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>When posting prompts, always remember to add kinks you're both looking for and wanting to avoid in a potential fill.
>When filling, please remember to add your story tags: characters, relationship types, kinks, series and universe (ie: skyrim)
>Our character limit here at LJ is 4300.
>If you have any other questions about posting, visit the HOW TO KINK MEME THREAD, under the Page Summary on your left.
A Hero for Skyrim 20/?
Date: 2014-08-05 01:38 am (UTC)Blunt. Without an audience, the girl was typically concise- often to the point of bludgeoning- with her words. Necessity had forced her to make an earnest effort to learn speechcraft, but she could be rather unwieldy at times. Like now. It was almost comical, how she could cut through to the heart of the matter, and then flounder though an explanation. Not that he could judge. He simply kept his peace rather than waste his energies on such effort. An ability that Arngeir seems to have lost since reaching his level of mastery of the Voice. Perhaps that was where Ulfric got it from…
“Do you know what happened to him since he left?”
The question should not have surprised him as much as it did. The Greybeard had heard of the events that lead to the current situation, but nothing of the underlying causes. His hesitation must have have shown on his face, for the girl sighed and turned back to the mountain. She was clearly uncomfortable with what she wanted to say. “Ulfric wasn’t joking when he called the elf who attended the talks the ‘chief Talos hunter’. She’s the First Emissary of the Thalmor in Skyrim. Before that, she served in the Great War as an interrogator.” The girl hesitated before elaborating, “I have no proof, but if what I’ve seen of the places that Thalmor reserve for that sort of thing is any indication, an ‘interrogator’ isn’t very different than a torturer.”
No wonder Ulfric was furious with her. But if that were so, how could she have knowingly forced him to face such a nightmare? Einarth looked at the Dragonborn, unsure of how to resolve what he knew of her, with what she had done. She did not back down, “I’m not sure how much you overheard, but I’ll repeat to you what I told him: If I had sent her away to spare his feelings, that would have only made him look petty and weak. And it’s true. The people in that room would have destroyed his claim at the Moot if he fell apart here. And he needed to face her eventually; she probably knows him better than anyone else alive. I have no doubt that she has access to far more subtle forms of control than we know of.” He must have looked skeptical, because the girl added bitterly, “You don’t go to war with Daedric Princes without learning a few things, and Thalmor are hardly above using many of the same tactics.
A Hero for Skyrim 21/?
Date: 2014-08-05 01:50 am (UTC)So, the girl did indeed know what was in store for her when all was said and done. He might have been proud of her perceptiveness if it hadn’t come at such a price. Einarth was not one for coddling children - he certainly had not the faintest idea how - but a youth spent waging war was not a way to spend one’s life. Ulfric tried, and what had that wrought him?
“The thing is, both sides know. They know, and what are they doing anyway?”
He did not need to try to determine what the Dragonborn was feeling. It was all over her face, and in the way she wrung her hands; the girl radiated frustration from every part of her person. Perhaps it was simply her anxiety, perhaps it was her dovah soul, but on rare occasions the girl would become animated. Not unlike the soft glow of an ember, smouldering quietly among the ashes, that might flare up into a roaring fire. She was far too passionate to keep the calm composure of a diplomat. Clearly, this child was not meant for politics. And yet, he would have said the same of her Dragonborn heritage. Though Einarth would never admit it now, he would have never chosen one so small and unassuming to become the legendary hero of Skyrim. But maybe it was for that reason that Akatosh saw fit to bestow them with a champion at once mild yet contrary. A new perspective- an agent of change not bound by their traditions and predispositions. The old man grimaced. The child would learn if she must. It certainly seems as though she wants to. Or was it that she cannot help but try?
wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal...
To keep evil forever at bay…
The prophecy spoke only of Alduin’s defeat, but the son of Akatosh was not the only evil that threatened the world. It could conceivably be in the girl’s nature to rise to the challenge, or to answer a threat. And just as she had taken up the sword, so too could she learn to wield the spoken word. The question was: to what end would the Dragonborn pursue the war?
A Hero for Skyrim 22/?
Date: 2014-08-05 03:19 am (UTC)Einarth saw the girl withdraw to dark places within herself, somewhere between resignation and dread. There was something in her manner that led Einarth to believe that there was more to her hopelessness than feelings of inadequacy. And her words, though vague, were laden with implications. Implications that he hoped were little more than unfounded fears. His lips tightened into a thin line as he considered what she had said, and what he himself at wondered at many a time.
One does not go with joy to a probable death.
He must have made a face then, because the girl smiled at him in her small, wry, yet sad, way. She turned back to the scene before them and said nothing for a time.
