this is my first attempt at a fan fiction. i wrote this in school while i was bored, and spoofed it up for my submission here. im not sure if i will continue it, and this isn't really a complete entry. it feels quite like an unfinished intro but just deal with it.



I wait in darkness. Tme flows through me like a river without substance. Hours pass. Minutes. Seconds. All meaningless to me. Most would say my career, my reason for shrouding myself in shadow, is to kill. Though, the wise understand my job is to disregard any number of things. I disregard my fear of darkness. I forget my guilt. I turn my head to moral reasoning. I shrug off questions, comments, compliments, insults. I ignore the passing days, and they ignore me.

When time moves without you, no natural end to your life can be seen. This is the case with me. I don't bother myself with the concern of dying of old age or passing away in my sleep, less it be by poison. A cold, dark blade through my chest, or an arrow lodged in my throat are things I must keep an eye on in nature's stead. These are the instruments through which death will reach me. And since such forms of mortal awareness are all inflicted by men, it is only logical that if I need not fear age, then all that is left to cower from is the wraith of man.

With only human ambition to be done in by, I have concluded my life and my purpose to one simple truth: Serve those more powerful than myself.

If you hold swords against a man who you cannot kill, you will not kill him. This is my logic, yet scores of aspiring heroins do not grasp this idea, and ultimately die by my steel. No matter how you look at it, see me as a killer or a disregarder, I serve the powerful. The powerful need jobs done. They pay the Black Hand. The Black Hand pays me.

I am an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood.

