute being played mockingly by a grotesque mockery of a man. Sera drifted in and out of consciousness, concussed thanks to the bump on her head and barely breathing as chunks of vomit remained lodged in her throat.
At last the faint, watery rays of a winter sun began to penetrate through the high windows as a late dawn began. Time was up.
Sera felt all eyes upon her instantly drawing her back to reality. She snapped to attention as Aldrin approached her once more. 'Play weak,' she cautioned herself. She noticed that the table had been cleared; Heriah's body, or what remained of it, was gone and the hooded figures were now sitting around the table once more in anticipation. They were going to put her on the table just like Heriah, which meant her bonds would be undone. Her chance would be narrow but it was all she would get.
Her green eyes took in Aldrin's weapon quickly; it was a scimitar with a gilded and bejewelled handle, as sharp as it was fancy. If she could get at it, it might just do the job. Red skulls flashed through her vision and she shook her head hard to clear it, now was not the time!
"Who are you to ignore me puppet?" A male's voice called in her mind this time, just as familiar as the female's and even more horrid.
Sera ignored it as she wondered if she was mad, perhaps hallucinating thanks to blood loss, a concussion and the horror of her circumstances. Aldrin was at her back now and slicing through the knot of ropes. She was conscious of a male flanking her left and a female armed with a flail at her right, undoubtedly they were ready and quite willing to subdue her if she attempted escape.
"Hmm to what troubles have you come? How interesting your predicament seems...Should I let you suffer for this folly? Ah but that would be a terrible waste of all the effort I have put into making you mine, puppet. Oh yes, I hear your thoughts," the male voice's continued with amusement, "well if you should get the weapon then perhaps I shall give you the strength. After all even these foul creatures can still be a sacrifice to the Order of the Black Worm."
She saw black worms sliding across the table in a large quantity, wriggling like maggots as they left a trail of slime. She blinked hard and tried to banish the vision just as her ropes snapped free.
Aldrin and the others were expecting the woman to attempt a mad dash for freedom, what they were not expecting was for her to attempt a grab for a weapon. They had marked her as a victim, a coward, not a potential assailant who would choose fight over flight.
Sera forced her chair back into Aldrin as she stood. He fell with the impact as she whirled round just as quickly, bent down and snatched his scimitar from him in the tumble. She turned and faltered to the right to avoid the flail and lunged with a scream.
The scimitar sank through the woman's skull, pushing back at bone and flesh as it cut right between the eyes. In that moment Sera saw only red. As with her slaughter of the animals in the woods it was as if another being was controlling her. Sera could only watch helplessly as her body seemed to move under another's will tapping into resources Lucien and the Gray Fox had both tried to bring out of her. The swiftness and sneakiness of both assassin and thief combined with the assassin's bloodlust and the thief's knack for survival.
Eventually it was done and all were dead save Aldrin who had fled in the chaos. Sera was finished but another was not and it bid her against her will to kneel in the blood and smear it on the walls forming the shapes of grinning skulls with skeletal hands crossed beneath them.
It was as the dew turned to frost and the morning sun was lost to a cold mist that Captain Alarik Burd, a handful of his men, and a few helpful citizens followed Ongar the World-Weary up to the ruins of a castle.
An unusually concerned Ongar had approached the captain of the guards just before the dawn seeking help. There was little that could fluster the retired thief and Captain Burd knew if Ongar was worried then there was something to worry about. The sceptic side of Burd also knew that if Ongar had reached out to the guards of all people then he was truly desperate.
The group halted as they fell under the shadows of the castle. The windows were dark and the walls silent. Ongar gazed up at it with a frown. "I shouldn't have let them go," he grumbled, "but they insisted." He tried to be hopeful that the trio had simply gotten sidetracked, maybe blended in with the feast too well and gotten full on drink and food instead of treasure. Perhaps they might have even moved on to Cloud Ruler Temple.
