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changelingsandothernonsense · 6 months

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Wip whenever or whatever

I'm tired, had a hell of a (two) weeks and then I worded like...7000 words in a day then I drew the descriptions.... And throwing in some other art stuff I'm bouncing around XD That's it really XD tagged by @mareenavee and @saltymaplesyrup

~Art and Writing~

And that writing I was doing under the cut!

Jiub's POV

Your brow furrowed, the faded, violet tattoos that framed your face creasing with the movement. I had worried about covering this part in my memoirs. Talking about the last six years often upset you but I wanted your opinion on it. I wanted your thoughts on everything, really. It was you who had inspired me to take on the winged menace after all. On that one fateful day in the Ashlands. A raging ashstorm and a flock of the things had taken you down by the old Redoran estate at Bal Isra. I had heard your cries as I made my crossing on my silt strider, my destination, Ald’ruhn, where you had been travelling from. I had shot every last one of the things, though the fight was a difficult one. Then I offered you my hand…and a ride back to Maar Gan.

It was out of my way, in the opposite direction to my destination but there was that look in your eye that I recognised from our first meeting on that prison ship. Fear. Fear made you combative, made you lash out. Though that time, you let me console you. You let me help. You even took that leftover lunch I had offered you. You had been so concerned over the loss of the gift you’d carefully prepared to give to that Velothi. The one your superior had charged with guiding you to that Ashland camp. I couldn’t just let you walk into that potential snake pit with nothing to show. I had grown fond of you during our brief interactions, though that was often a habit of mine. I always form attachments too quickly.

Though the truth was there was little to worry about. That Velothi would become more than a hired guide to you after all. He was your champion, your right hand through the ordeals to come. I supposed I had always been a little envious of your late husband. How you had taken to him, the stories I’d overhear in Vvadenfell’s corner clubs and tradehouses of the Nerevarine and his champion. The rumours of your exploits, as the two of you gathered armies and favours and… I wished I could have been a part of it, but fate would not have our paths cross again until four years later and my dear, you always knew how to make an entrance.

It was an evening, not unlike this. A storm crashing through Kvatch, winds raging and the loud, rambunctious jeering from a mer who had way too much to drink in the alley below. When the crashing came from the alley and not from the storm, I resolved to go check. It was not an uncommon occurrence, my apartment sat behind the local tavern after all. Drunks were a common sight but there was a certain, potent distress to the cries that had been coming from the alley that night. Odd, considering that night was meant to be one of celebration… well, amongst the Dunmeri diaspora anyway. The fourth anniversary of the defeat of Dagoth Ur and his minions. An end to the Blight that had decimated our homeland for centuries and counting. A festival to honour Morrowind’s great protector. I had chosen to stay in that night, to work on my memoirs, as I often did but the commotion from outside, the yelling the- I had come outside to tell you to piss off somewhere else. That you were disrupting my concentration! How could I tell the world of my own brilliant exploits when there was some drunken fetcher screaming profanities about the Nerevarine at the top of his lungs?

I always said you knew how to make an entrance, Sero and an entrance you made. I found you passed out alone in that alley. A large gash to your head where you had struck a barrel of gods know what and a curious, expensive dagger laying by your side. There was blood everywhere, I couldn’t make sense of it all. You were lying alone, crumpled and small, shivering half naked in soiled clothing. A bottle of Cyrodiilic brandy smashed into a thousand pieces against my wall.

It was sad, to see how far you had fallen in such a short time. I had seen the paintings of you throughout Morrowind and later, the reproductions in Cheydinhal. You always looked so regal in them. So strong, like the hero everyone expected you to be. The legend from the stories. The mer with a fire in his eyes. He who had stared death in the face and sent it screaming into the jaws of Oblivion.

It was a stark contrast to the mer who lay passed out cold from drink and grief in the alley beside my apartment in Kvatch. Small, shivering and horribly scared from all that had happened in these last few years. I felt a sense of compassion I supposed, you always showed up in the strangest of circumstances. I gathered you into my arms as you whispered a name that wasn’t mine and I chose not to correct you. I took you inside and placed you on the daybed in my study. It would be easiest to watch over you from there. I had cleaned you up, changed you out of those filthy trousers and left you to sleep off your bender in the warm quiet of my study. It was as I was cleaning you up that I found the source of the bleeding, a series of deep lacerations around a ring too small for your finger. The one that told everyone who had heard the tales exactly who you were.

