Chapter 1 - Black Light

18th Day of Hearthfire, Sundas, 4E 201

The wind blew in like a knife off the Sea of Ghosts. Kris pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, though the battered old legionnaires cloak and her leather armor did little to combat the chill. It was mid autumn, but in North Western Morrowind the first snows could only  be days away. Kris trailed along the edge of the road, wrinkling her nose at the faint hint of sulphur from distant Vardenfell. She was a trim woman, Breton by her fine bone structure and pale eyes, though her skin had been burned tan by years of long marches under southern skies. Her hair was dark brown and cut short, though in the past weeks it had reached the nape of her neck. 

It had been nearly a month since she had left Mournhold, cutting across country to the Gulf of Vardenfell and bartering passage on one of the small oddly shaped Dunmer coasters with their sharp triangular sails. Her quarry was headed for Blacklight, but he had gone the whole way by road. With the Legions absent for nearly a decade, the roads were decaying, rough and in need of repayment. With luck she would reach Blacklight ahead of him. Ryn Vorn had been an Imperial officer once, a captain in the Legion but he had traded that life, and the lives of his men for Thalemor gold. The peace might let him get away with that but Kristalia Courenne was damned if she would. Unconsciously her hand strayed to the hilt of her sword. She was close, she had to be.

It was nearly sundown when she reached the Narrows. The Dunmer farmer who had described it to her hadn’t exaggerated. The road clung to the side of a steep wooded hill on one side, while the other was a nearly vertical drop into a rocky defile. Atop the hill was a ruined watch tower. It lacked the familiar regularity of Imperial construction, dating to some point in the Dark Elven past, perhaps before even the Septims unified the land. Moss grew thick on its ancient stonework, and ravens cawed among its ruined battlements. The ravine also seemed to act as something of a natural boundry. Across the hundred foot expanse the vegetation seemed predominantly the fungoid forms of deeper Morrowind, while on this side leaf bearing trees were in the majority, their branches hung with a patchwork of autumn leaves ranging from yellow to dry brown. The road curved around the outhrusting bulge of a rock spur that fell down towards the bottom of the chasm. As she had hoped, it was the perfect place for an ambush. 

Kris carefully climbed to the base of the ruins, pulling herself up the steep escarpment hand over hand. The thin trunks of trees provided good handholds, and wedging her feet behind their roots provided enough leverage. Only once during her climb did anyone pass on the road below, a farmer driving a wagon of produce towards the city, but his stooped back kept his eyes low and incurious. At the base of the edifice she found what she was looking for, a narrow culvert in the stone that once must have served as a drain. Years of neglect had choked it with dirt, but there was enough of a space for the slender woman to wriggle inside. Crouching with her back to the sky she whispered the words to the spell. Magicka surged through her body as she spoke the words in her mind and a small pink flame kindled between her palms. A single tongue flickered way to the south. Vorn was close. Very close. She let the spell collapse as triumph surged through her. After months of chasing him, after just missing him in Kerwin and Berle Hall, he was at last coming to her. Kris pulled her cloak tight around her body and settled in to wait.

It must have been two hours after sundown, when Kris jolted awake, her scouts reflexes pulling her from a shallow doze. The sky blazed with the unearthly glow of the aurora, pulsating shades of blue and green throwing the landscape into strange and queer relief. In the distance she dierned the sound that had woken her. The clatter of hooves on the decaying roadway. With a hunters care she crept to the opening of the culvert and drew a half dozen arrows from her quiver, pressing the points into the soil before her. That done she reached into her pouch and withdrew a small glass bottle and pulled the cork, draining its sour and thready contents. After a moment she felt her vision sharpen and her form blur. A cramp began to tug at her stomach, she couldn’t find all the ingredients she was used to in Morrowind, and some of the herbs they used here had unpleasant side effects. Well different unpleasant side effects to the ones from Cyrodil at any rate. The added nightsight was worth a little discomfort and she had worked through worse than a few cramps in the past.   The potion was an old trick that the Legion taught its scouts. Though she knew both spells, the surge of magica might be detected by an alert foe.

