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Infamy's Daughter - The Road to Cheydinhal

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"The first night away from home is sometimes the worst."

That's what her mother had always told her, and now that she was away from home - perhaps for forever - her words rang in her head like the chapel bells on Sundas. She sniffed, recalling her mother, who'd been burnt up by that horrible monster Alfakyn. "I hate him!" she sobbed. "I hate him! I HATE HIM!"

Artanis dissolved into tears, curling into a tight ball in the boughs of a willow tree. The sounds of crying seemed to echo throughout the quiet of the Blackwood, though the small elfling didn't seem to notice. Mama was dead, Papa was gone, Leyawiin was lost, and she was alone.

After what felt like ages and ages, the wood elf's sobbing finally petered off into wet sniffles and she began to take in her surroundings. The woods had grown dark with the shadows of early evening; faint sunlight peaked through the tree canopy, making weird shapes in the lowlight. Artanis shivered, hugging herself. She was alone and very much lost.

An owl screeched nearby, breaking the silence. Artanis screamed and flung her arms around the trunk of her tree, shaking as more tears ran down her ash smudged cheeks.

"It was only an owl," she told herself. "Only an owl, like the stuffed one in the shop, only-" the bird let out another cry, swooping through the branches of the willow tree; Artanis gulped, "-alive."

Sniffling, the small elfling pushed herself against the tree trunk. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping for sleep to claim her.

When it did, her dreams were filled with fire and her mother's screams. Of monstrous high elves and blue eyed women who blocked her path. Those images haunted her all night. Several times Artanis cried out in her sleep, unintelligible babble mingled with sobs. But when she finally woke up, she remembered none of them.

Which was probably for the best.

The dark trees of the Blackwood didn't seem much different either in the morning or the evening. Weird shadows played along the ground made by sparse light from the sky; Artanis quickly decided that she didn't want to stay there by herself. With Mama or Papa nearby, the Blackwood was a fun place; by herself, however, it seemed far too big and far too dark.

Hugging her willow tree one last time, Artanis slipped down the trunk and began walking. She figured if she could get to Cheydinhal, maybe somebody would help her. With what, the elfling wasn't quite sure, but she did know she probably needed whatever help was given. After all, she was an orphan now and orphans need love and help; that's what Mama always said and Mama was always right.

What little Artanis didn't know was that she was several days journey on foot away from the city. Situated in the foothills of the Valus Mountains, Cheydinhal was a reflection of dark elven culture in the Imperial province; far different from Leyawiin, which straddled a stretch of swampy land between Elsweyr and Black Marsh, the homes of the beast races of Tamriel. But Cheydinhal was the last city of eastern Cyrodiil not taken by her mother's killers and she was determined to get there. All she needed to do was head north.

Heading north, it turned out, wasn't as straight forward as it sounded. Under the cover of the trees, it was hard to see the sun or the moons or anything in the sky. But she didn't want to venture near the waters of the Niben; the shores were crawling with Dominion soldiers and she didn't want to meet another one of them for as long as she lived! So she tried climbing the trees and watching the sun cut its path across the sky. She tried going by the treetops instead of by ground. But she either got disoriented and changed direction, or she couldn't get from one limb to another.

Her traveling plans didn't account for being hungry, either. Normally Mama had fed her, so she wasn't used to feeding herself. When her tummy first started rumbling, she'd tried nibbling on one of the green mushrooms, only to spit it out when its icky taste made her muscles feel funny. After that, Artanis decided that mushrooms weren't her thing.

With tummy rumbling, the little Bosmer rambled on through the dense woods, occasionally stumbling into muddy puddles and getting caught in brambles.

A full forty eight hours after fleeing the remains of Leyawiin, Artanis Felagund collapsed to the ground, thoroughly spent.

"How do heroes do it?" she muttered to herself. Her tummy hurt, her head ached, and she felt sick. "When their home gets destroyed and they leave and they're all alone in the world and...how..." Artanis trailed off. Her eyes felt grimy and everything had gone blurry. She needed...needed...

