Welcome to Gaia! ::

((All right. Two new characters accepted. My SBC account was cancelled for some reason, and I have a new one now. I have, for lack of any other term capable of describing it, mountains of information to catch up on. Being absent from my only form of news and updates for nearly a month does leave some catching up to be done.

I'll post later, possibly after someone else.))

((In my profile for Drac'rad, I said that his history was going to be revealed in the roleplay. Piece by piece, his dark history will be unclouded, mostly in flashbacks. I'll mark flashbacks in this color.))

"Drac'rad!" screamed a high-pitched female voice as Drac'rad was pulled under the murky swamp waters of the Black Marsh by a scaly hand.

His orange eyes were instantly clouded over with blackened sludge as he was pulled deeper into the swamp. He tried to pull loose, but the monster had an unimaginably tight grip on his ankle. He couldn't even see what was dragging him deeper into the dark waters, for when he tried to open his eyes, they erupted in an inferno of pain. Someone had poisoned the water.

Even when he tried to breathe, the poison seared his chest and throat. He couldn't see what was happening, and the only thing that told him that he was still moving was the thick liquid flowing past him as he was pulled to the bottom of the swamp. He stopped momentarily, and his free foot touched the sandy floor of the swamp. Then he moved down even further, and then up. His head broke the surface of the disgustingly murky water and he inhaled gratefully as he opened his eyes.

He was in some sort of building, and judging by the time he had spent underwater, the compound was underground. He looked at his attacker, and saw another Argonian, though he didn't know who it was. The structure was made of both wood and stone, and was riddled with tens of visible hallways, leading Drac'rad to believe that it was a labyrinth of some sort. However, he also saw other Argonians, none of which he recognized. They all wore robes that looked as though they had been colored by the swamp waters, and each had a solemn expression painted on their faces as they moved efficiently from one of the many hallways into another.

As Drac'rad was dragged up onto the wooden platform that led into the building, his captor yelled into the hallways, and Drac'rad immediately recognized one advantage: they echoed. Everyone in the building would hear what this insane-looking Argonian had to say.

"Fellow Serons! I have brought the Bloodscale sacrifice!"

Norid was transfixed by the new weapon for only a few seconds. It didn't take long for him to figure out what kind of arrow would be shot from this arrow. A standard arrow wouldn't kill the massive Land Dreugh. A special arrow on a standard bow wouldn't kill it, either. However, a special arrow on an Ayleid bow might be able to.

On Norid's belt were seven straps. in each strap was an arrow with a sheathe on each point. Norid tossed the bow up onto the unbroken part of the Battlements. He climbed up the rubble as quickly as he could, and picked up the bow when he reached the top. Only a few guards remained, as the stairwell leading to the battlements was gone. He unlatched one of the straps, took an arrow and pulled the leather sheathe from the point as he turned towards the massive creature that was still headed toward Cheydinhal. He carefully notched the arrow and aimed it as carefully as he could. At 3500 gold apiece, the arrows were hard to come by. He didn't want to waste one.

However, Norid overestimated the power of his new bow. For the first three hundred feet, the arrow flew without dropping. After that, however, it started to tilt downward, and dropped much more quickly than an arrow from a standard longbow. Fortunately, the arrow didn't miss, but rather it hit one of the monster's legs, and an explosion cable of destroying a large wooden mansion came shortly after. When the light cleared, the leg that the arrow had hit was gone, and the area of its body where the leg was connected was charred and cracked. The Land Dreugh had been badly crippled.

The next few events happened far too fast for most commoners to comprehend. By the time that Norid shot the creature, the Dreugh was less than five hundred feet away. The Demonic Argonian turned to the four guards that were still on the wall and yelled an order.

"Jump the the ground! That thing is going to come right through this wall!"

Three of the guards jumped without a second thought, and one of them broke a leg on the way down. The fourth guard, however, already had a broken leg, and jumping would have killed him. Norid didn't have time to keep him alive, however, and notched a normal arrow and shot him in the head. Better to kill him instantly than let him suffocate under three thousand pounds of stone. Norid saw where the beast was going to hit the wall, and ran until he was at least forty feet from that location. As the creature came through the walls, he ran forward and leapt onto its back. if Norid shot the creature from the ground, the explosion would kill every guard in the vicinity, and possibly even kill Drac'rad. But there was nothing above the monster to kill. He notched on the the special arrows, and fired at the back of its head. Even as he did so, he was running to the back of the creature, and the instant that he fired, he leapt from its back. The arrow buried itself in the back of the Dreugh's head, which disintegrated instantly as its upper back was blown to pieces. The rest of the body staggered and fell, and one of its claws crashed into the tower that Drac'rad was trapped in, clearing most of the heavy rubble away and sending it flying down one of the streets, levelling a Tavern, an Inn, a Bookstore, and a General store, but leaving the Blacksmith at the end of the street untouched. Norid rolled when he hit the ground, but in the explosion, he had dropped the bow.

