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Llandras the Outcast...(a character backstory)
Krysalan8415
✭✭
This started out as a short character intro for my main sorc as a couple of guildmates had done the same, however I got a little carried away.
Ultimately it might not be fantastically lore accurate but it was fun to write, so here goes
Llandras Greywatch and his twin sister Llandra were raised in a small manse on the outskirts of the Grey Mire in southern Grahtwood.
A thin, serious child, Llandras was as different again from his robust cheery sister who seemed to spend so much time roaming the forest that rumour was that their mother had dallied with a woodelf. Llandras lived up to his family name and spent his time staring out over the dismal long damp that was the Grey Mire, when he wasn't doing that he was, unsuccessfully, trying to catch the flames that popped in and out of existence when marsh gas filtered to the surface of the multitudinous ponds that made up the Mire.
While he was still a boy, a member of the Mages Guild, an old man weary and cold from travel, sought shelter at the Greywatch family home and entranced the young Llandras with fire magick, juggling flames as easily as if they were apples. The visit set the aimless young mer on a path that would prove to be his doom, and ultimately his salvation.
The Mages Guild became Llandras' obsession, he read about it, dreamed about it, drove his tutors who came to school him almost to distraction with his questions about it, his questions usually came around to the subject of fire magick.
"It's damn unhealthy Lilandra, that what it is" his father rounded uncharacteristically on his mother one evening "he should be focusing on how he will manage this estate when he reaches his maturity"
His mother, ever the patient calm one would simply reply "He will grow out of it Saulas, it is simply a boys dreams. Give him time my love."
As time passed, Llandras learned enough common sense to keep his curiosity to himself, quietly seeking out dusty old tomes in his fathers largely unused library. Books that told of the pyromancers of old. Mages who wove the elements into raging torrents of destruction.
Also, a name began to appear in the books he read, an old enemy, long forgotten, long defeated, the Dark to Vanus Galerian's heroic Light - Mannimarco.
Of course this couldn't be the famous Mannimarco, member of the illustrious "Companions" that the travelling storytellers wove magical tales around. This Mannimarco had died, along with Vanus Galerion, almost 300 years previously. Consequently this "old" Mannimarco became the young Llandras' imaginary foe. Young Llandras with his legendary staff (cut inexpertly from an overly thick willow withie while his father wasn't looking) had defeated this old Mannimarco time and time again, usually roasting with imaginary flames until he begged for mercy - occasionally saving Vanus Galerian for good measure.
Time passed, and the boy grew but his thirst for knowledge of the Mages Guild never waned, it simply became easier to hide.
Llandras blew the dust from the old book he had found in the root cellar of Greywatch Manse of all places. Almost destroyed by damp and mildew, it reeked of old rot and gone to seed potatoes. Llandras gently turned pages that were barely legible, pages almost obscured by black mould. On one was a drawing of an old man, juggling small flames.
It took Llandras a week to slowly dry out the pages of the book, and another to delicately brush away the mould that was slowly destroying it. The pages he concentrated on surrounded the picture of the old man with the flickering motes of fire in his open palms.
o
Llandras, hidden from view by a lucky early morning mist in the mire, concentrated hard on his outstretched palm, there was sudden heat which just as suddenly broke his concentration. Yet the flame remained, he wasn't imagining things this time, it was there! And it hurt!
Llandras stuck his scorched hand into the nearest muddy puddle with a sizzle.
Suddenly, the Mages Guild was no longer a dream, he would go, he would show his father that he could honour Greywatch as a member of the Guild rather than going blind over ledgers and pointless trade manuscripts.
The young Llandras ran home as fast as he could, his chest bursting with pride at his achievement. He spent the rest of that dry, bright summer day planning his surprise for his soon to be amazed family.
"You stink of the mire brother!" Llandra made a show of holding her nose as she sat beside him at the table that evening.
"Have you eaten of the flesh yet" Llandras intoned sepulchrally, waggling his eyebrows at her, "or do you have to wait until you turn completely into a Bosmer first?"
Llandra opened her mouth to retort and then closed it just as quickly. Their quick to anger father came to sit at the head of the table.
The meal was consumed in silence, a silence which the two young elves wished would continue once their father launched into his usual after dinner liturgy about the daily running of the Greywatch Estate. Llandras fidgeted, then grew sleepy as his father droned on about withies, and peat mainly it seemed. His nose had almost touched the table as he drowsed when his sister slapped the flat of her hand on the table-top next to his ear, "Llandras!" she mock scolded "Wake up!"