It was Captain Burd who led the way to the front door. He was made suspicious by the lack of life in the castle and beginning to wonder if perhaps Ongar's nephew Indyk and his friends had spun a tale for Ongar. He wondered if the castle had any residents at all or was plagued only with dust and bones.
"Are we really going through the front?" a gruff Breton quipped dryly.
The Nord captain glanced over his shoulder at the man with a wary look; he didn't recognise the Breton as a Bruma local. He was one of the few volunteers to agree to come on this questionable mission. Burd had brought only a skeleton crew, feeling he could not justify more men for what might be the prank of young folk or the folly of thieves rather than a serious mission. Burd nodded solemnly and answered, "it's the quickest way." He reached for the handle and was unsurprised to find the door locked.
"Amateurs," Ongar scorned under his breath before he shouldered past Burd to the door. He ignored the guard's scolding look as he fiddled with the lock and had it free in seconds.
Ongar then tugged out his iron dagger, ready for potential trouble. It wasn't much of a weapon and was starting to get blunt and rusty from age and lack of use but with enough force it could still open a man's throat or slice through his gut.
The door gave way into a dark hall with the torches burned out. They crept down it as quickly as they could, ever keeping an ear and eye out for trouble. They found several disappointingly empty rooms before finally coming across a scene of horror.
For a moment the men were still, silent in shock as they tried to take in the scene of carnage before them. There were still torches burning here though the men wished otherwise. The floor and walls were red with blood and the room littered with bodies crumpled in all directions. It took a long moment before they noticed that only some had been stabbed whilst others had been eaten. Worse, some bore deformities of sunken flesh and protruding fangs that had them appearing less than human. Already worms were feasting upon them but they weren't the expected maggots but gluttonous, black worms that shuffled slowly across the bodies as they gorged. The smell of fresh blood was thick and syrupy in the air.
Every wall bore a messy skull with crossed skeletal hands beneath it formed from blood and the words 'We Know'. Over and over the symbols and phrase were repeated, drying slowly upon the stones in vibrant red.
Only one occupant remained alive. She was a mess of a woman, sitting in a bloody heap on the floor, head bowed and crimson hands clasped tightly against her ears as she rocked back and forth on her knees muttering feverishly, "red skulls, red skulls."
"INDYK!" Ongar cried out as he stood over a corpse, clutching at his greying hair with both hands as he started to howl in anguish. His voice jolted Captain Burd back to his senses.
The Nord captain was quick to draw a set of cuffs and move towards the woman. "You there, stop where you are!" he snapped at her fiercely. "Don't resist and it will go easier on you."
"Dad she's in shock, don't frighten her further." Fenrick Burd stepped forward and looked at his father with pleading cobalt eyes. It was upon his return from Cloud Ruler Temple that Ongar had pounced upon his father to request his help. Fenrick had insisted on coming along too despite the captain's protest. Yes he was tired and his mind was already full of distractions involving Martin, the Blades and the Mythic Dawn but he wasn't going to let his father wander into unknown danger with only a handful of green soldiers accompanying him.
The woman tilted her head up at last as if she finally became aware of their presence. She exposed a drawn, grey face with dried brown blood smeared down it adding an element of horror to her otherwise pitiful expression. Fenrick felt his blood run cold and his flesh tingle as his calm, blue stare locked with her watery, nervous, green eyes. A jolt of familiarity rushed through him, and a recollection of another set of identical yet different eyes, the same warm, bright shade of green, like grass in summer, and just as alarmed and sorrowful looking.
"Seraphina!" It was the Breton who named her as he rushed towards her, ignoring the guards that bristled at him and tensed as they wondered if he made to assault her. He dropped down before her and met her frightened stare with his own grim grey gaze.
She blinked at the Breton in confusion and trembled as her hands finally slid down from her ears, exposing one to be caked in dried blood and pus. "Mm...Mat...Matthias?" she finally croaked out his name, the disbelief clear in her voice. Her gaze filled with desperation as she willed him to be real and not some cruel vision, she would do anything for this nightmare to be at an end.