It was ironic, in the bitterest sense, that the girl was resigned to glory, even as Ulfric chased it. The old man saw how much she abhorred it, and how much Ulfric had wanted it. He thought of small hands, bruised, scraped, and cut. Of the slow development of calluses and bandages that slowly claimed more of her as time went on. Of the way her soft feminine form gave way to the battle hardened body of the warrior. He thought of what he had seen of other warriors, and of Ulfric, and the scarred bodies such men inhabited. The weary souls they possessed. Of the haunted eyes that eventually marked them. There were few, like the Blade the girl had sought, who were more philosophers than warriors, but most men learned the value of wisdom far too late. Too late than what such wisdom might have been able to save of them, even. If she lived through this, would the girl share a similar fate? Would she follow in the footsteps of Ulfric, spiraling ever further onto a path that would twist her as it had him?
A Hero for Skyrim 23/?
Date: 2014-08-05 04:18 am (UTC)Einarth looked at the girl, trying to discern her thoughts. She had appealed to Ulfric, asking him to become more than what he had chosen for himself. Was it because she believed she would not survive killing Alduin?
A sudden urge took him, and he could not stop himself from voicing his worry, “Dovahkiin, tol Zaan hi doj…”*
The girl waited for the rumbling that often accompanied the Dragon Speech to subside before she spoke. “I will not speak it unless I have to.” A pained grimace marred her face, and she swallowed with difficulty thinking about it. Truly, the Shout was a terrible thing; he had heard her use it in her first battle with Alduin atop the Throat of the World, and knew of the agonized roar that it wrested from the proud dragon. The Greybeards could only listen as the battle raged, and it was not an experience he would want to repeat. He and his peers had felt many things in those tense hours, helplessness chief among them. They were hardly incapable of defending themselves, or of inflicting damage. But they were barred from action, simply because it was not their fight. It was the first time that he had ever begun to understand what it was that so troubled Ulfric when he first ran off to war. But the old man knew his place, as did the Dragonborn. Ulfric did not, and had paid dearly for it.
But this Shout had an affect on the girl that no other Shout did. To learn a Shout, one must internalize the words and their meaning. And that Shout, was the mortality of man, the inevitability of death, and the inescapable fate of all beings that walked Tamriel. It was one of the cruelest things that could ever be used against a dragon, immortal as they were, and was one of the few Shouts that mortals were immune to. Almost. The Dragonborn used the word, and felt it’s power and essence fill her as she did. There were Shouts she delighted in, Shouts she used as though they were the most natural thing in the world, and Shouts she seemed to care nothing for either way. But this Shout, Dragonrend, wrecked nearly as much havoc on her as it did other dragons; she may have been born into a mortal body, but she had a dragon’s soul.
To face mortality as much as she did, and to call upon it as much as she did… Was it any wonder that the Dragonborn did not expect to live? She had been terribly shaken after her first battle, and in anguish over the World Eater’s escape. And yet, it was clear from the way she saw to her wounds, that it was not the claws, teeth, or fire that she feared. Whatever it was that that Shout did to her, had forced her to face with savage clarity, was her own mortality. And she had had to call upon it repeatedly. She would have to do so when she faced Alduin again. What would the effects of that Shout combined with deadly combat, do to her in the end?
------------------------------
*Dragonborn, that Shout you learned...
A Hero for Skyrim 24/?
Date: 2014-08-05 05:32 am (UTC)Einarth simply bowed his head in response.
“I don’t know what will happen to me when this is over, and I’m not sure I’ll make it even if I win.” The Dragonborn closed her eyes and turned once more to the sky above. “If I die... someone else needs to end this war.”
Ulfric.
“I don’t know if leaving the Empire is the best thing for Skyrim. Even if I do trust and respect many of it’s supporters. But the Aldmeri Dominion is so heavily entrenched in Imperial governance, that I’m not sure they’re capable of protecting anyone anymore. They certainly can’t protect themselves. Look at what happened to the Blades, and what they replaced the Blades with. Not even the Emperor…” The girl choked a little at that. The strangest expression crossed her face, and the old man thought he saw shame, though he knew not why. Perhaps the girl was more emotional than he gave her credit for, for her to feel the enormity of the situation so keenly. She was, he realized with a start, not so unlike what Ulfric in that regard. There was a love of country in her that he had not noticed before now.
“And the Thalmor… The Thalmor are playing the long game with us. They’re no better than the Daedra: they first take our beliefs, they slowly twist and change our identities, and then they do what they want once we’ve lost ourselves. Bloody battle is obvious, but this is a war of the mind. They’re trying to take who we are, and once they have broken us as a people, it’ll be easy to take the country in a war. General Tullius knows, Rikke knows, so many of them know. But who can do anything to stop it? The Legion can’t, because they’re stuck upholding that treaty. And the Altmer have had a long time to plan. They’ll have a long time to act on those plans, too. Time many other people don’t.”
