Bleeding Sun - Chapter 3: Of Mystic Ghosts and Babysitting

• Posted by Lazy September 17, 2015 - Filed in TSC: Long Story - 1,024 views

  A blissful night of sleep passed. The room was still pitch dark. Little Adam was still serenely in her arms, a small trail of saliva present on the corner of his mouth, already making a circular wet stain on her sleeping clothes. A sleepy smile found its way into Sorine’s lips as she watched the infant sleep. She so desperately wished that the moment could last forever, to be in a steady anchor of humanity and security in the midst of darkness and turmoil. If only she could just hole up here until everything blew over eventually.

  But she knew she couldn’t. Sooner or later, the sense of security would fade as quickly as it had come and she would be back to square one, emotionally speaking. She mustn’t let her guard down by becoming complacent in temporary sanctuary, lest the shock of losing it became much worse. The irony in not taking shelter in shelter left a bad taste in her mouth.

  A good way of alleviating that would be preparing for the coming journey. Affirming her previous assumptions, a good night’s sleep did wonders to clear her head. As she set Adam down on the bedsprays, she made it a priority to dispose of the bodies upstairs. Properly.

  She ascended from the basement and dragged the woman’s body out of the house. Ever since her induction into the Dawnguard, she had stopped being perturbed by the smell and sight of rotting corpses, so the chore became ever so slightly easier. The sky was still red and bleak. The entire forest seemed…lifeless. The usual chittering of wildlife was absent and even the wind seemed to blow weaker than it had all her life. Had everything just died while she slept? She wasn’t exactly the most eager to find out.

  Using a conveniently placed shovel, she dug two shallow graves for the couple and smashed the dead vampire harlot’s head into red bony porridge, not even bothering to bury the rest of the body. The little things she always did to keep her mind sane As if I ever was, Sorine mentally taunted herself as she finished up burying the two poor innocents. It was sickening to think that their child would grow up never to remember them. And there was nothing he could remember them by?

  Then suddenly the color of everything desaturated into gray.

  “The man’s name is Jarim and the woman, Eren.”

  She gasped aloud upon hearing the abrupt voice coming from beside her. Rapidly turning around and readying the shovel like a spear out of instinct, the Breton paled when she saw a figure materialize next to her, the air-no, the space around him contorting and puckering. The figure revealed himself to be a tall elf, most probably an Altmer, wearing honestly tacky robes with a hood covering his hair. Questions rang in her mind. Who or what is he? Is he a ghost? An interdimensional wanderer? Why is everything gray? Had time stopped?

  “Hold your questions for a moment, survivor,” he replied smoothly, as if reading her mind. “There is no time to waste. Your survival has brought forth an unforeseen course of events. As it stands, the fate of the world falls to you now.” Sorine’s body tensed. The fate of the world fell…to her? So she had been left alive for a reason? To say that the news was troubling for her was putting it lightly. She didn’t want to be a hero! Both Adam’s safety and her own were enough burdens for her minds at the moment! She wanted to outwardly protest against this, but once again he was one step ahead of her.

  “I understand the news may be a bit hard to swallow,” she could’ve sworn she saw the barest hint of a smile on his face, but she said nothing and let him continue. “As such, we will not rush in the delivery of predetermined events. Go to the Nordic ruin of Forelhost, located not far due west from here. There, another part of your destiny shall unfold, heralded by raven hair.”

  When he finished, there was an awkward silence.

  “You may voice any of your concerns now.”

  “What do you mean it’s my destiny to save the world?!" she furiously asked the mysterious elf, practically screaming the query at him. He didn't seem perturbed by her anger and she didn't seem to care. "Surviving in the world is getting hard enough, now I have to save it? Is it still possible? And who are you to come and see my future like some…some street mystic?”

  He found the last question to be the easiest to approach. “You mustn’t misunderstand. The Psijic Order does not interact with anyone so lightly, especially when concerning one’s future.” Sorine was stunned speechless by his answer. The Psijic Order. That was a name full of mystery and legends, but she knew that the order had power. They possessed true control over magicka and natural forces. Masters of the lost art of Mysticism, they were even more secluded than any vampire clan she knew of and they rarely interacted with outsiders at all. She realized then that what he said before must have bore some truth. To deny the word of a Psijic was foolish. Slowly, but surely, her temper died down.