I make my living off of disregarding, forgetting, head turning, shrugging, and ignoring. End's meet is made by killing. I kill people like yourself. I kill the intelligent. The stupid. The big. Small. Strong. Weak. Brave. Cowardly. Among all the diversities of Nirn, I sow a common trait. They all die silently in the darkness.

~~~

They call me Sadril. I was birthed in the Nordic town of Bruma. My skin is ashen, my hair silver. I am a bastarde. One would assume, however, that since my mother is of the racial majority of my hometown, that my father would have to be Dunmeri. In fact he was.

Long lost bedtime stories tell me that I share my father's name. They tell me of his cunning and wits and of his cursed blood, which he also blesses me with. Though a father who abandons his own kin and crimson is not worthy of the few thoughts I keep on the tip of my mind, and so he remains among the things that I am paid to forget daily...

A Dark Brother eh... this ought to be an interesting departure from our more Morag Tong-ish types here. This is an intriguing beginning, please keep it up.

Hey! Nice to see you among the writers of this forum! You have a good start here you know! And I´m thrilled to learn more about Sadril.....

Well, well, well, time to see how Sadril is when he wasn't partially insane..... or was he like that when he was young too? Can't wait to find out Shogun

You certainly know how to develop a mood Shogun. You're introduction was written quite well.

I second canis' thoughts about Sadril being a Dark Brotherhood Assassin. It'll be neat to see the more ruthless assassin at work here. I hope you decide to continue on with this story.

thanks all. ill add another installment soon. though i plan to take it in a different direction. the above was written in first person, present tense. there is a lot i want to convey about my character and i find it hard to do so in first person, and present tense is just plain out hard for me to write in so i'm probably going to change it to third person, past tense.

anyway, thanks.

Welcome to the club of thrid-person writers, Shogun. As far as I know there aren't many of us........ Oh, well it doesn't matter, continuing to write Sadril's origin story is more important than whether it's in first or third person.

You have an excellent beginning here. I, too, hope you will gift us with more of your work.

Wow, I really like this begining. Please, keep it up!

Chapter 1: In the Air of Death


The blackness embraces those who embrace it...

Quietly, I waited, cloaked in the dire shadow within the home of a man I did not know and did not wish to know. All was silent. A silence so pure and soft that it seemed to deafen me. Even the air around me dared not move, for fear of playing the slightest whisper to my ear that may disturb me. The small specks of dust, visible in the painted blue moonlight that shone through a nearby window, did not even stir. They hung, motionles, as if stopped by time itself.

I crouched in the dark corner of a shack in the middle of the wilderness, north of Kvatch. This is where I was informed my target would dwell, and this is where I waited for him. The sun had disappeared for hours, and yet the Altmer man who I was to submit to the void remained away from his home.

Away, until, loud as thunder, through the still air came the sound of a key greeting the only lock within miles. My sword, a simple steel katana, glided out of its sheath with a satisfying slither as I instinctively readied a lethal lunge towards the door.

The latch clicked.
My stance raised slightly into a more mobile one.

The door cracked open, and the once still dust particles stirred and buzzed to life; as if foreseeing the doom to come.
My muscles tightened.

I said no prayer to Sithis asking for protection as I took a single leap--half step, half jump-- for that was all it took to cross the shack and get to the door still in mid-swing. The timing of my attack could not have been more perfect. The thrust slipped just past the opening door and plunged deep into the chest of whoever was on the other side.

My dance of death was choreographed so flawlessly that only a sliver of my figure was visible from outside the door. Even then, that sliver, my right shoulder, was still cloaked in the blackness of the hovel. My target probably did not even know that he had been slain. After an eternity of supporting my blade and my kill's lifeless body, I peaked around the door to inspect the corpse.

Rather than being satisfied, I was disturbed by what clung to my grey steel. An Altmeri man was my target, though I found the terrified expression of an Altmeri woman on the end of my sword; her face twisted and distorted by the pain and fear of the end.

Most Dark Brotherhood assassins lack compassion toward their kills. Any honor they may have is saved for their brothers and sisters; and even then, they are quick to betray in the name of the Night Mother and the Dread Father. I was different from most, but not by much. Yes, I was the embodiment of the cold murderous persona of an assassin, simply lacking in other areas of the Dark Teachings.

Yet, for reasons that were at the time beyond me, I felt a ping of sorrow for the accidental death I caused. A feeling i had never experienced before then. However, the emotion was shallow and fleeting for a glint of moonlight caught my eye just beyond the dark veil of the treeline and brought me out of my trance. The moon, being low in the sky and behind me, on the opposite side of the house that the entrance was on, had fatefully cast a gleem of light on the broadhead of an arrow racing towards me. I quickly withdrew myself behind the door, though was not fast enough. The arrow struck through the left shoulder of my most recent victim and stuck into my right shoulder.

The shock of being hit surprised me to the point of dropping my weapon, though any sound it may have made was deadened by the cadaver that still held lifelessly, even vengefully, to it.

I pressed lightly against the door for cover, trying to compose myself. It may surprise you to know that I, working with the Brotherhood for years, had never been wounded while carrying out the will of Sithis. This explains why I went into some amount of shock at the arrow protruding from my body. After a few deep breaths, my mind snapped back to reality and my left hand, without even being told to do so, ripped the arrow from my shoulder. I cringed, but did not dare make a sound. Silence and darkness were my only true allies, yet I had just been betrayed by them both.

I went back to doing what I had been doing all night. I watied, and listened. Each passing moment, each spark of thought illuminating my head seemed to last hours, yet I knew it took me only seconds to decide to reach around the door and feel for the handle of my sword. An assassin is nothing without his tools. I had been told this, and dutifully ran it through my brain, though I did not strongly support it.

At this point, I was sitting against the ajar door. It was being held open by the corpse now stuck in the doorway. I reached behind me, to the other side of the door with my left hand and slowly felt around for the unmistakable hilt of my katana. Slowly, my hand inched.

Further...

Further...

My fingers pulling it slowly like a blind, crippled spider searching for its web. My arm began to cramp and ache as I stretched even more. Finally, I lifted my hand for one final reach, one final grasp at the air; though I did not find my weapon.

Instead my hand fell upon the face of the Altmeri woman, still warm and full of emotion; full of pain. The feel of her smooth, creamy skin under my fingers flashed the bone-chilling image of her young, beautiful, dying profile in my head. Her gaze of death struck me hardest; deep black pools of innocence, staring into my own. Asking: "Why me? What did I do?" It came upon me violently; my mind's eye unable to avert itself from the paralyzing waves of pain her horrified face caused in me.

Though her death was not all I relived...

i suppose its a bit short... maybe awfully long for what little happens in it. whatever. enjoy

also, my resolution is maxed out so if the font is way big or way small please tell me.

It is kinda small, if it were bigger I would take the time to read it right now (Sorry but I am supposed to be actually doing stuff), I promise I will read it when I get home though.

EDIT: Just finished reading it. I like it a lot! I really love the way he killed that Altmer woman, very good idea!

I like how descriptive your writing is, it gives the reader a good picture in their head. That detail is perfect for narratives.

Basically, I'm enjoying this! Do continue!

thanks for your support.

im bored as hell, and i wrote a lot at school so i may have another addition up by tonight.

Neat, I like that vamp. I also like your style of writing. Very descriptive, with the dust floating in the air.

There are some things in life man is not meant to see. Man should not see his own death before it happens; though tales of the odd ability of foresight do exist. Man should not see into the thoughts of others; and still stories of telepaths spring up very often. Man should not see the entire life of the person who he had just slain. Though at the time, I was convinced it was some sort of hallucination, I had in fact experienced such a fate.

After her agonizing portrait ceased to block my thoughts, I began to see other things. Old memories. Memories that did not belong to me. Memories of the Altmer whose face my hand rested upon flooded through me in brilliant flashes of light. Heavenly light. From what I could tell, key moments of the young woman's life were blurring through my head. I saw, in her life, some happiness, but mostly sorrow. Death. Death of loved ones. Death of the people whom she lived with in her early years.

I saw blackness. An overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Helplessness. At first the images were fuzzy, sound muffled. I couldn't make out what was happening. Then...

Murder, I saw. Murder and rape... She was raped.

Guardsmen.

Legionnaires.

Those who bore the trusted emblem of the Empire were the ones committing these sins against their own people. Imperial Guards; they killed her family and raped her. I felt her pain so clearly and so sharply. I felt her burning questions, her lost hope, her lost purity.

Her screams.

Unanswered pleas for mercy resounded through my head and echoed through my hollow conscience. I was terrified. For the first time I could remember I felt fear. Not my own, but her's.

The woman--no... The girl's life, for she was much younger than I realized, contained no love. All she knew was sorrow, and yet I saw through her eyes how kind she was to others. How polite and pure her thoughts were through her daily life despite her past. The shallow, fleeting prick of pity I felt when I first saw this victim of my savagery struck me again. Deeper, this time.

Her final memory, of course, was that of my katana running her through. Though she had not seen it coming, she had been aware of her own demise after all...

Slowly, and with a new sense of pain and true agony, I resurfaced. Everything in the barren dark shack came back into focus. Cold beads of sweat ran down the side of my face, catching the now yellow moonlight as they dripped from my shaven chin. My breathing was hoarse and heavy; it would seem I had just awaken from a nightmare. The hard, unmistakable thud of an arrow striking the door I was using for cover brought me that much closer to the situation at hand.

Startled by the projectile hitting mere inches from where my exposed hand rested outside of the door, I withdrew my arm, feeling the soft facial features of the girl pass over my finger tips one last time. On its way back, my left hand ran across the handle of my sword which I worked so feverishly to locate moments ago. Or had it been hours since I reached for it? Regardless, I grasped it, tightened my grip and pulled hard, trying to free it from the Altmer's rib cage. My hand slipped from perspiration, but slowly the blade came loose.

Having been through the stasis I just experienced, the grotesque sucking sound that accompanied the liberation of my katana from the dead caused me to shudder, if only slightly. I shuddered not because of a faintness of stomach, but rather because I felt I knew the person from whose corpse I was pulling a piece of steel from. When you know someone personally, it makes their death all the more real.

I had gotten to know Ardarume better than I ever wanted.

~~

Some amount of time had passed before I decided that my predicament required action to be solved. I looked about me for anything that could help, but instead saw only what could not. My right shoulder served as the spring at the head of a river of blood. A river that cascaded to the floor and mixed with Altmeri blood. Namely, the crimson of Ardarume. I jumped to my feet, startled once more by the reminder of the atrocity I created.

I shook it off, and went into my logical reasoning mode. One archer out front. Accurate and sharp-eyed; a professional. I was expected so their may be others with him. The place is probably surrounded. I have no choice but to run for it... I sighed as I reached the grim conclusion; the first audible sign of emotion I had made since I entered the shack.

I looked towards the window I had once crouched by. The moon was getting lower and, opposite the window, on the entrance side of the house the sun crept up from behind the horizon, singeing the black sky orange along its edges. Now or never. I hated the phrase, but thought it appropriate as I dubiously lined myself up with the window, sheathed my katana and took the single required step to cross the shack before leaping out the window, arms covering my head.

