I'm not very imaginative when it comes to names. This is Chapter 23, incidentally. The rest is also posted there.))
Lyssi felt her life slipping away.
It trickled out sometimes, gushed others. She was going to die, though, that was the important thing. She'd survived fire and daylight and a number of other things that were supposed to kill her, but didn't - and now she was going to die.
It wasn't even an enchanted blade, she thought with mild disgust. Or at least, if it had been enchanted, she couldn't detect the enchantment ... which wasn't saying much; she only dabbled with magic, and that, only when it was needful, which it rarely was. The blade had been demonic in origin, though, that much she knew for certain. More than that, it had pierced her very heart. Normal elves, she was sure, would have died instantly.
Not her. She got to live out long, torturous minutes. At least she didn't have to breathe. She expected that the constant up and down would have torn her chest open even further.
She remembered she was standing on a platform, atop the tallest structure she'd ever seen apart from White-Gold Tower in the Imperial City. She held her pack in one hand, dragging it along the ground behind her. Even enchanted to seem weightless, the thing was ungainly, and often threw her off-balance. She suspected given its natural weight, it wouldn't throw her off as much - but then she'd be hard-pressed to lift it, even with her unnatural strength.
If she'd been wearing it, she wouldn't be dying now, though.
In front of her, floating in a glowing orb of light, was a block, like a hovering, six-sided die.
She held the block up to the first lights of predawn, staring at it with vision that blurred around the edges. It was etched with runes in a language she couldn't begin to make out, but then, she sometimes had a little trouble with plain Tamrielic letters.
Before long, it was too much work to hold the block up, so she set it down on her chest. It was immediately washed in crimson. She was a sticky mess with blood, her clothing ruined, her skin stained.
The demon, clad in full plate, was determined to take his killer with him. She'd thought him dead, but no - here he stood, behind her. She was exhausted by the climb, exhausted by the fight every single demonic sentinel had put up, exhausted by the very land outside this tower turning against her (who ever heard of plants tangling around legs and arms like living things?), and exhausted from the siege before. She hadn't checked to see if he was just playing dead. She hadn't heard him get up, hadn't heard the scraping of a sword drug against stone for the ringing that fought to become a dull roar in her ears.
She'd barely felt it when the sword punctured her chest from behind. There was a flash of something, behind her eyes, and she looked down to see almost two feet of greatsword sticking out of her. The demon had pulled his blade free effortlessly, and she fell forward, catching the stone with her free hand as she fell.
The world disintegrated around her, vanishing before she hit the ground.
Lyssi turned her head slightly to the side. She was lying flat on her back, now, staring at the shattered base of one of the pillars that had formed the massive Oblivion Gate. Apparently, the block was the keystone on which the portal was built, and with it gone, the portal couldn't stand anymore. It made sense to her, in the way anything magical made sense to her: she didn't think about it terribly much.
Right now, she couldn't think of anything terribly much.
But she'd done something. Something important, something good. There were things left to do, but there would always be things to do.
It was all right. She could rest, now.
She never saw the man's form standing over her.
In the early light of predawn, there was a sound that was not unlike a massive gong being rung - or at least, that was how Brother Martin had perceived it. No two refugees heard it the same, though everyone could agree on what came next. A roar, like a massive, angry, dying beast sounded from the south.
From the Oblivion Gate.
A young boy had found the way up to the high tower the chapel sported. Half-ruined, and long unused, no one else dared go up. Now, he did, and he reported the Gate's fall on his return. The Daedra, the boy said, were drawn to it, though only a few remained in the city anyway.
Here then was their diversion. The refugees took only what they needed. Those who could walk assisted those who could not, leaving only those who would not recover even with magical healing, and the bodies of the dead. Maybe they could return one day. Brother Martin prayed it would be one day soon.
The Nine showed him a miracle this day, guarding the refugees as they escaped through a lesser gate. He'd been overly optimistic - in total, it was thirty-seven people who managed to survive and escape, even counting Martin and the two Blades themselves, but that was thirty-seven lives the Nine had spared. They kept quiet, and there was no quarreling. Speed was of the essence, and they made good time out of the city.
Everyone knew that a raised voice here courted vivisection by a daedra - if they were lucky. Almost no one spoke, and when they did, it came in hushed whispers.
The Nine granted him a second miracle on top of the first. Outside the walls of Kvatch, the refugees found a camp of other survivors set up near the main road. Wives clung to their husbands, children to their parents. People mourned - even those few whose families remained mostly intact mourned at least one friend or distant relative. There were more dead than alive - but almost half of Kvatch had survived, it seemed. The nobility had holed up in the castle, so hope sprung from that corner, as well.
Everywhere he turned, he heard whispers about a Hero - or Heroine - of Kvatch, some solitary figure they found in the rubble where the gate had once stood. No one, it seemed, knew where exactly she was, nor how she fared - and Martin was very confident it was a she.
Finally, a guard approached him after sundown. He wore the haggard look of someone who had seen too much fighting these last few days. "I'm to understand you led these people out of the city, Brother Martin?"
Martin nodded quietly, so the man continued. "They tell me you're a healer, and a good one at that, is that true?" Another nod. He was tired, but he had enough magic left to put at least one or two more people to rights before he collapsed outright, anyway. Martin glanced back at Ariel, who stood at his right - the Nord at his left was unreadable, but the woman eyed the guardsman warily. "Forgive my manners - I'm Savlian Matius, acting guard captain."
"Then you'd be the one who held the road against the Daedra for two days straight?" Martin asked, inspecting the man. Still armored, he showed signs of exhaustion, but he wasn't badly injured yet, anyway.
The man - Savlian - nodded. "My men helped, of course. They're good, strong people. I ... also discovered the girl." At this, Martin felt himself perk up considerably. Finally. Ariel's firm hand on his shoulder restrained his eagerness. "Ah ... I see you've heard of our Heroine, then. She's in rough shape. I don't know enough about medicine to know if she can be saved, in all honesty." Savlian reached up, rubbing the back of his head. "And she's ... unusual."
"May I see to her?" Martin asked, keeping himself in check. There might, after all, be nothing he could do.
The guardsman smiled. "Of course."
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