dont have it in me to make fun of people who draw oblivion npcs prettier than they actually are but the misleading nature of the act itself is so funny to me bc i can only imagine what it must feel like seeing fan art of this mysterious sexy vampire assassin guy but when you get to the part of the game where he actually appears he looks like this
updated my blogs! this is going to be my exclusive TES blog, where my personal blog is @/robinbanks so feel free to follow there if you happen to like my misc posting and cats
sometimes people are absolutely WILD about comments, acting like the idea that they shouldn’t be a jerk is a violation of their first amendment rights
last week i read a fic i HATED. it was well written and highly recommended and i wish i had never read it. hours of my life i will never get back.
i disagreed with: it’s interpretation on canon, it’s take on mental health, the social contract between loved ones, recovery, trauma, boundaries, and … more tbh
i could NOT stop thinking about how much i disagreed with it. me and this fic have philosophical differences so large i could give a ted talk and i was still super irritated about it days later.
so you know what i did?
i called up my friends and was like “you guys have no context but i’m going to bitch about this fic you haven’t read in this fandom you haven’t consumed for the next thirty minutes” and they were like “okay sure it’s a tuesday night, we’re in a pandemic, i have nothing better to do”
what did i not do?
leave a comment on this person’s fic because i’m a human person
I mean, isn’t it more as mature to critique the fic as long as you are sensible about it? Like, how is anyone writing supposed to grow if all their readers vent to their friends and family instead of telling the author…?
having some internet rando whom I don’t know from Adam turn up on my fic and tell me what they didn’t like about it / what I should do differently / what they think I could have done better
I will feel like I shouldn’t write fanfic if the following happens because I’m super insecure about my fanfic and barely manage to write in months anyway:
some internet rando whom I don’t know from Adam turns up on my fic and tells me what they didn’t like about it / what I should do differently / what they think I could have done better
Some things some fanfic authors might want from writing and posting fic:
a nice hobby
stress relief
coping with trauma or other unpleasant events
escapism
sharing story ideas they had and wrote with others
just writing their ideas out and getting them out of their heads
Some things some fanfic authors might not want from writing and posting fic:
a writing circle with their readers taking on the roles of other members
improving their writing
“growing”
Things unsolicited criticism won’t achieve for many fanfic authors:
motivate them to improve
Things unsolicited criticism will achieve for many authors:
they’ll struggle more with writing
they’ll delete their fic
they’ll stop writing altogether
What it costs you not to leave unsolicited criticism on a fic that doesn’t specifically ask for criticism:
nothing
What it might cost a fanfic author on whose fic you leave unsolicited criticism although they didn’t ask for it:
their good mood for the moment
their good mood for the day
the enjoyment of writing that fic
the enjoyment of writing altogether
their participation in fandom
tl;dr: Not everyone wants the same out of fandom, and it’s not that hard to only leave criticism when it’s asked for. Of course if someone wants to publish their stuff professionally and sell it, they need to take lots of criticism. (Myself, I’m working as a scientific editor, so I do that kind of criticism on an academic level. I also get it from others on my own academic articles. It’s ego-bruising sometimes, but it’s necessary to improve the finished product.) But fandom is not that, nor is it some prep course for writing something publishable, so the same rules don’t have to apply. You don’t know the author, why they write or how their relationship with writing is going, so why risk hurting them when there really is no need?
Plus, there’s always fanfic authors who ask for criticism, so give it to them.
btw i don't want to start anything but if anyone wants to know some uh. interesting info about someone in the community here, feel free to bother me about it.
y'know what, screw it. have this. I have every account here blocked, and i suggest you do it too. I found this out when going through a terf's art post notes as a blocklist, so, yeah.
we made it to the end!!! So to finish, here is the boy, the love of my life, the glorious, Kaidan.
@tes-summer-fest
Tag list: @reachfolk @lucien-lachance @lookathooves @kittyspotatoes @vilkas @qah-naarin @sanguinettii @crustycalipers @rabbittwinrithings @fennorians @isran-deserves-better @chaoticsleepygremlin @farshores @bowandarrowandbrokenguitar @hobbithoes-main ask to be tagged!
[Image ID: Kaidan, a lighter skinned human with a blood red tattoo and black hair tied in a bun stands without a shirt and his eyes closed, half of his body shrouded in shadow.]
Warnings: Discussion of the Atmoran invasion/fall of Falmeri society
Some nights, Miryaris Haerlori feels as ancient as the auroras that cast their light over the icebound lands of his people.
They were there before he was born, of course, and they will be there long after he’s gone. The thought is some small comfort in the enormity of what he’s lost. The land that mothered his people has changed, and yet the skies that once watched over them are the same.
The skies spark a yearning in him that has not died since he last soared above the clouds. Now, he never will again. It’s a fact he’s gone back and forth on accepting, some days waking up strangled by an age-old bitterness and others facing the sky with a calm acceptance. Once, he flew on a dragon’s back amongst the auroras, inches from scraping the stars. Now, he is grounded once more.
He roams the field of ice beneath the auroras, watching their colors awake within the crystalline structures around him. It’s beautiful in a way that reminds him the gods exist. Once, on a night like this eras upon eras ago, his people would have gathered beneath the open skies to sing to the stars. He still remembers the words like he remembers his own name. The last time they passed his lips, his world was alive, and he’d stood alongside his people beneath the soaring arches of a long-fallen bastion in the north, not knowing that he’d never again raise his voice to the sky. He has not sung in centuries upon centuries, now. That part of him is buried with the ruins of his peoples’ cities, right alongside the parts of him that knew how to be anything other than a warrior, a survivor, a remnant of a bygone age left to grieve things no other remembers.
Miryaris mourns in a language he does not understand, older still than the bones of his people.
He’s watched the world change, but he no longer cares to be one of its orchestrators - his role in such things ended long ago. Perhaps they ended when he staggered from the catacombs of the Dwemer, fleeing the greatest betrayal his people would ever know. Perhaps it was after he threw off Atmoran shackles and fled the place they call Windhelm, where he was turned into an instrument of his people’s own conquest, forced to build that gods-cursed city. Now, he stands a silent vigil over the wild places of his motherland and watches the eras pass, sometimes as slow as pinesap oozing from a tapped tree and sometimes as fast as the wheeling hawks take flight. He will always belong to the winds and snows and skies of the north, no matter how many Nords lay claim to the land.
He is still Knight-Commander, still Venzoriik* of the dragon Loknahdinok, and he has sworn an oath to a long-dead Prince. He still wears the armor he was gifted the day he was chosen by his draconic companion, the gryphon-plume helm of a royal knight still graces his head, and though his hair has been cut short rather than falling in the elegant braids of a Falmeri warrior, he carries himself with the bearing of one. Not even the fall of his people could cut the bonds that hold him to his duty - none but his lord’s word ever could, and he died long ago, before the thought of parting from Miryaris ever crossed his mind. Miryaris likes to think he never would have dissolved the oath.
Even now, everything reminds him of his Prince, nameless in the eyes of the world and yet alive in the land he held dear. Miryaris watches the waves of the northern seas meet the towering glaciers, wearing away crystals of ice that glimmer like stardust on seafoam, and thinks of his hair - the color of snow beneath the sun. He watches Masser and Secunda make their way across the endless sky and thinks of his eyes - as bright as the moons and a thousand times warmer. He listens to the crunch of permafrost beneath his boots, looks back at his tracks through the snow, and thinks of the days another set of footsteps echoed his. The god he’s long since forsaken, whose long-neglected shrines still lay deep in the mountains or in the quiet places beneath the earth, reminds him of the reign of his prince, sun-blessed by the mark on his brow and yet doomed in the end. Auri-El himself could not have saved them, or he deemed it beneath him, and Miryaris is not certain which would hurt worse. It ended the same either way - his Prince dead in the snow, his body hauled away by the enemy, Miryaris alone and grieving in a hostile world.
