An hour later and Ra’Jirra had stripped to her underwear, panting on the bed like an overheated dog. Sarosh was on the balcony and dressed similarly (except for the bra) and settled in for the night. She might have been a little jealous, but he was right. Another Redguard sleeping on a hotel balcony was nothing to attract attention. A khajiit in her underwear would be.
When he’d pulled his shirt off, she was pleasantly surprised. The man had been training. Her estimation of him rose a notch. But now she was just miserable. “How do people live in this heat?” she asked him quietly. They were still speaking in Ta’agra but fortunately he was fluent.
“Any way they can, Raj.”
Her hair was bothering her. She pulled it up and flipped the pillow over again. At least the place was clean. She did give it some points for that.
“You want to go back to the Pendant later?” he asked her.
“No. Like you said, it might attract attention. I’ll manage.”
“In the morning let’s go back to my place. I need to write a message for Romanov and the drop off is near it. We can get cleaned up there.”
“Do you have Air Ice?”
“No. But it will be cooler in the morning. You’ll see.”
Ra’Jirra picked up the flyer beside her and began fanning herself again. She couldn’t sleep. She kept running the scenario over and over in her mind. The noise, then the man falling dead, a hole through him. Square through his chest. Everything screamed of another gun, but the only other person who was there was the amateur in the street. But surely the three were working together. And from that distance… From her own practice with her weapon, she knew it was inaccurate at range. In a pinch it might work – with luck – but things just didn’t add up right. And how would a Redguard, and amateur spy no less, have managed to get his hands on a top secret weapon designed by Elsweyr?
She thought about the position of her assailant when he’d been killed. He was turned a bit away from her, which is why the blood hadn’t hit her. And leaning down to ready another swing of the iron. But the projectile had to have entered almost exactly parallel to his body to pierce it so straight. And then she saw it in her mind’s eye. An imaginary line, from the man’s chest to his back, then extending not only outward but upward. He had been bending over to attack her when the noise had happened. The projectile must have come from up high. How high? Not across the street. That would have been too far.
The roof. The shot had to have come from the roof beside the alley. It had been, what? 2 floors? 3? But it lined up. Someone had shot him with a weapon similar to her gun from the rooftop. Another player? On her side?
“Dammit,” she said, turning the pillow over for the fifth time. “I can’t think straight in this heat!”
Sarosh was snoring lightly. The sounds outside were dim and far away. A couple talking on another balcony, maybe across the street.
“Fuck it. He’s a professional, and I’ve got my fur to cover me. Mostly. Modesty be damned.”
She took off the rest and closed her eyes, continuing to fan herself. It helped. She drifted off, imagining someone on the roof of the building with a gun. Still a long shot in more ways than one. The mysterious gunman might well have intended to shoot her instead, but she somehow didn’t think so. Romanov? From all she’d read, the girl was just a mid level cyber security expert. Not the type for field work. She dreamed of a khajiit on the roof, looking down at her. The khajiit was naked.
She woke at the first light of day. It was cooler. She put her underwear back on and checked on Sarosh. Still sleeping. She roused him and they got dressed. The streets were empty at this hour, and she hadn’t gotten enough sleep, but it was a good time to get moving. There was no sign of any patrolling guardsmen on the street, so they hailed a cab and made good time to Sarosh’s apartment.
The building was just like the man. Nondescript. Average. Not rich, not poor. He must have at least lived like one of the mythical middle class he had mentioned. Maybe there weren’t many in the city, but there were a few. No rising boxes here, they climbed the four flights of stairs and walked down towards his apartment.
He pulled out his key, then stopped.
“Wait,” he said, and looked around the floor. He found what he was looking for a few feet away. A thread, too small to notice unless you were really looking for it. It served the same purpose as her scrap of paper had. Someone had been here since he had left. He signaled to Ra’Jirra. She nodded and pulled her weapon from her pocket and held it in safety position, pointing up and standing beyond the door frame while he opened the door.
“Relan? Phelix?” he called as he opened the door, but Ra’Jirra noticed the tripwire in the gap at low level. She rushed at Sarosh and tackled him at the waist, sending them both to the floor on the other side of the door frame before the explosion hit. The wall of flame that instantly burst from the apartment singed the leather of her boot. Then, just as suddenly as had started, it was over.
She couldn’t hear a thing at first, but the ringing in her ears slowly faded. Sarosh was saying something, but he indicated his ears and shook his head. He was deaf too. They looked inside the apartment, but it was utter devastation within. She heard voices outside, her hearing returning. Sarosh recovered a metal box and they left quickly.
***********************
“Good. Very good indeed!” La’Dasha said quietly to the grate. “You’re sure she wasn’t hurt?”
“No. The weapon performed perfectly.”
“Where are they now?”
“I lost them last night, but I picked them up again at his apartment this morning. There was an explosion.”
“WHAT?”
“Not my work. Someone booby-trapped the door.”
“Are they okay?”
“Yes. No one was home and the khajiit stopped him from entering. I must assume she sensed something.”
“Dammit, she can’t die yet!”
“Continue with the plan then?”
“Of course.”
The voice was gone. They bombed the man’s apartment? Someone must be really pissed off. And that was good. That was the point. But she mustn’t be killed this soon. She rose and hailed a taxi.
“The Pendant,” she said to the driver, and closed her eyes, remembering the previous night’s entertainment. It had been glorious. Against all odds, the man had made for an excellent lover, and he fought well for a human. But she would have to find another hotel. The mess had been too much to clean up. She imagined the look on the maid’s face when she came in this morning. What a sight that would be!
******************************
Sarosh had written two letters that morning, one encrypted that he placed in the drop, the other she didn’t ask about, but he explained anyway. “A contingency plan. The family won’t be returning.”
She took his hand as they sat on a bench near a park. “I’m sorry Sarosh. I didn’t expect anyone to recognize you.”
“No need. It’s a good thing. I had no idea my cover had been blown. Now I know and everyone is still alive. It is the best outcome. But I will have to leave Rihad.”
“Any ideas who did it? It’s doesn’t sound like the work of a Hammerfell agent. They would just have swept in and taken us both.”
“I’ve a good idea. I think it was retribution for that guy last night. Bombing is a favorite of the local secret police, and those guys looked like the type. And their clothes were classic ‘plain clothes’. Cheap but spotless. But it wouldn’t have been officially sanctioned. My guess is it was that other guy. We killed his buddy, and he knew where I lived.”
“But we didn’t kill him!” Ra’Jirra protested.
“He thinks we did. I need to find out who he is. He won’t stop when he finds out I’m still alive. He’ll be stationed at the main headquarters downtown. I’m going to stake out the place and see if I can spot him.”
Ra’Jirra shook her head. “No Sarosh. He knows you. He doesn’t know me. I’ll go.”
“He knows you too,” Sarosh protested.
“Ha. Even you’ve said we khajiit all look the same. A change of clothes and I’m a different cat.”
“The hair is pretty distinctive.”
“I’ll wear it up. You leave that to me. I got a good look at him too. I’ll recognize him. No, you lay low for a while. I’ve got to go back to my room and change.”
Sarosh nodded. “I’ll meet you tonight at dusk at your room.”
She returned to the hotel and found the scrap of paper still lodged in its place, opened the door, and spruced herself up a bit, but she did not bathe. For the role she planned, she should be unkempt. Then she pulled on some shabby clothes, tied up her hair, making sure it was mussed a bit, then caught a taxi to the police headquarters.
“No!” she said to the desk officer. “This one will remain here until they bring him in.”
“Okay ma’am, but I’m telling you there’s no report of a khajiit kid arrested last night. But if you must wait, you can have a seat over there. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
She nodded acceptance and made herself as comfortable as she could. It was getting hot again. She spent the next four hours scanning the personnel that came and went until at last a big man came in wearing civilian clothes. He waved to the desk officer who unlocked a side door and let him in. She watched the man until he was out of sight. Hadn’t even changed his clothes, and he looked pissed off.
“That’s him,” she said to the desk officer when he had gone. “That’s the man who took my boy.”
“Who? Detective Royan? Couldn’t have been. He was on a stakeout last night. Besides, he doesn’t do grunt-work like arresting shoplifters.”
“That’s the man,” she insisted.
“Listen, lady, if he took your boy, I don’t think you’ll see him again honestly,” the desk officer said quietly. “I’m sorry, but he’s on a special task force, and your boy was involved in more than shoplifting.”
“Oh!” Ra’Jirra squealed, as if suddenly in anguish. “It’s those hooligans he hung around with, wasn’t it? Always talking about revolution this and insurrection that. This one knew he was in with a bad crowd, but she never thought… This one told him they would cause him trouble.”
“Look, I could go bring the Detective over to talk to you, but I wouldn’t advise it. He’s not very friendly. If your boy comes home with a black eye and some broken bones, count yourself lucky. If he doesn’t come home at all… well, that happens sometimes.”
“Oh!” Ra’Jirra began to cry. “No… No, I’ll do as you say. I’ll wait at home.”
With that she walked out of the station, caught a ride to the hotel, and went back to her room. The maids had been in, but she found nothing out of place. She took a long, leisurely bath, then put on her most elegant gown. A black affair, blackless and cut so low the top practically met the bottom. She smiled at herself in the mirror. Perfect, if she did say so herself. Then she went down to the casino.
She relished the looks she garnered when she walked in the door. She was in no way overdressed for the place, but when properly outfitted and trained, a khajiit woman was a rival in beauty to even the most elegant Altmer. Smiles went up on men’s faces, frowns on the women. Mostly. She crossed to the long bar.
“What does a cat have to do to get a bite to eat in this place?” she asked the bartender in a pretty good imitation of a Hammerfell accent.
“Why, just ask!” he responded with a chuckle. “What would you like?”
“What I’d really like,” she said, intentionally using the forbidden first person pronoun, “is a good sized plate of ground meat, lightly seared, water and a good stiff drink.”
“You’ve got it lady! What kind of drink?”
“You pick. You’re a bartender. Make me something special. But don’t forget the water. I might not like it.”
She scanned the crowd behind her. Various table games were set up. She watched carefully to see who was looking at her surreptitiously, but she caught no one, beyond those who obviously were watching her for other reasons.
The bartender returned with a colorful drink and a glass of water. She smiled at the bartender and dipped a finger in the drink, touching it to her tongue. It was sweet and strong.
“Mmm! What’s in it? Is that pineapple juice?”
“It is. My own concoction.”
She sipped and indeed it was tasty. “Thank you. What’s your name?”
“Sam,” he said simply leaning on the bar towards her.
Probably a lie, but she wasn’t one to mind. “Listen, Sam. I need your honest truth. Which of these tables are fixed? Who’s the sharks and who’s the fish?”
“All our gaming is as straight as an arrow, ma’am. There’s no…” he began before she interrupted.
“Sam,” she started, giving him the Sultry Eye. “There is no such thing. Look, you can check my cleavage out as much as you want. I don’t wear a dress like this because it’s comfortable. But be a dear and give me the straight scoop, okay? By the end of the night I’ll find out anyway, and you’ll lose a nice tip.”
“Table on the left is rigged,” he said quietly. “Dealer is a card shark. Can deal himself any card he wants. The roulette table is legit, as is the card table behind it. But it’s high stakes. That’s where the local bigwigs go for an honest game though.”
She smiled and bent over the bar a bit. A little tip for his honesty. “The drink really IS good. But I’m getting hungry. Would you mind checking on the food?”
“What?” he said, distracted. “Oh! Sure. Be right back.”
He brought the meat back, with a little salad.
“Thanks Sam. Um… will they mind if I… eat this properly?”
“Maybe you can step behind the bar instead? There’s a little room back here. No offense but, we’ve had khajiits in here before. I know what you mean.”
She nodded and went to a little room where she wolfed the food down as she really wanted to, then came back to the bar, dabbing her mouth with a napkin delicately.
“Thanks,” Sam said sincerely.
“No, thank you. It’s annoying not to be able to eat the way we want to.”
“By the way, your Hammerfell is excellent. Where are you from?”
“Oh, from here and there. I travel a lot. But sorry Sam, I’ve got to take your favorite cleavage away now. Nice to meet you!”
“You too! Say, want to go out later? I’m off at midnight.”
“Sorry. Can’t stay that long. Raincheck?”
“Sure. I’m here every night.”
She took her drink and water and slunk her way around the tables in her best sultry walk, tail sashaying behind her with abandon.
“Say,” the bartender called. “What’s your name?”
She smiled. Bingo. “Ra’Jirra’, she called back. “My name is Ra’Jirra.” she repeated, emphasizing the forbidden first person possessive..
