The Dragon's Daughter: Celandine's Tale (Chapter One)

• Posted by Arthur Keen November 5, 2011 - 763 views

  "Miss Celandine..."

  "Cel," I rather cruelly cut off the smooth-tongued Redguard, fixing him with a stare that from any other - to any other - would speak of darkness and murder most foul. Fortunately, we are friends, insofar as one in my position might accept such a relationship with one in his. No doubt this sounds pompous, and arrogant? You're probably right. But the truth is, this man is my bodyguard. He knows his place as well as he knows mine.

  And really, is asking him to call me by my androgynous nickname such a bad thing?

  "Right," he responds with an inclination of his head, a wide and startlingly white grin searing past the careless growth of coarse stubble that is busily claiming his handsome face. "Whatever my lady wishes, she'll have. Unless she wishes to remain in this, ah," he pauses to clear his throat, reaching up to flick the edge of his thumb against his nose - an unmissably wry gesture, "'Pox-ridden, ice-infested hellhole'."

  My eyes flicker downward, because I can't suppress a smirk, and the lowborn oaf knows it.

  "I believe those were your words, milady?" He adds, practically glistening with self-satisfied mirth.

  I return his good humour with a distant snarl as I raise my stare to meet his once more, saying nothing but maintaining a level gaze until he looks away; expressing an air of sheepishness I feel certain he cannot truthfully feel. But this is it, the game we play, and have played since first he broke through my despondence during our seemingly endless trip through the scorching desert of Hammerfell. I may not be the most pleasant person upon the face of Nirn, but I am an honest soul - and I express my prejudices in kind.

  Elias has served my father previously, as the uncommon form of military grunt who proves useful in more situations than the beheading of the opposition's helpless peasantry. I'll concede now, for the record, that in battle he possesses the manner of elegance that I admire in men, as wound about with brutality as his style may otherwise be. But more than this, he has a quick wit and an adaptability that few mercenaries bother to display; almost as though he can be at once murderer and man, a very human form of what otherwise amounts to an atronach clad in terrestrial garb. I suppose that's admirable enough.

  Still, he did not win me over until he saved my life. And twice, at that.

  The first time I barely remember, so fixated was I upon proving myself in battle. Flourishing the long, gently curved blade handed down by my eldest sibling, I charged forth to meet the tanned band of creatures before us - some form of desertbound goblin, I believe, though it matters not. Regardless, I was beyond my depth, a fact I'll concede only now that the wake of circumstance has delivered the knell of truth. A twisting lunge carried me too far and too deep, and as my ensorcelled steel tasted rank flesh, I was half-flung and half-pulled into a stumble that presented my either flank to the primitive creature's likeminded companions.

  It takes no real wisdom to know how best to act in such circumstance, and barely did I register their ecstatic cries when I found myself saved so readily that I still cannot fully recall the strokes therein. Elias stepped once, his hip twisting as he deflected a notched axe-blade, and a second time to spring around and aside, coming up at my left with his chainmail ringlets catching a rusty dagger's thrust.

  Would I have died there? No. I don't believe so, despite the cajoling of the men. The second time...

  Ah, me, the second time. Before I tell of this, I should make clear why we have walked the path we have. I told thee already, I think, that I travel in search of a purpose - ostensibly to ease the frustrations of my father, that his wayward daughter become a woman worthy of Wayrest's courting. Despatched to a series of manses and palaces throughout the land, I was to grow heedful in the manners and mores of the game my family has ever played. Astute, and proper, should I be. But he gambled too heavy upon the force of my will.

  Where there are courtly motions, there are present also the ministrations of warrior and of mage. Unable to travel the former path due to my circumstance of birth, and unable to hide my secretive studies too much longer, I have turned my attentions to the twisting path of Tamriel's abiding magicks. I'll admit, the stories excite me, that bedtime troll of Jagar Tharn became in my mind a dark anti-hero; playing his own game, far more dangerous and delightful than that of the Venande and our noble brethren. Evil he may have been, that is a matter for the history books and the scholars who pore upon them, but...

  I don't know. Perhaps I'm intrigued by power, and see in the art of magecraft a steep, upward path. Certainly, the pale enchantment upon my inherited blade causes as much a surge in my breast as the keening slice of its razor's edge. Whatever the reason, I have turned my courtly pilgrimage into a journey of self-discovery quite unlike that intended by my father, though as we made our way through Hammerfell I found it increasingly hard - forced to sneak about in the shadows like some common thief, lurking in the background of mine own life.

