Phoenix.The.KidSep 23, 2014Sep 23, 2014 at 07:01 PM
#1
Sing With Them
YouTube video: ghb6eDopW8I[/youtube]
Brother, I Can't Get Through
Two Dunmer watched each other in the Friend House, two brothers as different as night and day.
One sat on the bed, dressed in what were once fine clothes - the sleeves had been chewed up by sharp teeth, and his gloves were ripped to shreds. His hair was messy, its chestnut luster dulled in the candlelight. His eyes were circled with bruises, his skin as pale ashen and pale.
As Korvos watched his baby brother, little things besides his physical appearance jumped out to betray Donvyn’s undeath. His breaths weren’t regular. They almost seemed to be a conscious action, and the ride and fall of Donvyn’s chest was never quite the same as the last inhale. Breathing wasn’t needed to sustain him.
His movements, too, were different. Korvos fondly remembered Donvyn as a klutzy child, a toddler who would topple over for no discernible reason. As he grew, the clumsiness manifested in the haphazard way Donvyn completed the work his tutors gave him, the no less than seven times he’d set the barn on fire, and his whirlwind of social interaction. The only time Donvyn was graceful was when he danced - now it seemed like he never stopped dancing. Every movement was fluid and saturated with grace, his balanced expertly poised between his feet when he walked. He glided along the ground like a spirit, and his footfalls were unnaturally silent. Sometimes he moved too fast or reacted too quickly, displaying reflexes far beyond the abilities of a normal mer, his supernatural nature slipping beneath his facade, even just for a moment.
His eyes were the most terrifying, though. The whites were deep red, bloodshot, as if someone had taken a knife to Donvyn’s eyes and carved away the sclera. His irises were stark white, bleached of pigment. Korvos missed the way his eyes used to be - a bright, vibrant pink, like the gods had set the petals of peonies in Donvyn’s eyes when he was born.
Korvos stood by the foot of the bed, occasionally cracking his knuckles. The gesture wasn’t intimidating; rather, it betrayed his nerves.
“You chopped off all your hair.” Korvos spoke.
Donvyn sighed, his breath quiet. Despite his horrific appearance, the fatigue was overwhelmingly present in his posture. His eyelids drooped halfway over those bloody, ghastly orbs.
“And you locked yours.” he replied, his voice soft.
Korvos nodded. “You know how it used to be… Frizzed out like a trauma shrub. Couldn’t do anything with it except try to tie all of it back and hope for the best. Trying to get a helmet on over that’s a nightmare, too. Much easier like this…”
Donvyn nodded back, self-consciously running a hand through his short hair.
“John said there was a plague.” he began.
Korvos frowned. “You’re still recovering, aren’t you? You were in a trance, or something. We don’t… we don’t have to talk about it right now.”
Donvyn tilted his head at his brother. The big oaf he remembered was rarely capable of showing empathy.
“The thing I need most is to get back into my routine. So I’ll hear it from you.”
Korvos shrugged, his usual common gesture that conveyed nothing more than indifference. “Llodos plague, started in Serk. Moved fast; people thought it was in the water, or maybe the air… People just rotted away until they were crazed husks. Like zombies…” A small shudder ran over Korvos’s back. “The plantation’s outside of Narsis’s wall, so it hit us. Father, Malvo, Telvys, Sweet Briar, Ma’Kush, Tills-The-Ground, Kunai-Fen, Hlenna, Broke-Tooth… Took ‘em all.”
Donvyn frowned. “But not you?”
Korvos shook his head and shrugged again. “After you left, I-I… No. After we betrayed you, I didn’t stay, either. Went to Mournhold, enlisted with the Ordinators. Father screamed at me, but I don’t think he truly cared. The plantation would’ve gone to Telvys. He was better at running it than I was. I was almost done with training when the plague hit. Then I had to go back when they’d all died. Cremated what was left, took ‘em to the tomb in Vvardenfell. Read the will with the cousins.”
Donvyn shifted in his seat, moving to sit cross-legged. “So you’re the head of the household now?”
Korvos dropped his eyes to the floor. He shook his head. “No. I didn’t… Father didn’t put me in the will. You weren’t there, either. Fortune was divided between the cousins.” Korvos rubbed his eye. “He must’ve hated me.”
Donvyn sighed. “He didn’t understand how you’re different.”
“Mother did.” Korvos interjected. “If she understood, and you understood, why didn’t he…?
Donvyn gestured helplessly. “He wanted a perfect son an heir. Third time was the charm, Telvys was everything Father wanted. But then you were in the way of Telvys’s deserved inheritance. If anything… he was grooming you to obey him and Telvys, not run the plantation.”
Korvos rubbed at his eyes again. He wasn’t quite crying, but his eyes shone. “But we’ve got nothing left. The plantation’s gone. The house’s abandoned. The cousins won’t talk to me; they think I’m a layabout and a failure. They’ve got all Father’s money, but they won’t talk to me because I’m mad. Maybe it’s better that way…”
“So you went to find me?” Donvyn said, tugging Korvos away from his frustrations.
His brother nodded. “Followed your paper trail. To Ebonheart, to Davon’s Watch, all the way to Velyn Harbor, your caravan routes, Woodhearth, the Bandaari Trading Post…”
Donvyn ducked his head. “You knew why I was in Ebonheart?”
Korvos sighed, barely cracking a grin. “Whore.”
Donvyn scowled, though the expression softened immediately. “You did a good job, though, you found me… You must’ve worked hard.”
Korv nodded, the simple praise exceptionally meaningful. His shyness and stutter made him loath to speak to others, and for a year and a half, he’d done nothing but speak to other people with a worn portrait of Donvyn in his pack. He searching through ledgers and records and officials, sympathetic or otherwise, for a trace of his brother.
“You’re all the family I’ve got left.” Korvos held out his hand. A gold ring adorned his finger, a simple flat signet inscribed with the negative image of a seht. “I wanted to renounce your exile. You were right about… about the slaves. They’re people, too; we treated them cruelly. So I want you to come back, as daesohn…”
Donvyn sighed. “Your brother’s dead, Korv.” He gestured to his face. “I’m not the same. Accursed undead. I’m stable now, my personality is still here and I can speak to you, but this is going to deteriorate. There’s no cure for me, not one that I know of. I’m researching a cure, but there’s no telling how long it’ll take. I barely understand even the nature of my own state right now. There’s much work for me to do, and I can’t know if I’ll ever accomplish that before I lose myself.”
Korvos moved to Donvyn and sat beside him on the bed. Donvyn recoiled slightly, questioning Korvos’s own sanity. The elder brother simply shrugged. “John said you were in control before that spell. And you’re better now, and you haven’t eaten me yet…”
Donvyn fell quiet. “You don’t mind, at all?”
Korvos shrugged again. “It’s creepy. But you’re smarter than fifty of me. You’ll cure yourself.”
Donvyn smiled. “Fine then. A vampire for a daesohn.”
Korvos smiled back. “Life’s already interesting, it’s just one more thing.” With a sudden lunge, he ruffled Donvyn’s hair, beaming.
Donvyn flailed, a broad smile flashing over his face. “Fetcher!” he screeched.
“S’wit.” Korvos replied.
Edited Oct 02, 2014 at 04:14 PM by 0