"Silence daughter! If there is scolding to be done then I shall be the one to raise my voice!" their father threw them a black look, which softened momentarily.
"Llandras, you are nearly come of age, you need to learn to leave your childish games with your sister behind." he rose from the table and stood at Llandras' side and lay a callused hand on his shoulder "You're almost a man, Greywatch will soon be yours."
Thoughts of the Guild fell from Llandras' mind in an instant, the softened rumble of his father's voice and the reassuring hand on his shoulder made Llandras' heart swell. Maybe he would save his feats of pyromancy as a trick to entertain Llandra, and not disappoint his father this night with such antics.
In an instant his father was his old gruff self again, "To bed!" he barked, his lips twitching with a smile "Your chores start early tomorrow!"
With the youngsters thus banished from the table their father went to share a pipe with Brellin the old woodelf who kept the garden tidy around the manse.
"Take Llandras with you tomorrow old friend, have him help you strip the ground around the buildings, this summer is too hot and dry. Even this close to the mire I'd not risk dry grass and rushes this close to the house"
The old woodelf took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully. And put it out.
o
"Put it out!" Lllandra hissed, "there's a damn blister on your palm already!"
Llandras held his outstretched palm up triumphantly before his sister with his teeth gritted against the pain. He cast a desperate glance about him.
"I don't think I can!" he whispered desperately. The pain became throbbing agony shooting up his forearm. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to will the flame out of existence.
His hand was suddenly grabbed and plunged into cool wetness. He opened his eyes.
"That was.."
"Yes. Your chamberpot!" Llandra wrinkled her nose in disgust, "Be thankful I didn't just pour it over you. Now go and get cleaned up before father catches you and makes one of your ears as hot as your hand."
"But!" he spluttered.
"Yes, yes. You can set yourself on fire, it's very impressive. I'm sure it will come in useful for lighting the peat in the hearth."
Llandras pulled his tongue out at his sister and grinned, when they were together they became children again, rather than the graceful young twins that the neighbours saw at father's interminable dinner parties.
Llandra returned to her room down the hall and Llandras lay on his bed, and slept, and dreamt of fire.
And smoke, thick choking smoke, and a hand on his shoulder, this time not his father, shaking and shaking him. Awake!
He sat bolt upright in bed, eyes blinking and watering at the acrid smoke filling his bedroom. The hand that had been shaking him, just as roughly pulled him to the floor and slapped a wet cloth over his mouth. He looked into the terrified eyes of his twin.
"Come on!" she pleaded, "We have to go"
"But mother and father!"
"I screamed for them until I almost passed out." tears streamed down her face, making tracks in the soot. "They must've got out. Quickly Llandras, please. This is the Grey Mire, there shouldn't be fire, there can't be fire..."
They crawled from the room and out into the hallway where the fire roared along the ceiling like a live thing, dropping spots of white hot flame not unlike the one Llandras had held in his palm a few hours earlier. It was as if time stood still, all there was was the fire and the door at the end of the hallway. Fiery agony above, and life just a few yards away.
The door burst open in a hail of splinters and a whoosh of cold air, and the fire raged with a new ferocity as the cool night flooded it with more oxygen. Landras and his sister felt strong arms grab them and drag them along the floor into the relatively cool night air.
Brellin coughed and hawked up a soot blackened gob of phlegm, "Almost lost you dammit, thought my heart was going to break"
Llandras caught his breath and stared at the old mer, they were clear of the smoke, but tears still ran down Brellin's face.
A lead weight settled in the pit of Llandras' stomach, suddenly a quiet young man no longer, he sprang to his feet "Where are they?" he demanded, sounding for all the world now like his father in a gruff rage, "Brellin damn your eyes! Where. Are. They?" he dragged the old woodelf to his feet, holding him upright by main strength.
"Gone!" the old man's face crumpled into misery, he looked over at the burning manse, now surrounded by estate staff beating at the flames to keep them from the edge of the forest. "We couldn't..."
Llandras released him and the old mer sank to the ground. He started back to the manse, "Llandras no!" his sister pleaded, clutching at him as he sprinted past.
"It's my fault!" he howled as he ran, grabbing another wet cloth from a bemused onlooker. "I have to get them out"
Llandras stumbled blindly along the hallway, the manse was a rambling old building, single storied with thick stone walls. However that hadn't stopped the fire from ravaging the summer dried thatch, and the ancient dry beams which now glowed like hot coals in a fireplace.
