» Fri Jun 28, 2013 10:01 am ((A note for mods: this is a short story posted in parts that serves as an optional prologue/scene setter for an interactive forum RP to follow. Not to be confused or merged with any threads that form said RP!))
Chapter 1: Dans le port d'Cyrodiil
There's only one city in Cyrodiil. One city in Tamriel, one city in the World: it's a stinking, heaving mass of people; refugees break bread with war criminals, the sewers are slums overspilling, the nobles locked in endless soirées in their boarded-up mansions, the Watch are vigilantes in their own towers. The Imperial City has woken up into a nightmare, it has shrugged off Law, it has forgotten the words to the ancient oaths that bound its people in decency. Every day a thinning and frantic Elder Council meets to make a hundred more proclamations: provisions as to rationing, to curfews, to warnings, to recommendations, to assurances that soon, have faith in the Nine, law will return, and a new Emperor will be crowned.
The city has a new conciousness. Headless now for eight years, it has began to respire, and to react as a living organism. As The Only City in Cyrodiil absorbs the people of the province, all fleeing from the massacres that are heralded first in the morning post, then forgotten as news of more killings follows in the afternoon post, then again, in the evening. As report after report of incalculable slaughter pours in from every corner of The Imperial Provence, The Deathly Province, the only thing left truly alive is its capital. But as crowds of confused and disparate faces swell up in every avenue, and block the hundred bridges of the fabled Ruby City, they enter a new unlife. The City is starving, but no-one seems to care. A carnival atmosphere pervades everything; it is the end of the world, and there is nothing left to do but celebrate.
In the Waterfront District, the change was barely noticeable. The merry brutality of the sailing caste has extended itself all the way to Green Emperor Way, but on the Waterfront, that mile-long expanse of docklands that curves like a scythe across Lake Rumare (in times past shielding the City's more serene waterways from the vulgar nautical classes), things have gone on just as they always have. Sure, business is booming with The War, and there's never a shortage of uppity nobles who've lost their land and will pay anything for the assurance of safe passage (passage to where?), but the Waterfront never knew Imperial Law, not like the other Islands, The Waterfront always dealt with its own business, and that wasn't about to change just because there was no Emperor any more, and the Elder Council changed every other week.
Across the Crescent Mile, the sailors piss away this night like any other. They drink and they drink, and feast on the Queens of the Waterfront, the pvssyring, laughing prosttutes who seem to outnumber even the sailors. The wooden wharfs creak, boats bang happily together, the Rumare gurgles up eddies of filthy flotsam, and a thousand different taverns are aglow, vomiting out the sailors who have drunk so much they too need too to wretch, emptying their bellies into the dark water, not even wiping their mouths before they stumble around and fling themselves back into the warm lantern glow, the bawdy music, and the air thick from a hundred belching, singing sailors.
Sailors hanging off the balconies, heaped over the bars, sailors fighting in the corners and everywhere tankards smashing, sailors downing their gin by the pint. Around one table, the talk turned, as it often did, to Count Spiros. Spiros was a bit of a joke around the Waterfront, in the state of drunkenness that the sailors in The Forebear's Head were now serenely submerged in, a single mention of his name was enough to bring a wave of raucous laughter around the tavern. The sailors lent back as they howled in mirth at the mere idea of the man, and wiped their greasy, gin-drenched lips, eyeing each other, all sharing the joke.
"Where's the young Count to nowdays, ey?" said one, before belching into a tightly gripped fist
"I 'ered 'e gotten lurked up in thee dungeons fer [hiccup] ...indecentcecses." dribbled another.
"No, no no! I 'ered 'e presented 'imself to the Elder Councillers, gonna be next up fer Emperor, mark me words!". Once the laughter of response had died down, a larger sailor with huge, curling eyebrows and a wooden nose lent into the table, and said darkly:
"Yer all wrong. I heard it from the watch themselves, 'e got arrested for treason! That's right, piracy on the 'igh seas. Went rogue 'e did." this caused a series of serious murmurs, and grave noddings of heads, even from many sailors who had just got into port, and had never heard of Count Spiros before in their lives. "The boy was always a bit wrong. Not like us, no, 'igh society type, aristocratic and like, they can pretend, but they ain't us, they're always gurna go wrong in the end." - several sailors, although quietened by this remark, seemed to tacitly agree. From the far wall of the pub a clattering noise broke the sudden, unwelcome silence, as a figure rushed out of the crowd to the table, and slammed a grey fist down on it, splashing gin out of a dozen different tankards.
