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I stood in a tableau of a completed horizontal swing of my sword, my katana covered in blood from kissaki to tsuba. My stance was both wide and deep with both hands keeping a steady but loose grip on the handle, just as I was taught. My eyes were focused strait ahead and my face twisted into an expression of anger. My only motion was my breathing, which betrayed my excitement and rage with it's loud, and rapid cycle of huffs and half-grunts that were muffled through my clenched teeth. I had just killed someone...and in their own house.

I held that posture for several seconds trying to calm my body, letting my breathing slow back down and keeping my hands from wanting to tremble. Trying to calm down my entire being was more like it. After a few seconds of not moving I finally stood up from my pose and looked down at the floor in front of me covered in blood. I felt a rush all over my entire body that upset and unbalanced every bit of my mental composure. It felt like I was shaking all over, but when I looked down at my hands still holding my blade...they were steady as a rock. Though I was breathing steadily I felt sick all over, my feet felt so heavy as if I would never move again. My knees, which my mind told me were shaking, were perfectly still, as though I were a tree rooted to the ground. My katana, I knew it as the lightest weapon I had ever held, but in that moment it felt like it weighed a ton.

As I stood there with my mind trying to make sense of what had just happened my gaze shifted from the blood that splattered from my cutting to the twisted body of the imperial man who I had spent the last few seconds cutting down. My mental state suddenly went from excitement and confusion to satisfaction and contentment. I was surprised at how easy it was. It was all over, no more suffering from his personal vendetta, no more abuse from his undeserved power. All the years he made father and I suffer finally came back to leave him in a pool of blood. His punishment was long overdue; no amount of life sentences could add up to the pain that he inflicted on us. He deserved to fall like that, covered in his own blood with a humiliating defeat that only my vengeance could bring upon him. But...somehow, it felt wrong.

I stood there for just a few more seconds to wipe the blood from my katana and then return it to it's sheath on my back. Then I heard footsteps from upstairs...

"Lianis, are you alright? I thought I heard you yell for me." Lianis' wife, Anita, I couldn't let her see me here. Looking up I tracked the sound of her movements above me, I could hear her fumbling around for a candle. Suddenly my calm from the kill shifted to a rushing fear of being caught, I had to act fast. I quickly scanned the room looking for a place to hide. Really I wanted to bolt out the back door as fast as I could but the bottom of the stairs was facing that exact door, there was no way I could make it without her seeing me. So I sprinted as quietly as I could to the small shadowy crevice underneath the stairs and prayed that she didn't want to look my way. I tracked the sound of her footsteps as she approached the top of the stairs, then watched as the light from her candle appear from overhead and cast itself over half of the room. The light didn't reveal Lianis' body yet, but I knew that I had only seconds to decide what to do next. I could have killed her and no one would ever know it was me, but she had never done me any harm, but there is no way that she would feel safe around me if she saw that it was me who did this. I made my decision by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs and waited for her to walk by.

"Lianis did you try mixing your drinks and pass out again?" She asked as she walked by my hiding place. I stood up from my shadowy corner, stepped out into the light behind her holding the grip of my sword, and quietly backed my way to the back door. As soon as she turned the corner all the way to where she disappeared from my sight, I turned around, put my hand on the doorknob and waited.

"LIANIS, BY THE NINE ARE YOU OKAY...LIANIS, GODS HELP US, LIANIS!!"

I used the sound of her blood curling screams to cover up the sound of me turning the knob, and flinging the door open. As I bolted out the door I pulled the knob so that it slammed shut behind me. I quickly scanned the outside world around me, making a full circle as I checked to make sure I was alone. Then I ran into the woods as fast as I could into the blackness of the night.

I don't know how far I ran, or for how long, but it was the fastest I ever ran for so long. I wanted to put as much distance between me and the Venin manor as I could. I ran for what seemed like hours and at a full sprint too. I vaulted over logs higher then myself, ran up hills with a vertical climb and slid down the other side. I even dived over a grizzly bear that I almost didn't see, hitting the ground, tucking into a roll and springing up so fast that I wasn't so sure if it saw me. I never did look back to see if it gave chase, what I was really running from was the feeling that someone has seen everything I did. I kept running until dawn started to break, then I found a brush think enough to hide my entire body and laid down. I listened for about half an hour trying to pick up on any hint that I was followed. Nothing. Did she see me? No she couldn't have. I made sure of that. But why does it feel like I'm being followed. I thought to myself for several minutes about what I did before I drifted off to sleep

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"Dairou, I want to talk to you." My father said to me as I was busy practicing with my bow outside our farmhouse.

