The New Faces of Skyrim

Chapter Six - Mynil

Several things came to mind when Mynil made a silent list of what he didn't like about the Brotherhood's sanctuary. He quickly found he preferred the idea of the Morag Tong more than this... this cult.

The first thing? Well, the door seemed a good start. The pressure of its voice (since when did doors talk, anyway?) forced him to made stupid faces until his ears successfully popped.

Another thing he could list off was the smell of the hallways within. A strange mix of blood and deathbell assaulted his nose, as well as a musty dust odor that he quickly deduced must be coming from a corpse propped up ritualistically in a corner. The doors of her coffin were thrown wide open, revealing her wrinkled and distorted face, as if she found disgust with the various poisonous plants strewn at her feet. Upon asking Qa'shan about the corpse, she simply responded with, "Azaril isn't fond of closing it."

Mynil tried to press on who exactly Azaril was, but Qa'shan seemed firmly set on saying only a couple words or simply grunting.

The last thing Mynil found uncomfortable would be two guild members. The first, seemed alright in some sense of the word. The second however...

"Can you, uh, not?" Mynil removed Betne's hand from his lower back for the fifth time. The previous four times it had started traveling too low for comfort. The blonde Nord simply smirked at him in a knowing way.

"Oh, you'll come around," she purred.

"You have to slap her to get her to stop," the other member, an Argonian named Runs-In-Shadows mumbled into his stack of papers and pile of books. "Or kill her. None of us here would be opposed to it." His golden eyes flicked up, looking tired or incredibly bored. Mynil was still trying to figure out which.

Betne pouted, trailing her fingers across Mynil's shoulders as she walked away. "Oh please, Shadows. If Azaril hasn't killed me yet then I think I'm alright."

"That's because you inflate Azaril's ego. He likes it when anyone flirts with him," Shadows rasped, slouching into his chair and holding a book in front of his face. Betne simply moved closer, peering over the book and smiling coyly.

"When do I get to meet Azaril?" Mynil turned to Qa'shan. The Khajiit stood on the other side of the room, with a Redguard man in traditional Alik'r clothing.

Qa'shan shared a look with the Redguard, who shrugged and answered. "He had a contract two days ago. I expect he'll be back soon."

"Hopefully," Mynil mumbled under his breath. Betne had shuffled again, the distance between her and Shadows growing, while the space between her and Mynil steadily grew smaller.

"I heard my name. Are you in need of me again?"

Once, after a deal brokered by Mynil's father, the Pudashara family was introduced to fine wine. Mynil had been young then, and his mother paranoid of embarrassment, so he only got a small splash of the dark liquid. At the first taste, all he had noticed was the acidity. By the second, the other flavors began to register. And by the third, the flavor danced and tingled on his tastebuds.

This man sounded like good wine tasted. But with a hint of something. Poison. Sweet poison.

He came down the stairs with a silence that made Mynil suddenly uncomfortable, a coy glitter to his red eyes. The man was a Dunmer, but Mynil felt like adding the adjective "fellow" before that would be wrong.

Wrong.

That seemed a better way to describe this elf. Everything about him seemed wrong. The way pieces of hair fell from where the rest of the black length had been pulled back into a bun seemed perfect in a bad sort of way, like an act. Like he wanted the world to believe that he was just an elf and nothing else. It felt like touching him would reveal he was just a spirit or some other ethereal being the whole time.