Tamriel Data:The Mask and the Mirror: Book I
 The Mask and the Mirror: Book I |
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[About the Author:
Llandyne Vandoroth is a Dunmer author of great skill. Originally from the city of Almalexia, she has made her home in Sarchal, seeking to sate the more refined literary palate of the west.]
Bronjar Clean-Clothes had been with the Brotherhood for a great many years. He did well because he had no principles when it came to targets, and somehow even less when it came to pay. From a poor family in Haafingar, Bronjar was satisfied with any contract that provided a room with four walls and a new shirt. As the years went by, however, he dreamed of bigger things, mostly bigger rooms, and found that even the sum he was paid by the Brotherhood for barely discriminate slaughter wouldn't foot the bill.
It was in late Evening Star that he received what was to be his longest-running and highest-paying contract. The Brotherhood had learned that a member of the wretched Morag Tong would be passing through Haafingar on route to Wayrest, and it fell to Bronjar to fell him.
The plan was simple. Bronjar would take a seat at the inn, whose window provided him a perfect view of the city gate, and would sip fine mead in comfort while waiting for that ragged eastern murderer to shamble through it. Fortunately, the wait was a long one, spent enjoying the attention of a black-haired serving girl and a seemingly endless mug of mulled mead. The Dark Elf of the hour didn't appear until it was almost dawn, and Bronjar spotted him at once. He did not skulk in the shadows like an amateur, trying to hide his plain iniquity, nor did he walk boldly down the middle of the street whistling a jaunty tune. Instead, he walked halfway between the street's side and its center, seeming to pant and gasp with weariness after what was no doubt a long and tiring journey for such an unassuming elf. He was outfitted in an almost absurdly typical fashion, with a warm fur robe, a simple walking stick, and a dagger of a type that could be bought at any smithy in Skyrim. On his back was a leather pack filled to bursting, so much so that a rag peeked out from the flap. Bronjar could have (and would have) bet anything that this pack contained the eyebrow-raising uniform of the fabled assassins of Morrowind, complete with his true weapon: a dagger which was no-doubt fine enough to slit the throat of a Potentate out of Reman antiquity.
Bronjar coolly threw some septims onto the table and strode out, affecting a drunken stagger before he had even left the common room. Of course he was not drunk, never on a job, but a drunken Nord shambling after you was less conspicuous than a sure-footed one wandering the streets of Haafingar so late at night. One was on his way home after a typical night of raucous drinking, the other an agent with some immoral purpose wanting the cover of night to carry it out.
The Dark Elf dipped into the city's second-seediest flophouse, and by the time Bronjar followed him in he had already paid for and vanished to a private room. Coins changed hands, and the Nord, who had abandoned his inebriated gait for softer footfalls. crept towards a door at the end of the hall. He pulled his own unadorned tanto out of its tucked-away sheath and prepared to, quickly and quietly, fling wide the door. He was relying on the draft to extinguish the candle whose light flickered beneath the ill-made portal, and on his own speed to strike the first blow. Rarely were Bronjar's assaults such unsure throws of the die. He was usually sought after for his willingness to kill even the most pitiful, but now he had been paid for an act which was foolhardy to attempt no matter the skill of the chosen agent.
The door did its work, and Bronjar had only a moment of candle-light to spy the elf pulling a curved dagger from beneath the bundled clothes of his pack. A dagger he would never again use. By the time Bronjar had shut the door and lit the light, the Morag Tong assassin was choking on his own blood on the floor of the filthy inn. The Nord was leisurely in his next steps, knowing that no witness had seen, heard or cared what had happened. He examined the dagger first. Finding it to be of superior make and obviously enchanted, he carefully hid it in his loose shirt. Next he took each item out of the dead assassin's pack one by one, discarding each article in turn until he came to the most striking. It was a black leather mask with strange insectoid eyes and long, sheath-shaped covers for the assassin's elven ears. It was obviously very well made, and Bronjar was surprised to find that it fit him, and further that it didn't obscure his sight or periphery in the slightest. Indeed, the strange eyes almost seemed to make him more aware of his surroundings. After this, he only found a small gray paper, bearing the name of some irrelevant Merchant Prince who no doubt traded out of Wayrest, the felled Assassin's now unattainable goal.
Bronjar decided he would spend his pay on a fine room at the inn he had so enjoyed, and for the next week drank, talked, and boasted of heroic feats of cleverness and strength. And each night, back in his big room, he stared at the strange mask of the nameless dark assassin. He wondered how much his victim had been paid to travel so far and risk so much, knowing full well that Mephala's hands were forbidden from reaching westward. And after this full week of short days and long nights, he had made up his mind. He would travel east and find out how the Dark Elves rewarded those who spilled blood for their aspirations.
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