Innocence Lost
A Skyrim Story
I stared at my hands, soaked warm with blood. I faintly heard my dagger clatter against the wooden tombstones of Honorhall Orphanage. Numbness took over, my knees gave out and I collapsed to the floor. There was a constant ominous ringing reverberating in my skull, like the chime of Nirnroot. It pulsed and undulated as my eyes, swollen in their sockets, stared at the corpse in disbelief. The realization gripped me like cold claws as the hot red dripped from my shaking fingers.
A young woman, the orphanage assistant, Constance Michelle, was flailing about in a frenzied panic, screaming at the horror she had just witnessed. I remember her welcoming me into HonorHall quietly as the Headmistress of the house was scolding the children. Her eyes were tired but friendly and she had an aura of maternity about her. Now, those same eyes were wide with fear and despair, it was as if she had aged several decades in only a few moments. I sensed a dark, powerful force laughing at me from the void. No, it was the Void itself: Sithis, the Bringer of Ends, the patron god of the Dark Brotherhood. I don’t know how I knew this, it was like the knowledge was branded with a blazing iron upon my mind after I committed the deed.
But amidst my turmoil, the death, and the sneering of the abyss–there was laughter, but not that of evil. My gaze wandered upwards and beheld a sight only the most vile of the Daedric Princes could have fabricated. The children, the once depressed and pathetic youths of the orphanage, were… dancing. They were running about not in fear, but in celebration. I saw children surrounding the body and dancing to unheard, phantom music. I heard them laugh with each other and smile as if it were the best day of their short little lives. It was a horrible sight, one that could fill the most resilient souls with disgust. I felt a piece of mine die that day.
The woman I killed was called Grelod “The Kind,” but I saw through her dissembling disguise. She was an abuser. She used and manipulated the children into servitude, demanding their obedience and loyalty as if she were some sort of Jarl. She believes herself the ruler of the orphanage, a tyrannical dictator whose people could be used, then discarded like trash. She insulted and berated those unfortunate souls, who already had to deal with abandonment from their own flesh and blood. How did my path, one of an average, run-of-the-mill man, converge into that of murder?
I remember entering the cold city of Windhelm one evening, far Northeast and bordering the Sea of Ghosts. The winds drafting over the high walls breathed from that sea chilled my bones and froze my flesh to stone. I wonder how the people living here could withstand this bitter cold. As I walked to the Inn, my footsteps crunching on the freshly fallen snow, I passed a pair of guards speaking to each other and I overheard an odd piece of their conversation.
“... away from the Aretino Residence. That place is cursed.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s no secret the Aretino boy is doing some ritual, trying to call the Dark Brotherhood. But who’s gonna stop him? Me? No, I’ll have no part in that...”
I carried on, my mind captivated by their words, but even more so, my craving for some warmth. As I opened the door to the inn, a warm breath from the crackling hearth greeted me kindly. Knocking the snow off my boots, I strolled into the inn’s hospitable embrace, as if I was finally home from braving the great unknown. The pleasant smell of slightly damp wood with the sweetness of fresh mead filled my nose, the sound of sweet alcohol being poured by the barkeep enlightened my ear satisfyingly.
“Welcome to Candlehearth Inn, traveler. In need of a room? Something to drink?”
“Just some drink.” I requested, not wanting to seem too eager. “A cup of mead will do.” I removed a gold coin from my money pouch, remarking the profile of the Emperor on its faces, then slid it across the wooden counter. The woman uncorked a bottle of Honningbrew mead and began to pour.
“Any gossip?”
A drink was made better with some story after all.
“Some,” she said, not looking up. She pushed the tankard towards me, pulled an empty one from across the counter, and started wiping. “Apparently, a boy, goes by Aretino, returned North from Riften. Word has it he’s plotting the demise of the old orphanage keeper there.”
“Oh. Yes, I believe I overheard some of the guards talking about it. They said he was, what was it, summoning the Dark Brotherhood?”
“That’s right. They say it’s a secret group of assassins who haven’t been seen in over a hundred winters.”
“Assassins?”
“Oh, yes. Why, you curious?”
“Not at all, it’s just, what could that orphanage keeper have done to the boy to warrant her death?”
“Well word is, the keeper, Grelod they call her, is a nasty old hag. Heard she been treating those children of hers like slaves, bet she makes em’ do nasty things too.”
I considered that for a moment. The whole thing tickled something funny inside. Could this be my next adventure?
“Well then, thanks for the drink… and the story. But, I think it best I get going,” I said, setting my empty tankard down. The mead warmed my throat and chest nicely. Satisfied by the fire, the shadow of snow no longer caressing my clothes, I ventured towards the door.
“Safe travels, and be wary, dark things are afoot.”
I paused, flipped another coin onto the counter, then made back out into the bitter cold. This time, though, I was protected by the homely aura of savory spirits. Aventus Aretino eh? Well, since I’ll be leaving anyway, I might as well check it out. What’s the worst that could happen? I thought to myself. Gods was I wrong.