The Snow Prince was his liege and love for a fleeting instant in the face of the enormity of Miryaris’ long centuries of life, and yet he left an indelible mark on his heart. When he fell, some part of Miryaris had known their people were lost, broken just as surely as the body in the snow. Miryaris had screamed his grief to the heavens, turned the ice crimson with Atmoran blood, and yet none of it had been enough. Sometimes, he still wants to scream, or take his vengeance life by life to make them understand a tiny sliver of what he feels. A part of him that’s grown over the past few thousand years knows it won’t ease his grief.
Time has dulled his pain, but cannot erase it, not when it is so entangled in the fibers of everything he is and the land itself is resonant with his loss.
It hurts, the remembering, the burden of carrying on the last living memories of a dead people. Forgetting would be an unforgivable shirking of his duty. He’s chosen his path long ago, no matter how much it hurts. On this night, Miryaris walks the ice fields at the furthest reaches of his homeland, a thousand years away from the conquerors who would call this place theirs, and he remembers the world as it once was.
Tags: @lucien-lachance @reachfolk @friend-of-giants @lookathooves @qah-naarin @fennorians @cwahsont @faolan-red-eagle (ask to be added)
As they wander through the forest, Firien and Vilkas discover an unexpected part of Firien's past
—
At first, Firien did not realize what she was seeing. She had tilted her head, narrowed her eyes, and taken several steps forward before she finally processed what was before her. It blended in so well with the rest of the woods, and what once had been sun-bleached white was now grey and aged, no doubt having been sitting in one spot for gods knew how long. Moss and lichen had long since taken over, speckling the grey with green and yellow and making it look all the more like it belonged exactly where it was. Like the earth itself had created it and placed it exactly where it was.
"Is that—?"
"A dragon skull," Vilkas finished for her, his tone hushed. "An old one, by the looks of it."
Awed, Firien stepped over a fallen log and approached the skull. Aside from the sound of her boots crunching through the leaves, the forest was nearly silent. Not even birds chirped, nor did any wind brush through the trees. All was still and tranquil, as though the world itself was quieted in respect for this mighty, fallen beast.
The skull was weather-worn and aged, but she could still see the yellow of the teeth and scars that decorated the forehead, jaw bone, and horns. Not only that, but the bone was almost completely covered in old Nordic runes, which was surprising. She had not expected runes, but if she had, she would have assumed they would be in Dovahzul.
Strangely enough, there were no other bones. The rest of the dragon's body was nowhere to be seen. Only the skull, resting against the trunk of an old and gnarled oak tree with branches so large that they scooped downward toward the ground, in some places even touching. Normally, a tree like this would be a wonderful place for animals like squirrels or birds to run rampant, yet there were none. Firien could not detect a single living creature other than themselves near the tree and the skull. Not even a fox hiding in the massive roots, nor any deer skirting around at a distance.
They were completely alone, and while this should have set her on edge, it actually felt peaceful. She knelt before the dragon skull and placed her hand on it. Physically, she felt nothing, but the moment her skin made contact with the old bone, she saw flashes of fire in her mind, burning buildings and trees, and screams echoing in the air. Another dragon, one she knew, scales black as ink and eyes red as boiling blood as it shrieked its fury. It all happened so fast, and vanished the moment she jerked her hand away in surprise, her heart racing wildly. Who had this dragon been?
"This thing is ancient," said Vilkas, and she nearly jumped. She had not heard him come up behind her. "But where's the rest of it?"
Firien shook her head, feeling dazed. "I do not know."
"Are you alright?" The concern in Vilkas' voice echoed in her ears as he dropped down behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"I think so," she said. "I just... This dragon..."
"What about it?"
"I have no idea," said Firien quietly. "I feel like I know her."
"Her?" he asked, and she could practically feel his eyes flicking between her and the skull. "How do you know it was a jill?"
"I just do," she answered, and as she spoke, something stirred in her chest, a feeling she had come to dread every time it occurred. But this time, rather than rage and anger and hatred and a burning desire to kill, it felt... content? In a way, it reminded her of those summers in Valenwood when she spent her days with a grey tabby cat curled up in her lap as it snoozed peacefully and purred so loudly it seemed to tremble her entire body. The cat had been her only friend.
"What is...?" Vilkas' voice trailed off, and his hand left her shoulder as he stood. He crept around Firien, closer to the skull. She watched him curiously as he crouched beside the skull and reached forward, toward something on the ground behind the skull half hidden in the leaves. He grasped it and, after a moment of effort, he pulled it free and slid it from beneath the dragon.
Once upon a time, it had undoubtedly been black and polished until it shone, but now it was faded and missing any luster it may have once had. Dirt, moss, and old, rotten leaves clung to the half of the staff that had been partially claimed by the earth. The same runes that were carved into the skull covered the staff. On one end, there was a sharp, wicked-looking blade that had rusted over centuries ago and was now near crumbling. Firien felt like she had seen it before, but could not place where.
At the sight of it, the feeling in her chest darkened, and at once, she saw for the second time, she saw a spear, the very same one Vilkas now held, hurdling through the night air. It pierced through black scales with skin like molten lava pulsating just beneath, and her hand instinctively clutched at her sternum but the feeling immediately vanished.
"Yolziinah," she breathed, and her dragon soul within seemed pleased.
"Yolziinah?" repeated Vilkas as he examined the spear. "This is... your dragon soul?"
"Her body," said Firien, suddenly stricken as she reached forward and touched the bone again. "This is her body."
"Well, what's left of it," Vilkas said with a chuckle. "How do you know?"
"I just do." Her fingers curled where they were, instinctively clutching her necklace, yet she felt... satisfied, somehow. Yolziinah was a part of her, whether she liked it or not, and the ancient skull before her was proof of that existence, one she had never experienced.
"She was pretty large for a dragon," Vilkas observed. "I read somewhere that jills were larger. Doesn't seem like she was any exception. Gods, what I would give to have seen her in her prime."
"She likes that," said Firien with a nervous laugh as more satisfaction grew in her chest. "You probably would not have survived the encounter, though. Apparently she was... her hatred for mortals rivaled Alduin's."
"I'm not even going to ask how you know that," said Vilkas as he leaned the spear against the tree.
"What do these runes mean?" she asked him.
Vilkas crouched beside her again, inspecting them closely. "I'm not sure. I can't make them all out, but they look like runes to protect and to bind."
"Maybe whoever killed her was afraid she would come back," said Firien.
Vilkas smiled at her wryly.
"Well, they failed that one, didn't they?" he said. "She may not be within the body of a dragon, but she is in the body of a very feisty Bosmer. Not sure which is to be feared more."
Firien rolled her eyes as she stood. How she managed to find Yolziinah of all dragons was astounding to her, and by the looks of it, she had been here for some time. Perhaps even waiting for Firien to find her. A deeper, lonelier part of her wanted to stay. Seeing Yolziinah like this made her heart ache. She had been forgotten to the ages. A feared, dreadful dragon now lost to memory in a massive forest somewhere beyond Falkreath. Firien's heart hurt for her, for she feared the same fate. She feared that one day, she would be left behind, alone and forgotten and no more than someone who had existed once upon a time.
"I want to return to this place," she said, turning back to Vilkas, who had his head craned back as he looked at the oak tree. "We can do nothing for her now, not with everything going on. But some day, Vilkas, I wish to return. She is a part of me, and I of her, and she deserves better than this."
"Of course." Vilkas reached out and took her hand in his. "When the gods allow, we will return to her. But for now, woodlouse, we should let her rest."
A sliver of amusement pierced the melancholy ache in Firien's heart when she heard the nickname. He was right, however. The best thing for Yolziinah now was to let her rest.
Firien did not look back as she and Vilkas crunched through the forest floor covered in dead leaves. She only looked ahead as they continued onward, leaving the silent clearing, the oak tree that housed no wildlife, and the skull of Yolziinah behind.
Summary: An Initiate undergoing the final ritual before becoming a Vigilant of Stendarr reflects on his purpose in life and his creed.
Tagging: @tes-summer-fest @vilkas
Word count: 3k
Warnings: None
Sil watches the sun burn itself out on the horizon in a thin line of scarlet and braces himself for a long night.
