wait. wait so you wrote. breathing water AND the fic with aerik?? i knew about the first (and several of ur fics with enthir) HOWW did i not know you were the one who wrote the second with aerik?? your username never clicked!!! *gives you sticker that says official favourite skyrim creator* mwah mwah ily never stop pls WAITTTT AND YOU WROTE THAT ONE ONESHOT WITH BRYNJOLF?? HOLY SHIT DUDE YOURE EVERYWHERE
HEY HI hello yes!! I wrote all those things. I went a little wild for the five or so years I was writing for this fandom. I think I wrote... *checks* ... 32 Skyrim fics?? In total!? (And a handful of Morrowind fics as well!) Those games were an absolute font of inspiration. My head was just bursting with ideas.
I've moved onto other fandoms now, but I'm really glad people are still reading my stuff! Aerik is still my best boy. I think of him often and fondly. <3
7 and 45 for the writing asks >:) I know you've done some really meaty TES worldbuilding and I'm always fascinated by how people can extrapolate so much on what bare bones we're given
45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?
GRAMMAR. And punctuation. I couldn't properly use a comma to save my LIFE before my benevolent and patient beta readers pointed out all of the things I was doing incorrectly. From dialogue tags to dangling participles, I feel like my grasp on grammar has improved leaps and bounds within the last 6 years that I've been writing fic regularly. (And getting feedback).
7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?
Oh lord this is a tough one. I've really enjoyed working with the Falmer, obviously. I was very excited to make the connection between a blind race adopting sound magic (Tonal Architecture) into their culture. Especially since it's a reclamation of sorts. Re-taking the power that their slavers used to subdue them.
But I also had A LOT of fun with...ah fuck I just went looking and realized IT'S NOT EVEN PUBLISHED. Okay, random snippet from "Ex Oblivione" below the cut on the Daedric realms and traveling between them. Explained to us by none other than my favorite teacher who never asked to be a teacher, Neloth:
“I’ve been to Apocrypha,” Aerik argued. “I know what it’s like.”
Neloth tutted and shook his head, a smug smile curling the corners of his mouth. “My dear boy, you’ve accessed Apocrypha through a Black Book. Your physical body remained here, on Nirn. What you perceived as ‘Apocrypha’ was simply a single tome. The full realm stretches the length of Tamriel, if not Nirn itself.”
With a quick gesture, Neloth procured a glimmering, ethereal map in the air before them—a map of Tamriel.
“Think of the planes of Oblivion as such…” He pulled his hands apart, and the map separated into multiple layers of different colors. “They exist in parallel to our own world, overlapping and congruous. The Daedra did not create their realms, for they are incapable of creation. Instead, they used Mundus as a sort of… blueprint, if you will. Each plane mirrors our own in this sense. Fargrave, by comparison…” Another gesture and a diagonal map appeared in the center of the planes, dissecting the others. “Fargrave is an anomaly. None can say how it originated, if by Aedra, Daedra, or other beings entirely. But its position allows access to almost any known plane of Oblivion.”
“This is great,” said Aerik with a nod as he stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I’m a visual learner, so this is helping me a lot.”
Neloth waved the maps away and they dissipated like clouds of shimmering smoke. “Because of this overlap, it is not guaranteed that we will arrive anywhere nearby the location we need to be in order to find Miraak. We must be able to locate the approximate area of Apocrypha that corresponds with Solstheim, since this appears to be the seat of Miraak’s power and the point at which he is attempting to break into our world. This will be the most difficult task, and it may take time to calculate.”
Thank you for the people who have continued to tag me and loop me into the WIP Wednesday things! Namely @kookaburra1701 @ladytanithia and @unironicallytes
I haven't had a whole lot to offer recently but, maaaaan I actually have been working on something. Picking up "As the Crow Flies" again nearly two years later lol.
I missed the tag round this time, but hey, if you want to participate in WIP Thursday, I tag @greyborn2 @bosmerblood @snowy-weather
--
“You’ve been awfully secretive these past few days,” said Urag over dinner. “What are you up to?”
“Me?” Enthir pointed to himself with feigned innocence.
“Do you see anyone else around here I might be talking to?” Urag snapped. He let out a sigh, grumbling something under his breath as he stabbed a potato slice with his fork (a little harder than necessary). “Just don’t go getting yourself into any trouble, alright?”
“Oh, come on. Do you have so little faith in me? It’s not like that. It’s just…” He swirled the bottom of his ale bottle against the table, leaving little rings of moisture on the wood. “A surprise.”
Urag raised a brow and paused in his chewing. He swallowed. “A…surprise.”
“Yes.”
“As in a good surprise? Or a nasty surprise?”
“Urag, for fucks sake…”
Urag cracked a smile, huffing out a laugh through his nose. “Remember when you spiked my drink with fire salts?”
“Please, that was almost two years ago. Let the past die, will you?”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
Enthir threw a chunk of potato across the table. It bounced off of Urag’s nose, making him flinch, and fell onto his plate.