You told me when you had awoken that you had tried to remove the ring. That you had resorted to trying to amputate the entire digit when the band wouldn’t budge. As it tightened around your finger. As His taunts swirled like a sickness in your head. You wanted to be rid of it all, to forget that the last few years had ever happened. That you always broke like this whenever this day came around.

#my art #my wips #teldryn sero #danger!josh #Jiub #he's the POV here #Erra Ilaba'andul #nerevarine #dunmer #morrowind #oblivion #the elder scrolls #skyrim #kvatch #saint jiub #nerevarine teldryn #tesblr #urshilaku #ashlander

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ehlnofay · 1 year

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28 for your hok? :)

storyteller

“Right,” Pax says, brusquely unplaiting his hair. “You’re the Emperor’s bastard son.”

Martin (a Priest of Akatosh, living and working in the Kvatch Chapel, never knew his birth father) stares at him. They’re in a little grove a ways away from the encampment, sitting on logs and rocks with their feet in the dewy grass, Pax beginning to loose their hair and undo their armour. (They haven’t had time, since they came to talk to Martin as soon as Matius told them they weren’t needed anymore. And told them to piss off, basically. He wasn’t best pleased with the way they talked about the dead count – like he was a corpse, which he was.) (Their whole body aches. Their armour smells singed.)

Martin says, “What?”

Pax’s fingers pause. “I’m not sure how I can be any clearer,” she says, and rakes her hands through her hair.

“What are you talking about?” Martin says, sounding vaguely irritated. She doesn’t see how he has the right to be – she’s the one who’s been travelling weeks to find a holy man and had to do battle in this realm and another to reach him. She’s the one who should sound irritated.

“The Emperor told me,” she starts –

And Martin interrupts. “The Emperor is dead.”

“Yeah, well, this was before that, obviously,” Pax snaps. They yank at their hair fiercely as they untangle the last of the braid.

Martin continues to act tired and annoyed, which really just annoys them. He pinches the bridge of his nose and asks, “What is this really about? What do you want from me?”

Pax fishes a comb out of their little bag.

It’s not that they thought this conversation would be easy, just – easier than it is, they suppose. Maybe if they were better at talking to people it would be. Maybe if he would just listen it would be.

“You’re Martin, right?” they say, because maybe he’ll get it if they start from the beginning. “Priest of Akatosh?”

“Yes,” he says slowly. “Do you need a priest? I’m not sure I’ll be much good to you.” He’s picking at the grass at the base of the rock he’s sitting on, but his head turns. Pax follows his eyes back to the wreckage of Kvatch. “I’m having trouble… understanding the gods right now. If this is part of a divine plan, I want no part in it.”

His voice sounds rough and raddled. Pax thinks that’s fair enough.

“I don’t need a priest.” She thinks, combing through a knot near her fringe, and then adds, “And there is a plan, if you want to believe the Emperor. Kept talking about stars –”

“What are you talking about?” Martin repeats. He’s ripped up a chunk of grass by the roots. Pax’s log is near enough that they can kick his hand so that he drops it.

“Look,” they say, slowly and plainly as possible, “the Emperor told me to find you. It’s a long story, but –”

“I would like to hear it,” Martin tells her.

There’s something of a scoff in his voice, but Pax lets it be. “That’s not really your business.”

His head snaps up and he stares at them, incredulous. “You approached me, making these outlandish claims – how is it not my business?”

“Fine!” Pax stuffs the comb back in their bag and starts unbuckling the pieces of their armour. (Probably not going to wear it again. The gambeson Matius gave them is nice, and they’ve been using these leathers for a year at least, they barely fit anymore. Plus they’re all singed.) “Fine,” they repeat. “I was in prison –”

“Why?”

“What did I say about not your business? I was in prison in the Capital, the Emperor comes through my cell with guards that are being all jumpy, he says –” he pauses, hands stilling on the clasps of his gorget. “Said he saw me in a dream. Or something. They go out through some secret way in the wall, I follow them for a bit –”

“Why was it in your cell?”

“I don’t know, Martin, I didn’t quiz them on their bloody architectural decisions. Anyway. I followed them a bit. They got attacked –”

“By who?”

“I don’t know, they were in red.” Red like the space behind the gate, and the two things are probably interrelated, but Pax isn’t thinking about that right now. “Stop interrupting me!”

“I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me,” Martin says. “This is very confusing.”

