Hi there! I was hoping to get a teeny bit farther along in the plot before posting, but I thought, 'heck, I'll just post it when it's done.' Thanks for your patience and kind comments.
love and mush, enithermon.
*****
Inanna held the wax bar over the single wavering candle flame and watched the thick red tip begin to warp. She caught the single drip in her hand, saving the smooth finish of the desk, and pressed the melting bar to her neatly folded letter. It had been a week since she had returned Feric to his people, and she'd heard little from him since except for brief greetings in passing. They'd thankfully heard little from the hunters as well. It was, however, only a matter of time.
From what they'd told her, it wasn't the hunters who were the threat, and she agreed. They were just appendages. This would be like fighting a draugh. Why spend hours hacking at tentacles when one well placed hit in the jugular would accomplish the same in a much shorter time? She should know. She'd spent one very long afternoon tangled up with one, literally, just a month after her fiftieth. It had been a hell of a way to commemorate it. Inanna leaned back in her chair and chuckled. She couldn't understand the language it had hissed at her...but she got the gist of what he 'meant' to say, she was sure, just as he probably caught the meaning of everything she'd gurgled back. Gurgled, because they were underwater...and he was trying valiantly to choke her to death with one of his five remaining tentacles. Her lips twisted up in fond remembrance.
She was no church follower, indeed like most of her people, she felt the worship of the tribunal was a sacrilege, but that hadn't stopped her from attempting the pilgrimage, not least of all because someone suggested she couldn't do it. Of course a Morrowind Pilgrimage, is not a Cyrodilic one.
Here they merely tramp around the idyllic country side and bless themselves at quaint little alters before moving on. Conversely, to fully complete the pilgrimage of the seven graces, one is required to wade through muck, fight draugh warlords, drown oneself, and then go traipsing into the Ghostgate to visit with corpus stalkers and ash zombies and the gods know what else. She'd even made the pilgrimage to Gnisis temple. There you fight a Dremora guard as he describes-- with all the growling, hissing, charm of a denizen of the darkest realms of Oblivion--all of the horrifying and downright kinky things he's going to do to your skull once he's severed it from the rest of you. Luckily she'd finished the fight before he could move on to other body parts, though not before she discovered that Dremora have absolutely no problem with necrophilia. Gross. No one needed those images in their head...attached or not.
Drowning herself had been the biggest challenge. The will to live is a hard thing to fight. Then again the corpus stalkers were no picnic, those are almost as bad as zombies...almost... she shuddered slightly and replaced the quickly cooling sealing wax in its little shelf.
She loved this desk, it wasn't as nice as the one the vampires had gotten their clever undead hands on, but the wood was rich and dark and the faces of the many drawers carved out handsomely with fine little abstracts. She admired it a little, letting its beauty push out all the weird nasty thoughts that had somehow snuck into her head. She blew on the wax seal to cool it faster and waved the folded sheet in the air before tossing it in a drawer and standing to stretch. She'd been giving it some thought over the last week, while she'd been slipping supplies to Feric's people a little at a time, not wanting her actions to be obvious to anyone who was interested. Of course, who exactly might be interested was precisely what was first and foremost on her mind.
Who, why, and where, and more or less in that order. The 'how' would be ascertained once she knew what she was dealing with. She'd asked, but no one had any answers as to why they were being hunted, only that they were. Whoever it was had others do their dirty work, and it was dangerous work, so they were probably wealthy. Feric had been personally ensuring that the fatality rate was incredibly high among those who took the job.
She shuddered again at the thought, though this time for an entirely different, and more pleasant, reason. She gritted her teeth and forced herself, only half successfully, back to the topic at hand.
She tapped the banister thoughtfully as she made her way upstairs. The expenditure on disposable mercenaries also indicated that this probably wasn't personal, unless the person was completely mad. That was possible, but her initial guess was that it was motivated by compensation of some sort. This was a dangerous and long term hunt, so the motivation must be a powerful one.
