POOPHEAD189
NarilWe were to have some fun with our character biographies, weren't we?
What remained of the Town Guard had returned to Bravil by dawn and with them had arrived the news of massacre and with the news came a commotion. Aldric had been in the pub then and drinking, as she did now, but she had drunk far more greater quantities of a far more potent drink and unlike now, nothing had made sense and as she listened she wondered if staying such would have been a better alternative, for what she heard made old wounds ache with grim reckoning.
“A stray demon, most likely. Cut off from their plane they may be, but they are no less dangerous for it. We’ve had some incidents since… Since then, but nothing like this.”
A cough.
“Similar thing in Elinhir, about two years back. Archaeologists receive odd geomantic readings, gather men to dig, expecting something Dwemer. Turns out to be Xiv. Eighteen dead there, four more in pursuit.”
The Altmer was called Endimion and the bailiff had confided to Aldric that she along with all others were hired for their competence and renown but Aldric had never heard of him nor any of the others. He looked pale and sick, burly with tiny eyes and Aldric had never seen an elf that fat before but he spoke with a fine voice, without the usual Altmer arrogance and such was not immediately dislikable. There were five of them in total and nearly all were from different races, Aldric the sole Imperial. The Dunmer woman was said to be blind but she moved so gracefully and so well in touch with her surroundings that she might have never needed sight at all and the other two were Orc twins and Aldric immediately disliked them.
“You will be rewarded handsomely for this, and each of you will earn a bonus if it’s a live capture. Our Court Magician has prepared these Cuffs of Binding which will be sure to sap its strength. Report immediately once the job is done so that our men can safely gather the bodies of their fallen comrades and give them a proper burial. May the Divines guide your way.”
They made preparations that day and by come the next a coach was prepared to take them through the Green Road, even if they would see little of it from its caged tiny windows. The stagecoach was only meant for four and Endimion, being the fattest of them all was persuaded to ride shotgun and Aldric was stuck alongside the Dunmer woman with the two Orcs in posed front of her like some sort of satirical painting. The twin Orcs both wore fineries of Breton style, dressed in the same outfit the both of them, and both their nostrils flared upwards such that they seemed to look down on her even when they were staring straight.
“We haven’t met each other,” spoke the Dunmer as she extended her hand out to nobody in particular. “I am Iveri Bandas.”
“Aldric Oranio.”
“Herz gro-Bashtugh and Dulroy gra-Bashtugh,” the twin with the red cravat replied. Aldric wondered which was which but she decided not to ask, not wishing to risk a faux pas and create unnecessary animosity. Iveri’s hand was still extended and one of the Orcs eventually reached out and shook it seemingly more out of pity than genuine appreciation. There was a lull and Aldric peeked out of the grated windows of the coach to watch the overgrown greenery surrounding and at parts consuming the stone road.
“We are Destructionists both, originally, but Dulroy has begun practicing spellbreaking techniques. Widens the repertoire,” the Orc in the white cravat said. So this one’s Herz, thought Aldric. When they spoke it was soft and gentle and obviously practiced and Aldric found them pretentious but still had to appreciate them for humbling themselves by breaking their own silence.
“So I see,” replied Iveri. “Sensible. This party of ours does need some people who can take dangers head-on.” Aldric wondered if that was a jab meant at her or the fat Altmer sitting outside or the both of them but the idea of entering an argument in this cramped space felt like fire and brimstone and she kept silent.
They exited the stagecoach by noon and the air was scalding hot and Aldric felt beads of sweat forming on her brow not long after first exposure to the sun. Endimion was surprisingly nimble on his feet and he hopped off his seat but nearly lost his balance and in that moment began spinning and he pirouetted and ended his impromptu performance with a surprisingly feminine curtsy. The Dunmer responded with a soft, joking applause and Aldric became certain that she was merely pretending to be blind. The coachman pointed up a hill, on which a track was seen, made of the grass decimated by heavy footprints, and up the tracks they went, silent and contemplative of the florally decorated scenery as they carved a path through the butterflies and the sweet scents and the spiky shrubs, their green masses decorated with flowers like beauty marks or colorful kisses left by the brush of an unknown painter.
They reached a wooded clearing and the picturesque scene was hijacked by one of devastation. The ground was a dead grey, decorated with dried blood and bits of burnt wood and fabric and corpses were strewn afoot, some burnt and some clubbed and some pierced with appropriate tools of any kind – lances, daggers, arrows. To one part of the clearing lay an ape of a man, nearly gargantuan in size, with his arms dotted with holes red and bleeding and leaning back into a lance stuck into the ground, its tip poking out his chest like a pin wrapped in muscle, and near them stood the corpse of what seemed to be a scamp, a child, misshapen with the right side of his gigantic head caved in with brains and fluids leaking out the eyeholes and the top of the head, and others had been left in the flames for so long they were more charcoal outlines than anything once living.