Heads turned. Some at the unusual sound of a khajiit voice speaking in a Hammerfell accent, others at the name itself.
“The problem with being undercover,” she thought as she advanced on the high roller table, “is that you never know who sees through it. Better to have your cards exposed. Then you don’t have to wonder.”
Ra’Jirra strolled out of the bath wearing only a towel, her hair wrapped up in another atop her head. Then she sat at the small table.
“Romanov? What kind of a name is that?” she asked, scanning the dossier.
“It’s a
malapropism. Her real name is Ko’Manir. Seems someone misheard her at some point and the new name stuck. She’s been here in Hammerfell for years.”
Ra’Jirra listened halfheartedly, her focus was on the papers before her. She finished and turned them over, then back again. “There’s nothing here about why, Sarosh. Why does a khajiit cypher who has risen through the ranks of the Hammerfell security force suddenly want to defect?”
“No idea,” said the Redguard, sitting up. “I guess you’ll have to ask her.”
Ra’Jirra shook her head, causing the towel to fall to the floor. She left it there. “No. She’s got to prove herself before she meets me. Can you get a message to her? I want to get that encryption machine first, and I want to test it. This seems a little too easy.”
“We’ve got a daily drop. She checks it every morning on her way to work. I’ll tell her.”
“Do that. Tell her. I want her to understand who is in charge of this operation. She may be legit, but I don’t trust anyone without knowing their motivation.”
She handed the dossier to Sarosh and he lit on fire before dropping it into a metal wastebasket. They waited for it to finish burning before emptying it into a bag, which Sarosh pocketed. Ra’Jirra felt slightly better. Her compatriot was a professional despite his nondescript build.
“Dinner?” Serosh asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Ra’Jirra smiled, and opened her luggage. “Anywhere good here in the hotel?”
“Afraid not. We’ve got to brave the wilds of Rihad again. But I know a good place not too far. But don’t dress swanky. It’s a joint. A nice joint, but nothing fancy.”
Ra’Jirra frowned, but put her clothes away into the closet until she got to the khaki number that seemed most appropriate, along with a set of matching underwear. The towel fell to her feet and she began to dress.
Suddenly she stopped, realizing she wasn’t alone. “You got a problem, soldier?” she asked without turning around.
“Me? No problem at all. You’re the boss.”
“Good. Sorry Sarosh. I’m not trying to seduce you. I promise. Military training. You do what you have to do when you have to do it, you know?”
“Like I said, no problem at all. I’ve gone through it to. Case closed.”
She pulled her bra on and began buttoning her shirt. A few minutes and a couple of spritzes of perfume later, and they were out of the door. She closed it carefully, inserting a small scrap of paper in the jam.
The ride to the restaurant was uneventful, though the driver was a Redguard this time and was riper than the Orsimer had been. They got out and walked into the open-air cafe, sitting at a table surrounded by other patrons. There would be no loose lips here.
At Sarosh’s suggestion, she ordered a chicken platter over a bed of rice that was covered in a green sauce she recognized as unique to Hammerfell, which came quickly to the table.
“Very good!” she smiled at the first bite. Though in other circumstances she would have wolfed it down, she took care now to cut the meat into delicate pieces, apparently savoring the flavor. What she was really doing was scanning the crowd for anyone unusually interested in them. In five minutes she’d spotted all three.
“So,” she continued. “Come here often?”
“I’ll say! I bring my family here every other week, when I can afford it. It’s a little pricey for me, though, but anything for an emissary from Elsweyr!”
“One at the end of the bar and two at the table in the back,” she said under her breath. “Recognize them?”
“It’s not everyday I get a buyer for my wares from so far away,” Sarosh replied in a normal tone, adding quietly. “Maybe. The guy at the end of the bar looks familiar. I think he lives in my apartment complex. But I could be wrong.”
Ra’Jirra thought about that as they continued their dinner.
“How about a little stroll to work off this food?” she suggested when they were done.
“Should be fine. This is a decent neighborhood.”
“One minute, let me freshen up a bit. I’ll be right back,” she said and rose to go to the ladies’ room.
She watched the guy at the bar from the corner of her eye. She didn’t even glance at the two at the table. His eyes connected with hers for only a second, then he looked away. Amateur.
She came back to find the bill paid and they walked out through the low gate to the street beyond. The night was relatively cool and the smells had dissipated. Or she’d gotten used to them already.
“You want to confront them?” Sarosh asked quietly as they walked.
“What a gorgeous night,” Ra’Jirra said in answer, whispering “Let’s see how serious they are. Kiss me.”
“What?”
“Kiss me, soldier,” she repeated, the last word quietly but distinctly.
He did so, and she hugged him strongly back, glancing momentarily over his back. The one in front stopped. The two behind kept walking towards them, but they were far back.
She took Sarosh’s hand and led him farther down the street, ducking into a darkened alley as if to continue their embrace in earnest.
“Quick,” she said once they were out of sight. “Over here.”
She took Sarosh by the hand and pulled him to the end of the alley. It ended in a stark stone wall. She could climb it, if she had to. He could not. She embraced him and made as if she were kissing his neck.
“What do you see?” she whispered.
“First one walked past. Looked in for a moment.”
“Keep watching,” she said, opening the button on a leg pocket. She felt the cold steel within. Just in case.
“The other two stopped…” Sarosh said, then a moment later. “They’re coming in.”
“Damn,” Ra’Jirra said, and released him. “Oh! There’s somebody coming!” she continued in a husky tone of voice.
The two men continued walking towards them. They were big, and they didn’t look friendly.
“Excuse us,” Sarosh said as they approached. “We’ll be going.”
“Fucking a cat?” said one of them, and he produced a wicked looking iron.
“Oh shit,” Ra’Jirra said sincerely. They certainly weren’t ruffians, but they were going to pretend to be. They could well plan to kill them both. She suddenly wondered if Sarosh had been keeping up with his self defense exercises. She didn’t have time to ask.
She dropped to her feet and leapt at the nearer, but he blocked with an arm and grabbed her strongly. She wished she hadn’t worn the boots – she couldn’t use her claws. She brought her knee up into his crotch, but she felt the hard protection there. This man was no amateur.
He brought the iron down hard, but she lunged into him just in time to miss the brunt of the blow which glanced off the back of her head. She bit at his chest and tasted blood.
The man rammed her into the wall, knocking her head back hard against it and she dropped momentarily to the ground. She looked up at his face. It was emotionless. All business. He was damn good. She kicked as hard as she could as he raised the iron for another blow. Her kick had knocked him back only a little and he remained on his feet. She thought for a moment about the gun, but she had no time to draw it. Instead she rolled to the side, hoping he would be coming at her with too much momentum, but he swung around instantly. Goddammit.
Then a sound like thunder roared in the street beyond and a rose bloomed in her assailant’s chest. She’d heard a similar sound before. Recently. The man fell instantly to the ground. Finally she had a moment to see what else was happening. The third man stood at the alley entrance, apparently guarding it. The second stopped attacking Sarosh, who had managed to hold his own. But now the second turned to the body in front of her. They could probably rush him now, but she still didn’t know what had happened.
“You’ll pay for this,” he spat, then ran out of the alley.
“What was that?” Sarosh managed between gasps.
She pulled the gun from her pocket. Had it misfired? She sniffed it. Nothing.
“No idea,” she said. “They weren’t going to kill us. They’d have brought edged weapons. But they were good. Not hoodlums. They were here to deliver a message, but damned if I know what it was.”
She bent to search the dead man’s clothes. Nothing, but the clothing itself was a clue.
“Well we’ve got to get out of here, Raj. We’ve got to get off the streets. The local police are rough and they won’t ask questions first. Come with me, I know a place. Plus… I think these were police. If I’m right, they’ll be back in force. Soon.”
She let him lead her away. Once back to the street, they turned farther down the road and ducked into a seedy hotel of sorts.
“This place will be crawling with them soon,” he whispered. “Let’s hole up here for the night.”
She just nodded, trying to work out what had happened, but she had no ideas. Sarosh spoke with the greasy man at the desk and got a room key, then led her upstairs.
They walked down a hall, past a sleeping body and into a room with a bed so small Ra’Jirra wasn’t sure if it even qualified for the term. The heat was stifling. Sarosh opened the window and looked out on a small balcony. Ra’Jirra stepped beside him. On other balconies, the residents were sleeping on theirs.
“You understand the mission then?” La’Dasha said to the grate under her feet as she sat on the bench.
“I do,” came the terse reply. La’Dasha had never met the man she knew as Faelian, though she had made use of his services for years. So far he had been undeniably successful. However, her requests had typically been much simpler than this one. She sincerely wished she could have just ordered a straightforward assassination, but that wasn’t the plan. Her operative would need to have a good grasp on the complexities. But she trusted no one more than Faelian.
However, that wasn’t saying much. She wasn’t even sure what race he was, though he was clearly not a khajiit or argonian. She only knew he got the job done where others had failed her. And this was going to be an expensive operation, though expenses didn’t bother the Dominion. A good thing too. The long range weapon she had left in the drop off location was priceless.
“Where?” came the hoarse voice from below her.
“Crypt. Name of Shelley. Key is in the urn on the left of the door. And Faelian…”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to be following this one closely. It’s important.”
“Got it. When do you expect her in the city?”
“Two days from now.”
“I’ll contact you when it’s over.”
“No need. I’ll know when it’s over.”
There were no footfalls, but she sensed the man had gone anyway. It wasn’t like her to worry, but she was worried now. This was way too complex, and too many people were involved. Important people. If she failed this, she would die. It was as simple as that. Number 5 didn’t have to make the threat. She’d carried out similar orders on other high ranking members herself.
She needed a drink. She crossed the road to a bar. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light within and she sat at the bar and ordered her usual. It came to her – clear, cold and strong. She downed it with a single gulp and ordered another.
“This seat taken?” came a voice beside her. She looked to see a man. Big man.
She thought about it for a moment, then decided she needed the distraction. “There is now,” she replied noncommittally.
“You new in town? I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“Pretty new. Just came in yesterday. Business.”
“Ah,” he said, and she wondered how long he was going to take to get to the point. But it was all part of the game. She had to wait.
“Say, wanna guide? I know all the hot spots in town. This place, it’s alright, but it’s dead.”
“You like cats?” she asked, touching his thigh. She felt the muscles flex underneath her claws.
“I like everybody,” he said.
“Do you?” She looked him up and down. Slowly. “How much do you weigh, stud?”
“Oh! Like what you see? Couple hundred.”
“Mmm. And how big are you?”
“Big enough for a cat.”
“Are you? Well, this one does like to sample the local meat when in town. Want to skip the hot spots and make our own?”
This was the turning point. A lot of men she met would balk at this point. She didn’t mind. It was all part of the game. Some would be turned off by her boldness, and those were the ones that got away. “Go home to your wife,” she would tell them in her mind. “Go kiss your kids, stud. Be smart.”
“Sure, pussy. Where are you staying.”
Externally she smiled and told him her hotel and room number. Internally she sighed. The mean intelligence of the male population of Tamriel would slightly increase tonight. There was that. She was a force for evolution.
“Give me 20 minutes,” she said, standing up and downing her second drink. “The door will be open, stud.”
She saw the lecherousness in his eyes when she turned back at the door, watching her tail make motions in the air. “20 minutes.”
“I’ll be there,” he said, smiling a smile that told her all she needed to know. He would be.
**********************************************
Ra’Jirra stepped down from the wagon behind a family of fellow khajiits into the full majesty of Rihad. It stank. The odor of thousands of different people, all crammed together in such a small space and under such high heat, would yield nothing else. Along with that wafted the aroma of a thousand different street vendors, all selling their possibly-still-edible wares. It combined to give a stench that reached to the sky.
She’d been here before. She had hoped to not be again.
Her contact was named Serosh, a rather bland looking Redguard she had met once before briefly, but she had done her research on him during her trip to Rihad using the folio Em had given her before she left. Not a top agent, but reliable and committed. However, he was a family man, and that was dangerous.
He hailed them a taxi, a premium affair. The Orsimer pedalling it was pleasantly quiet and didn’t reek too badly.
“Where am I staying?”
“The Pendant. Best lodgings in town. They’ve a premier casino and bar if you’re interested. I’ve got you the penthouse suite.”
“Nice! You know my tastes,” she smiled as he offered her a cocktail. She spat out the feathers though. She preferred them plucked first.
“Indeed. But it’s not just for your vanity, Raj. They’re the only hotel that excels in privacy. We’ll talk there.”
