AEsob 26 Posted April 9, 2016 (edited) "Prologue" 3E 427 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Do not believe madness to be a curse mortal, for some it is the greatest of blessings, of bitter mercy perhaps, but mercy nonetheless" – Sheogorath, the Madgod --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am a warlord. No, not a warlord, I am THE Warlord. I am the reincarnation of the Chimeri warlord Lord Indoril Nerevar. The first of the Ordinators rushed me head on, stupid fellow, thought he could win. I sidestepped, used his momentum against him. He fell, face first. I drove my sword into his arse, and pulled upwards. The dark sword cut through his armour, his spine and his innards as if they were made of cotton. Through the blistering heat and blinding ash, the imperial taller than a dunmer, one red eye and the other grey, a Mohawk on his head and a scarf hiding half of his face driving a sword through the elite warriors trained by House Indoril. That must have been a sight to behold. The ordinator's howls demoralised his companions. If they weren't already demoralised by the skinless body I was dragging through the fodaya. They charged. They were supposed to be masters of tactic. It was said that what they could not achieve through the mace, they achieved through guile. They had made the biggest, and the last mistakes of their lives. I cut the second one in half with a diagonal stroke. Shield, muscle, sinew, bone, bonemold...ebony made no difference. In this land of discrimination, the natives should learn something from the sharp edge of a long and straight ebony blade. As the Ordinator's guts spilled out, the one next to him diverted his attention from my sword to his dying friend. I turned to the right and punched him in his helmet with my gauntleted left fist. The bonemold of his helmet was destroyed, along with his nose and his eyes. As he fell downwards from the force of my punch, I sensed another Ordinator trying to bring his Ebony mace down on my head from behind me. He had two distinct disadvantages. One, his armour slowed him down, and two, even if he did bring his mace down on me, he wouldn't be able to kill me. Ah. It looks like I didn't explain. The point is that his ebony mace could definitely crush my head and spill all my brains all over this blasted wasteland. But that wouldn't do much. Sure, that would ruin my wonderfully soft and sublime blue robes, and since it has no buttons my light ebony armour would collect that brain fluid, the plates would smell and the leather underneath would be stained...and brain fluid gets very difficult to clean from under those ebony plates. If the blood trickles down, then my new breeches would be dirty as well. My skull and brains would repair themselves within a minute, there's nothing anyone, including me, can do about it. Ever since Divayth Fyr made me swallow that yellowish liquid that smelled as if it was made of bones and rotten meat, I can't be killed. In retrospect, it was since I caught Corpus, but then my powers were limited to shambling, screaming and having digits drop off my body only to regenerate in a short while. I can't die, they robbed me of the only solace I had in the world. Death. Like a warm, fulfilling sleep after a long day's work, it was supposed to come to me quick. Most didn't survive with their minds after a few weeks. I fought on for three months. Yagrum Bagarn, that rutting spider-legged bloated freak who calls himself the last living dwarf, he said that after a thousand years, I'd have my mind back. But Divayth never explained why I could regenerate; he had a theory that I'd caught a special strain of Corpus, prepared by my 'friend' under the mountain, just for me. I got his note too. He called himself my 'respectful servant' and 'loyal friend'. Sometimes I think I should go to Red Mountain, it isn't as if he's going to kill me, anyway. Oh wait, he even made sure that he can't kill me. But he made Corpus. Corpus killed my life, destroyed everything I had. For that, my 'respectful servant' and 'loyal friend' will pay. Anyway, back to the Ordinators and the skinless corpse. Where was I? Let's recapitulate. I had just finished cutting one in half vertically when others charged me. I cut one diagonally and his spilling guts just missed my robes, then I punched another in the face, his bonemold collapsed under my ebony gauntlet, along with his skull and facial features...then another was just behind me. I made a sweeping arc with my sword, intending to lop his head off. But since I had learnt this manoeuvre when I was shorter than the average Ordinator, meant that I grossly miscalculated the height his head would be at and simply sliced his hand off. His gauntlet cracked, and he made