Llandras kept his eyes fixed upon the thick oak door at the end of the hallway, the door to the room where he and his sister had been born squalling lustily while his father had beamed with pride. The room where the two youngsters had snuggled down with their mother on cold mornings once father had gone for his morning tour of the estate. The room where their father's gruff, commanding, sometimes angry voice became unusually soft.
Llandras pulled the now dry cloth from his face and tried to take shallow breaths of air that burned his throat like acid, he wrapped it around his hand and gripped the scalding hot door handle, and pushed.
The wave of heat that exploded from the room would have seared him to ashes except, there was a moment, a split second, when the image of the two fire blackened bodies, clutched in each other's arms, registered in his appalled mind. Llandras's hands squeezed into fists so tight that crescent shaped scars would remain in his palms for the rest of his life.
Llandras shrieked his loss and anger at the terrible flames that sprang towards him.
The fire went out.
The entire building was plunged into inky blackness and silence as the crowd of people surrounding it looked on in awe. A single figure, shoulders slumped under a seemingly terrible weight, walked slowly from the ruins. And fell.
o
"Will he live?" Brellin stared a challenge into the eyes of Koritha the healer.
"He may wish that he hadn't" the woman looked Brellin up and down. "One eye is gone, and it's lucky his hands weren't burned to the bone, if the fire hadn't been snuffed out while he was in there, then more than just his left side would be the weeping horror that it is now." she caught Brellin by the arm as he turned away, "Why did the fire go out? The whole of the mire is abuzz with rumours Brellin, what aren't you telling us?" Brellin returned her questioning stare with his own laconic blank one.
"Fine!" she turned back to the bed where the young elf lay, "But help me get his hands open, if he doesn't keep the fingers moving they'll stiffen into claws. That's if he manages to live though the night that is."
Llandras' hands were still clenched tightly shut, and fresh blood dripped from between his fingers as Brellin and Koritha pried them slowly open. Both palms bore bloody marks where his fingernails had dug deep and although they had escaped the fire entirely, in the center of the left palm was a perfectly circular blackened mark.
"Door handle must have burnt him!" Brellin grunted.
"Don't be a fool man, he used his right hand. Wrapped it in cloth he did, I know, I picked the remains from his burns earlier" Koritha smothered the mark with white healing salve, "No-one must know. They'll hound him from Greywatch, maybe all the way out of Grahtwood, if they find out the flame was his."
o
But rumour travels fast along the green pathways of Grahtwood, rushing almost like the fire that had threatened to consume the young elf. And with the rumour, fear went hand in hand like an evil twin.
The local people wouldn't cross their healer while she struggled to mend the boy's burns and soothe the sister's agonised grief, but time would come when there would be a reckoning. Despite Brellin's claims that it was a stray spark from a chimney on the dry grass and reeds surrounding the manse that dry, dry summer.
o
"Travel at night boy," the old man thrust a bundle of food and clothing at Llandras, "At least until you leave Grey Mire. No, until you get beyond the border of Grahtwood, just to be safe."
"Maybe they should take me to Elven Root Brellin." the young elf looked desolate, "My parents, the manse! Trees Brellin! Trees, burning! I deserve to be judged."
Brellin slapped him unexpectedly across the unburned side of his face, "It wasn't you! Dammit boy, your father asked me to clear away the dry grass and reeds from around the manse the very evening before the fire, to help prevent a fire. That was to be your damn chores with me the following day! Stop your snivelling!" he clasped Llandras by the shoulders, "What ever you did in there stopped half of Grahtwood going to the flame, never forget that." his voice softened. "Go to your damned Guild, show them what you can do. Make a difference boy! Llandras, make a difference."
Brellin turned Llandras around by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shove, "Go, while I still have the strength to let you go. Maybe I can even stop your sister's heart from breaking." Brellin watched the thin figure trudge slowly away into the shadows. "I'll care for her as if she were my own" he whispered into the darkness, then turned and walked back to the ruined estate.
Llandras wandered seemingly for days on end, always keeping wary eyes on the huge edifice of the tree that was Elven-Root as he worked his way slowly northward. Llandra had delighted in telling him that from the lofty heights of the great, the Bosmer scouts could see as far as Reman's Bluff.