The elfling fell into a fitful sleep, curled up in a pile of mushrooms and swamp plants.

Not long after Artanis slipped off, there came a rustling noise in the nearby brush. Four yellow eyes peered from within the foliage to stare at the supine form of the tiny Bosmer. ''I do not like this," hissed a voice. "We go out foraging and find more dead elves!"

"Quiet Gol-sia!" Came a deeper growl. "It is not dead, see? Do you see how the chest rises and falls?"

"Yes, yes, Bron-shay," the first voice replied dismissively.

A pair of Argonians then emerged from the brush and approached the elfling curiously. The larger of the two, Bron-shay, crouched down next to the elfling. "The elves seldom leave their offspring alone so young," he mused to his sister. The carnelian Argonian hissed at him dismissively. "Here one is, alone and young and sick, by Seth!"

"Leave her then," Gol-Sia snapped, shaking her feathered head. "What use is another mouth to feed when we cannot even fill our own at present? And what do you know about sick elves?"

Bron-shay hesitated, and looked between his sister and the form of the tiny elf thoughtfully. "I do not know how we will feed her, nor do I know how to take care of her, but one so small could not need that much food...and you know Uncle can probably tend to her ills."

Gol-sia glared at her brother.

"It is what Father would have done," he ventured slowly.

"Fine!" the female Argonian huffed, throwing her hands in the air. "But you are feeding your scavenger and Uncle is helping you! I will not take care of your messes!"

Raising to his feet with the little elf nestled in his arms, Bron-shay rolled a pair of yellow reptilian eyes dismissively. "Yes, yes, so you say. Come, let us return to camp."

Artanis woke up several hours later with a headache. It took her several minutes to realize that she was no longer under the dark trees of the Blackwood; she was swathed under a blanket of woven bullrushes, which was surprisingly soft for something made out of a prickly plant. Upon further examination of her surroundings, Artanis found a fire burning in a ring of stones set in a dirt pit. She stared at it, dazed, for several long moments before recognition clicked in her mind and she let out a terrified scream.

There was movement off to the side as two Argonians scurried toward her. The younger pulled the wood elf into a sitting position as the other one watched her. After a moment, he sat down, blocking her view of the fire, and snapped his clawed fingers between her eyes.

The Bosmer started and gasped before looking fearfully between the two Argonians.

"There, there little one," Bron-shay said, patting Artanis' matted ginger hair comfortingly.

The older Argonian stared unblinkingly at Artanis, who wiggled self-consciously under his gaze.

"I am Bron-shay," said Argonian went on, oblivious to the weird staring contest going on between his uncle and the wood elf. "We took you from the Blackwood. Where are your parents, little one?"

"M-my...pa-parents?" Artanis stuttered, turning suddenly to look at the younger Argonian. "They...he...there was a fire and - and he killed Mama. He killed my Mama!" she cried as tears began to well once more in her eyes.

The two male Argonians looked at each other, both in thought. They both wondered silently if the elfling had seen her father attack her mother. It would explain her frightened reaction to the small fire they had for their camp.

"Gol-sia," the uncle, Nelgos, began, looking over his shoulder at his niece. Gol-sia sat on the other side of the fire, turning a large swamp rat on the spit. "Gol-sia!" he snapped louder when she didn't acknowledge him. After a moment, she looked up at him and blinked rather owlishly in silence. "Put out the fire."

"But Uncle-" the female Argonian cried in protest.

"Do so now, Gol-sia," Nelgos told her firmly, giving her a withering look.

Admonished, she threw several handfuls of dirt into the crackling flames, but not before she'd moved the half cooked swamp rat away.

"What is your name, little one?" Bron-shay asked as he continued to pet the ginger hair of Artanis, who he'd pulled into his lap.

