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His heartbeat was by far the loudest thing on their journey. Above the chirping crickets and the clopping horse hooves on the worn stone path. Cicero could tell it was. Not just by the constant feeling of his heart in his throat, but also the way Ji’Ghoul’s ear would twitch towards him with every hitch in the road that would make it beat faster. Which certainly didn't help him in the long run.
“I suppose you’re curious,” the Khajiit said after a decent portion of the night and their journey had passed in almost silence.
“About what?” Cicero replied, now curious.
“About the full story of how I became the champion of Lady Death.”
His heart dropped to his stomach. His last encounter with Lady Death had been rather eventful, and not in a good way. He shuddered to think about it and the scars he kept gave him good reason to.
“She’s not a devil. Speaking her name won’t summon her,” He had reassured him. As if he could hear his heart’s plummet off the cliff down his body. “She’s not all bad despite what happened. People think the same dark thoughts about your own Night Mother, do they not?”
Cicero couldn’t deny it. He had heard terrible things said about the Night Mother during his time in the Dark Brotherhood. His ears tended to work especially well when her name came up in conversations in taverns or between market stalls. It wasn’t often, so he always made a note to listen when he was out. Usually with the Listener when they needed company.
He chews his lip between his teeth before he answers. “They do. What scares me more, I think… isn’t what else she can do but what you’ve done to be chosen by her. I… Cicero… I… I’ve thought about that at night when I can’t sleep. When you first told me about those whispers it scared me… to imagine those whispers I've heard while slowly going insane being something. I wanted them to be something. To be her; the Night Mother. You’ve lived out my feverish dreams of insanity and that scares me more than anything she’s done to me when I traveled with you to her tomb in Elsweyr. To some extent an old part of me felt jealous.”
Moments passed. There was a long silence between them as they continued to move further out of the open fields and into a wooded forest. Cicero looked over to see eerie blue eyes staring past his flesh and into his soul. He felt cold in the warm air, but he couldn’t make himself look away.
“The question isn’t what I have done, it’s what I haven’t done. I wasn’t always a humble Khajiit earning my living by the river bank fishing before all of this happened. I used to belong to a group when I was younger.”
“A group?” Curiosity grows.
“A group?” Curiosity grows.
He nodded. “Way too young to know better. I… we used all sorts of magic. Healing, destruction, illusion, you name it. There were no bounds to what we were allowed to practice. I was a prodigy at healing magic and they all had their eyes on me. It felt suffocating. I ran from town to town. Faction to faction. Not just around my own country, but all of Tamriel. Borders blurred. The only difference was the dialect and the currency. I never felt safe. It was always running from them or being run out of town for my race. It wasn’t until I was older that I finally managed to settle down in an obscure fishing village on the coast of Elswyer. I lived there for a while until the whispering started that night.”
“And you left magic behind?”
“As best as I could. Sometimes I would find myself using it still before I stopped myself. It was ingrained into my subconscious to always reach out and use magic. I avoided temples of gods too. Full of mages. I guess that’s how she found me in the first place when I settled down. When you’re buried deep under in a town devoid of magic and your whole life was founded on the very concept of the arcane arts, you’re bound to reach out for more when you get a taste after what I can only imagine was decades.”
“You said that she had done this to others before,” Cicero brought up.
“She has, but I’ve only ever heard about it in passing. I’ve never thought to ask in detail about it, and although I’m curious I think that, ultimately, I don’t want to know what she’s done to them.”
“I understand.” And he was telling the truth. “Can I just ask one question?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you go if you thought you were going to die? I’m a fool, but gods you’re such a fool Ji’Ghoul! You can’t tell me it was only really for answers. You run your whole life without questioning why they keep coming after you, and now is the time you want answers? You could have ran again. You could have done anything else, but why did you follow it?” He wasn’t angry. More so concerned, in-fact.
“Do you want an honest answer? Because the answer is that I don’t know. I’ve been so afraid of magic all my life and I follow the very magical thing. I could have done so much worse than just die. We all do dumb things and that was one of mine, but I don’t regret it. Do you, Cicero?”
Cicero looked away, staring at the rien in his hands as their horses continued to move smoothly along the path. His heart was calm, but it felt funny in his chest. “How would I ever regret things for you?”