  The Psijic monk continued. “It is beyond the Order why it is you, specifically, that would be named savior, when other survivors are far from non-existent. But divination is never an exact art. Such has been unveiled and so it shall transpire. To resist the flow of time is a fool’s errand.” A lump in her chest faded when she heard that she wasn’t the only survivor. Maybe if she could find and organize them, she could form a new Dawnguard…

  “Anywho, my work here as a messenger is done. Destiny ordains that you will go to Forelhost. Shall you do so?”

  “I…Yes, I will.” It wasn’t hard to agree. What did she have to lose? Besides, she now had a destination whereas previously, she had just been wandering aimlessly.

  The smile confined in his lips broke out. “The Order expects much from you, craftswoman. You and you alone will be the one to return sunlight to this world. That’s what the Ritemaster said, anyway. Now, off with you and remember that we will be watching your next move closely. Good luck.” With that, the mysterious monk’s form as well as the space around him started to distort uncontrollably and his entire body seemed to be sucked into a single point in his chest, crumpling and twisting until there was no sign of him being there. Color returned to the world soon after. The grass he stepped on didn’t even bear any footprints. Sorine wondered if what she saw and heard were the real thing. It wasn’t everyday that an elf from an organization more enigmatic than the Morag Tong came to her to tell her future and wish her good luck. Weighing her options, she went back into the farmhouse to make preparations for the journey to Forelhost.

  Forelhost… The name wasn’t unfamiliar to her. She visited the place once to hunt down a fugitive Whet-Fang. The place was beautiful in the way the Dragontail Mountains were beautiful; imposing, sinister and housed death in one way or another. Isran told her it had been one of the last strongholds of the Dragon Cult back in the days of dragon-related strife. As far as she could tell, the vengeful spirits of the ruin had been permanently put to rest by a joint effort between the Vigilants of Stendarr and either the Stormcloak rebels or a contingent of Imperial legionnaires some 2 years ago. She never paid much attention to history debriefings if Isran was delivering it. Always seemed to find a reason to talk about how vampires were the scum of the earth and how sleep was for the weak. Forelhost, as with all  Nordic ruins, was well-protected both on the outside and on the inside, with time-tested stone walls and an entire maze of corridors full of traps, beasts and possibly draugr. Sorine found it increasingly hard to resist going there immediately.

  As she went back into the farmhouse, she noticed an instantly recognizable sound. Adam was awake and he wasn’t happy at all. She supposed she had to accept that there was much more work to taking care of a baby and she had no right to complain. It was her conscious decision to foster him and now she would have to take everything else that came with the infant.

  Suddenly, she felt grateful for her time as a babysitter ages ago.

  Taking a deep breath, she went down the stairs and checked him up to see what was wrong. Best case scenario: a simple soiled diaper or he was just hungry. Worst case scenario: he missed his parents. If the latter was the case, there was no telling when he’d stop. Fortunately, he just soiled his diaper. The usual pungent smell of infant shit wasn’t as strong as she had remembered. Either her nose had gotten used to it since or the gods were helping her again. A good thing she noticed it now. Left like that for long periods of time, it could cause very painful rashes on his rear. She changed him out of the old rags, throwing it into the fireplace and washed him lightly with some stored water. After that, she ripped off a piece of her own garments to wrap a makeshift diaper for the boy. An old trick she learned from a Stormcloak war-maiden. Before long, the baby was clean, but something wasn’t right. He must be hungry. Or thirsty, since babies his age weren’t suitable for solid foods yet.

  Resting him on the bed once more, she scanned the storage spaces for anything she could use for his breakfast. At first glance, Sorine spotted bottles of milk, a few eggs, sackfuls of flour and two cloves of herbs she identified to be frost mirriam.

  She snapped her fingers in clarity. Here were the ingredients for a simple infant formula. Grabbing all the things except the apples, she rapidly got to work, taking use of any tools available at hand. It implemented more alchemy than cooking if one went about it in terms of technique. The formula was intended to make use of the most mundane of household ingredients, so as to remain accessible to all families, regardless of background. The gist of the formula was to supply the infant with fundamental nutrients and to utilize the stamina debilitating effects within the frost mirriam to temporarily sedate them for several minutes, or a few hours at most. Sorine thought it was less than humane to put a baby into forced slumber, but desperate times called for desperate measures. The creator of the formula must have been smart. And one hell of a frustrated mother, she thought as she whisked the mixture until it became a light white liquid. She used a small dish to give the formula to him, almost shoving it right into his mouth. Adam drank so desperately, he choked and spat all over her face. It was a full minute before the formula took full effect and he fell asleep.

