Whispers in the Wind

[Illumination]

Chapter One:

Welcome Home

Dust allowed her eyes to close for a moment as she inhaled the damp night air of Cheapside.

An angry storm was beginning to brew on the outskirts of the district: she could feel the tension in the air, slowly building as the darkened clouds crept closer. Each rumble of thunder that echoed in the distance reverberated throughout the decrepit stone buildings of the slums. Clattering shutters offered a primitive lullaby for those close enough to listen as they swayed in the chaotic breeze.

Dust found herself absent-mindedly reaching out a few gloved fingertips to lightly caress the brick of the home nearby. She had decided that tonight was the night she’d strike up enough courage to creep through the refugee-infested slums. After all, if this was to be her new “home” she’d have to learn its sharp corners and hidden alleyways to prosper—or at least to survive.

A careful step forward landed her boot on a dried-out piece of wood. The creaking from her weight caught her off guard, and she stiffened when she realized that she wasn’t the only one who had heard it. A small street urchin with a dirty face turned to regard her with a silent frown, before skittering away in between the buildings like a spooked animal.

The wind tangled and swirled her snow-colored tresses with playful abandon as she turned and made her way through the same dark alley that the urchin had run into moments before. The more steps she took, the more the storm’s cold mist slithered in after her and began to claw at her heels. She inhaled, sharp and painful, as she tried to calm her nerves.

“Psst,” she called after the little creature to try and grab its attention. “I’ve got a stag for you,” she lied in a sing-song whisper to the child. A frown brushed her lips as the tangible darkness hid him—or her—well enough from the half-elf’s eyesight that she had already lost her way, and the child, in the maze of run-down fences and buildings.

“Dirty little street rat,” she seethed in a hiss under her breath as she immediately felt at her pockets. Empty. The flea-bitten mongrel had purposefully led her into the maze of darkness in order to pluck the last of her savings from her pocket. Outwitted by a child—both her cheeks and ego flared in embarrassment.

Dust slid down to the mud-soaked ground as the soft pitter-patter of rain sounded against the broken shingles of the rooftops above. She pulled her knees up to her chest and heaved a misty sigh.

It was all so familiar and so alien to her at once. The wind still carried that same sour stench—the one cluttered with desperation and helplessness. The echoes of crying urchins and the chatter of scurrying rats made her feel at ease. But it was different here as well; there was a lurking danger around every corner that she couldn’t anticipate.

She didn’t know whose turf this was, and that was the most dangerous thing of all. Pick the wrong pocket and you’d find yourself in a ditch, eyes-wide open with a dagger in-between them—or so she predicted.

Before long the woman’s thoughts had turned completely inward and she found herself in half-slumber. Her eyes fluttered gently as a dream state skulked upon her, bringing her back to a particular memory of her old home.

It was a cool, fall evening and a blind vagrant—known to the small ring of guttersnipes as Tellfast—had beckoned the children in closer to his small, crackling fire at the edge of the slums. As they all huddled together on the cool stone ground, Tellfast sat perched upon a broken chair underneath an overhang of a nearby building. He tapped the walking stick in his hands on the ground twice, and the chattering children quieted as bid.

Tonight’s story was a lesson on storms. Ironically one was looming above them and suddenly a steady trickle of rain found its way to the small overhang they had crowded beneath.

The wizened and wrinkled man lifted a finger and pointed at Dust with a near toothless smile. “Did you know this, child? That it is said that with each storm, it brings with it a quiet change?”

Dust shook her head with all the enthusiasm of a nine-year-old child. Her blue eyes were wild with delight at the story and at being singled out.

“Oh, yes.” Tellfast dropped his finger and then cackled as a sharp breeze crept around them, threatening to distinguish their only heat source. “Yes, yes, yes. You do not know it at first, oh no. But each tiny droplet of rain is an old strand of fate that has been broken and forgotten in a string of choices each of us makes. It reminds us. . .” He planted a half missing finger to the middle of his forehead, articulating for the smaller children. “. . .of our lives. Our choices. That while there is mourning and death in those ended strands of fate, there is also a sense of hope that there are still many new choices ahead, with brand new fates in store.”

Dust leaned into the little boy next to her. She didn’t know him or his name. She didn’t care to. But she was growing cold and the boy’s body heat was beginning to offer more warmth than the dying embers of the fire.

“And so, little ones. . .” The blind man’s eyes tittered about at the numerous sounds near him and he slammed his staff down on the broken cobblestones near his bare feet. “. . .remember that a storm can always bring a sliver of hope among it’s darkness.”

There was an eerie silence among the group of little urchins as a clap of thunder rumbled overhead. Tellfast smiled that same toothless smile and then in an instant he was throwing the staff out around him to rid the area of his young audience. “Shoo!” He had exclaimed in an annoyed tone as he took a swipe in the air before him. “Git! Ya hear!?”