The shattering glass broke the silence of early morning. That, however, was the only thing that would go according to plan. Once I hit the ground, my momentum carried me into a single roll before I was up on my feet sprinting. If you ignored the blood now dripping for my lacerated arms, the entire act would have been quite graceful and skillfully executed. My sprint too, was well formed and inhumanly fast. No archer could possibly hit a target moving as quickly as I am. This thought was not of arrogance, but of simple fact.

Famous last words.

A small hail of arrows fell upon me. Fifteen, twenty even rained down and peppered the ground along the trajectory I was running. Though through the first volley I remain unscathed. The second came, and at this point I could see the arrows were being fired from the treeline surrounding the shack. It were as if the house was designed so it could be ambushed, with nothing but open field to sprint across before any cover could be reached.

I ran hard and avoided the now constant rain of death as I closed in on the woods.

Thirty meters. An arrow whistled by my ear as my chest began to tighten, perhaps warning me of my doom to come.

Twenty meters. an arrow finally struck me in my right calf.

Stumbling towards ten meters and the torrent still fell.

I, at long last, made it, though I almost wished I hadn't. For this time, the flawless dance of death was directed towards me. Three archers, clothed head to toe in black, spun from behind each of their respective trees that provided them with cover until the perfect time to strike. I could have taken them, though their bows were already armed, taught, and aimed. They fired simultaneously, and all three struck me. I was in too much pain to tell where I was hit. I was not in too much pain to come to a conclusion, to the irony of the way my life had been delivered to the void. I forgot it, though, being too engulfed in my final moments to bother with such trivial things as one's 'manner of death.'

Forever, I lied in the grass, just feet from the cover of the treeline. Icy dew soaked through my clothing and reminded me of my own mortality in an odd, metaphorical sort of way. The sky turned a lighter shade of blue with each dying gasp. My head felt empty, and still the image of Ardarume's dying smile remained burned on the back of my mind.

I spent my final moments contemplating how dew got to be all over the ground without any rain the previous night. As the edge of my vision tinted black I could not even recall who I was, or even what had happened. I heard footsteps crunching in the leaves, not towards me. No. Who would walk towards dew? So cold and wet. But, away from me. My killers had to have been so confident in their techniques of assassination that they would not even inspect their supposed dead target. This kind of reasoning was beyond me at the time, for I was still wondering why the stars disappeared during the day. All the blood I lost made me a little light headed.

As the darkness encroached on my vision further, like a plague across the lense of my eyes, I heard more crunching from the woods.

Blackness took me completely, but the crunching of leaves grew louder.

Step. Crunch...

Step. Crunch...

The sound grew until it became a distorted mass of noise. A scream. The screams of Ardarume which still pulsed, trapped in the emptiness of my heart. They were all I could hear, but eventually, they too became quiet...

Wow, this is quite dramatique stuff you're writing here Shogun. It makes for a very enjoyable read.

Maybe whoever is approaching Sadril killed the hunters, that could explain the screams. So maybe Sadril might get lucky and survive this incident... I hope so, or this story has ended WAY too soon!

thanks a lot. i was a little worried that this addition was not so good.

as for the story. it will continue definitely, but that is all i will say as im sure you prefer it.

Now this is a story! Good stuff! Good stuff!

thanks. im writing more now... i cant seem to pull myself away from it for some reason.. its like a drug.. i cant stop writing.

is this normal?

Very

Yea, it's usually hard to get away from writing something you enjoy. Especially at the beginning when you're just brimming with ideas. I'm surprised I have enough control to just write one update a week. But, since this week is March Break, I just might be writing a bit more. Maybe submit something to the Temple of Lore, or possibly something else. Depends on whether filming doesn't take too much time during my spare time.

I'll definitely be working on something in the writing department tomorrow (hell maybe even tonight). But I can't tell you what it is. It's a secret!

The first thing I remember after the screams subsided was the feel of cool water falling into my mouth. I had not the strength to swallow it, but the refreshment it provided was so welcome that I would not want to rush its journey down my throat. For the longest time all I could think of was the flow of water.

I could imagine the liquid. So cool and pure that it was completely invisible, save for the heavenly mist that rose and drifted from it. I saw it in my mind. A collumn of mist containing the silhouette of invisible water.

Sadly, conciousness began to take hold at this absurd thought. My first moment of reasoning came accompanied with the question, Where is this sweet nectar coming from? I immediately dismissed the question, though, deciding that it did not matter.

Moments later, the second rational wave, which was much more philosophically groundbreaking than the previous, reached me: How am I drinking water... if I'm dead?

This lead me to the third logical thought process in which another part of my bliss was lost when I realized that I indeed, was still living.

~~

I gasped; the first mistake of my new life. When I gasped I inhaled what water had not made its way down my throat, and jolted upright in a coughing spell.

"Hey, there. Take it easy," I told myself in a feminine voice.

And thus, the fourth reality check hit me. My voice... is not that of a woman's. With this final brilliant deduction came the end of my coughing. The voice rang, this time much clearer with concern and a hard-to-place soothing quality to it, "Please, rest."

I opened my eyes to see just what the source of the beautiful voice was, but the light of midday blinded them, for they were not long ago completely consumed by darkness. My eyes instinctively winced shut. I then began to feel light headed and passed out once again.

Years passed with only the mysterious voice to think about. A teenage girl-crazed part of me that persisted in the back of my head exclaimed "Such a pleasant voice must be paired with good looks!"

My usual self beat him back with logic and responsibilty, "I need to wake up and find out what's going on."

The wiseman Sadril who spoke in riddles raised his voice, "Why must I do anything? After a period of nothingness, something will indefinitely happen."

A period of nothingness passed.

These voices... Who are they?

They are different aspects of you.

"I think... I am going crazy."

"W-what?" the pretty feminine voice from before asked with a laugh. Her voice rippled through the darkness of my mind like a stone tossed in a pond.

It startled me awake again. This time, though, I managed to gasp without choking on water. I opened my eyes and was once more blinded, but more like being blinded after just waking up from a night's sleep; as opposed to being blinded after just waking up from death.

"Wha? What?" I answered her question with the same she asked, only in a frightened, dry whisper.

I looked around panickedly and could barely make out a figure lying on her side, facing me, propping her head up with one arm and holding a book in front of her with the other. My vision was blurred, unfortunately, and I couldn't make out her features, in fact, I was only assuming to was a her.

"You said you thought you were going crazy," the voice replied matter-of-factly. I could hear her smile on her words. It, as her voice did, sounded beautiful. "What did you mean?"

"I--" I stared blankley at her, blinking hard 3 times, trying to regain my vision. Obviously I didn't realize how stupid I must have looked with my confused gaze and gaping jaw, for she started giggling. The giggling turned to laughter when I asked, "What are you laughing at?!" but didn't manage to change my perplexed look.

"No--" she could barely get her words out, she was laughing so hard, "Nothing! Nothing! I swear!" she finally managed. I could hear her still trying to stiffle her laughter.

Realizing it was hanging open, I closed my mouth. As my vision steadily came back into focus I looked to her. All the predictions I had made had proved to be correct. Before me, lied the fairest Dark Elf I had ever layed eyes on. She closed her book and let her hair flow loose from the bun she had pulled it into behind her head. Her hair, flowing like a black river, consumed my gaze. She shook it loose in such a way that would drive most men insane. I, being trained to lack emotion, did not project such weakness.

Admitedly, she did cause a spark of something inside me. What exactly, I was not sure.

I looked down, sighed, and looked back up at her, "How long--" I lost my words.

She sat herself upright, cross-legged, put her hands on her knees, and made an attempt at a serious face that I dared consider cute. "I found you with four arrows sticking out of you, and a fifth wound on your shoulder, about three days ago. I took you here and dressed your wounds," she looked down, almost looking ashamed, skipping over parts in her mind she did not want to talk about openly, "You woke up two days ago, choked on some water," a smile broke through her stern look, she clearly wanted to laugh but supressed it this time, "Then just passed back out again." She continued to smile softly and sincerely, then shrugged, a look of concern in her eyes; which were a much a deeper ruby color than most Dunmer's.

I went silent, to which she interrupted by leaning forward and extending a smooth hand, "I'm Elle."

"Elle?" I raised an eyebrow at her, ignoring her outstretched hand asking for a greeting, "That's a weird name."

She scrunched up her face, crossed her arms, and looked away indignantly; flirtatiously.

I grinned gently, then went wide-eyed realizing I had just smiled for the first time in years. The surprise passed, and the smile returned. "My name's Pooka," I said in the most convincing voice I could muster, extending my own hand for her to shake; a way of making ammends for making fun of her name.

I saw a smile creep across her expression at and broke out into laughter just before she did.

~~

I lost rack of time, as usual. We could have been laughing for hours or seconds. It would have felt the same to me. As cold and heartless as I tried to make myself seem, it felt good to laugh again. I had no doubt, that I was still cold and heartless, but this girl, this Elle... She inspired something in me that I had never felt before.

The laughter died, and she finally asked, "What's your name? Really?"

"Sadril."

"Sadril," she repeated. She put her hands together behind her head and our eyes locked. "What were you doing that got yourself into so much trouble?"

I averted my eyes quickly. Something stopped me from lying to her, yet I couldn't let her know the truth. A long time passed. Too long. Elle would know now that anything less than a horrifying answer would have to be an outright lie if it required this much thinking on my part. "I," I began slowly, "am an assassin." My head hung low. Never had I been so ashamed of the title, and I could not for the life of me decide why.

Her expression remained unchanged, as if waiting for that horrifying answer, or the punch line. A cool breeze blew through the woods, reminding me that I was still in the wilderness, sitting on an outstretched, worn, green blanket with the most beautiful girl I had ever met. "And?" She probed, confirming my prediction of her expecting more.

"What do you mean: 'and'? That's... all there is to it. I kill people for a living. Aren't you scared? Worried that I might kill you?" Again I asked myself why I poured my secrets out to this person who I had just met. It just felt natural. It seemed as though I had been with her forever, though it must have only been minutes.

"Do you plan to kill me?" she answered with the same aura of calm she had held through the entire conversation.

"No."

"Then I'm not worried."

Those words... stayed with me. They were not forced out of her mouth. They did not linger in the air with the stench of lies or fear. They were light, free, fearless. She had me completely convinced that she was not afraid of me. It was a humbling feeling. I had been able to scare anyone I wanted, yet she was so calm and sure of herself. Sure of me, and my supposed true intent. Hell, she could have easily convinced me that I didn't kill anyone.

Being with Elle reminded me of so much that I had lost to my life as an assassin. My age. I always saw time move by so slowly, perhaps attributed to my Cursed Blood, but I had begun to feel ancient. Elle reminded me of my true age, though. I was only twenty years old. Wow. It hit me. I was so young and yet so highly respected in my order. I was blessed with the ability to kill instinctively, yet I had so little experience. I was beginning to feel so old, entranced by the life of an assassin. Something had freed me from it.

Ardarume.

Suddenly I felt as if my head had just exploded with memory.

Ardrarume, it called again. A feminine voice, different from Elle's. The one I heard spoken in memories.

Her final moments flooded back to me. I clutched my head tightly and hunched over, as if trying to keep my skull from falling apart.

Ardarume

All the memories she passed on to me rushed back.

Ardarume. Her name, her dying breath, it haunted me.

I let out a roar of pain and Elle came to my side. She put her arm around my back and called out to me, "Sadril! Are you okay?" Her golden voice pierced through the depths of my mind, like a holy arrow of light, shattering the veil of darkness that Ardarume induced.