"What is it Dad?" I asked him before knocking another arrow and drawing pulling the string back.

"Dairou, it's about Lianis," Right then I wished that he didn't even bother talking to me. "I know that you are not going to like this, but I didn't want to keep it from you any longer."

"What did that cheat do to us now?" I didn't bother hiding my frustration.

"Dairou, I wish that you could control your anger," Father glared at me,"But I understand why you feel the way you do."

His glare shifted to a sympathetic expression. He sat down on a stool a few feet behind me and watched me let another arrow fly.

"I think it would be best if you heard this now instead of finding out later," He went on." Lianis cheated us out of our taxes again"

"What!" I spun around to face him. "Dad, what are you thinking, we can't afford to keep paying him off like this, if he does it again were not going to have enough to eat this year, why don't you just take it to the count." I already knew the answer to that question; we had already tried that, many times in the past. Lianis would somehow come up with forged documents saying that we didn't pay, and we would be threatened with fines and jail again.

Lianis worked for the count, he was his steward. Most of all the financial work went through him; he collected the taxes and took census every year. But he also had something against us that I could never truly understand. Every chance he had he would make us pay at least twice as much as we owed in taxes every year. Father had told me that in the past Lianis had a grudge against him for things that had happened between the two of them, and that this was just Lianis' way of getting revenge.

"You know that it'll catch up to him sooner or later, he's done this to us every year and when he is found out, he will have to pay us back everything, and that would be a huge payout!" He replied to me with a little mischievous grin. Father was trying to sway me with the thought of the count figuring out Lianis' scheme in due time, he had always taught me patience and that every man's actions are returned to him in the same manner he is deserved. I used to think that meant that we could be left alone, or that we would somehow be given a huge fortune for our suffering. But right about then it seemed more like we were paying dearly for mistakes we had yet to make.

My Father and I lived on a farmhouse just on the outskirts of Kvatch. We grew vegetables for the chapel, who in turn would distribute them to the town. In return for our labors we were given enough money to live comfortably throughout the year until the next harvest. I had known this simple lifestyle alongside preparations for the life of a moth priest, or blade, either way was my choosing. I was trained by my father in the ways of the Akaviri sword and marital arts styles that were passed down from generation to generation by the monks and blades of the empire. The blades were a group of warriors who worked for the empire in total secrecy, they were a mysterious group whose actions were almost never really known to the general public. I was training to be such a warrior. My father would have been a moth priest if it weren't for my birth, as the Temple of the Moth priests weren't allowed to ever be in wedlock and were not allowed to have any children, legitimate or otherwise.

Both my parents came from Chorral, but my father had relations with a young woman during his teenage years and it led ultimately to my birth. At first Jauffre, the Matriarch of the temple at Weynon Priory was furious, but my father promised to atone for his disgrace by raising me to be in service to the empire. So truly I was an illegitimate son who was raised with a noble purpose. Some would see it as being cruel to me since I was basically paying for my father's sins, but truly to me it was an honor where in any other place I would have been sent to an orphanage or a sanitarium. I was being trained as a blade and a priest, I was being given an important place in the empire's history. So for my life as a farmer and a monk growing up I was truly grateful.

"Dad" I replied with a softening tone. "How much are we going to endure before he's caught, we've already given the better part of my lifetime to him, what if he tries to get in the way of my priesthood?"

"You know that he won't, as long as we just do things as we have been we'll be fine." He was talking about my training in secret. "You have but one more year and you'll be far away from this"

"Dad, but what about you, are you just going to stay here?" I asked him, this was my final year in training as a blade squire, next year I would be taken away to live with the blades at Cloud Ruler Temple.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about Dairou" His face went from a smile to a frown slowly as he struggled to find the words to speak again.

"What?" I asked

"Dairou," He stood up, his movements showing the first signs of old age as he did. He put a hand on my shoulder and slowly opened his mouth to speak again. "I'm dying."

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This is my first Fanfic ever, I'm still new to the very idea of fanfictions but Oblivion was an awesome canvas for me to work from, so any and all reviews would be appreciated. I did leave some details vague in this first chapter to help out with the story. What does not make sense here will come together in future chapters.

Edit about a year or two later

Alright, I've finally edited this first chapter for spelling mistakes, there, happy!? No more critques on spelling mistakes until you've read all the way up to the most recent chapter, this is a contract you sign by going to chapter two, got it? Good! Now enjoy the story for what it is, you can pick it apart later.