King and Lionheart

by nuwanders

Summary:

A novelization of TESV: Skyrim featuring an ensemble cast of original characters.

When the daughter of a Redoran councillor suddenly disappears from Blacklight, her skooma-addicted brother and long-suffering cousin are flung into Skyrim to try and guarantee her safety. But in a land embroiled in political turmoil and a world-ending prophecy, their plans soon fall apart.

In the centre of it all stands a blind woman—desperately trying to escape her life in Cyrodiil, and cursed by the gods with the weight of the world.

Chapter 1: ACT I. Before the Storm

It had been too long since Raydrin’s last score; his stomach was cramping and his skin was slick with sweat. J’urabi threw his head back with a derisive laugh when he opened his door in the middle of the afternoon to find Raydrin there on the threshold, evidently looking worse for wear.

“Back so soon, serjo?” he leered, though he opened the door wider as he did so. Raydrin skulked past him, scowling. He wasn’t in the mood to talk or be talked at. “What a privilege it is to be graced so frequently by your noble presence.”

“Save it,” Raydrin snapped. He stopped in the middle of the room and inhaled deeply; the air was saccharine, laced with earthy undertones of candle smoke. “You’re cooking now?”

“Yes. You’re just in time.”

The Khajiit led Raydrin into the back room, holding the curtain up for him as he ducked beneath it. Raydrin could make out the face of Alysa in the dim lighting, along with a Bosmer he did not recognize. Alysa smirked at him, teeth glinting in the dark.

“Look at what the cat dragged in.”

Raydrin slumped into the musty cushions beside her, nuzzling her neck. She laughed. “Your payment, serjo,” J’urabi said curtly, clearing his throat and nudging Raydrin with his foot. “Before you get too comfortable.”

Agitated, Raydrin dug into his pocket and thrust a pouch of coins into J’urabi’s outstretched hand. Then he turned his attention back to the lovely woman at his side. She stroked his hair and together they watched as the Bosmer measured a scoop of crystalline powder into the metal receptacle of a pipe, suspended over a lit candle and connected to the bowl of the pipe by two blue-glass tubes. The Bosmer flicked the lid of the receptacle shut and poured water into the bowl. Raydrin’s skin crawled in anticipation. 

It was only a few seconds later that the first vapours began to curl and twist behind the murky blue of the pipes. The smell alone was intoxicating and beside him, Alysa released a slow, wobbly exhale. The Bosmer grinned; his teeth were yellow and crooked, his smile reptilian. 

“Who’s going first?”

Raydrin was too desperate to be courteous and would have accepted the offer had Alysa not beat him to it. He watched, transfixed, as she inhaled from the pipe, her eyelids fluttering closed and her lips falling open in a silent moan. “Gods, that’s good,” she murmured, weakly holding the mouthpiece out to him and falling back into the cushions. He was trembling as he took it from her grasp and held it up to his own lips, sucking in the deepest breath he felt he had ever taken in his life.

The relief was near instant. He counted to five, revelling in the hot, dry feeling of smoke in his lungs, before watching with a heavy gaze as his sigh curled away from him in loose ringlets up towards the lantern. He was vaguely aware of someone taking the mouthpiece from his hand but it slipped too easily from his grasp, his bones dense as lead and his muscles loose as liquid, his whole body too tingly and warm to do anything except sink back against the pillows. 

His hearing lost all focus. Distant voices faded into a low buzz, his blood lava-hot as it pulsed magnetically through the inner coils of his ears. Shapes and figures that were familiar to him started to bulge and contract. The low-hanging lantern above them rocked steadily to and fro. His centre of gravity couldn’t stay in one place and his head suddenly felt so heavy, until he was rolling backwards, over and over. He tried to cry out but his voice was lost to the winds.

Hands pulled at him and he lurched to a stop, panting and damp. They tugged at his clothes and clamped over his mouth and raked sharp nails down his back until he could feel blood. He leaked out of himself, like a perforated barrel, but as his flesh began to sag and sink he reared the remaining dregs of strength in his body to scrape his tongue across the palm covering his mouth. An effeminate laugh came from everywhere at once, then she was kissing him, her lips hot and wet and tasting of purple. He kissed her desperately, dependently, gasping in her life-force, clutching at her flesh, terrified that if she pulled away he would deflate into just skin and bone, trying to bury the ringing at the base of his skull in the heat of her body, the meeting of lips, the rolling of trebuchets, the clashing of swords, the whistle of arrows the squelch of metal against flesh the hoarse gasping of—

Sleep claimed him quickly, after that.

 

---

 

Blacklight, Morrowind, 3rd Last Seed 4E 201

Raydrin awoke to the violent shaking of his shoulders. Alysa’s face gradually emerged in the centre of his vision, her voice coming into sharp focus.

“… Raydrin? Raydrin, wake up. You have to wake up.”

He pulled himself upright, drawing away from her. “What’s going on?” he rasped, throat ashen and crackly. He rubbed at his eyes, glancing around the still dimly-lit room. J'urabi's den was uncharacteristically astir, swarming with the energy of an agitated kwama nest. Patrons who must have arrived after he did were hurrying back and forth, carrying crates of bottles and packing cooking equipment into boxes. Others were being roused from their sleep as he had been. 

“Guards are searching every house on the street. They’ll be here in minutes.” Alysa was looking at him with wide, red eyes. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

Raydrin’s stomach lurched. He’d be recognized instantly; he couldn’t be found in a place like this. “Shit,” he said, scrabbling to his feet. “Shit, they’ll see me leave.”