~~~

When I awoke, the sky had turned orange and purple with the falling of dusk. Elle sat over me, her lips pursed with concern, her hair pulled back up into a hasty bun; a few strands of her bangs still hanging loose and dangling down into my face. "What happened?" She asked abruptly.

"I... don't know," I replied. Questions raced through my own mind. Questions I would have preferred forgotten. Why did I witness Ardrarume's life when I killed her? Why was I attacked? Who attacked me?

"...Memories just keep coming back to me. It feels like a waterfall in my head..."

She ran hand across my forehead gently, pulling my silver hair away from my eyes.

Elle's shoulders slumped with both relief. Relief and concern. She sighed, her face deepened with worry.


Seeing her elegant complexion in the fading sunlight and the single tear well up and roll down her cheek, glowing orange with the setting sun, I found I was finally able to name the emotion she sparked within me...

This is some truly gripping stuff Shogun. Your sense of conveying emotion and detail just astounds me, heck I'll even admit that it makes me a bit jealous!

Great work so far!

i honestly had no idea i was such a writer. thanks a lot for your support.

Very nice Shogun! Though I must admit I liked the addition before this one more. Still, very good.

yeah it was darker, there will be some romance in this, obviously, but it will not subtract from the bloodiness to come. since their was less dialogue (none, actually) and more action in the last one, i had an easier time fleshing it out more.

more like the previous are yet to be written, though. dont worry.

im just setting the scene.

EDIT: if you could, did you like the last one more because it was a different mood, or was it written better?

Good, I really liked those action bits. And the jumping out of the window part was very well done, I hope you plan on doing more stunts like that.

Ahhh sweet Shogun! I liked it very much....mmmmmmm

Hmm, she does seem to have an odd effect on him. I don't think it's just the lack of fear, I think the fact she brought him back from the death also plays here.

Both the mood and the writing, not that I don't like the mood or the writing in your last chapter, I just like actiony bits.

what im asking is whether the writing was better... like higher quality i mean, rather than more appealing to your tastes.

i'd like to keep a consistent quality as best as i can. despite the mood swings that this story will have, i dont want actiony bits to be well detailed and described, where as other parts get left out. thats what im trying to get an idea of here.

anyway

the next addition will probably be done some time tonight. its pretty deep, i think. not back to actiony yet, but more past is revealed as well as a little insight into sadril's instability. and an average little twist.

k its done. took another step from sadrils dark side.. made him a little wimpy-ish, but perhaps that is his true self?

