//------------------------------// // Chapter 10 // Story: My Little Prequel: Friendship is Oblivious // by GroaningGreyAgony //------------------------------// This story contains spoilers for the game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the webcomic Prequel. The few remaining sewer rats had indeed caused little trouble, and Katia had worked her way swiftly through the remainder of the sewer tunnels. She was now standing alone, staring out of the round grating that led from the Celestial sewers to the outside world. She'd thought that she wouldn't be able to leave the mossy, slimy, mephitic tunnels fast enough, but she'd been standing here for long minutes now, locked in thought. Her task—to bear a precious artifact, upon which the safety of the Celestial empire depended, across the countryside all by herself—smacked of heroism. And she wasn't anything like a real hero, despite the trust the Empress had placed in her. Was this really her destiny? Was it at all possible that she could even do this? She mentally ran over her abilities, searching for a glimmer of hope. Her name was Katia Maragan. She was a Khageet, a catpony unicorn. She was young, round headed, with improbably large golden eyes and a slim noodly frame. She was born under the sign of the Atronach, and she could set things on fire by making stupid cat jokes. And she was still a Loser. Yeah, everything checked out. There was no hope. Just fiddling around wasn't going to make it any better. To stall a bit further, she checked her inventory for hope as well. Before she'd left him, Haurus had reclaimed Captain Roanault's katana ("Thanks for recovering it; I'll see that it hangs in a place of honor," he'd said with a disarming smile). Katia still had a short sword, a rusty bow and arrows, various scrolls and potions, a small bag of coins and flawed gems, a mortar and pestle, and much miscellaneous clutter. She had a skull at the end of a stick which could fire lightning bolts, and a single small soul gem that she could use to recharge it once. Dominating all else, she had the Amulet of Queens, which she could feel right through the saddlebag as a persistent deflection in her internal magicka field. There were also a few bottles of PLAIN ORDINARY WATER which she had found in an old barrel and which she was trying not to think about too much, so she stopped thinking about them, as well as a recovering alcoholic could. Also, she'd occasionally found old scraps of parchment as she made her way through the sewers. Some were phony deeds to various properties which were just too good to be true (A whole wizard's tower, hers for the taking? Shyeah, right) and one was a coupon for some free barding, obtainable at the Chestnut Hoovey Hostel. Well, that one stood a marginally better chance of being real—maybe she'd check it out. She was holding on to the others for their gag value. But no real hope here, either. The only thing that came close to qualifying was one last thing she had taken from the chamber where the Empress died, while Haurus was not looking. It was a bloodstreaked, white pinion feather with a sheen of gold. It now rested next to the Amulet, wrapped carefully in a scrap of the cleanest cloth she'd been able to find. Katia sighed, shook her head, and pushed at the grate, which opened with a squealing of rusted metal and a crunching of nameless filth. She walked slowly out of the pipe into the outside world. —<§>— It was night when Katia emerged. The stars that the Empress Celestia had trusted, and which had led her to her death, lay in confusing spatters overhead, serene and to all appearances untouched by earthly concerns. Also in the sky were both moons, Masser and Secunda, their divergent crescents making the heavens look rather walleyed. Katia remembered the first time that her father had shown her the mystery. He'd taken two apples and held them near each other in broad daylight, showing how the shadow on one fruit looked the same as the shadow on the other. The moons didn't follow these rules. Whatever the dark areas were upon the moons, they weren't shadows; sometimes you could even see stars shining through them. The moons were supposed to be some of the mortal remains of the god Lorkhan. Just what part of his remains they were was a subject of ribald speculation. The Khageet called them... Katia strove to remember... Chone and Chode? Jack and Jay? She wasn't sure that sounded right. Her Ti'Igra was really rusty. Katia lowered her eyes. She stood by a dock on the shore of a narrow lake that curved beyond her view to the west and east. On the opposite shore, under tall hills with mountains beyond, stood a white, ghostly ruin of arches and columns, a remnant of the Antelid elkes, whose civilization had dominated the continent of Equestriel many thousands of years in the past. On a broad hill behind Katia, beyond the sewer pipe, loomed the Celestial City, sometimes called Canterlot. Katia could see the round walls of the prison from which she'd just escaped. Just beyond rose the great stone circle of the city proper, in the center of which stood the tallest tower ever built in antiquity, the White Gold Tower, which in modern times served as the Celestial palace. The city looked quiet and peaceful from here, but Katia could only imagine the chaos happening inside. Having gotten her bearings, Katia studied the map that Haurus had given her and saw that the Celestial City was in fact standing on a large island surrounded by a thin, roughly circular lake, Lake Rumare. Chorral and Wainon Priory lay almost due west from her. Couldn't she just take a straight line path to her destination and get it over with? Just see this Jirauffe, hand over the Amulet, let it become his problem, and move on with whatever remained of her life? Maybe she could scrape together passage to some other land than this and get another fresh start, or head south and just walk over the border to Elswai, ancestral land of the Khageet... Well... She'd need more practice in talking to her fellow