All of the children, Dust included, scattered in a fit of screams and laughter at the blind man as he continued to swing until their numbers dwindled to nothing.

A hazy laugh suddenly riddled Dust awake as two dirty children poked at her with a stick. The sun beat down hard on the woman as she battled with the fog of her sleep. She blinked a few times into the mud as she realized it was probably mid-day, if not a little later.

“Think she’s dead?” One child whispered gleefully to his partner-in-crime. “She ain’t wakin’ up--”

The children squealed in delight as Dust roused from her sleep and groggily tried to snatch the sticks from their grip. “—run fer it!” They bellowed in unison with flailing arms as they disappeared into a cranny of the alley she didn’t even know was there.

A foggy frown drifted over her lips as she ran some fingers through her ashen hair. She yawned and murmured a few somber words to herself.

“Welcome home, Dust. Welcome home.”

[Illumination]

Whispers of Change

Chapter Two:

Whispers of Change

One of the only lights that shone out through the mist and the darkness of Cheapside came from the decrepit building across from her. It brought a spark of warmth and a false sense of security to an otherwise cold area. It trapped people like desperate moths to a flame.

Even the temple of Oghma and the Exigo Factory didn’t compare in all their eerie silence to the building right in front of her.

It was Jimmy’s Dice Den. It was here that the creak of a door could be heard at all hours of the night as people congregated and drank their lives away.

Dust had kept an eye on the place for a few nights—since she had started wandering the district—but only now did she realize that it was the “important” part of Cheapside. One of the lone reasons people bothered traipsing through the muck of the ward.

This night, though? This night the wind had brought with it whispers of change. Dust had settled in near the well at the center of the district and had turned her back on the light, and its sliver of comfort. Her blue eyes darted around the shadows, as she willed them to see something that was not there.

A light, cool rain began to trickle down from the clouds above and coated everything in a damp embrace. The remote sound of a screaming man haunted her thoughts before they were interrupted by a feminine voice behind her."And I'm already nearly out of supplies," the voice sighed lightly. "I'll come better-equipped next time."

Dust’s heart fluttered with fear as she nearly jumped in surprise. She spun on her heels to regard the voice in the darkness. She expected some thug with a dirty face and a blade pointed at her: What she saw was the complete opposite. The woman looked clean and unarmed.

"You there, young miss," the woman offered Dust a small smile. "How goes the night, besides—oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to sneak up."

Dust immediately went on the offensive, pointing an accusing finger in the woman’s direction. "Ye. . .ye were tryin' tae kill me!" She gave the woman fearful, wide eyes. It had been her first true encounter with someone else since she had wandered the slums of Sundren.

The unsoiled woman tilted her head and raised her hands. "Unarmed, unarmored, and musing about supplies? Miss, I truly wasn't intending any harm."

A flash of lightning and an echo of thunder sounded around them. Dust skittered a bit closer to the stranger and circled around her once to confirm her words. "Dangerous tae admit in these here streets!" Dust whispered to her loudly, through nature’s wrath. "Ye’ll get snatched up!"

"... Unarmed doesn't mean helpless." She flashed Dust a grin. "But I'll keep it in mind.”

Dust chuckled quietly, amusement glittering from the sound as she allowed the rain to drip off her wet rags. "Nae, the bogeymen will come an’ get ye here. I seen them there shadows move once. What's yer name?"

A soft crackle of lightning illuminated the woman’s form as she spoke. "Melissa, miss. Melissa Chandler, of the Temple of the Triumvirate. And yours?"

"Eh, yer one of them holy types," Dust countered as she straightened immediately, her shoulders poised and her back aligned as if trying her best to be prim and proper. "Well, me name's Dust, ye see. . ."

There was a certain hesitation between them before the conversation continued. "As long as one of 'them holy types' is a good thing... then sure, let's go with that. Good to meet you, Dust." Melissa offered a polite nod to Dust, manners intact.

"Ah, it just be one of them descriptors, ye know?" Dust leaned slightly to her right to look past Melissa, making sure no prying eyes were watching—at least any that she could see. It was then that she found herself comfortable enough with the woman to realize her stomach was rumbling. "Say, ye ain't got any bread, do ye?"

"No." Melissa offered up a quiet sigh. "I came equipped to beat evil in the face with my stick, not provide food. Which I now regret. I... could give you something to trade, maybe?" Dust watched as a tiny shiver worked its way up Melissa’s back as she looked around. "This is my first time in Cheapside. You do trade here, right?"

Dust’s soiled features twisted to show she was a little crestfallen, but she covered it up quickly as the woman offered up something else. "Oh, there be tradin' goin' around. Ye betcha. Ye jus’ gotta know how."

"Well, I could probably spare you a potion. If you are hurt, it could help a lot ... or, I imagine, someone who was would trade you quite a bit for it." With very careful, deliberate movements, Melissa placed the vial in Dust's fingers and lightly closed them around the glass container.

