[h3]Requiem[/h3]
[sub]a Father Storm production [/sub]

[i]Evening, 9th of Midyear, 4E208
The Haunted Tide Inn, Gilane, Hammerfell[/i]

The pain was overwhelming. It had spread from his shoulder to the rest of his body at frightening speed and Gregor could feel his muscles locking up as the poison carried out its unholy purpose. He had dismounted from his great black steed to ransack an alchemist’s shop, scaring the proprietor away with his blood-soaked claymore, the deranged expression on his face and the foam clinging to his lips, taking what anti-venom he could before hoisting himself back in the saddle and speeding away. The undead horse was fast enough to outrun the city guard that were trying to catch up to him and he made it to the inn where he and Raelynn had made their home undetected. After the horse sensed that it was no longer needed, it simply vanished into a swirling mass of swiftly dissipating magic and left no trace behind of its existence. Under ordinary circumstances Gregor would have been amazed by its sudden appearance and disappearance, a power evidently gifted to him by the Ideal Master that had accepted Nblec’s soul, but he was far too busy trying to stay alive. He’d stumbled into their room, wide-eyed and calling out Raelynn’s name with a voice that refused to cooperate, only to find it empty. 

She wasn’t there. 

Mortal terror clutched at his heart with ice-cold talons. Gregor uncorked the anti-venom with trembling, stiff fingers and threw it back, coughing and gasping as his constricted throat almost couldn’t swallow the foul-tasting brew. His legs gave out beneath him and he fell to his hands and knees when searing, immediate jabs of agony roared through his collarbone, arms and sides. Horrified, Gregor felt a hot wetness on him and watched as blood began dripping onto the wooden floor. His wounds had reopened. Everything he had done to patch himself up after Zaveed had tore into him was being undone by the Redguard woman’s poison. “Gods, no,” Gregor stammered and rolled onto his back, clutching his wounds with his hands and summoning all the Restoration magic he knew. The panic and the pain made it impossible to think and Gregor could only send a raw, unsophisticated stream of healing magic into his body in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding. 

Where was she?

Gregor writhed and coiled on the floor, punching his chest with the claw-shape of his contorted fist, trying to keep his heart beating rhythmically -- every faltering flutter sent another spasm through his body, as if the very core of his being was fighting against an enemy to stay alive. His vision went dark and his limbs went cold and he could no longer feel his heart beating. 

He was dying. 

The forest loomed above him, trees towering even higher than before, the canopy overhead not even visible in the almost total darkness that reigned. Gregor immediately reached for his claymore this time, knowing what to expect, and he did not flinch when he heard the monster’s roar in the distance. He blinked, trying to remember how he got here, and came up short. He only knew that he was going to have to fight for his life now and that he could not allow himself to be scared. He stood his ground, blade at the ready, and followed the noise of the trees being knocked over and the vicious snorts and bellows of the beast as it circled him at a distance, hidden behind the dense woods. It knew where he was. Gregor could feel it. Slowly but surely, it came closer, and Gregor could barely make out trees being splintered some sixty feet away from him. He took a deep breath and steadied himself, but something was wrong. He felt… weak. Why? 

Sudden and unexpected silence fell over the woods. It was as if the beast had vanished in the midst of its approach. Gregor could only hear his own breathing and watched it steam in the air in front of him. The absolute lack of sound was just as deafening as any noise could be and Gregor felt it pressing against his ears like a thick blanket. When he swallowed, it was almost unbearably loud. 

“Gregor,” he heard behind him, the voice low and heaving. 

He whirled around and saw it -- truly saw it, properly, for the first time, and almost dropped his sword. It was immense, like a mammoth, and shaped like one too: quadrupedal, with massive front legs that ended in cloven hooves, and black fur clung to its skeletal shape. But Gregor’s eyes were drawn to its head, or what existed in place of it, and he found himself staring at two pale eyes in a pit of impenetrable darkness. Two arms with horrifyingly long, black hands, the ones that had grabbed him before, hung on either side of the monster’s baleful gaze, like a twisted, hellish interpretation of a centaur. Above it, like a crown, was the splayed form of a decapitated human torso, antlers growing from where its hands should be. It was the single most horrible thing Gregor had ever seen. 

Before he could even react, the beast had closed the distance and grabbed his head with its hands, lifting him from the ground to come face-to-face with its eyes -- infinite and lifeless, just two points of eternal light that stared at him with all the indifference of death itself. The antler-torso loomed above him. It had no mouth and yet it spoke again. 