It’s fitting, given the name of his order, that he should hold a vigil to become one of them. He’s spent years looking forward to it - or rather, the moment it ends and he’s welcomed as Skyrim’s newest Vigilant of Stendarr. He’d accepted waiting in the cold as the price for that honor, but he hadn’t thought it would feel so lonely.
Even with the plume of smoke and the spillage of amber lights from the Hall of the Vigilant in the valley below keeping him company, he feels small, isolated. It’s a low peak, and too close to midyear for the cold to be more than an annoyance, and yet he feels as though he stands on the Throat of the World. The statue of his god looming over him is no better company - it stands silent and still, mirroring his own vigil over the lands, the brazier at its stone feet crackling with magefire. Ghostly pale light plays over the front of Stendarr’s flowing robes, throwing his carven face into sharp, craggy relief. He looks regal, powerful, watching over the Hall in the valley and the young Initiate seated mere paces from his pedestal alike.
Nearer to his sitting place, Sil’s own fire crackles merrily within its ring of stones, a spark as bright as if one of the stars has fallen from the sky and landed at his boots. He sits perched on a smooth boulder and watches the valley, the wending path up to his post, the slopes of tumbled scree stretching bare under the moonlight into the glacier-hewn valley, the long shadows of the mountain peaks interplaying with the light of the rising moons. The hoot of an owl echoes through the valley, the occasional shadows of bats flit this way and that across the stars, and he breathes in the scent of woodsmoke. His exhalation comes in short clouds, though his fur mantle and the fire nearby keep him warm enough for comfort.
He watches the flames devour one of the split logs from the small pile nearby, encouraging them to dance a little higher with a spark of magicka. He’s not bored, not exactly, but being alone with nothing to do but think is a novelty for him after the rigors of his training. Perhaps he should’ve given more thought to how he’ll keep awake during his vigil, but in truth, he’d dwelt little on it beyond the rules of his assignment.
Keep the fire going, Keeper Carcette’s voice orders in his memory, matronly and stern. Stay alert, keep the flame alive, and await the dawn. We will come with it. Brigh’s voice comes just after it, a recent memory but no less beloved. I’ll bring you your blade myself. I’ve no doubt in my mind about you, Sil. I never have.
The vigil is more a formality than anything. The real trials came with his first hunt and his first healing. Those are the cornerstones of their order - to heal mankind’s ills, to hunt those that would cause them, to stand vigilant over the shadows. His real duty tonight is to reflect, more than anything. He’s learned much over his years in training. He would be remiss not to remember who he was and how he’s changed.
He was scared, once. Perhaps some fragile part of him still is, but it’s propped up by the iron will his training has brought him. His sword lies across his lap, the blade sheathed for the moment, but his hand rests on the dull bronze of the hilt. If he’s lucky, the morning will see his fingers wrapped instead around the silver blade marking a true Vigilant. Still, a pang of nostalgia runs through him at the thought of setting aside his first weapon. It was, perhaps, the first thing that had lessened his fear of the dark and what lurked within it.
The sword has never been a mere tool, but an extension of himself. That was the first lesson he learned. The second was that he was never to draw it unless he was ready to deal death.
Sil has taken lives in his time as a trainee. He was taught to save them before he learned the art of ending them - both are necessary, and yet the latter carries a far more somber weight. It’s a grave duty, playing arbiter of a god’s justice, and he does not take it lightly. None who did would have made it to their vigils. He’s never killed those who have not harmed another. Part of his duty as a Vigilant will be to ensure he never does. He’s ready for the role, or thinks he is, and the Keeper agrees. He’d never have been sent on his hunt otherwise.
Even now, the face of the cultist he’d slain flashes into his mind unbidden. Brigh told him to welcome them, the memory of those he’s fought. Remember the lives you took, and remember why you ended them. Bitter as it is, he knows she’s right - his is a sacred duty. It demands clarity of purpose, not mindless violence. He cannot let his motive slip from his sight.
The cultist - a disgustingly ardent follower of Namira - had led a small band through the woods around Riften, taking sacrifices from among the local hunters. Sil had ensured they never would again. Brigh told him it was a good fight, and he knows it was. Still, it’s strange, to have not only taken a life but to have orchestrated the death. The strangeness is a sign that he’s chosen his path well, or so his mentor said - to grow callous towards killing is not the hallmark of a Vigilant, but a barbarian. He embraces the surreal gravity of dealing that death, just though it was. It’s a solemn certainty, running his fingers along the basket-hilt of his rapier and remembering how it felt in his hand as he plunged the blade into his foe’s heart.
He’s never been more certain that it’s what he was meant to do.
Once, he was in the place of the cultist’s victims - different daedra, same ending. Perhaps if they had not taken everything from him, he would never have found it within him to do the same to them.
He stirs the flames with a stick, watching the darkness wavering at the edge of the firelight from the corners of his eyes, and sees his own past playing out in capricious flickering shadows. He still remembers, keenly, how it felt to be one of those he is now bound to defend, one without a prayer of fighting back against dark magic or the undead or lycanthropy. He will never forget - the dreams that plague his every rest will not let him, and the scars on his back and arms and chest stand as stark reminders of why mortal men fear the dark. The fire in his veins, the blade laid across his lap, and the amulet warm around his neck are even starker reminders that he has joined that bastion between his people and those who would make them prey.
The vigil takes on new meaning with each initiate who undertakes it. To Silevon, it means his frailty wearing away like sand before water as the night passes on.
He has much to embody come dawn - righteousness, mercy, justice. Once, he’d found it odd, that mercy and righteous might could go hand in hand. The moment a cultist’s blade first found his skin, he’d learned just how deeply the two are intertwined, and he has never forgotten that lesson. There cannot be one without the other. Mercy for his fellow man necessitates justice against those that hunt them. Righteousness is the tempered balance between the two.
Sitting in the darkness atop a hilltop, watching the sparks of his fire sail up and merge with the tapestry of stars, Sil knows beyond all doubt that he will live and die by those truths.
Perhaps this is the purpose of the vigil. Perhaps, when the waking sun spills crimson over the peaks ringing the valley, Sil will finally feel ready to hold the silver sword and the duty that comes with it, and he will no longer be the boy who lay sprawled on that altar long ago. He stirs the embers once again, watches them dance with light, watches the sparks wink out into darkness and pictures his former self turning to ash with them. The vigil is almost a permission, a promise, the ceremony which grants him his courage, his faith, and the strength they have brought him.
Molag Bal’s followers forged their own worst enemy the day they took him, and with the blessing of Stendarr, it is a destiny he will eagerly fulfill.
~~~
The woman who raised him and the woman he idolizes appear with the creeping sunlight as it washes the ridge in gold.
Though he’s remained perfectly awake, stirring the embers of his fire and watching the sparks sail upwards every time he felt his awareness slip, he starts at the sight of them. Carcette is in the lead, Brigh only a few steps behind. He can tell from her gait that she only walks behind the Keeper out of respect. He halfway suspects she’d already have reached him were it not for Carcette’s presence. In her hands rests a slender shape bundled in cloth, thoroughly unremarkable to anyone who doesn’t know what lies beneath the roughspun fabric.
Part of him wants to jump to his feet to greet them, but his discipline keeps him firmly seated. He watches the robed figures grow closer as the sun drifts above the peaks, turning the valley to shadow and light, and waits with bated breath for his long apprenticeship to finally end.
“Congratulations, Initiate.” Carcette’s voice is hushed in the pale morning as she crests the rise, Brigh on her heels. She’s dressed simply, as she ever is, but it doesn’t detract from the gravity of her presence. Even with a warm smile, she looks battle-worn - iron-gray hair cropped short, stark scars spanning her cheek and jaw, warhammer on her back and the measured confidence of a warrior in her step. He’s always wanted to look as effortlessly dangerous as she does. Still, she is not unkind, and she bows her head to him as she stops a few paces from where he sits.
“I ought to say Vigilant, now.” The Keeper’s smile widens for a heartbeat. “You have passed your tests - healing, hunting, vigil. When you took your post as the sun set, you were an Initiate of our order. Now, as the sun rises, so do you - Silevon Ashcroft, Vigilant of Stendarr, watcher over darkness and shield of the living.”