Alysa picked up his knapsack for him, thrusting it into his chest. “Not if you leave now. You'll be fine. Go. Go."

Raydrin watched through the open doorway as J’urabi passed through the next room, ushering along some dazed-looking patrons. The building was filled with panicked voices and the clinking of glass.

The stench of skooma hung thick in the air; it would be clear to anyone walking in what kind of place this was. Raydrin was reluctant to leave them. His head was still foggy and he couldn’t think ahead more than a few seconds. Alysa started tugging on his hand. “Come on,” she said, pulling. Dumbly he followed.

They were stopped at the doorway when J’urabi suddenly appeared in their path. “No,” he said, pushing them back into the room, “the guards are already at the next house. It is too late.” Raydrin staggered backwards and tripped on a cushion, falling unceremoniously to the floor. “Roll over,” J’urabi gestured to Alysa to sit down, “pretend to be asleep. Do not let them see your face.”

Raydrin turned to face the wall, pulling his knapsack close to his chest. His heart was racing, his breathing shallow. Alysa sat down next to him.

“What are they searching for?” she asked, but there was a hard knock at the door before J'urabi could answer. Raydrin couldn’t see what was happening but the building fell suddenly quiet.

“Everyone sit down!” J’urabi hissed. “No-one say a word.”

“This is the Redoran Guard, open up,” called a voice, muffled by wood. The knocking persisted as J’urabi made his way over. The building held its breath.

“What is it?” asked J’urabi innocently, opening the door. Sunlight streamed in, hitting the dirt wall just inches from Raydrin’s face.

“Missing person. We’ve got a search warrant for every house in Blacklight. Nothing to worry about if you’ve nothing to hide.”

“Of course,” said J’urabi, allowing them entry. Raydrin could hear the clinking of bonemold armour as what sounded like two guards stepped into the front room, followed by the thud of the door falling back into place. The room was once again cast into shadowy darkness.

The guards made quick work of it; J’urabi’s den was not a large building, only four rooms in total. “Clear,” they shouted in turn from the adjacent rooms, coming into Raydrin and Alysa’s room last. Every muscle in Raydrin’s body seized up when one of them approached; he watched in his periphery as the guard grasped Alysa by the chin, twisting her face from side to side before letting her go. Alysa fell back with a gasp. They paid him no mind.

“Not her,” said the guard, standing upright. “She isn’t here.”

They returned to the front room; Raydrin rolled over to watch. “Thank you for your cooperation, sera,” they said to J’urabi. The Khajiit bowed low.

“You’re most welcome,” he purred.

They left without another word, the door slamming behind them. There was a beat of silence before everyone collectively seemed to relax, beginning to talk in low murmurs.

Raydrin sat up and turned to Alysa, who was rubbing at her jaw. “Are you alright?” he asked. She glanced at him with a curt nod.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Good job they didn't see you.”

Guilt chewed at his gut. J’urabi slid past the curtain and strode over to them, his stare hard.

“J’urabi would wait a while before leaving if I were you, serjo. The Olms District is crawling with guards.”

Raydrin pursed his lips. Having had time to wake up, he wanted nothing more than to head home and wash the smell of sweat and skooma from his skin. But he knew J’urabi was right. He nodded, sinking back into the cushions with a sigh. “Alright,” he said; he could go back to sleep, at least.

“I’m going to head, I think,” said Alysa. Raydrin followed her with a sluggish gaze as she got to her feet. “I’ll see you around.”

He nodded. “See you, Alysa.”  

She left and J’urabi did the same, presumably to attend to his other patrons. There were just two other people in the room with Raydrin, two Vvardenfell sailors he hadn’t seen before. They whispered lowly to each other, occasionally throwing furtive glances his way. He ignored them, turning his back as he sank into the cushions, and allowed himself to slither into a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

---

 

Raydrin awoke for the second time that day to find himself alone. The building was silent, save for the low whistle of wind and the rattling of shutters against the windows. He sat up, rubbing his eyes as they adjusted to the dark, and took a few moments to collect himself before getting to his feet. He hadn’t eaten in what felt like days and didn’t want to overdo it.

J’urabi was sitting on a chair in the front room, his legs stretched out in front of him and a joint of what smelled like chokeweed between his fingers. He looked up as Raydrin emerged from behind the curtain.

“J’urabi trusts you slept well?” he said coolly, tapping some ash into a small clay dish at his side.

Raydrin shrugged. “Sure."

He squinted at the windows either side of the doorway, trying to get a sense of how light it was outside. It was cloudier than it had been that morning which made it difficult to tell. “What time is it?”

“Mid-afternoon,” J’urabi replied, sucking in a long drag from his joint and exhaling slowly. “It should be safe for you to leave now, serjo.”

Raydrin nodded and hoisted his knapsack onto his shoulder. “Thanks J’urabi,” he said, starting to move towards the door. J’urabi waved his hand.

“Of course, serjo. I am grateful for your custom. Take care in your travels. There’s an ash storm on its way.”

Raydrin threw a quick smile at the Khajiit and took his leave. The fresh air was a welcome relief despite the strong winds.

He glanced up at a reddening sky, taking note of the dark clouds approaching from the east. J’urabi’s den, being in the Olms District, looked out over the Sea of Ghosts and Blacklight’s famous harbour. The Great Gates of Azura stood stark and proud in the distance, diligently guarding the entrance to the bay. The docks were eerily quiet, save for the steady thudding of boats being rocked against the jetty. Raydrin pulled his jacket around himself with a shiver and started the long climb home.