I received some directions accompanied by some odd looks and made my way towards the house. When I reached my destination, I saw that the house was more of an arch shadowing the narrow alley than the usual square shape. Under the arch, I saw a dark elf woman speaking with a young Nord boy. I don’t recall exactly what she said, but she was pleading with the boy to stay away from the house, saying the boy inside was unwell and not in his right mind. Something stirred in my stomach. The thrill of adventure perhaps? Could be the mead sloshing my insides too. I attempted the door. Locked. I picked it with some tools I acquired during my travels.
The house was cold, not as cold as the naked city, but not as cozy as Candlehearth either. I heard a thumping and faint mumbling coming from upstairs. My footsteps cracked up the old floorboards as I made my way up the narrow stairwell. Upon ascending to the second floor, the room was dark, save for a smaller room, off to the side. A familiar flickering of dim candle light shone bright against the rest of the house. The light danced and made the whole place look sinister, alive. The thumping and mumbling was emanating from that room. Slowly, I approached the ominous room.
What I saw was a sight so disturbing, so ghastly, it chilled me to my core, as if the walls had been stripped down and the Sea of Ghost screamed its agonizing tempests.
There was a young boy, who I assumed to be Aretino, kneeling, hunched over an arrangement of a book, a nightshade flower, and a human effigy consisting of what appeared to be human bones, a heart, and bits of meat encircled by candles. The thumping I heard earlier was from him stabbing a dagger repeatedly into the effigy. He was mumbling, or rather, chanting a mantra.
“Sweet mother, sweet mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood in fear.”
Over and over he chanted this phrase. It was like he was possessed by some sort of obsessed ghost. Even I could tell what the boy was doing was not natural; it was a ritual that should not be performed. His hand was red and scabbed from the leather of the dagger. Tears streaked his face and his eyes were empty, dull, lifeless. He didn’t even seem to notice me, despite my footsteps not being concealed and the ancient floorboards groaned under my weight. He seemed to be in a trance.
I should have left, right then and there. I should have turned around and run away from that shivering sight. Involving myself in something like that couldn’t possibly end well. But I didn’t. I don’t know why I didn't. My footsteps echoed loudly as I approached the child, but they were alien to me. Some force was pushing me forward, clouding my mind. I warily tapped the boy’s small shoulder(as he still held a knife). The boy gazed back, his eyes unseeing at first, red marks from his burning tears mapping his face like rivers. Suddenly, he sparked to life, a childish, bright grin stretching from ear to ear.
“It worked! The Black Sacrament, it really worked! I thought it wouldn’t, what with the body and the things… but you’re here! An assassin from the Dark Brotherhood. And now, you can kill Grelod the Kind!”
He said it with such innocence, such ignorance of the gravity of his words. He proposed it as if killing a person, murdering a human being, was as mundane as taking a stroll to the market to buy some bread. It troubled me deeply. How could a child who has barely seen twelve winters utter such disturbing and violent words with such joy, such glee? I don’t know why I accepted. I was like a puppet, the string controlling my body being manipulated and played with for sport. An unholy force, a power I could not see, guided the tip of my blade into the meat of a woman I hardly knew.
Was it pity, a form of empathy for this poor child? No, even that wouldn’t justify murder. But there was no turning back now, for the deed had been done. I had killed someone, really killed someone. Life that would no longer exist in this world… because of me. I have put down wolves and animals of the like, but all in self-defense. Never have I sought someone out and brought them low without warning, without giving them the chance to raise their blade to fight back. It was wrong. Even in our bleak world in which monstrous creatures beyond imagination could ruin your life, this was wrong.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her, of the pile of flesh that was once Grelod “The Kind”. I can’t unsee the merriment of the children, all so young and new to the world, dancing, laughing, skipping, celebrating the murder of their abusive caretaker. They commemorated the deed as if it were an act of heroism, as if I was the mighty Dragonborn who had come to save them from the World Eater, one who brought down a dragon and saved their town. Off in one of the corners, one girl, maybe eight, broke off from her friends and approached me cautiously.
“Here you go mister,” she said as she offered me her teddy bear, “Take this, and thank you… for saving us, I mean.” Then she scurried back to her friends who giggled excitedly.
Having collapsed under the weight of my actions, I got up, weakened, to my feet. My stomach threatened to throw up. In the back of my darkened mind, I swore I could hear Sithis laughing at me from the Void. I remembered the angelic faces of those innocent children cheering over a fresh corpse. I remembered Aventus Aretino, so young yet so hateful as to create a contract of death. I even recalled my own childhood, how blissful it was, how unknowing I was of the world. But now my hands are stained forever, and all I can hope to do is pray, hope that another child would not be turned dark by crooked hands.
Innocence lost, the wicked voice taunted, its mouth curling in a sinister grin. All I could hear now was the deafening, hissing amusement of the Dread Father as I dragged myself out of that accursed sanctuary.