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You bet your ass I'm going to take a shot at this.
He was sad.

Despite a plate of lapin grillé and a bottle of mulled wine waiting solely for his pleasure on the table that stood before him, Andel’s mood seemed to be in dire straits. Eating alone had never been his specialty, especially not in public settings. Raised as he was, meals were not solely for physical nourishment; they were rituals, with many participants, meant to reinforce one’s place in the social order, and in doing so, provide sustenance for the very soul. Sitting alone at this crooked table, he felt like a mockery, the butt of a joke prepared for him by his nemesis, his current lot in life. Where was Theriault, that foxy, silver-tongued bastard? Where was gallant Galar, ever stalwart, ever loyal? Sure, it was he who had dismissed them, but had they not accepted? How dare they?

He composed himself. Fair men at arms they may have been, but in the end, they were burghers, not privy to the privileges and obligations of nobility. He grasped his fork, a crude, two-pronged affair, and stabbed with it a piece of rabbit, tearing it from the plate and he threw it into his mouth and began chewing, hoping to busy himself from more thought in motion and sensation. He filled a goblet and drank and as he did so in his seat of solitude, around him the inn grew busier and busier, the clanking of plates and cutlery louder now; men coming, men going, men laughing together and patting each other’s backs and spilling their drinks, others growing frisky with scantily clad serving ladies of common birth, bad breath and hygiene forgotten in the wake of unabated lust for flesh and coin, even the lonelies greeted with recognizing smiles by the tenders. Bastards, the whole lot of them, he thought. Enjoying yourselves, hm? Damn you all to hell, then.

Then bolted up an old Dunmer and called his staff to his hand in mere moments, a sight straight from the tales that he’d listened as a wee boy, and rushed outwards with an anxious look on his face, suddenly pouring into the inn a miasma of foreboding. Andel in the moment was far too spiteful to appreciate the gravity of the situation as he normally would have, and figured whatever perdition that the fates had in store for them could very well come now. Then blew in an actual gust, snuffing out candle and laughter alike. Far too caught by surprise to appreciate the irony, Andel suddenly shifted in his seat to look at the windows, perhaps hoping to find some soul that he could persuade to shut them, yet there was naught but mist pouring in through the windows within his line of sight. Almost all sound had ceased, the customers were rightfully anxious, and soon a lumbering figure could be seen outside the window. With a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to finish his meal in ease, he skewered the largest piece of meat he could with his fork and stuffed it into his mouth, and after some chewing, grasped onto his overcoat and got up from his spot.

At that very moment, the figure outside broke in, a green mass of muscle and massive mammaries, her eyes a sizzling red. Well, damn, he thought to himself, then a young lad sprung forward with sword in hand to confront the creature. Such a chivalrous display! What was stopping him, then? Rush forward, Andel! But wait, she’s saying something! And, oh… Sweet Zenithar. Why’d he have to set the damn place on fire?

“Now, or never!” Spoke the gallant young lad, and Andel for a moment could do naught but provide the man with an awkward expression. Had he some sense, he would’ve asked just what the hell was going on, but such concern about earthly matters was beneath his station; he was meant to set an example, especially with that… Oh, she’s not half bad looking, next to him. “Yes indeed,” he asked, “but where to?”
Andel had seen better days.

It had been two days since his arrival in Anvil, and yet his flesh and joints ached with the reminders of the journey, the experience of sitting hunched in a poorly fitted wagon moving across a long unpaved road having almost shaken the meat off his bones during the creaky ride. The poorly lit room was tiny and bare of any furnishings and smelled of the sour sweat of its previous occupants despite the open windows, the summer warmth and the windless skies having joined forces to make the circumstances even more unpalatable. Stripped of his clothes save his shirt and breeches, he lay on the bed, at this point only able to hope to cool down for he had already attempted everything else. As he lay still, he scoured in himself the energy to at the very least get up and perhaps jot down his latest impressions in his long-neglected journal, yet there seemed none to be found.

In what felt like mere seconds he found himself dozing off and was suddenly jolted awake by a primordial sort of fear, his body mistaking sleep for death perhaps, and in the following few moments he inferred from the shadows of the buildings outside the window that he’d been asleep for a few hours. He was parched. He would have yearned for a glass of iced Aalto of Third Era vintage had he thought that he could find -or afford- one, but he knew it not to be the case, and thus he yearned for simpler things, a glass of cold well-water, a cutlet, maybe some tobacco. He wiped the dewy sweat off his brow and reached for his purse, emptying its contents onto the nightstand beside his bed. He set apart three Septims -why they were still called Septims he did not know, there hadn’t been a Septim Emperor on them for the last hundred years- of gold and twenty of silver. No, not twenty. Nineteen. He picked up the stray coin with his two fingers and held it up so it could be better seen by candlelight.