Reaper's March came and went in a haze of hard labour and meager rations as he worked his way, literally from homestead to farm, from smithy to orchard.
When he finally reached the edge of the March, he glimpsed, in the distance, the graceful spire that was White Gold Tower. If he could just reach Vlastarus, maybe he could beg work with a trade caravan and reach the city, convince the Mages Guild to take him in, or at least to stop him from descending into rage and fire and blackness once more.
Llandras sat on a boulder, looking down at the Gate of Altadoon, the guards and the damn priests at the scroll temple had laughed at him and chased him away,and he was now almost certain now that the Mages stationed at the gate would let him through into the vast expanse of Cyrodiil, but they certainly wouldn't let him back out again.
It was now or never, he had come this far and Vlastarus was only a league or so the other side of the gate.
Llandras began to roll up his pack, saving his last bit of dry bread and hard strong cheese for the journey when without warning, the world went black.
A dusty choking black cloth hood had been thrust over his head, and hands that were like iron hauled him to his knees.
"Shackle him like the others!" a voice that sounded like gravel, ground out the words. "Move you worms! The master will pay well for an Altmer, even if it is a bit crispy around the edges." Harsh laughter barked around Llandras before a blow to the back of his head stilled his struggling and he knew no more.
When he came to, he was laying on stone so cold that it seemed to suck the warmth directly from his bones. The sound of tortured screams and harsh barking laughter surrounded him. He couldn't move, bonds that he could not feel held him motionless as a statue on the icy stone.
"Silence!" a deep cultured voice spoke the order so softly, but it fell into the surrounding cacophany like a pebble into a well and all was still. "A Mer this time? And this one has power too, though it would seem he's a bit clumsy with it."
Hands as gentle as his mothers eased the hood from his head, and Llandras stared up at a face that was oddly familiar. A face that surely he had seen in the dusty old books that he had read as a young boy. A face that had a name.
Mannimarco.
A knife flashed in the flickering torchlight, and for Llandras time seemed to slow to an agonising crawl as the blade sped directly towards his heart.......
Far away, just outside the great tree of Elven Root, a young woman stumbled to the ground clutching her chest. A scout leapt from the branch of a nearby tree and sprinted to her side and looked into a face consumed with a sudden terrible loss..
"He's gone!" she whispered....
Edited by Krysalan8415 on January 14, 2016 7:14AM
Ultimately it might not be fantastically lore accurate but it was fun to write, so here goes
Llandras Greywatch and his twin sister Llandra were raised in a small manse on the outskirts of the Grey Mire in southern Grahtwood.
A thin, serious child, Llandras was as different again from his robust cheery sister who seemed to spend so much time roaming the forest that rumour was that their mother had dallied with a woodelf. Llandras lived up to his family name and spent his time staring out over the dismal long damp that was the Grey Mire, when he wasn't doing that he was, unsuccessfully, trying to catch the flames that popped in and out of existence when marsh gas filtered to the surface of the multitudinous ponds that made up the Mire.
While he was still a boy, a member of the Mages Guild, an old man weary and cold from travel, sought shelter at the Greywatch family home and entranced the young Llandras with fire magick, juggling flames as easily as if they were apples. The visit set the aimless young mer on a path that would prove to be his doom, and ultimately his salvation.
The Mages Guild became Llandras' obsession, he read about it, dreamed about it, drove his tutors who came to school him almost to distraction with his questions about it, his questions usually came around to the subject of fire magick.
"It's damn unhealthy Lilandra, that what it is" his father rounded uncharacteristically on his mother one evening "he should be focusing on how he will manage this estate when he reaches his maturity"
His mother, ever the patient calm one would simply reply "He will grow out of it Saulas, it is simply a boys dreams. Give him time my love."
As time passed, Llandras learned enough common sense to keep his curiosity to himself, quietly seeking out dusty old tomes in his fathers largely unused library. Books that told of the pyromancers of old. Mages who wove the elements into raging torrents of destruction.
Also, a name began to appear in the books he read, an old enemy, long forgotten, long defeated, the Dark to Vanus Galerian's heroic Light - Mannimarco.
Of course this couldn't be the famous Mannimarco, member of the illustrious "Companions" that the travelling storytellers wove magical tales around. This Mannimarco had died, along with Vanus Galerion, almost 300 years previously. Consequently this "old" Mannimarco became the young Llandras' imaginary foe. Young Llandras with his legendary staff (cut inexpertly from an overly thick willow withie while his father wasn't looking) had defeated this old Mannimarco time and time again, usually roasting with imaginary flames until he begged for mercy - occasionally saving Vanus Galerian for good measure.