A single nod of her proud head and he rises to his feet, trying desperately not to stumble over legs numbed by cold and disuse alike. A sweep of his gloved hand sends his fur-lined hood back from his head, letting the weak sunlight meet his face. Brigh’s eyes lock onto his and she smiles.
“You’ve come far since you first drew the sword you now wield,” she says, nodding towards the blade hanging at his side. “As my apprentice, you have shown me that you are ready in every way - in devotion, in ability, in knowledge, and most importantly, in heart.” Brigh raises her chin, golden hair a lion’s mane around her muscled shoulders. “Do you swear before the eyes of Stendarr, Apologist of Man, to defend your people to the last against whichever harm they face? Do you swear to honor the saving of lives before the taking of them and the healing of the innocent before the judgement of the wicked?”
“I swear by my faith and my shield,” Sil replied, the words he’d turned over in his head time and again finally falling from his cold lips. The stone eyes of Stendarr’s statue seemed to burn into the back of his neck like hot coals from the magefire brazier, but it was not a hostile feeling. Strict, yes, but that made the warmth he felt within all the more earned.
“Do you swear to stand vigil over the world of man, the first to rise to its defense and the last to walk from the battlefield triumphant? Do you swear to forsake opulence for the riches found in a life of service, the safety of the hearth for the perils of the open road, and your own glory for your duty to Nirn?”
“I swear by my courage and my helm.” Sil meets his mentor’s eyes, warm as the rising sun.
“Do you swear to live by the blade, yet never turn it towards the innocent? Do you swear to wield mercy in one hand and righteous might in the other, commanding each as your compassion dictates? Do you swear to live your life by Stendarr’s rule, to honor your fellows in word and deed, to keep your heart and your code no matter what foe you should face?”
“I swear by my heart and my blade.”
“If this be the path you choose, offer your blade to the Apologist of Man.” Brigh nods towards the statue keeping its silent watch over them.
Before him looms the moment he’s awaited since he first stumbled from the cultists’ holdings into the path of a patrol of Vigilants. Sil takes a deep lungful of frosty air and turns toward the statue. His knees meet the snow as he sinks into a graceful kneel, as he does every evening prayer. Steel whispers as he draws his sword and offers it on extended palms, the naked blade turning rosy in the sun’s strengthening light. He bows his head before the flames of the brazier and speaks words he memorized years before they’d pass his lips, each turning to mist in the freezing air.
“I pledge this day my sword, my heart, and my life to the defense of mankind and all which is holy and just. I vow to stand on the border of day and night, vigilant, unflinching. As long as I should live, I shall walk the path of Stendarr emblazoned by those who came before I: to render aid as best I can, to defend the defenseless, to carry out the justice of my god. This be my life by the creed of the Vigilant.” He draws a breath, basks in the moment and the rising sun. His blade slips from his gloved palms to rest on the pedestal. “And if I should die in battle, I swear that I shall die with the innocent at my back and their foe at my blade. This be my vow before the Apologist of Man.”
Wordless, Brigh unspools the roll of cloth she carries. The silver blade within flashes in the waking dawn, fashioned in the same shape as his apprentice-blade and yet somehow more. For a moment it hovers above his gloved palms, flat down, his own reflection wavering in the polished metal. He looks older, somehow, than he did the last time the sun rose, the weight of a sacred duty behind his green eyes. For a moment his eyes are drawn to the hilt and the words carved there by his mentor’s hand, a different pair from those on any other Vigil-blade, one a virtue learned and the other a virtue lacking: ardor on one side, temperance on the other.
The blade comes to rest across his hands, and with it, an inviolable oath he will uphold for the rest of his days.
“Rise with the favor of Stendarr and join the bastion between mankind and that which stalks the night.” Brigh’s voice is reverent in a way he’s only heard when she prays and motherly in a way he’s come to know is for him alone. Her eyes follow him up, follow his hands as he sheathes his Vigil-blade - gods, it feels wrong to hide the gleam of the silver from the world.
“You are joined to us now by the vows we have sworn since the birth of our order.” Carcette inclines her head once, and it means more than the most effusive words of praise most others could scrape up. “Walk in the light, Vigilant Ashcroft. Stendarr chose well.”
Brigh beams and starts forward, hesitating in the thin snow. At the Keeper’s nod, she’s sweeping him into her powerful arms. “I am so proud of you, Sil. I’ve always been proud of you.”
“Thank you,” Sil whispers, hand still curled around the hilt of his sword. “You brought me here.”
“You brought yourself here.” She steps back with a chuckle, warm as a summer’s day. “I just steered you along a little.”
“And taught me everything I know, and saved me from--”
“Sil. You’ve earned this by your own right.” Brigh clasps a large hand on his shoulder. “This ceremony was yours for a reason. Enjoy it.”
He nods, and the exhaustion seems to hit like a battleaxe to the face. Now that he bears his new title, the rush of waiting has died off, leaving him bone-weary and cold in the Dawnstar morning. He musters a weary laugh. “In all truth? I’d rather enjoy a day’s uninterrupted sleep.”
“Just as I thought you might. That can be arranged…can it not?” Brigh casts Carette a glance from the corner of sharp eyes and the Keeper nods once, mouth a grim line but eyes smiling.
“Rest, Ashcroft. You’ve earned it.” Carcette turns from him to watch the horizon. “Cloud-Tamer, take over his watch for the day.”
“Aye, Keeper.” She watches Sil with the fondness of a parent, as sure as if she’d borne him. “Go. Your new duties can wait an afternoon yet.”
As he turns to leave, fatigued yet proud, his oath seems to turn the blade at his side into something holy, a length of silver turned to the embodiment of his purpose and vows. He’d never quite expected to feel so solemn in the wake of speaking his oath, and yet here he is, somber and elated in equal turns. They’re just words, intangible, and yet somehow they’ve changed his entire world.
Perhaps that was the real power behind the ceremony - turning abstraction to reality, and oath to life-path.
A destiny written in the Elder Scrolls was certainly a step up from spending his youth thinking he was destined for nothing greater than an early death in a gutter somewhere. To call it difficult to believe would be vastly understating how Faolan felt in that moment.
“So…it’s me, then?” He gestured vaguely out over the balcony of High Hrothgar, at the sprawling lands of Whiterun in the distance laid out like a patchwork of grass and trees and bare rock. “I’m meant to save all this?”
From the corner of his eye, he caught Arngeir’s solemn nod. “Skyrim, and the world beyond. Alduin seeks to devour them all. It’s written in the Scrolls that the Last Dragonborn would appear at the turning of the age. It only follows that you and he are destined rivals.”
“Scrolls didn’t say anything about me kicking his ass, did they?” Faolan asked hopefully.
“That part falls to you,” Arngeir said with a dip of his wizened head. “Still, you will not walk your path unaided. We are masters of the Way of the Voice. Our knowledge is yours, and our tenets will guide your steps.”
Faolan paused a moment to take in both the night-shrouded lands below and the weight of destiny. Scarcely a week ago, he’d been no more than a former Companion, a young warrior making his way in a land split by civil war and shaken by the return of the dragons. Now, he was something more - or perhaps he always had been.
The waking spirit stirring in his blood, like a newborn flame, had always been there, now that he could put a name to it. He’d felt the first sparks of it as a child in those first few scuffles on the streets of Bruma, felt it roar to life in a bonfire during his first real battle at the peak of Dive Rock, lived with a glow in his veins ever since.
Dragonborn. It made sense, oddly enough, as though a piece of him had fallen into place. Still, it was almost too fantastical to be true.
“I grew up hearing about the Dragonborn,” Faolan admitted, leaning his arms on the carven railing.
“Fascinating. Those are Nordic tales.” Arngeir scrutinized him in that way which made him feel as though his soul was laid out on a table to be prodded at. “Who taught you our ways so young?”
“I’m Nordic.” Faolan was all too aware of how ridiculous those words sounded issuing from elven lips. His pointed ears never exactly felt small, but he could practically feel Arngeir’s gaze on them, and it sent a dark thread of discomfort twisting sinuous through him. “Grew up in Bruma. I’m as much of an elf as you are.”