Ra’Jirra saluted him and began gnawing on the cocktail as she watched the riffraff of Rihad go by outside. The driver was impressive in his speed and mobility. She lay her head back and enjoyed the meager breeze and occasional respite from the atmosphere of the place. At moments she might almost think…
Suddenly an explosion rocked the small cart. She spun around to look out of the small window behind her. Smoke was rising from a storefront behind them, but the Orsimer was dutifully speeding past. She saw blood and heard screaming.
“What’s that all about?”
“Local disturbance. The usual thing. Massive poor population, small rich population and practically no middle class. The place is ripe for revolution, but the government keeps a pretty firm hand.”
“So that was a revolutionary bomb?”
Serosh shrugged. “Or counterrevolutionary. Who knows? Doesn’t make much difference really, does it?”
“Not to those people bleeding on the street.”
They pulled past the gates leading to The Pendant. Armed guards were in evidence. Lots of them. She watched as the gates clanked into place firmly behind her.
“Are they locked out, or am I locked in?” she asked Sarosh as he took her hand to help her out of the taxi.
He handed the driver something gold and the driver bit it before pocketing it. “Yes,” he replied with a smile, and two large Redguards came to see to her luggage while she strolled into the hotel. The doors opened at her approach, and she wondered for a moment if there might be magic involved, until she saw the ropes which obviously led to a couple of menial laborers stationed to give them a pull at the proper time.
Inside the air temperature dropped at least 20 degrees.
“Whoa! What’s this?” she asked the her friend.
“They call it Air Ice. They have a big tub of ice on each floor with a fan that blows it into the rooms. Nice, eh?”
“I’ll say! Almost makes me think I could live here!”
“Better watch that, cat. Some of us do, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“Let’s get you to your room,” he said.
They walked into a small box surrounded by a gated door which he closed. He turned a knob to indicate her floor number, and the box began to rise smoothly. She never did see the laborers that accomplished that little miracle, but she had no doubt they were there.
Serosh handed her the key and she opened the door. The room was huge and immaculate. She even let out a squeal when she saw the bath. It was enormous and open, with a commanding view through thick glass doors that led to a balcony beyond.
“Serosh, you’re not into cats are you?”
“Sorry Raj, no. Not me. Happily married man.”
“Good! You stay there, I’m taking a damned bath!”
“You do that. Sweaty fur isn’t exactly the most delightful perfume, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t I know it!”
She opened a spigot and water began to flow. She had no idea how that worked, but she was sure somebody’s muscles were involved. The water temperature was perfect.
“I’ve left a dossier on the table,” she heard from the next room as she got undressed. “Burn it when you’re done.”
Ra’Jirra lowered herself slowly into the warm water and let the tub fill slowly over her as bit-by-bit parts of her were submerged. She nearly cried with pleasure. “Aaaaaahh!”
“Long trip?” came the voice from the other room.
“Too long. I think I just want to stay in here all night. So, how long are you good for tonight? When do you need to go home?”
“I’m good as long as you’d like. I sent my family away. I don’t like them to be around during an operation.”
Sashimi commissioned this from Kazerad and it inspired me to do something a little unusual. I’m writing a fanfiction based on it. I’ll be posting it here at bdfanfic.tumblr.com in sections as usual. Here’s Chapter 1. Plot blatantly copied from From Russia With Love, so don’t watch that if you want to be surprised!
__________________
La’Dasha arrived at his office as quickly as she could. She had proven herself worthy of the top assignment as a chief operations officer within the Aldmeri Dominion over the years with exemplary service, yet as a khajiit she knew she would always be under the severest of scrutiny by the Altmer she worked for. Number 1 sat with his back to the door when she came in. He did not deign to turn around, but simply indicated a seat beside another High Elf at his desk.
“Welcome La’Dasha,” said Number 5 beside her. She knew his name was Tormandil, but even that was information she should not possess. She sat in the seat indicated.
“This one was notified of an urgency,” she replied. “This one is ready.”
“We have an unusual assignment for you today, La’Dasha. Does the name Ra’Jirra ring any bells?”
“Agent for Elsweyr. Licensed to kill. One of their best as this one recalls.”
“Yes, indeed,” Number 5 smiled in that too-slick way. The man always reminded her of a reptile, though he was no argonian. Sometimes she expected his forked tongue to peek out from between his lips.
“She has been causing us… difficulty of late. We would like you to eliminate that difficulty.”
“She will be dead within…” La’Dasha began, but suddenly Number 1 swiveled around and La’Dasha instantly silenced herself.
“Death is not enough,” said the porcine elf, quietly at first but growing redder with every word. “No, we would not trouble you with a simple assassination, cat. She must be humiliated. She must be humbled. She must fall to her knees and beg for death! Only then will you be allowed to kill her! Do you UNDERSTAND?!?”
The vehemence of Number 1’s outburst took the khajit aback. This was not usual. Not usual at all. The Altmer prided themselves on their calm and impassive demeanor. Even Tormandil looked shocked.
“This one understands, sir,” she replied quietly. Already her mind was reeling with various scenarios.
“La’Dasha, perhaps you begin to understand,” Tormandil said calmly. “We know you are a loyal and trustworthy agent. You have a 95% success rate, the highest of all our operational chiefs. Yet your… personal predilections are somewhat distasteful, if I must say.”
The khajiit grinned a toothy grin. She wasn’t completely sure which ‘predilection’ he was referring to, nor even which he knew about, but when speaking with a high officer of the Aldmeri Dominion, it was always best to assume they know everything. They usually do.
“Still, quality service forgives much. And your dalliances have never caused us any undue issues.”
“This one’s dalliances do not talk afterwards.”
Number 1 snuffled and turned back around, looking at something on the floor. La’Dasha knew of the trap door there. The light from below indicated there was some entertainment currently amusing him. She looked back to Number 5.
“No,” Number 5 agreed. “They do not. But I do implore you to use your best efforts on this operation. It is of utmost importance that we succeed. To that end we have some… ideas. Please, if you would, let us leave Number 1 in peace and I will fill you in on the details.”
“Oh gods,” La’Dasha thought as she left the office and continued down the hall towards Number 5’s personal quarters.
She liked Number 5 well enough, but his own penchant for mixing business with pleasure left her cold. Worse yet, when the upper management had ‘ideas’, they were usually overly complex and under-imagined. Still, she had always managed to streamline things to get the job done. As for Number 5’s fondness for khajiits, she didn’t mind that so much, but she could never finish the act as she most desired. Tormandil probably never suspected just how close to death he was after he’d lain with her. Or maybe he did. There were those who got off on proximity to danger. She’d certainly had enough of those. But she’d never gotten to taste Altmer flesh. Maybe someday. Hope springs eternal, someone once said.
**********************************
Ra’Jirra was late, but not for lack of trying. Technological progress had been amazingly fast since the near-elimination of magic, but along with it came incumbent problems that no one had anticipated. With all their talk of betterment of all, no one had yet come up with a solution to the problem of traffic in the city. And Torval was growing rapidly. While Ra’Jirra was just a visitor here, still she found that every trip to the headquarters of the HMSS was a new adventure in just how badly the city growth was being managed.
“You’re late,” the secretary said. “Go on in. They’re waiting for you.”
The Leonid head turned to look at her when she entered. “Ah, Ra’Jirra. Glad to see you could make it. We were beginning to worry you wouldn’t make it. Sit down, we have a lot to talk about and you haven’t much time.”
Ra’Jirra crossed to where Queue and Em sat at a small conference table.
“I haven’t?”
While Ta’agra did forbid the use of the first-person pronoun, she was happy to be back in Elsweyr where she didn’t have to think about the quirk it caused in the Common tongue. His Mane’s Secret Service did employ non-khajiit agents of course, but here in the capital of Elsweyr the de-facto language was the khajiit’s own, and she no longer had to structure her tongue around the foreign words, so she didn’t even have think about the pronoun issue. It was simply how you spoke in Ta’agra.
“No. There’s urgent business afoot. You know, of course, of the impending crisis between the Imperials and Hammerfell.”
“Of course,” Ra’Jirra frowned. “Don’t you remember my last assignment? I was in the thick of it!”
“Oh, yes. That’s right. I seem to recall reading something about that. Anyway, the Imperials have asked for our help. It seems a Hammerfell cypher wants to defect. But they can’t be caught stealing her away from Hammerfell during this crisis directly. And there’s another reason…”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“She’s asked for you by name, Ra’Jirra. It seems she’s become somewhat enamored of you, given your recent publicity.”
Ra’Jirra frowned at that. She’d never been much for disguises and going incognito – in fact, she had some small pride, if not outright ego, in announcing her name far and wide. But the story of her last exploit had made it into certainly publications widely read by those into politics and intrigue. And they hadn’t redacted her name.
“I see,” she said simply. “Does she check out?”
“She does. She’s a mid-level cryptologist in Hammerfell’s security department. But Ra’Jirra, it’s more than just getting a cryptologist. She says she can get us their prime encryption device. Ra’Jirra, that would take months for their agents to stop using. If we can get that, every message sent from Hammerfell would be decryptable.”
“And we’d just hand it off to the Imperials,” Ra’Jirra growled.
“Oh, not so!” said Queue, the head technologist of HMSS. “With the device in our hands, we could read the messages, but we would only transfer to the Imperials those that we chose to!”
“Besides, Raj, the Imperials are our friends,” Em said gruffly.
“This week,” Ra’Jirra countered.
The head of the HMSS had to nod at that.
“Anyway, you’re to head off to Rihad as soon as possible. We have an agent there that can fill you in on the details…” Em said, but Queue interrupted him.
“But first,” he said, obviously relishing the moment. “We’ve got a couple interesting devices that you may find helpful on your mission!”
“Oh joy,” Ra’Jirra said, eyeballing him dubiously. “Last time you almost got me stabbed with my own shoe!”
“Pfft,” Queue hissed. Quite literally. Queue was an Argonian. “A small error in metal fatigue calculations. We’ve perfected that now! But look at this…”
“Looks like a briefcase,” she said, opening and closing the lid. Nothing obvious. No hidden compartments that she could make out.
“Ah, no… the secret is in the lock. It’s a combination lock. Here, look… When closed and locked, the case is nearly unbreakable. Only extreme shearing force could break it open. For all practical purposes, it’s invulnerable. But set these symbols to Snake, Snake, Cat and…”
The latch popped open.
“Well, that’s great. But if someone steals the thing, they can force it open eventually. I don’t see the…”
“Oh, no! That’s not the secret! Hammerfell’s been using locks like this for years. They’re ahead of us in technology, you know. But look at this! Set the combination instead to… Cat, Snake, Snake and.”
Queue turned the last thumbwheel and something snapped.
“Dammit!” he cried, snatching his hand back from the case.
“What?” Ra’Jirra asked, looking closely at the combination lock.
“Poison dart. Instant death,” Queue said, nursing his thumb.
“QUEUE?” both Em and Ra’Jirra exclaimed.
“Should I call for a medic?!” Em asked the Argonian.
“No, no… doesn’t work on Argonians. Well. Almost doesn’t. My thumb’s going to be swollen for a week. Dammit! Here, I’ll reset it.:”
“And what’s this gadget?” Ra’Jirra said, turning to the small metallic rectangle.
“Oh, that! Be careful, Ra’Jirra. That’s deadly! The boys in the lab call it the Projectilized Ultimate Suppression System. Unlike the briefcase lock, it’s our own design from scratch!”
“Wait… What do you call it for short?”
“The boys have an unusual sense of humor. We just call it a ‘gun’”
“A gun. Better. How does it work?”
Queue proceeded to tell Ra’Jirra the intricacies of the device, explained about the exploding gas contained within it when triggered by a small hammer, and demonstrated the devastating effect on a side of beef they’d set up on the other side of the room.
The hole it left was impressive.
“Nice!” Ra’Jirra said, taking the ‘gun’. And good to see you’re testing your devices on proper materials too.”
This is a new story. It is the backstory of my PC in a D&D campaign I’m playing in. As the D&D campaign progresses, I’ll continue to write her “diary”, but that’s separate from this. In fact, if all goes as I plan, this will likely be the longest story I’ve written yet.
As much as I tried, I could find no appropriate images for Kreet as a child. If you search for “kobold girl”, you get a lot of images. But none appropriate for THIS story, which should be SFW. If I get the chance, I’ll see if I can commission someone to draw her. FurNut is my first choice. Sure he can go porny, but he also does the most awesomely cute work ever, and for this at least Kreet should be mega-cute.
Here’s what I’ve got so far, but PLENTY more to go. Like, tons in my head that I have to get out somehow.
