The Tools of Statecraft: Sotha Sil

[neoqwerty]

Sotha Sil hadn't been planned, at all. When Nerevar had set out for Ald Sotha, following a lack of communication from a minor Indoril noble, and reports of smoke and fire, he hadn't expected to step into a war with daedric forces. He still remembers the sheer terror of a Daedric Prince towering over broken, burnt building-bones, over the bodies of crushed mer and blood-soaked grounds, a red-dyed coast, and the stench of death and Oblivion.

But he remembers, too, a mer perhaps a half-head shorter than himself, walking through the blood and ash and debris, a hissing rush of energy streaming into his palms from the daedra, like snakes and darkwinds and waterfalls. Souls, siphoned from countless crystals that the enemies held, from the weapons and staves they used, from the corpses of kinsmer fallen in the daedric assault. All gathered by this small, masked mage who wore simple robes spattered with blood and daedric creatia and soot, with the ease of a wizard readying a magelight.

Powerful. Doubtlessly using forbidden magics, but so, so very powerful.

The light that hit the edge of Nerevar's mind at that point had been dazzling, with all the possibilities he could get, if he could have a mage as powerful as this, forbidden knowledge or not. And when Nerevar glanced at his side, to V'vehk, the warrior-seer subtly nodded assent: he needed this mer. Nerevar nodded back in understanding, adjusted his grip on his swords, and dashed out of his observation spot.

"Mage! Tell us how to help!"

The mage's head whipped toward the sound of his voice, as did several dremora, as did Mehrunes Dagon, whose gaze felt like a flaying weight, but the mage yelled back.

"Get rid of the dremora! I can banish Dagon back to Oblivion, but I need time to cast the spell!"

The voice rang strangely, and something in Nerevar's stomach lurched, because that voice still sounded like a child's. But he didn't have time to react; already daedra - or dremora, was that what they were? - were converging on the mage. So Nerevar hastened his run, and he heard V'vehk run out after him, and then the few soldiers with them who hadn't run.

The ropes of souls gathering in the mage's hands struck out to constrict the Daedric Prince, when he moved to swipe a burning flail toward his would-be banisher, and Nerevar's breath caught in his throat. His body was moving entirely on reflexes now, reacting to enemies' proximity and to incoming blows without seeing them, because the mage was commanding his awe. He was paralyzing a Prince, and Nerevar had never seen anything like it. It was...

"...magnificent."

The mage tilted his masked face, as if he'd heard, and Nerevar resumed burying his swords through the tough daedric armors and fabrics of the dremora, forcing their discorporation. Having such a powerful mage would be incredible - but again, a faint tug of his conscience, because he sounded like a child, even if he seemed rather tall for being one. So perhaps... Not a battlemage, not yet. But he certainly knew things of conjuring, and that could potentially be an excellent weapon against the northmen.

In the end, Sotha Sil merely followed them, like that was meant to be.

And Nerevar now has one of the most powerful mystics at his disposal, teaching V'vehk letters and numbers much better than Nerevar could. He also teaches Nerevar about the theory underlying the schools of magic, about the principles of the Psijics that he knows.

Nerevar sometimes feels as if he is the axle of the world; first an assassin-seer, then an orphan raised to rule, now a psijic-in-training? Too many important things find themselves in the snares he places - and he sometimes wonders if it's his doing at all, or some greater machination.

He chances a glance at the two younger mer at the campfire, then turns to gaze at the sky, dusk half-covering the stars in the liminal space between day and night.

He wonders what lies further down his path, what will come at the end of it.

...if the tools he gathers may yet become... friends, perhaps...

In this series: Indoril Lexia