Khageet before even trying to go to Elswai. None of them seemed to want to talk to her at all. Maybe it was her weird Holsteinfell accent? Okay, so scrape up some money for some Ti'Igra speech lessons first... Katia absently started to groom herself, then stopped. There was no way she was going to run her tongue over her fur right now. She took a quick bath in the lake instead, washing away the accumulated filth and slime of prison cell and dungeon and sewer. Her chest fur was still stiff and spiky from the Empress's dried blood, but rinsing it off into the same water that she'd just befouled seemed like sacrilege. In the end, she mopped it up with a piece of wet cloth, which she stored carefully in her bag—perhaps she could find a priest who was trained to properly dispose of theoactive materials. —<§>— Katia was trotting along the shoreline to the west, a gentle breeze making her damp fur chilly, when her danger music went off again. She turned to see an ugly rocklike lump scuttling towards her, snapping its sharp claws in a fit of vile hatred towards all other living things. Katia was tempted to burn some magicka and toast the mudcrab for dinner, but she instead drew her bow and notched an arrow, walking backwards in Parthian style. She hadn't gone far when a horrible noise assailed her ears. It was a high pitched ringing, chiming noise coming from behind her, and it struck straight past all her defenses and burrowed into her brain in a furrow of tension, making her miss the mudcrab and lose an arrow. What the hay was it? She started to panic—the noise got worse the further she retreated from the mudcrab, ruining her concentration, and the hillside by the shore was too steep to climb. She hopped into the water and continued to back away, clumsily launching arrow after arrow until the mudcrab at last gave a hissing chitinous clatter and lay still. Wet and furious, she plugged her ears as best she could with scraps of cloth and walked back to shore, pausing to loot the crab and retrieve at least a few of her limited supply of arrows. She stalked angrily westward, and soon saw a small aquamarine plant with four long leaves, nestled among some rocks by the shore. The noise got ear piercingly worse as she approached it, cutting right through her makeshift earplugs and nearly driving her mad with pain. That was it! Wincing and cringing, she quickly seized the plant, yanked it up by the roots, and trampled it fiercely until the horrible noise stopped. Ugh, it smelled noxious! Well, now she knew how to deal with the nasty things. She trotted off along the shore, leaving the crushed pulp oozing into the sand. —<§>— The shoreline bent south as Katia walked, and she now had to make a choice. She could swim across the lake and continue her straight line path, try her luck with a weathered wooden bridge that led north, or head south to the main bridge that extended from Celestial City and pick up the road to Chorral from there. She was tired of being wet, but she also wanted to avoid any soldiers of the Celestial Legions; she had no idea how they'd react to her or whether Haurus had spoken to them yet about the Empress's effective pardon of her crimes. She also wanted to visit a merchant and sell off some of the excess stuff in her saddlebags, including the BOTTLES OF ENTIRELY NON-ALCOHOLIC WATER, but she could just imagine the reaction if she, an escaped prisoner, went strolling into the Celestial City on the eve of the Empress's assassination, carrying the Amulet of Queens. They'd probably build an entirely new kind of dungeon cell to put her in forever. Katia looked north across the lake at the far end of the wooden bridge, and saw the remains of a stone fort. Probably full of bandits, or Dogs. She shuddered, then looked back at the water. Just a quick swim straight to the west, and she'd be on her way with a minimum of lost time... —<§>— Slaughterfish. Why did slaughterfish have to keep re-entering her life? Particularly vicious ones, too? Katia muttered as she limped south. She wasn't wounded badly enough to justify using a healing potion or spell, but she was wounded just enough to feel pain. She remembered trying to cast a fire spell. While she was under water. Stupid, stupid... Why was she even fooling herself? She was still a Loser. And if she could just be satisfied with being a Loser, if she could maturely and rationally accept it, she might stand a chance at a decent life. But some part of her couldn't accept it, and kept pushing her to try, and to fail, and to fail again and again, under the delusion that she was something more. Dripping wet and morose, she wandered past a wayshrine, a small circle of white columns around an altar inset with a stone bowl. Each wayshrine was dedicated to one of the Nine Divines; Katia sensed that this one was controlled by Julianos, whose powers were said to govern the intellect, and whose wayshrines were sometimes sought by road-weary mages. Julianos would be as good a source to ask as any. She shivered with cold and apprehension as she stepped into the shrine and approached the altar. She bowed her head, and strove to quiet her thoughts and focus her mind toward the posing of a single question... and perhaps to receive a blessing. She was trying to do something of real importance for once, something to help the Realm and the Empress, who surely had been beloved of the Gods, at least until today. Just a little bit of help would be nice... After long minutes of silence, in which she grew colder and colder, she realized that there would be no answer. She just wasn't popular enough, it seemed. She sighed and backed out of the shrine. As she turned back on the path that led to the Celestial bridge, Katia looked up at the moons, which still gave the appearance of staring at opposite sides of the horizon. The sky seemed on the verge of challenging her, demanding to know just what she thought that she was. Her silent question rose to her lips. "...Am I a Wizard?" she asked. The moons and stars gave no answer.