The Long and Exciting Life of Kreet the Kobold.
They found 5 gold pieces, and one said he had leveled up. That was the sum total of what the Adventurers had managed to gain by slaughtering Kreet’s entire family. As the youngest member of her clutch, she was still hiding in the little cubby high above as she watched the torch bob back down the passage going deeper into the tunnels that were all she knew of life. Of course, they had expected this would happen eventually. The life of a kobold was notoriously short and even at her young age she didn’t really hate the people that regularly came venturing down into her home.
Usually her family just hid in one of the myriad tunnels that branched off of the main tunnel. Before her own family was wiped out she had seen four other clutches massacred and she’d learned that was just the way of her kind. Oh, they fought back. They always fought back. She’d heard of other races that had no concept of ownership, but the kobolds were certainly not that race! When some random Big Person, or more often, Big Persons found the home of a clan of kobolds, the kobolds would attack without reservation until the last one was dead. She knew that the top-dwellers considered them evil because of that.
There was no negotiating with a clan, it was true. There was only fight and kill or die. Later she would learn that there were alternatives, but no one she had met in her short life understood that. Now they were all dead, and the little box that held her family’s five gold pieces lay smashed into splinters, stained red with the blood of her father. She wept silently, waiting for the torch light to fade completely from view before she ventured out into the little space that she had called home. She wasn’t worried about visibility. She could see in pitch darkness due to the unique structure of her eyes. But even the flicker from a distant torch would reveal more than she really wanted to see of what remained of her family. Her dark-vision would be blessedly monochromatic.
A sniffle escaped her snout, unbidden. It wasn’t much. Just the quietest of sniffles. But apparently it was enough. One of the Adventurers apparently was still nearby and heard it. He had been sitting silently just outside her vision in the darkness. Now he lit a torch and she tried to shrink back again, eyes wide with fear. She knew enough about Adventurers to know they never stopped investigating till their curiosity was sated. She was doomed.
The problem with kobolds was not a lack of bravery, nor a lack of intelligence really. No, the problem with kobolds was a lack of size, strength and technology. Any average Big Person could kill an entire clutch if equipped with even modest armor and a steel blade. It didn’t help that the kobold would be pounding on his knees with his fists or trying to scale his legs to attack more vital bits. Once a kobold saw red, he would not relent until he was dead – which didn’t take very long usually. On the rare occasions that a group of kobolds actually gained enough technology to equip themselves with more than small sticks and wear anything more substantial than thin cloth, they could actually be formidable. But Kreet didn’t live in those circumstances. She was just one of a clan of kobolds living in an obscure network of caves in an even more obscure country above.
Security through obscurity had worked fairly well up till now. But she heard the man below searching for her, and she’d probably not see much more security as soon as she lost her obscurity. She was beginning to see red. Then a head came into view and she knew her time was up. She didn’t hesitate. It was in her blood. She attacked.
But instead of spending her last seconds scratching at the hair of her fated doom, she found herself instead inside a cage. She railed and screamed, but the Big Person who held the cage just looked at her.
At first she was happy to see he wasn’t wearing any metal. If she could get free of this cage, she very likely would be able to actually scratch him enough to make him bleed – and that would be a pretty significant victory, especially for such a young kobold.
“Calm down little one,” the Big Person said in her language. This startled her. She had never heard a Big Person speak in Kobold before. She’d never even heard tales of a Big Person that could talk properly. She looked at the huge head looking into her cage in front of her and cocked her head to one side. The red left her vision.
Another voice came down the passage and for a moment she saw one of the other Adventurers, his armored plate gleaming in his own torchlight. The Big One that held her responded in that too-loud tongue of theirs, but with anger clearly in his voice. The other seemed to shrug, said something back in an offended tone, and returned the way he had come.
“Don’t worry little one. I’m not going to hurt you. I am returning to my home and I’m going to take you with me. I’m going to have to cover your cage though. The sunlight would hurt your eyes. But I’ll be right here.”
Kreet was too young to be anything but naive, and she had no experience with anything that could talk to her except other kobolds, yet they had always been trustworthy. So she didn’t hesitate to talk back to the man.
“You can talk to Kreet?”
“Oh! So you can talk? Yes little one, I can talk to you.”
“You killed my clutch? All dead?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Your family is gone so you might as well come with me, Kreet.”
“Why don’t you kill me?” she wondered, completely sincere, as a cloth was placed over the cage and she was rocked back and forth as the man walked out of her caverns.
“Why should I kill you, little one? Would you kill me if you could?”
Kreet was puzzled. “Yes. But I can’t. I am trapped in here.”
“No, you can’t. But I don’t want to kill you little one.”
“Why not? You killed my clutch.”
“That was not me. The other Big People I was with did that. I tried to stop them, but they have Gold Fever. I will not continue with them. I will go back to my home instead. Would you like to live with me? I would like to have someone to talk to.”
Once again Kreet didn’t understand. His words were clear enough, but his meaning was beyond her. “Would I like to live with you? Kreet doesn’t understand. Kreet would like to live with her clutch, but they are dead. Kreet wouldn’t like to live anywhere now.”
“Oh, I think you would. You might even like it.”
“Will there be other kobolds?” she asked hopefully, knowing that she shouldn’t think such things. Hope was not a survival factor in her life, but she was too young to have it completely removed from her psyche.
“No, Kreet. Only me and a cat.”
Kreet felt her heart sink. “Then I wouldn’t like to live there,” she said simply.
Though the cloth over her cage was dark, she could still see the light getting brighter. Then soon she was outside. The sounds were different. The smells were different. She’d heard of the outside before of course. But she’d never been before.
“Are we outside?”
“Yes Kreet. Are you okay?” said the Big Person.
“My eyes hurt. It is too much light.”
“I know. I’m sorry Kreet. I’d let you go back into the caves, but there are no more kobolds there. I’ve been searching for your clan in there for a year or more. Yours was the last clan left. You’d starve or worse without them. Please accept my hospitality Kreet. I would like to be your friend.”
“You are Big People. Big People can’t be friends to kobolds. I think you might be crazy.”
The Big Person made a weird noise. Something like coughing. But then it talked again. “I think you are probably right Kreet. Please, I would like you to call me by my name. Could you do that for me?”
Kreet shrugged, knowing he couldn’t possibly see her. “Sure! What is your name?”
Though Kreet couldn’t properly form the word, she did her best given her vocabulary to repeat the sound he had said.
“Ka’Plo?”
“Yes! That is very close! Call me Ka’Plo, Kreet. Maybe we will be friends, you and me?”
“Ka’Plo is crazy. But Kreet has no choice, does she? I will be your friend if I can’t kill you.”
“Can you kill me?” Ka’Plo asked while cage swung to his walking rhythym.
Kreet lay down and wrapped her tail around one of the bars for support. “No. I can’t kill you. I’ll be your friend.”
Then she went to sleep.
——————————-
Kreet slept for a long time. It had been a long day. She vaguely wondered why her mother hadn’t woken her by now, but the rocking of her bed was too soothing so she stayed sleeping.
But then the rocking stopped and she opened her eyes and remembered where she was, and she cried quietly.
“Kreet? Are you awake?”
“I am awake Ka’Plo. I am sad.”
“I know Kreet. I’m going to take the cover off your cage. It’s night now and we’re outside.”
The darkness was lifted, but the light wasn’t too bright now. Kreet looked at the man she knew as Ka’Plo. He wore plain cloth that was wrapped with a similarly colored belt. He looked nothing like the other Adventurers she had seen.
“I have to pee,” she said to him.
“That may be a problem, Kreet. I’ll need to let you out of your cage. Will you run away if I let you out?”
Kreet looked around her. They were on a hill, beside a large boulder. There were woods not far, and a road ran by them in front of the woods. She considered if she should run away.
“No. I have no where to go. You haven’t hurt me yet. I’ll stay with you.”
“Okay Kreet. I don’t want to keep you as a prisoner, nor as a pet. If you don’t want to stay with me, you don’t have to. But you will probably die if you leave me Kreet. I don’t want you to die, and I don’t think you do either. So please don’t run away.”
“I will run away if I want to, Ka’Plo. But I don’t want to now. I want to pee.”
He laughed at her again. “Okay Kreet. You go do your business and come back when you’re done. I’m tired though, and need to sleep soon.”
The door of the cage lifted and she looked around, then up at Ka’Plo. She noticed then that he had white hair in his beard and on his head. “You’re old,” she said, then looked around for an appropriate place.
“Yes, Kreet. I’m old. Does that bother you?”
Kreet shifted her clothing and relieved herself. “Yes. You are easy to kill. If someone wants to kill Kreet you won’t stop them.”
“Fair enough,” he said, turning away. “But I will try not to let that happen. Also you really shouldn’t pee in front of other people Kreet.”
“No,” she agreed. “It is a vulnerable position. But you are my friend, right? You won’t kill me so it’s okay.”
“I suppose so,” Ka’Plo said as she rearranged her clothes and stepped back into the cage.
“Kreet, you don’t have to go back in the cage.”
“No? Where should I go?”
“What I said before, I meant Kreet. You can leave if you want. I’m hoping you won’t want to leave, but you can. I can’t be guarding you day and night.”
“I don’t want to leave. But where should I go if not back in the cage?”
“Well, anywhere you want really. Are you hungry?”
At this Kreet’s eyes lit up, quite literally, in the dark.
“Food! Do you have food? I am very hungry!”
“Sure,” said the man, pulling some things out of his pack. “Here, I’ve got a lot of jerky, and I picked some mushrooms and moss while you were sleeping. When we get back to my home tomorrow I have much more.”
Kreet snatched up the food eagerly. She gobbled the moss instantly, though it wasn’t the sweet kind she liked best. The mushrooms she picked through.
“You pick bad mushrooms, Ka’Plo. Some of these would kill me. But it’s okay, I know the good kind from the bad kind.”
“I’m sorry Kreet. I know kobolds, but I don’t know mushrooms I’m afraid. Would it be okay if I light a fire? I’d like to make some soup.”
Kreet looked at the man’s eyes. “A small fire, right? I don’t like big fires.”
“A small fire, I promise,” he assured her and set to work. Kreet nibbled some more mushroom and then crept up behind the man. She watched him work his flint until he managed to light some dry grass, then he stacked on some small sticks until they caught as well.“
"You are a mage,” she said flatly.
The man coughed again, then said, “No Kreet. I’m no mage. I just know how to make fire. This kind of stone makes the sparks, see? Then I just make the sparks go into a little dry grass.”
“My father was a mage. He could make fire. Sometimes,” she said, watching the flickering flames as if entranced.
“Did he use stones like these?”
“No. He used a special stick. But it took longer. Big People do everything better.”
“I doubt that, Kreet.”
Later on, when the soup was ready, the man offered her some.
“Be careful, it’s very hot. Just sip it, like this…”
“OOOOO!” Kreet cried, unable to duplicate the sipping that the Big Person had done.
“Oh, I’m sorry Kreet! Just wait till it cools down.”
“My tongue hurts,” the little kobold cried.
“Here, have some cool water… There, does that help?”
Kreet nodded. But a few minutes later she was fine and tried the soup again. The taste was very strange, but also very good. Finally, when she’d had enough, she sat back against the rock they had sheltered by.
“What are those? Are they stars?” she asked while Ka’Plo doused the fire.
“Oh! Yes, they are. Do you know about stars?”
“My brothers used to tell me about them. They’re beautiful sparklys!”
Ka’plo laid out his bedroll and crawled inside while Kreet watched.
“You will sleep in there?” she asked, curious.
“I will. It gets cold outside at night. I have an extra blanket if you need one.”
Kreet crawled under the bedroll with the man. “I don’t need one. You are warm enough.”
The man seemed startled, but then put his arm around her. Soon he was sleeping. She was surprised by how much his snoring sounded like her clan when they were sleeping too. She wasn’t sleepy herself, but she was very warm and comfortable. She decided she wouldn’t try to kill Ka’Plo in his sleep after all. He was a good man, and he wasn’t one of the Adventurers that killed her clutch. Instead she wriggled all the way under the blanket with just her snout pointing out, and eventually she went to sleep too.
She did have a brief moment of panic when the man turned over in the middle of the night and she was afraid he might crush her, but he shifted to make room for her and she got her tail out from underneath him and managed to go back to sleep.
The morning was bright to her eyes, but not intolerable. Ka’Plo said the sun was behind the clouds though, and so she was spared blinding direct sunlight. Still, she asked him for a bit of thin cloth that she happily took and fashioned a sort of blindfold that she wore the rest of the day that still allowed her to see without hurting her eyes.