The Battle was over, but the destruction would scar the city forever.

((The Inn is the Cheydinhal Bridge Inn, the Tavern is the Newlands Lodge, The Bookstore is Mach-Na's Books, the General Store is Borba's Goods and Stores, and the Blacksmith is the March Rider. Most of that section of the wall is now gone, and the Tower that Drac'rad was thrown into was one of the Gatehouse towers. However, most of the people were holed up in the Castle, or fled like that coward Hirtel at Kvatch, so while their shops were obliterated, the shopkeepers were not.))

Drac'rad was worried. He was a mere fourteen-year-old Argonian, and had never so much as killed an animal, much to the disappointment of his family. However, as he was dragged down the halls in the center of a procession of Argonian cultists, something in his mind clicked into place.

He had never killed anything else because nothing else had ever decided to try and kill him. What quarrel did he have with a common mudcrab or nix hound? In Argonia, animals never attacked the citizens unless they had to defend themselves. However, these people had nearly killed him in the process of getting here, and now they intended to sacrifice him to a Daedra Lord. His blood was boiling with anger, and he saw his chance as they rounded another corner. He kept a frightened face as they led him to a blood-stained altar, and as he crossed a pedestal, he took one of the ceremonial daggers from its resting place.

No one saw him as he stashed it in his vest.

He was placed on the altar, and one of the cultists walked up to him with one of the other daggers and raised it high above his head.

"In the name of the Lord, Mehrunes Dagon, I present this filth as tribute to-"

He never finished. Drac'rad pulled the dagger from his vest and leapt up, driving it through the cultist's chin in the process. His arms went limp as he died, and Drac'rad caught the dagger he had been holding, while unsheathing the other from the Argonian's head.

The spirit of his family came out in full force as he threw one of the knives at another of the nine cultists looming before him. It didn't kill him, but the iron hilt hit him in the nose, and by the time he opened his eyes, Drac'rad had already dashed forward and slit his throat. As the Argonians lunged at him, he stabbed one in the stomach, picked up the other dagger from the floor, and slit three more throats with one slice. He pulled the blood-soaked dagger from the stomach he had plunged it into, and recieved a gash on his arm as one of the cultists managed to cut him. He drove one dagger through his assailant's eye, and plunged the other dagger in one of the other's feet. He stood up with the dagger in his right hand, and as one of the murderers lunged at him, he sidestepped it, smiling maliciously as the cultist's dagger killed one of his own kind. He stabbed that cultist in the back of the head, and drove it into one of the remaining two killer's forehead. The last cultist hit him with a magic lightning bolt, and Drac'rad picked up a silver knife off the ground, and threw it. This time, it lodged itself in the cultist's heart, and became the only thing keeping him alive, for the blade stopped him from bleeding out.

Drac'rad advanced on hid wounded opponent with an icy expression, and spoke in a dark tone.

"What does this cult call itself?" as he spoke, he grasped the knife's hilt, showing that, if the cultist didn't answer, he'd pull it out.

"We are the Mythic Dawn!" the worshipper raved madly, "all who oppose us shall die and burn in Mehrune Dagon's prison! You will pay for-" the cultist looked down to see that the dagger had been pulled out of his chest, and that Drac'rad was already walking away.

Vision returned to Drac'rad as he gasped in fresh air, and his eyes opened wide. He saw Zakkon sitting nearby, and he rolled over, only to notice that one of his guantlets was gone, having been shattered when he hit the inner wall of the guard tower, and that his helmet was gone as well.

His weapons were all gone, and despite the dream that he had just experienced, he couldn't pull up the strength that he had used to kill those Mythic Dawn cultists so long ago. The cultists that were the sole reason that he resented Mehrunes Dagon, and opposed him at every turn. He saw that most of his chestplate had also been shattered, so he broke off a piece of what amount of glass was remaining, and threw it expertly at Zakkon's throat. If it hit, it would very likely kill him.

Of course, he doubted that it would work, and so he fired a ball of fire into the air, and when he knew that it was high enough to be seen for miles around, he shot a much faster lightning bolt at it. When the lightning hit the fireball, it erupted just as strongly as the spell that had knocked him out to begin with.

Over three miles away, Norid saw the explosion, and knew that Drac'rad was no longer in the tower.

Viriathos saw a flash appear through the window. What in the...? He quickly left his house and made for the stables, trying to keep the explosion's direction in his head. Climbing onto his horse, it shot off toward the remnant smoke of the burst fireball. It's those bloody mages again, isn't it...? He was starting to smell the smoke, now. Maybe it was one of those Argonians... this ought to be fun... He rolled his eyes as a decimated tower came into view,. He brought the horse to a gentle stop and took a quick look around. He couldn't see anyone... surely he wasn't the only one that had noticed the ground-shaking bang?