1 Last seed 4E20

"Hullo, Drevas."

"Wah-hey, Marcus."

"Drevas, have a listen to this new guy."

A Nord sat by the two friends. Old, withered, but with keen blue eyes and obvious laugh lines around his mouth. He was new to Cyrodiil from Skyrim, but had traveled much of the rest of the world in his youth. As such, he had seen, heard, and taken part in many thousands of stories.

"He just got through telling me a story about how a four-year-old Dunmer helped save Tear from the Daedra back in the Crisis." Marcus said. "The story just comes out. You don't even care if it's true or not by the end, you just want to hear more."

"Really? What's his name?" Drevas asked.

"You can speak to me, son." the old Nord said, in a voice that was surprisingly young. "I'm not yet so old I canna hear! And my name is Halgerd Wind-Listener."

"Well, tell him one, Halgerd!" Marcus said, motioning to the rest of the patrons of the Feed Bag to shut up, because the old man had already begun.


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It happened that day on the coasts of Hammerfell that a Nordic adventurer, a simple man named Jor, would stumble upon the ruins of an old settlement. It was tall, in a shambles and barely standing. Something about it made his skin crawl. He moved on to a nearby oasis, where a small trading villiage had sprung up. Once there, he began to ask the locals. Whenever asked about the strange structure, they all made signs of protection from old Redguard superstitions. Only when he went to the hut of the medicine-woman, a Dunmer who had come to Hammerfell some months before, did he get an answer.

"That is the cursed place of The Sload. So powerful is his Destruction magic that we dare not speak his name." She said, shuddering.

Jor, who had a strong sense of justice and, aside from which, had taken notice of the young mer woman's beauty, announced somewhat foolishly that he would destroy the foul creature and aid the villiage, demanding no reward or aid for himself, he set out to return to the ruin. As he got there, he kicked down the door and strode in, his mighty ancestral axe gleaming even in the dim light, when he was hit full force by an explosion of noise and heat.

"Who dares infringe upon my lands?" The sickly voice, positively dripping with the arrogance only the truly evil can possess, hit Jor like a hammer. The disgusting white mass of quivering flesh and slime crawled up to the profane altar, and began hurling insults followed by superheated fireball spells.

"I'll bet you don't even grasp the infinite nature of my magic power!" He shouted, badly burning Jor's right arm with the following spell. "I have studied all the texts from Morrowind to Summerset! None can rival my infinite knowledge!"

Jor then retorted, "At least I don't need stage tricks like yours to move and fight!" At this the Sload was enraged, for in his mind he knew Jor spoke the truth, and the truth always hurts far worse than lies. "YOU... YOU...!!" The Sload stuttered, before unleashing a barrage of profane non-sequitorial words and fire spells, coating the room with flames. Jor fled the building, stumbling back to the villiage, He dropped, unconsious, by the hut of a clothier. He awoke in the medicine-woman's hut.

"Did we do anything?" He asked, assuming since he woke up with no memory and a headache he had gotten drunk.

"No." The woman sighed, "You stumbled back here, burned and jibbering. I applied some magical salves, but there is only so much I can do. Did you kill the beast? You are the first to come back alive."

Jor searched his throbbing head. "I don't think so. He hit me with fire spells, and insulted me quite a lot." His memory came back in a rush. "He was enraged when I insulted him, he couldn't even speak. By the gods, if nothing else he needs to be killed for his arrogant tone!" Jor sat up and winced. His arm and shoulder were still a little crispy. "He didn't use any kinds of spells but fire."

The medicine woman sat and stared contemplatively over her incense-table. "I can make a fire-blocking potion. It also seems that if you frenzy him, he'll exahust his magicka."

Jor shifted around on the cot to get a better look at the woman. She looked young, but he knew since elves could live for a thousand years, she could be hundreds of years old. She had a dark, sad wisdom in her eyes.

"Perhaps..." She muttered. "Perhaps if you use the potion and distract him, I can stun him with a spell!"

"If that's your plan, I'll go with it." Jor said. He usually limited his plans depth to deciding which foe to take out before they noticed him.

The dunmer woman applied the last of her salve to Jor's arm, him feeling both the icy touch of the magic and the tingling of his nerves at her touch. Then Jor stood up and grabbed his axe. His arm still stung at the movement, but it was significantly improved. as he and the woman walked to the ruion, he asked her name.

"Anara." She said. He liked the ring of it.

"Well, Anara, if you have only one potion, take it yourself and be the distraction." He said, then touching her arm gently, "If you were to come to harm for me I would never forgive myself."

The woman shook her head. Jor wasn't the first man to look at her that way, but she still hated needing to turn men down. How could they understand the hardships she had had to face on that front before?

Night fell. A look of panic entered the eyes of the lovestruck Nord. He quickly turned to the horizon and looked at the moons. He had nearly forgotten the day!

