CHARACTER BACKSTORY EPISODE 9: In which, well, you'll just have to read it.

  • Five hundred forty three known exits from the sewers and by noon, no one could say how many people were out searching them.  Neither Farys nor gro-Ushal would reveal specific numbers to the other.  In the end, their mutual suspicion didn’t matter, because it was Nils that found the carved symbol and he reported it to Lucy.

    Leaving Farys, Lauren, and gro-Ushal’s second-in-command behind to lead efforts in the city, Lucy, Henri and gro-Ushal followed Nils to the secondary southwestern sewer outfall.  He pointed out to them the small precisely etched scratches that he had found there—two diagonal lines and a dot scratched into the stone lip of the tunnel.

    “Left, as you emerge,” explained Lucy, “They went downriver.” The party split up to search both banks.  They proceeded carefully and slowly. Lucy found the next letter in a tree stump many yards downstream, where the bank was heavily wooded.  “ ‘Straight’; they went up slope.”

    The assassin had left no signs of passage.  Had it not been for the letters every hundred yards, they would never have been able to follow.  To Lucy, the marks meant something much more important—Swims was still alive.  He’d not done anything stupid, and he’d not been detected.  It was almost too good to be true.

    The trail led them to a small farmhouse in the woods.  “Should we send for more men?” wondered Henri.

    “Definitely,” agreed gro-Ushal, “we don’t know what’s in there.”

    “Nils, run back and tell Lauren we need as many men as think they can handle this.”

    “Your mates aren’t fighters,” gro-Ushal countered. “Tell my man we need soldiers—rangers; archers.”

    Nils nodded and left, leaving the three of them on stakeout.

     “Where is Swims?” Lucy wondered suddenly.  “Shouldn’t he be out here in the woods, somewhere?”

    Henri and gro-Ushal considered the question.  “He could be around the far side,” suggested gro-Ushal.

     “Inside already?” suggested Henri.

    “Or they’re holding him prisoner!” said Lucy.  “I knew this was too easy!  I’m so stupid!”  She jumped up.

    “Lucy, wait!” her father hissed urgently, lunging to stop her.  She shrugged him off and crouch-sprinted toward the house. Swims was in dire trouble, and it was her fault.  There was no more time to sneak around or wait. She gave up all attempts at stealth and charged the house, screaming her rage.

    “Damn it!” cursed gro-Ushal, as he pulled a war axe off his belt.  As he stood up, he felt a small sting in his neck, like a bee.  He reached up to swat it, and found a dart in his neck.  The forest began to spin around him. 

    As Henri sprinted after Lucy, his feet shot out from under him, the ground turned into the sky, and he found himself dangling upside down from a rope snare.  He drew his long blade, but as he dragged across the fibers, he felt a sting on his shoulder. His blade dropped from limp fingers as consciousness faded.

    Lucy crashed through the window and found herself surrounded by three dark-cloaked men.  She charged one and knocked him to the ground, but another grabbed her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides.  She struggled, but he was far stronger than he should naturally have been.

    “We have questions for you,” the man said in a calm voice with no sound of strain.  “Answer them, and your friends will live.”

    Lucy’s hand glowed red, and she grabbed her assailant’s crotch.  He screamed and dropped her to grab his jewels.  She threw an elbow into his outthrust jaw, which crunched sickeningly.  She was on to the next enemy before the first one dropped.  The dart struck her as her fist connected with his nose.  She started to feel woozy as she spun to find the last man.  He wasn’t where she expected.  Something struck her hard in the lower back and she cried out and fell.  A second dart struck, followed by a blow to the head, and then it all went dark.

     

    She awoke coughing and gagging as a result of something burning that had just been poured down her throat.  She was tied securely to a chair by her arms and legs.  Her heart pounded.  A Southlander in dark robes stood over her.  When he saw she was awake, he stepped aside to reveal her father, gagged and tied to a rack by his arms and ankles with two dark-robed operators standing by.  The dank stone basement was windowless, lit by flickering torches.