"GUAR-[censored]." the intruder was a familiar face to the patrons of The Forebear's Head, a Dunmer woman with a shaved head, her skull, neck and shoulders covered in wispy, colourful tattoos, fifteen different Daedra dancing over her grey skin. Her voice carried enough authority to it to command the instant attention of everyone around the table. Serious eyes fixed their winking attention on her as tankards were raised to lips; the woman had something to say.
"Spiros is a good man. He never turned 'Baan Dar. I was on his crew when he sailed up Topal, yes, the Empire took us in, but Spiros never would be a corsair. He is not that man." she threw accusing looks around the table, the mazte in her belly starting a fire that smouldered in her eyes. That same intense loyalty marked her out as a Mananaut; they all had it.
"Oh yar? Then 'ow [hiccup] did 'e en' up accosterred by 'e 'mpire, ay?". The Dunmer sailor glared for a moment at the interrupter, and ran her stubby fingers across a flask of mazte she was holding in front of her. She had the tables attention now, smiling or incredulous faces ready for a story.
"It went like this...
"You all know what work has been like, since the war started. Busy for our lot, but not for Count Spiros. See, The Saint Alessia is a special ship. Her sails alone are worth more than the lot of you combined. She is built for the waters of oblivion, and even putting her to water costs more than most jobs are worth. Still, the work was steady, back when the Empire was still held together. The Arcane University, the Blades, the Zero-Temple and those dusty Moth-Priests, they all had use of Captain Spiros' ship. Even the Dreamsleeve needs patrolling every now and again, and all the wraiths of aetherius know Spiros' name. They call him GHREYSAHT ALTADOON, by which they mean "Amethyst-Butcher". But now the Mages Guild has broken up, and The Blades have returned to Cloud Ruler Temple, all the work, it has dried up. Captain Spiros was desperate, so desperate he broke his golden rule, the rule he always used to repeat to us, "Never go against The Company". He was offered a handsome commission, enough to retire on, for a voidraid. Direnni Battlemage offered it, working for some warlord, one of the pretender Emperors. Mazte I think his name was. Titan Mazte? Anyway, the job was stupid, but the pay was so good, and the Captain was so desperate, he took it.
"Stupidest job ever. Spiros was crazy to take it, and he told us all before we set sail, that we might not be coming back from this one. No-one left: we stand by our captain. If one voyage across the Waters of Oblivion isn't enough to shake your loyalty, risk of an ordinary death isn't going to, I will tell you this. So we took the job."
"What was it 'fer?"
"Stealing an Imperial Battlespire, right from under the Blade's noses."
"Minotaur-[censored]. Everyone knows ther's only one 'er those, 'got sunk during Tharn's rule."
"Only one that people know about. On Ayem's Golden briast, I swear it, I've seen three Battlespires in my lifetime, and that is enough proof for me. Word is there are five floating around Oblivion, three of them the Elder Council still have, and the other two Dagon took. We went for one of the Elder Council's three, it is better, a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears Battlemages than a Prince of Destruction, I am right, am I not?"
"How does a ship even sail to Oblivion? What er buncha mudcrap..."
"That was the Captain's business, the Captain and his Navigator. All the rest of us needed to know is we needed plain sea on every side, and the Navigator does the rest. I did not believe it either, but believe me my friend, when you have seen the waters of Oblivion with your own two eyes, you will believe also.
"The mission was horrible. The jump took us to the wrong realm, we where almost shipwrecked off Coldhabour, before we even got to the Battlespire. The place it was nearly abandoned, but they filled it with gylph-traps. Spiros went ashore with thirty Voidstriders, came back with four. Still, he got what we needed, a Signal Stone I think it was called. We latched the Battlespire to The Alessia, and made the slip back to mundus, towing the castle behind us."
"How can you tow a castle!"
"One thing you learn when you are a Mananaut, this is that you do not ask questions. Spiros and that strange woman, the Navigator, they did it, and we where back in the Topal Bay. All we had to do was return it to Bravil, where the warlord was meant to be waiting. The Gates of Leyawin had just changed hands, and no-one had repaired them, so we sailed right through, everyone, they where so distracted by the castle floating above us, they gave us no mind. But when we reached the Niben Bay..."