If that were true, then perhaps even High Hrothgar would not be safe. The Greybeards were followers of the Way of the Voice, and as such were the keepers of a long honored tradition of the Nords. If the Thalmor sought to destroy all the cultural symbols of Skyrim, they were most certainly a target.
“But Ulfric? Don’t tell Arngeir I said this, but Ulfric might destroy Skyrim more readily than the Thalmor. He has so much hatred. Enough that he sees enemies in those who would be allies, and would make allies of many who are less than honorable. The things that happen in his city are simply inhumane. The Elves and Argonians have been reduced to living in poverty and filth, driven to shady dealings to make ends meet. There is even murder in the upper streets. And he does nothing! Absolutely nothing if they are not Nords. If all of Skyrim were to be run like that, there might not be anything left to save.”
Then what in Oblivion was she doing asking Ulfric for more?
A Hero for Skyrim 25/?
Date: 2014-08-05 06:59 am (UTC)“He’s too- he can’t truly hate foreigners so much. But it’s something he’s come to wrap himself up too tightly in. He’s lost sight of his goals, of himself. That hatred was put in him by the Thalmor. He intends to fight them. They’re never very far from his mind. It’s impossible not to be so painfully aware of them, given what they do to people, to the things they say, to how they say them. It’s so hard not to hate everything about them! That’s simply the way they were raised to be; how do you overcome the ideology that you were shaped from birth to believe in? There are Altmer who do, though, and I can’t fault them. They say that the Thalmor have twisted and ruined everything it means to be Altmer. I can't speak for them, but I daresay it’s true. Whatever the case, Ulfric’s been taking out his hurt and anger on all mer, and that isn’t right.”
The girl clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes shut. But none of that stopped her from crying.
“They’ve hurt him. Broken him. They’re using him even now. And I don’t know how to stop it. How can I save him from them? How can I save him from himself?”
As a hermit sequestered from the world, Einarth had never learned how to deal with crying women. Men did not weep openly. Men were not supposed to. Women were considered soft, but in the case of the Dragonborn, that softness was not necessarily weakness. It allowed her to find the nuance of things, to see the world with eyes unfettered by an unyielding worldview. It allowed her to have compassion born of understanding, and not mere pity. But this? To oppose Ulfric and yet shed tears for the man?
So he stood there, dumbfounded and silent. It had been a long time since he had been so unsure, so lost for what to do. Perhaps this was what Ulfric had felt not too long ago. For a man of action, he’d been just about useless when the Dragonborn had been on the verge of tears earlier. The old man might have been amused at finally finding something in common with the boy after all these years if the situation had not confounded him so.
A Hero for Skyrim 26/?
Date: 2014-08-05 07:56 am (UTC)“Maybe it’s only because I am Dragonborn, but he doesn’t seem to hate me for being an outsider. He had seemed shocked at first, but did not contest my title after a demonstration.” Perhaps there is hope for the boy. Or was she simply an acceptable exception? “Maybe he’ll listen to me. I don’t know if he will, but there has to be some way I can reach him.”
What was it about Ulfric that had compelled Arngeir, and now the Dragonborn?
“You should hear him when he talks about the old legends.”
Einarth’s gaze sharpened. Was it for the sake of building his own legend that the boy persisted in such bloody pursuits?
“No one tells stories the way he does. Especially the old songs when he thinks no one is watching. If I could give those back to him, restore his dreams, then maybe he might be able to see Skyrim again. To really see what it is, and what it has become. He loves the stories too much because he thinks they’re all he has now. He’s not fighting for the future, he’s fighting for what he’s lost. And there’s so much he’s missing because of it.” The Dragonborn wiped her face with her hands before turning to the old master, “He cares in spite of everything that’s happened to him. Skyrim needs people like that. People who can find it in themselves to fight, to love even, especially when they’re past hope. At the very least, he deserves a chance to be the kind of man he wants to be, to be the man he sought to be all those years ago.”
A Hero for Skyrim 27/?
Date: 2014-08-05 08:38 am (UTC)“I think that, given the chance, and a push in the right direction, he could be exactly what Skyrim needs. It may be enough to make leaving the empire worth it. And to be rid of the Thalmor.”
That was an awful lot of hope to place on a man with such a dismal record…
“I don’t know if I can do enough for that to happen. Or if I’ll even be around to do anything at all. But no matter what, Skyrim needs this to end. This war is unsustainable, and the Thalmor cannot be allowed to do this to Skyrim, or to anyone else. But someone has to do it. Someone willing to risk everything to save her. We need someone who will try and succeed.”
The Dragonborn was herself a hero, and yet looking for one other?
Einarth marvelled at the revelation, but the girl fell silent, and it seemed as though her near-admission had drained her. It wasn’t often the girl talked so much, and it seemed that she was done speaking for the time being. So they stood in silence, both lost in their own thoughts.