The Argonian Maid?...Nope!

 

I was back at the tavern with Gil and Dro. They were happy that I was well and Gil had some choice words about the Mage guild and certain argonians who thought with other organs than their brain.But as the days went on I realised some things about the highelf and the cat.

They got along so well, better than just ordinary friends.

The cat still stayed, not interested in going back to his house but at least he was back to gardening and I felt wrong somehow.



Their interacting...because of his nightmares Dro slept in Gils chamber and the highelf who alway was so aloft with others, was totally different with the Khajiit.

Not that I stood alone, outside...I was not shunned, shut out by them. No not that, but still..we cleaned and cooked and I served and washed, the elf and the cat were closer and it gave me a strange feeling.





After a week I could not stand it any longer and I went to the mages guild to study.

It felt easy, the ingredients and their properties, how to treat them and mix them to make draughts, ointments, liquids with healing properties or damaging ones.





It really didn´t made it any easier that this damn elf I rescued and my guildmaster were as close as Dro and Gil and soon it also unnerved me so much that I started to wander more outside of the city, collecting ingredients..and food.





I felt that there was something missing and it influenced me in an unfortunate way, I couldn´t concentrate right, started to mix things up and after I blew the laboratory in the guild up, I was forced to take a break.



And again I was forced to search for something to occupy me...sure I worked in the tavern but...I always got so agitated when I saw 'them' both interacting and one time I thought I saw how Gil patted Dros backside, smiling at him...unnerving.







One night I just..., I know what I saw in the kitchen. Both of them cooking together, the bigger elf leaning over Dro, standing behind his back ...how they stood together...it looked like they were cuddling and I left the tavern.

I don´t think they saw me, so fixed on each other.

It would have made me feel worse if they had seen me, seeing them...strange thoughts, or?



So where could I go?

My day was already bad and how could it become worse? So I entered Dros house, maybe all

that ghost talk was a ruce for the cat to get closer to Gil, but he seemed just too frightened for it to be fake.



Again I was not thinking clearly, acting dumb...who in their right mind would enter a hounted house?

Not the first dumb deed, not the last.



Dros house was small, but nice, sparely furnished and cold..so I went and started a fire.

I even found a bit of food he had stored and because Dro ate in the tavern I did not feel guilty to take it for myself, laying in front of the fireplace on his blanket I had taken from the bed.



No, I did not want to stray too far away from the lovely warm sheen, getting sleepier by the minute even with my upset mind.



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The sleepy argonian did not see the dark shadows drawing nearer like a fog, crawling from the corners and over the walls, slitted eyes fixed on the flickering flames and then falling shut.





Whispers wavered through the air, maybe even too low to get heard. Shy the shadows seemed as if they did not know what to make of the strange creature sleeping there, drifting nearer and around it.

Still the fire burned, but the flames dulled, turned grey and sounds muffled.



Disfigured silhouettes could be seen in the dark of the shadows which soon turned all the walls, the floor into darkness. No longer were there corners, left, right, up or down.



Only the grey tinted silent fireplace and the creature in front of it were not swallowed.

But then only the argonian withstood, trapped in dreams.







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Water all around, not swimming but drifting in it as if I were a ghost myself.

Nightly waters, lost in the blue with fairy lights twinkling here and there..



No, not fairy lights. Strange glowig orbs but not made by fairies.

Elves walking deep down under me over the ground of the lake...yes a lake, or a river?

Something drew me nearer, watching the elven warriors marching along, clothes flowing as if time slowed, but it was just the water, not wind..not land on which they walked.



Proud men and women, walking to their destiny, walking up a hill, just that it was no hill.

I was sucked up there with them, tumbling through the air like a butterfly pushed around by the wind, drifting higher until I were over a city.

..the city...a beautifull city with high walls, towers like reed, elegant and desigend to poke the sky, scratch the clouds.



Everything shimmerd in the moonlight, high, proud..like in a fairytale.

There were houses behind the outer wall...but behind the outer wall was a ring of water and this was where the elves entered the city.