"Anara, run!" he shouted as he doubled over in pain, his bones changing size and shape as grey and brown fur began to sprout over his body. He cried out as his face extended into a snout, and his cries turned into beastly howls.

He turned to Anara, his eyes filled with sadness but his nouth twisted into a hungry snarl. He lunged at her, but she simply, calmly put up her hand and he stopped dead in the air, suspended a foot above ground. He flaided his limbs and whined. She let him gently down to the ground, and scratched behind his ears. He made appreciative noises and rested his head in her lap as she sung a tune in the Dunmeri tongue. She wispered in his ear, "Up." He stood up and shook the desert sands from his fur. They walked together to the Sload's abode.

Anara took the potion and walked in. She hadn't expected the noise of his shout to be so loud, but the fire didn't scorch her. Jor growled, emanating feral malice.

"A mongrel and an inferior being have come to marvel at my omnicience!" The Sload exaulted. "And a beautiful inferior as well! When I have slaughtered your pet, you will be my pleasure-slave!"

He launched a fire spell at Jor, who jumped with his wolfen agility to the side. Anara shouted over the explosion "You'd need a slave, no woman would go anywhere near you!"

The Sload was enraged at this blatant display of honesty. He launched a barrage of flame at Anara, who absorbed it into her flame shield.

"If you were so omnicient you'd have known about my fire shield!" Anara taunted. The Sload was further enraged, for his nature demanded that he be lied too and flattered whenever a living thing approached him.

"The Sload were beaten back by mallitia farmers!"

"You're out of touch with reality!"

"Dunmer wizards are smarter than you!"

The Sload went into convulsions, for having been exposed to reality he was blacking out. Jor leapt on him and tore his throat out. He looked around, jaws dripping with the foul, arrogant creatures blood, and Anara was nowhere to be found. She had fallen in love with him, and had fled to not need to reject im, breaking both of their hearts.

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"But why did Anara run?" Drevas said, like a child who wanted to hear the end of a too-long bedtime story.

"That, my boy, is a story for another day." Halgerd said, walking out into the night. "I'll be back tomorrow night if you want to hear more!" He shouted over his shoulder as he walked out for home.

First off let me congratulate you on the epic title. Enjoyed the short read.

Excellent short story and I knew Story was going to show up here with something to say

Good work, I enjoyed that.

If I didn't know better I would say that came right out of the games. Cheers.

The next night, Halgerd seemed lighter. He had a spring in his step, as though he had passed a physical weight with the first story.

"So let's hear about Anara and why she was afraid."

Halgerd shook his head. "Another time. Tonight I have a different story."

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Once in Morrowind, many years ago, there was a young man named Joseph. His mother was a Breton and his father was a Nord, but he also had Imperial blood in his veins. He worked for the translators at the Mages Guild, and traveled always between his home in Balmora and his workplace in Vivec. Whenever he took the silt Strider, even as a youth people would go out of their way to avoid him. In ashstorms (This was before the Sharmat was defeated) people would wait for the next Strider rather than take an open seat next to him. He always noticed it, but didn't care unti lhe began to think about it. Then he noticed people on the streets avoided him, too, and people in the Guild only interacted with him when they absolutely had to.

He became confused over time. There was nothing in his looks that would scare people away, nor his manners. He was a perfectly average man. It began to eat at him, he became angry, depressed, downtrodden. He never thought about it before, but he realized that he was an exile.

One day, the Strider took a detour, and they let on some people from another guildhall. One of them looked at him for a second. she took a step towards him, ignoring her friend's requests that she avoid him. She sat down right next to him.

"Hello." She said. He was stopped for a second, before replying.

"Hi."

She looked at him with those bright, kind eyes. They were mostly blue as the sea, but they had a rim as earth-green as his own. He saw in her face a kindness he wasn't used to. A concern for this lonely young man. They talked until she had to get off the Strider. She gave him a happy wave and a smile, and like that was gone. He never saw her again. Years later, he was still lonely, still an eternal exile, but he would look back at the woman and smile. Sometimes, the memory of the woman who'se name he never learned but who alone showed him kindness was all that kept him going."

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Drevas stayed silent, as did the rest of them. Halgerd got up.

"Well, see you tomorrow." He said, then shambled out.

Abrupt but well written.

You didn't think I was done, did you? After only a few stories? Laughable. it'd take morew than reformatting my computer and losing everything I've ever writen to get me to stop!

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Halgerd walked in, and it was obvious to all who saw him that he was certainly younger. It was no longer deniable.

However, when Drevas walked in, everyone fell silent and stared.

'What is it?" He asked. Marcus drew his dagger (a marvelous piece of work that his best friend, the blacksmith Robespierre, had made for him), and Drevas looked at his reflection in the impeccably-polished blade.

"By the Gods!" he exclaimed, "what's happened to me?"

