Dead As Dead Can Be

[cthulhu worship]

 

Thunder crackled above and the skies opened up to release the drenching tears of rain. Lighting illuminated the chapel of Stendarr briefly, bathing it in an eerie white lightning before covering it in a shroud of darkness once more. The chapel once stood proud and fierce in the bathing warmth of daylight, but now it hung but a former shadow of itself. The grounds were ill taken care of, and broken tombstones littered the sacred burial grounds to the right of the chapel.

 

 

The graveyard was normally silent, but tonight the forces that be decided it was time to awaken. Lightning flashed in the sky, and a pair of ravens that had taken shelter on a perch under the roof of the chapel cawed out in protest. Again lightning pierced the storm ridden skies, sending the birds off into the night. Slowly, the ground beneath a shambled tombstone began to stir. At first it was a low groaning, with the wet mud sliding around, but after a series of thunderous booms of thunder, something began to poke out from the dirt. Slowly a dirt covered hand reached out into the night sky.

 

 

The free hand clawed and dug at the ground, until another hand joined the cause. Grasp by grasp the wet soil was pushed away until there came a gasp of a man, whose lungs sucked in breath of fresh air. He coughed and groaned, pulling himself out of the grave and collapsing in exhaustion next to the open grave. His body shivered as he curled up into a ball, attempting to shield himself from the cold sting of the rain. Where was he? How did he get here?

 

Everything was a blur to him. His dark brown eyes opened for the first time to look around. Wet black locks clung to his face as he felt around on the wet ground. His head pounded and muscles ached, as he tried to stand up. Why was he naked? Was he in a graveyard?

 

Suddenly a searing pain stung him in his brain, causing him to fall to his knees in the dirt. He clutched his head. He…remembered. He remembered fire, and pain. A castle? There was so much rubble.

 

 

“NO!” he cried out, his voice raspy.  He backed away from the graves with fear, his heart racing. He stumbled away from the graveyard and made his way onto the cold cobblestone streets. The man looked up at the chapel, and muttered the name: Stendarr. Yes, he remembered this place. He then remembered his name. Raziel. His name was Raziel. He served Stendarr. He was a paladin! Another stab of pain slammed into his head. There was fire again, and a chapel burning to the ground. He…he could hear screams!

 

Raziel stumbled in a haze to the chapel doors and grabbed them by the handle. He grunted as he pulled them open. Inside was warm, and the smell of incense and oils lingered in the air. He moved in with one mud covered foot after another, shivering and looking around. The chapel was bathed in candle light, which was only own shown by the occasional strike of lightning from outside. The paladin called out; “H-hello. I-I need help…”

 

 

 

No answer came. Raziel continued down the long row of pews. This somehow felt familiar to him. Was this the Chapel of Stendarr? If so, was he at home, in Chorrol? “Please...I need help..” he whimpered, tears rolling down his dirty cheeks. He was alone, confused, and utterly scared. As he approached the altar he felt the familiar painful sting. It brought him to his knees once more, the pain racking his body.

 

 

The fires again. The creatures from the darkness. He was over taken. They all were. The screams of women and children echoing in his ears. “NO!!! By the Nine NO! STENDARR!” he screamed out, grabbing his head. His eyes were shut tightly as he tried to fight through the pain of memories. 

 

 

“I don’t think he heard you. On the account of him bein’ a dick.” Came a woman’s voice.

 

Raziel’s eyes shot open, and instantly he scrambled back away from her. She was standing before him, voluptuous and beautiful as any creature he had ever seen. She was garbed in very little and he might of thought her one of the Nine Divines if it wasn’t for the horns jutting from her head and the bat like wings protruding from her slender back.

 

 

“D-demon! Daedric devil!” Raziel shouted.

 

The demoness rolled her eyes and approached the naked man. “Oh please. I have been called worse.” The woman purred, kneeling down and looking the man over slowly. A grin spread across her face as she nodded with satisfaction. “Fuck yeah. I did an awesome job.”

 

 

Raziel looked up at her puzzled, then slowly began to rise to his feet. His fists clenched at his side as he eyed the area for a potential weapon.

 

“This isn’t some cheesy summoning spell. I’m talking about full blow mother-fucking-resurrection!” the demoness shouted with pure delight!

 

“Resurrection?” Raziel whispered, his heart thumping in his chest.

 

“Yep. You, my little walking bag of meat, have been resurrected. I gripped you tight and pulled you from perdition. And THAT was not an easy thing to do. You pissed someone off big time.” The woman said, slowly walking around Raziel and inspecting him like a piece of meat.

 

“No. T-this can’t be right. I wasn’t dead…I’m alive.” Came Raziel’s voice, shaky and nearing a panicked state.

 

The woman shook her head, then chewed on her bottom lip and giggled. “Nope. You were dead as dead can be. And with you, I’ll finally now be able to get back on Daddy’s good side.”

 

Raziel cried out in pain, his head throbbing again. A voice whispering in his memories: ‘Come back to me…’

 

“M-my wife. Victoria!” He exclaimed, his face panicked as he looked around. “Where is my wife!?”

 

The demon woman crossed her arms over her ample chest and said nothing.

 

Raziel bolted away from the woman, and ran out of the chapel. 

 

 

“Hey! Asshole! Where are you going!?” she cried out after the naked man. She sighed, looking around, then looked up at the stain glass window of Stendarr. “Your followers are annoying as fuck.”

 

 

*****

 

It was once his house. Once his home. Now only cob webs and upturned furniture littered the place. What ever happened here, had happened a long time ago. Raziel took a step into the house from the drenching rain and surveyed the area. “V-Victoria?” he said aloud, his voice quivering on the edge of breaking down. From the sight of the house, he feared the worse.

