Fire.
Fire, burning and consuming, a waving skirt in the tall grass, the wind blowing with it clouds of ash and heat. Smoke, blown high by the prevailing wind, stood as a dark harbinger of the death soon to come. If one stood in the correct place, one could smell the sweet smell of the sugars in the cane fields burning, along with the more bitter smell of charring grasses. Much farther in the distance, one could see the beginnings of a large forest, across a sparkling, blue river.
The Khajiit in the city were just becoming aware of the impending danger - the smoke in the distance becoming too pronounced to ignore. Too late, unfortunately: The fire, blown by the easterly wind, was blowing straight for the little town, a ring of fire bending across the plains and to the banks of the river. The only reprieve lay in crossing the river into Valenwood.
Straight into the arms of the waiting Wood Elves.
The Elves had set up camp just across from the town. Parties of bowman, waiting in both the trees and on the ground waited for to run for the river. Arrows stuck in the ground gave the far bank a bristling appearance, volleys upon volleys of arrows ready for the archers to rain upon the fleeing Khajiit. Their faces were grim with anticipation. The fire burned, and the Khajiit would be driven here. There would be no Torval, not anymore.
In the city itself, the panic had only begun to rise. Khajiit streamed out out the city, some running for the plains to try and find a gap in the fire, and others running for the Valenwood border, to cross the lifesaving river there and thereby escape fiery doom. Those who made for the plains quickly found that the fire was, indeed, a complete circle. Those who tried braving the inferno died, the smell of burning bodies joining the charred smell of burning grassland.
Those who ran for the river fared no better. The Bosmer's arrows were swift, and their hearts stone - weeks later, masses of arrow-marked kahjiit bodies would wash downstream and into the southern seas, most of them completely stripped clean.
Of the few Khajiit who survived the destruction of Torval, very few ever went on to be anything more than refugees from that land. Among them, however, was Za'Riijah, a female Khajiit, and her yet unamed kitten.
Skirting past the ashen wastes of what was once vibrant fields of crops, they made their way to the closet available city - Senchal.
Unlike any other place in the world, Senchal was ruled and not-ruled, a place of order and a place of unbridled freedom. While law ruled those who adhered to it, the true master of the city was gold, and sugar - always, always sugar. Anything one wanted could be gotten, for a price, and to those who knew how, any experience was not out of reach. It was a smuggler's paradise, a glorified bay of pirates barely held in check by the rule of the Mane.
Of course, the little kitten did not know this. It knew merely that its mother was warm, that it was hungry, and that it hadn't slept on something soft for weeks. To tired to cry anymore, the kitten merely lay in it's mothers arms, dozing exhaustedly in the haze of arid smoke that seemed to continually fume around the older Khajiit.
When it awoke, however, things had changed, and not to its liking. Two strange men were talking to her mother, talking and hissing loudly in turn, and waving bright, shiny things around in their hands. She cried out her distress, and her mother seemed to tighten her grip on the poor child. The two men continued to brandish the shiny objects, until one of them put them away and pulled out a handful of shiny objects.
Her mother's grip slackened, and the baby quited for a moment. It opened its eyes to see the man hand her mother a handful of shiny, golden things, and set down two little purple bottles. Her mother stiffened and then slackened, a slight mewling sound coming from her, and taking a rattling breath seemed to clutch the child closer. The child began to wail again, discomforted by both the strange men and the sudden pressure applied on it.
Za'Riijah let out a mewling wail again, and felt her body begin to shake, not only with the monstrous proposition in front of her, but the telltale shakes of skooma withdrawl. She had a pounding, excruciating headache that was only going to get worse. Her child's crying wasn't helping either. She gasped, her vision suddenly going double as a fresh wave of wracking pain quivered down from her brain and into her toes, and felt of bit of blood trail down her chin. She'd bitten her tongue.