“No,” it whimpered. Gregor knew that voice -- he’d known all along, he just hadn’t realized it. 
“Don’t. [i]Please.”[/i]

It was the voice of Hannibal. When Gregor looked up, his own claymore pierced the torso’s chest, just like it had done when he had betrayed and murdered the Vigilant in cold blood. Was that what this thing was? His own guilt come back to haunt him? He wanted to cry, to surrender and give in, whatever it took for this to simply be over… but he couldn’t. The Pale Reaper did not allow it. He would not yield and he would not die. 

Just like before, Gregor’s silver longsword sprang from its sheath with a musical rasp and cut deep into the monster’s flesh. The quailing voice of Hannibal was drowned out by the beast’s screams, like a dying horse, and Gregor could smell the rancid miasma of rot and decay. It dropped him to the forest floor and he hit the ground running, immediately setting off in a random direction into the forest. He did not know why, but he felt like there was a purpose to his own movements now, and he felt confident that he was running towards something, instead of merely running away. The beast followed and Gregor could hear its anger in its accusatory shrieks and the violence with which it threw down the trees in its path. 

Whether or not it was because Gregor ran so fast or the beast had slowed down he did not know, but the noise of the monster’s pursuit diminished and Gregor came upon a house in the woods. He knew this house. It was his home. He fished his key out of his pocket and unlocked the front door, which swung open as smoothly as the last day Gregor remembered, and he slowly walked through the house. The painting over the mantlepiece that his mother had made, the figurines that Gregor and Briar had fashioned from walnuts and matchsticks standing in formation in the windowsill, the loose floorboard in the hall -- it was all so familiar, and yet so foreign, like he was visiting the home of a character he knew well from a book. He quietly climbed up the stairs to the second floor and pushed open the door to the master bedroom with a slight touch of his fingers. There she was, in the bed with the blue covers, her back turned to him, soundly asleep. It was a sight that he remembered well. A moment of clarity pierced the haze that clouded his mind and Gregor knew that this had been the last time he had seen Briar, the final moments before his departure. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, the pain in his chest too much to bear. He looked down and remembered that he was bleeding. When he looked back up, Briar’s sleeping form had burst into flames and the fire spread rapidly through the room, and Gregor watched in horror as his former life was reduced to ashes. He flew down the stairs and burst out of the house and back into the woods, escaping the unnatural wildfire with inches to spare, and turned back to look at the all-consuming inferno. He wept. 

“Burn it all,” Hannibal said, like always. Gregor did not turn around. He could feel the monster’s presence behind him. It was like he could see it at the edge of his vision, despite the impossible angle, as if its shape bent light towards it. 

“Curse you, Gregor!” it continued, taunting him with Hannibal’s last words, and Gregor could hear in the wheezing, hollow voice that it was laughing. “Curse your whole family!”
 
Gregor turned and leapt at the beast in a single, fluid motion and drove his sword into the darkness beneath its corpse-crown, right between the eyes. 

“We are already cursed,” Gregor spat bitterly.

[hr]

She had ran as fast as her feet could have carried her over the sands of Gilane, through each winding back alley, past every person that seemed to clutter up the walkways as they ambled through the evening - nothing life or death happening in their lives. They had the time to spare to look and ponder and mosey around. Raelynn Hawkford did not, and she sprinted like she never had in her life, her lack of athletic ability a detriment to her mission to return to her room at the Inn. Instinct, and connection to Gregor had told her that’s where he was. 

Finally she came upon it, throwing open the door and alighting the stairs to their quiet place. She could already feel bitter chills emanating from it before she had even grown close to the door - it was a chill powerful enough to make the heat from running simmer down. It was a chill powerful enough to run like the blade of a knife up her spine to the nape of her neck - the hairs standing completely on end. She slowed as she approached, the handle of the door as cold as ice. She pulled away from it only for a second, before braving it once more, forcing open the door to see Gregor splayed out over the floor in the very centre, surrounded by a thick layer of frost and ice, wisps of dark magic swirling around his hands as if he was trying to pull himself back from his approaching death. If it had been cold outside - inside was far worse, in the eye of the hurricane she did not falter and rushed to his side. Her breath a mist against his face.

Her hands moved immediately to his chest, to the place where his heart was always 
beating it’s slow, languid rhythm - and sometimes thundering against his rib cage. However right now, there was nothing but a faint, dying flutter. A whisper of life. 