Time passed, and the boy grew but his thirst for knowledge of the Mages Guild never waned, it simply became easier to hide.
Llandras blew the dust from the old book he had found in the root cellar of Greywatch Manse of all places. Almost destroyed by damp and mildew, it reeked of old rot and gone to seed potatoes. Llandras gently turned pages that were barely legible, pages almost obscured by black mould. On one was a drawing of an old man, juggling small flames.
It took Llandras a week to slowly dry out the pages of the book, and another to delicately brush away the mould that was slowly destroying it. The pages he concentrated on surrounded the picture of the old man with the flickering motes of fire in his open palms.
o
Llandras, hidden from view by a lucky early morning mist in the mire, concentrated hard on his outstretched palm, there was sudden heat which just as suddenly broke his concentration. Yet the flame remained, he wasn't imagining things this time, it was there! And it hurt!
Llandras stuck his scorched hand into the nearest muddy puddle with a sizzle.
Suddenly, the Mages Guild was no longer a dream, he would go, he would show his father that he could honour Greywatch as a member of the Guild rather than going blind over ledgers and pointless trade manuscripts.
The young Llandras ran home as fast as he could, his chest bursting with pride at his achievement. He spent the rest of that dry, bright summer day planning his surprise for his soon to be amazed family.
"You stink of the mire brother!" Llandra made a show of holding her nose as she sat beside him at the table that evening.
"Have you eaten of the flesh yet" Llandras intoned sepulchrally, waggling his eyebrows at her, "or do you have to wait until you turn completely into a Bosmer first?"
Llandra opened her mouth to retort and then closed it just as quickly. Their quick to anger father came to sit at the head of the table.
The meal was consumed in silence, a silence which the two young elves wished would continue once their father launched into his usual after dinner liturgy about the daily running of the Greywatch Estate. Llandras fidgeted, then grew sleepy as his father droned on about withies, and peat mainly it seemed. His nose had almost touched the table as he drowsed when his sister slapped the flat of her hand on the table-top next to his ear, "Llandras!" she mock scolded "Wake up!"
"Silence daughter! If there is scolding to be done then I shall be the one to raise my voice!" their father threw them a black look, which softened momentarily.
"Llandras, you are nearly come of age, you need to learn to leave your childish games with your sister behind." he rose from the table and stood at Llandras' side and lay a callused hand on his shoulder "You're almost a man, Greywatch will soon be yours."
Thoughts of the Guild fell from Llandras' mind in an instant, the softened rumble of his father's voice and the reassuring hand on his shoulder made Llandras' heart swell. Maybe he would save his feats of pyromancy as a trick to entertain Llandra, and not disappoint his father this night with such antics.
In an instant his father was his old gruff self again, "To bed!" he barked, his lips twitching with a smile "Your chores start early tomorrow!"
With the youngsters thus banished from the table their father went to share a pipe with Brellin the old woodelf who kept the garden tidy around the manse.
"Take Llandras with you tomorrow old friend, have him help you strip the ground around the buildings, this summer is too hot and dry. Even this close to the mire I'd not risk dry grass and rushes this close to the house"
The old woodelf took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully. And put it out.
o
"Put it out!" Lllandra hissed, "there's a damn blister on your palm already!"
Llandras held his outstretched palm up triumphantly before his sister with his teeth gritted against the pain. He cast a desperate glance about him.
"I don't think I can!" he whispered desperately. The pain became throbbing agony shooting up his forearm. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to will the flame out of existence.
His hand was suddenly grabbed and plunged into cool wetness. He opened his eyes.
"That was.."
"Yes. Your chamberpot!" Llandra wrinkled her nose in disgust, "Be thankful I didn't just pour it over you. Now go and get cleaned up before father catches you and makes one of your ears as hot as your hand."
"But!" he spluttered.
"Yes, yes. You can set yourself on fire, it's very impressive. I'm sure it will come in useful for lighting the peat in the hearth."
Llandras pulled his tongue out at his sister and grinned, when they were together they became children again, rather than the graceful young twins that the neighbours saw at father's interminable dinner parties.
Llandra returned to her room down the hall and Llandras lay on his bed, and slept, and dreamt of fire.
