Livia wrapped her cloak tighter around her body and rushed on through the rain and wind, her eyes feverishly scanning the ground flying by at her feet. The sky’d been clear when she left Darkwater Crossing early that morning. And foolishly, she’d thought the good weather might last the day.
What was it her father used to tell her? Right. If you don’t like the weather in Skyrim, wait five minutes. That about summed it up, especially in Eastmarch.
She’d ducked under cover of a decaying tree trunk an hour or two earlier to consult her map in the mid-afternoon light, and if she’d read it right, a mill village should have been straight ahead, just where the Black and White Rivers joined up. And even the smallest milltown boasted at least an overhang or lean-to she could use as shelter from the storm. But she couldn’t hear the chunking of a waterwheel, or the tell-tale chuff and whine of the longsaw.
No sound reached her ears but pattering rain and rustling leaves, and a rushing, hollow crash that might have been thunder or a waterfall—Livia wasn’t sure. But she pressed on, trying to ignore the first tendrils of fear snaking through her belly. Hearing a waterfall was a good sign anyway, if she was looking for a mill. Her feet moved faster, toward the noise, when another sound stopped her in her tracks. Wet, slapping steps, echoing her own.
Something was on the road. Following her.
Something, someone…every muscle in Livia’s body screamed at her to run, but she held her ground. Maybe it was a fox or a rabbit, after all. Or a wolf. She could handle one wolf, she reminded herself. Slowly, she turned on her heel, and called a ward in one hand and flames in the other.
She heard what dogged her steps before she saw it in the glow of her ward— rain-soaked tawny fur hanging down to its huge paws, and a snarling mouth boasting curved canines the size of her forearm. The tendrils of fear snaking through her belly exploded into panic, and Livia twisted her arm behind her back and ran, shooting flames in the cat’s direction. Her feet pounded on the road, and her heart pounded in her chest.
“Saber cat!” She swiped at the rain pouring down her face and blinked. She couldn’t see the mill, but it had to be just ahead. She had to warn them. “Saber cat, coming your way! Get inside,” she yelled, and looked over her shoulder, flames spilling from her fingers. “Get—“
The ground disappeared under Livia’s feet, and her words died in her throat as her breath rushed out of her lungs. You’re falling, a thin, distant voice called out from inside her fuzzy, broken brain. She kicked her legs out into nothing, into darkness and air, one last protest against gravity, or whatever awaited her on the ground.
She’d almost resigned herself to certain, splattering death, when her chin hit something that felt like stone. Her head rocked back and stars swam behind her eyes, but her body kept falling down, down, down…through something cloying and wet and cold as ice.
Water, the thin voice called out again, more dazed than before. You’re underwater.
Livia kicked and paddled with cupped hands, struggling for the surface. Her lungs burned, and she kicked harder. A high-pitched yowl reached her ears just as she broke the surface, but it was too dark to see if the cat would follow wherever she’d fallen. And Livia had no way to know when the cat had last eaten.
Ahead, a light shone quill-thin, but bright and fairly close. The current pulled her toward it, and she grabbed a sapling at the edge of the water and yanked herself onto the bank. Her lungs craved air, but Livia forced herself to take shallow breaths—quiet, still. And she listened. No more yowls or snarls. Nothing barreling down the embankment into the gorge where she’d landed. Was it the White River gorge? The Black?
Livia called candlelight in her left hand and flames in her right, and in the dim light of her magic a stone wall loomed ahead, disappearing into dark skies above. A narrow path of hewn stone, rather than river rock or cobbles, led from the riverbed to a thick, wooden door maybe ten feet away. A warm yellow light shone through a rotted-out hole at the bottom left corner.
It could have been an old fort or an abandoned dam, but Livia knew it absolutely wasn’t the entrance to a milltown.
Lightning hissed across the sky, followed far too closely by another crash of thunder. The storm was building up, and Livia’s choices dwindled to one. She trudged to the door, her soaking cloak and tunic making her feel like she weighed a ton, and pulled at the handle.