Then there were the guardsmen, who seemed folded to pieces like broken toys after a child’s tantrum or samples of some macabre form of origami. Some were simply dismembered, and some in heavy armor seemed more like they were taking naps on the ground, not a dent to be found on them, yet lying in a pool of their own blood, dripping still from the orifices. Some had been cut in twain, cut horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and some had limbs grown bloated and purple as if their skin were overfilled with blood. Some had their weapons and shields cut through like butter while others lay intact while the limbs that held them were separated from their bodies and left in their pools of brown and crimson.
Aldric felt her throat knot tight.
Endimion was nonplussed. The twins were awful silent. Iveri walked out into the scene and opened her arms and then lowered them again.
“He is lying.”
“Huh?”
“The Count’s Bailiff. He is lying. This is not Daedra work.”
“Well, so long as we’re still paid,” said Aldric, silently.
Iveri headed east and the group followed and as they went downhill they passed by two corpses, almost identical and naked and crisped, the scalps of their heads burnt away to expose darkened bone, their hands together. They moved on.
That night they camped on a plain under clear and starlit sky and ate from their supplies and Endimion volunteered for watch duty. They slept wrapped in their cloaks against the cold and they woke and followed the track again. They soon entered another wood and Iveri began pointing out signs of their quarry, with bite marks left on the trees and nearly invisible bits of torn fabric, lint and cord. A day passed on the track and it ended in a cave, which Iveri was certain kept their prey, and they spent the remainder of that day resting while the Orc twins watched the cave entrance, ready to annihilate anything that would dare come out.
Come night they went in, hoping to catch their target in sleep, with Iveri and Dulroy as vanguard and Endimion a value target in their midst as the only Restorationist in the group, while Aldric and Herz kept the rear secure. They were well-coordinated, each of them like the limb of a quadruped, but then suddenly Iveri stopped and told them that they were going to die and then she did, something pouncing her from right above and piercing her skull from the top and punching out through the jaw, keeping her standing but nailed to the ground, like some sort of twisted marionette. Dulroy screamed and the metallic pin keeping Iveri up burst through her face, cleaving it open, and cut off the Orc’s right hand and with the left she set the roof of the cave on fire.
Aldric looked about. Endimion was gone and the magic fire kept the shadows dancing all around and she unsheathed her leaf-bladed sword and felt it crackle with energy as a gangly bipedal outline fell onto the ground right in front of them, catlike, agile and aflame. Herz with his left hand grasped Aldric’s shoulder and pulled her down as he roared and reached out with his right, and beyond it cracked the sound of thunder deafening and rumbling, and pure light illuminated every nook and cranny of the cave for a moment before crashing into their figure, which raised only a metallic limb to defend against the blast, a sword, and was flung into a corner with it and disappeared.
“Dulroy!” Herz roared and he sticked his arms through his bleeding sister’s armpits and pulled her up, and they grew stiff as the figure appeared and pulled something out of them, his sword, and they dropped together in embrace and they were dead. Aldric dashed backward and the sword licked the air where she once was and she raised an open palm in her aggressor’s direction and a beam shone out and punched a surgically small hole in its searing flesh. He fell to a knee and Aldric leaped forward, her arm sprung back and ready to thrust her sword in, but he was gone. She swung backward out of instinct and her sword clashed with his midair and there was an electric explosion and both their weapons flew away.
The enemy leaped into Aldric before she could raise her arm and blast him to smithereens and Aldric, left in a pinch, stabbed into his gut with an ethereal knife but the grip around her neck was like a vice and she felt her windpipe begin cracking under pressure. Then Endimion appeared and miraculously pulled the would-be killer off her with surprising strength, and he cracked into his nose with the side of his hand and smashed one of his soles into the impossible swordsman’s knee, caving it, and in his grip the man under him began growing pale and he withered and fell, a barely breathing mess.
By the time Aldric came back to her senses, their gangly prey was laid down on the floor and he was twitching, his arms and legs tied and bound with the enchanted irons, and his sword placed on his chest like a trophy while he hissed and sobbed silently with tears in his eyes, like a caged and humiliated animal. Endimion patted his hands to clear off the filth and he seemed surprisingly refreshed and healthy and Aldric looked at him with horrified amazement, then she looked back down on the monster. His clothes were a bloodied and crisped mess and his flesh a seared, filthy yellow, and the wet green eyes in their sockets seemed like they could burst open any moment, so intensely hateful they were. He was ugly and his teeth were bared in some primitive animal instinct.
“Where were you?”
“Just finding an opportune moment. You did well out there.”
Aldric looked at the corpses.
“What about them?”
“Well, we’ll share it fifty-fifty.”
She felt distraught. Dirty in a way.