Runic inscriptions. Aldmeri, perhaps? A Dominion coin? No. Too geometric, too clean. Dwemer. Sweet Zenithar. Vvardenfell mintage, maybe? No. Not as sophisticated. Reach, most likely. Maybe Hammerfell. Ten gold Septims, at least.

A sense of elation took over him, a sudden jolt of energy, electricity running in his veins. He slid his legs off the bed, reaching to grab his stockings and putting them on with practiced alacrity and then came his boots, crude and heavy, but at the very least, somewhat comfortable. He stood up and began reaching across the room to gather the items of his clothing, and in a manner of moments he was all clothed again, save his overcoat, for the heat was already nigh unbearable. All that was left was his sword belt, and he was good to go. He looked at it, draped across the sole chair in the room upon which his two swords sat. It too was worn after a delay, tightly buckled, for otherwise it could not bear its burden. He reached for the door, then remembered that he’d forgotten his purse, and after filling it back with the coins spilled upon the nightstand, save the Dwemer one which went in his breast pocket, he put it in his satchel and left his room.

One cramped hallway, one creaky staircase and one door later, he was finally outside to bask in the middling glory of the city of Anvil. The last two hundred years had not been kind to the city and for one who knew where to look it showed, with most its houses ramshackle and shoddily built and lacking architectural cohesion, its roads all bent and labyrinthine and paved unevenly, and the city walls patchwork, bearing the damage of the Great War still. In a hundred years the chaos would become part of the city’s aesthetic and add to it rather than subtract, Andel thought; for now it was all too recent to be anything other than an eyesore. He began walking to the town square, not knowing where exactly the market district or the local Synod lay, and as he walked a feeling of foreboding walked with him, growing more and more palpable as he passed through shadowy alleyway after another. At some moments, in narrow streets where the roofs were so close together that the sun barely shone through, this feeling grew so intense that his hand instinctively reached for his sword, but before it found reason to be grounded in reality, he reached the bustling openness of the town square and the feeling was gone.

A few greetings and a few questions later, he knew where to go. An enchanter, by the name of Cassia, was in the hobby of buying such trinkets, enchanting them, and selling them at a higher price. Had he known the subtleties of magic, Andel could have called it unfair, but as he stood he had no right to complain. He walked towards the Old Town, where the wider streets and wholesome even if unmaintained houses made of white stone and crowned with red tiles made for a more pleasant experience. He thought of Cheydinhal and its lush greenery, its black spires and the quiet flow of the Corbolo, and a yearning stung his soul for thinking of it and he turned right as per the directions given to him and upon finding the house with a tiny Akaviri statue on its lawn, walked up to the door and knocked. To his surprise, the hefty wooden door opened itself. “Come on in,” someone shouted from inside, their voice muffled as if it were being heard through a wall. “Upstairs! In the study!”

Andel walked in and lightly shut the door behind him, puzzled by the state of affairs and the amount of Dwemer oil lamps that lit the house for all the curtains were kept shut. Curiosity kept his head on a swivel, his gaze scanning over whatever of interest that he could see, but courtesy kept him from changing his course. He walked upstairs and crossed the hallway, passing by a few paintings, the fossilized remains of what seemed to be an aquatic lifeform and the skeleton of a bipedal creature, not unlike a troll but not quite a troll’s size, and finally reached the study. Inside was a waifish woman, her gaze fixated on a circular object about the size of an orange, shaped not unlike a mirror save the fact that it was pure black as if made of ebony. Andel reckoned it to be rude to interrupt and gazed around the room, which reminded him more of a cabinet of curiosities than a study. Amongst the oddities he saw were fossils, molluscs, bezoars real and imagined, an egg the size of his head coated in gold, and gems, a whole lot of gems, and a mandrake root dressed in doll’s clothing, and a prismatic piece of amber in which a faint silhouette could be seen, and crystal balls, and tomes, and a small terrarium in which a centipede the size of a python kept writhing and writhing. The ebony mirror that the woman was looking into suddenly grew red hot and began melting, setting the table on which it stood afire, leading the woman to grabbing a wall rug and wildly smacking the budding fires before coming to a halt. She turned, her hair a mess, and smiled with a glint in her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting that. I’m Cassia. Cassia Carantha.”

Suddenly, Andel wasn’t sure if this was worth the ten pieces of gold.

“Sir Andel Indarys, at your service, madam.”

Her eyes grew wider with excitement.

“A nobleman! Oh, how wonderful. Prithee, what has brought you to my humble abode?” She asked, her sudden shift for the archaic no doubt inspired by his title.