Unfortunately for the child, Za'Riijah was already into withdrawal. And she knew, like all Khajiit, that skooma addiction could not be cured. Blocking out the sounds of her child's crying, she handed her to the grinning dark elf and practically lunged at the little bottles, unscrewing the cap and downing almost all of it in a single gulp. It wasn't long before she was in the pleasant dreamland of a skooma high, the tears on her face already drying.
The baby would never remember these events, save for impressions and a lifelong dislike for the smell of skooma, and so it would never remember the face her mother made as she handed her baby over as a slave, for three-hundred septims and two vials of skooma.
As soon as the baby grew old enough to walk and speak, she was fitted with a slave bracer, and was begun to be taught her role in life. Normally, slaves taken by the Sugar Knives, as the drug dealers were called, were again sold to a third party for a substantial profit, and a slave bought for less than a third of what she was worth would indeed bring a profit. They had a different role in mind for the young cat, however - even as a baby, she had shown herself to be uncannily bright, and they had need of a young one to train.
Golcat, as she was known, for the relatively small amount of gold she had been bought for, was to be given to Ja'Khaij, the gang's chemist. The elderly Khajiit would make use of her as a lab assistant, and through doing so would train his own replacement. He was old, and his time was nearing an end - by the time the little Khajiit was ready to take over the processing of moon sugar into Skooma, it would be time for him to retire, or simply have died from age.
This wasn't to say hers was going to be an easy life. Lessons would often involve being in close proximity to corrosive chemicals and noxious fumes. Ja'Khaij, who had worked with the chemicals for years, possessed an extremely emaciated, raspy voice, and had a terrible, sometimes bloody, cough. Alchemists who worked with the kind of materials he did didn't tend to live long, and they would be no kinder to the little Golcat.
Golcat grew up with a rasping, hollow voice, and possessed a minor little cough of her own. Throughout her life, she would have troubles breathing. Her training as a Alchemist, however detrimental, was also in addition to the more menial tasks normally given to slaves, such as taking care of the hovel she and Ja'Khaij called home, cooking, and generally being at the entire gang of thug's beck and call. She grew up thin, lean, and eternally smelling of moonsugar, alchemical supplies, and sweat. Though by no means was her life easy, it was far better than the fate of some slaves bought by the Knives of Sugar - she never had to worry about being used the way some were, nor having to suffer the awful fate of a drug mule. She lived with the old Alchemist uncomfortably, as more a disfavored child than a slave
The bracer never left her wrist, however, the metal band a nagging, constant reminder of her true state. It rankled at the young Khajiit. While she dared not ever express her dislike openly, like most slaves, she would sometimes daydream about escape.
In the meantime, however, she continued to live with the Ja'Khaij, and to be taught how to make the skooma that gang sold so voluminously.
Today was a little different than most. The light that filtered through the slatted windows of the little room I called home was still dim with the early-morning Senchal sun, but it still seemed...
I bolted upright in bed and opened the slats a little further. The sun was practically fully risen - I had overslept by at least an hour. Stumbling out of bed I threw on the dirty clothes that the old s'wit
graciously allowed me to wear and padded into the main room of the hut, hoping beyond hope that Ja'Khaij hadn't awoken early this morning to see me not preparing breakfast.
I exhaled. He hadn't, and I still might make it through the morning without a beating. I opened the little cupboard that contained out supplies, and setting a few pieces of sweet bread Ja'Khaij had bought last week on the counter, and took the single match allowed me every morning and began to light the stove. I had to be careful - if the match was wasted, it wouldn't matter how early I woke up. Breakfast would be cold, and I would be sore the rest of the day.
I took a piece of wood from the pile beside the stove and placed it inside, the coals still just slightly alive beneath the cold ashes. I lit the match on one the the faintly glowing embers and held it beneath a smaller twig.
It lit. I exhaled, stoking the flames, and began to prepare breakfast. Buttered toast and a few pieces of meat was generally how Ja'Khaij liked to start the day. From the look of it, he was going to sleep in this morning. I shrugged, a little irritated at the old man. Sleeping in was a cardinal sin for me, anyway. Fetcher.
