Title: Sithian Web 50, Hunting Assassins
Author:
darth_eldritchFandom: Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Size: ~2,000
Characters: Saje Eldros (MDunmer!Nerevarine)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The Elder Scrolls and all characters owned by Bethesda.
Notes: Written and expanded upon according to in-game experience and head!canon.
The hunted and the hunter.
An old theme. Saje creeps with bow in hand, an exquisite amber bow set enchanted so the quiver never runs out of arrows. He creeps the rough stone of a cave, hunting assassins, a spin on his old game. Rival assassins, those broken off from the Dark Brotherhood and the honor of serving Dread Father Sithis to be in the pay of a corrupt king. Or the frauds who worship Mehrunes Dagon.
It’s taking a while to regain a sense of his old game, the creeping, the feeling out his target, the skill of stillness and awareness, but the killer instinct is there.
Two shadows, two people moving about and talking in low tones in the watery cave ahead. They talk low, but the sound carries. Saje watches them, listens. He crouches and takes care to not let his legs cramp. It’s been a while since he’s used stealth like this, but he has to be mindful of focus; the prey ahead.
Focus.
Some of the Dark Brotherhood back in the Cheydinhal Sanctuary spoke of Dread Father Sithis speaking to them just before they kill. Saje isn’t sure of that, but he knows the desire to kill his prey. There were also stories of a revenant, a Wrath of Sithis, visiting one who breaks the Five Tenets of Sithis by killing or attacking a Sister or a Brother, or by stealing from them. One young Nord in Kvatch had been found dead by his bed in that sanctuary; he had killed a Brother, and he had not survived the battle with the Wrath of Sithis during the night.
Or such were tales designed to keep the novice cutthroats from killing each other. Saje nocks an arrow, breathing in deeply and smoothly, noiseless as his soft shod feet. Saje now wears shroud armor courtesy of the rogue Dark Brotherhood assassins he has been hunting. He wears the stuff with old familiarity, hidden under his robes, only the black gloves showing.
One thing Saje is sure of; like the Daedra, Dread Father Sithis favors the strong. This prey show their weakness in their betrayal, becoming lackeys to a mortal king that could be slain by an assassin himself, no matter his alleged cleverness with poisons. Or, their betrayal in worshipping a Daedra, who, however powerful, is not of the primal power of Dread Father Sithis.
Not that Saje is particularly religious. But he is aware of the supernatural and the elder gods thereof, who move beyond, or lie dead as corprus that forms the mundus and seperates the Nirn.
He draws back the bow, smooth as his breath. His arrow flies, silent, and finds its mark. A body falls, one of the two men who were dickering over how to take down their mark. A local Telvanni merchant, how interesting.
Someone is cleaning house and hiring help to carry out the chore.
Well, so is Saje, doing his part in cleaning house, be it Great House Telvanni or the Dark Brotherhood.
“You will die!” yell of the other man, who brings out a gleaming shortsword. It shimmers green, an enchantment infused into a sharp blade forge out of a dull gray metal.
A jinx sword of a make not known to Saje. Jinx blades paralyze the target, enchanted by Illusion magics to induce the mind to freeze the reactions of the body.
Saje lets his next arrow fly. The man in shroud armor falls with a soft plop on the rock ground of the cave.
Just like old times. Saje holds still for a moment, waiting to see if the noises the men made had attracted the attention of any others.
No. It is quiet save for the distant echoing dripping of water from a deep water pool in another cavernous space.
Complacent fools. Too secure in their hiding hole. Saje remembers the Cheydinhal Sancturary, where assassins of the Dark Brotherhood treated it as such, a safe place to let down one’s guard.
That is a luxury no one who lives as an assassin can afford.
Saje creeps to the area where the men were standing, talking as they took care of repairing their armor or oiling their weapon. Wooden planking. Saje briefly wonders where they get all this wood when wood is a premium import from Cyrodiil. He carefully snuffs out two torches, watching to see if the cessation of the flickering shadows on caves walls will be noticed.
Nothing.
Saje ignores crates of goods stacked about, and barrels of foodstuffs and often liquors smuggled past customs to avoid taxes. The crates are usually odd assortments of weapons, goods, plates, odds and ends, and often soul gems, mostly smuggled, or robbed from passing traders. Or they are salvaged from the many ships that wreck on the rocks off the shores of Vvardenfell. They usually yield sellable goods that made a nice profit for an adventurer, or good equipment that is sometimes hard to find anywhere else. Which is why Saje liked invading hideouts like this.
But now he is focused on learning who wanted an assassination attempt on Master Aryon. Who had contracted these pretenders.
Whoever it is, is going to die.
He cautions himself against emotion. Keep clear, keep focus. He sees papers on the barrels. Glancing either way, he takes the papers and looks at them. Plans to kill a merchant in Tel Aruhn. Saje recognizes the sketched map of the island town and Archmagister Gothren’s tower. A traveling merchant due to dock at Tel Aruhn tomorrow. Saje has no idea why this merchant is marked.
Perhaps Aryon can determine a pattern from this, with his other intel. Saje pockets the papers. He sneaks onward, to kill most, but to perhaps interrogate one or two of these fools.
As faint sighing. Familiar. Saje edges around a bend in a tunnel to find a soft lavender glow. A cluster of purple crystals. Already his skin tingles. Normally he would examine the stony matrix from which the crystal grow for smaller crystals that serve well as soul gems.
The power… it’s there. Saje shakes his head, ties to clear it. It seems he is becoming sensitive to the crystals.
“I’ll kill you!” shout.