He had visibly aged years in less than a day. Halgerd huffed impatiently. "All in good time, my boy." He said, "that is the final story I'll tell, and it'll be just for you, but for now I have yet another story."

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"Today I will tell you a story of a kindly young boy. He lived on a farm with his grandfather, up in the lowlands of Skyrim, where spring meltwater makes the valleys so fertile you could feed half the Empire on one crop. This boy had sworn an oath of nonviolence, planning to become a monk after his old grandfather passed away. Provisions had been made for him to stay with the old man and help him until his last days were over.

As it happened, a large group of bandits was marauding near to the farm. The old man was too frail to fight, despite having been a fearsome warrior in his younger days. The boy, having sworn his oath, could also do nothing at first. The two planned and plotted over how to save thier farm from these men. At last, the old man came up with an idea.

'Yeh cannae strike any of 'ehm,' he said, 'but there be nary rules on usin' yeh magicks to sop 'ehm.' he said.

The boy thought on this, then nodded. He used a soulgem from one of his grandfather's old trophies of his older triumhs, and took a simple leather belt, nothing too special, but nothing that would fall apart. He enchanted it as best he could, still being a novice mage, then strapped it on and waited.

The bandits came quickly, surrounding the boy and jeering.

'No weapons, and he's just a boy!' One laughed.

'I say we string him up to a cart and feed him to the wolves!' Laughed another.

One came forward and made to grab him, but the boy jumped forward, and with his hands glowing blue he touched the bandit's forehead. he slumped to the ground, unconsious.

The other bandits ran at him as they registered what happened. Channeling the magic through his body, the boy exhausted them as they came within his reach, draining them of thier energy and leaving them face-down in the mud. After the last fell, he sent a carrier pigeon to the nearest legion fort, tewlling the guardsmen that he had caught them. His grandfather came out of the house, and laughed his strange laugh.

'Knuck knuck! Yeh've shown 'ehm, haven'yeh?' He said. "Such a great magickal thing needs a truly honorable name, so what shall yeh callaht?'

In honor of his aged grandfather, he called it the Belt of Northern Knuck Knuck. It was sold to a trader, which was ambushed by pirates, then it was sold to another bandit in Morrowind before coming to the possession of that great hero, the Nerevarine."

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Halgerd took a deep breath. "Well, I hope you've enjoyed this tale. Either way, I'll be back tomorrow."

And with a youthful stride, Halgerd left the tavern. Drevas looked at his hands. He wondered what strange magicks were at work to trade thier ages in such a way.

I know this is a short story to move the longer story along, but is this really all that happens in this bit? It's like that scene in Forest Gump where Jenny is the only one who lets him sit beside her, but drawn out over the course of a decade with Jenny only riding once. Joseph is a bit disappointed because white people have to sit at the back of the bus, but instead of overcoming his difficulty he merely avoids suicide by thinking of the only person who was nice to him? It's a bit of a depressing office tale. If he smelled bad, I totally wouldn't sit by him either though.

To the business! The part where you establish the frame story of the Storyteller gives a good setting to begin with, but it ends a little abruptly once his first story is over. You might take a cue on that from the Arabian Nights story where Scheherazade is trying to run side gambits to help in the deception. Trust me when I say that I'm commenting because I do like the story, it might not seem like it from the criticism.

It seems like Jor should have a greater interest in killing the sload. He isn't a witch-hunter or a knight looking to prove himself, he just seems to be a guy seeking some adventures who could be inspired to fight by some wrong doing he perceives. Sure he has a strong sense of justice, but the sload hasn't done anything unjust, has he? He just seems like a hermit who doesn't appreciate door to door salesmen.

Right, the manner of insults are a little too polite. Saying "I bet you don't know magic" isn't all that pointed when the receiver doesn't care about that. The sload should be vainglorious and derisive of Jor's value as a living being. Jor in return should be using vulgar insults, calling the sload a flesh turd or something. And the end of the story where you continue these insults, I think you mean militia farmers. Saying a Dunmer wizard is smarter that someone isn't all that insulting when the Dunmer are pretty good wizards. Say that Goblin wizards are better.

There are some words where you accidentally put a wrong letter in or minor misspelling, a general proof read is in order. The were-wolf thing was really random. I'm also seeing a bit much of a Pizza the Hutt reference when the sload wants a hot chick as a pleasure slave, they seem a little too reclusive for that. Don't forget to expand the frame story!

it would be an insult to the sload because they think they are far superior to all other races, even the skilled dunmer.

comparing the sload to a goblin would just be ridiculous and the sload would call his bluff, so to speak.

True, but a large part of insulting someone is the hyperbole involved. Let's take that insult in a different form: You're meaning to insult the intelligence of a genius, is it more insulting to say "Your intelligence is above average!" or to say "You're a retarded little idiot, aren't you?". Insults need to be a bit over the top.

the sload is insulted because he is being told the truth. calling him a retard would just make him laugh.