such a shriek that even a Cliff Racer in heat would be envious. The gauntleted hand, still bleeding, flew over my head, miraculously spared my robes and fell over in the ash before me, still twitching. The Ordinator, all heroism drained out of him, had dropped his shield and clutched the stump of his wasted arm. That injury was something no amount of magic could solve. I turned and faced him. Under the helmet that was a hideous caricature of my handsome face, I could see the fear in his eyes. Before he could draw the dagger in his boot, I stabbed him through the hand, taking special care to sever all the nerves in it and pin it to the hot, dry and dusty ground. Bonemold and gold leaf could offer little resistance against ebony. He tried to trip me with his feet. I jumped, drawing my knees up to my chest and firmly placing them on the ground in a moment. The Ordinator was bewildered, he had never seen someone so tall pull that off. "Look around you. Your friends are dead, I just sliced your hand off, and the healer is going to slice the other one off...if you survive, that is. You still want to be a hero?" "You N'wah! Cursed fetcher! You have sealed your fate, you cannot escape the righteous!" Ugh...Ordinators used to give me bad headaches...it was like they were assigned certain lines to speak and leave their brains outside the training camp. I kneeled in the ash, gripped his helmet with my left hand, and channelled my hate into my fist, and through my fist, to the Ordinator...slowly subjecting him to the immense heat, burning him alive. He screamed, over and over and over again. My nostrils were flooded with the glorious smell of melting, smouldering flesh. Dunmer have natural protection to flames, but touch spells of this magnitude are something not even an atronach can withstand. How did I learn destruction magic? I don't know myself. But one day, I saw that I could melt a septim in my hand. In a few days, and with loads of practice on priests, Ordinators and zealots, I found that I could unleash a wide variety of immensely powerful flame spells, but never frost, not even shock. The fatigue and loss of energy experienced and documented by experienced mages was something I never experienced. Since the Ordinators were dismembered and burnt alive, I decided to get back at the task at hand. The skinless corpse I was dragging had had some damage in the rough Ashlands. The face had started to bleed, and the eyeballs had already been smeared over the ashen ground. I didn't matter to me though; I just had to drag the body from here to Ald'ruhn. The sun was already enough to heat up my mostly shaved skull, especially since the somewhat spiky but ultimately low Mohawk offered little protection. My hair wasn't even close to the hideously long levels depicted by the Ordinator's masks. Like I said, they were nothing but a bad caricature. In time, I left my Mohawk as it was and instead kept on shaving both sides, although I had to trim a little whenever the hair reached past my shoulders. The skinless, faceless body I had been dragging belonged to a very vicious, slave trading Dres councillor. This particular maggot in the maggot infested piece of rotting flesh that was Morrowind politics, had come to visit his dear friend Orvas Dren. From there, he visited Molag Mar. I killed his contingent of poor excuses for bodyguards, cut the tendons in his knees and dragged him to some eggmine. Then, I flayed him alive, slowly. I let him savour the wonderful taste of pain; I had to be very careful not to destroy the skin, for it was art. And what was art if not shared with others? Once it was finished, I wrapped him, skinless and screaming, in a Guar skin. Once I had finished attaching his skin to a signpost in Molag Mar, I came back and hauled him out to deposit him in Ald'ruhn. Dead or alive did not matter. When I had started dragging him, he was still screaming. Why was I doing this? Is there an answer? Very well, I will give you one I did it because I could, just like THEY destroyed my life because they could. Just like the emperor took fancy on an orphan, had him arrested for crimes he never committed and threw him on a prison boat to a place where outsiders were less popular than the blight. Just like they took away the only people who mattered to me. Just like they deprived me of the only solace I had left...they took away death from me. They made me what I am. They had plotted, deliberated for thousands of years; they had even left guidelines for me. AE GHARTOK PADHOME CHIM AE ALTADOON Very well then, I shall be the hand of chaos and define entropy. If heaven was denied to me, I shall reach heaven through violence. Edited April 9, 2016 by AEsob Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