Kaidan drooped in his chains, and his eyes threatened to close. Fear—or close to fear as he was willing to let himself feel—jerked his head back and forced his eyes open. They always came when he slept. They—the arseholes who ambushed him at his camp, what was that now, a week ago? A month? A year? Kaidan didn’t know, but somehow, in the depths of his muddled mind, he guessed his not-knowing was probably part of their plan. A plan to drive him insane, he figured. And over a sword, of all things.
So they came, over and over again—the wizard in black and his golden soldier. And then they’d leave, and stay gone just long enough so he’d give in to exhaustion, before barging back into his cell with their whips and fire and potions that stirred the shadows.
His mother’s sword.
She held the sword, when she came out of the shadows, held it up to his face. Sometimes she’d cut him, just a slice on his cheek or across his chest. Sometimes she’d just stare, her eyes pits of black fire in a face Kaidan had never known.
His eyes closed again, and stayed shut. His wrists stretched in their manacles, and the muck-covered stones on the floor dug into his knees, but Kaidan was lost in shadows, and past the point of pain.
Lightning crackled in Kaidan’s ears, and then a scream. Kaidan braced himself for whatever he’d feel when the wizard’s lackey yanked him back to consciousness. Gods, if he was screaming already, screaming in his sleep…
He forced one eye open, and then the other, his teeth clenching at the pain, the shock of simple wakefulness and despair…and shame. It was time—they’d come for him again, with their magic and metal. And their questions, too. Questions Kaidan couldn’t answer. The same questions that brought him to Skyrim in the first place. And he’d told them as much—he’d screamed it—he didn’t know, he didn’t have the answers they sought.
And if I knew, I wouldn’t tell. I wouldn’t. I…
No, that was a lie, and Kaidan moaned under the weight of it, and the shame. Because he would. He would answer every question they had, and more, if they’d only end it. He’d sing like a thrush and beg for the last stroke of the sword, the last burst of magic.
If only he knew how.
His eyes adjusted to the light, and he stared into an empty room. No soldier, no wizard with lightning webbing his fingers. Just light and shadow and dripping, stinking stone. Where had the lightning come from then? And that scream, if it wasn’t his own.
Had it been a dream then, just something crawling from the shadows to torment him some more?
Kaidan strained his ears, listening. No, something was there—someone—heading his way. But it wasn’t the wizard. Or the soldier in his clanking gold armor. Instead, light footsteps padded down the stairs by the row of cells, and what sounded like soft robes and leather leggings swished down the hall.
The footsteps stopped by his cell, and he heard a sharp intake of breath. A key turned in the lock, and the door creaked open. Kaidan struggled in his bonds, and a spark of joy crackled up his spine, even as the manacles tore at the raw skin on his arms. Shame and despair disappeared under a wave of resistance—he wasn’t ready to give up, after all. Not just yet.
“I’ll bloody kill you. Kill you all,” he rasped, punching out with his right hand an inch or two, as far as the chain would extend. “When I get out of here—“
“Shhhh…”
A soft voice startled Kaidan into silence, and he squinted up into a face framed by wild, brown, curly hair. A woman’s face. A woman’s brown eyes, wide and frantic. He swallowed. “Who are you? You’re not…you don’t look Thalmor. How’d you get in here?”
“Shhh…lower your voice, if you can,” she whispered, and glanced over her shoulder. “I killed the guard at the door. But there’s another, just upstairs.”
“You killed…” Kaidan began, and noticed the blackened key in her hand. He swallowed again, barely allowing himself to hope. “Aye. Just the one. Bastard. Let me out of here. I’ll get my sword, and I’ll kill him. I’ll—“
Kaidan gagged. The woman backed up a few steps and turned away, and waited for him to stop retching. “I’ll kill him,” he finished, weakly.
The woman turned back to him, and stepped around the bile on the floor. Kaidan stared at her feet. She wore soft leather boots. He hoped he hadn’t gotten anything on them. Lucky for her, the Thalmor didn’t feed him enough to make a proper mess.