"-Two more floating Battlespires. Aye, I heard the story, but it were from a skooma-fiend, I'er thought 'is 'ead musta been halfway 'tween Masser an' Secunda at 'a time.."
"Aye, I heard the tale too: three castles in the sky, battlemages flung between 'em by bolts of lightning"
"I 'erd some dragon-riders turned up-"
"-Dreughwax! There ain't no dragonriders no more-"
"-But you still get castles floatin in 'e sky? Pull 'e ov'r one.."
"So now you believe me, boys? Yes, the Blades were waiting for us, cordoned the whole bay with their ships, and the two other Battlespires, hanging there in the clouds."
"What did Capn' Spiros have yer do?"
"We sailed right through the Imperial blockade, and we would have made it we would have; there's no ship faster than The Alessia in the whole Imperial Navy, not anymore. They ran a chain between the two Battlespires, but Spiros went himself up there to cut it, and we made it through. But waiting in Bravil was another legion there for us. Titus Mazte had been chased out of Bravil the previous night, he was halfway up the Green Road by the time we arrived. Legion took us in, they put us in chains and sailed us back to The City, threw us in the Imperial Prison. Spiros had us all out to a mer the next day, paid all of our bail, but they kept the ship. And that's the last I saw of the man. Five months ago now."
"So all 'er that, and you still don't know where the lilly-livered Count is to?"
"No. But I will tell all of you this thing: I would follow the man back into the Jaws of Oblivion if he were to ask for it. No, do not laugh at me. You will all say what you will like about him. You want to know what kind of man Spiros is? I will tell you this:"
"I'm nobody, really." Spiros said to the wind, leaning slightly too far off the marble railing that warded him and his female companion from a sheer drop to the scented pleasure gardens below. "I don't do anything. I sit in my house and write, well, silly little things like this. They are dreadful really, I don't know why I bother to get them published, but I find them amusing, I suppose. I mean, really, they are just to pass the time. Completely silly. You can say what you like, It's fine, I've heard it all, haha. Really, be honest, I mean, I've heard it all. Honestly its dreadful, completely gibberish, just say so, I mean."
"It doesn't rhyme."
Spiros coughed and almost heeled right over, nearly tumbling down to the party below, where numerous minor nobles where pvssyring and laughing in masquerade.
"Well, no, it doesn't. I mean, not all poetry rhymes nowadays, you know. Have you ever read Mnoriad, you see the Bosmer have been doing it for years..." for which words in exchange his companion gave Spiros a stare blank enough to force a Hunger to recoil. He had forgotten that the lady in question was Bosmeri herself.
"I don't understand it." she said flatly, handing the book back to Spiros, directing her gaze sideways as if the spectral figure of White-Gold tower, leering over them, had for some sudden reason become of the utmost interest. Spiros felt he was losing his audience.
"What did you think about the part with the Nymph?" he said brightly moving from the railing, warming to this new manoeuvring of the conversation to what would hopefully prove a more fruitful waters.
"She was okay." shrugged the Bosmer.
"It's funny, but something about you reminds me of her", by the time he had let these words loose form his lips, Spiros was aware that he had made a mistake.
"You say I am like a Nymph?!"
"No, I mean, your-"
"Oh I see, you think all Bosmer girls are easy, is that it? You think we are all free-loving tree hugging people who you just need to show a poem to make them put out, is that it, City-Boy?"
"Now look! I didn't say all Bosmer were nympish, just-"
****
Fifteen minutes alone on the balcony with a woman before he had earned himself a slap in the face. Par for course, really, considered Count Spiros, as he nursed a stinging red patch across his cheek, the Bosmeri princess quick down the stairwell. She'd be absorbed back into the party already now. For the upper classes, flin poured like water, there was nothing but endless circles of parties, "little gatherings", balls and soirées, such as this one. All of the jobs in for their caste had gone with the Empire, all the usual holiday destinations now bloodbaths. There was nothing to do but to drink, to mix and mingle, to dance, dancing just stave off the hunger; they felt it too. Everyone was starving in The Imperial City, but not starving equally. Spiros' palms itched, his head throbbed, and there it was again. The old black cat on his shoulder, clawing. One way out of this party, one destination.
Out of the Elven Gardens district, down to Market-town. His dirty fingertips buzzed already with it, the excitement churned in his stomach; Spiros could taste the Skooma hitting the back of his throat in his anticipation before his wretched and sick body was even out the house.
Stay turned for the next chapter: "Waiting for The Man", out soon!