“No,” she said as she pressed both palms to his chest now, climbing astride him, no time to really focus on a precise pour of Magicka - he needed all that she had, and he needed it now. She closed her eyes tightly and felt the warmth of it in her hands, and with all of her concentration she shot it into his chest with force, she could sense what was going on inside of him. Blunt force wounds, slashes, hacks, broken bones... She felt her Magicka envelop his heart and contract and release, contract and release… until it flowed throughout his whole body. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that she did not have just Healing Hands, rather that her whole body was cascading golden light into him. “Wake up, wake up..” she pleaded, finally falling to his face, planting a golden kiss on his forehead. “Please don’t die… Please don’t die Gregor…”

[hr]

He watched his mother rearrange the floral piece for what felt like minutes, shifting one particular white flower back and forth until it was right, [i]just so,[/i] and no other way. Gregor laughed when she finally stopped and took a step back to observe her work, and she turned her head abruptly to look at him. Her long brown hair was slightly wavy, like perfectly draped curtains, and the dark makeup around her eyes made them glimmer like emeralds. “How long have you been there?” Gaia asked and put a hand to her heart, clearly startled, but she smiled as well. 

“A while,” Gregor said and held up his hand, showing all five tiny fingers. “This long!” 

“Five? You were there for… five?” she asked and laughed. 

“Yes, five,” Gregor said in solemn agreement. 

She approached and knelt down beside him. Her earrings were pretty, Gregor decided, and he reached out to touch them but she stopped him. “No, no, don’t touch that. Those are not for you,” she said, but her voice was kind and her smile did not waver. She kissed him on the forehead and cupped his chin with her hand. 

“Now go on and play outside.”

[hr]

The touch of her lips on his skin broke his dream and he awoke with a start, eyes rolling back into focus and his abused lungs gasping for air. Gregor looked frantically around the room, searching for his mother -- why did everything hurt, and why was he so old? It took him a few seconds for reality to come back to him and when it did, his gaze fell on Raelynn and he practically fell over himself with relief. “You’re here, you came, heavens above, you’re back,” he stammered and took another deep breath, a trembling smile tugging at his colorless lips. It was going to be alright now, he could feel it. His heart was beating with strength again, fueled by Raelynn’s overwhelming magic, and his wounds were slowly knitting back together -- but hesitantly so, as the poison still fought back. “I killed him,” he said, his voice hoarse and unsteady. “I found him and I killed him, but someone attacked me, a Redguard, and there was poison--” He fell silent as he ran out of air and he focused on his breathing instead. He had lost an immense amount of blood. 

Of course it was a poison, only poison could burn through the flesh like this, through his wounds and hold them open. No mind, she was a skilled alchemist and she would find a formula to halt and undo it soon enough - but first priority was to get enough Magicka into him to keep him steady, to buy that time. “Shhh,” she whispered, her lips against his. They were cold but hers were golden, and she kissed him on his lips, her hands still working against the clock to put him back together. That was not the only issue, she cried against him when she realised that he believed Zaveed to be dead. “I looked for you,” she whispered again, choking back a sob. Her Magicka beginning to run dry. She did not stop, she would pass out before she stopped healing him now. “I couldn’t find you… I’m sorry.” She wouldn’t lie to him, he deserved more than that. She reached across the floor to pick up her own bag, a Magicka potion rolled out and she grabbed at it, drinking the contents desperately. A small top up of magical stamina, it would be enough tonight. “I found him… I knew you had fought…” 

Raelynn spoke but her words did not make sense. “You found him?” Gregor asked, having recovered enough to try speaking again, but he took deep breaths in-between each sentence. “You saw his corpse, you mean? Tell me he is dead, please,” he groaned and grabbed at the hem of Raelynn’s clothes with his white-cold hands. Cracks began to spread through the ice that coated every surface in the room. 

Even now his grip was powerful, she didn’t have the answer he wanted or needed to hear. Avoidance. “Shhh, Gregor please. We can talk about this later… You need to keep your strength.” She kissed him again, and stroked his cheek. Knowing that her answer was not good enough, knowing that he would work out what had happened. She lingered over the kiss - wondering already how quickly she could move away from him should he lash out. “Be still… Please?” Her tone was almost pathetic, the inflection of her words like that of a small child begging, her eyes were begging too as her lip shook.

“Raelynn,” Gregor began, lost for words as the truth dawned on him. A horrible, sinking feeling spread through his guts, almost as painful as his injuries and the poison, and he had to resist the urge to crawl away from her -- without her help, he would still surely perish, and yet he could not help but feel disgust and anger. When he spoke again, the tone of his voice matched the frigid temperature in the room. “What have you done?”

Everything had consequences. This was just one of them. She forced herself upright, her eyes closed as if to block out everything, her entire body shivering - from the cold, or fear - she wasn’t entirely sure. She exhaled and whimpered, unable to move her hands from him, not yet. She was growing ever more exhausted and light headed too, she hadn’t much left of herself to give him now. If she had slain Zaveed then Gregor would have taken her in his arms, but she would have been a shell of herself. And yet, she was a shell now, and he was turning on her. All that she could do was turn her head away as her face scrunched, fighting back the tears. Somewhere in it… She felt the simmering rage too. “I wasn’t strong enough to kill him,” She croaked, her voice broken. “Let me fix you, damn it. Let me fix you then we’ll talk.”