They were silently running through the streets and there were also imperials, some on the watch, some drunk and most sleeping.



Soon they slept forever, their bodies dropped outside on the land while the elves were back in their city.



Smaller than the imperial city but..much more beautiful to me even with the damage the fight over the city did to it.



I flew higher again, nearly as if beeing everywhere at the same time and watching the small fights that still went on, the growing pile of imperial bodies outside of the walls.



The landscape seemed new and old to me. It was the city I now dwelled in, no..not the city.



The area was clearly the same as the one where Bravil was..should be.



But it was heavily forested and where Bravil should have been..it looked even smaller, it was not even really there.

Tents and soldiers and in the niben bay was a bigger island and on this island stood this grand city.



The stars rushed over the nightly sky and soon the dawn threw colour over the formerly darkness.



This was when a batalion of horsemen and foot soldiers marched through the woods on the earthen street, nearing the camp and all too soon there was an uproar when they dicsovered that the soldiers who had been sent out to keep watch in the city, were dead.





Night and day flashed again, rushed and tumbled over each other and I was trapped in it, tumbled with stars and sun into a new day.

The forest burned. It was not just a fire, it was an inferno. Where once everything was green, now it was red and black, dark smoke was everywhere, so were the cries.



Mages held the flames behind a barrier so it would not harm the imperials while the fire scavaged on the woodlands, only hindered by the water, killing everything in its way.



All kind of creatures tried to flee, jumping into the water, suffocating by the smoke or burning to death when the flames closed in on them.

Carnage was everywhere, twitching charcoaled bodies in the last trows of agonys, not only animals but also two legged beeings...if elf or not, you could not tell by the looks, all the same, blackened, red oozing flesh, the features that told one from the other licked away by the flames.





The fire slowly died down during the night and than the remaining elves rose from the water, weeping over the carnage that they saw. Where once was green pasture only earth and coal remained.

And there once again they entered the city, some of them turning their back on their bretheren and walking away, walking away from the destroyed land to find a living elsewhere while most of them cleaned their city again from the intruders, their fury filled by the dirty deed.



But now, something else happened. The elf mages entered the towers which crowned the walls.

In each one a big crytall shone, bigger than the elves they were, soon shining brighter thanthe stars.



This woke the imperials but they could only watch as the light shone brighter than the sun, blinding everyone.

Only bright white light, rumbling soon sounded, like the roar of angry dragons and than the earth shook before the waters reared from their bed.



The ground split, swallowing some unfortunate imperials before the water came, rearing like an angry horse, thundering onto the land and crushing everything under it, digging gashes, deepening the wounds in the earth and washing away what had been there.



Rumbling, screeching the city shook as the light died and it sunk. With wailing noises the city went down, not destroyed but whole swallowed by the water, sinking while the element went higher, scrambled like a trapped creature trying to flee and leaving claw marks in the lands, big chunks breaking away.



And a second later it was over.



Where once dry land was, forest stretching over it, now there was a mixed plane of marsh and dry land..or rather mud. and rocks.



The river that had so angrily clashed its contents over the land had digged the niben bay we know today, changed the land and swallowed the elven city which had lain in the middle of where now is the bay, a river flowing around it.



The imperials were gone, everything was gone..only where the mages had held the fire at bay there was some green left.

A mile or two around niben bay was only destroyed land.

This is what the army saw when they arrived the next day to celebrate their victory where now only a mess was left.



They had wanted to conquer the elven city with all its treasures and were now depraved of it.



Not even the body of the imperial soldiers were found that had kept watch that night.



Over the years county bravil turned green again until it looked like what it is now, but never again was there found the richness that was there once before.



And still there lays the elven city on the ground of the bay, deep under, deeper than anyone can dive, sleeping and waiting for a better time.



The curse of bravil to dwell in the mudd of the river, never to gain back the riches that had been lost.

Every noble to reign over bravil, would loose himself, every member of the nobles family to fall and go down, what they once possesed would be taken away like the land had been taken away by the water, what they had they would loose, running through theirhands like riverwater.





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