“I see,” Arngeir said, in a tone that said he didn’t quite. “My apologies, Dragonborn. You’d heard of those with the dragonsblood before?”
“Aye. Grew up on all sorts of stories about ‘em.” They were some of his favorite childhood memories - admittedly, they had thin competition, but that was hardly what mattered. “How they were great heroes. That they could tear dragons from the sky and show them what fear was like. How they were Skyrim’s fiercest defenders. Back in Bruma, every kid wanted to be Dragonborn someday. We all grew out of it. Except….guess I kinda didn’t after all. And now I’ve turned into some kinda storybook character, yeah?”
“You always were Dragonborn. Akatosh’s chosen are born with their power.” Arngeir looked out at the horizon as he spoke, voice rumbling through the bones of the mountain and setting the thin air trembling. “Still, as any talent, it must be nurtured over the years. Even now, you are not all you will become. As I said, Akatosh chose you for great things.”
“Akatosh, hm?” The thought of being chosen for anything sent an unpleasant shiver down his spine. His fingertips almost absently found the amulet beneath the thick leather of his breastplate. Kyne’s hawk, suspended in thin gold, hung in flight over his breastbone, as it had ever since he’d scraped together enough money to buy it from the jeweller in Whiterun. It had been his first legitimate purchase that wasn’t strictly necessary for survival. “Never been one for his worship, really.”
“You don't have to be. He’s already granted you a dragon’s soul and gift of the Voice.” Arngeir’s clever eyes followed the motion of his hand. “We use the Thu’um strictly to honor the gods. It is the wisest way, the furthest removed from the corruption of this world and the terrible things it can do to those who wield the Thu’um. You, as one blessed by the gods, are not bound by the same rules. While we attune our Voices to the sky, and you are welcome to follow that path, you may also use it for more worldly pursuits as necessary.”
“The sky?” Faolan’s gaze was drawn to the churning cloud that perpetually swallowed the peak of the mountain. “Kyne?”
“It was she who first gifted the Voice to mortals. We honor her with our restraint in its use.”
Faolan frowned. “Don’t think restraint is gonna stop Alduin from eating the world.”
“Restraint may be the only thing that brings you to face him, in the end. Many a hero has succumbed to the power the Voice grants them.” Arngeir laid a gnarled hand on the rail, hooded robe rippling in the sighing wind. “No matter. You have time to learn the Way of the Voice and the means by which we honor Kyne for her gifts. Neither you nor Alduin are ready to fulfill your destinies.”
“So he’s…what? Hiding? Preparing? Waiting for something?”
“I cannot say.” Arngeir bowed his head, brow creased in thought. “Those mysteries will be yours to unravel, I suspect.”
Faolan sighed, breath turning to a cloud of mist. “Do I get a night to let it sink in first?”
“You’ve already proven what you are rather admirably.” Arngeir’s lips hardly moved as he spoke, gaze still lost in the distant horizon that burned with waking starlight. “Caution is wise, but your path is written in the Elder Scrolls. Do not let fear keep you from walking it.”
“I won’t,” he said, realizing in the same moment that it was true. Purpose, light and heady, had crept in like water seeping through cracks in stone ever since he first tasted the Thu’um. He hadn’t felt such gripping determination since he’d learned what battle - true battle - felt like. He’d been fighting for survival his entire life, alone more often than not, but combat had woken something within him that had never since laid quiet.
Somewhere deep in his bones, he knew it would only grow louder.
"Truly?" Arngeir said, neutrality beneath thinly veiled surprise. "I take no comfort in a warrior’s bravado - in fact, I find the lack of it far more admirable. It's natural to fear one's destiny, or to mourn for the ordinary life one must leave behind."
"And I don't." He'd expected to, really. He'd heard the word Dragonborn and halfway expected it to be chased with fear, with reluctance, with a rejection of what the gods had made him, but a fervent excitement had filled those gaps instead. A quick smile stole across his face. “I’m not afraid,” he said, and meant it. “This is who I am. Why deny it? Why cry over something I never was?”
Arngeir’s eyes swept over him, once, twice, as though he could see through flesh and bone to the dragon’s soul within. “You carry yourself like you believe what you say. If that’s true…see to it that your courage does not undo you. If you’ve heard the legends of the Dragonborn, you know how often their surety in themselves sent them to their graves.”
“I know.” Faolan’s shoulders rose and fell. He’d heard of the way legends ended, of course - blood and fire, early graves and shattered swords, gods-given Voices silenced too soon. He’d spent much of his childhood bracing for a similar, but far more inglorious, death. Now, with a dragon’s fire in his words? He couldn’t bring himself to look at his future and see only the day it ended. He raised his chin and turned to meet Arngeir’s dark, glimmering eyes. “I’m not gonna be afraid of what I am. I want this. And when I send Alduin back to whatever hole he crawled out of, I’ll do it because I chose to. Because that’s what a son of Skyrim would do. Not because some dead man said it’s my fate.”
For a moment, the old man looked as though he was going to say something, head tilted and the shadows of his hood partially obscuring the look that had stolen across his face. Then he turned away once more, this time to the doors into the monastery at their backs. “You’ve had a long journey, and you’ve already learned much of yourself and what you must do. I’ll leave you to your thoughts, Dragonborn. Master Wulfgar will show you to your quarters whenever you rejoin us. Meet us in the courtyard tomorrow when you rise.”
“Aye. Good evening, Master Arngeir.” Faolan dipped his head once and turned to face the open sky. The wind picked up in a glimmering cloud of ice crystals as it raced down the snowbound slopes. Behind him, the door closed with a boom that carried into the thin air at the top of the world, leaving him alone on the mountain-hewn balcony with his thoughts. He watched the horizon, faded as it was by rolling clouds, and let his mind stray to the prophecy.
However long ago, before he’d ever drawn breath, someone had seen his life play out - or at least glimpses of it reaching across the ages. Some nameless seer of ages past had known his face, seen his story, and foretold the day he’d walk the world. They spoke of him like a young god. Last of his kind, Alduin’s bane, his coming foretold by cataclysm after cataclysm. Such lofty things as fate were the dominion of men far more polished and educated than he, but the power of a dragon running through his blood was as real as the knives at his hips. Alduin was real too - he'd seen him erupt from the inferno at Helgen, malice given form. These were no mere abstractions conjured up by one who refused responsibility for his own actions or who cowered before gods and men alike.
He didn't put much stock in fate, but he knew when something needed killing and he was best suited to the task.
Still, it was strange. Days ago, he’d been no more than Faolan Snow-Strider, coming from nothing and no one. Now, he was still the former street rat from Bruma, grown into a wandering warrior but no longer cast adrift. Purpose had found him, greater than any he’d have dared to imagine for himself. Fate had nothing to do with it - the day he learned of his powers, he'd have chosen to face Alduin, whether some long-dead prophet had foreseen it or not. This purpose was his choice, not that of old men who believed they understood him and his future, and he would fulfill it. It would have been daunting, were it less thrilling, if it felt less like coming to life.
After all, Dragonborn meant more to him than just talent with Shouting. Dragonborn meant Skyrim’s savior, given the means to guard the land and her people, given the duty to do so for the rest of his life. Dragonborn meant strength and hope and courage. Most importantly, Dragonborn meant Nord and not Altmer.
Dragonborn was promise and purpose, and it was an end to those long years without a name for the thing which slumbered in his blood - and now, he knew, was waking up.
Miraak speaks it like a mother tongue, and yet Dovahzul still feels holy.
When he first spoke it, it had been cause for fear. His parents - now faceless phantoms of his past - had ordered him to keep silent. They’d never known why he knew the tongue of dragons in the way he knew how to breathe, or sleep, or open his eyes. He’d never known why half his thoughts came in murmurs of Dovahkiin, mahtiidaal, unadaan,* nor why he dreamed in words he’d never been taught. He burned inside with a nameless fire, and the smoke bore whispers that he was meant for more than the simple hand he’d been dealt - whispers in a tongue forbidden to all but the greatest of his people.