"You know her?" Captain Burd queried suspiciously. "Am I to suppose it's a coincidence you came with us to find her? What plot do you two share?"
"Dad," Fenrick interrupted his father's demands calmly, "I know her too." Well it was a stretch, he didn't really know her, they'd met once in Kvatch and he wasn't even sure what she had been doing there. Yet Fenrick was somehow certain that she had not committed the atrocities in this room and was but a victim of it.
Alarik looked to his son now with disbelief. "How?" he queried.
"I met her on my travels..." Fenrick paused and let out a weary sigh. "In Kvatch."
Alarik's wintry blue eyes widened and he muttered curses. "You have a lot to tell me of your travels then," he remarked bitingly.
Fenrick nodded. "Yes, we'll do that at home." He glanced about the room distastefully and his stare fell on Ongar. The older Nord's wails had turned to quiet sobs and he was now on his knees, hands raked through his greyed hair as he clutched at it tightly and continued to stare at his nephew's mutilated form.
Captain Burd followed his son's stare and he filled with pity for the man. He didn't always approve of Ongar's lifestyle but he did have a healthy respect for the man nonetheless, one didn't get to his age in one piece without a degree of talent. Alarik's gaze darted up to the bloodstains running down the walls and then he turned it back on the blonde.
"All dead," she rambled, "all dead, they ate them, they ate people." She hiccupped up a sob as the tears streaked down her cheeks turning the dried blood wet again causing her face to be smeared in streams of pink.
"Who?" Captain Burd demanded. "Who did this?" He gestured first to the bodies but then to the walls.
The Breton, Matthias, followed the captain's hand gesture up to the walls and he narrowed his grey stare. He knew those marks; he had seen those skulls and skeletal hands on the barks of trees and the black worms too, festering on the flesh of animals. He turned back to Sera, immediately suspicious but her teary state turned him to pity instead. He leaned forward slowly and extended one hand to her, resting it lightly upon her shoulder.
"I think some of the perpetrators are here," Fenrick murmured as he glanced pointedly at a figure with tusks instead of teeth and a misshapen, grey skinned face that was a mockery of a human one.
"And who killed them?" Captain Burd pondered. "The girl?" He looked to the blonde again. He wanted to take her into custody, she was the only lead in this whole mess but even he did not think she deserved to suffer a jail cell after all this. "I will need to question her," he said sternly, "but it can wait until she is...recovered." He said the last word awkwardly as he wondered if one could recover from such trauma.
Sera leaned into Matthias and was relieved to find him a solid form, she pressed the side of her head against his chest and found it warm and rising shallowly with each breath, yes he was definitely real and here with her.
Matthias was stunned at the gesture and said nothing; he simply tightened his grasp upon her shoulder and let her stay as she was.
"She could stay with us," Fenrick suggested.
Matthias frowned at this; he did not know how well the captain's son might know the blonde and he did not care. He had come to Bruma specifically to see that she had made it to the city safely, finding her in this state had him resolved not to see her gone from him too soon. 'I should have just accompanied her,' he thought angrily, 'and not let her dismiss me or be so indecisive about it. How did she end up here like this?'
Matthias had intended on leaving his mother's home and going back to the Imperial City as he had informed Sera, he knew Umbacano would be growing impatient for his return but then his mother had scorned him and murmured about the dangers of the wilds of Cyrodiil. In the end Matthias has changed his route from the Imperial City to Bruma, taking a nag from his mother's farm, certain he would catch up to Sera on the path to Bruma that way. Alas he had not been quick enough to see her safely to the city.
"You can stay with her too Breton," Fenrick offered as he saw how Matthias' grasp tightened upon the blonde, "if you are her friend."
"We were safe," she rambled, "together we were safe and warm and happy, what happened?" She started to cry in earnest, loud, grief stricken sobs that had even Captain Burd's stern resolve threatening to break.