  Sighing in relief, she left her to sleep for a bit and went to get into her gear. After strapping all her armor pieces into place, she went up to retrieve a spare dress belonging to Adam’s birth mother- Eren, if she recalled the Psijic mentioning it. She intended to use it as a sling for him, admittedly only out of convenience on her part.

  Then, she went down one last time. Retrieving her rucksack and tucking Adam into the self-fashioned sling, the Breton stuffed a few more foodstuffs into the bag, namely a cut of salmon, three sticks of celery and a raw rabbit’s rib. Surprisingly, the added weight of the rucksack, her crossbow and Adam didn’t really hinder her that much. Throwing away her supplies to make a swifter getaway was always a viable course of action, anyway.

  With everything ready, she headed out of the farm and walked westward. To Forelhost.

  The small dirt paths she went on were barren and silent, the sun burning darkly right over her. It was high noon. Soft autumn wind blew past and Sorine inhaled a deep breath, taking in the scent of the season. It smelled like juniper berries and tree sap, a natural kind of sweet that no perfume would be able to emulate. Overhead, she could see a pair of jays fly past, seemingly unaffected by the apocalypse. The land was obviously alive and as vibrant as ever. As if anything the vampires did could permanently affect nature. It was getting by pretty well, just struggling to adapt.

  Maybe, once she saved the world or whatever, everything would blow over and nature wouldn’t even notice if anything had changed. After all, why should it trouble itself with mortal affairs?

  It seemed apparent that nature and the gods were of the same mind, because as it stood, neither of them were willing to contribute much to help. 

  She pressed on west until she came across a mount where the temperate autumnal ground gave way to snowy terrain. The winds blew stronger and stronger. Grey clouds mercifully concealed the sun. She adjusted her position to cover Adam from the incoming blasts of cold air. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), he didn’t stir at all, a testament to the potency of the formula. Climbing up the stone stairs that led up to an enormous Nordic bastion, she readied her crossbow at her hip.  Forelhost. It wasn’t as far as she first anticipated, and a few things had changed since her last visit. For one, the giant iron doors had been blasted open, exposing the ‘foyer’ of the ruin to the open cold. Footprints dotted the snow, all pointing towards the inside. It was evident that Sorine wouldn’t be entering an empty ruin. She felt a cold sensation run up the length of her spine and it wasn’t from the snow. She now hoped for her sake that all of the spirits here had been put to rest. With that kind of wishful thinking in mind, she entered and left the rest to fate.

  There was a saying often heard around Wayrest: “If you want to live, avoid the dead and their lodgings.”A common trait among the Bretons there was an irrational distaste for dark crypts and graveyards, heavily contrasting the Shornhelm locals’ fetishistic attraction for them. There was always something daunting about the macabre air of death, the intricacy of its architecture and the possible presence of restless spirits.

  You could imagine the distress nineteen-year-old Sorine, a less-than-proud Wayrest native, felt upon first entering a Nordic ruin, where every negative thing said above is taken up to eleven.

  Thankfully, she grew out of it after the next ten forced runs through Geirmund’s Hall, a particularly horrifying Nordic crypt and Isran’s personal favorite place to train for dungeon-based combat. If she ever met him again in the hereafter, she made it a point to kick him in the groin for all the torture disguised as training. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful for it. Just extremely annoyed that he even thought it was necessary.

  But even with all that training, Forelhost on the inside was on a whole other level of terrifying. The grim shadow that the Dragon Cult had left on the fortress so long ago had never ceased to lift. So many atrocities must have taken place here, it was naive of her to think that anything lingering here could obtain peace. Her grip on her crossbow quivered ever so slightly and every step felt like stepping on an explosive rune. Seeing no other way to go but through, she pressed forward, deeper into the haunted ruin.

  A bad decision, really.

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  |Interlude|