And smoke, thick choking smoke, and a hand on his shoulder, this time not his father, shaking and shaking him. Awake!
He sat bolt upright in bed, eyes blinking and watering at the acrid smoke filling his bedroom. The hand that had been shaking him, just as roughly pulled him to the floor and slapped a wet cloth over his mouth. He looked into the terrified eyes of his twin.
"Come on!" she pleaded, "We have to go"
"But mother and father!"
"I screamed for them until I almost passed out." tears streamed down her face, making tracks in the soot. "They must've got out. Quickly Llandras, please. This is the Grey Mire, there shouldn't be fire, there can't be fire..."
They crawled from the room and out into the hallway where the fire roared along the ceiling like a live thing, dropping spots of white hot flame not unlike the one Llandras had held in his palm a few hours earlier. It was as if time stood still, all there was was the fire and the door at the end of the hallway. Fiery agony above, and life just a few yards away.
The door burst open in a hail of splinters and a whoosh of cold air, and the fire raged with a new ferocity as the cool night flooded it with more oxygen. Landras and his sister felt strong arms grab them and drag them along the floor into the relatively cool night air.
Brellin coughed and hawked up a soot blackened gob of phlegm, "Almost lost you dammit, thought my heart was going to break"
Llandras caught his breath and stared at the old mer, they were clear of the smoke, but tears still ran down Brellin's face.
A lead weight settled in the pit of Llandras' stomach, suddenly a quiet young man no longer, he sprang to his feet "Where are they?" he demanded, sounding for all the world now like his father in a gruff rage, "Brellin damn your eyes! Where. Are. They?" he dragged the old woodelf to his feet, holding him upright by main strength.
"Gone!" the old man's face crumpled into misery, he looked over at the burning manse, now surrounded by estate staff beating at the flames to keep them from the edge of the forest. "We couldn't..."
Llandras released him and the old mer sank to the ground. He started back to the manse, "Llandras no!" his sister pleaded, clutching at him as he sprinted past.
"It's my fault!" he howled as he ran, grabbing another wet cloth from a bemused onlooker. "I have to get them out"
Llandras stumbled blindly along the hallway, the manse was a rambling old building, single storied with thick stone walls. However that hadn't stopped the fire from ravaging the summer dried thatch, and the ancient dry beams which now glowed like hot coals in a fireplace.
Llandras kept his eyes fixed upon the thick oak door at the end of the hallway, the door to the room where he and his sister had been born squalling lustily while his father had beamed with pride. The room where the two youngsters had snuggled down with their mother on cold mornings once father had gone for his morning tour of the estate. The room where their father's gruff, commanding, sometimes angry voice became unusually soft.
Llandras pulled the now dry cloth from his face and tried to take shallow breaths of air that burned his throat like acid, he wrapped it around his hand and gripped the scalding hot door handle, and pushed.
The wave of heat that exploded from the room would have seared him to ashes except, there was a moment, a split second, when the image of the two fire blackened bodies, clutched in each other's arms, registered in his appalled mind. Llandras's hands squeezed into fists so tight that crescent shaped scars would remain in his palms for the rest of his life.
Llandras shrieked his loss and anger at the terrible flames that sprang towards him.
The fire went out.
The entire building was plunged into inky blackness and silence as the crowd of people surrounding it looked on in awe. A single figure, shoulders slumped under a seemingly terrible weight, walked slowly from the ruins. And fell.
o
"Will he live?" Brellin stared a challenge into the eyes of Koritha the healer.
"He may wish that he hadn't" the woman looked Brellin up and down. "One eye is gone, and it's lucky his hands weren't burned to the bone, if the fire hadn't been snuffed out while he was in there, then more than just his left side would be the weeping horror that it is now." she caught Brellin by the arm as he turned away, "Why did the fire go out? The whole of the mire is abuzz with rumours Brellin, what aren't you telling us?" Brellin returned her questioning stare with his own laconic blank one.
"Fine!" she turned back to the bed where the young elf lay, "But help me get his hands open, if he doesn't keep the fingers moving they'll stiffen into claws. That's if he manages to live though the night that is."
Llandras' hands were still clenched tightly shut, and fresh blood dripped from between his fingers as Brellin and Koritha pried them slowly open. Both palms bore bloody marks where his fingernails had dug deep and although they had escaped the fire entirely, in the center of the left palm was a perfectly circular blackened mark.
"Door handle must have burnt him!" Brellin grunted.