“You’re very good with those hands, Kreet!”
“Do you think so? I’m not as good as my mother was, but she showed me how to do things. I could fix your robe if you want me to,” she said as they packed up and began to resume their journey.
“When we get home,” he said, “that would be wonderful! I am a poor man, Kreet. You should know that. But I have a modest cabin in some woods not too far away. We should get there by noon.”
They started walking down the road, but Kreet began to find it hard to keep up with Ka’Plo’s stride. When he asked her if she would like to ride on his shoulders, she fairly beamed with joy.
“Kreet, you should tell me when something’s bothering you! I’ve tired you out trying to keep up with me, haven’t I?”
“No!” she shouted, trying to climb up his legs belying her protests. “I’m not tired! I can keep up with you fine!” she said, her muscles protesting. “But, if you want me to ride on your shoulders, I will not mind.”
“Here,” he said, squatting down so she could climb up. “Hop on board, Kreet.”
They passed a few travelers on the way, and Kreet was deathly afraid they would see her and kill her, but in fact they just gave her an odd look and continued on.
“Kreet, you should learn some of our words, don’t you think? Can you say this… See if you can say ‘hello’”
It took some repetition, but before long she was greeting the other travelers with a hearty “Hello Sir, or Hellow Ma’am!”. However, Ka’Plo had to explain the difference between “Sir” and “Ma’am” a few times.
“Don’t be silly, Ka’Plo. Of course I know the difference between men and women. But it’s a lot easier to tell in a clan. You know everybody and have seen between their legs before. You Big People are so wrapped up in clothes there’s no way to tell!”
“Well, usually our women have longer hair, but that’s not always true either. And only the men have beards, so that’s another way to tell.”
“The elves don’t have beards,” Kreet stated, rather proud of her knowledge she’d learned at her father’s kneee.
“That is true. Also if they talk, women’s voices are higher pitched. Breasts are another way.”
“What are breasts?”
Ka’Plo laughed. He’d finally explained laughter to her some time earlier. Then he held his hands under his chest. “These things. Women have them. Men don’t.”
Kreet scratched her head, but accepted it. When the next travelers passed, she spotted them.
“The one on the left is a woman, isn’t she? She has breasts!”
“Yes, that’s a woman alright.”
Kreet looked down at herself. “I don’t have breasts.”
Ka’Plo sighed. “No Kreet. Kobolds don’t have breasts. They’re for ‘nursing’, and you don’t ‘nurse’.”
“Nursing,” Kreet said the unfamiliar word and Ka’Plo had to explain.
Finally they turned off the road onto a small path and into some woods where Ka’Plo’s cabin stood, decrepit but serviceable.
“I wish I had breasts,” Kreet said, climbing down from Ka’Plo’s shoulders.
“Kreet, even if your kind had them, you would be too young anyway. There’s no good in wishing for something you can’t have anyway. Now let me show you around.”
Kreet understood the wisdom of his words. She would never be Big. She would always have a tail. She would always have a snout. Her scales would never be skin. She would never have a beard. She would never have breasts. She would never have a clan. She would never fit in.
———————–
Ka’Plo never did understand why she looked so sad when he showed her the little cabin, but he knew she’d been through a lot and after she’d been introduced to the cat and the little outhouse behind the one-room shack, he left her alone in a corner to cry a little while he busied himself getting some food together for them.
He looked at her occasionally while he cooked. Most people would see a little monster at best – all fangs, claws, scales and tail. But he had spent years studying her kind. He’d even adopted another many years ago, though that hadn’t ended up well, for him or the ‘bold. And now he’d killed the last of the kobolds in the caverns too. True he hadn’t actually killed them, but he might as well have. In his studies he had become a local expert and had mapped most of the major passages of the caverns, primarily looking for kobolds. They were elusive enough creatures, but every time some group of Adventurers would go into the caverns and run across a clan, he would learn more of them by careful examination of the carcasses left behind.
Yet he was poor. No matter his expertise in the little dragons, there simply was no money in being a kobold scholar. This last band had needed a guide, and he had agreed, and now regretted with every fiber of his being. But he also knew there was only one kobold clan left in the caverns. He could not have imagined that this group would actually find them! But find them they had, and they had done what everyone before them had done. Mass slaughter. They had cut the angry little lizards down without hesitation. They had to have some reason for all that armor and weaponry of course, and killing kobolds had become that reason far too quickly.
Then a miracle had happened. This one little kobold had survived. She would be his life, he swore. He would do anything he could to keep her alive. When he had slightly ‘revised’ the Adventurer’s map after the slaughter, he slid it back in their pack with a glad heart. They would never emerge from the caverns again. It was little enough retribution for what they’d done to Kreet’s family, but it would have to do.
Well, I never said all my fanfictions would be Prequel related. Johnny Cheesedog created a Discord ‘server’ for a group to play D&D on and we had our first session last night. I decided I wanted to play a female kobold and named her Kreet.
Madman drew our party including Kreet:
She’s based on a couple of images I found – primarily this one by Chochi:
And this one I don’t recall where I got it from:
She stands about 4′ tall (rather tall for a kobold), is a Cleric, is susceptible to flattery and is very self-conscious about bust or lack thereof. Raised in a monastery with humans when her parents were killed by Adventurers where she learned to be a Cleric, but then kicked out when she attained maturity.
Worked as a tavern wench for a couple of years where she learned the real ways of the world. Hates adventurers for having killed her family – but not a murderous hate.Just wants to dissuade them from such activities. Generally fearful, skittish and avoids violence as much as possible.
Being the author-wannabe I am, after our session last night, I came up with this – a summary from Kreet’s point of view.
And just for completeness, here are the NPCs that are also prisoners – some of which are mentioned here:
And now, without further Ado, Kreet the Kobol, chapter 1!
She found herself in a stone cave with a bunch of Big People. But she didn’t know the Big People. The cave had bars though, and she tried to get out but her hips refused to get through them. So she sat back on her haunches out of everyone’s way and tried to assess who these Big People were – which were dangerous, which might be friendly. Her captors had fed her well enough with some mushroom soup. The other Big People seemed to dislike it, but to her she found it delightful – if a little monotonous. She wished she had some salt.
When she was delivered to this place, there were other Big People already here and then there were the Big People that the Dark People had captured with her. She didn’t really know much about any of them. Mostly she just noticed how big they were. One was Really Big, but he seemed rather violent. The others all looked pretty much the same to her. They all looked like Adventurers. She hated them all instantly. Well, maybe not the one with the robe so much.
Then there were the Big People that were already in the cell. One had lots of hair on his chin. One had a little hair on his chin but was far too big to be safe around. One had no hair on her chin. Then there was the funny-smelling fish man, and finally the mushroom. Apparently the mushroom could talk, but she still smelled a mushroom. She thought about taking a small bite, but withstrained her instinct. She’d had enough mushroom recently. Besides, it probably wouldn’t be polite to eat a fellow prisoner – even just a nibble would likely be a faux-pas. So instead she sat in a corner and watched. She was good at watching.
They were, of course, slaves now. That was okay. She’d expected to become a slave eventually. Her years at the monastery and her last two years spent working in a Tavern had taught her much about her kind. She was quite lucky to have survived to this age and was proud of the fact that she’d made it to her child-bearing adulthood. But she missed actually living with other Kobolds. It was a distant, fuzzy memory now. She’d grown up around Big People instead, but at least she had grown up! She had taken to the monastery rather well in fact. The brothers hadn’t beat her too often and eventually they let her in on their practices. She’d learned a lot there, until she’d been kicked out. She’d learned a lot more at the tavern. A whole, whole lot more. And now she was a slave. Not unexpected really. She had rather wished she could mate and have a clutch before she died though. But one mustn’t get ones hopes up too high after all when you’re only four feet tall and exceptional at that.
The others began looking around to find stuff. There wasn’t much here, but it was a big cave. She found a bit of rope and a spider. The spider wriggled a bit much, but had a nice flavor. It was a nice change from mushroom soup too. Then a beautiful Big Dark People came and talked to her Big People. She left and then the Big One with the beard started fighting the Big One with the funny eyes. She tried to help the one with the funny eyes. He was weird, but they were all weird. But he was hurt too.
Problem is the Big One with the beard wouldn’t stop. She climbed onto his back and tried to stop him, but he ignored her. Finally she rolled off and gave up. There was nothing she could do here. Best to just stay back. But then one of the Dark One’s helpers came back and told them he would help them leave. Well, leaving would be good! But then he went away and they broke the lock anyway. They talked about leaving but decided not to. And then Funny Eyes ran away. He didn’t get very far before the Dark Ones threw him to the Big Spiders.
Later the Helper came and opened the door and told them to wait for a horn blast. Then it came and a bunch of monsters appeared far away to their left and started fighting with the Dark Ones. All the prisoners left and she followed. Some went right, most went left. She went left. Then a big spider climbed up and attacked the two that had gone right. The Big Guy ripped it’s guts out with his bare hands. She changed her mind and went right.
The Big Guy and the other guy went into a room where there was a Dark People and a Dark People Helper. The two with her started to fight them and she got scared. She knew that without her ‘friends’ she was helpless and the Dark Ones would probably kill her for being with the Big Ones. So she closed her eyes and used the Spell She Must Not Use. When she opened them again, the Dark People was gone. Her ‘friends’ looked at her funny but she just shrugged. They found some other pointy things that she didn’t like the look of, and then they were stuck. There was no where else to go this way. So they ran back to the other Big People who had gotten themselves into a fight again.
Somewhere in the back of her head, she realized that what she was doing was a AWFUL LOT like Adventuring. But this was different, she convinced herself. This was just survival stuff. This wasn’t really Adventuring. But the Big People she was with were having some trouble. Already one had been killed and the red headed female one was down with stab wounds from a Really Big Dark People Helper. The two giant spiders he was fighting with were pretty ferocious too. She thought about running to the female Big People, but she was too close to the Helper. So instead she tried to use a little Sacred Flame. It wasn’t TOO forbidden, and if all her fellow prisoners died… well, she probably wouldn’t be the last one to die anyway. That was some consolation.
But finally they killed the spiders, though the female prisoner was killed. She felt bad that she hadn’t been able to help her. She certainly wanted to! And now she was the only female in the group of prisoners and she worried about that a little. She knew what could happen in that situation well enough. Two years working in a bawdy small-town tavern had certainly taught her that. But finally the others managed to kill the Big Helper, though she had to look away when the Big Guy turned the Helper’s face into something liquid. She would want to stay away from that one. Probably best to stay away from all of them as much as she could.
Then she saw some Sparklys in one of the weird giant cave-spikes. Sparklys were always nice. She considered going in there first before all the Big People took all the Sparklys, but she hadn’t obtained the lifespan she had by being rash. Instead she wisely stayed behind and let the Big People go first…
Sorry, this is a bit of a long-form story compared to the others. But I was afraid I was getting too predictable. I thought about breaking it up but decided to leave it as a single massive post. I did get an image commissioned for it by Ciderward, though I’ve not colored it yet. You’ll see it down there.
“Oh no,” Quill shook her head. “In fact, once I got over the embarassment, it actually turned out quite well.”
Mae was sitting at her work space in the hidden ‘exotic’ area below her stall in the Imperial City, working on replacing the ruby stones from Quill-Weave’s Evil outfit while Quill sat nearby, telling the tailor about her latest exploit with it.
“How on earth can that be? You were parading around their fall festival bonfire completely naked for all they knew!”
“And carrying a Jack-O-Lantern don’t forget.” the Argonian laughed. “I was holed up in my tower for days after that, too embarrassed to go out. But Mooky’s wife came by after he’d told her the whole sorry tale. She had explained it to the rest of the town and they actually want me to do it again next year!”
“Really?”
“Well, after they put the kids to bed and with some matching underwear for modesty.”
“They must really like you Quill!”
Quill-Weave restrained the instinctive correction of ‘Mistress’. Mae certainly knew her as both. “They do, I think. I guess I’ve brought a little notoriety to their little town. Of course, that wasn’t exactly what I was going for originally.”
“Still, having an Incarnation of Evil living nearby must bring in some tourist dollars.”
Quill laughed and rummaged through her bag, pulling out a little wooden figurine. “Look Mae! This is what one of the shops is selling now!”
Mae took the figure and looked it over before handing it back. “Nice replica! Though really, the boobs are a bit much don’t you think? I mean, even disregarding the size, there’s a couple of points there that you don’t have at all!”