The remainder of dusk was lost to silence.

I sat against a nearby tree, lost in my own maze of thought while Elle had apparently gathered wood for a fire. She brought me out of my trance, and I watched her build the pieces into a neatly stacked pyramid and ignite it with a peculiar spell. A fiery snake slithered from her hands cupped together just inches from the kindling. It twisted and twirled casting lashes of fire upon the wood until it completely comnsumed it.

She stared intently at the fire with emotionless eyes, and I stared at her. I was unable to tear myself away, watching as she clearly pondered on a pressing issue; admiring how strikingly the flame pronounced her features. The darkening ambience of light contrasted with the glow of the flame on her grey-blue skin, as if the two fought for control over such a high stake; light and darkenss... She must have felt my gaze baring down upon her, or simply seen me out of the corner of her eye, for she turned her head towards me and shot me a smile warmer than the fire she brought to life.

It was the last thing I remembered before dozing off for the night. The image of her stayed with me through my slumber, as it was more than welcome to.

~~

I slowly and wearily opened my eyes. Oddly, I saw the same blinding light that I had witnessed when I was first awaken from death by the heavenly water days ago. I felt a sudden pain in my chest, several points of pain in fact. Sudden, but at the same time they felt as if they were always there, I had only forgetten about them. Pulsing, throbbing pains that dug deep; and another, in the back of my right leg. I was no longer on a blanket, instead I felt as if lied in ice soaking through my back. Dew.

No.... A realization began to dawn on me. A realization so sickening, I began to feel nauseous.

It can't be...

Before I could clearly voice the conclusion in my own head, I heard a familiar, distant crunching of leaves. It grew louder, the sound moving closer. Not just familiar. I had heard it once before.

This is not happening.

My heart sank. I felt betrayed by my own imagination. Such a cruel trick it played on me, giving me such glorified bliss then severing my tie to it.

This can't be. Wake up, Sadril! Wake up next to Elle, you fool!

I recognized it clearly now, without any doubt in my mind. The very same steps taken towards me in what I thought were my final breaths approached once more. I closed my eyes, blotching out the sun with the blackness of my eyelids, but the crunching of leaves did not cease. I could see their feet. Dark, shapeless limbs shattering the brittle structures of each browning leaf they trampled under foot.

Step. Crunch...

Why?

Step. Crunch...

How?!

The sound grew until it became a distorted mass of noise. Not a scream like last time. No. Instead the distortion was caused by more pairs of feet joining the original, making each suspenseful footstep blur with the rest into a single horrifying roar. They came from all directions, their focus on me. The blazing cacophony crushed my spirit. My hope. My happiness drained away, as I'm sure the color from my Dunmeri face did as well.

Finally, they stopped at my sides, above my head, below my feet, and I once more tried opening my eyes. People... Monsters garbed in black with bows strung over their shoulders and emptied quivers across their backs surrounded me. The only one who dared show his face to me was an Imperial man. A man with greying black hair reaching out in all directions, trying to get away from his terrifying features. Namely, his eyes, as silver and distant as the high moon. He smiled a crooked smile, so icy cold it froze the blood in my veins. He smiled at the hopelessness of his quarry, of me, as he brought a black leather boot down on top of an arrow embedded in my chest.

I heard screaming. It was not Ardarume's, but my own. The man's foot leisurely forced one of the arrows deeper into my chest cavity. I felt it tearing through any matter of tissue inside me. My breathing grew shallower as the bottom of the Imperial's foot inched closer to my body. The arrow pressed against the interior of my shoulder blade and scraped wretchedly across it. I did not only feel it, but I heard the arrowhead grinding away at my bone like a Khajit's claw across slate.

I screamed louder but found I could not move.

Tha man. The demon. The monster. The god of all my suffering put more of his weight on his leg until the arrow, with no more tissue to shred and no cartilage weak enough to penetrate, snapped inside of me. I felt my lungs become littered with splinters as he did this to both of the arrows in my chest. The projectiles were not made of any humane steel or iron, but rather of ancient wood, grown black as night and just as vengeful in its age.

My screams began to grow muffled by the blood flowing into my mouth. The darkness encroached inward on my vision as I had grown accustomed to. I did not resist its pull this time, but rather embraced it. Each gasp brought sizzling embers into my body, and each sigh expelled blood with the redness boiled out of it leaving only a black resin on my lips. Death would save me from the pain that much quicker...

The brutish, militiristic Sadril that resided in my head with the others would not go so quietly with this decision of mine. "Are you going to give into unconciousness again?" He asked condescendingly. "Poor poor Sadril," he mocked, adding an aching head to my extending list of pain, "Everytime you get hit with some silly little arrow you go down for the count!" He yelled. The others, the teenage girl-crazed Sadril, the cold calculating Sadril, the wise riddle spinning Sadril, they all remained silent, ashamed of the fault they shared.

Silence passed for a moment, then I felt like I was sinking. The hair-thin thread I suddenly clung to, suspending me above the murky colorless pool of death, began to slip between my fingers. I looked down and saw myself in the reflection of the darkness, a paralyzingly fearful expression plastered across my face. Above me, atop the cliff from which I dangled, stood the merciful Sadril of strength and honor.

"You're weak!" He screamed, louder than that of the previous painfully honest Sadril.

"No I'm not!" I yelled back, slipping ever closer towards the void.

"You're a damnable coward!" Sadril shouted, "You run from pain and suffering until you can run no longer run, then you just give up and die!"

"I do not!" I exclaimed futilely as I dropped closer still to being consumed.

"Instead of standing up to the people who may be stronger than you, you simply do their bidding. You're no better than a dog, taking orders and fetching papers! Taking the lives of innocents!"

"No..." I replied, in a less confident, weaker voice.

I held the string supporting me by only my thumb and forefinger, with mere inches of slack left to slip down, my next loss of ground would surely be my last.

"You gutless scum, you couldn't even protect your own sister!"

"DIE!" I cried.

I clenched my fist, grasping the final length left on my lifeline, and opened my eyes wide. An uncontrollable anger bubbled over inside my head as I regained my awareness and finally picked the moon-gazed man out from a line up of those I feared from my forgotten memories.

My grip, in reality, did not clutch thread of any sort. In its stead was the man's leg, draped in black cloth, resting triumphantly on my chest that was in my grasp. Blood drenched my fingers and dripped down his leg from where my nails had punctured him as I gave him a primal, murderous look.

His smile widened and his eyes revealed the joy my anger gave him.