"Don't be a fool man, he used his right hand. Wrapped it in cloth he did, I know, I picked the remains from his burns earlier" Koritha smothered the mark with white healing salve, "No-one must know. They'll hound him from Greywatch, maybe all the way out of Grahtwood, if they find out the flame was his."
o
But rumour travels fast along the green pathways of Grahtwood, rushing almost like the fire that had threatened to consume the young elf. And with the rumour, fear went hand in hand like an evil twin.
The local people wouldn't cross their healer while she struggled to mend the boy's burns and soothe the sister's agonised grief, but time would come when there would be a reckoning. Despite Brellin's claims that it was a stray spark from a chimney on the dry grass and reeds surrounding the manse that dry, dry summer.
o
"Travel at night boy," the old man thrust a bundle of food and clothing at Llandras, "At least until you leave Grey Mire. No, until you get beyond the border of Grahtwood, just to be safe."
"Maybe they should take me to Elven Root Brellin." the young elf looked desolate, "My parents, the manse! Trees Brellin! Trees, burning! I deserve to be judged."
Brellin slapped him unexpectedly across the unburned side of his face, "It wasn't you! Dammit boy, your father asked me to clear away the dry grass and reeds from around the manse the very evening before the fire, to help prevent a fire. That was to be your damn chores with me the following day! Stop your snivelling!" he clasped Llandras by the shoulders, "What ever you did in there stopped half of Grahtwood going to the flame, never forget that." his voice softened. "Go to your damned Guild, show them what you can do. Make a difference boy! Llandras, make a difference."
Brellin turned Llandras around by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shove, "Go, while I still have the strength to let you go. Maybe I can even stop your sister's heart from breaking." Brellin watched the thin figure trudge slowly away into the shadows. "I'll care for her as if she were my own" he whispered into the darkness, then turned and walked back to the ruined estate.
Llandras wandered seemingly for days on end, always keeping wary eyes on the huge edifice of the tree that was Elven-Root as he worked his way slowly northward. Llandra had delighted in telling him that from the lofty heights of the great, the Bosmer scouts could see as far as Reman's Bluff.
Reaper's March came and went in a haze of hard labour and meager rations as he worked his way, literally from homestead to farm, from smithy to orchard.
When he finally reached the edge of the March, he glimpsed, in the distance, the graceful spire that was White Gold Tower. If he could just reach Vlastarus, maybe he could beg work with a trade caravan and reach the city, convince the Mages Guild to take him in, or at least to stop him from descending into rage and fire and blackness once more.
Llandras sat on a boulder, looking down at the Gate of Altadoon, the guards and the damn priests at the scroll temple had laughed at him and chased him away,and he was now almost certain now that the Mages stationed at the gate would let him through into the vast expanse of Cyrodiil, but they certainly wouldn't let him back out again.
It was now or never, he had come this far and Vlastarus was only a league or so the other side of the gate.
Llandras began to roll up his pack, saving his last bit of dry bread and hard strong cheese for the journey when without warning, the world went black.
A dusty choking black cloth hood had been thrust over his head, and hands that were like iron hauled him to his knees.
"Shackle him like the others!" a voice that sounded like gravel, ground out the words. "Move you worms! The master will pay well for an Altmer, even if it is a bit crispy around the edges." Harsh laughter barked around Llandras before a blow to the back of his head stilled his struggling and he knew no more.
When he came to, he was laying on stone so cold that it seemed to suck the warmth directly from his bones. The sound of tortured screams and harsh barking laughter surrounded him. He couldn't move, bonds that he could not feel held him motionless as a statue on the icy stone.
"Silence!" a deep cultured voice spoke the order so softly, but it fell into the surrounding cacophany like a pebble into a well and all was still. "A Mer this time? And this one has power too, though it would seem he's a bit clumsy with it."
Hands as gentle as his mothers eased the hood from his head, and Llandras stared up at a face that was oddly familiar. A face that surely he had seen in the dusty old books that he had read as a young boy. A face that had a name.
Mannimarco.
A knife flashed in the flickering torchlight, and for Llandras time seemed to slow to an agonising crawl as the blade sped directly towards his heart.......
Far away, just outside the great tree of Elven Root, a young woman stumbled to the ground clutching her chest. A scout leapt from the branch of a nearby tree and sprinted to her side and looked into a face consumed with a sudden terrible loss..
"He's gone!" she whispered....
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