User blog:HambleBee/Mortal IV

"Come on, lass. Wake up." Emeric told Pura, while holding out some sort of jerky dripping of meaty juices in front of her to lure her into being awake.

The jerky was enough to lure the child into snatching the piece of meat and eating it joyfully. Emeric nodded in his thoughts and cleaned his hands before readying his supplies. The carriage driver was already waiting for both of them.

Once both he and Pura were ready, the journey continued for Bravil.

...

The two were dropped off at Bravil. A city that even Emeric despised for it's reputation as a very squalid town, and one of the poorest cities in Cyrodiil along with the damp climate.

Still determined to finish his trial, Emeric continued forward through the city, with Pura close to him as the child feared Bravil from the rumors she had heard regarding a statue of an old lady, which appeared in her nightmares at times.

When they arrived at the castle, they were greeted with the Count of Bravil himself, a descendant of Regulus Terentius, a man by the name of Gaius, sitting on a chair in front of the great hall.

"Welcome. Before you say anything, yes, I know why you're here. Word travels fast around Cyrodiil." Gaius Terentius said.

"So you are here to kill me. Sent by your overseer as a test of your trials. Yes, this is true, and I accept the conditions. But you do realize how guards look on someone killing their Count, yes?"

The guards of the castle then drew their weapons and surrounded Emeric and Pura. The child hid under a table before the path was blocked. The man grunted, his hands on his blade.

"Don't worry. I'll make sure that your Overseer knows that you died very valiantly. Guards, kill him, and take the girl to the dungeons." Gaius said, bored, before leaving for the throne room.

Emeric gripped his blade with one hand, dodging a lunging strike from a guard, before setting him on fire along with some rugged carpet with a blast of flames. While the guard screamed for his life, Emeric literally cleaved the man in half, horrifying the other 5 surviving guards.

The Breton had a cold look on his face. Mercy became foreign to him. He was determined to kill.

Using ample footwork, he dodged the attacks thrown at him by the guards. Attacks he couldn't dodge, he parried with his blade and countered with jabs of short-ranged telekinetic blasts, before following up with deadly counter-attack by snapping their necks with telekinesis itself.

With the guards taken care of, he went to check on Pura, and gestured for her to stay where she was as the man headed for the Count's room.

As Pura stayed under the table, she heard what sounded like yelling, before it was followed up by screams of pain and eventually the swing of a blade. After a while, Emeric hurried towards the child.

"We'd better leave. Now." Emeric said, making the child drink an invisibility potion before he drank one for himself as well. He carried the child and rushed out of the city before the effects wore off as guards began to swarm the castle and lock the city down.

The two barely but successfully escape.

...

After a while of running, Emeric decided to stay in an abandoned hunter's shack, putting down Pura.

"You know, you could have least asked if you were going to carry me first!" Pura asked, rather annoyed.

"Sorry. Speed was of the matter when escaping a city full of angry guards." Emeric noted, before he began to look around the shack. The fireplace was long gone, and most of the utensils of the shack were useless.

The Breton looked around outside for a bit, before gathering a few materials and began to create something that looked like some sort of hatchet. Pura observed him, and the man used his make-shift hatchet to chop a fair abundance of wood located outside the shack and gathered a few stones. Emeric trimmed some of the wood down to smaller pieces for the big ones, before placing them all at the fireplace and lighting them.

With a small fire made that would last for a few hours, Emeric sat down close to the fire to warm himself up. Pura sat a bit next to him as she sought for the fire's warmth as well.

"Umm... s-sir Emeric..?" Pura asked.

"Just call me Emeric. or anything you want for that matter," Emeric sighed, "you know, back at the castle, if you knew magic, you could have fought with me." He shook his head.

"B-But... I abhorr things like that..." Pura said sadly. Emeric just sighed, before answering "You need to learn how to stop abhorring it, and eventually learn how to defend yourself once your back's on the wall. There will always be people looking to exploit you or cause you harm. I'm not saying that it's good either. What I'm saying is that you need to learn how to defend yourself and those you care about."

Pura thought about it as she looked at the fire. "I guess so..." she answered after a while.

As the child pondered Emeric's words, the man himself thought that he knew he would have been eventually betrayed, but didn't expect it sooner. It was also possible this was part of his trial, but only time would ever truly tell the answers. For now, he was focused on laying low from the guards, and contact his Overseer once the danger had passed.

"Stay here, and try to keep the fire lit and not burn down the shack." Emeric told Pura, before the former went to hunt for food for both of them. He knew that even rabbits would help sustain them for the day, and luckily there were plenty in the area he was on.