My fist tightened until at least half of the length of my fingers disappeared into his flesh. Growing tired of being stepped on, I rolled to my left, not loosening my grip. He fell over, as any normal person would, though his daunting smile remained immortal. It begged me to take his life.

I obliged.

I released his leg, lept upon and straddled him, my knees pinning his arms down. I wrapped both my hands around his throat and slowly tightened them. He will die the slow death he tried to impose on me.

My burning lungs, my bleeding chest, they all no longer mattered to me. I was blind with rage and wanted only to see the death of the moon-gazed man. I wanted that terrible smirk to disappear from his features. My inferno of hatred fueled further by that thought, I squeezed harder but his smile only widened. Frustrated, I brought my right leg back and began kneeing him in the stomach with all the strength I could muster. I felt pockets of air being forced out from under my grip with each blow after gruesome blow to his gut. A slight hum began to irritate the air, as if my anger reverberated and shook Nirn.

Though through all this brutality that would have killed a lesser man, he opened his mouth, and appeared to laugh, though what escaped his lips was no hideous howl. Instead, straining to hear past the buzz of fury that began to swarm about the entire scene, I could make out the sound of him struggling for air. I could have smiled and listened to the sound of his glorious suffering for hours. I leaned in closer to hear past the incessant static that I could neither explain nor acknowledge, and smiled a terrible destructive grin.

His anguish made me feel so much more powerful, but with the power came the droning noise that drowned out the painful sound I was growing to enjoy. I moved my ear closer still to his laughing mouth, only to discover what was horribly wrong.

I could almost pick out the voice behind the man's battle for air. This struck me as odd, for as close as an encounter I had had with the moon-gazed being in the past, I never heard his voice. I listened harder, trying to hear past the persistant monotonous tone around me. This time I was listening not for pleasure, but for knowledge. I had to know whose voice the struggling belonged to. Though, even as my ear was less than an inch from his mouth, it never crossed my mind to loosen my grip on his throat.

That is, until I recalled the name that belonged to the echo of the voice behind his fight for air.


Elle

~~

T'is a frightful feeling when a man comprehends that there is an off chance that he is unknowingly strangling the woman whom he thinks he is in love with, even if that woman was from a dream. It is so frightful, that it scared me into loosening my grip ever-so-slightly on the man who I hated with so much passion. I heard Elle again. Rather than struggling for breath though, she managed to gain a taste of the fresh air from under my barely eased clasp. However slight, the sound of her gasp brought the coming of two things:

The first being the buzzing that felt ready to obliterate me dissipitated with my anger; which was replaced by a vivid fear of what I may have done; of who I may have actually been strangling.

The second being that my location on the edge of the treeline where I was thought to had been slain was sucked out from under and around me. The entire world was pulled down the moon-gazed man's throat like a fabric painting being pulled through a hole in the wall behind it. I was left with only darkness through which the sound of Elle's gasp resounded brilliantly, and a now meaningless person under me.

However, with the vanishing of the world came the morphing of the man I had originally intended to choke. The arms that my knees held down and the throat that my grip still clung tightly to no longer belonged to the moon-gazed man. Instead, pinned helplessly beneath me, pulling hard for air, eyes tearing up, was the girl of my dreams.

My surroundings, whether they were dreamt or real, faded back in from blackness. The green blanket I once rested on, the smoldering fire, everything was how it was before the last time I slept. With the exception of the fact that I was half strangling Elle, rather than verbally sparring with her.

Everything I thought I knew about reality shattered at that moment. I was unsure whether I was dreaming or awake or awake and simply hallucinating. Realizing that I was now in control of myself and was still choking Elle, I quickly withdrew my hands from her and scrambled to get off of her.

Even as I did, I still forced myself to get further away, wrinkling the blanket as I clumsily stood and backed away from her. I tripped over my own feet and fell backwards, hitting my head against the trunk of a tree. My vision blurred and I thought I might black out again before the words of the militiristic Sadril rang through my head.

I regained myself and looked down at my hands, asking myself if I had actually done what I thought I did. They trembled violently when I was struck by yet another image which I preferred to have not been.

My right hand was stained with blood, as it was during my struggle with the moon-gazed man. This blood was Dunmeri, though, not Imperial. My focus shifted from my hands, to the shaken girl who sat against a tree across from me. Her left arm poured blood from several deep claw marks in it... Caused by me.

She clutched it with her other arm, and with both she put pressure on her stomach. I... Must have kneed her as well...

And of course, the ashen skin of throat was darkened with irritation, caused by my stranglehold on her. She must have seen me looking her over as she started to explain in a shaken, hoarse, yet unbelievably fearless voice, "I.. I was checking y-your wounds while you slept...

"You were peaceful until..." she trailed off, losing confidence for a moment. "Until I tried to repl--" She swallowed hard. I could tell that it was painful to do so from what damage I must have caused to her trachea. "Replace your bandages. I put pressure on it to hold the cloth in place while I wrapped it."

The pressure on my chest. That man's boot pressing down...

She swallowed again, having to supress a cough this time. "When you..." once more she trailed off.

I must have grabbed her arm as I did that man's leg.

She leaned forward and crawled across the outstretched blanket toward me, blood dripping from her fingertips onto the green fabric. The thought that I had inflicted such a wound to her made me cringe and feel sick to my stomach. "I know it wasn't you, Sad--"

"Don't come any closer!" I shouted, pulling my hands and legs in close to me, afraid that they might again commit a heinous act without me knowing. She replied only with her saddened ruby eyes, denied of their sole want to be close to me. It seemed I was more panicked than she was.

Elle stopped aproaching and, with a grave expression, sat not six feet from me. She looked at me with pity and concern. "Sadril..." she finished quietly. Even with her voice torn by trauma, it still maintained some of its serene beauty...

Wow... Now that was a good one! That one is now my favorite, forget jumping out of the window, this one takes the cake!

And as for your previous question, if I was neutral as to which addition I liked more, I would say they were both equal. But since I like your action scenes, I like the first one more, see what I mean?

Wild stuff... what is dream and what is real? Difficult times for the paranoid.

zelda: yeah i got it now. thanks.

canis: exactly what i was trying to convey

SGM! Dang, that must've been painful. Not just finding out you've just tried to kill the wrong person, but also the arrow being pushed inwards. Gruesome.

SGM?

Story Good More. It's a compliment.

I couldn't bring myself to look at her, though I could sense her eyes watching over me.

We simply waited in silence for the other to do something. Anything. Elle sat on her knees not six feet away from me, hands resting on her thighs. With a light breeze, I caught a stronger scent of blood; a harsh reminder what I did to her arm. I looked up slowly, as if any sudden movements might frighten her, just far enough to where I could see her wound. Uncountable streams of red flowed down her arm, seperating and rejoining until they finally dripped off her fingertips.