“Great gods of nowhere,” Gregor breathed. His arms went slack and fell by his side, limp and devoid of their strength, as Raelynn’s confession knocked the wind out of him. She’d had the opportunity to finish the job and she hadn’t. What’s worse, Gregor knew that he and his Wrathman had inflicted mortal injuries on the Khajiit. For him to live through them… he would have needed help. [i]Her help.[/i] He closed his eyes and felt everything spinning around him; his exhaustion was too strong for him to feel anything else. His anger ebbed away and the void it left behind was filled with bitter disappointment. It had all been for nothing. His victory had been snatched away by the very woman he loved, the one person he thought he could well and truly trust. 

When he opened his eyes again, tears welled in them and the look of hurt and betrayal on his face was unmistakable. “I thought we were a team,” he whispered, broken, and began to cry. It was too much. He was done and he no longer had the strength to keep himself in check. Like a bursting dam, the tears flowed freely and he sobbed silently, so hard he almost gagged and choked on it. Not even the pain could stop him. He could no longer see Raelynn through his blurred vision, and that was fine. 

Everything had consequences, she reminded herself, her eyes glazing over as her own tears stopped. The sight of him crying should have broken her heart and unmade her right there, but she blanked it entirely and ignored his words. Part of her wanted to bite back at him with that rage that had been forming, that had been planted there by Zaveed himself when he thrust the nail through her and into a table. It had been there the whole time longing for a moment like this... 

Not now. In this fugue state, all she could do was finish her work. Her hands began to move methodically over each wound and she was completely silent - even if he was not sobbing, and the room was free of noise he would not have even heard her breath. She moved quickly now, feeling from him that he could not stand her presence for a moment longer than was required to save his life. Switching herself off protected her. Like a woman possessed by something otherworldly, each finger worked precisely on his body, finally closing all of the wounds, each left a terrible scar behind, like a map that traced out every attack of the vicious fight to the death. Still swollen and red and like they might tear open again at any moment. Raw. The poison was at bay at last, but too late to have flushed it and saved Gregor’s skin from the scarring. 

No apologies in the world would make him alright now. And in turn, no amount of comfort that he could give to her in her time of need was enough either. Killing Zaveed did nothing, saving Zaveed did nothing. 

The temperature in the room returned to normal and the ice disappeared. It did not melt, and instead simply evaporated as the primal, unconscious magic from deep within Gregor that had conjured it in the first place ceased its spell. His life was no longer in danger. His wretched sobbing, too, diminished until it stopped, and he merely lay there in sullen silence, too empty to even lift a hand to dry his face with. He kept his gaze averted, his head turned away from her, and Gregor breathed. It was all he could do. It killed him to know that Zaveed was still drawing breath as well. Any sympathy he might have felt for Raelynn’s plight was drowned by the depth of his rancor. 

“Please leave,” he said softly. 

She did not need to be told twice. She rose to her feet, she should have staggered from the exhaustion and yet she found a strength somewhere to hold herself upright long enough to move through the room. Her hands picked up her journal, which had been by their bed. She picked up a necklace she had left on the table, some alchemy goods - dried flowers and the like that were sat in a pile on top of a dresser. She took every trace of herself from the room, piece by piece until she emptied her arms into her satchel. Saying nothing, making little sound, all spirit and Joie de Vivre void from her. 

No amount of comfort or affirmation that anyone could give her would be enough. Hurting Zaveed had hurt her, allowing him to live had ruined everything. Nothing was fair and the only person who could fix this was Raelynn herself. Time and space for Raelynn and Gregor both. As she approached the door, something inside screamed at her to turn and give him one last look, and yet her head was stuck facing forwards, it would not budge to her will and desire. Not this time. She closed the door gently, and gracefully behind her.

There was only one place for her now, Daggerfall. 

Minutes passed before Gregor moved. He hissed through gritted teeth as he pulled himself up and shambled towards his bed. He held himself upright with one hand, leaning on the bedpost, while the other undid the buttons and fastenings of his armor and clothes with trembling fingers. He let everything fall to the floor in a jumbled mess and slipped beneath the covers, groaning and grunting with pain and effort, until he was comfortable at last -- as comfortable as he could be, in a room that seemed so lifeless to him now that Raelynn had removed every piece of herself. He pulled the covers over his head and curled up, his arms wrapped around his shins, and let himself drift away into sleep. Anything was better than being awake. 

That night he dreamed of loss and regret, but the monster of the dark forest haunted him no more.