Dust grabbed the potion with trembling fingers as it was placed in them and fell back a few steps. "Thank ye, thank ye!" She stated as she moved to unveil a dirty rag and quietly covered the vial with it. After it had been hidden, she placed it tenderly in her pocket and covered it with her hand so it wouldn’t be. . .misplaced.

"Be careful. I may be wet-behind-the-ears, but even I can see there are bad men all over. Is there anything else I can do for you given my lack of food, Miss Dust?" Melissa tilted her head with her question.

A swirl of wind caught in Dust’s wild locks and tangled them further in her visage. "I jus’ got here a tenday ago meself, ye know." She stated as she glanced about. "Got. . .I got nothin' but th’ clothes on me back. I'm tryin' to make it out of this here district, but it be hard tae come by. That's wha’ everyone else be wantin' too." Dust motioned with her free hand to the numerous other dirty refugees that littered the ground nearby.

Melissa rubbed her chin. "Hrrhm. I'll admit this isn't the most ... well ... cheerful locale in the whole world." She cast her gaze slowly around.

Dust turned to and fro, watching as the mist’s fingers slowly curled and crept around everything. "Ye, ah.. .ye know it be bad when the cryin' of the little ones sounds like a lullaby at night tae ye."

Melissa’s features turned contemplative before uncertainty painted over them. "I might be able to help you. But ... I don't know. See, this is where I'd normally say the Temple of the Triumvirate has a place for you. You could earn your keep scrubbing floors, or polishing swords, or some such. But I'm sure you've heard the... news."

"News? News? I hear nothin', M'lissa. Unless it be the cries of grown men dyin' at night." Dust skittered a little closer to Melissa, as if her next words were some huge secret. "News?"

Melissa heaved a deep sigh. "The word is that the entire Left Hand of Mundus—one half of the arcane spellcasters that keep this city aloft—are traitors, and have fled to take shelter with the Black Hand. On the way, they betrayed the Temple's knights. We lost ... nearly everyone. Only a scattered handful remain. The Temple's barracks are empty. It was... mostly our warriors. We have a few healers left. But right now..." She took a breath as a pained expression crossed her features. "Gods, I don't know."

The light trickle of rain that had invaded their conversation from the start slowly began to let up. Dust’s dark brows creased while her smudged face contorted in both rage and helplessness. She stood in stunned silence for a time, her mind reeling. Is this what she had escaped to? Another sickening life of poverty? Except this time, the city was dying a slow torturous death—even the lifeblood of holy men and mages were trickling from its veins.

A quiet confession sounded from Melissa in the midst of rubbish and beggars. "I always dreamed of joining the faithful at the Temple, you know. . .but I never expected to join it in its last stand.”

Dust trembled as the clouds overhead broke apart and the sky shimmered with the last of the night’s stars. “Ye can help the little ‘uns here at least?”

"I'm one woman, Dust. And I'm not even... very good at this sort of thing." Melissa cracked a faint smile. "I can't promise I'll help. Or even if I'll, well, still be alive. I wasn't really ready for this. But you have my word that I'll try. And ... here, let me give you this."

Melissa reached in her soaked satchel and withdrew a hilariously outdated Traveler’s Guide to Sundren. She carefully removed the blank leaf page, and then pressed her finger to the parchment. Bold black letters began to appear. Melissa Chandler, initiate of Torm, vouches for Miss Dust. Help her if you can.

"... and if the Hand shows up to give me a hard time about two cantrips, then swive them. Here you go, Miss Dust. Hopefully, that'll carry some weight if you encounter another ‘holy type.’"

Dust took the parchment with trembling fingers and offered the woman a pitiful, half-hearted smile. "Hey, yer alright M'lissa. Ye know tha’?"

She watched Melissa for a moment with fleeting admiration before the bell of the nearby temple sounded the approaching of sunrise. It rattled her enough that she abruptly ended the conversation with the holy woman and she began to move off for the nearest alleyway. “I be seein’ ya, holy one!” She called over her shoulder before she turned and made her way through the maze of buildings.

Only once she had found herself in an abandoned stable, nuzzled against a pile of pale-colored straw, did she dare look down at the parchment in her dirty hand. Her fingers uncurled from it and she read the bold words over and over. Help her if you can.

Dust’s lips pulled up in a half-quirked smile as the first of the sun’s rays were born and scattered across the city. The golden-tinged light poured over her form even as she tried to hide from its embrace. It held a certain warmth that she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

[Illumination]

Dead Weight

Chapter Three:

Dead Weight

Dust threw her head to the side and gagged.

Her tongue had the consistency of cotton and her fingers trembled as they tightened around the seam of her hood.