“I, ahem, I was told that you have an interest in oddities of historical value, and being in possession of such an item, figured that you would have more use for it than I.”

She smiled. “Why, yes, it’s true. I suppose you can tell from the room. And the house. What is it that you have for me, Sir Aristocratus?”

He reached inside his breast pocket and picked out the coin and reached his arm out to show it to the woman. “A coin. A Dwemer coin, I reckon. The inscriptions aren’t that far off from what I’ve seen.”

She walked closer, her brows momentarily rising upon the utterance of the name of the long-lost tribe. Hunching forward and squinting to see the coin better, she shifted the angle of her head to take a look at differing angles, and eventually stood back up. “Dwemer indeed. How’d you come upon this, may I ask?”

“Found it in my coinpurse. I figure that someone passed it onto me as change without realizing its provenance.”

Cassia smiled. “Not the first time I’ve heard a story like that. Such is often the case with antiques and curiosities. See this, for instance,” she said, tapping the glass prison of the giant centipede, “You’d think it to be no more than an overgrown insect, but it’s actually a Daedra.”

Andel didn’t respond.

“Well, Daedric fauna, rather. They say they used to be quite common in the years following the Oblivion Crisis, but these days… Not so much. Bought it off a bunch of kids who kept in a jar. Can you believe it? It can breathe fire, you know! Could’ve burnt them to a crisp! Would you like to see it?”

“No. I mean, I’m not sure if I have the time. Got a very tight schedule today, you see.”

“Oh, oh, I’m terribly sorry.” She seemed genuinely upset by her lack of manners. “But, yes. A coin. What exactly it is that you want of it? An appraisal? A determination of its precise origins? Its previous owner? An enchantment? A disenchantment?”

“I simply wanted to sell it, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, certainly,” she said, even though Andel was sure he could sense some second-hand disappointment in her voice, “Let me take a closer look and I can give you a price estimate.” She took the coin off his hand, the care she took against her hand touching his dealing a slight blow to his confidence, and placed it on the table on which the black mirror had melted and then procured a device from underneath the table, a rather unwieldy microscope, under whose lens the coin was placed and then thoroughly examined. “Hm. Hmm. Mhm,” she murmured to herself as she rotated the plate on which the coin lay. “Skyrim mintage. Had it been from Vvardenfell, I’d have said it to be your lucky day; but still, not bad. What were you expecting for this, hm?”

“I’m aware that it’s no Vvardenfell sample, but it’s Dwemer silver nonetheless. And, as a plus, it’s in good condition. I was hoping for something around twenty pieces of gold, maybe?”

Cassia turned her head back at Andel, her gaze different, almost predatory, eyeing something to be auctioned. His gaze met hers.

“Fifteen. This isn’t the Imperial City. Maybe if it were Kagrenac on the obverse.”

“…It would appear that we have an agreement.”



Andel could not help but notice how quickly time must have passed in the short amount of time that he’d spent in the enchantress’ house. The setting motion of the sun was not unappreciated by the Dunmer, who’d found his molestation by the heat quite intolerable, and now, stronger gusts brought a welcome chill to his flesh. He took the scenic route, not wishing to treat himself once more to the horrors of the choked alleyways, taking in the sight of the sun bleeding purple into the sky and the sea. It had dimmed, closer to the color of an effervescent egg yolk. He stood awhile, his hands around his waist, feeling triumphant for having managed to find a way to extend his journey for yet another month without want of money. It was not without humiliation to find a victory in an event so trifle, but days in which it was an unfamiliar feeling were long gone.

As the sun drowned on the horizon, he made his way back to the Dancing Donkey, hoping to treat himself to a grilled rabbit.


Don't suppose there's a spot for an old timer? Haven't had a chance to scratch the TES RP itch in a long, long time.
I like the teaser and would say I'm interested, but I'm not going to push my chips forward without knowing exactly what this is going to be about.
ft. @Hank



The meeting had since been adjourned and its participants had gone on to spend the rest of the night in their own way, whether that be drinking or resting or frolicking with the others or huddling into isolation and watching the dances of firelight and shadow from afar and Ando was amongst those who had taken the lattermost option. He was perched atop camp, sitting on a tree branch that kept him at the very edge of the light, his feet dangling into bare visibility from above as if it were a foreboding premise for the sight of a hanging corpse. Save pulling a piece of firewood in his hand into the edge of the blade sitting in his lap in a reverse chiseling motion, he was motionless, more automaton than man, and he was liberating a small blade, liberating it from the excess of material that which surrounded it, and as such giving it purpose like the warrior-woman gave to those that gathered around her.