When he’d been taught it properly, he’d come to see it as sacred. Speaking as a dragon would was his right as a priest, after all. No mortal beyond his order would dare to speak it, much less take a name in it. Miraak has become him so fully that he cannot remember who he was before, when he was a child destined for a life in the shadow of his betters. He’d wondered, then, at what it had meant to be named allegiance-guide. He’d read significance after significance into it over the years, stared at the flowing runes forming his name until they’d utterly subsumed whoever he was before. He was not that nameless boy he’d once been - he’d become something divine, holy.
Later, he’d come to learn his name was a shackle.
Dovahzul had granted him power and stolen it away in turns. Wielding the language had left him beholden to cruel masters, but he’d once thought that was a better fate than that of the many who’d never dare speak a word of it.
He isn’t certain how much blood had stained his hands before he learned that he was wrong, but he knows where it led him - to rebellion, to war, to Apocrypha. Miraak is a name soaked in blood and grief, chained and caged by one tyrant after another, but it is his nonetheless. To run from it would be as pointless as running from the sunset, or the coming of winter. To live with it is a burden akin to lifting all the world on his shoulders - his hands will never be clean, his heart will never be unshadowed, his thoughts will never be cloudless. It is the price he pays to bear his name, and it is one he embraces with the fevered vigor of a warrior in battle-rage. His past is inevitable, but it has not reached its end.
After era upon era, Dovahzul is still power, but its purpose is something else entirely. The Thu’um is still worship - not for any god or master, but for what he himself can do. His purpose is now his own. The words he speaks are his, not a mere conduit for the will of some higher being. He writes passages in Dovahzul because he can, reads words carved into the bones of the world, lets his Voice tear asunder the sky, and finds an odd sanctity therein. For all the pain the dragonstongue has brought, there is a savage beauty to it, a greater purpose he still hasn’t quite grasped.
He’d like to think he’s getting close to the new divinity within the language, even if it burns. He’d like even more to think that he’s learned new shades of sanctity in the words as he teaches them to his fellow Dovahkiin - the last of their kind, learning the Voice of the first. There’s a poetry to it, as fine as any the gods could pen. Though the youngest of their kind hardly seems to find a nameless god in the Thu’um, he is no less devoted, and he is no less skilled with the words. He’s known from the start he was - after all, it was through knowing him that Miraak’s own name began to take on new meaning.
Now, Miraak means freedom, his allegiance owed to himself and a path of his own choosing. Miraak means guiding himself onwards from his past, learning from it and knowing he has grown from the cruelty he once embodied. Miraak is a man who defies fate, whose Voice shapes a world where man will never again bow to dragons.
Perhaps that is the real divinity to the dragonstongue - that the words which can destroy a world can also rebuild it.
*Dragonborn, destined, chosen.
Fennorian’s skin is the color of the moonlight limning the ridge in silver and turning the water to liquid mercury.
Elanris has always found him lovely. His beauty takes on another dimension beneath the veil of night. He comes to life under the stars, fragments of the moon broken off and given shape. Elan watches the waters of the pool ripple around his slender waist before returning to a mirror-glossed stillness. He looks as though he’s wading through the night, stars breaking on his skin and the spaces between constellations illuminated by his presence.
“Aren’t you joining me?” he calls softly over his shoulder, grinning shyly at Elan where he’s still perched upon a smooth rock at the bank. That bashfulness has always been unfairly lovely on him - the demure way he glances at him from beneath curtains of dark hair, the shy curve of his lips.
“Of course,” Elan murmurs. He braces himself from the chill of a mountain spring, even in the mild summer air, and slips from the rock into the star-studded water.
It only reaches his hips, but the shock of icy water is enough to elicit a short, high gasp. Fennorian laughs softly. “Sometimes I forget how much you hate the cold.”
“Yet another of my mortal weaknesses.” He says it as a joke, but they both know the severity that underscores his words. Fennorian turns to face him fully, pale in the moonlight. Elan’s heart aches at his beauty as keenly as though a knife has been thrust between his ribs. He is unimaginably flawless, and Elan’s own awestruck adoration is mirrored in his ruby eyes.
“Weakness, is it?” Fennorian’s pretty mouth curls into a pensive frown. “I wouldn’t be so quick to write off your own mortality. I miss mine, at times.”
“Spoken as one who’s never suffered the consequences of it.”
“Ah.” Fennorian’s words falter. Elan feels the way his eyes are drawn to the scar at his breast, cruel and pale beneath the cold light of the moons. “I suppose that would change things, wouldn’t it?”
“More than I can describe.” Elan shudders even at the memory of the blade’s cold kiss. He watches the patterns of starlight on the water’s surface as he shifts in place, setting the pool rippling, smooth stones sliding beneath his feet. “I died, Fenn. I’d sacrifice anything to never feel that helpless again.”
“Even life itself?” Fennorian’s lips hardly move. “If you shared my nature, you’d walk forever in the in-between, neither dead nor alive. You’d scrape by off the blood of others. You’d turn your back on the day. I don’t regret joining the Ravenwatch, not for an instant, but it comes at a price.”
“A small one, compared to the toll of living the rest of my life knowing it will end.” Elan shakes his head with a tiny sigh. “I don’t want that life, Fenn. I could not withstand it, not after I’ve seen how easily it ends.”
“Mine is still frail,” Fennorian breathes. “I’ve followed you into enough battles to know just how little it would take to end it and land me an eternity in Coldharbour as a reward.”
“You deserve a kinder fate, yet I would take that chance with my own life.”
“You’d give up daylight for moonlight?” Fennorian steps closer, splays an open palm on his chest, light as the kiss of the breeze that ruffles the pond’s surface.
“I’ve always found the night more beautiful.” Elan lifts his face to the cloudless stars. Ever since he was a child clinging to his mother’s skirts, he’s watched the constellations wheel across the night. He’s tuned magic to the stars before, drawn on their power, and it’s always felt suspiciously close to divine. “I can go without sunlight.”
“I suppose you’re halfway to becoming nocturnal already,” Fennorian admitted with a tiny smile, almost bashful.
“Since meeting you? How could I not be?” Elan laid his hand over Fennorian’s smaller one, intertwining their fingers, clasping them to his heart. He let his voice grow softer still than the moonlight turning the water to silver. “I want this - the night, and a place as its warden. All will be well, my love.”
Fennorian hesitates, eyes downcast, but Elan is certain - he has been ever since he clawed his way from Coldharbour and crashed into the sea off of Khenarthi’s Roost. His own mortality will not take him again.
“I would never have left the day behind, had I the choice.” Fennorian is choosing his words carefully, and Elan can tell - he still won’t meet his eyes. “You have so much I never will again.”
“I know.” Elan cups his chin, draws him closer with his other hand at the small of his back. “And I wish, more than anything, that you could take my place and be done with it. The world has dealt you an unfair hand, and if I could, I would suffer it for you.”
“After everything you’ve done for me? I’ve no trouble believing that you would.” Fennorian leans into his touch with a tiny sigh, half content and half rueful. “I know you want this, or you’re certain you do. I just don’t want you to regret it the way so many of my kin do. Immortality drains the vigor from them until they’re left undying husks of their former selves. I’d not see you become one of them. You have too much left to do, and be, to lose yourself to eternity.”
If most people implied Elan didn’t know what he was willing to sacrifice, he’d turn from them with a scoff and a roll of his eyes. But Fennorian…Elan knows he cares. Knows he understands - if not Elan’s grander ambitions, then what it means to give up the day for the night. Over the years, he’s learnt that understanding is a rare and valuable treasure.
Fennorian, a white gem beneath the moonlight, is still more precious.
“Then I shall wait,” he reassures in a whisper. His thumb traces Fennorian’s sharp cheekbone, the angle of his jaw, the swell of his lower lip. “Until you’re certain too.”
He stands up straighter, as if an intolerable weight has been lifted from his narrow shoulders. “Thank you,” he whispers, leaning into Elan’s touch. Torchlight eyes meet his own, adoring, twice as bright as the daylight Elan will cast aside. “I…I love you. I know I’m not the best at saying it yet, but I do, and it’s why I’m so hesitant to see you surrender the daylight - to watch you give up anything at all. I can only hope you understad.”