“Comon’ Dust,” she chastised herself in a shaky whisper. “It jus’ be th’ sewers. Ye grew up in the damned sewers back home.” She shivered and tried to shake the stench. “So what if it be smellin’ like a dirty dwarf’s backside down ‘ere?”

She had thought that the last leg of her sewer adventures would be easier: quicker, quieter. She had thought that the aqueducts underneath Aspirations would somehow be cleaner as well—but oh had she been wrong.

The remains of odd oozes and jellies covered her from head to toe, and spatters of blood adorned her used armor like some sort of ghastly decoration. She watched the running muck as it trickled between her feet and spattered across her boots. Her stomach flipped.

“Damn,” she hissed to herself as her mouth began to water. “Hope I don’t be catchin’ nothin’ down ‘ere.”

She danced a few steps to her right and bent down to the man that had found his resting place on the sickly-slick and stony ground. Her cold blue eyes weaved over his features for a moment before her lips drew into a thin line. “Now. . .I want ye ta be quiet as I do this, aye?” She waited only a moment for the confirmation that never came before she continued. “An’ I be needin’ ye ta git as far away frem here as possible. I could git in a lot of trouble, ye hear?”

The man on the dirty sewer floor just stared at her.

She shook her head, a few wispy white tendrils of hair peeking from her hood as she did so. “Comon’ then.” She stated to the man as she looked away from his eyes. She moved around his form to take both of his hands in hers . . . and then dragged him to the gargling watercourse with as much strength as her lithe frame could muster.

“Talk ‘bout dead weight. Damn yer heavy,” Dust complained after a few minutes as she neared the edge of the stone ledge that overlooked the waterway. She dropped his hands and moved around him to better see the water that quickly traversed the aqueducts underneath Sundren. She idly placed her boot on his ribs.

The candles that shone from the table nearby made the murky water glisten in a somewhat eerie show and it gurgled with the promises of taint and death. It was enough to put the street rat at ease. Her mind idly wandered over the dead man under her boot. Where he’d end up; who’d find him. There was a fleeting question of how long it would take him to rot before something else started to gnaw on him.

She came out of her stupor moments later as she realized she was biting on her bottom lip a little too hard. She sighed softly and then in a mild display of strength she booted him off the ledge and into the dark waters below. She turned away as she heard the awkward splash in the water but she didn’t look back.

She had no regrets.

“Now let’s have a looksie an’ see what yer little Night’s Edge gang be up ta.” Dust skittered back to the table as an odd breeze made the candle’s flame flicker and dance.

A single stag sat upon the table and a few other objects she didn’t recognize. That wasn’t what had caught her eye though. A halfway rolled up piece of parchment had taken the spotlight as it sat in the middle of the table, obviously having been in use before Dust’s looming attack.

She licked her lips and spread her dirty fingers over the scroll to see just what exactly it was. Her eyes darted over it numerous times in disbelief. She gasped in both horror and delight.

“Ye got ta be shittin’ me,” she whispered into the dismal air of the sewer. “Here I be this whole time mappin’ out th’ damn place an'. . .” She hit at the parchment in frustration. “. . .they. . .they already got detailed plans of th’ whole damned thing!”

Dust groaned softly in frustration before her eyes darted to the pile of parchments on the side of the table. A slow, playful smirk then painted her lips as an idea struck her. She could take all of these. Use them. Sell them. Try and make her own copies with her own notes about the place if she could find the right material.

But she wasn’t going to be able to carry all of these things out of here, plus the baubles that she had stolen from the dead man’s pockets. Her lips twisted in silent contemplation and she placed her hands on her hips as she glanced over her surroundings.

A wicked grin passed over her lips as her eyes trained on a cloth backpack sitting at the edge of the steps on the other side of the room. “Aw, ye been so good ta me taday, Tymora. I’ll be sure ta thankee later.” She hissed in laughter as she strode to pick it up and then jogged back to the table.

She carefully stuffed each parchment that she could find into the backpack, bending and folding them as necessary, as well as plucking the single stag from the table before throwing it in for good measure. She glanced over the room to make sure nothing else looked steal-worthy. Nothing else did.

She heaved the surprisingly light backpack onto her shoulders and moved to blow out the candle before hesitation snatched at the breath in her throat.

Her eyes danced over the gleaming trail of blood that moved around the table and pooled at the ledge in the distance. It was one of her first murders in the valley of Sundren.

But it wouldn’t be her last.

A sudden, violent breeze drifted from a nearby grate and wandered along the same channel of water as the dead man. She could hear its hollow scratching along the stone as it crept closer and closer to her, beckoning her to its embrace.

The invisible gust of wind struck all at once, sending its unseen fingers out to coil around the lone murderer standing at the table. It tricked her, pulling her hood from her head to reveal half-elven features and stark white hair in the fleeting candlelight before it snuffed out.

Darkness reigned.

And in a blink her silhouette was gone.