The sound of hooves grew steadily along with another more intermittent sound, it took her a moment to recognise the crack of a whip echoing from the chasam wall. Her lips flattened into a frown, was Vorn bringing a wagon? If that were the case why would he be such a fool as to push his horses hard on this dangerous stretch of road. Like all questions, the answer would reveal it self if she watched and waited. With an abruptness that startled four horsemen rounded the southward bend. Three of them were tall slender figures dressed in black and gold robes. Thaelmor. Hatred and fear bubbled up in Kris stomach, cramping it far worse than the potion ever had. Thaelmor wizards had killed more of her comrades than she cared to remember, and there were three of them. The fourth man, was Vorn. He was tall blond and good looking, dressed in fine clothing that was going a touch threadbare at the cuffs. She could still see him laughing and joking with Titus and Ilmar, the night before he had betrayed the Legion. The urge to kill him boiled up inside her, pent up from months of tracking him. But no, she had to be smart if she wanted to survive. Behind the horsemen came a pair of Dunmer in shabby armor, one carried a large wooden pole with a rough rope hawser around it. The rope went back to a train of a dozen Argonian’s and Khajit connecting to each at a leather collar around the neck. Slaves. Another Dunmer was cracking a whip, more or less arbitrarily over the slaves heads. Even from her lofty vantage point, Kris could smell the sour reek of despair and fear. 

“Talos curse it,” she whispered venemously, chewing her bottom lip. She had hoped to catch Vorn with one or two body guards, not with a contingent of Elven Wizards and a slave caravan. Part of her knew that she should let them pass, wait for another time when the odds were in her favor. That would be the Legion way. But the Legion was gone, and Vorn was right here.

The first arrow punched down through the leading elf’s collar bone, the steep angle driving the point down into the mass of arteries above the long. The sorceress fell backwards from her horse vomiting blood for the instant it took her heart to give out.  Only the horses had time to scream before Kris’ second arrow took another of the Thaelmor in the belly, dropping him shrieking to the road clawing at his blood soaked robes. Chaos erupted below. The slaves screamed and ran, some pulling foward the others throwing themselves down against the  The third wizard turned and lifted his palms towards the wooded hillside blasting out a stream of lightning that ignited brush and burst winter damp trees to fiery kindling. The wizard must have been aiming at random but by unhappy chance his first bolt nearly blew her head off. She ducked back into the shelter of the culvert and re-emerged as Vorn spurred his horse to a gallop, It leaped over the withing body of the gut shot wizard, shoes striking sparks on the uneven cobblestones. Kris loosed another arrow which flew short striking the horse in the spine. It shriek as its back legs collapse, the momentum torquing its  body towards the ravine. Vorn stood in his steps like an Sentenliese guardsman and leapt free of the horse a moment before it slid screaming and screaming over the precipice to its death. Lightning flashed across the mouth of the culvert as the elf adjusted his spell, spraying Kris with hot shards of stone that sliced at her bear arms above her arches bracer.   The spell must have illuminated the opening for the crackling energy continued to play across the narrow opening, bathing Kris in blue white light. 

With every heart beat she could feel Vorn getting further away from her. Steeling herself she whispered a prayer to Dibella and leaped through the arcing spell craft. Leather burned and sizzled and she felt a sharp burn erupt across her left arm, but she was through and tumbling down the side of the escarpment. Like all Breton she had a natural resistance to Magicka but it wasn't something she cared to put to the test. Catching at trees she tried to slow her decent as she slid and skidded, rocks and trees tearing at her exposed flesh. For a miracle she kept her orientation well enough to hit the road on her feet. Her bow and quiver had been abandoned so she whipped out her battered sword. The wizard was only an arms length from her and she thrust her blade into his thigh in almost the same movement as her draw. The elf screamed and his spell collapsed, plunging the roadway into relative darkness. His horse, pricked by the tip of the blade, bolted along the roadway. Kris turned to give chase, heedless of the insurmountable advantage of the man on horseback, when a sharp stinging crack ripped at her left arm. The whip wielding dunmer guard jerked her towards him but she wrapped her arm around the cord and jerked hard. The dunmer stumbled forward and dropped the whip, evading her disemboweling stroke by inches.  She thrust through his body as he clawed at a shortsword on his belt, sending him staggering back grasping at the greasy pink rope of his own entrails. The remaining two guardsman turned and fled in blind panic. 

Kris’ lungs were burning with the exertion of the few minutes of frantic combat.She stumbled back towards the screaming Thaelmor and thrust mercifully through his neck, choking his screams off in a brief gurgle. She collapsed against the side of the embankment, bitterness and failure curdling her stomach as she glanced down the road that both Vorn and the wounded Thaelmor had escaped. She wanted to run Vorn down, but pursing him and his wizard ally was suicide. She sank to her haunches, wiping blood from a cut above her eyes, evidently taken unnoticed at some point in the frantic struggle. Her muscles felt like water and she badly wanted to relieve herself. Familiar sensations.  

After a moment she registered the weight of eyes upon her and she looked up to find the slaves still roped together. The lead slave was trying to make his way towards one of the fallen daggers, but the rope connecting him to his more timid fellows prevented it.

“Talos curse me for a fool,” she muttered bitterly, working hard to catch her breath. 

[@POOHEAD189]