your scars like mine (elder scrolls online | naryu, mephala)

[fiachairecht]

your scars like mine. elder scrolls online, naryu, mephala. naryu's summoning circle brings her more than she expected. 1k words, rated t. for kartaylir in press_start_comm vi.

With each brush of chalk over the dark wooden floorboards Naryu felt her hands grow colder. Next to her, the words on her writ slowly began to come to life, red bleeding through the ink and paper and sweeping over the words until her charge was buried under its crimson tide.

Naryu sat back on her heels, chalk hovering over the beginning of the final stroke. She had hoped this would be unnecessary — hoped that she would not need to call on outside help, especially of this most ... unpredictable sort. It all felt very Dark Brotherhood, involving Daedra, and though her friend had helped facilitate the one piece of business she had needed to do on Brotherhood territory, that did not mean she had to like it, or them, or needing help at all.

The writ continued bleeding, liquid pooling atop the paper and pouring over the sides. The cavern was silent enough that Naryu could almost imagine she could hear it, a steady drip that was almost meditative.

It sped up as she took a deep breath and drew the last line, pressing down so hard at the end of the rune that her chalk snapped. The sigil flared bright against the dais, illuminating the cavern fully for the first time since Naryu had locked the door behind her, and—

And nothing.

No smoke. No Daedra. Not even a breeze to disturb the candles burning steady in the centre of each rune.

Naryu sighed and got to her feet. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe she hadn't truly expected anything to happen — she wasn't the sort of person things happened to, after all, she preferred to be the sort of person who made things happen. She crossed to the small table of supplies she had set up, and uncorked a bottle of wine.

No sooner had she raised it to her lips, though, than she heard — something from the circle behind her. Almost a footstep; not quite wings.

Naryu took a sip, shuddered as the warmth ran through her more fleeting than the shadow of a cliff racer passing overhead. "So it does work," she said, and was pleased to find that her voice was steady. "Perhaps the Brotherhood aren't quite the hopeless sort of unorganised mystics they pretend to be."

All she got in return was the faint hum of arcane energy, the ties tethering her summoned spirit to Nirn burning through the air. "What?" Naryu asked, when it was clear the silence was intentional. "Aren't you going to ask why I've summoned you?"

"That is not the sort of question that mortals usually ask of me." The voice was low, female, though no one could ever mistake it for a mer's. A dremora, Naryu supposed, which meant the ritual had worked more or less as she had intended. Though the longer she turned that thought over in her mind, the less certain she was that she should classify that as successful.

"I'm not a mage," she said. "Not part of the Brotherhood, either. You'll have to forgive me for not being conversant in all your games, I suppose." She took another sip of wine, more out of habit than anything else

Behind her, the dremora laughed, high-pitched and "Surely you don't mean to tell me this was a mistake?"

"No." Naryu sighed, set the wine down amongst the scattered candles and bowls and incense. "I'm afraid I did this quite on purpose."

Only then did she turn around, and when she did, she wished she was still holding the wine. The thing inside the circle was nearly translucent, a shimmering purple creature that was closer to a spider daedra than anything else, with long, spindly legs climbing out from its back, doubling its arms. A hood made of silken shadows covered its head, but Naryu was certain that if she were to throw it back, she would find eight eyes set gleaming in a woman's face.

"What?" The creature asked, and its voice was gently mocking in a way that set Naryu's teeth on edge immediately. "Do you not recognise the form of the one who gave you purpose?"

She should have known. Dread began to gather in Naryu's stomach, and she fumbled behind her for the wine, suddenly unsure that her circle would hold — Mephala? A chosen of Mephala? Certainly something more powerful than the single dremora that she had meant to summon.

"The Webspinner has many faces," she said. None quite so beautiful as mine, she wanted to add, but she was sure that her summon would not take kindly to such jokes. "How am I to know that you speak with her voice? It's not her name on my writs anymore."

"Isn't it?" The creature looked down, and Naryu followed the path of its gaze to her writ, now floating in a pool of — blood. There was no use denying it, even though she didn't know whose blood it was. She suspected it wouldn't matter. The surface of the writ, however, was no longer bleeding, and at the bottom of the paper there was a new line, gleaming daedric script patterned over with a faint silver web.

"You have no love for Vivec," the creature said, and, how do you know, Naryu wanted to ask, but she felt, suddenly, as if she had been asking the wrong questions since she first thought that daedric assistance on this writ may have been a good idea. "I do not need you to love me instead. But I cannot deny that it would be ... nice. Intriguing."

Naryu's lip curled, despite her attempts to school her face into neutrality. "Does the Brotherhood not give you enough love? Or are you simply tired of consorting with criminals who are spread all through Tamriel with no love for any of the places they pass through?"

"Perhaps I have simply missed my children among the Dunmer." The spider legs waved in an approximation of a shrug. "Perhaps I see the benefit of an assassin who has seen more of the world than her fellow members of the Morag Tong. Either way, will you help me?"

Naryu didn't, for a moment, believe she had a choice. But still, when she nodded, she was sure that somewhere under the hood Mephala was smiling down on her.