"Ar...Ar...ty...Arty," she sniffled, fidgeting uncomfortably. Of course there'd been a few people from Black Marsh in Leyawiin, though according to her old school teacher, there'd been many more hundreds of years before. The ones she did know made her nervous. They reminded her very much of the gecko that used to live on the back wall of the Felagund cottage, and that had always scared her. Now she was in the midst of a camp of lizard people, one of whom clearly did not like her. Artanis wasn't sure what to do.

"Arty," Nelgos hissed. The little elf winced at the way his tongue flicked on the last syllable. "Could you tell me how you ended up so far away from any settlements in the woods?"

The tiny elf looked down at her hands, twisted together in her lap. They were dirty and smudged with ash and filth from the damp woods; she wasn't sure what the rest of her body looked like, but she imagined that she kinda resembled her grubby little hands. Peaking up at the old blue green Argonian shyly, she wondered...wondered if maybe, just possibly, she could get them to take her to Cheydinhal. After a few minutes of fidgeting, the elfling began:

"I...I'm from Leyawiin, you know, the city that sits at the head of Topal Bay," she explained, shakily at first. She took a deep breath before continuing. "The Dominion, the elves from the Summerset Isles...they came and they took over the city and Mama had to go work for the governor and he...he..." Artanis trailed off as the tears slipped down her face. "Sh-she's g-gone now and, and I ran into the woods."

Nelgos sat back and stared off in thought. He was aware of the Aldmeri Dominion's campaign up the Niben, taking Leyawiin and Bravil as they moved into the Cyrodilic Heartlands, but he hadn't known they were killing their own kin in the process. Now, looking down at the small elf perched on his nephew's lap, covered in ash and dirt and leaves and looking more miserable than anything else he'd ever seen, the old Argonian wondered just how far the high elves were willing to go in their bid for domination. Silently, he retrieved a small sponge and a flask of water and took them back to the elfling. She watched him wet the sponge before he handed it to her. "Here, you must wash the grime from your face," he told her. Artanis merely nodded, sniffling, and began to scrub her cheeks.

Bron-shay watched her for several long moments before turning to his uncle. A wordless conversation passed between them, and Nelgos finally nodded to Bron-shay's curious look. He then turned to Gol-sia, who was nibbling at her partially roasted rat. He watched her; she looked rather childish and ridiculous the way she was hunched over, guarding the cooked vermin like a child guards his sweetmeat.

"Gol-sia," he said at length, startling his niece. She nearly knocked over the still standing spit in surprise. She steadied it before turning to glare slightly at her uncle.

"Yes?" she hissed, the scales on her neck flaring up in obvious frustration.

"We need one of your spare tunics; the child cannot go on in what she has on," Nelgos told her.

Gol-sia huffed. "Can we not just return her in what she is wearing?"

Nelgos shook his head, not at all amused with Gol-sia's selective hearing. "Her home is overrun with the elves of the west; she cannot go back, so we must take her north with us."

Even Gol-sia, who hadn't liked Artanis from the first, didn't like the idea of sending a child back into the arms of the Thalmor. The races of men were not the only ones effected by the high elven sorcerers. They had tried for a foothold in Black Marsh decades before, but their attempts at "ensnaring" the Argonian people had only resulted in anger and bloodshed. Even so, Gol-sia handed over a spare tunic rather begrudgingly. Nelgos gave her a look of reproof before returning to the wood elf's side. By then, Artanis had cleaned her face and arms and Bron-shay had succeeded in untangling most of her ginger tresses.

Nelgos handed the cloth shirt to Artanis once she had set aside the sponge. "You can go a little ways into the trees to change," he told her. The Bosmer nodded hurriedly before darting up and away into the cover of the woods.

Bron-shay watched the elfling go before standing up beside his uncle. "How far north are you willing to take her?" he wondered, having heard what he had told Gol-sia.

The older Argonian looked thoughtfully at the trees and tall grasses that surrounded the clearing where he and his family had made camp. After several silent minutes, he turned to face his nephew. "We may take her as far as the settlement on the banks of the Thir, or yet we may send her to a place for parentless children."

"We should ask her if she has any relations in the vicinity she can be taken to," Bron-shay suggested.