I surveyed my surroundings for the first time since I had fully waken up from death the day before. I saw a bag of supplies conveniently located right next to the tree I had backed against in my frightened retreat. I lifted the bag and brought it in front of me and gently dug through. I pulled out one of many flasks of water as well as what appeared to be left of any bandages that I had not already gone through. Of course I was only concerned with helping Elle and was thusly unaware that I was still half-wrapped in bandages myself before I subconciously attacked her.

"Come here," I said grimly, leaning forward and unraveling the white cloth. She obeyed and closed the distance between us until she was directly in front of me. "Give me your arm," I ordered again in the same tone. Halfway through the command her left arm was extended in front of me, trembling not from fear but from loss of blood. I pulled the cork cap off the flask, reached out and held her wrist to steady her arm. She seemed relaxed by my touch and stopped quivering.

I poured half the content of the flask over her arm. The water was almost as clear as I had imagined it in my dreams, but not quite invisible, nor did a heavenly mist rise from it. It did, however, work just fine for washing the blood away leaving only the five snake-like gashes visible. I reached for the dressing, but she protested and pointed to the bag of supplies next to me, "Grab the folded parchment out of there."

I dug through the burlap sack once more. Finding several items that could pass as folded parchment, I grabbed one at random and unfolded it with the hand that was not steadying her arm. Contained in it was a moist, dark green powder with such an aroma that it burned my able sense of smell.

I assumed it was the object Elle had in mind, and that I was doing the right thing by dabbing my fingers in it, then smeering them over her lacerations for she protested no further; except with a breath taken through her teeth, from the pain, I presumed.

Her arm began shaking again as I wrapped it in gauze, but upon noticing I realized it was my own arm that shook like a leaf. I didn't know why I trembled, or rather didn't want to admit it. But had I looked inside myself I would have found it was probably because I had never been this close to a woman before. I spent so many of my twenty years killing when I should have been chasing down tavernmaids like a normal lad.

I had never felt this way for a woman before.

"Are you okay?" Elle asked, noticing my nervousness.

"No," I replied jaggedly as I finished wrapping her arm.

"Why?"

I put my hand to my head, trying to center myself, "I just tried to kill you," As if that needed to be said. A silence fell between us, "Aren't you afraid of me?"

Another lull.

"You weren't in your right mind. I know yo--"

"How do you know?!" I interrupted harshly, removing my hand from my head and slamming it against the ground. Leaves scattered from the blast. "All you know about me is that I kill people! What if I don't even have a right mind?!"

Her head dropped, dark hair falling loose, covering her features. "Don't say that," she whispered.

"How do you know?!" I was yelling, louder and with more anger than I would have liked to, "I could be planning to murder you and you wouldn't even know it!"

"Don't..." she repeated weakly.

What makes you think otherwise?!" I interjected again as I stood up.

"Be--Because... I..."

I walked off before she could finish. Even if she did, I wouldn't have been able to hear her over the rustling leaves of Frostfall being kicked up angrilly under my bare feet. Bare feet? She must have removed my shoes in my time of dying to make me more comfortable... I didn't care though. I just kept walking away and she did not pursue me.

The midday sun bared down through the branches stripped of their green children. My sword, I realized was not even with me. Nor my shirt or cloak for that matter. I was simply a Dunmer and a pair of pants. They were not even the tight black leather pants most assassins wore, but flowing, thin, black cloth. They were louder and more visible than their leather counterpart, but much easier to move in; that's how I justified them, anyway.

I inspected my chest, somehow freed of bandaging, as I walked. The wounds in my chest and shoulder, four in total, had almost healed, though I couldn't decide to attest it to my own unnatural healing ability, or to Elle's soft, careful hands.

~~

I walked for some time before I realized I had begun to lose track of time as I used to; odd how the flow of it eluded me in the absense of Elle. I stumbled across a small stream. Stumbled, as in walked halfway across before even realizing my legs were wet up to my knees. I looked down at the water and was reminded of how many things I let slip by me in life. My adolescent years were almost gone, yet all I had to show for them was a taste for killing. I had abandoned my mother as my father did, though my reasons for leaving were different. My father disappeared for that is how he was; never staying in any one place for long. It was his nature to be untrackable. I left out of shame.

My sister. I let her die.

I was reminded of the moon-gazed man and of my hatred for him. Out of frustration, not just for the man, but for everything, how I wasted my life, my sister, I kicked at the water moving past my feet. "Damn you!" I cried, striking out at it more, throwing a tantrum like an infant. Though no matter how much I thrashed at it, it still fell back into place and continued to move without me.

I breathed heavily, exhausted by my futile act, and surrendered to sitting in the stream. The water felt nice on my back and reminded me of Elle, whose smile I could not remove from my mind.

Through the sound of water splashing over my shoulders, my ears, hyper-sensitive like the rest of my senses, picked up a foreign voice in the distance. "Did you hear that?" I thought maybe it was the water that spoke the words; it wouldn't have surprised me in light of recent events.

But another unkown voice replied, "Hear what?"

That is definitely not the water talking.

"I heard something by the stream." A Bosmer The other voice did not reply, but instead I heard two sets of feet moving towards me from the North, on the other side of the stream from where I had entered.

My instincts took hold. I felt the freezing grip of an assassin latch on to all of my joints and all of my limbs and move them accordingly. I stood and lightly, without removing my feet from the water, trudged towards the voices until I reached the short bank. I stepped up on land, and took four completely silent steps towards the nearest tree and leaned against it so the tree was between me and the two men.

They got closer. So close that I would have picked the wrong tree had they been more thourough in their investigation; one, the Bosmer went around the left side of the tree, the other, Breton, cricled the right. They both stopped at the edge of the stream, right in front of me, and looked up and down it.

They were both dressed in the same black outfit as the beings who had managed to 'kill' me, save for their cloth masks which were lowered and hung liimply around their necks. They also had similar bows, made of the same pitch black wood, as was their ammo. I doubted that these were two of the three people who actually loosed the very arrows that struck me, but I was sure they were part of the organization responsible for it.

"Nothin," the Breton stated glumly. The icy murderous grip urged me so forcefully to snap his neck, but I resisted for fear that I would have another episode like that with Ardarume. "What are we lookin' for again?"

The Bosmer replied, "A young Dunmer woman possibly with that guy we were shooting at a few days ago."

"Isn't he dead?" The Breton asked.

"When the woman was spotted in the area, they sent a party to check on his corpse, but what they found were four of our bloodied arrows, and no body."

"Well shouldn't we have checked him before we left him there for the wolves?"