  I'm proud, you must realise this by now. And I will not skulk. I will not live barred by the rules of another.

  I did not find my way until we entered the province of Cyrodiil. Oh, such an afflicted place it is now, lost to politicking, to backstabbing and even the similar stabbing to open and unguarded face. Those Imperial fools have finally lost their ironclad grip upon this country, and nowhere is it more apparent than in their homeland, where it is - I hear tell - much akin to the land it threatened to become during the Oblivion Crisis. The wilds are flooded by vagrants and savages, wild beasts and evils still wilder for their manly form. At this time, Elias beheld in me the spoiled brat that perhaps I am, upturned nose and downturned mouth whilst within the unpleasant company of her sweat-soaked escort. And I saw him...

  Well, I saw him for what he is. On the outside, I mean. A thug. A brigand. Hired muscle.

  He found me during a night-time excursion from the wine-soaked residue of Skingrad, basking in moonlight before the violent, blood-curdling roars of a native bear. With the Mages' Guild noticeable for its absence, and my illicit studies thus thwarted, I had set out in search of a rumoured coven of 'witches' - incidentally, why does that term still exist? Only in a man's world would it, and can it - and quickly fallen foul of the fauna. When the Redguard found me, I already bore a thick and pulsating wound about my midriff.

  He struck as quickly as he had upon the much smaller menace in his own homeland, covering the moist grasses in bounding springs of those honed legs before lashing out once, twice, and thrice! I've mentioned his prowess in battle, and to date I have seen no better example; power and beauty in one package, it was, as arcs of knotted crimson sprayed toward the darkened skies, catching in the glow of a million stars. My breath caught, my knees weakened, though I can and will maintain it was - for the most - to blame upon my weakened state. This, however, does nothing to diminish the spectacle. Elias may be illborn, but he was a hero that night.

  And I have never felt smaller or more pathetic. It got worse, from there, for this was the first time that I experienced the- pardon me. I struggle with that to call them. In light of the passing day, I shall call them the visions... and at least to my memory, this was their inception. If I had been to those tortured dreamscapes before, then it must lie buried deep within the most arcane vestiges of my mind. And arcane I mean - for if there really is much magic dormant within me, the sights I have seen through closèd eye may be confirmation.

  Stand by, as I say it simply; for many months, I have dreamed of dragons.

  Think me a foolish child if thou will't, but these are no mere dullard's fevered and desperate attempts at imagining something better, something more. In such forms as I have seen them, these beasts are beyond all mortal ken, as majestic as they are slavering - as terrible as they are beautiful. I believe myself strong in will, as forthright and courageous as any person may be, but I have never been so afraid. And yet...

  No. Afraid is not the word. I was gripped by the darkest terror, as though Mehrunes Dagon himself were thrust close to mine face, his hideous countenance seizing my own in a deathly embrace. I have never felt so violated, so completely certain that all that I am is woefully inadequate. Ill-prepared, even, for what lies before me. Because when I call this first instance a dream, I mean it only in the most tenuous sense; and what would follow over many months hence I have come to term visions, because that is what they were, and what they are.

  It's even what they have proved to be. Mark me well, stranger, when I tell thee that. I speak as truly as any noble-born daughter ever did, with all the care and attentiveness to my words that my departed mother would wish me to have, alongside the father from whom I am now so far divorced that I--

  I move too far ahead. Where was I? Ah, Elias...

  Elias, who held me as I shivered and moaned like a little girl, who saw me broken down to nothing both physically and emotionally. I still hate him for it; but as I looked up the next morning and saw him passed out beside my bed, his ridiculous mouth lolled open and a line of spittle emerging from one dark corner, I realized that this was a man whom I would see beside me until whatever end he deemed necessary. Would he be here if my father paid him not? No. But that makes him no less worthy of my respect, and beneath all that I portray, removed from the playful insults of friends, know that I consider him that - to the last.

  A friend. My friend.

  Akatosh knows there have been precious few I term thus. Now, as I sit here attempting to tell you why I am so cold, I wonder that I shall make many more. I've found my destiny, but where, you ask, and how? Within the Guild of Mages, perhaps, in some rotten nook of Cyrodiil? Allow me to huddle deeper within this meagre cloak before I tell you how we turned northward, how the march of the chain-and-leather-clad column brought myself - and my bitterly-won painted friend - to our first taste of the chill that would encompass us.

  To Bruma, and all that therein lies embodied.