    “Your other friends are dead—the orc, the Argonian hatchling, even the little blond boy.  This one will die slowly if you do not tell us what we want to know. Once you have told us, we will let both of you go.”  To illustrate, the men on the rack tightened it a notch.  Henri groaned involuntarily.  “He’s clearly a brave man.  You should know that brave men suffer worse under torture than cowards, because they try to fight it.”

    Lucy was aghast at the sight of her father stretched across the machine. She could not even wrap her mind around the part about her friends being dead.  “Ah… um…” she fumbled, unable to come up with a clear thought. “I don’t know anything.”

    “You know the Dragon Language.  All we want to know is where you learned it.”

    Lucy gaped at him in confusion.  He took her silence to be resistance, and signaled for the rack to be tightened another notch.  Henri began to pant.

    “How do you know the Dragon language?” he repeated.

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested.  “You’ve got the wrong girl.”  The rack was tightened two more notches, while her interrogator grabbed a piece of bark and held it up to her face.  On it was scratched the Youth Corps symbol for “Left,” an L in Lucy’s childhood alphabet.

    “You and your friends leave these all over the city.  Did you think we would not notice?” His pitch and volume rose, as he shook it in her face.  “Where did you learn it? Can you use The Voice? Have you been to the Throat?”

    “I MADE IT UP!” she shouted. “You clown, I made those up!” 

    “I WON’T PLAY GAMES WITH YOU!” shouted the interrogator, and the torturers tightened the rack two more notches, producing a muffled scream from Henri.

    A door burst open to Lucy’s left, and a fourth man spoke urgently, “Sir, we’ve no more than five minutes.”

    “Fine!” replied her interrogator.  “Drug her and bundle her for travel.  Kill the man.”

    At that moment, Durz gro-Ushal arrived with a crash and a war-bellow, swinging his axe wildly and splitting the skull of the man in the doorway.  Lucy had never seen him fight.  She’d thought of him mostly as an administrator, but now he was a force of nature.  He was stabbed repeatedly, but laid about with unstoppable force.  All four assassins were crushed and crumpled against the walls before he brought himself to a stumbling, panting halt.

    He wiped the blood from his axe and his face with the edge of the interrogator’s robe.  After a moment to calm down and begin thinking again, he released Henri, who crumpled to the stone floor.

     “They said you were dead,” Lucy told him, as he cut her bindings.

    “They lied,” he replied, while he set about cauterizing his wounds.  “Their poison slowed me down, though.  Managed to stagger away but then passed out in a ditch.  When I woke up, I was afraid I was too late.”

    Lucy knelt over her father.  While he rubbed feeling back into his wrists, she centered herself and cast a healing spell to help his joints recover.

    Durz gro-Ushal turned to the bodies.  He methodically searched each one, pulling out a seemingly endless arsenal of weapons, pendants, rings, totems, and documents, and sorting them systematically on the floor in the center of the room.

    Leaning on Lucy’s shoulder, Henri pulled himself to his feet and took a few tentative steps around the room.  He winced, but nodded, and Lucy reluctantly came out of her trance and allowed her worries to come crashing back in on her.  Her first thought was, “They said Nils and Swims were dead, too.”

    “They lied about that, too,” gro-Ushal assured her. 

    “How do you know? Did you see them?  Are they here?” Lucy asked excitedly.

    “No,” admitted gro-Ushal, “but these guys wanted information from you, right? It’s pointless to torture an Orsimer, so they tried to play on your loyalties.  If your friends had been caught, they’d be here for you to see, either as victims like your father, or as corpses to break you down.  Therefore, your friends are alive and free.”

    Lucy was so overjoyed by this interpretation that she didn’t even consider questioning it.  “Nils should be back soon then,” she said.  “We still don’t know where Swims is.”

    “Nor where the Argonian assassin is; my guess is, one of them is pursuing the other,” replied gro-Ushal. He bit his tongue as he saw her face fall.  He was used to speaking with soldiers in situations like this, and he reminded himself to reset his brain-to-mouth censor for “teenage girl”.  To change the subject, he asked, “What did they want to know from you, anyway?”