“I do. I love you too,” Elan murmurs, feeling Fennorian’s hands tangle themselves in his moon-white hair. He draws Fennorian into his arms, traces a finger up his smooth jawline. “Let us speak no more of sacrifice.”
Fennorian’s tiny, fang-edged smile tells him more than words ever could, and the swift press of his lips to Elan’s says even more. Still, his mind is drawn to darker places, haunted by the shadows of Coldharbour - he hesitates to say he ever truly escaped that place.
Sacrifice. Elan has been forced into that role unwillingly, spending his lifeblood on Mannimarco’s altar to fuel Molag Bal’s return. He had defied it, then, clawed his way from the grasp of fate. Now, he eagerly turns his back on mortality, on the day. His sacrifice will be for himself and no other. And yet…
Looking at the man before him, he knows he’d make still greater sacrifices to keep him safe.
Tags: @reachfolk @lookathooves @qah-naarin @fennorians @lucien-lachance @friend-of-giants @cwahsont @faolan-red-eagle (ask to be added)
In which Farkas reflects on his dedication to Firien
—
It was Farkas' turn to take first watch that night. He didn't mind, honestly. Even if he didn't have the beast blood to make him restless, especially in such an uncomfortable environment, it was nice out. The midnight air was rather pleasant for late spring and the fire illuminated the immediate area, casting the sleeping forms of his companions in a cheery, warm glow. He had sat quite still in that same spot for some time, opting to wait and watch day's last light fade away into darkness and swiftly be replaced by the cold twinkle of stars.
At first, he had assumed it was a moonsless night, but now he could see Masser slowly creeping up over the southward mountains, and he knew Secunda would follow soon after.
The low valley they camped in was quiet and peaceful, but he could hear the gentle murmur of a creek on the valley's edge, and the wind whispering through trees and grass. Somewhere, an owl hooted, and before it even finished its melancholy call, another responded, somewhere farther away. He could hear and smell that the valley was alive with nocturnal life. Silhouetted against the rising moons, he could see an old barrow, one Tahir had said was called Volskygge. It was a few hours' march southwest of Solitude, the same valley where Tahir had reunited with Firien after her year absence.
Farkas' eyes fell onto her then. She was curled in her bedroll beside him, sleeping soundly with her hand extended just enough for the backs of her fingers to be touching Farkas' thigh. The cuff on the shell of her left ear glinted in the firelight, a detail that caught his attention for no reason other than it was a part of her.
He reached out and gently traced her jawline with his fingertips. She stirred slightly, her nose scrunching and her eyelids fluttering just a bit before her face relaxed once more, and she slept on.
"Don't you know I would give anything for you?" he murmured to her unhearing ears. Suddenly embarrassed at having said that aloud, he quickly glanced toward where Vilkas and Tahir slept side by side, but neither of them seemed to have heard him, for they remained unbothered and unmoving. Relieved, Farkas turned his gaze skyward again.
But Farkas had spoken true. He had sacrificed many thing for her; his home, his life among the Companions, all forms of sanctuary and safety, his freedom, and even nearly came close to sacrificing his life for her on multiple occasions. She had never asked this of him. He just decided to do it on his own. Realistically, he did have his freedom back, but he chose to continue to serve her because he wanted to.
His oaths had not died with her.
Truthfully, Farkas didn't even consider his oaths as a sacrifice of his freedom, no matter how many chastising comments from Aela or snide remarks from Ria he had received. In fact, he felt completely free when he was with Firien.
And with her blessing, he would go anywhere she wanted, even if that took him to the ends of Tamriel and beyond.
Perhaps, if he was honest with himself, his oaths were a way of him binding himself to her while respecting her aversion to marriage. If she were willing, he would ask immediately, amulet of Mara or none. But he knew it made her nervous, so he didn't press it, and if she some day decided she no longer wanted him around and wanted him to go, he would go with a heavy, aching heart. But he would respect her wishes.
Anguish tightened his throat at the idea of going forward in his life without her. He was dwelling on hypotheticals and hurting about it, and while someone like Aela or even Skjor (once upon a time) would chide him for it and call him silly or an icebrain, it genuinely soothed his heart and made him happy that he loved her so much to feel pain at the idea of losing her. It meant that, not only did he have someone he would gladly sacrifice everything for, but he also had someone he wanted to live for.
He started slightly when cool fingers slid themselves between his own and he responded in kind, knowing Firien's hand without even having to look.
But he looked anyway and saw her watching him curiously, the moonslight reflecting in her eyes from where she still remained in her bedroll.
"You are restless," she mumbled. "Would you like me to take over?"
Farkas smiled at her. "No, I'm okay. It's a nice night out. You can sleep for a while longer if you want."
"Or," replied Firien, and she released his hand before freeing herself from the confines of her bedroll and sat beside him, leaning into his side. "I can enjoy it with you."
"It's a long road to the Reach," he warned.
"I know." She remained where she was, and with an exasperated chuckle, Farkas wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Firien rested a hand on his thigh and looked toward Volskygge, where Masser now looked as though it was balancing atop the highest central pillar of the barrow. Secunda was just now becoming visible above the mountain peaks.
Firien hummed to herself quietly, and it took him all of an instant to decide that his earlier musings about following her to the ends of Tamriel and beyond were something he would hold onto through this war. She was something he would hold onto through this war, looking forward to a peaceful, happier future where he would continue to follow her as long as she would have him.
If that was where the road took him, as long as he was by her side, Farkas would eagerly go.
Summary: Faolan struggles with the reality of being a Companion.
Tagging: @tes-summer-fest @vilkas
Word Count: 2.3k
Warnings: Blood, animal death
Iron floods his mouth, earthy and metallic, and the wolf spirit within Faolan howls in triumph.
As soon as the taste of blood permeates his tongue, the moon-haze over his mind clears. The deer beneath him is still twitching, breath rasping wetly in its ruined throat as Faolan’s fangs slip from the tattered flesh. In the form of the wolf, he’s powerful - enough that the deer never stood a chance from the moment he caught its scent on the wind - and yet far weaker than he was before the spirit settled within his flesh. The moment he’d shifted into this creature of white fur and bloodrage, helpless before the silvered moons that rise this night, he’d been unable to think of anything but the hunt.
When he hunts with a bow or sets traps along game trails, his mind is focused with a rare clarity. When the wolf takes over, he is nothing but rage and the thrill of the chase. Only the kill can drive the madness from him. He hates it, succumbing to bestial rage in order to escape its clutches, but he has found no other way than the one practiced by the Circle.
He watches the deer’s blood soak the earth, his massive paws, feels it drip from his jaw to stain the ruffle of fur at his chest. It’s still in its death throes, seizing before him as noises of primal distress spill from its bloodied mouth. If he’d killed it with an arrow, it would have been gone before the pain sank in. As the wolf, all he can inflict is a slow, brutal death - and he will, every night the moons swell to fullness, every time Hircine calls from the trackless thickets.
He’s almost afraid to taste its blood again, but he lowers his head to its throat and bites down hard, squeezing for those last interminable seconds until it falls limp in his jaws. He releases the moment its last breath fades to the ringing silence which follows the hunt - but something far less honorable than hunt took place here. This was a slaughter.
On shaking legs, he turns from the deer and bolts into the undergrowth. He can run faster and further as the wolf, and yet he’s come to fear the boiling in his blood that such exertion brings. He can never tell when his mind will slip again. His head’s been hazy since the first night he transformed, confused and only half-willing, and fled from Whiterun into the plains beyond. Around him, the woodland is alive, his ears catching every rustle of scurrying in the undergrowth and his nose catching a blend of scents - moss, water on rock, deer fur, owl. The forest parts around him, branches whipping at his coat and leaves crackling beneath muffled pawpads, the scent of blood and earth cloying in his nose and the breeze in his ruffled fur. Keeping pace with the wind has always been the best part of his new nature, but all too often, it’s turned to the purpose of chase and kill.