As the noble house of Blacklight, the Dutheri clan lay claim to an opulent residence situated high up in the Council District, Blacklight’s outermost ring. The walk from the harbour was a half hour in total. Raydrin kept his head low as he passed through the Market District, as the typical crowds were holed up indoors and the activity of the guards was, as J’urabi had predicted, increased. He could hear orders being shouted in the distance and see patrols moving on the streets below. Whoever they were looking for was clearly someone of importance.

When he arrived home, the guards usually stationed outside were nowhere to be seen. He felt mildly uneasy as he climbed the steps up to the entrance, and tried to be quiet upon slipping inside. But the moment he had shut the doors behind him, he could sense something was wrong. His mother and aunt rushed into the vestibule, their eyes blown wide as they took in the sight of him. Jothryn’s usually tidy black hair had come loose from its updo, the salt-and-pepper curls sticking out at odd angles from her face.

“Raydrin!” she cried, running forwards and flinging her arms around him with enough force to knock him backwards. He balked, very aware that the smell of skooma would be lingering on his clothes and skin, and tried to wriggle out of her embrace. His aunt, the Lady Fedrasa, was close behind, her lips drawn tight in a look of grim resignation.

“What’s going on?”

Jothryn released him from her arms and placed her hands on his cheeks.

“Oh Raydrin, where have you been? Where is Cassathra? Tell me she’s been with you!”

His mother’s voice was desperate, her red eyes pleading as they bore into his own. His heart sank into his stomach as he started to put two and two together, and he found that, despite opening his mouth, no sound was coming out. He suddenly felt nauseous.

Jothryn wailed in response to his silence, burying her face in his shoulder. His arm instinctively came up to try and comfort her, but it was a weak gesture; his thoughts were racing and he couldn’t focus on one long enough to translate will into action.

The missing person. Cassathra. His sister. Missing.

Fedrasa approached. The bags under her eyes were stained a deep purple. “You really don’t know anything?” she said.

Raydrin limply shook his head, stammering out some attempt at an answer. “I—I... no. I haven’t seen her since yesterday. I got caught up at the library and then this morning I was swimming—”

Jothryn started sobbing harder and he trailed off, unable to come up with any further lies. His nonsensical answer seemed to go unnoticed and Fedrasa sighed, averting her gaze.

“How long has she been gone?” Raydrin asked. His voice cracked on the last syllable. “Does—does Ata know? Where’s Mathyas?”

"We've sent word to your father's residence in Cormaris," said Fedrasa, laying a careful hand on Jothryn's shoulder and glancing at her sister-in-law with a look of pity. “Assuming she isn't found, he should return within a day or so. Mathyas is overseeing the search effort. We’ve sent task forces after each of the silt striders that have set off since last night, and guards have been going through every building in the city. But we're unable to follow any of the boats until the storm dies down.”

Jothryn pulled away from Fedrasa's touch, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. “We last saw her yesterday at breakfast,” she said. “Oh Raydrin, we thought you were gone too. When you came back, I—I hoped—” she shook her head, her voice giving way to another sob as she buried her face in her hands. Raydrin stared at her uselessly.

What was he supposed to do? He knew he needed to do something—he wanted to do something. A million different scenarios of all the things that could have happened to Cassathra were flying through his head, each one worse than the last. He wanted so badly to be able to do or say something that could help her, but he was frozen where he stood. The appropriate course of action eluded him entirely.

“Forgive us, Raydrin," said Fedrasa. "We did not mean to ambush you.”

“What should I do?” he asked desperately.

“We have the entirety of Blacklight’s forces out looking for her," said Fedrasa. "Your mother needs you here. Stay and rest a while.”

A lump was rising in Raydrin’s throat. His cousin Mathyas was out there searching, and where had he been? Filling his blood and his brain with poison in the pursuit of fleeting pleasure. He could feel Fedrasa’s eyes boring into him, and his mother’s, too.

“I..."

He winced and shook his head.

"I think I need a moment, just to, um—”

The end of his sentence evaded him and he trailed off, gesturing vaguely down the hallway towards the stairs. His voice was choked and watery, making it obvious he was trying not to cry. Raydrin just needed to get out of there.

Jothryn nodded, wiping her cheeks again. “Of course, my love,” she sniffled. “Just—please join us when you can.”

He bowed meekly and pushed past them, desperate to escape their stifling company. Raydrin had never been more relieved to see his bedchamber in his entire life. He shut the door behind him and sagged against it, breathing hard.

What to do, what to do…

The stress was making his skin crawl; he felt antsy, agitated. He was craving something to ease his nerves, despite having smoked less than a day ago, but there was nothing in his room that would be strong enough. He couldn’t exactly go back to J’urabi’s.

Raydrin just needed to not think for a while. He set himself the physical task of running a bath, knowing that at the very least he needed to not be smelling of skooma when he next went down to face his family. He lit a fire and stocked a cauldron of water, allowing himself to smoke a joint of chokeweed in the time it took to heat up. It made him feel less jittery, but did little to calm his overactive mind. He couldn’t help but think back to every conversation he’d had with Cassathra over the last few weeks, desperate to find some indication that maybe she’d planned to run away and that her disappearance wasn’t because something bad had happened to her. But he couldn’t find anything. Her behaviour had been completely normal. Dark memories threatened to resurface, and the hissing of the water as it came to a boil was a welcome interruption.