He had stood by her side in the council, and only stood, like a macabre figure of taxidermy, and he had not spoken a word nor was there any response elicited from him. He was not the final authority in the council and he knew for a certainty that were he to add an opinion, it would only muddle the waters further, even if his opinion was put forth to snuff out the other opinions and cease the contention, a pointless endeavor. But he also knew well that women of Isobel’s sort were far too loving of their confederates and far too merciful to clamp down on their notions of individuality and entertained it as some sort of respite for them, for questioning one’s place in the great machine of fate was an act which brought with it much dejection and weakness.

He turned his head and his gaze fell upon the camp. They were a bunch of broken and or fleeting spirits, unpolished and inconsequential despite their power. Some had been hooked into her act out of curiosity and some out of ambition and some for new purpose for no living being could knowingly accept its purposelessness. Life sought will like moths sought flame, whether its own or someone else’s, for life did not care for whose purpose it served, only that it served one, and as such one could become a pawn with the same ambition that one sought its own ends with, whether to leech off that larger will and rebuild its own or to lose all individuality and learn to love being a tool. A blade. Few could appreciate that the strength of a blade did not lay in its construction but in its wielder’s mastery and it was a common mistake for a blade to see the acts of cutting it served as a means to as its own planning and doing.

What of him, then? Amongst this crowd of fools and undesirables, was he really cutting his own path or had he taken up the path of the pawn again?

His thumb slipped and licked the edge of his blade and he lifted it up and saw a cut on it. It was a minuscule cut and it had barely penetrated the skin and there was no blood, but the blade had cut nonetheless and his brows furrowed and he grasped the tang of the blade as if it were a flyswatter and he slapped the flat of the blade into a nearby branch and did it again and again. He stopped, abated, and he pulled his weight forward and landed on the leavy clearing underneath and put the blade back in its resting place in the ropes wrapped around his waist. The half-carved wooden blade stood in his other hand like a tasteless reminder and he threw it away and began walking through the camp, his mantis gaze wandering upon the surroundings and the inhabitants as if eyeing potential fodder.

Akamon was the first to spot Ando as he dropped down from his perch and he followed him with his gaze as he made his way through the camp until the two men locked eyes. Perhaps emboldened by the Stros M’Kai rum that he was still nursing, the Redguard stood up from his place by one of the fires and yelled out the Rimmenese swordsman’s name. “Come, sit with me,” he added and gestured for Ando to join him, an inviting smile on his face even though he knew that the man was not susceptible to being manipulated into interaction by adherence to the social contract. Hell, Akamon didn’t think Ando even knew what the social contract was. “I have rum,” he added, and wiggled the bottle and the sloshing of the rum almost spilled some over the rim.

The sandy-skinned figure first gazed at the Redguard for a couple of seconds without a response before moving forward slowly yet in a peculiar loping gait, and sat in front of the fire across the man. He looked blinklessly at his face, as if Akamon were an animal or a foreign creature or perhaps vice versa, for either way the behavior was alien all the same, and his expression seemed slightly fascinated as if comprehending a newfound object or a beetle before growing complacent and he proceeded silent and expressionless and without movement.

“Do you want some?” Akamon asked and wiggled the bottle of rum again. There was an easy smile on his face that hadn’t wavered, even when Ando lumbered towards him and stared at him and sat down without saying anything. He had come to accept the man’s strange ways and insular nature and he was just glad that he had replied to his invitation and that they were now sitting together. Conversation could follow later, if it was to happen at all. “You might like it.”

Ando reached forward, perhaps unexpectedly, and grasped the bottle’s bottom with an open palm as if holding up a ball. He pulled his arm back and brought the bottle’s mouth to his face, and held his nose over it and took a curious whiff and his face grew sour and his brows curled down in a frown. “No,” he said, and he grasped the neck of the bottle with his other hand before leaning forward and handing the bottle back to Akamon. “Alcohol. Not good for you, not ever. Especially not today. Tomorrow is the day of battle. Would cease if I were you.” His voice was not as hard as it normally was, and his expression seemed unconcerned and without judgement, as if voicing a fact.

The Redguard laughed. “No, no, you have it all backwards. It’s good for me especially today, precisely because tomorrow is the day of battle.” He did not explain himself and instead took the bottle of rum back from Ando without further argument, threw back a gulp with smacking lips and much appreciative grunting, and then put the bottle down and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the swordsman with a tilt to his head and a curious gleam to his brown-green scarab-eyes, and at long last he spoke again and voiced an empathic question. “What is a sword?”