“Don’t start things you can’t finish, you fetcher,” Urag threatened with a scowl.
Enthir just smiled, took a swig of his ale. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to soon, I promise. I just need to make sure I’ve got all my horkers in a row.”
Urag gave him a long, hard look, one brow still raised skeptically. “Alright. I’ll hold you to that.”
–
Meridia came to Enthir in a dream.
She was formless; a being made of pure light. Her voice was androgynous with a stern, commanding edge that pierced the veil of his dreams like a glass arrow. When she spoke to him, he felt the vibrations of her words like the crash of thunder outside his room. He woke in a cold sweat, pulse thudding in his throat. He threw back the covers of his bed and went to his desk, grabbing the nearest piece of paper to write down what he could recall:
“I ask that you spread my light through Tamriel, freely and generously. Promise me this, mortal, and the power of the charm is yours to wield.”
Enthir re-read his own writing as waking reality settled around him and his heart rate returned to normal. It felt like a riddle more than a pact. He wasn’t sure what ‘spreading her light’ meant, exactly. He pulled open his desk drawer and retrieved the Opal Charm, still sealed in the silk bag. He turned it over in his hand, pushing his finger into the opening of the pouch and allowing some of the blinding light to slip through. When he returned to bed, he placed the charm under his pillow, nervousness thrumming through his body.
“I will release the charm back into the world after I have made use of it,” he said into the darkness of his room. The sound of his own quivering voice unsettled him, his affect overly formal. “I shall do this freely, and without exchange of gold.” He swallowed, took a deep breath. “After such time, our connection will be severed, and I shall owe you no further service.”
It took longer than he would have liked to fall back asleep, his mind thrumming with fears and regrets that battered against his resolve. When at last he slept, upon waking the next morning he could barely recall if he’d dreamed once more, but the echo of Meridia’s voice lingered. Her final words to him were simple. Overly so.
The following journal was found next to the body of Tyrdren Suranni, former Dark Brotherhood assassin.
--
As one reaches the end of their life, it is only natural to look back on the branching paths of possibilities past and become reflective of one’s choices. I feel privileged, as both a Dunmer and a career assassin, to have lived as long as I have. In my two hundred and eighty-odd years of life on Nirn, I have spent well over half of them in devotion to our Dread Father, the Lord of Chaos and Change, Sithis.
I began my worship in the same way as many who come to Sithis do: through entering communion with the Night Mother. I consider my joining of the Dark Brotherhood to be my true birth, and, like my first birth, it was not without a great deal of pain and suffering and loss of blood. But I do not wish for this to dissolve into a memoir, for I would much rather use my final hours in praise of the Unmaker.
I have read innumerable texts on both the founding of our Family and its failed predecessor, the Morag Tong, and I have yet to find my own feelings about our Dread Lord put into words. There is an appropriate amount of fear and awe to be expected when speaking of Sithis. His is a name I have never taken in vain. Yet this fear has always felt counterintuitive to me. Even as a young assassin I did not fear my own death, in the same way that I did not feel remorse for taking a life. There is no guarantee that any of us shall see the next sunrise. If not by my blade, then by another.
I have faithfully followed the Five Tenets for the entirety of my service and devotion, and I have witnessed only on one occasion the appearance of the phantasmal apparition known as The Wrath of Sithis. It is a moment I shall never forget. To see a man’s flesh ripped to ribbons by a spectre he could not touch… I was forever changed, but not for the reasons you might think. When I beheld the Wrath of Sithis, I was struck with clarity that upended the entire paradigm of my life:
The Sithis we fear as mortals is not the truth of Sithis.
That pitiful wraith who disposed of my colleague was not sent by our Dread Lord as punishment for breaking the Five Tenets. No. That spectre was something of mortal creation.
One might be led to believe that this would cause me to have a crisis of faith, perhaps even leave the Dark Brotherhood altogether. This was not the case. In fact, I felt great joy at this realization. The Tenets were rules to be followed by a strictly mortal organization, which were entirely reasonable and easily accomplished. However, I was still unsettled by my own family’s view that sending a soul to the Void was somehow punishment.
I ask you, what is life? What is death? Are we not stuck in an unending prison of consciousness? Of suffering and loss? Are we not trapped in a dream from which we can never awaken?
Now I ask you this: what is the Void if not the promise of release from the unending cycle of mortal suffering?
This was my revelation. Sithis, Dread Father, Unmaker, Bringer of Ends. He is the opposite of Life—the antithesis of mortal suffering. To send a soul to the Void is to enact the greatest kindness one could offer: eternal rest, peace.
Unmaking.
It is for this reason that I know the hour of my death, for I am the one to order it. I have performed the Black Sacrament with myself as the target. It is only a matter of time before one of my siblings appears to release me from the suffering of a world to which my spirit shall never return. I shall dissolve into the nothingness of That Which Is Not.