He filled the tub and undressed, discarding his clothes in a pile on the floor. The water was so hot he could barely stand it against his skin. He soaped himself down and washed his hair, then sank further into the water’s depths, stopping when his nose was just above the surface. He closed his eyes and lay there, unable to fall asleep but not wanting to be awake. His thoughts alternated between outright denial and acute awareness that his sister was missing, but he couldn’t fight them. He just had to sit and let them wash over him, and hope that maybe when he poured the bathwater away, his troubles would flow away with it. That he’d emerge, having cleansed himself of his wrongs, and Cassathra would be home.

Raydrin didn’t know how long he was lying there, but when there was a knock at his door sometime later, the water had gone cold. The storm outside had picked up, the winds now howling loud enough to be heard even through the thick stone walls of his room. He jumped slightly as he was pulled out of his thoughts, splashing water onto his floor.

“Wait a minute,” he called out, staggering clumsily to his feet in search of a towel. He felt light-headed and shivery.

“It’s just me,” said a familiar voice, smooth and steady—Mathyas' voice. He sighed with relief, wrapping the towel around his hips and opening the door to greet him.

“Mathyas,” he breathed, stepping aside to let him enter. His cousin glanced down to Raydrin’s bare torso with distaste, but said nothing of it as he strode past him and took a seat on the edge of Raydrin’s mattress. “Have you found anything?”

“Actually—yes,” said Mathyas, and Raydrin’s heart caught in his throat. He didn’t want to dare let himself hope, but something about Mathyas’ delivery suggested that the news wasn’t terrible. “I’d shut the door first, though.”

Raydrin did as he was told before joining Mathyas on the side of his bed, careful to keep his towel bunched at his waist. Mathyas had clearly just got back; he was still wearing his cloak, and strands of his thick dark hair—normally so neat and tidy—hung loosely in front of his eyes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, which he held in his lap.

“The first thing we did when we realized something was wrong was to search the house. While you were out, I found this in your room.” He held the paper out to Raydrin, who took it with confusion.

“You didn’t show it to anybody?” Raydrin asked as he unfolded it, noting that the wax seal had already been broken.

“Read it,” said Mathyas, inclining his head. Raydrin did. Cassathra’s loopy scrawl was unmistakable.

Dear brother,

            This letter is for your eyes only. If you’re reading it, my plan has been successful.

I ran away because I want to study magic at the Arcane University. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to ask Alma and Ata for permission to study at Shad Astula or with the Telvanni, but when I talked about the idea with Mathyas he made it clear it would never work. I’m heading to Cyrodiil in the hope that he won’t think to follow me, because I just know if I stayed in Morrowind he'd have figured out where I'd gone.

I will feel much better knowing that someone is aware of my whereabouts, so I'm telling you my route—in TRUST (!!!)—that you won't send anyone after me. I am heading west through the Dunmeth Pass, south-west through Eastmarch along the White and Darkwater Rivers, west from the town of Ivarstead towards Helgen, and then southward through the Pale Pass towards Bruma and the Imperial City.

I’ll miss you so much, Raydrin, more than I can say. But I just couldn't stand staying in Blacklight for a moment longer. I want to carve out a real life for myself and that was never going to happen in a council hall.

I love you. I'll write to you all the time. And I promise we'll see each other again someday soon.

            Cassathra

Raydrin read it several times over. After the initial feeling of relief subsided, he felt suddenly angry.

“You read this?!” he said, turning to Mathyas accusingly. His cousin had the decency to look guilty.

“I’m sorry,” said Mathyas. “I was just desperate to know she was safe.”

Raydrin fell silent, unable to fault him for that. He turned back to the letter.

“I haven’t told anyone about it,” Mathyas continued, gesturing to it. “I’ve been searching all day under the pretence that I don’t know anything. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“What do you want me to say?” said Raydrin. “You agree we have to keep this a secret, right?”

Mathyas stood up and started pacing.

“Do we?” he asked. “Be practical, Raydrin. It’s not fair on your parents to just let them keep searching, thinking she could be dead. It would be a massive waste of resources. Not to mention they’ve already—”

“It’s not fair on Cassathra to force her to live a life she doesn’t want,” Raydrin cut him off.

Mathyas scoffed. "She's nineteen years old. She hasn't the faintest clue what sort of life she wants."

"She's not going to have a choice in the matter if she stays here, that's for fucking sure."

Mathyas stopped and turned to look at him. “Well, there’s another thing,” he said, rejoining Raydrin on the bed. He took the letter from his grasp and pointed to Cassathra’s planned route. “You see here? She’s going through Skyrim. Stormcloak territory. Do you realize how much danger she’ll be in, a young Dunmer girl travelling through there alone?”

Raydrin had been ready with another retort, but closed his mouth. In truth, the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

“I’m worried about her, Raydrin,” Mathyas went on. “She’s just a child. She's never travelled on her own before. And she seems to be under the impression that she can trek across half the fucking continent like it's—are you listening to me?"

Raydrin, who'd been watching a spider lurking in the corner of his ceiling, pressed a hand to the growing ache in his temples. "Yes," he said, teeth clenched. "What's your point?"

Mathyas sighed. "If we tell your parents, we can send people after her and make sure she’s safe.”

And bring her back, Raydrin thought. He shook his head. “No. Absolutely not."

"No? That's it? Vehk, Raydrin, we—"

"Honestly, Mathyas, given that you weren’t even supposed to have read that letter in the first place, I don’t think it’s your call to make.”