Gol-sia huffed, drawing the males attention to her. She gave them an exasperated look. "Would it not be easier just to leave her in one of the cities? The Cyrodiils have chapels for this reason."

Shaking his head, Nelgos sighed. "Even after many years, you have failed to learn the meaning of charity, my niece."

The female Argonian opened her mouth, as if to argue, but then closed it. After several moments, she spoke. "If I should seek the preservation of myself and my family over that of an elven street urchin, than-"

Artanis reemerged at that moment, and Gol-sia snapped her jaws closed, choosing to simply glare at the oblivious little elfling.

The tunic seemed to swamp her small frame, hanging off more like a blanket than a dress. In her hands, Artanis held tightly to her ruined dress, the one her Mama had promised to adjust when she had more thread. But that was now impossible. Artanis sniffed and took a deep breath before venturing closer toward the three Argonians. She smiled shyly before sitting down on the bullrush blanket she'd used earlier.

"Here," Nelgos said, turning his back to his niece and offering his hand to Artanis. "Let me see that."

The elfling hesitated before slowly handing the garment over. Nelgos examined it for a minute or so before he began to fold it, occasionally teared it, and twisted it until it resembled a thick woven sash rather than a dress. He then handed it back to a stunned Artanis. "Tie this about your waist; it will hold the tunic so that you are more comfortable."

"Thank you," she mumbled quietly as she did as instructed.

Bron-shay reached over and helped her when she began to fumble with the knot. He then turned to his uncle. "When will we leave?"

The aged Argonian watched the Bosmer and his family for a few minutes before nodding to himself. "Tonight."

Artanis looked between the three Argonians: the kind one, the wise one, and the mean one. She then looked at herself thoughtfully, then looked back up. "Where are we going?"

"We have relatives who live in central Morrowind," Bron-shay explained good naturedly. "We are journeying up there to dwell in their settlement."

The wood elf's lips formed an 'o' as she nodded. "What about me? Am I to go with you?"

She needed them to get her to Cheydinhal. She'd tried on her own and had failed miserably; now, these Argonians were her only hope.

The two males looked at each other silently. The minds of elves were something they did not easily fathom. The way the youngest of them all could seem wiser, perhaps, than even one of their elders was something that many an Argonian found unsettling. Upon reflection, they did not truly know how old this Bosmer was, only that she appeared to be maybe six or seven by the reckoning of men.

"Do you have any family that we may contact for you?" Bron-shay asked after a moment.

Artanis looked down thoughtfully. She had a whole family, her parents had told her, an entire family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and more, all living together in a tribe in Valenwood, though a few of her mother's relations also lived in High Rock, far away north and west from Leyawiin. She knew all that, but that was as far as her knowledge went. Aside from a few names, like her Uncle Galadhion anx her grandmother Auroriel, she really knew nothing on how to contact any of them, especially now during the war.

Which brought the little elfling back to Cheydinhal. If she was going to be alone in any sense of the word, Cheydinhal was the place she needed to be alone in. But if she told the Argonians, kind to her though they may be, they wouldn't leave her there by herself. Well, except maybe Gol-sia, but even she wouldn't get away with that. They wouldn't be able to send her to the orphan home in the Imperial City, so they would end up taking her to Morrowind with them. Artanis couldn't go to faraway, foreign Morrowind, she couldn't!

She would have to lie, then.

The Bosmer shifted uncomfortably. Her parents had always told her not to lie, especially to adults. But her parents had never imagined that they'd leave their only child alone like they had, and desperate times called for desperate measures, or so she'd heard, and this time she was indeed desperate.

Her reflections lasted only a minute before she looked back to the Argonian males, a solemn expression on her little tanned face.

"My aunt is a priestess in the Chapal of Arkay in Cheydinhal," she said slowly. "She...she keeps the chapel crypt..."

"The priests trust a Bosmer cannible around their dead?" Gol-sia cut in, sneering at the small elf who once again looked down.