Saje whips around. A man charges him with a short blade glittering green. He, too, is in head to toe black. Saje quickly shoots a firebolt at the man, and incinerates him. But other shouts echo in the caves.
Great.
Everyone here is alerted. Because he had gotten careless. Those damn crystals.
Sage snaps out two blades, one in each hand. Now he has to kill these thugs. It’s unlikely any of them can be subdued for interrogation. He battles them, angling himself against the wall so they can come at him only one at a time, lest they be hit by their companions. It also neatly prevented any of them from attacking from the distance, poison darts or the like.
Their enchanted, or poisoned, blades are threat enough. Saje blocks with his left, and strikes out with his right, though his blocking blade sometimes deals damage.
There’s not too many, it seems. Enough to build this base and to carry out contracts. But not enough to attract attention as they posed as bandits who prey on travelers
Who invited them here, to the Grazelands? He doubts anyone here justifies the attention of Helseth himself, and certainly a merchant doesn’t merit royal displeasure. Saje’s blade slashes one thug away. Another took her fallen comrade’s place.
“Inwah!” he kicks out at her, toe gouging into her diaphragm. She falters back with an oof. Damn Imperial.
“Stupid pretender. You are not worthy of Sithis,” he snarls to the next flunky in shrouded armor.
“Who worships such ghosts?” the man in disdain as he dives at Saje with a green enchanted gray blade, “Only by the might of Mehrunes Dagon shall we prevail, and only the strong survive.”
“Thank you for the confirmation, fraud,” Saje drives his blade outwards, into the man’s gut, ducking his head away from his victim’s swinging blade as he killed the man with a final twist of blade deep into his body. That is all Saje needs to know that these who claim to be of Sithis are frauds at the best and traitors at the worst.
That man is the last, as far as Saje can see, unless one is lurking in the shadows… Saje quietly casts a detect enchantment spells to detect any enemy’s enchanted weapon as he moves about the rest of the cave.
He sends off a frostbolt in time to hear the slide and click of a crossbow. Into a shadow under a high wooden platform. An enchantment had glimmered there to his spell heightened senses. An arrow speed past his face, nearly nicking his cheek before it splinters against the far wall behind him.
A groan from the shadows under the platform. A thunk and a thump. A crossbow falls, as does a body. Sparkle of enchanted bolts fallen on the ground from the body's opened belt pounch.
Any others who need to die?
“Come out so I can send you to swim forever in the void at the mercy of Dread Father Sithis, you traitors!” he yells.
Silence. Drip. Drip.
The caves are empty, Saje’s final patrol ensures that. He gathers what is useful and valuable, even finding a gently prying a soul gem or two from the singing crystal formation. He takes the dimly green litten short sword, the jinx blade carried by the one who had revealed the allegiance of this assassin group to Mehrunes Dagon. It is forged of a dense dull gray metal that holds a very sharp edge in spite of recent battle. Saje cannot identify the metal, though he had come across chunks of it in a rare basket or crate. He takes the blade of the same make from one of the assassins who had charged him.
He doesn’t take too much, though. But he does pile up stuff that roaming bandits might get their hands on and use in their raids and magically locks them away in a sturdy chest that cannot be picked. He’ll return to retrieve and bring it to Tel Vos it so the equipment can be distributed among the forces there.
Instead of Recalling out of the cave, Saje meanders outside. Late afternoon. Sometimes, being in caves like that, or in Daedric or Dwemer ruins, it’s easy to lose track of time and emergence from the dark can be met with a surprise of rain, dark of night, or bright sunshine.
It’s beautiful out here, the sun lowering, casting red rays over Azura’s Coast. Saje finds reason to tarry. He isn’t too keen on reporting to Aryon his misstep, how he had gotten careless… or even to Miun Gei.
Zing! A sparkle of light. A sound Saje has heard many a time… magic prickles his scalp…
Frost. It hits him in the back, instantly chilling, the cold sinking into his body like a thrown snowball. He startles. From behind.
A screech. A cliff racer’s all too common screech.
Saje whirls and looks up.
A pure white cliff racer hovers above, striking against the late afternoon skies. It zings again, a magical ball of frost shooting at Saje. Saje jumps aside, staring at the creature.
A magical cliff racer.
A dead one, Saje promises as he brings out Scamp’s Claw, his soul trapping blade. The next sparkly zing crashes harmlessly into Saje in a burst of light. Magicka absorbed. The racer’s magic is weak, it’s frost spell does little real damage to Saje.
Saje backs away, knowing how to lure these pests lower so he can kill them up close. Inevitably the white creature comes lower in the mindless aggression typical of its breed, snapping its sharp barbed tail at him.
A couple of jabbing stabs bring it down. Purple bubbles of light, and its soul sucks into one of the gems Saje always carries with him. It will be interesting to see what power of soul this creature has compared its magically inert kin.
It flutters down, dead. Saje strips it of its plume, and he finds the magic salts of frost typically found on a Frost Atronach in its gristly body.
Fascinating. An elemental cliff racer. Where there ones of fire, or shock? He carefully puts the frost salts away in a vial.
The plume. Saje holds it up. It is pure white. A chill gently vapors off it. The faintest touch of elemental frost, just enough to entice the touch…
He traces it on his forearm. A touch of cold.
Fascinating. What produced this breed of cliff racer? Sorcery or Red Mountain?
Saje grins. This will be a surprise for Master Aryon.
Now he is not so reluctant to return to Tel Vos.
Notes: The elemental cliff racer is from the mod Racer Assortment by Glassboy.
.