Mathyas pursed his lips. “Then what do you suggest?”

An idea was forming in Raydrin’s head. “You’re right that we should try and make sure she’s safe,” he said, pausing as he worked out where he was going with this. “I guess, maybe... we could go after her and do that ourselves.”

Mathyas stared at him. There was a beat of silence. “You’re joking.”

Raydrin shook his head, getting to his feet with a new-found excitement. “I’m not,” he said, pacing aimlessly for a moment as he worked out what to do with himself. “Could you shut your eyes? I want to get dressed.”

Mathyas sighed, but did as he was asked. He fell back onto the bed and brought a hand up to his face. “Explain."

Raydrin was putting his trousers on. “We set off tonight,” he said, shoving one foot through a leg, “catch up to her before she leaves the Dunmeth Pass, escort her through Skyrim, then turn around and come back.”

“There are so many holes in that plan I don’t even know where to start,” said Mathyas from the bed, gesticulating blindly with the hand not covering his eyes. “What about your parents? We just vanish in the night and give them even further cause to worry? What about when we get back, what do we tell them then? You think there won’t be any consequences? And then there’s this fucking storm to consider—”

“I think we can handle a little ash storm, Mathyas." Raydrin slumped down onto the bed again to indicate that he was finished getting dressed. Mathyas sat up and gave him a withering look. “My parents can cope with a month or two of stress if it means giving Cassathra a shot at a happy life. We can worry about what to tell them closer to the time. I don’t know... I suppose the only way to guarantee that they don't go after her would be to tell them she's dead…”

Mathyas stared at him in disbelief. “You'd really put them through that? Again?”

Raydrin cringed a little. “Cassathra's happiness is important to me," he said, though he was unable to meet his cousin's incredulous gaze. "She's not an idiot. She wouldn't have done something this drastic unless she was really desperate. And besides... maybe she wouldn’t have run away if you hadn’t been so dismissive.”

Mathyas flinched.

“Maybe," he said.

“Sorry. I didn't mean that."

Raydrin felt a little jealous that Cassathra had confided in Mathyas instead of him—and maybe he'd wanted to lash out. But he knew deep down that he would have done the same. Cassathra had never been subtle about her interest in magic, but if she'd gone as far as asking for permission to study it, the answer would have been a firm no and her fate would have been sealed. He couldn’t blame Mathyas for telling her the truth.  

“No,” Mathyas sighed, “you’re right. I should have known something like this would happen.”

Raydrin paused. “Maybe this could be your chance to make amends?”

Mathyas didn’t say anything for a few moments, staring at his hands.

“Come on, Mathyas,” said Raydrin. “They’ll be angry with us, but it’s not like they’ll be able to do anything about it. They won’t want to risk losing their council seats. It’ll be the best kept secret in House Redoran.”

Mathyas frowned. “How would we make sure they don’t follow us?”

“The Dunmeth Pass is probably the last place they’d think to look. Cassathra was clever, choosing to go that way.” Raydrin paused, then smiled to himself. “Actually, she probably set off when she did in the hope that the storm would delay any search parties.”

Mathyas let out an empty laugh. “And here we are planning to set off right in the middle of it.”

Raydrin’s head perked up. “So you’ll do it?”

Mathyas shifted in his seat, hesitant and uneasy. But eventually he let out a long sigh, his shoulders sagging as he capitulated.

"Fine," he said. “If it's the only way to make sure she's safe."

"It is," said Raydrin.

Mathyas cursed under his breath.

"So we leave tonight?" Raydrin pressed.

His cousin met his gaze from the corner of his eye and held it for what felt like a long while. Then he nodded, once.

"Fine," he said again. "We leave tonight."

Notes:

thank you to my absolutely incredible beta readers haley and diana for their advice, feedback, moral support, and keen eyes. couldn't do this without you guys <3

thanks for reading! and i hope you stick around for what's to come :^)

Chapter 2: Burning Bridges

It took a whole day of travelling before Raydrin and Mathyas escaped the clutches of the ash storm. The violent winds which whipped around them gradually subsided as they ventured further west, until eventually vanishing altogether when they took refuge in the protective bulwark of the Velothi Mountains. It was a relief to come out on the other side; Raydrin’s bones ached, and his skin was clammy under all of his protective gear.

The Dunmeth Pass was grey and craggy. Very little grew there—it was too cold for the plants of the east and too dry for plants of the west. They found an overhang at the base of a cliffside and collapsed beneath it, exhausted after nearly fourteen hours of travel with barely any rest. Mathyas' pace had been military, but Raydrin had long since lost the stamina of their soldier days.

They unstrapped their goggles and tugged down their masks, bending over to shake the ash from their hair. Raydrin's throat was tight with thirst. He raised his waterskin to his lips and drank deeply, heartbeat beginning to slow. Mathyas got to his feet and surveyed their surroundings.

“We’ve made good time,” he said after he caught his breath. “I’d estimate we’ll catch up to her sometime tomorrow afternoon, if we carry on at this speed.”

Raydrin nodded. It wasn’t yet late; the sun was still high in the west, shining almost directly down the Dunmeth Pass and casting long shadows over the barren landscape. The usually grey mountain sides looked almost golden in the evening light.

“Are we stopping here for the night?” Raydrin asked. It would be hours before darkness fell.

“I say we rest for half an hour and then walk until nightfall,” Mathyas said. “Eat something small while we’re here.”