I leave this final journal with a record of my assassinations, as well as an account of the techniques I have perfected over the many years, in hopes that others might follow my path and walk into the Void unafraid. Let us all step forward into our own Unmaking, hand-in-hand.
O’ Father, Unmaker, O’ Sithis, Dread Lord! Accept me as your child and render me into naught!
From nothing we were created, and into nothingness shall we return.
I haven't shared a wip in god knows how long, and even though I've been working on my other fics in the background, I was bitten with the Bloodweave Bug and have been indulging myself a little bit here and there. So if it's your thing, have some... well. Have whatever this is shaping into:
[Context - Gale and Astarion attempt to get frisky after relentlessly flirting for two acts. NSFW warning: sexy and not-so-sexy postulating, but nothing too graphic. CW: descriptions of dissociation.]
--
“You really are a gorgeous creature,” Gale said, running his hand back down Astarion’s chest, across his stomach. “But I’m sure you already know that.”
“Never hurts to hear it again. And again.” He arched into Gale’s touch. “So, do go on.”
Gale finally tugged the shirt up and over Astarion’s head, tossing it to the floor before bending low to speak into his ear. “You’re gorgeous.”
“I know,” Astarion replied with a sigh as Gale placed kiss after kiss along his jawline before capturing his lips once more.
Their pants remained on and were becoming increasingly more uncomfortable. Gale licked his way between Astarion’s lips, sucking and nipping. For all his enthusiasm and verve, it was, unfortunately, a rather predictable escalation. Gale groaned into his mouth and Astarion felt himself begin to detach, eyes half-open, gaze drifting unfocused to the upper left hand side of the ceiling.
He wondered what kind of fuck Gale preferred. He seemed like the type to want to get Astarion off first before fucking him raw—the type to pride himself on getting his lover to cum before using their spent body for his own pleasure. Astarion knew the type. And there was something so incredibly wretched about having to pantomime pleasure for an unwanted orgasm–
“You still with me, ‘starion?”
“Hmm?” Astarion jerked his gaze from the ceiling to focus on Gale’s face. He couldn’t actually recall when they’d stopped kissing. “Sorry, I was just…” He paused, momentarily at a loss, then affected his best flirtatious smile, brow furrowing coyly. “I was just thinking of all the filthy things I want you to do to me.”
Gale sat back on his heels from where he knelt between Astarion’s legs, brow drawn. “Right… Listen, if you’d rather not–”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling.” Astarion reached down and curled his fingers around the hem of Gale’s trousers. “Of course I want…” His gaze went unfocused once more, staring past the cut of Gale’s hip at the shimmer of the arcane lock on the door. “I want…” Whatever he’d intended to say, the words refused to surface, and his resolve was withering on the vine.
Gale slid his hands beneath Astarion’s, gently uncurling his fingers. “As I said, I consider myself to be an agreeable lover, which means recognizing when I’m not wanted.”
“But I want–” Astarion’s throat seized as the panic set in. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. “I want you,” he finally managed to squeeze out. “I just don’t… I don’t want…” As his desire, his true desire, solidified, it felt so ridiculous that he wasn’t sure if he could utter it aloud.
“What don’t you want?”
“I don’t want to be touched. Like… that.” He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “Hells below. I’ve had sex more times than probably half of Baldur’s Gate combined. You’d think I’d be a little more articulate on the matter.” He sighed, letting his hands fall to rest against Gale’s knees. “But rarely did I want it, and even more rarely did I enjoy it. Now that I’m—well, now that I’m not compelled, I just…” He let out another heaving sigh, eyes trained on the ceiling, on the far corner, the window, the crack in the wall. Anywhere but on Gale. “I don’t know if I remember how it should be. How to… enjoy it.”
Gale made a noise of understanding, shifting to extricate himself from between Astarion’s legs. “Well,” he said, grunting with exertion as he lay down next to him on the bed. “It would be neither the first nor the last time I’ve had these kinds of activities halted abruptly. And, to be clear, I’d rather they be halted than to have you carry on as if I’m some…” He made a swirling gesture at the ceiling, as though attempting to conjure the word, but left the silence unfilled.
“It’s pathetic,” Astarion said. Hatred and misery roiled in his gut. “He ruined me.”
“He didn’t,” Gale assured, as if it were that simple a claim to dismiss. “Give it time.” He reached down between his own legs and palmed himself through his pants with a groan. “Besides, I’ve more than enough practice with my own hand to find satisfaction if I need it.”
Astarion felt something stir in his loins, something that overrode the simmering bitterness. He turned onto his side, propping his head against one palm. “What if… What if I watched you?”
Gale looked at him with a raised brow, still cupping himself. “Watched me have a wank?”
“I was thinking of it more in terms of ‘pleasuring yourself’, but sure. Be crude. Have a wank.”
“A titillating proposition,” Gale said with a breathy laugh, tipping his head back with a hiss as he squeezed himself. “Why not?”
