The Dragonborn's Apprentice

Fah Madness

It was true. Shadowmere was the fastest horse I'd ever had the honor to ride. The trip from the Pine Forest to Dawnstar flew by almost faster than I would have liked. Most of the ride was spent trying to balance Cicero's journals in my lap as I rode. It was all right there. His birth, his contracts, his life, his Keepership. All in the palms of my shaky hands.

I learned that Cicero was born into the Dark Brotherhood. I had figured as much. He couldn't be over thirty and had spent twenty years trying to rebuild the brotherhood in Cheydinhal after the raid. It saddened me to think of a ten-year-old Cicero dressed in an oversized jester's motley, clutching desperately to the corpse of the Night Mother, hiding in her coffin until the sounds of fire and death ceased.

I had learned of the contracts he took before he was forced into the role of Keeper after the death of his mother, the Keeper before him who had died fighting to protect the sanctuary. He was a born assassin, succeeding greatly at it from a very young age. I read of the jester, the last of his contracts before he swore off death. The motley he took from the contract was one of the few things to survive the raid. It reminded him of a less silent time. A time of laughter.

I learned that his mother had pushed him into the coffin and closed it tight. He did not go without a fight. Herself and a few others were able to carry the coffin to a carriage behind the crypt before going back in to fight. He pushed and pushed to fight with his brothers and sisters. He fought to save them.

I learned that he fought to save me, for I too was a child of the Void. He had pulled against his mother's grasp to get to me, only four at the time. He depicted my cries for my parents, whose names I learned were Nibenay and Yorgrim. They had both died pulling me out of harms way. I laid between them, failing to understand why they couldn't hear me. I read of Sanguine, who had scooped me into his adolescent arms and ran as the doors closed Cicero into the Night Mother's tomb. Sanguine, too, had been a member of the Dark Brotherhood. The lies which haunted me at night about Cicero, the ones that Sanguine planted that morning after Vikki's contract, they weren't true.

I learned that when Cicero was finally able to push open the walls to the Night Mothers coffin, it was night and everyone he had ever known and loved had been burned alive in fire of Stendarr. I read of his many attempts to move and rebuild the sanctuary and how many times he had failed. I read of his slow descent into madness as the silence consumed him and the laughter saved him over and over and over. Time and time again.

I learned of his journey to Skyrim. I read of his relief to find me alive and more so yet, to have me be the Listener. I skimmed pages of pages of Cicero's beautiful writing about me. Ramblings of the Night Mother faded in place of paragraphs upon paragraphs of his love for me, and how he would abandon all, even his duties as Keeper, to keep me safe.

I learned of the Dawnstar sanctuary and how it was ancient and forgotten. I read that the Black Door would ask me another question, "What is life's greatest illusion?" to which I would answer, "Innocence, my brother."

My thoughts were racing, even as I approached the Black Door of the Dawnstar sanctuary. I forced them all down. Cicero, my parents, myself. Deep, deep down. A wounded Arnbjorn sat huddled over in a pool of his own blood.

"Should have figured Astrid would send you," he said as he saw he approach. He looked awful, a large gash torn into his side.

"You're hurt," is all I could manage.

"What gave it away?" he laughed with painful sarcasm. "Yeah, got to admit that little jester's good with that butter knife. But don't worry, I gave as good as I got.