Raydrin chewed on some scrib jerky, not thinking about anything in particular as he appreciated the landscape. The Dunmeth Pass would never be described as ‘pretty,’ but it was beautiful in a bleak, dramatic kind of way. At the very least it was interesting to Raydrin, who hadn't left Blacklight in a while. The snow-covered mountaintops of Skyrim could just be seen in the distance.

They soon set off again, though travelling was easier without their restrictive ash gear. The evening was almost pleasant; they walked mostly in silence, content to keep to their thoughts. When the warm tones of the golden hour gave way to the cool blues of dusk, they veered off the road and set up camp in a sheltered ravine. It was warm enough to sleep without a campfire, though the lack of vegetation would have made it difficult to light even if they’d wanted one. They worked together to put up the tent.

Raydrin was eager to go to sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been awake for so long. When Mathyas offered to take the first watch, he gladly accepted.

It was an uneventful journey; time passed slowly. They didn’t come across anyone in their travels, as the Dunmeth Pass—which had once been a prominent trade route—had fallen into disuse after the Red Year. Raydrin’s whole body was sore from the previous day; he had to keep reminding himself that they were moving quickly for good reason. They could rest for longer when they caught up to Cassathra.

“All right,” said Mathyas late into the morning, breaking the silence, “so two men are talking. The first one asks the second, ‘How is your wife?’ and the second man replies, ‘she’s in bed with laryngitis.' The first man says; ‘Oh, is that Altmer bastard back in town again?’”

Raydrin snorted. “Vehk,” he said, “is this what we're doing now? All right... a Nord, a Redguard and a Cyrod all fall in love with an Altmer. Who has the best chance?”

“The Nord," Mathyas sardonically replied. "He's resistant to the cold. You don’t have anything more original?”

“You’ve heard it before?”

“Who hasn’t?”

Raydrin huffed. “Sorry,” he said. “I hadn’t realized we were supposed to be breaking new ground here."

"Raydrin, that's one of the oldest jokes in the book—"

"Alright, yes, fine—"

"—did you genuinely just say it as if I wasn't going to have heard it before—"

"Point taken," Raydrin shoved him half-heartedly, "gods. So, it’s the War of Betony. The Bretons have been under siege for days. The island is liberated, and the Breton Lord finds a group of survivors hiding in the ruins of a castle. The roof has collapsed and the survivors are trapped. The Lord sticks his head down and shouts out—‘Are there any expectant mothers down there?’ And then a young woman replies—” he paused for effect, “‘It’s hard to say, your Lordship—we’ve only been down here for a few days.’”

Mathyas looked sceptical. “Why would he ask that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why would his first question be ‘are there any expectant mothers down there?’ The exposition makes no sense.”

Raydrin huffed. “It's about the punchline, you s'wit. You’re thinking about this too hard."

“You need to find better jokes,” Mathyas bit back. Raydrin scowled. It was several moments before either of them spoke again.

Eventually Mathyas sighed. “All right,” he said, his tone now a little less disparaging. “One more. There’s, ah... there's this big Nord named Julgen. Julgen's strolling along one day when he's attacked by a group of bandits. He fights them furiously, but they manage to get him down and beat him into semi-consciousness. When they search his pockets, they find just three Septims. 'Do you mean to tell us you fought like a mad lupe for three lousy gold pieces?’ they say. And Julgen says, ‘No, I was afraid you were after the four hundred Septims in my boot.'”

Raydrin actually laughed out loud at that. But the laugh was forced out of his lungs when something heavy thumped against his back, making him collapse forwards onto his stomach. His head was yanked up off the ground, his scalp burning where someone was pulling on his short hair. He groaned.

“I didn’t know Dark Elves had a sense of humour,” came the voice of a woman speaking in the common tongue, her accent marked by that distinct Nordic curl. She pressed the blade of something sharp and cold to the stretched skin of his throat. His breath started coming ragged.

“I wonder what was so funny,” replied a man, and in his periphery Raydrin could see him pressing Mathyas up against the cliffside wall, holding his cousin’s wrists against the small of his back. Raydrin tried to call out Mathyas’ name but his own attacker pressed the dagger in harder and he just wheezed pathetically.

“So what are you?” she demanded, shifting her weight from where she was straddling Raydrin’s back. “Morag Tong? Imperial spies? More immigrants wanting to use up our resources?”

“We’re travellers,” Mathyas spat, switching into accented Cyrodilic. “Let us go.”

The male Nord brought his knee up sharply between Mathyas’ legs, eliciting a strangled groan. “Ah, but we’re under special orders to keep our borders safe,” he said. “We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we just let you pass.”

“You Stormcloaks—” Raydrin croaked, finally recognizing their armour. “…just organised thugs.”

The woman hissed and slammed his head into the ground, putting her mouth next to his ear so he could feel her breath on his skin. “Show some respect, elf.” His vision went spotty; a sharp pain had shot through his nose and blood trickled over his upper lip. “Search him,” she ordered the other Nord, who did as he was told, keeping a dagger pressed against Mathyas’ neck as he patted him down.

“One wrong move, elf,” he threatened. Mathyas leered at him indignantly.

“We’re innocent,” he said. “This is theft.”

“Think of it as more like charity,” replied the woman as she went through Raydrin’s own belongings with her free hand. “The Stormcloaks need funding.”

“The Stormcloaks,” Raydrin croaked, “need to get their heads out of Ulfric’s arse.”

His face was slammed into the ground again. He moaned in pain. “Watch your mouth,” the woman hissed.