It’s not that Faolan is opposed to killing. He’s hunted his entire life, and he chose the path of a warrior willingly - but that’s just why he finds himself fearing this thing he has become. Whenever he took lives before, it was his own choice, as painless and wasteless as he could make it, turned to some higher purpose than some craving for violence. Now, he serves something far darker and more unknowable than his own mind.
He lopes through the wending paths until the trees thin and he comes upon the shores of a lake that stretches rippling towards the distant hills. The ground beneath his feet shifts from rich loam and fallen leaves to thin moorland soil and shifting pebbles. The scents of the forest are washed away by the wind on the water. He slows to a walk as he reaches the waves lapping on the shore. In the moon-silvered water, his own haunted eyes stare back at him, wolfish but no less green. The rest of the face is not his own.
Faolan has felt an exile within his own body before - a Nord staring from behind elven eyes - and yet never has his own nature made him feel so removed from himself.
The form of the white wolf feels cloying, wrong, as if he’s been crumpled up and forced into a shape he cannot possibly fit. Coiled power rests in each muscle lining his sleek form, in the jaw lined with dagger-sharp fangs and the massive paws bristling with thornlike claws, in the ears that can hear the moonlit moors come alive for miles around. His pelt is thick, braced for blows from any weapon, and his body is something quick and lethal, built for the kill. He ought to wear this new shape like a second skin, revel in the speed of his legs and the strength of his body and the sharpness of his teeth. He is more dangerous than he’s ever been, an incarnation of the hunt he loves. Still, parts of him feel muffled, as though shrouded behind a veil of moonlight.
He stands on the rolling pebbles of the waterside, watching tiny waves break on smooth stones, watching the green-eyed wolf reflected in the water, and soaks in the cloying wrongness of it all until he can bear no more.
Shifting back is a tricky thing, an art he’s not quite mastered, and yet he grits his teeth and wills his body back to itself. The wolf’s spirit is reluctant to be caged, and it thrashes against him, but something within him burns brighter still. In a flash of blinding pain, he’s a man once more, kneeling on slick rock, smears of blood sticky on his chin and chest. The drying crimson is suddenly inescapable, suffocating.
He splashes cold water onto his face and scrubs the last traces of his kill away, watching crimson bloom into the water. He scrubs himself clean until his fingers itch and his face feels chilled to the bone with lakewater. Frigid water slips into his mouth and he sucks it between his teeth until the heady taste of blood fades. Blinking away the lakewater, he takes in his reflection - this time, that of a pale-haired man. Still, in his mind’s eye, the bloodstained muzzle of the wolf remains.
Even freed from that prison of fur and fangs, something within him feels wrong. It’s like he’s swallowed a chunk of Skyforge steel and it’s burning him from the inside out. The swift agony of the transformation fades quickly, leaving only bone-weariness behind, but the wrongness of it lingers.
“Kyne fucking preserve me,” he pants to no one in particular, kneeling on the lakeshore a hand’s breadth from the lapping waves. His eyes are drawn to the golden hawk pendant suspended from his neck, dangling a finger’s span from the water, a gold reflection dancing in the depths.
Kyne. Of course. He’d never claim to know the motives of a goddess, and yet he’s grown pretty damn sure that this moonshadow darkness within him is far from what she’d want for him. Every hunt he’s ever undertaken has been in her name. It’s the purest form of worship he knows. As the wolf, can hunt with more devastating lethality than he could ever manage as himself, and yet…
The wolf hunts as a beast, not a man. The wolf does not understand restraint, or faith, or harmony. The wolf only knows how to take until the forest has nothing left to give.
The Circle calls the beast-blood a blessing. Faolan’s come to the swift, bitter realization that it is a curse.
He sits back on the shore, breathing hard, and watches the reflections of Masser and Secunda turn the water bright. Given his new nature, he’s found a reverent, creeping dread in the sight that he never before associated with the moons. Perhaps he ought to feel grateful for the trust of the Circle and this new form they’ve granted him. And yet…
Even now, he can feel that hungry presence in the shadow of the moons. Every time he tastes the blood of his prey - still sharp on his tongue despite the clean taste of lakewater - it looms over him, until he can all but hear dark laughter in his ears. There is something in the woods, watching, waiting. For what, he does not know.
The forest has been his salvation time and again. He cannot stand to look back on the dark bank of trees and feel dread running icy claws up and down his spine.
And so he closes his fingers around the amulet dangling from his neck, feels the chilled metal wrought into the shape of a bird beneath a stormcloud. It warms with his touch until it feels as though he holds a shard of summer in his hand. The darkness beneath the trees suddenly feels softer at the edges.
“Kyne preserve me,” he repeats, watching the moonlight shine luminous on the thin golden sigil clutched in his shaking palm. “Kyne…gods, what’ve I done?”
His goddess may not speak directly in his ear, and yet she is not silent. He can hear her in the murmur of leaves in the wind, in the patterns the clouds form across the starry sky of the north, in the dancing moonlight scintillating through the waves like captured diamonds. He is not alone with the beast at his back.
“I shouldn’t've let them do this.” He’s never spoken his doubts aloud before, and it eases some intangible weight from his chest. “Should’ve left. Said no. Some shit like that, and now…” He can feel his throat close up. “Part of me’s gotten twisted and I can’t get it back undone. Doubt you can hear me, but…I’m a little lost, here.”
He sits on the pebbly bank, knees drawn to his chest, and watches the lapping of the lake on the shore. The wilds have always soothed his troubled thoughts. Now, they’re a part of them.
Whatever power he’s gained from the wolf cannot be worth the darkness seeping into his heart like vines breaking through the stones of an abandoned fortress. Before, when he’d hunted only with bow or snare, he’d been part of the world beneath the rustling leaves. Now, he is too sharp at the edges to fit.
Ironic, perhaps, that the wolf made him less a part of the wild places he loves. He’d laugh if it felt less like a piece of him is missing. Something awful has taken its place, something just barely kept contained, a vicious hound on a fraying leash. He has never felt further from the goddess whose symbol he clutches in his hand.
The path forward is overgrown, and Faolan is lost in a lightless thicket. He watches the moons creep across the sky, reaching their zenith, and resentment sours his blood. To live at the whims of the moons is unthinkable. The wolf within him wants blood, wants death, and beneath the bright moonlight it claws at his insides until he’s certain he’s a tattered wreck. He’s never before felt as though a part of him wants to tear the other pieces to shreds until it’s all that remains.
He’s grown accustomed to finding his own way. Still, some part of him knows this is not a burden he can bear alone. Even out here, with the lights of Whiterun glowing like a waking dawn over the hilltops, he might as well be standing on the surface of one of the moons. The lakeshore feels a world away from anything. Isolation - perhaps that’s another aspect of his new curse. There are precious few who understand it, and most of them are taken by the bloodlust it brings. They serve the thing that laughs when he kills, watches from the woods, and he knows he cannot trust others of his kind. Still, can he truly leave the Circle? Would they even allow it?
It would be the simplest path to accept the dominion of that laughing spirit which now has a hold over his blood. Surrender is always seductively easy. Leashing this thing he’s become wears at him until he’s wondering if it would be better to just let go of the ropes.
He bows his head, lost and questioning, and when he raises it, the answer is emblazoned across the stars.
A burst of color ignites the darkness, blue and green flames kindling to life across a dozen shades of night. His breath comes up short as he watches the sky come alive with Kyne’s lights. Perhaps it’s his desperate mind reaching out, but the amulet around his neck feels a shade warmer, as though dipped in the ribbons of fire amid the stars. The slavering beast in the moonlit thickets seems to quail before the sight. Faolan feels his heart grow bolder.
He rises before the aurora, restless fingertips finding the pendant of his goddess, and knows what he has to do. Faolan Snow-Strider is not a man who surrenders, not in battle, not to the Daedric Prince that lurks over his shoulder with burning eyes. After all…
“How tough can kicking one little curse be?” he muses aloud to the moons.
The silent ribbons of light kindled by his goddess’ hand are the only answer he needs.
annaxmalina
titsay