    It was the perfect question to distract her.  “They wanted to know where I learned ‘Dragon Language,’ but they’re all fools, because they were asking about my alphabet like it was something important, and I just made it all up!” The frustration she’d felt under questioning crept back into her voice.

    “Are you sure about that?” asked gro-Ushal, examining something as he squatted over a body.  “Sure you didn’t see it somewhere and copy it?” He held out a golden amulet with an embossed dragon design for her inspection.  “Take a look at the back side of this.”

    She took it and flipped it over.  On the back was a runic inscription in her letters!

    “But that’s impossible!  I made this shit up!” she insisted.  “It must be a fake,” she mused. She read the letters under her breath. “Alduin Diivon Lein.”

    The room exploded in a blinding white flash and deafening roar.  Lucy was thrown hard against the wall and pressed there as though a great rowdy mob was forcing its way through the room.  With one last blast of heat, the light and sensation abruptly stopped, and Lucy fell to the floor, ears ringing and spots before her eyes. Her father and gro-Ushal had landed in similar heaps against the opposite wall.  The roof was blasted away and smoke blotted out a roiling sky.  The smoldering walls of the farmhouse ringed the scorched basement like fallen battlements.

    “What the hell was that?” roared gro-Ushal.

    “I think I accidentally…” but the amulet was gone from her hand.  “Where’d it go?  It’s disappeared!” She looked around the room.

    Suddenly, Imperial archers, in full armor, bows drawn and arrows nocked and aimed down at them, surrounded the rim of the basement.

    “You’re a little late,” gro-Ushal chuckled.  “Party’s over.  Stand down.”

    None of the archers so much as twitched.  An Argonian in the robes of an Imperial magistrate gazed down and hissed.  He was accompanied by gro-Ushal’s second-in-command.  A soldier held the struggling Nils, and another the bound and unconscious Swims-in-Shadows.

    “Durz gro-Ushal, Luciana Henriette, Henri the Redguard,” the Argonian intoned solemnly.  “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit treason against the Emperor, four counts of murder and one of attempted murder of Imperial officials.  To that, I must now add the charge of destroying evidence.  So long as you come quietly, you have a right to an impartial trial by Imperial magistrate. If you resist, I am authorized to use lethal force to restrain you.”

     

     

Comments

10 Comments
  • Justin j
    Justin j   ·  November 8, 2011
    Absolutely amazing. been in love with this from the beginning, so far my favorite character is Durz(make me think if a mister Miyagi teacher) keep them coming. your going to have to continue them once skyrim is out!!!
  • Piper Jo
    Piper Jo   ·  November 8, 2011
    @ Vix,  Swims lived for you, just like Durz lived for my spouse.  Everyone must have someone that cares for them in order to survive.
  • Batman
    Batman   ·  November 6, 2011
    Oh, oh wow! I think this has been the best chapter yet, stunning job Piper.
  • Bilbo
    Bilbo   ·  November 5, 2011
    This should be the one in which: things go from bad to worse :D
  • RuneRed
    RuneRed   ·  November 5, 2011
    Nice, I wasn't suspecting the Argonian assassin to be gro-Ushal's second in command - no idea that betrayal was coming from the Imperials.  But I did figure out the alphabet... I gave a little hint on Ch 8 .
     
  • Nick Black
    Nick Black   ·  November 5, 2011
    Very nice, I'm eagerly awaiting your next installment! 
  • Arthur Keen
    Arthur Keen   ·  November 5, 2011
    Oh, what a fantastic payoff! You built up that twist with the alphabet so well; I hadn't even considered it as any more significant than a piece of characterful flavour. When I saw this was the last chapter, I was wondering how you'd tie it all together -...  more
  • Nick Graham
    Nick Graham   ·  November 5, 2011
    Hah, I wondered if that's what her secret alphabet was. A very clever touch--I like it. It plays into the supernatural element of being born as a Dovahkiin; that you have other gifts besides Thu'um that might manifest themselves in unpredictable ways. Onc...  more
  • The Nexus
    The Nexus   ·  November 5, 2011
    Very awesome as always.
  • Casimir Aldwyr
    Casimir Aldwyr   ·  November 5, 2011
    You're doing a magnificent job with this story, love it