Despite the lack of context for the question and the frivolous behavior he’d shown beforehand, Ando received the Redguard’s question without any surprise, as if a lecturer or a student in a place of higher learning where such questions were the norm. “A sword is a tool for cutting,” Ando replied in a tone that belied the inquiry as a matter of fact. “A beginner’s tool, but a tool nonetheless.” He stopped and smacked his lips. “…You are a swordsman. You know what a sword is. If you ask for some other reason, you would better be direct.”

“I know what a sword is, but until I asked you that question I did not know what you know a sword to be,” Akamon said by way of explanation, and he smiled because he had learned something about Ando now. “A beginner’s tool. How do you mean? Is the sword inferior to other weapons? You carry a sword,” he said and pointed out the katana that poked out from inside Ando’s ragged robes. “You would prefer something else?”

Ando’s eyes followed the Redguard’s index finger to the tang that stuck out from his belt and he seemed pensive for a brief moment before he grasped it and pulled it out of the wrap of rope around his waist. “This is no sword,” he spoke, his eyes following the tempering patterns of the blade. “It is a blade.” With a swift movement he flipped the blade’s orientation and thrust it into the ground by him. Lacking any sort of handle or cross guard it seemed more like the unfinished or unadorned work of a smith than a proper weapon. “And no. I would not call the sword inferior. You must define weapon for a clearer answer, however.”

“Blade, then,” Akamon conceded. But that only raised more questions. Why would Ando choose to wield an unfinished weapon, of any kind? And if the sword wasn’t inferior, then why was it only a beginner’s tool? He shook his head and chuckled and reached for the bottle, the act of drinking giving a moment’s respite to prepare a new avenue of questioning. “Let’s go back a step. You called it a tool for cutting, but only a beginner’s tool, yet it is not inferior to any other weapon. So, then,” he said, thinking out loud, looking up at the canopy, until the right question had come to him and his eyes found Ando’s again, “what is cutting?”

“To cut is to create a difference in space,” Ando replied flatly. “A sword, a blade, a rock, a tree, a wall, a man, a city. These are all cutting instruments. The sword is a beginner’s tool because it is expressly designed for its purpose. Would your swordsmanship fare better were you to wield a rock for a sword, or worse?”

“Worse, of course,” Akamon replied, puzzled. He felt like he wasn’t understanding what Ando was getting at. “The rock has no cutting edge, no balance, no hilt.” He reached over his shoulder for his own sword now and unsheathed the weapon and lowered it in front of him, and he observed the faint green ripples in its make and the way its edge caught the light. “This is a cutting tool,” he said with certainty. “A rock cannot cut, nor can a man, or a city. But I think you mean something else. They do… affect change, I suppose.” Confusion had crept back into his voice and he stared at his sword for a few more seconds before he laid it flat across his lap and focused his attention back on Ando. “What is a master’s tool for cutting?”

Ando’s mouth curled in a faint smile, somewhat predatory but still more enthused than gloating. “Master’s tools, you ask. A rock. A man. A city.” He raised an arm and slowly waved it to one side, like he was presenting the scenery. “Trees all around us. Shrubbery. They cut your sight, do they not? You cannot see behind it.” He reached down with the same arm and picked up one of the smaller stones framing the fire. “A rock. You say it is not cutting, yet strike with the right alignment and it will sever all the same.” He stopped, lost in thought, before beaming with a hint of entertainment. “Or the right force. Watch this.” He held the stone between his thumb and his middle finger and he stood contemplative for some time and he sprung his arm back, and then he shot his arm forward along with a flick of his fingers, sending the stone cutting through the air and the fire and promptly smashing into the bottle of rum standing by the Redguard.

“Cutting and swordsmanship are two different things,” Ando spoke as his calves curled inward and pushed him to stand up in an odd display of human anatomy. “You would do well to consider what separates them and which it is that you seek.”

He turned his back on Akamon to disappear into the darkness, but then he turned again and he looked at the Redguard with his usual, blank gaze. “Appreciate the hospitality. Good night.” With that he turned once more and then he was gone.

Stunned into silence, Akamon watched Ando leave and his gaze remained fixed on the darkness where the Rim-Man had disappeared. “My fucking rum!” he exclaimed eventually, to nobody in particular, and grumbled and swept the shards of glass away from him with his foot. “Cutting my ass. That was throwing.” He sighed and got to his feet and swung his sword idly around him, a languid one-handed grip around the hilt, eyes focused on nothing as he listened to the singing metal swishing through the air. “Cutting is not swordsmanship,” Akamon mumbled to himself. Then he returned his sword to its scabbard and decided to give the matter some more thought when he was sober again. For now Akamon headed deeper into the camp in search of more company and conversation -- and a new drink.
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