"Gol-sia!" Nelgos rounded on her as quickly as any viper would have. Flaps of poison colored skin flared off of his neck, making his head look twice, if not three times larger than normal. He began hissing and clicking his jaws at Gol-sia, who quickly backed away and scuttled off into the undergrowth.

After several long minutes of Nelgos glaring at Gol-sia's vanishing point, he turned back to his nephew and Artanis, his great crown having fallen back in place, invisible against the scales of his neck. "Your aunt is the keeper of the dead in the city of Cheydinhal," he reiterated shortly.

"Y-yes," Artanis stuttered, feeling rather startled by the vicious display.

"Then we will take you to the city," Bron-shay assured her, uneasy himself after witnessing his uncle and sister clash heads once again. "Will your aunt expect you?"

Artanis looked between Bron-shay and Nelgos, mind racing, before she finally answered. "She...she does the funeral rights, in the name of Arkay and stuff, and...and she probably isn't there because of the war, but she will be soon and so...so..."

"I see," Nelgos mused absently after Artanis trailed off. "We shall simply leave you at the chapel gates, then, if she is not there."

Artanis let out a short breath that she hadn't even known she'd been holding. She nodded silently in reply to the two Argonians before looking around their small camp. She suddenly felt tired and heavy, her skin hot and splotchy even after her wash. She looked up at Bron-shay, who knelt back down in front of her.

"Now what do I do?" She asked him wearily, sounding far older than her eleven years.

Bron-shay smiled at her, vaguely reminding the elfling of a crocodile she'd seen once while out boating with her parents. He gestured toward the bedroll of woven bullrushes where Artanis had woken up an hour or so before. "You should sleep while you can, little one; we will be leaving in a few short hours and you will need your energy."

Glancing at Nelgos proved that the elder Argonian was once again distracted, probably still too mad at Gol-sia to pay much attention to the others. Artanis then nodded silently to Bron-shay and hurried to nestle into the bedroll. She was so tired after everything that had happened that when she placed her head against the bullrushes, she fell asleep.

The Bosmer slept on for several hours and long after the sunset. It wasn't until a leaf fell in her face and tried to blow up her nose that she woke up.

Artanis started, quite disoriented and confused.

"Wha-"

"Careful little one," the voice of Bron-shay came from above her, and Artanis realized that the Argonian was carrying her through the woods. She looked around, but the land around her was covered in darkness. She could only just make out the figure of Nelgos walking ahead of them; she could not see Gol-sia either, though if noise was any indication, the dark red female was walking at the back of the small group.

"Where are we?" She asked quietly.

"We are still in the Blackwood, child. The Panther River is within a day's walk from here," Bron-shay explained softly.

Silence fell again, though by no means was the world around the small group quiet. With the sunlight gone, nocturnal animals left their nests and burrows. Artanis heard more than one owl swoop overhead, chasing after its prey. The noise of insects nearby and the screech of bats sent her turning her head in every direction from her perch in the Argonian's arms to see them. She had only seen a bat up close once when she was little. It had been living in their roof for months, though after Siri...

Artanis blinked, trying to remember what her brother had looked like. To the wood elf's horror, beyond ginger hair like hers and black and leafy green eyes, her lost brother seemed to die all over again. She turned and buried her head into the cloth covered scales of Bron-shay's shoulder. She didn't cry, but the ache in her heart seemed to mount higher than before.

The small group continued on. The Argonians preferred night travel, finding the day rather hot for a journey, though they thought those were the perfect conditions for sleep. Then there was Artanis, who was too short to walk without slowing the desired pace down drastically, though the elfling didn't seem to care about it much. She was too busy thinking about what she'd do when they arrived in the city of Cheydinhal. The fact that she'd managed to get them to believe her story of an aunt who didn't exist would have unnerved her only a week before. Now though, her parents and home were gone and she was raising herself.

The Argonians didn't want to enter the chapel, she knew that much, but they'd still ask after her "aunt." It was only a matter of time before they'd ask her for her name, even if she was ellegidly off tending to the Imperial Legion's dead.