Mathyas was writhing in place, desperate for leverage. “I wonder what Ulfric would think about accepting charity from Dark Elves,” he said as the Nord found his coin pouch. “He may be a racist but I doubt even he would stoop as low as petty thievery.”

“We said,” barked the male Stormcloak, “to watch your fucking mouth!”

He was fast but Mathyas was faster; the second he pulled away to reach for his weapon, Mathyas swung a fist round and knocked the man to the ground, scrabbling for his dagger and holding it to his throat. The woman growled and moved to her companion’s aid, but as she got to her feet Raydrin rolled to his side and seized her ankle, pulling her backwards so that her jaw hit the earth with a dull thud.

“Ena eam molhegahn!” Mathyas shouted, and Raydrin obeyed, scrambling for the Nord's dagger. With her blade in hand he tried to fling himself on top of her, but he was too slow, and she used the momentum of his body to roll them both over so that she was straddling him again. She punched him repeatedly in the face until satisfied that he was too stunned to move, then barrelled over to Mathyas and knocked him off her companion with a cry. Raydrin watched feebly as they writhed on the floor in a tangle of limbs and curses and spits, desperately trying to summon his remaining strength so that he could come to Mathyas’ aid. He didn’t notice when the other Stormcloak dragged himself over and hit the lights out in Raydrin’s head.

 

---

 

When he woke a few minutes later, the Dunmeth Pass was completely silent. Raydrin sat up and groaned, the blood rushing from his head and leaving him dizzy. His nose was throbbing; he hesitantly raised a hand and prodded at it, causing a searing pain and a sort of crunching sensation. Broken, then.

He looked around, blinking as his surroundings came into focus. Mathyas was lying a few feet away from him. Their packs and gear were nowhere to be seen. Raydrin dragged himself over, not yet confident in his ability to get to his feet without falling over again.

“Mathyas?” he called out, his voice weak and trembling. “Mathyas?”

There was no response. His cousin was lying awkwardly on his side, his head turned towards the ground and his limbs sprawled out in front of him. Raydrin held his hand in front of Mathyas’ mouth and fould with relief that he was still breathing. He was confused and disoriented, but at least had the wherewithal to gently pat down Mathyas’ body, checking for broken bones or open wounds. It seemed that—other than a gash on Mathyas’ temple—he was uninjured.

Mathyas came to shortly after, returning to consciousness with a long moan. Raydrin helped him sit up, taking care to support his head. “Raydrin?” he said, his voice sort of slurred. “How long have we been out?”

“I think just a few minutes,” Raydrin replied. “Are you all right?”

Mathyas didn’t respond straight away, looking around dazedly. “They took our things?” he eventually asked. Raydrin nodded. Mathyas blinked. “We should go after them,” he mumbled. “They won’t have gone far.”

“I think we need to rest, Mathyas,” Raydrin gently replied. “You might be concussed.”

Out of nowhere, he was overwhelmed with a sudden feeling of dread. “Shit,” he said, getting to his feet. He paced to and fro, looking behind boulders and under rocks in the vain hope that the brigands hadn’t taken everything. A litany of curses spilled from his lips, his movements growing increasingly frenzied in his desperation. Mathyas watched in confusion.

“What is it?” he asked.

Raydrin felt sick. He couldn’t tell his cousin that they had taken his entire liquid skooma supply, and that he had a day or two at most before withdrawal started to rear its ugly head and from then a mere couple of weeks before he was reduced to a sick, violent mess.

“I—” he started, the panic rendering him incapable of finishing the sentence with anything plausible. “I—it’s nothing,” he finished lamely. “I was just checking to make sure they hadn’t left anything.”

Mathyas nodded, seemingly satisfied with Raydrin’s answer. But Raydrin’s heart was racing. This was a problem he’d have to deal with sooner rather than later, and he wouldn’t be able to lie to Mathyas for long.

Though it was still only midday, Raydrin was realizing that his cousin wouldn’t be fit to carry on travelling until at least the next morning. Their task had become a whole lot more difficult; they now had no money, no shelter, no weapons, no map, no rations and no water. If they didn’t catch up to Cassathra soon, they’d be in more danger than she ever would have been. And the thought that their attackers may have crossed her path already made Raydrin feel nauseous.

He was breathing hard as the panic started setting in. One task at a time.

“Come on,” he said, moving to help his cousin get to his feet. “Let’s get off the road. Then you can rest and I’ll go look for some water.”

Mathyas obediently followed, leaning on Raydrin for support. They had to climb the mountainside a little way in order to ensure they wouldn’t be seen from the road, but they found a spot where the ground levelled out and where some jutting rocks provided shelter. Raydrin leaned Mathyas against them, but his hands were shaking as he did so.

“Try and stay awake if you can,” he said. Mathyas nodded.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of funny,” Mathyas started, still catching his breath, “that we came here to protect Cassathra from Stormcloaks? Only to get attacked by Stormcloaks?”

It might have been funny if Raydrin wasn’t acutely aware of just how much worse things were about to get. He frowned. “You have an odd definition of ‘funny.’”

Mathyas was smiling, but the smile quickly faded. “Yes,” he said, “you’re right. It’s not funny.”

Satisfied that Mathyas was safe for now, Raydrin took a quick mental note of the nearby landmarks, then set off back down to the valley in search of water. But his hands wouldn’t stop trembling, and his stomach wouldn’t settle, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that these symptoms were down to more than just his recent head injury.

