2- An exile's tale

Lars was always known as a calm tempered man. So calm indeed, that it was a common joke throughout Jehanna that the earl's heir apparent lost his emotions when he awakened his excellent magical talent. A magical genius, such that many said that he could easily become an Arch mage before 50 if allowed to grow. And that's exactly what was happening. The 'if' being the most important part. It didn't help that he was only sixteen when he was recalled from his studies at the Winterhold mage academy.

He knew about the war, well aware of the crushing defeats suffered by the empire. Not that it mattered much to him, because he was well-aware of the family oath to the Septim Dynasty. To be loyal, and keep away from all governmental affairs until the end of the era. Not surprisingly, they were strictly banned from military service, however being allowed a retinue of 50 knights and 5 mages. That with a fiefdom in one of the north-most, most frozen parts of Tamriel. This was the reason of his shock when he learnt that the white-gold concordat actually effected them. Them. The Laruses. Possibly the most politically isolated and forgotten nobility of all the empire. Someone who although living in Jehanna and was actually an imperial count, but had the political weightage of a wall.

Or so he thought as he was making his way to his then-inherited earldom.

And then shit broke lose. It really blew up into his face. For real. Revelations upon revelations. Of how his father broke the family law of no outside Jehanna political involvement, how he actually was a Blade commander; the word secretly not being said because the blades were ever a secretive organization. How his family ended up being one of the most effected from amongst those effected by the Great War from amongst those from Jehanna. How his father and his whole organization was sold over by the great emperor Titus Mede II. How he perished instead of surrendering to the Thalmor. Along with all 45 of the knights he had with him and the 3 mages comprising of the 98% of his territory' strength.

Ohhh, the empire did protest with the Thalmor, that the Blade commandant had disbanded and there was no need to capture and kill him, only to earn a reply of 'we just wanted to ask, he just had to resort to violence. Like life was cheap and he'd just throw it away at the likes of those humanoids. Not that the empire was any angry at the dead commander. He had too much key information and was too great a security risk had he stayed alive. After all, the blades were to serve the empire, and they had to serve the empire however it was best for the Empire.

Lars sighed again. He had been sighing a lot over these 5 years. He did take a break from sighing 2 years ago, though he was back to it now. He looked again at the little kid in his arms- his little kid- and again began his journey down the memory lane.

Lars had returned home, or what was left of it. His mother had died when he was 5 in an accident. Or at least his father has claimed the cause of her death to be an accident. At least he did get to know the reason of it then, when he got to know of his father's true profession. Now remembering he could only roll his eyes in the back of his head and smile bitterly. Like he was so much a simpleton to have believed that a stone tower could crumble from the weight of snow, when even only the thickness of the walls of the towers was more than a meter.

"Zin, they killed your grandfather, your grandma. They made us vacate our centuries-old estate. And now we are homeless, going to claim asylum by claiming the ancient right of hospitality and allegiance. Zin, this is all we have left, we, the greatest amongst the human lineages of Tamriel. And now the nobles claim they want peace. What peace? Can it return the broken families, the shed blood, the tarnished honor, and the parents to orphans, the lovers to spouses?"

"Zin, all I have left is you. You and Shay, and am burdened with the hopes of a nation and longings of a race. I'm sorry, but I can't give you the childhood you deserve, for it is ever your fate- no OUR fate to be hunted. To be hunted and hunt, thus it is, and so it will be, though I do wish we could be free."

Lars still remembered vividly, when he returned home, or the frozen castle as it was, then housing only five knights and two mages of the original 50 and five knights and mages; for they were his only family left. He received the controls of the sod lonely castle, and became the lord. Of the five knights, only three were full knights with the rest two being knights in training, Elaine and Selene, whom he remembered as the daughters of the two senior knights Jon and Allen. Similarly, the two evoker level mages Iris and Cynthia, were only the forces left to man the castle because they were unfit to fight a full fight. The return home was painful, and trying, such that it made him man up, even grow up much more than a 15 year old boy can think of. Faced with a powerful enemy who pitied neither the weak nor the civilians, who didn't differentiate between guilty and non-guilty, between honor and dis-honor, just employing every tactic possible to further its goals.

He returned to a letter detailing a contract marriage his father had negotiated with one of his friend's daughters, and thus he got betrothed to Shay Maurice, 2nd daughter of the baron Maurice. Times passed, with him feeling the ever growing menacing presence of the Thalmor, there always prying eyes, there attempts to any way bring disaster to him and the hidden schanderfreude of the Thalmor agents hidden behind the scene, seeing him struggling.

Time passed, till he became 18, on the day of his 18th birthday, he became a married man, and received the last letter from a blade agent who sent the last letter his father left him. It was the knowledge of a rune, to be drawn by his blood, and a single sentence. The sentence that had kept him going even after what was to come, the sentence that was to become his fuel for life. 'Keep the bloodline going on. You carry more than the legacy of the Larus family. You carry the hope of Humanity.

That night instead of his bridal chamber Lars Larus of house Larus Imperial count and Earl of the kingdom of Jehanna went to the dungeons of his castle. He still remembered it like yesterday. The sound of his feet on the stone cold floor, the echoes of his rustling robes that was amplified in the silent darkness like the murmur of a thousand ghosts. The silence sending shivers down his spine, as he went down to the place that his father had forbidden him to enter as a child, as that was their core inheritance. The reason, or so, his father told him that they were banished to these cold frozen lands. He took in a deep breath and snapped his fingers, igniting a small flame at the tip of his finger.in the flickering light he cast detection spells to ascertain any unannounced on-lookers. Ascertaining his being alone, he moved to the center of the big bare hall. There in the very center was drawn their coat-of-arms, a sea gull in flight, but the strange thing about this seagull from the regular seagulls drawn on their insignia, their house flag, signs, etc., was that this one seagull had slit eyes, not that he would've noticed it if not his father had specially written to inscribe the rune drawn from his blood on this very same slit.

Shay always asked Lars what happened that night. The castle had a strange fire incident; not that she could quite understand how somewhere barely furnished or even completely bare had managed to catch fire. Lars had been giving excuses about him practicing fire magic before it going out of control as he was barely a scholar level mage trying to level up by practice casting a mage wizard level spell. The magical fire barely caused any visible damage, apart from the blackened walls, that was barely noticeable, because the dungeon never was less gloomy place either but it sure did change Lars from the barely-mature young adult to a resolute man, with eyes burning with a hounded resolve.

And actually that was the cause of them ending up being here, as the current resolute Lars appeared too much of a risk to the Thalmor and their agents to be left in his home ground, and so they pulled strings to make him let go of his fiefdom, by forging false charges, staking claims of reparations for the soldiers killed fighting his father. And so Lars Larus was rendered a self-imposed exile, as he set off with his pregnant wife, the three knights and two junior knights/ladies in waiting for his wife and two evoker mages.

With almost all valuables sold, save for some personal jewelry, some tens of thousands of Septims and a ruby necklace that Shay had seen Lars wear, that was pretty much like a very good imitation of the Amulet of kings that she had happened to see in the plays they had put on in the nobility gatherings to commemorate the oblivion disaster.

And his title of the hereditary count, for that had the personal seal of emperor Uriel Septim I and the whole of the Elder Council at that time.....