I grabbed a broom and began to sweep the trash dotting the dirt floor of the little hut into a corner. I'd take it outside later. There were places where one could dump trash, but the bay was closer, and gave me five or so minutes to enjoy the sun. It was, perhaps, one of the few indulgences I had.
I sometimes suspected that Ja'Khaij could smell the saltwater on me, but he'd never said anything. Sometimes the old man could be tolerable.
I finished sweeping and flipped to toast, and reached into the cupboard for the flask of Mazte Ja'Khaij kept in there. The codger had spent some time in Vvardenfell, apparently, and had become enamored of the local drink. I poured a measure of it into one of our clay cups, crinkling my nose at the smell, and set it on the table, next to his chair. Ja'Khaij swore by it, but I sometimes wondered if the stuff wasn't used somewhere to remove varnish.
To my astonishment, the smell of sizzling meat still didn't rouse the sluggard from his bed. I grimaced, taking the just slightly cooked bits of sweetmeat and lavishly buttered toast, and placing them on a plate next to his glass of mazte. I sat down on the floor and waited for the old man to rouse.
When he still didn't rouse twenty minutes later, I began to get worried. I knew that Ra'Jiirah would be coming to meet the old fetcher at a little before midday, and that the druggist still didn't have all the skooma ready to be handed over yet. It still needed measuring and packaging, and Ra'Jiirha would probably beat the old man if he was too lazy to have gotten everything ready by now. I sat there for twenty more minutes, waiting.
I stood. The old man would probably beat me for this, but...
Entering his room was strictly forbidden. But then, so was oversleeping. I carefully eased the driftwood door away from the wall, intent on waking the old man softly.
The damn door squeaked louder than a mewling kitten. I knew this, and despite how carefully I tried to open it, it still screamed into the early morning air. I cursed, and simply threw the door open, uncaring. Maybe it would wake him up for me.
What I saw confirmed that Ja'Khaij wasn't sleeping.
Ja'Khaij was curled into a fetal position, fangs bared and his body twisted unnaturally. A pool of blood covered his mouth and chest. Years and years of slow erosion to his lungs and throat had finally caught up with him, and Ja'Khaij had drowned in his own blood last night.
"Oh."
Of course, at the time, I didn't feel much of anything at seeing the old man dead. It was... too different. A foreign concept. I vaguely felt the notion that I should be shocked, or disturbed at seeing him dead. Even if it was just a dead body, I should feel... something. I felt nothing, however, except for a sudden rush of adrenaline. I would realize what had just happened later, and largely be the happier for it. But at that moment, I simply felt numb.
It was only an hour past dawn, and I had five hours before Ra'Kiirah would be coming to collect this weeks product. And I also knew that I had a sudden, refreshingly unrestricted access to the alchemical supplies.
When Ja'Khaij wanted to teach me, he'd bring an alembic and a mortar and pestle into the main room and watch me there, sometimes actually letting me do real work with it. I was supposed to take over for him one day, after all. But at all other times they were kept in his room, a place that I was strictly forbidden to enter.
There was a good reason Ja'Khaij had kept the equipment locked away. Skooma, in it's basic form, was an extremely mild acid. An extremely expensive acid, if one wished to use it for corroding metal, but an acid nontheless, and a foolish slave with enough moon-sugar, time, and knowledge might be able to melt the bracer off its arm.
Three things I suddenly had in droves. The idea hit me slowly, an over-shy guest in my mind. I wasn't quite sure I wanted to entertain it either. It was impossible. It was unthinkable. But, yet... wasn't this what I wanted? This was golden. Getting another chance like this...
I would have to act quickly. I ran out and got a stick from the stove and light it, and ran back into the room, lighting the alembic, and grabbed a stoppered bottle to pour into the glassware. Eight similar
bottles dotted the desk, and crates more were set into the wall, all of them pure skooma. I poured two into the Alembic and set down to waiting, grabbing Ja'Khaij's uneaten breakfast and running back into the room.