"Alright," Matthias grumbled, "let's just get out of here."
Captain Burd frowned and looked to Ongar once more, he knew the Nord would not be willing to abandon his nephew's body here and he couldn't blame him for that. "You go Fenrick," he instructed his son, "see the girl safely to our quarters and have more men come here. We need to remove the bodies; they deserve to be buried properly."
Fenrick nodded in agreement even as he did another check around the room, wary that a villain might yet be lurking near. He reminded himself of his father's many years of experience before finally turning to Matthias expectantly.
The brown haired Breton murmured quietly to the blonde, "can I take you out of here Seraphina?" Her name was still awkward on his lips, sure she wanted him to call her Sera but that seemed too personal still, even Seraphina still sounded too informal to him. He wanted it sound right of course, to roll off his tongue with ease but he wondered if that would ever happen. Lately he only seemed to meet the thief under grim circumstances. 'She's been injured every time,' he realised, 'what in Oblivion kind of life is she living?'
"Please," she begged, "take me with you." She clutched at him in desperation, he was someone familiar and someone normal, not a mage, assassin or thief, just a sane, dependable reminder of her old life in the Imperial City. Why did that life suddenly seem so long ago? She wanted it back, she wanted to be free of blood and death but, as she realised jarringly, even in the city she had not been void of tragedy. The Dark Brotherhood had poisoned her long before Lucien had gotten her in his clutches. She had been tainted for years now it had just never seemed so up close until Lucien had set off a chain of events from which she could not return. Until him she had only been a victim of death not a cause of it, now she was murderer and victim both, a slave to the Dark Brotherhood in so many ways. 'But it's more than that,' she thought numbly, 'and worse, all these voices in my head...mages in the woods...blood, red skulls, red skulls...'
"Black worms," she choked out as she shook her head feverishly, "and red skulls."
Matthias stood up, pulling Sera with him as he did. He steadied her with one hand about her waist, holding her upright as he urged her forward. She slumped slightly against him and moved slow, held back by fatigue rather than injury.
Fenrick moved towards her, pausing as he caught her gaze again. This time she seemed to acknowledge him and her chin trembled as she choked out, "Thomas!"
Fenrick shook his head helplessly; she had called him that in Kvatch as well but why? "Fenrick," he reminded her, his voice soft and kind, "Fenrick Burd."
She shook her head too and bowed it in despair. "The webspinner mocks me," she mumbled.
Fenrick looked sympathetic as he moved to her other side and helped Matthias shoulder her weight to guide her out of the ruins and away from the carnage. "I'll send the men as quickly as I can," Fenrick murmured as he glanced back to his father.
Captain Burd nodded stoically before he moved to stand near Ongar. He did not offer condolences, knowing it was too soon for that, he just stayed as a quiet presence at the sobbing Nord's back, silent in his sympathy.
Nightfall came early as was often the case in Bruma. The city might be part of Cyrodiil but it was close enough to Skyrim to share its bitter cold, brief days and long, icy nights. For most of the city it was a time to slumber but for Seraphina Polita it was a time to rise.
The blonde had spent three days and nights now in Captain Burd's modest quarters, tended by his Breton maid Erline Lirrian who had initially found the blonde unsettling. Erline did sympathise with the young Imperial however having only recently suffered the unjust loss of her husband Bradon. So with the maid's help Sera had been scrubbed of the worst of her bloodstains, her wounds had been bandaged and she had been changed into clean robes hastily purchased by Erline from the Nord Winds.
At first Sera had only rambled as if ill though she was not. She continued to call Fenrick, Thomas despite his protests and talked coherently only to Matthias and even then it was only to mumble about life being easier in the Imperial City. Eventually, on the second day, the truth had slipped out, a confession of an attempt to surprise a ritual feast of some order no one had heard of because they were allegedly rich. The grieving Ongar had supported this tale, admitting that his nephew and his friend Heriah had been swayed by some fanciful notion of treasure in a ruined castle. Sera had then explained how the feast had actually been one of cannibalism. When pressed for details by Captain Burd she had become hysterical, silenced by Matthias whilst Fenrick had scorned his father for his lack of tact.
