Chara : Penultimate

The bloody footprints had ended, but the Khajiit was still walking. The pain in his feet seemed to have gone. He didn't look to see if his feet had gone too. There was no happy ending at the end of this trail, and nothing to go back to at the other end. The only meaningful "choice" at this point was to sit down right here and freeze into a person-shaped trail marker. Chara opted not to. His lute wouldn't freeze with him.

Finding a Khajiit in bed with a Nord here should have been like finding a needle in a haystack. This particular needle seemed to always point north, and leave a red trail behind it. It wasn't hard to find Kjang responsible. He was "guilty" the moment he was born, a rap sheet waiting for the names of the accused and the dead. The dead and undead hostages weren't expected additions, though.

Chara wanted to say Elia deserved better than this, but he couldn't say much about Elia at all. She was a killer who enjoyed being drooled over, and he was the first beastfolk to stare at something other than her face. Her sister certainly didn't have undeath coming to her, but Chara had wasted the chance to do something about that long, long ago.

He wanted to blame Alberich for this. The two-faced soul-stealing monster that banished Elia, when giving her the lash would have made everyone else feel better. Then again, maybe Chara was glad that Gwyn was miserable. It certainly seemed like Gwyn was glad about that too. And no-one could really be blamed for Kjang filling a Khajiit's shoes first except for the Suthay-Raht who was outpaced by a nord.

Maybe it was a feeling of entitlement to a happy ending, after he'd sacrificed so many others for the sake of his own well-being. Maybe laying down his blade was some ritual the nearest aedra would reward with a family and a home. A family that Elia never agreed to start, and an ending that Archer never promised would come. Maybe the fact a bard said it was supposed to sway everyone; a silver-tongue speaking in a bronze language to aliens he was lucky "spoke" at all.

He wasn't sure what he was looking for anymore. Blame the dementia, blame dehydration, blame the inevitable hypothermia. If he stopped to think what he was looking for, he'd freeze to death before he found it. Not that being a year-round snowman sounded like much of a downgrade at this point.