“You wanted to know, I’m telling you. Stop interrupting.” He’s on to the arm armour now. The archery gloves he got rid of ages ago today – they were sticking to his skin – but now he can see that even the bracers got burned, too. They didn’t melt like whatever the gloves were made of, but the leather is dried and peeling. He strips them off. “It’s not all important. The point is, he – the Emperor – he talked a lot about stars and gods and how he was going to die. We got attacked again. He –”

Pax doesn’t like to think about the next part. It all happened so fast.

Martin is looking at her, wary.

“He gave me his Amulet,” Pax says, “and he told me to go talk to another person who knew about his secret son. Said to find the son – and close shut the jaws of Oblivion. That’s what he said.” Now Pax is ripping up the grass. “Then he died. So.”

They sit with her story for a bit.

“It sounds mad,” Martin says. Pax wants, a little bit, to shove him off the rock.

“Well, it’s true. Can you think of another reason some stranger would come looking for you?”

“And you think I’m the son?” Martin asks, ignoring her question. He’s staring at her, a haggard look about his face. He shakes his head. “No. You must have the wrong man.”

Pax wants a lot to shove him off the rock.

“Oh, I have the wrong Martin Priest Of Akatosh In Kvatch Who Never Knew His Father?” he jeers. “How many other people you know have that description? Please, point me in their fucking direction.”

Martin’s face scrunches up like cardboard. “They’d be dead now,” he says flatly, and goes to stand.

“Don’t!” Their desperation is much more noticeable than they want it to be, practically dripping off their voice. They stand too, their legs still armoured but everything else uncovered. Shouldn’t have said that. “I’m – don’t leave. I have to take you to Chorrol.”

“Because I’m the Emperor’s son,” he says, voice as disdainful as it is guarded, and Pax really wants to poke it but they’ve already fucked up and they can’t afford to act like an ass again.

“It’s where the Amulet of Kings is,” she says weakly, and then, “he said about closing off Oblivion. What happened here – it’s connected, I bet you.”

Martin presses his lips tight together, head tilted a little to the side so his hair falls over his brow. “They say you’re the one who closed the gate.”

Pax isn’t sure what to say to that. “I was.”

“Really?” Martin shakes the hair out of his face. “I didn’t know whether to believe it.”

Pax scowls. “What’s that s’posed to mean?” he demands.

Martin raises his hands placatingly. Pax hates being placated. “All of it seems unbelievable,” he says, which is fair. He gestures to Pax. “Your story isn’t exactly helping.”

That’s also fair. Pax winds his fingers into his tunic.

“It isn’t that I don’t believe you,” Martin tells him carefully. “It’s just… a lot all at once.”

Pax snorts despite herself. “Believe me, I know what you mean.” Five weeks ago they were swapping insults with their shithead cellmate across a prison corridor. Now… they don’t even know what they’re doing. Kings and assassins and gateways to Oblivion – it all feels like something out of a story. These are events that belong to the epics from the First Era, not now.

Martin looks at them, and his face is a little less wary.

“Look,” Pax says, twisting the fabric under her hands into knots. “Honest, I don’t really know what’s going on. They didn’t say why the Amulet was important or why he got killed or anything. But the Amulet’s in Chorrol with the person who told me where to find you, and he knows a lot more. If you have questions, then come with me. He’s the one to ask.”

Martin keeps looking at her; it’s weird.

“What was it like inside the gate?” he asks eventually. Pax wrinkles up her nose. “Humour me,” he adds.

She’s too tired to get annoyed with him for asking the question; she hasn’t slept in a day at least, busy with all the bullshit going on in Kvatch, and it’s abruptly catching up with her. She shrugs. “Bad,” she says, because that sums it up pretty well.

She wasn’t meaning to be funny, but it shocks a laugh out of him. He looks as surprised at it as she is.

“That gate shouldn’t have been possible,” he says, glancing again at the ruins of Kvatch over the hill, “but you closed it. You gave them hope, you helped them drive the daedra back.” He makes them sound a bit too much like questions. Pax did all of that stuff. They don’t need him acting like they couldn’t have.

But then he looks back at them and they don’t argue. “I’ll go with you,” he says. “I’ll hear this person out. It isn’t as though there’s much to keep me here.”

Pax smiles grimly. (And it’s at the macabre humour with which he says it. It’s not out of relief. It’s not.)

“We’ll start tomorrow,” Pax tells him. They bend and pick up all their leathers off the log. “Pack your things, if you have any. And get some rest. It’ll be a lot of walking.”

#no idea if this is good or not; I wrote it just now and didn't feel like rereading or editing #but yeah! ty for the prompt #oc tag #pax #martin #oblivion #the elder scrolls #kvatch #my writing #fay writes

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