Now, on night three, she was finally at peace, resolved to a new purpose. It was just after eleven at night and the household was asleep. Matthias had nodded off in the chair he had occupied in her borrowed room. She found it touching that the Breton had resolved to guard her now and felt a prickle of guilt as she sneaked out of the room and his presence. His sleep was deep, hastened by wine he had shared with Fenrick and she hoped he would not awaken before she could return.
Sera snatched a woollen cloak from a wooden stand in the hall before unlocking the back door to the house and slipping outside to a frosty night. She relocked the door before heading through the cold, dark streets of the city to the main gates out to the wilds. There was only one guard by the gate and he barely glanced her way as she hurried past, hood drawn up just in case he should know her as the only survivor of the Ald Olyra Massacre.
Out of the city she found the night thick and foreboding, just perfect for her intentions. Her breath seeped out in a white mist and she was prompted to dig her hands deep into the woollen pockets of the cloak. She was surprised to find the route feel familiar despite having only travelled it once, she had thought she might never find it but apparently Sithis was with her. That thought chilled her more than the weather but it did not dissuade her from her purpose.
She moved hastily on her feet and was unsure how long the journey took, it was perhaps an hour but it felt like less before it ended. It was as if she had blinked the foreboding ruins into existence. She was back to the scene of the crime, it was horrifying but appropriate. Ald Olyra loomed before her once more. She had thought the sight of it might send her scurrying back to the safety of Bruma but it didn't, it only reminded her of the horrors she had suffered and strengthened her desire to see her goal through.
The blonde moved up to the main doors and crept into the castle quietly. She moved with haste and silence, crossing through darkness and shadows back to where it had happened. Back to where two of her friends had been murdered in a long and brutal fashion, where she had lost her sanity. Indyk and Heriah needed avenged as did everyone else who had suffered under the cannibals' idea of a feast. Their vengeance was mostly complete thanks to Sera's crazed attack on them but mostly was not enough. One had gotten away, Aldrin had escaped her wrath. She had given the others in sacrifice to the black worm though she couldn't understand why but Aldrin could go to Sithis.
The Dark Brotherhood had caused Sera only grief and anger so far, let them finally be useful to her now. She found the bodies of the unclaimed as she had left them, stiffer now that rigor mortis had set in and smelling of rot but still whole enough to be of use to her. They were the murderers and no one in Bruma wanted to offer them a proper burial. The blonde moved as quickly as she could, not giving herself the time to consider how far gone her sanity must be if she was here kneeling amongst bodies and defiling them to summon the Dark Brotherhood. From one she took a heart, from another a head, and a third donated bones and flesh, all to make a crude effigy meant to resemble Aldrin.
From her cloak Sera tugged a dagger and nightshade, a plant brought from the Mages' Guild by Erline after Sera had claimed the smell of it to be consoling. She rubbed the flower's petals over the dagger's blade and then she began to stab the effigy. "Sweet Mother, sweet Mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear." She said the words emotionlessly, loathing herself for knowing them and for speaking them.
A loud, mocking laugh filled her head. The female speaker who plagued her was tormenting her again. "What's this, a Dark Brotherhood member summons the Brotherhood? How marvellous and unheard of! Yes, you make the patterns of the web interesting indeed! I wonder if Lachance will be so amused, it would be a pity if he cut you down too soon. Ah but he needs you still but he is so often blind to the bigger picture."
Sera ignored the voice and continued with her chanting. Soon it overtook her and she found herself saying it without thinking, repeating the words and the stabbing gestures as if she could not stop. It went on for hours and yet the blonde did not feel the time pass. She did not notice as night gave way to dawn and the watery, pale lemon light of the sun seeped in to highlight the rotting horrors of the castle. Sera noticed nothing until her chant was finally answered.