It was then that a cold realization crept over the already aching Bosmer. She would have to abandon them before they reached Cheydinhal or else she'd be found out. Truthfully, Artanis didn't know what they'd do to her if they discovered her lying, but she knew she didn't want to see Bron-shay's crestfallen face, Nelgos' look of disappointment, or Gol-sia's smug "I Told You So" grin.

Artanis decided, as they sat on the banks of the Panther River boiling mudcrab meat and gazing off toward a distant Ayleid ruin, that she would disappear once she knew they were close to the eastern city.

Another two days passed, over which they crossed through the Nibenay Valley, situated between the Panther and Silverfish rivers. On the banks of the Silverfish was an old inn, the Bridge Inn, which had been been founded nearly two hundred years before as a rest stop for travelers coming to and from the Heartlands and the southeast of Cyrodiil. Now, in the recent years with the war, it had seen less use, though it had escaped the general notice of the Aldmeri Dominion, something that the few travelers in the province's eastern region were thankful for. The group stopped there, and the owner offered Artanis, who looked exceptionally horrible, the use of the baths in the basement. Gol-sia had to accompany her, though she didn't seem to mind overly much as it meant she could use one of the other tubs for herself.

They left early the next evening, trekking into the Nibenay Basin. The geography of the area was vastly different from the dark and swampy Blackwood the young elfling had called home. The vegetation was sparse; beyond the grass and trees and a few clusters of lavender, columbine, and a few other flowers, there wasn't much in the way of plants. The landscape looked different, illuminated by Masser and Secunda in a way she'd never seen before. Her own sign, the Warrior, glimmered high and bright above her in the heavens; the Eye of Warrior sparkled particularly bright at the head.

The Bosmer squeezed her eyes shut. Her mother had said that the Eye of the Warrior was also the planet of Akatosh, the Dragon God's aspect within the mortal planes. Mama had always been particularly devout toward Akatosh, though Papa had often scoffed at her stout devotion even after twenty something years of marriage. But her Mama insisted that the Eye had shown exceptionally bright the night of Artanis' birth. Artanis, her darling garland.

Sighing, she continued to stare off into the heavens as Bron-shay carried her steadily through the scarcely lit darkness.

Once the initial wonder of traversing the entirely new (to Arty anyway) Nibenay Basin had worn off, the small wood elf found the rest of the next three days extremely tedious. The land around her was unfamiliar, yet always the same, and she was almost ready scream in frustration and boredom.

Then, early in the morning on the third day out from the Bridge Inn and the Silverfish, they came upon a sharp bend where two rivers met together. The waters of the Reed went on for several miles north of the Corbolo, which emptied out into the Niben in the southwest, before it disappeared underground where it eventually flowed under Cheydinhal, providing water for the city's wells. The small group continued on at dusk that same day and sometime, several hours later, they came across a small farmhouse.

Both Gol-sia and Bron-shay stood back as Nelgos investigated the building. Artanis, standing beside the younger Argonian male, watched the elder curiously.

At last, Nelgos turned back to his family and the wood elf. "This building has been abandoned, though how long ago I cannot say. I can say, however, that the occupant was a witch." The old Argonian looked thoughtful as he said this, glancing back over his shoulder to look again into the dark windows of the small house.

Artanis shivered, whether from the night wind or Nelgos' words she couldn't say. "What kind of witch?" She ventured to ask.

"One that practiced magic," Gol-sia hissed.

Her uncle growled at her before turning to face the elfling pressing into his nephew's side. Said nephew was giving his sister an exasperated look that told her just how childish he thought she was. Gol-sia, in turn, ignored them both.

"There are many covens of witches throughout Tamriel, young one, and it would be foolish of me to attempt to tell you to which one exactly the witch who lived here belonged," Nelgos explained gently. "However..." He trailed off, stepping closer to where a crude, bird like form was scratched into the oak door. "Yes, we shall leave. This is no place for mortals."

"Uncle..."