“No, I mean, about them.” She waved an arm towards her fallen acquaintances.
Endimion walked over to them, and he knelt and reached out and appraised their clothes and items with his fingers.
“Well, we’ll share it fifty-fifty,” He said again, grinning. “You carry him.”
“A stray demon, most likely. Cut off from their plane they may be, but they are no less dangerous for it. We’ve had some incidents since… Since then, but nothing like this.”
A cough.
“Similar thing in Elinhir, about two years back. Archaeologists receive odd geomantic readings, gather men to dig, expecting something Dwemer. Turns out to be Xiv. Eighteen dead there, four more in pursuit.”
The Altmer was called Endimion and the bailiff had confided to Aldric that she along with all others were hired for their competence and renown but Aldric had never heard of him nor any of the others. He looked pale and sick, burly with tiny eyes and Aldric had never seen an elf that fat before but he spoke with a fine voice, without the usual Altmer arrogance and such was not immediately dislikable. There were five of them in total and nearly all were from different races, Aldric the sole Imperial. The Dunmer woman was said to be blind but she moved so gracefully and so well in touch with her surroundings that she might have never needed sight at all and the other two were Orc twins and Aldric immediately disliked them.
“You will be rewarded handsomely for this, and each of you will earn a bonus if it’s a live capture. Our Court Magician has prepared these Cuffs of Binding which will be sure to sap its strength. Report immediately once the job is done so that our men can safely gather the bodies of their fallen comrades and give them a proper burial. May the Divines guide your way.”
They made preparations that day and by come the next a coach was prepared to take them through the Green Road, even if they would see little of it from its caged tiny windows. The stagecoach was only meant for four and Endimion, being the fattest of them all was persuaded to ride shotgun and Aldric was stuck alongside the Dunmer woman with the two Orcs in posed front of her like some sort of satirical painting. The twin Orcs both wore fineries of Breton style, dressed in the same outfit the both of them, and both their nostrils flared upwards such that they seemed to look down on her even when they were staring straight.
“We haven’t met each other,” spoke the Dunmer as she extended her hand out to nobody in particular. “I am Iveri Bandas.”
“Aldric Oranio.”
“Herz gro-Bashtugh and Dulroy gra-Bashtugh,” the twin with the red cravat replied. Aldric wondered which was which but she decided not to ask, not wishing to risk a faux pas and create unnecessary animosity. Iveri’s hand was still extended and one of the Orcs eventually reached out and shook it seemingly more out of pity than genuine appreciation. There was a lull and Aldric peeked out of the grated windows of the coach to watch the overgrown greenery surrounding and at parts consuming the stone road.
“We are Destructionists both, originally, but Dulroy has begun practicing spellbreaking techniques. Widens the repertoire,” the Orc in the white cravat said. So this one’s Herz, thought Aldric. When they spoke it was soft and gentle and obviously practiced and Aldric found them pretentious but still had to appreciate them for humbling themselves by breaking their own silence.
“So I see,” replied Iveri. “Sensible. This party of ours does need some people who can take dangers head-on.” Aldric wondered if that was a jab meant at her or the fat Altmer sitting outside or the both of them but the idea of entering an argument in this cramped space felt like fire and brimstone and she kept silent.
They exited the stagecoach by noon and the air was scalding hot and Aldric felt beads of sweat forming on her brow not long after first exposure to the sun. Endimion was surprisingly nimble on his feet and he hopped off his seat but nearly lost his balance and in that moment began spinning and he pirouetted and ended his impromptu performance with a surprisingly feminine curtsy. The Dunmer responded with a soft, joking applause and Aldric became certain that she was merely pretending to be blind. The coachman pointed up a hill, on which a track was seen, made of the grass decimated by heavy footprints, and up the tracks they went, silent and contemplative of the florally decorated scenery as they carved a path through the butterflies and the sweet scents and the spiky shrubs, their green masses decorated with flowers like beauty marks or colorful kisses left by the brush of an unknown painter.
They reached a wooded clearing and the picturesque scene was hijacked by one of devastation. The ground was a dead grey, decorated with dried blood and bits of burnt wood and fabric and corpses were strewn afoot, some burnt and some clubbed and some pierced with appropriate tools of any kind – lances, daggers, arrows. To one part of the clearing lay an ape of a man, nearly gargantuan in size, with his arms dotted with holes red and bleeding and leaning back into a lance stuck into the ground, its tip poking out his chest like a pin wrapped in muscle, and near them stood the corpse of what seemed to be a scamp, a child, misshapen with the right side of his gigantic head caved in with brains and fluids leaking out the eyeholes and the top of the head, and others had been left in the flames for so long they were more charcoal outlines than anything once living.