It felt odd, eating his breakfast next to his dead body.
Perhaps it was the excitement, or perhaps it was the fear I had of Ra'Jiirah suddenly bursting into the little hut, but the two bottles seemed to take ages to boil down to the consistency I wanted,
pudding-thick. I poured in eight more bottles, getting it down to the consistency I wanted. I had eight bottles of skooma in the little jar, which was about how many I thought I'd need - I then poured as much water as I dared back into it, filling it to the brim, and set a distillation cap on top of it. A I placed a smaller jar under the catch, and waited.
It took another hour before I saw what I needed to see. A slight bend was beginning to develop in the glass arm of the distillation setup - which meant that it really was a strong as I was going to need it. I turned off the flame, and stared at the little glass cup, about halfway full of hyperrefined skooma. Taking a rag, I gingerly grabbed the top of the vial and held the mixture over my arm. I saw the glass bottom begin to bend, and clenched my teeth.
Though I would later come to realize that I was lucky the mixture didn't simply explode, or burn my arm off, I was at the time only fairly certain that it was going to hurt like hell. And it did.
The skooma began to drizzle out the bottom and react with the slave bracer almost instantly. The fumes nearly gagged me, and made a hellaciously loud sound, like a dozen eggs being fried in a pan at once.
I coughed and tried to keep the smoke out of my eyes.
The skooma started to come out faster and faster, the smells and sounds getting far worse, and I nearly choked before I felt a scream burble up from my throat. My hand was on FIRE. The bracer still hadn't been eaten through yet, though...
The keyhole. The damn keyhole. I'd poured the acid straight into it, and my wrist was now being nicely chewed up. I bit back a scream and tried to keep any more of the liquid from dripping down there. It didn't work entirely too well, although now more or less acid seemed to make little difference.
Between the smoke, the sounds, and the burning pain, I felt like it took an eternity to burn through that bracer. Considering how much of the skooma I had, though, it couldn't have been any more than a minute. I can still remember the yip I let out when I saw the little band of metal give a sudden jerk, and fall away from my wrist. I literally threw the ruined alembic into the wall and the old bracer with it, and ran into the kitchen for fresh water. My hand still felt like a nest of fire ants had decided to burrow into my skin, and they were starting to dig tunnels.
Water didn't seem to help it. I panicked briefly, and in desperation I grabbed my former master's glass of mazte and poured that onto it. It was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced in my life, the feeling of that alcohol mixing with the acid on my hand. I know I screamed. Sometimes you get lucky, though - no one seemed to question Ja'Khaij's beating the little slave girl again. My yowlings were dismissed as a particularly brutal one. Still. The mazte, although it intensified the pain for the moment, caused it to begin to fade away a moment later. It would still throb for weeks, but the acid was no longer trying to show me my insides. I would forever after have a hairless patch on my wrist, however, in the perfectly odd shape of a keyhole.
Things moved quickly from there. I stole the bloody robe that Ja'Khaij had been wearing, and hiding my maimed arm inside it I simply left our little hovel. It was the last time I would ever see it - not that I wished to. Staying in Senchal would have been suicide. But getting out of the city could have been no simpler. Cloaked as I was, and without a bracer to set of magical alarms at the gate, I was free to pass through, no questions asked.
And so I did. And, as I walked out of the gates, I shivered. It was the first time I had ever seen the dunes outside of Elsweyr without a wall or bars between myself and the sands. I dared not take a moment to gaze at them, however, and looking at the sign I tried to deduce what direction to go. I was illiterate at the time, but I did know how to read two words - my own name, and Rimmen.
My slave bracer had been from Rimmen, and the name had been etched into the metal. The place was famous for it's slaving.
I thought a moment. It was, perhaps, the one place they would expect me to try and avoid. Looking at the sign carefully, I traced my hands over the symbols to make sure, and began walking down the sandy path towards the distant city.