Quill put it back in her bag, snickering. “Well, you mammals have your little fetishes. Besides, a little enhancement is good for the myth, and I owe it all to your and your cleavage magic. Plus it helps me go incognito when I need to. I’m all for it!”
“Well, here you go,” the little tailor said, standing and handing her the revised outfit. “Nice normal rubies this time. I even got a local jeweler to do the skull.”
Quill held the outfit up. It looked identical to her eyes. “Thank you Mae! I know these must have cost you something extra. I don’t want you to go broke replacing them!”
The little cat waved her offer away, “Nonsense. For the right purpose, those enchanted stones will bring a lot more than normal rubies.”
Quill looked at her darkly.
“Hey! Business is business.” Mae said defensively.
“Oh, I guess it’s okay. You’ve got to make a profit after all. Thanks a lot Mae. But now I’ve got another request for you…”
…………………………
She rode back to Anvil with two packages tucked away. As much as she would like to have stayed in her Evil Tower of Doom, she had to get her writing back to her publisher. Her monthly sabbaticals were doing wonders for her writing, even if so far they had led to nothing but embarrassment personally. She’d even gotten inspiration for a new book, “Life in the Sticks”.
The days at her home in Anvil passed slowly though, and she glanced at the calendar every morning as the day of her next sabbatical approached. It finally arrived and she took the first coach heading towards her destination, hopping off midway since there were no actual stops near the village. Mooky was there waiting for her as usual.
“Good trip?” he asked.
“Oh, it was fine.”
“Let me carry those,” he offered as they walked down the path into the woods where her Tower lay.
“Thanks! So, anything interesting happen while I was away?”
“Oh, the usual things that happen out here I guess. My sister is pregnant again. Farmer Brown’s cow got loose and we had a dickens of a time trying to rope it. Your tower was burnt to the ground. Fox got into our hen house again the other night.”
Quill nodded then stopped. “Hold on, what was that last one again?”
“Fox… hen house?”
“No, before that.”
“Oh. I thought you might mean that one. Your tower was burnt to the ground. A bunch of do-gooders came down from Cheydinhal. Said they were purging the countryside of evil and they’d caught wind of our Mistress of Evil. Yup, came and leveled the place. Not so much as a ‘by your leave’ either.”
The rain started to fall as Quill-Weave sat on the ground hard. “But… My tower!” she cried.
Mooky sat down beside her. “I know. A damned shame too. I guess you probably won’t be needing me anymore.”
Quill looked at him with tears in her eyes. The Faceless Mook patted her on the back. “Now Mistress, it’s just an abandoned tower.”
She turned to him with real anger in her eyes, “but it WASN’T abandoned! It was MY tower!”
He nodded in agreement, “A real shame. Want to see it?”
Quill rose and nodded, and Mooky led the way into the deep woods to the clearing where the tower had stood. Now it was a pile of rubble.
“How do you burn stone anyway?” Mooky asked to no one in particular while Quill poked around, prying a charred fake skull loose from cold cinders that was all that was left of her throne of skulls. Tears streaked her face as she held it up.
“Come on to our hut, Mistress. The wife has made up the spare room for you for the night.”
Quill allowed herself to be led away from the ruin.
……………………
The Argonian that stepped inside the little hut on the outskirts of the village that Mooky called home was not the Quill-Weave that had hopped off the wagon earlier that day. She was, in every aspect, a broken woman. The big lady that was Mooky’s wife welcomed her into the modest dwelling graciously, but Quill-Weave wasn’t paying much attention. She had met the woman some weeks back and was quite fond of her, though she would have described the housewife as ‘bombastic’. But along with her larger-than-life demeanor, she was a genuinely caring lady and kept her home tidy and respectable. And if she browbeat Mooky every once in a while, he still had genuine affection for her. Quill could see why he’d taken to her.
But now she was seeing none of that. In the few months since she’d taken on the role of Mistress of Evil, she’d really come to enjoy these trips as the highlight of her life. But now it was over and she’d have to go back to her old life without this spark of intrigue.
“It’s not fair!” she said as Mrs. Mooky sat her down on the ratty couch. “They can’t just go burning down people’s Evil Towers of Doom like that! Where’s the justice?”
Mrs. Mooky sat down beside her, handing her a cup of coffee. “Well dearie, you are supposed to be the Mistress of Evil after all. You shouldn’t be too upset.”
“Damn if I shouldn’t! I may be the Mistress of Evil, but that doesn’t mean I’m bad! I’ve committed no crimes or anything! Well, not serious ones anyway. But they just come and burn down my house?”
“There there. This life is hard, I know.”
Quill-Weave looked up into the big woman’s eyes. “Oh Mrs. Mooky. And I’d bought you an Evil Outfit too. I was going to ask you to be my sidekick.”
Suddenly a change came over Mrs. Mooky. “Sidekick? Me? Oh Mistress, you shouldn’t have! Can I see it?”
Quill-Weave sniffled and motioned to a package Mooky had left on the table.
Mrs. Mooky opened it up and unfolded the garment. Dark brown leather glistened and metallic edging shone around the ample chest-piece. Her eyes went wide at the scandalous cutout.
“Oh my! Quill, you had this made for me?!”
Quill-Weave nodded, adding a half-hearted “Mistress of Evil” correction between sniffles. Not that it mattered anymore.
“I’ve got to try this on! Excuse me Mistress. I’ll be right back!” she said excitedly and fairly ran down the hallway to change.
“That was a very nice thing you did, Mistress. I haven’t seen her this excited in years.”
“Well, she’s been kind to me Mooky. I had to do something for her.”
Later, a door opened and something came striding up the hallway, something large and dark. Quill was especially happy to see that she had put brown mascara around her eyes as well to accentuate the dark leather mask that covered her eyes. To call her a large woman was, perhaps, a bit misleading. Standing over six feet tall and quite broad, she was nonetheless not fat at all. Years of working with livestock and running a small rural homestead had kept her quite fit in fact. Now her bosomy physique was made plain. She was a vision. She was larger-than-life. She was… Evil Woman! Somewhere a clavinet played a staccato measure and in the back of her head and Quill started humming a tune.
“Clarisse?” Mooky said hesitantly.
Quill-Weave rose from the couch, a big grin on her face and temporarily forgetting her loss. “Nonsense! This isn’t your Clarisse, Mooky. This is EVIL WOMAN!”
Somewhere in the background a clavinet played again.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Mooky from behind the mask. “I wasn’t sure what the ‘EW’ meant.”
“I considered ‘Evil Girl’, but frankly you’re quite obviously no girl.”
Mooky nodded his agreement enthusiastically.
“Mrs. Mooky, you really rock that outfit!” Quill responded. “Though my guess at your bust size may have been too conservative.”
“You think so?” she replied, crossing to a little mirror nearby. "What do you think Hon?“
The Faceless Mook was speechless for a minute. “Um… don’t you think the cleavage is a bit… much? It’s practically bursting out. I can almost see your…”
“I know! Isn’t it great?” Evil Woman responded happily and turned to Quill-Weave. “Besides, it’s nice thick leather. It can’t break!”
“Well, you are certainly impressive,” Quill-Weave added, remembering the tower. “Too bad we won’t get a chance to use it now. It would have been a lot of fun having a sidekick.”
Suddenly Mrs. Mooky stood up straight, her back arched proudly and even Quill-Weave was beginning to lose faith in the leather straps that held the breast-piece in place. “Nonsense! Mooky, get the Mayor and tell him to convene a town meeting. We’ve got things to discuss! I think it’s time we deal with those vigilantes. They’re in the next village over, looking for witches. Well they’re going to get more than they bargained for. They won’t soon forget the Mistress of Evil and Evil Woman!”
Then she seemed to return from a fantasy world and looked at her husband. “But, can you help me out of this first? It was a bitch to get those straps tied up by myself.”
Mooky nodded happily, running his hands over curved leather on his wife. “Of course!”
“Oh! Hon! Umm… Never mind the Mayor for now. Mistress, will you excuse us for a little bit?”
Quill-Weave nodded and left the two to their hut and strolled out into the village proper.
………………………….
Later Quill was dressed in her Evil garb and was sitting at a large table inside what passed for the town hall. The fact that it was normally occupied by a few cows and horses and smelled as such didn’t seem to bother the townspeople who had gathered there with her though. Mrs. Mooky, dressed again in her humble housewife clothes now, was speaking.
“And furthermore, I think we need to call for the Imperial Legion to do something! We can’t have some random people wandering the countryside looking for trouble.”
The Mayor was a portly, balding man with a hint of grey still visible at his temples. While the village was barely more than a hundred souls, he obviously took his position as lead council member seriously though. “Now now Clarisse, they may have done some damage to this fine lady’s Tower of Doom, but you have to consider their motives too.”
“Motives, schmotives,” said a new voice. When Quill turned to look, she saw it was the shopkeeper who had sold her the toy Mistress.
“Mayor, ever since the Fall Festival this town has been booming. Why, my profits last week were more than I made all last year on Nekked Mistress figurines alone! Pumpkin sales went through the roof too. I’m having to import pumpkins from all the neighboring farms to keep up with demand!”
The Mayor looked concerned. “Yes, but the Imperial Legion? Surely we can handle this ourselves and keep them out of it.” He turned to Quill, “and Mistress, we all know and love you around here you know, but the Imperial Legion wouldn’t take kindly to your particular style. The Knights of Stendarr have moved on now, and are the next village over’s problem aren’t they? Let them handle it.”
“Mayor,” the owner of the local inn spoke up. “Maybe you don’t realize it, but since the Tower was razed my rooms have gone empty. Word has gotten around that our Mistress of Evil has been run off. No one’s coming to visit anymore. I’m back to just serving Herbert the Drunk again.”
A Bard nodded agreement, “And I’ll have to move on. Herbert doesn’t tip me!”
“AND,” Mrs. Mooky interjected, interrupting them all with her booming voice, “…all this lost money means lost taxes too you know.”
Quill looked back to the Mayor. He had suddenly become a lot more interested.
“Point taken,” he said, his face changing to one of concern. “But what do you propose?”
This time Mrs. Mooky had no comeback. Quill looked to the others, but they were just grumbling among themselves.
“And that’s the crux of the matter, Clarisse. If we don’t call out the Imperial Legion, what can we do? They mean well, they’re just a bit radical in their approach. And I’m none too sure if the Legion will side with us.”
“Gentlemen,” Quill-Weave said, speaking up. “And ladies,” she corrected herself before continuing, “I think this calls for the Mistress to wreak her revenge. I think, if you give me a little time, I can scare them off for good. But I will need your support.”
“What do you have in mind?” the Mayor asked uncertainly. “Nothing really evil, right?”
“I’ve got some ideas, but I don’t think you want to know about them. Not officially anyway. Just let me have free reign for a few days and I’ll see what I can do.”
The townspeople murmured, but the shopkeeper spoke up. “If the Mistress of Evil were to do something… substantial, it would surely bring interest back to the village!”
That seemed to sway them. Even the Mayor got on-board since he would not officially know anything about it.
“I’m a little worried about your term ‘free reign’, Mistress. But as long as it’s nothing too outlandish, I think we’re all agreed. Do what you can and we’ll help if possible.”
Quill looked to Mooky and Mrs. Mooky. Of course she knew their real names by now, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to call them anything else. “Can I stay with you for a few more days? I will need some time to come up with a plan, but if the Mistress of Evil has to go, I’d at least like her to go out with a bang and not a whimper.”
Mooky looked at Mrs. Mooky who smiled warmly at Quill. “Of course you can. Anything we can do, we’ll be happy to. For an Incarnation of Evil, you’re quite a good neighbor!”
“If a little nuts,” the Mayor added, but he was beaming a genuine smile.
Quill looked around her. All the villagers were looking at her and nodded their agreement. She gulped, “Well, I’ll do my best!” she promised.
As the meeting broke up, Quill found herself torn. She felt sure she should be upset that all her attempts to become a real Mistress of Evil had instead resulted in her being turned into the town nut case. Yet somehow she couldn’t muster up the emotion to be upset. With Mrs. Mooky holding her hand as they walked back to her hut, something decidedly NOT evil was washing over her. She liked these people, despite their conviction that she was as crazy as a loon. Still, they saw her as THEIR crazy loon, and that made her feel warm inside.
The zealots that had caused her to lose her place with them must pay for that.
……………………………
The next day Quill was racking her brain trying to come up with a plan. Calling themselves the Knights of Stendarr, nonetheless there were only five of them, so it wasn’t like they were a big group. The small cult of Stendarr and had taken it upon themselves to rid the countryside of all evil forces they came across. Yet for all her imagination, she simply could not think of a good plan until the next morning. She awoke from sleeping on Mooky’s couch with the plan firm in her brain, as if someone had planted it there. But she needed gold.