Then there were the guardsmen, who seemed folded to pieces like broken toys after a child’s tantrum or samples of some macabre form of origami. Some were simply dismembered, and some in heavy armor seemed more like they were taking naps on the ground, not a dent to be found on them, yet lying in a pool of their own blood, dripping still from the orifices. Some had been cut in twain, cut horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and some had limbs grown bloated and purple as if their skin were overfilled with blood. Some had their weapons and shields cut through like butter while others lay intact while the limbs that held them were separated from their bodies and left in their pools of brown and crimson.
Aldric felt her throat knot tight.
Endimion was nonplussed. The twins were awful silent. Iveri walked out into the scene and opened her arms and then lowered them again.
“He is lying.”
“Huh?”
“The Count’s Bailiff. He is lying. This is not Daedra work.”
“Well, so long as we’re still paid,” said Aldric, silently.
Iveri headed east and the group followed and as they went downhill they passed by two corpses, almost identical and naked and crisped, the scalps of their heads burnt away to expose darkened bone, their hands together. They moved on.
That night they camped on a plain under clear and starlit sky and ate from their supplies and Endimion volunteered for watch duty. They slept wrapped in their cloaks against the cold and they woke and followed the track again. They soon entered another wood and Iveri began pointing out signs of their quarry, with bite marks left on the trees and nearly invisible bits of torn fabric, lint and cord. A day passed on the track and it ended in a cave, which Iveri was certain kept their prey, and they spent the remainder of that day resting while the Orc twins watched the cave entrance, ready to annihilate anything that would dare come out.
Come night they went in, hoping to catch their target in sleep, with Iveri and Dulroy as vanguard and Endimion a value target in their midst as the only Restorationist in the group, while Aldric and Herz kept the rear secure. They were well-coordinated, each of them like the limb of a quadruped, but then suddenly Iveri stopped and told them that they were going to die and then she did, something pouncing her from right above and piercing her skull from the top and punching out through the jaw, keeping her standing but nailed to the ground, like some sort of twisted marionette. Dulroy screamed and the metallic pin keeping Iveri up burst through her face, cleaving it open, and cut off the Orc’s right hand and with the left she set the roof of the cave on fire.
Aldric looked about. Endimion was gone and the magic fire kept the shadows dancing all around and she unsheathed her leaf-bladed sword and felt it crackle with energy as a gangly bipedal outline fell onto the ground right in front of them, catlike, agile and aflame. Herz with his left hand grasped Aldric’s shoulder and pulled her down as he roared and reached out with his right, and beyond it cracked the sound of thunder deafening and rumbling, and pure light illuminated every nook and cranny of the cave for a moment before crashing into their figure, which raised only a metallic limb to defend against the blast, a sword, and was flung into a corner with it and disappeared.
“Dulroy!” Herz roared and he sticked his arms through his bleeding sister’s armpits and pulled her up, and they grew stiff as the figure appeared and pulled something out of them, his sword, and they dropped together in embrace and they were dead. Aldric dashed backward and the sword licked the air where she once was and she raised an open palm in her aggressor’s direction and a beam shone out and punched a surgically small hole in its searing flesh. He fell to a knee and Aldric leaped forward, her arm sprung back and ready to thrust her sword in, but he was gone. She swung backward out of instinct and her sword clashed with his midair and there was an electric explosion and both their weapons flew away.
The enemy leaped into Aldric before she could raise her arm and blast him to smithereens and Aldric, left in a pinch, stabbed into his gut with an ethereal knife but the grip around her neck was like a vice and she felt her windpipe begin cracking under pressure. Then Endimion appeared and miraculously pulled the would-be killer off her with surprising strength, and he cracked into his nose with the side of his hand and smashed one of his soles into the impossible swordsman’s knee, caving it, and in his grip the man under him began growing pale and he withered and fell, a barely breathing mess.
By the time Aldric came back to her senses, their gangly prey was laid down on the floor and he was twitching, his arms and legs tied and bound with the enchanted irons, and his sword placed on his chest like a trophy while he hissed and sobbed silently with tears in his eyes, like a caged and humiliated animal. Endimion patted his hands to clear off the filth and he seemed surprisingly refreshed and healthy and Aldric looked at him with horrified amazement, then she looked back down on the monster. His clothes were a bloodied and crisped mess and his flesh a seared, filthy yellow, and the wet green eyes in their sockets seemed like they could burst open any moment, so intensely hateful they were. He was ugly and his teeth were bared in some primitive animal instinct.
“Where were you?”
“Just finding an opportune moment. You did well out there.”
Aldric looked at the corpses.
“What about them?”
“Well, we’ll share it fifty-fifty.”
She felt distraught. Dirty in a way.
“No, I mean, about them.” She waved an arm towards her fallen acquaintances.
Endimion walked over to them, and he knelt and reached out and appraised their clothes and items with his fingers.
“Well, we’ll share it fifty-fifty,” He said again, grinning. “You carry him.”