"Yeah that was Jeande's job. They killed him for neglectin' his duty."

"Yeesh," the Breton shuddered.

They both turned around to continue on their patrol. Fortunately, I had the foresight to move to the other side of the tree, putting it between myself and the stream. In the same fashion that they had arrived, the two men walked right past me.

Once they were barely out of earshot I circled the tree, leapt over the stream, and began sprinting towards Elle's camp.

That's when things got worse.

~~

Running, as I was trained, is great for closing distance but if it cannot be done silently, like across ground littered with leaves, and cannot be done out of sight, like in the middle of day, in a forest with no leaves except the ocean of them on the ground, then it has little merrit for avoiding the attention of others. Getting to Elle before the search parties did--assuming there was more than one--was the only thing that drove me to sprint at my fastest; which was, as I previously mentioned, abnormally fast.

I felt kind of awkward running through the forest clothed only in a pair of pants. Though, I pushed it to the back of my mind when I managed to run square into a group of five or so black archers. They looked more menacing than the two at the river, with their faces covered and their fancy bows pointed at me as I jumped just over their heads in their neat formation.

Two of the smarter of the five increased their odds of hitting me by waiting until I was on the ground before firing. Though right when I touched down, I cut right, avoiding the shots and kicking up a cover of browned leaves and dirt as I went.

I left the archers behind me, though a horn blew through the woods from where I had left them. A warning call. Finally, after moments of sprinting and without anymore incidents, I reached Elle's camp to find that it had not yet been reached by the enemy.

Nor had it changed at all, for that matter. I was surprised to find that she was sitting in the same position, head still hung low, hair still covering her face. "Elle," her named flowed from my mouth as if it yearned to be spoken, "We gotta go."

She looked up with a perplexed look on her face, "What?" she asked with a remaining hint of despair from our previous conversation.

I steeped towards her, put a hand under her right arm, and forcefully lifted her to her feet, "We've got to get out of here right now," I said again sternly.

"I don't want to leave," she replied, now with anger on the edge of her voice.

"Too bad," I said with slight frustration. I pulled the drawstring on the burlap sack and slung it over my back, thinking that we may need the supplies.

"What is going on?" she asked in a raised voice.

I took a large step towards her, and hushed her, my face inches from hers. "People are out here looking to kill you and me," I informed her in a quieted voice. Her ruby eyes widened and a bit of color faded from her face. "Where is my sword?" She pointed at the tree the sack had sat next to. Behind it, my katana leaned. I took it up and slipped it under my belt.

"Let's go," I demanded as I grabbed her hand and pulled her behind me. She did not protest.

We walked in a rushed fashion east, towards Skingrad, but dared not run. I figured our enemies were coming from the nearest city, Kvatch just south of our location, to the north there was little but forest, and west lead to the ocean so east was our best bet. I kept my head on a swivel, something deep in the pit of my heart warned me of danger getting closer. It tried to weigh me down more than our bag of supplies did, but I pressed on, keeping only Elle's safety on my mind.

I sqeezed her hand tighter and quickened our pace, feeling each rock and twig dig into my bare feet. Eventually, I could hear the men approaching us from almost all directions. Again my heart sank and warned me that my final moments were drawing nearer.

The crunching of leaves had become recently easily associated with impending doom. Now I heard the noise all through the forest which certainly did not help the doomed mood I was put in. I stopped, we stopped, so I could gather my thoughts.

How well they have tracked us; these are no ordinary assassins. They're much more advanced and greater in number than those of the Dark Brotherhood.

We were trapped, I concluded. All of these men I had encountered were armed with bows and head pinpoint accuracy. If that stayed true for the ones closing in, then Elle and I would surely die in a rain of black arrows before I had a chance to draw my sword. For the first time I looked at Elle's equipment rather than her soft features, hoping perhaps that she carried an arsenal of bows and arrows on her that I had not noticed before.

I had grown to think of her as a ranger of sorts, but her clothing suggested otherwise. She wore a very plain, very poor skirt, worn drab with wear, and an equally unnoticable blouse. She looked to have been a city woman yet we met in the wilderness. It pained me to think that I would be unable to admire her further.

I ignored the thought, and turned my concentration to the situation at hand. The circle of archers surrounding us had grown close enough that Elle, with her unaided ear, could make out the dull roar of their march. She tugged at my hand, but my gaze would not be diverted from the terrible thing I saw, or rather, didn't see.

Both Elle and I were fooled into thinking this army, as the number of them had been built up by my pessimistic attitude, of dark archers were further off and that their sound must have simply carried very far through the desolate woods. In contradiction to this idea, I could make out in the very near distance, nearer than the sound might have suggested, the odd sight of leaves being thrown into the air and settling again. It were as if a giant wall of wind was slowly approaching us from all sides, though I knew what this phenomenon was really being caused by.

The wall of wind ceased its approach. The noise, the leaves, the hum of danger suddenly subsided.

It was deathly quiet.

Wow, you've been really popping these updates out quickly. These aren't even short ones either! It's very impressive.

Keep it up, man. I'm liking this!

yeah thanks. i'm really not planning as i go though... its odd.

like for example, it was originally written that sadril snapped the bretons neck, but i forgot that the way i want things to happen, he would have had another episode like with ardarume... which would reveal much more of the plot than i have developed as of yet

Wow this is an extremely good story. Are you a serious writer? You're better than the ones working on Oblivion.

Hey, it's a good thing you caught that thing about killing the Breton. At least for me, gross inconsistencies tend to ruin stories.

I think we have another postmachine here, folks. Good work!

So, I guess there won't be any more of this story.

Well it seems that currently Shogun hasn't been able to visit our site lately. The only reason I could see him doing that is either computer troubles or just that things at home are really busy.

I'm sure he'll eventually make his way back to the forums and hopefully continue this story. It would be great to see this one continue.

i am surprised to see this remains on the front page.

im afraid my absence is not defined by either troubles of the computer nor busy-ness of life.

my leave is one of laziness and carelessness.

the story will continue, but i cannot say when for certain.

criticism is sure to boost my motivation though

Criticism huh? Hm...It's a good story, but the lack of further chapters keeps it from living up to it's potential. I think you could make it allot better if there was more quantity to it.

so... the only thing wrong with it is there is not enough of it?

well not the only thing... but the biggest problem i presume? there is never enough of a good thing. like songs. i hate it when a band does a song that sends chills down your spine, but its like 2 minutes long.... like eleanor rigby....

i will add more hopefully in the coming week.

Well I'm sure there are a few other things wrong with it as is always the case but I'm not that good at critisizing stories, especially those I like. Give me a game and I could critisize the hell out of it. I could explain every reason why I find Oblivion to be a disapointment, but stories are different.