 

 

How long had he been gone? The fallen paladin clenched his teeth and roamed the halls of his once beloved home with a sense of utter despair. His heart ached as he barely noticed the glass shards that he stepped on. Much like his mind, his house portrayed the same; disheveled and broken. As he ascended the stair case his breath was coming quickly. He half expected to see his beloved wife dead in their bed.

 

 

When he opened the door to his bedroom  he could only scream out in the pain of a man who had truly lost everything. Only a bed remained, the rest of the room was turned over. On the bed itself was a large old blood stain. “Victoria…gods no…baby..oh baby…” he choked out, falling onto the bed and clutching the sheets and drawing them to his chest. The man wept as he was curled in a fetal position, memories of his wife haunting him in his mind.

 

 

 

If he wasn’t dead before, he was now.

 

“Ah, your wife.” Came the demoness’ voice, sensual yet cold at the same time. “This is what you were running to?”

 

Raziel’s eyes narrowed and he hopped off the bed, fists raised in balls of anger. “Why do you taunt me demon!? Do you not see I have NOTHING! Everything is gone!”

 

 

“Lust. My name is Lust. Thanks for asking.” Scoffed the woman, casually leaning back against the wall.

 

Raziel spat at her feet. “I don’t care what your name is whore. Where is MY wife!?”

 

Lust looked around, then to the bed sheets. “Dead, I would assume. I mean, its been like, I dunno, a year since you died?”

 

Raziel was taken back; “A year?! A fucking year?! I was dead for a year?”

 

“Yup.”

 

Raziel growled with anger and then lunged at the demon before he clutched his dead in pain. The stabbing pain brought him to one knee as he remembered that night. The Oblivion gate had opened in Kvatch. There was no warning! He tried to evacuate as many people as he could. The Daedra had run over the place in minutes. He remembered fighting them off one by one before falling to one of the creature’s foul blades.

 

He backed away from Lust, fear in his eyes. “I have been dead for a year…” he said aloud.

 

“You look pretty good, despite all that.” Lust replied, tossing the man a pair of pants.

 

“W-why?” he whispered, absent mindedly slipping them on.

 

“Because. I need you. For a task. I got 6 other Siblings running amuck in Cyrodiil, and my Father sent me to get them. And what better way to do so then get someone like your skills to help me?” Lust replied strolling over to Raziel and smiling sweetly.

 

Raziel back away from her and turned his back. So much was happening too fast. “Why would Stendarr allow such a thing to happen?”

 

Lust strolled up beside him and placed her hand on his back. “Yeah…you must have pissed off some one, because I didn’t find you in Stendarr’s little happy hole.”

 

 

Raziel jerked his back away from her in disgust. “You did this. You brought me back. Why a year? Where is my wife?!” he shouted at her.

 

“You know what?! Fuck you! My ‘people’ skills”, she said, emphasizing quotes with her fingers, “are ‘rusty’. I have spent that last fucking three centuries as a multi-dimensional wave length of pure celestial intent.” She paused, letting her point sink into the man’s skull. “Resurrection, and I’m talking about a real fucking resurrection and not some crazy mage who summons corpses to his aid, is not an exact science. You’re lucky you ended up with all your body parts and in the right fucking decade!”

 

The grizzled man scowled, then slumped onto the edge of the bed. Here he was, in hell and without any hope.

 

Lust took a deep breath, trying to hold onto the threads of patience she had left. “Look, I’m going to level with you. Your wife is dead. Murdered I would assume. And before you ask, no. I can’t bring her back to life. Resurrection costs some serious sacrifice. But, what I can promise you, is if you help me get my siblings back to my Father, I will personally ensure that your soul and hers will be together again.”

 

Raziel scoffed. “I don’t trust you. What I want is the person responsible for her death.”

 

Lust grinned wickedly. “Sure. You can have all the vengeance you want. Help me, and I’ll help you.”

 

 

Raziel couldn’t trust the daedric demon, but he had little else to go on. He would go along with her plan until he found the one he was looking for. He looked up as Lust threw him some clothes. He slipped on the top and long black jacket.

 

“One more thing. Take this.” Lust said, handing him a mask.

 

“What is this for?” he asked, flipping the mask around. To him it looked like a simple painted wooden mask.

 

“Two fold. One, it will keep you hidden from any daedric eyes, and second, it will let you see any daedra in disguise. My siblings will most likely be hiding in plain sight”

 

“Am I” Raziel asked, tightening the belts to his boots.

 

Lust laughed. “No.”

 

Raziel placed the mask over his face and narrowed his eyes. The world around him seemed to shimmer and echo with the mask on.

 

Lust looked him over and smirked. “Scary as shit. Let’s go catch us some sins.”

 

 

[Myst42]

I was going to talk, but the thread shifted XD

 

Interesting, stories involving SIns always are, specially if you can incarnate them all into special characters, each one with it's own special kind of personality and aspect.

 

I've been meaning to ask what race does her face come from? It really looks amazing. Is it this one? In any case well done! 

 

"Endorsed" 

We don't have that here in LL

Here... we have them "likes"

 

I get the feeling there should be a thread to post stories... just like "storyteller" in Skyrim, which is mostly about sex and creature rape but still...

We don't have one for Oblivion...

Problem is, this one's already too "personal"

No room for other stories 

 

Well... nice story!

[abibliboop]

great start so far. Looking forward to your next chapter.

[HBB]

Fan of "Supernatural"?

 

Nice work so far, pretty interesting.