And what was the most powerful motivator? Power, obviously. There's a reason all roads lead to the imperial city.
They'd been chased and hounded for over fifty years...that also indicated either more than one person, an organization of some kind perhaps, or a very wealthy, very dedicated Mer, because no human she knew could keep that up this long, not all on their lonesome.
Feric had also informed her that the bodies always disappeared, and were never left behind. This told her that the bodies were important rather than just eliminating the people. They could, after all, take a token from the body, rather than drag the whole thing back to their employer if it was for the purpose of proof. Of course who would be interested in bodies...besides necromancers.
Oh hell, please don't be more of those, she groused. Thoughts of giant shape shifting zombie lions sprung unbidden to her mind and she got a rather nasty taste in her mouth. The memory of the dead imperial on the alter sprung up as well, his face morphing into another more familiar one...she forced the image away before it could fully form. She wasn't going there.
She grabbed an apple from the little nook of a kitchen and crossed into her room. She held the fruit in her teeth as she stripped, and threw herself down on the wide, soft, bed and chewed thoughtfully. Well, regardless of whether it was a rich Mer, or a society of some kind, she knew just the person for the job of getting the inside information for her once she'd tracked them down. She'd written three letters. One to Max, asking him to meet her at the Roxy in two weeks, one to her mother and father, because she was, if nothing else, a good daughter after all, and one addressed to a Tel on the far side of Morrowind.
The contents of the third read only this: Sister, I need you. Cheydinhal. Always, The Velothi.
Three threads, and tomorrow she'd send them shuttling across Tamriel. In the mean time she needed to rest and think. She had asked Feric to come along on the next hunt, or rather the next game of hide and seek with the hunters. Mirisa had been there, and balked slightly, but had the good sense to not complain out loud.
She'd been back and forth several times so far. Cyrus and Bellane, the mated couple were always pleasant, and although Mirisa was also generally polite, she watched her with all the good will of an assassin sizing up their mark.
She was also put off by the fact that, although he was friendly enough and appreciative of her help, Feric seemed to be keeping his distance. She guessed it was for form's sake in front of his tribe...pack...pride, whatever. Perhaps they had a taboo against messing about with outsiders. She'd have to ask, because seeing him so often and not getting to do anything about it was making her edgy.
She still hadn't taken her frustration out on anyone yet, as she was still trying to hold out for when she finally got that big cat alone, but more and more she was wondering when that was going to happen. She'd even had a few offers from a couple of rather well built fellow adventurers, but something in her told her to turn them down. She followed that voice, like she always did, but it left her pretty tightly wound. She almost started a fight with an Orc in Newlands lodge just two nights ago after he made inappropriate comments about her physiology.
Normally such comments would pass without notice, or occasionally even encouraged, but she was looking for an excuse. Sooner or later she'd find one.
The memory gave her another chuckle. Dervera, a fellow Dunmer and the charming proprietor of Newlands lodge, and Borba a local outfitter had seen the look in her eye before the other Orcs had and had turned her around and marched her straight out the door, one at each arm. Borba warned her about messing with the Orum gang, and Dervera about the danger of catching the attention of the city guard, but she didn't care, she just wanted to sink her fist into someone's face. Eventually they'd convinced her to go for a run instead. It had taken the edge off but it wasn't the same.
She sighed. She was really starting to look forward to this hunt. But good lord...nearly a week, she didn't know if she could wait that long.
She wanted to get one of those hunters alive so she could get some answers. They wouldn't know much, but one had to start at the bottom and work their way up. She would also need to start collecting useful toys. She'd examined, or had appraised, a number of useful items taken from the vampires, and had begun stock piling numerous potions and scrolls which would come in handy. There were a few items she didn't have that she suspected by the end she'd need, but it was going to cost. She tossed the core of her apple in a waste basket by the dresser and closed her eyes.
Screw it, she hadn't really wanted a horse anyway.
**