“You’re in no condition to be fighting anyone. Not yet,” she said, and pulled at the manacle. It dug into Kaidan’s wrist. “Sorry. Just let me…”
She turned the key and the lock popped open. Kaidan’s arm flopped to his side, limp as a wet bit of bread. And numb. His hand lay like a rock on his leg, but he couldn’t move his fingers, couldn’t feel a thing. “Get the other one. Please,” he begged. Tears burned his eyes and he blinked them away. “I can help. You have to let me out.”
“Not yet—“
“Why?” Kaidan hissed and watched the woman walk to the far side of his cell and look around the corner. Knifepoints of pain shot through his arm as the blood flowed back in, and his stomach threatened to revolt again. “Is this another part of their plan? Send you in here, give me hope, let me feel…gods…alive, and then—”
The woman ran back to him on her toes, silent as a shadow. “Shh…”
“Don’t shush me, Thalmor trash.” Kaidan curled the fingers of his free hand into a fist. “Are they listening around the corner, then, just waiting to come in and have a laugh?”
The woman waved her hands in front of Kaidan’s face. “Please, stop—“
“I can hear them now,” Kaidan said, his face burning. “They’ll love it. I believed you, you know. Congratulations. You did it, you had me.” A laugh bubbled up the back of his throat, a thin, reedy laugh. It would carry through the cells and upstairs to the wizard, and he knew it would, and no longer cared. Shame came rushing back, and he welcomed it. It was no more than he deserved.
The woman clapped her hands over his mouth, and Kaidan glared up into eyes as wet as his own. Her cheeks were flushed red, and her mouth pulled in a wide grimace. She was an excellent actress, he had to own.
Something scraped across the floor upstairs, and quick footsteps pounded down the hall, but no hint of satisfaction slithered across the woman’s face. Just a clenched jaw and eyes darting back and forth as the footsteps continued.
“He’s coming downstairs. Fuck me,” she swore under her breath, and pulled a tiny glass vial from the neck of her tunic.
Kaidan’s eyebrows rose, and he gently pulled her hand from his mouth. “You’re…not with the Thalmor.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “What was your first clue?”
“Fuck,” Kaidan muttered, and groaned. “Ok. The one coming, he’s a wizard. Usually lightning in his left hand, and an Elven dagger in his right.”
“Thanks,” the woman said. “I might not leave your ass in this dump after all. If we survive, that is.”
Kaidan narrowed his eyes and watched her pad over to the doorway of his cell and crouch down beside a barrel. “Let me out,” he said, and wiggled his chained hand. “Unlock the other. I can help.”
“Really? You threw up at the mere mention of fighting, not five minutes ago. Just sit there and try to hide your free arm. And nod when he comes through the door,” she ordered, and clasped both hands around the vial.
Kaidan grasped the chain above his head with his free hand and hoped the wizard wouldn’t look too closely. He smelled the wizard before he saw him—ozone swirled about the mer like his soft, gold-hemmed cape. The woman—the mage? He hoped she was a mage, because she didn’t seem to be armed at all—sniffed the air and shivered. Kaidan watched, waiting until the golden-skinned male walked around the corner and leaned against the door of his cell.
The wizard grinned, his chin coming to a point below thin lips. “I heard you talking to yourself. Anything you’d like to share?”
“Yeah,” Kaidan said, and chuffed under his breath. “You know, I was stupid to think I could hold out so long. Come on in, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
The wizard didn’t move. “That’s a quick turnaround.”
“What can I say? I’m a strong man. But even the strongest can’t hold out forever.”
“You’re a man.” The wizard took a step toward Kaidan, his lips curling into a sneer. “You all break, eventually.”
Kaidan sent gratitude swirling toward whatever Divine had blessed the Dominion viper with such predictable pride, and nodded. “Well, you’re half-right, at least.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Kaidan watched the woman snap the glass vial between her fingers. And then he watched the woman, the wizard, and nearly a third of his cell disappear in a cloud of whirling flame.
I hadn't planned to write a continuation of All This Past, but I couldn't get Kai and Liv's story out of my mind, so here goes...
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Days of torture with sleep deprivation, physical mutilation to make it all the more intimate, and of course you can't go wrong with lightning. Wheeee! Powaa! The Thalmor know their work. L... more