She explained her plan to Mrs. Mooky who, true to her socializing nature, came up with a plan to hold a bake sale. Quill found herself helping Mrs. Mooky bake cookies and cupcakes that afternoon while Mooky himself spread the word around town. Though Quill protested, Mrs. Mooky insisted that she wear her Mistress of Evil outfit.
“Oh you have to wear it Mistress! It’ll bring so much more interest!” she said as they were putting the baked goods into little containers for sale.
“But… I’m going to be selling cookies! The Incarnation of Evil can’t be seen selling cookies!!!”
“Sure you can. It’s just the townsfolk. They know you anyway. Come on, you’ve gotta wear it.”
Quill got an idea. “I’ll wear mine if you’ll wear yours!”
That caused Mrs. Mooky to pause for a minute, but then she smiled. “I’ll DO it! The Mistress of Evil and Evil Woman will unite!”
A few minutes later, the Mistress of Evil and the mysterious Evil Woman emerged from the hut and set up a small table. Mooky tacked on a little signboard in front of them that read “Evil Bake Sale”. Below that it read “Mistress of Evil” on Quill’s side and “Evil Woman” on Mrs. Mooky’s side with crude hand-painted caricatures of each.
The line started forming ten minutes after they’d set up and sales were brisk. However, Evil Woman had to explain to the Mistress of Evil why she should stay seated when the customers came up to pay.
“Mistress,” she whispered as Quill was sitting back down after completing a transaction with an elderly man who seemed to walk away disappointed. “You’re not giving them a chance!”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Evil Woman told the waiting customers that they’d be right back, then she took Quill back a few steps to explain in private.
“Mistress, you need to stay seated. They can’t look down your cleavage at all if you stand up.”
“My cleavage? What does that have to do with anything?”
Her sidekick let out an exasperated sigh. “Mistress! Do you really think they just came here to buy cookies?! Give them a SHOW! After that bonfire scene, they expect at least a little something extra.”
“Oh! I see. Well, if that’s what it takes…” Quill said, and turned her back to the customers and unceremoniously pulled her boobs up higher behind her bodice before turning back. “Let’s start the show!”
After that the money really started to come in on Quill’s side as well as on Mrs. Mooky’s. In fact, she had to remind some customers to take their cookies and cupcakes as they seemed to have forgotten just what it was they were buying. Eventually Quill noticed that the same faces seemed to be coming back. She mentioned it to Mrs. Mooky, who just explained that there were some lonely men in town with more gold than sense. Finally, though, all the products were sold out and Quill stood, getting ready to pack up the table.
“Sorry sir, we’re all out,” Quill said sadly.
“Oh, well… that’s okay. Take this coin anyway,” he said and dropped it between her boobs before turning and heading back to the back of the line.
“Wait a second! E.W., selling cookies in skimpy outfits is one thing, but we’re not going that far are we?!” Quill said standing up indignantly while she fished out the coin.
The next guy in line offered to buy the coin for two more.
“Enough! Thank you for coming gentlemen!” the Mistress of Evil declared, glaring at the pervert.
………………………………………
“So, how much did we make?” Mrs. Mooky asked as they sat at the kitchen table while Quill-Weave counted the coins.
“Two hundred and sixty! My lord that’s a lot for some cookies and cupcakes!”
Mooky was sitting with them, smiling broadly. “There’s a lot of lonely men in this town.”
“Apparently,” Quill-Weave agreed. “But desperate times call for desperate measures. I’m just glad the women didn’t mind!”
Mrs. Mooky laughed, “Oh, we’re a pretty pragmatic folk here Mistress. There’s a lot of lonely women here too. They won’t be so lonely tonight. So, will that be enough for what you need?”
“I certainly hope so. With what I have with me and this, it should cover my trip as well as the scroll I need. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. With luck, I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
…………………………………………
The ride to Cheydinhal was thankfully uneventful and she was able to find a mage selling just the scroll she was looking for. She made it back to the village before the sun had gone down.
The Faceless Mook was waiting for her along with his wife.
“So, did you get what you were looking for?” Mrs. Mooky asked excitedly.
“Sure did!” Quill answered. “No problem. I even have a few coins left over! Here, you take them. For your hospitality. Now, just direct me to how to get to that village where they were last seen.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you, Quill? I might be able to help. You need your sidekick don’t you?” Mrs. Mooky asked, though Quill noticed she didn’t protest when accepting the change. But then again, Quill-Weave didn’t bother to correct her using her real name.
“I appreciate it, but no. You’re a married woman with responsibilities. I don’t want you to get in trouble if things should go wrong.”
“Well, if you insist. Just head down that trail going across the road to the west. It will take you straight there. Here, I brought your outfit.”
Quill thanked the two and headed off in the other direction. She waited till they were out of sight before changing and becoming, if for one last time, the Mistress of Evil. Then she headed down the trail as the sun set in the west.
The lights of the village appeared soon after. It didn’t take long to find the men she was looking for. They were in a clearing outside of the village proper, goading an old Khajit man.
“Come on you mangy cat,” one was saying while pulling the man’s tail. “We know witches love their cats. You must know something!”
The Khajiit looked like this had been going on for quite some time. He just sat stoically while another man poked him with a stick.
“No one’s going to help you here. Want another dunk in the river?”
“Yeah,” said a third. “I can get a bag. Isn’t that how you dispose of cats? Bag them up and throw them in a river?”
Quill saw a little shiver run through the Khajiit, then he went silent again. Then she noticed his eyes were open and unfocused. In fact, they were so clouded by cataracts he must effectively have been blind. Suddenly she really began to hate these men. Stendarr or no, they were doing nothing but torturing this poor creature. She pulled out her Scroll of Terrifying Presence and cast the spell. Instantly they all turned to her as the Mistress of Evil approached them boldly. Even the blind Khajiit squeaked timidly.
“BEGONE YOU! I AM THE MISTRESS OF EVIL. BEGONE AND NEVER RETURN OR YOU SHALL FACE MY WRATH!” she shouted. One broke and ran, followed by another. The other three looked on the verge of doing the same.
“YOU REMAIN? FOOLISH MORTALS, IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO DIE!!!” she screamed as they backed right up to the nearby river. She raised her hands as if to cast a powerful spell. Two screamed and ran headlong in opposite directions. But the last did something unexpected. He raised his hands and a purple glow infused them, rapidly covering him entirely. Now it was the Mistress of Evil’s turn to step back.
“Good try, witch!” he smiled. Then he cast a spell not at her, but at the backs of his fleeing companions. "JONAH! HURRASH! Come back here! She’s just using a spell!“
The purple glow enveloped the two and they stopped, then returned, encircling Quill.
"Yes, you do look like your effigy,” said the mage in front of her. “A reptilian witch. What? No response?”
He began walking towards her as the other two approached from both sides. A feeling of panic washed over her and she looked around for an escape route. She knew she didn’t have much time.
“Not much of a witch,” one of the other men said.
“Oh, she’s a witch alright,” said the mage, and he cast another spell, this time directly at Quill-Weave. Instantly she felt tired – so tired she couldn’t even stand. She fell to the ground with a grunt.
“Tie her up boys! Now, how do we deal with witches?”
“DROWN HER!” the two responded with gusto as one of them wrapped up her hands and feet in rope.
“Oh no! No gentlemen. We don’t drown anyone! We just test them. If she floats, she’s a witch and we burn her at the stake. If she sinks, she’s innocent!”
“Oh yeah!” said one of the others. “That’s right.”
Quill-Weave detected two flaws in that testing method, the salient one being that she could breathe underwater, but decided she’d rather not participate regardless. She bolted towards the smallest of the men, hoping to slip past him. Unfortunately he was also the fastest of the men. He had her tackled and flailing on the ground before she could get two steps past him. A minute later she was completely hogtied. The one good thing, she was happy to see the old Khajiit getting away.
“And now, my fine fellows,” said the mage, “let’s give her the old Heave-Ho!”
They carried her up to the edge of the rushing water and began to swing her when a large dark shape in brown leather crashed into one of them. Had Quill-Weave’s snout not been tied up as well, she would have cried for joy.
“Oh no you don’t!” Evil Woman screamed, shoving one of the men into the rushing river. She turned immediately to the other man who was still holding Quill-Weave’s hands and even behind the mask Quill could see the rage burning in her eyes. The woman ran full speed and head first into the other, knocking him to the ground. Though he was struggling valiantly, Evil Woman sat firmly upon his head and his struggles began to subside.
But the mage had recovered his composure by then, and a flash of red flew from his hands and struck Evil Woman. She rolled paralyzed off the man underneath her as he struggled to regain his wits.
“A Coven! Jonah, we’ve found a Coven! Quick, tie the big one up. The spell won’t last long. Tie her tight. There may be others, but they’ll talk. Oh yes! Now that we’ve got proof, we can do whatever we like with them!”
Evil Woman shot him a glare that would melt ice, but she was unable to speak.
The third man, wet but unharmed, came stumbling back from downriver shortly after and helped tie the two up to a tree back-to-back. They’d untied Quill’s snout so she could talk fortunately.
“Sorry E.W.,” Quill said when she was able to. “I’m not very good at planning I’m afraid. I told you not to come.”
E.W.’s voice was slurred, but Quill could make it out clearly enough. “Not your fault Mistress. You couldn’t know they had a mage.”
“Shut up you two,” the man they called Jonah said, kicking E.W. in the stomach with enough force to knock the wind out of her.
“That’s right. We’ll ask the questions here. So, how many others are in on your little witchcraft game around here LADIES?” asked the mage. “Let’s start with that.”
“There are no witches around here,” E.W. replied. “The only evil mage around here is YOU!”
“Hah!” he said, bending low. “Look at you. Why, you’re practically the poster child for witches! I serve Stendarr, one of the eight Divines you hag! Now it’s time to talk before we burn the both of you. We’ll burn you anyway, but at least we’ll burn you whole.”
“Ken,” said one of the men. “Isn’t that a little drastic?”
“SHUT UP!” screamed the mage and struck the man hard across the chin sending him to the ground. “They are pure evil and must be destroyed! They work their seductive magic on us even now! Look at those heaving breasts, you! Those nubile curves! Why, even the reptile is trying to seduce us now that she can no longer wield her magic! Is there anything more evil and perverted than that? They must BURN and quickly, before we are reduced to less than men!”
“Too late,” a voice said quietly from behind them.
The three spun around and looked at a little man, dressed in a ridiculous minion ‘armor’ that likely couldn’t stop a pin.
“Are you with these?” the mage asked, somewhat flustered and red-faced after his tirade.
“Oh, yes! The Argonian lady is my employer, the Mistress of Evil. And the other is my wife, whom I love dearly. Clarisse, are you alright?”
“KEVIN! What are you DOING here?!”
“Yes, little man. What ARE you doing here?” the mage demanded, and sparks flew between his balled up fists.
“I’m here to rescue them from you of course,” Mooky squeaked.
“YOU? HA! What can you do little man? We are allied with Stendarr and will vanquish all evil, including these witches AND you, admitted witch-lover!”
“Uh… Boss…” one of the men said, backing away from the mage but not looking at him.
“Me? Oh, not much. But I can rescue them from you two.”
“Two? There’s three of us you nitwit!”
“Not anymore,” Mooky said, smiling and Quill noticed a flicker of light dance across his face followed by smoke.
The mage swung around to see hundreds of torches bobbing up and down approaching from the nearby village. His remaining companion was already running like the devil was at his heels in the opposite direction.
Mooky ignored the mage and knelt beside his wife and Quill, brandishing a meager knife that was barely as long as the rope that bound them. It was, however, incredibly sharp.
“What? What is this? We are the Knights of Stendarr! You cannot escape so easily!” the mage said, his hands glowing in a myriad of colors, rapidly changing as he desperately searched for a spell to use. But the torches were getting very close now and Quill saw the face of the Mayor of Mooky’s village as well as another man similarly dressed. They did not look happy.
“Don’t,” Mooky advised the mage, who looked at Quill’s little minion with fear for the first time. But Mooky wasn’t looking at him. He was sawing through Quill-Weave’s bonds now that E.W. was loose. “It won’t go well for you if you try to use magic now. No matter what you do, you’ll be overwhelmed in a minute. The way I see it, you have three choices. You run, and hope you run faster than my wife. You can give up, and throw yourself on the mercy of the villagers. Or you can fight and get taken down by all the people you don’t manage to hurt.”