"No, Bron-shay, it is not safe here," Nelgos said firmly. He then took Artanis by the hand and led them away from the farmhouse and northward once more.

Artanis looked back over her shoulder as they distanced themselves from the old house. Suddenly, a raven flew overhead and perched on the gable of the house; the young Bosmer blinked when it cocked its head to look at her. They stared at each other until Nelgos led his party around a cluster of trees and the house and bird vanished from view. Artanis turned to look ahead once more, wondering if the raven knew anything about the witch who had lived there.

A few short hours later, they reached the head of the Reed River; water gushed from underground and sped downstream passed several caves. Upon investigation, Bron-shay and Gol-sia discovered that none of them went beyond a few dozen yards below ground and they decided that if they had ever gone any further down, there was no visible sign of it now  Soon after that, Gol-sia and Nelgos stretched out to sleep, absorbing the faint rays of the midmorning sunlight peaking over the Valus Mountains and shining down upon the Niben.

Artanis lay on her bullrush blanket, watching Bron-shay through half lidded eyes as the azure Argonian scratched markings into a piece of old wood with one of his claws.

They were within a day's easy walk to Cheydinhal, Nelgos had said when they had first set up their camp a hundred or so feet away from the river banks. It would not be long before the young elfling was safe with her aunt and they were on their way to Morrowind.

Except, she had no aunt, at least none who lived in Cheydinhal or even Cyrodiil, and they couldn't know that. After lying still for a long while, listening to her companions' steady breathing and the faint noises of nature, Artanis ventured to set her small plan into motion.

"Bron-shay," she whispered, catching the Argonian's attention, but not disturbing the sleeping pair.

"Yes, little one? What is wrong?" He asked gently.

The Bosmer hesitated for the briefest moment. Over the passed week, Bron-shay had been so nice to her; carrying her and helping her along the road. He was almost like the big brother she'd never had, and she didn't want to make him upset. But on the other hand, if they continued and they discovered her lie, she'd have to see him and Nelgos' looks of utter disappointment and mistrust and she couldn't face that, she couldn't! So Artanis decided to go through with her plan. It would cause less heartache, she was sure

"I need to go," she said simply.

The young Argonian stared at her for a good minute before realization dawned on him. "Oh yes, of course! Just go a little ways into the trees. Don't wander off too far."

Artanis nodded, standing up. As she walked passed Bron-shay, she stopped and turned toward him.

"Thank you," she said.

"Whatever for?" He asked in surprise.

The wood elf shrugged. "You know, for being a nice friend."

"Of...course..." Bron-shay nodded, slightly confused, as the elfling walked into the woods.

As she went, Artanis couldn't help but shed a few more silent tears over the kind group of Argonians she'd used to get away from Leyawiin and her past.
Part II

Summary: Artanis' attempts to flee Leyawiin and the death of her mother result in a run-in with a band of friendly Argonians as she tries to run away to Cheydinhal. Spans through the 10th to the 20th of Last Seed, 4E173.


Author's Note: If this ran a bit long...then you're not the only one to realize that. However, the Road to Cheydinhal is actually really long when you're trudging there from the Blackwood and all through the Niben. Trust me, I did it specifically for this. Also, Bron-shay (ahem) is cool.

Hopefully part three of Infamy's Daughter, in which Artanis' teenage years are (somewhat) covered will be less tedious.

Infamy's Daughter Gallery: http://winters-dawn1221.deviantart.com/gallery/57915660/Infamy-s-Daughter 

Disclaimer:
Artanis and the Felagund family, Bron-shay, Gol-sia, Nelgos, and any unrecognizable persons or stuffs © Winters-Dawn1221
The Elder Scrolls and recognizable content © Bethesda Game Studios.

Oh look, a raven!
© 2016 - 2024 Winters-Dawn1221
Comments6
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ThunderMagi's avatar
I stated this before, but the pacing is absolutely stunning! I can't wait for part three.

It seems like so many travels take place during the month of Last Seed. It is a ripe time for a journey.