Quill felt the bond snap loose and she unwrapped the remaining rope from around her hands and feet. Mooky turned back to the mage then, without getting up.
“But I also should warn you of three things too. One, We can be pretty savage out here in the countryside, especially to those who would hurt our families. You wouldn’t survive the last choice.”
The mage looked at him, down at his hands, and then at the crowd approaching, now just a few yards away.
“Two,” Mooky went on, “If you give up, you still may be put to death. We really don’t have Defense Lawyers out here. I wouldn’t call our justice system exactly ‘Fair’. But we like it.”
The mage took off at a dead run, straight down along the river’s edge. A flash leaped after him. A dark, large flash of brown leather.
“Three,” Mooky said, turning to Quill-Weave and helping her up and smiling broadly. “My wife can outrun a deer.”
Quill looked past the little man. Though the figures were rapidly dimming, she saw Mrs. Mooky collide with the mage at a speed unbelievable for a woman of her size. The mage didn’t have a chance. Quill saw his body fly away from the point of impact as if it had wings, landing with a splash in a shallow, but very rocky, section of the river before being carried off to the waterfall just a little farther downstream. He was never seen or heard from again.
…………………….
Almost three months had passed. Quill had resumed her normal life back in Anvil, but every once in a while she would see the old outfit in the back of her closet and a pang of regret would pass through her. Though her exploits had been far from what she’d envisioned when she first donned her Evil persona, she still thought about them from time to time, but without Mooky and her Evil Tower of Doom, she knew any attempt to relive that experience would just be disappointing now.
A knock came on the door unexpectedly. Quill automatically looked to her calendar, but no – there were no deliveries expected for today. She dressed and answered the door. The little man outside was the last person she ever expected to see again.
“Hello Mistress,” he said.
Quill-Weave looked anxiously up and down the street, whispering, “You can call me Quill-Weave here Mooky. How on earth did you find me? I didn’t know you knew where I lived!”
“Well, no. We didn’t. But the wife found your Khajiit friend in the Imperial City and after a little persuasion she pointed us your way. I’m ever so sorry to intrude.”
“Oh, come in and bring Mrs. Mooky in to for heaven’s sakes!” Quill said, seeing the big woman still sitting on a wagon that had seen better days.
After pleasantries were made, Mrs. Mooky got down to business.
“Mistress,” she said plainly, “we miss you in the village. Things just haven’t been the same without you.”
“Oh, and I miss you-all too Clarisse.”
Faceless Mook started next, “We were going to send you a letter, but we know how you value your privacy, Mistress. But maybe, if you are interested anyway… We’ve rebuilt your tower.”
“What?” Quill said, dumbfounded and looking to Mrs. Mooky for confirmation.
The big woman nodded her head, a naturally cheery smile coming over her face. “It’s true. The whole village pitched in. Mistress, to put it simply, we want you back.”
“I… don’t know what to say! The whole village you say? You rebuilt my Evil Tower of Doom?”
“Good as new,” Mooky said proudly. “We even aged it up for you. We knocked a hole in the roof and put a whole family of bats back inside too!”
Quill frowned. “I’m not sure if THAT was necessary. But… well…”
“Oh please come, Mistress. Even if you don’t want to stay. Just come and visit won’t you?”
She needed no further persuasion. In a flash she had a suitcase packed and was rattling across the roads of Cyrodiil. True to their word, the tower was back. If it smelled a bit of fresh paint and wallpaper, what of that? At least superficially it looked amazingly similar to the original. The carpenter had even installed a new Throne of Skulls and, sure enough, a fake torture rack in the basement.
Tears were in her eyes when she came down the stairs from her lair at the top of the tower. “Oh Mooky, Mrs. Mooky! I don’t know what to say!”
“Well, you’d better come up with something because there’s a whole village waiting outside to hear you,” Mrs. Mooky said.
Quill stared and darted to a window by the stairs. Sure enough there must have been a hundred people coming up the path to the tower and they cheered when they saw her looking out.
“Tell them to wait! I’ve got to get my outfit on!” she cried and raced back up to her room to change.
In a flash she the Mistress of Evil was ready. She tried to don her Evil Persona as well, but a terribly non-Evil smile kept stealing over her features. She stepped outside of her Tower to a quite respectable cheer for a bunch of villagers.
“Now what’s all this!” she demanded in her best Evil voice. “Torches and pitchforks will avail you nothing against the Mistress of Evil! Begone you vile mob!”
The mayor stepped up to her, handing her a small box. “Yes Mistress,” he laughed. “We will leave you in peace to terrorize the countryside as you will. But before we go, we wanted to give you this as a token of our… fear.”
The Mistress of Evil may have choked up a bit, but she accepted the large box and unwrapped it. Inside was the most beautiful pure-white cake she had ever seen. In black lettering it read, “Welcome Back, Mistress!” Atop it was a very respectable likeness of her, even if it was naked and carrying a pumpkin.
She looked up and her mouth was shaking. The mayor and the townspeople all nodded and seemed to be satisfied and left the way they had come.
“But,” Quill said before they’d got far. “But don’t you all think I’m just crazy?”
“Certifiable,” said the carpenter whom she recognized.
“Daft as a Loon,” said the innkeeper. “But you’re OUR Loon Mistress. Welcome back!”
They all shouted “Welcome Back!” in unison, then left the way they had come.
“We’ll leave you be. I’ll be back in the morning Mistress,” said the Faceless Mook as he and his wife followed the others.
She watched them go and closed the box. “Nice people,” she had to admit, and went back to the door.
The new latch fairly sparkled in it’s silver frame. But it wouldn’t open.
Madman read some fanfiction on the Prequel stream tonight and he was SO friggin good that I persuaded him and Kaz to let me pay him for voice work and read my latest fanfic. This is the result. I left it fully intact, with all weirdness in place. I might edit it at some point, but I kinda like leaving it as-is.
She opened the letter from her tailor in the Imperial City immediately upon receipt from the courier.
“Dear Mistress of Evil,” the letter started. Quill-Weave was happy to see that the Khajiit had addressed the letter appropriately as she had requested. Though of course the tailor knew full well who she was, it wouldn’t do to spread that word around too liberally.
“It is with the greatest of concern that I write this to you. Two days ago I happened upon that crazy mage I told you about. You remember, the one who sold me those rubies? Well we began to talk and it appears that they were enchanted! As best I can gather – you must understand the nutjob is very hard to comprehend – they are enchanted with an invisibility enchantment. If you touch the one with the skull engraving while repeating the word "Hej” three times, it will activate the others and the invisibility will be engaged. The word “Xhu” will disable it. I apologize deeply for this and will be more than happy to replace them with regular stones. You need only stop in the shop and I will gladly swap them out for you!“
Quill-Weave looked down at the red skull ruby on her bodice and smiled an evil smile.
"I bet you will!” she thought. “Didn’t know you were selling me an enchanted outfit did you?”
She decided to wait till the next day when Faceless Mook came back from his vacation to test it out on him.
The next morning she heard him enter downstairs and called down to him, “Be down in a few minutes Mooky. Please can you put the cat out for me?”
“Sure thing Mistress!” he called back.
She heard him downstairs and said the word three times while touching the stone. Nothing happened, but she also had no idea how it was supposed to work either. She then crept downstairs as silently as she could and heard him outside. She hid behind the door until he came back in. He went to his workbench and began working on the door latch again.
She silently walked around right in front of him, but there was no reaction. She was totally invisible to him! She smiled a toothy grin and crept back up the stairs.
After saying the words to disable the enchantment she returned down the stairs as if nothing had happened.
“Oh! Working on that latch again?”
“Yes Mistress. I really can’t figure out why it’s so much of a problem. Here, look… See, it’s really a very simple mechanism. The only thing I can figure is that the little axle gets stuck somehow.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “I’m no good with such things Mooky. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Say, are the villagers still holding that festival tonight?”
Faceless Mook perked up at that. “Oh yes! It’s the talk of the village! I really wish you’d come. My wife is dying to meet you too. She forgives you for that whole salt thing.”
“Ah, well, tell them thanks. I’ve come to terms that I won’t be doing my Evil Deeds around here anyway. But really, it just wouldn’t be seemly for Evil Incarnate to show up and dance with a bunch of villagers now, would it?”
Her minion sighed. “I guess not. We’re going to have a big bonfire though! Really it would be so nice of you to join.”
“Well, I’ll think about it. Now I’m off to start planning my next Villainous Deed.”
“Okay, let me know if you need any help,” Mooky said, turning back to his work.
In fact, she was planning her next Villainous Deed. With her invisibility outfit, the idea was practically thrown into her lap. During the fall festival, Quill would activate her invisibility and create a jack-o-lantern. But this one would magically appear at the festival, floating on air! The superstitious rubes would freak out! Oh, maybe it wasn’t as Evil as some ideas, but she would definitely get a kick out of seeing them run screaming from the Magic Jack-O-Lantern. She grabbed a nice fat pumpkin from the garden out back and sequestered herself in her room with a knife and a spoon.
Three pumpkins later and she finally felt she had just the right look of menace on the pumpkin’s carved face. The fact that she’d managed to get pumpkin brains all over herself didn’t bother her since she’d wisely removed her Evil outfit beforehand. But she needed a bath.
“Hey Mooky? Could you make a bath for me?”
“Sure Mistress! I’ll start heating the water up now. But, can I leave early today after that? The wife wants me to get dressed up for the festival.”
“No problem. I’m going to go to bed early tonight anyway. Give her my regards. Just let me know when you leave.”
Some little while later, she heard her minion call up the stairs, “Okay Qu… I mean, Mistress. The bath is ready. I’ve left a towel and soap right beside it. I’m heading out now.”
“Okay, thank you Mookey! You’re the best!”
When she’d heard the door close, she went downstairs and climbed into the bath. The water was just right. She decided right then that, if she saw Faceless Mook and his wife at the festival, she’d steer clear of them. His wife really had been awfully accommodating to her, and she felt a little bad at having not met her yet.
The day turned to night and Quill was all prepared. She waited until the hour was getting late, then she crept towards the village. Keeping to the wooded area around the clearing, she could see all the townspeople gathered around a large bonfire. Most were dancing while a few were playing some crude instruments and others yet were obviously somewhat drunk and singing badly at the top of their voices. She waited until she spotted Mooky and a large woman she assumed to be his wife nearby. They were on the far side of the fire happily so she decided to focus her efforts nearby.
She touched the ruby and repeated the incantation. Then she lit the candle and placed it within the pumpkin. Raising it high overhead, she stepped out of the woods. As expected, many of the villagers pointed and shrieked. She waved the pumpkin up and down as she circled the fire. But instead of screaming and running away in terror, she noticed most of them just made a pathway for the haunted jack-o-lantern. While the children pointed, most of the adults just shushed them and made them look away.
A little frustrated, she blew out the candle and went back into the woods. While she’d obviously caused a bit of an uproar at first, it was certainly not the terrified spectacle she was expecting. She dropped the pumpkin in the woods and went back to her castle. Once again, the latch wasn’t working. She fiddled with it but finally sat down in front of the door in frustration. At least it wasn’t cold or raining, she thought.
Then a figure came out of the gloom. It was Faceless Mook, and she was glad to see him.
“MOOKY! Just the man I was looking for! This latch is stuck again.”
“Hi Mistress. Sure, give me just a second and I’ll get it open.”
True to his word, with a little help from a small tool he kept nearby he had the latch open.
Once inside, the little man sat down at the table.
“What is it Mooky? What brings you here tonight of all nights? Don’t you want to be at the festival?” she said, smiling a little.
“Well, yes, but the wife insisted I come and talk to you. I’m sorry Quill… I mean Mistress. But it’s kind of hard to talk while you’re naked.”
Quill looked at him puzzled and looked down at herself. “Naked? I’m not nak… Oh no. OH NO!!!”
Quill-Weave’s pupils went from her normal slits to fully dilated.
“Thanks for coming to the festival anyway, Mistress. But, it’s not really a fertility festival,” Mooky said.
“But… this morning! You… I…”
“It’s okay Mistress. I know you’re a little eccentric in your dressing habits. But the rest of the villagers don’t know you that well. I… well, I suggest you wear clothes pretty much all the time when you come into the village, even if you sometimes don’t around here.”
………………………
Dear Mae the Tailor,
I thank you for your letter of yesterday. However, in the future I would appreciate it if you could be a little more PRECISE in your language. I’m afraid I misunderstood a critical aspect of your missive.
I will be in next week to have suitable alterations made to the garment.
bdfanfic 