 

---

 

The Imperial City, Cyrodiil, 7th Last Seed

Jórunn sat perched upon the edge of her mattress as her last client got himself dressed, picking anxiously at a loose thread in the bed sheet.

“That was great,” muttered Gurak in that soft voice of his; “ah—one of our best sessions yet.”

Her response fell on just the wrong side of too late. “I’m glad,” Jórunn said, wringing out a smile. An odd feeling had settled in her gut, an unpleasant concoction of excitement and anxiety and anticipation. It was hard to sit still.

“I’ll, ah— I'll book another meeting on my way out,” Gurak carried on.

“I'll look forward to it,” she said.

Floorboards creaked as Gurak shifted his large frame towards the door, having evidently finished dressing himself.

“Thanks again,” he said. “One last kiss before I go?”

Jórunn nodded.

“Of course."

Tightening her robe about her middle, she rose to her feet and traced the usual route from her bed to the doorway, hands extended out before her. Gurak's broad, calloused palms—toughened from hoisting sails—emerged to take them, then she was swallowed into his embrace and his tusk-bracketed lips.

Kissing wasn’t something she had to think about anymore; the act had become second-nature to her years ago. Jórunn was hoping that the ordeal would be over quickly, but the Orc clearly had other ideas. She felt his tongue prod at the seam of her lips and reluctantly allowed him entry. Given what they had been doing only twenty minutes prior, it seemed ironic that she would find this so uncomfortable; but the Jórunn of twenty minutes ago had been in a different state of mind. Now the kiss was just tedious. Gurak slid that rough palm down her back and molded it to the curve of her rear, which Jórunn took as an opportunity to end the kiss and push gently on his chest.

“Well,” she said, “you best be off now. Safe travels.”

Gurak cleared his throat, stepping back. “Of course,” he muttered. “Er, thank you.”

The door latched shut behind him; Jórunn pressed herself against it and listened to the receding thud of his footsteps. When they faded out of earshot, she sagged against the wood and released the thin, warbling breath she had been holding in for so long. This is it.

The bells of the Temple District rang out in the distance; Jórunn counted to ten. She had maybe fifteen minutes before her next ‘client’ would arrive, but those fifteen minutes could not be over soon enough. She had already packed all of her things—not that she had much to pack—and all she had to do before the client’s arrival was get changed. She did so quickly, discarding her robe, wiping the sweat and the stink of sex from her skin with a wet flannel, and pulling on a loose blouse and some leather breeches. She had only a thin summer cloak, but she figured it would be enough until she reached Skyrim. Her hair she tied back into a plait. Once finished, she pulled out her knapsack from where she had hidden it under the bed, sat on the mattress, and began counting each second that crawled agonizingly by.

Latent doubts began tugging at her mind; what if something had happened to Heloise on her way? What if she had changed her mind and wasn’t coming anymore? What if the whole thing was just some big ploy and she was going to turn her to the Madam? They were silly, irrational fears, Jórunn knew, but real enough to make her stomach churn.

After what felt like an era, there came a knock at her door. “Your next client is here, Jórunn,” announced Caeso.

Jórunn released the breath she didn’t realize she'd been holding. She cleared her throat. “Come in."

The door creaked open, followed by the light footsteps of Heloise and the sound of the door falling shut behind her. When Caeso had left, Heloise spoke.

“Are you ready?” she asked. Her kind voice and melodic Breton accent were music to Jórunn’s ears.

She exhaled. "Yes. Nervous, but—ready."

Heloise laughed. “Haven't changed your mind?”

She said it casually, but Jórunn knew of the hope tucked away behind those words. She smiled thinly and got to her feet; “Not yet.”

“Let me help with your pack—” said Heloise, before something touched her arm without warning and Jórunn flinched.

“It's only light,” she said, pulling away. It wasn't a lie; her pack contained only a single change of underclothes, the small amount of savings she’d accumulated in secret over the years, a waterskin flask, her cane, and some scraps of food she’d managed to steal from the brothel kitchens. But Heloise didn't deserve to be subjected to her sharp tongue, so she amended herself with an awkward cough; “Thank you, though. You may offer me your arm.”

She held out her left hand. Heloise slotted into place a moment later; “Of course.”

The Breton was a good few inches shorter than Jórunn, which made following her lead somewhat awkward, but Jórunn located the space above her elbow and found her fingers curling around fine velvet.

"I know my way around," she said. "But you'll need to guide me once we reach the basement."

Heloise cleared her throat. "Lead the way."

They headed to Jórunn's door; Heloise opened it just a crack. For a few moments they were still, listening to the dull noises emanating from the other rooms; beds creaking; low, guttural moans. Then Heloise stretched upwards and whispered, close to Jórunn's ear: “It’s clear. Quickly now.”

They hurried through the long corridors of the old townhouse and down various flights of stairs until they reached the ground floor. The kitchens were down here, along with storage rooms, offices, and break rooms. Most importantly, there was the entrance to the basement.

Voices floated out from the kitchen, which Jórunn recognized as belonging to Celine and Marina, two of her fellow workers. They were speaking too quietly for Jórunn to hear what they were saying, and the kitchen was otherwise silent; it was late in the evening, and most people had already eaten. Briefly her heart panged at the thought that she would never see them again, but the feeling was quickly swept aside. They would not be missed; no amount of sentiment would be worth clinging onto her memories of this place.

Heloise pulled her forwards, indicating that the coast was clear. They moved slowly now, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. Heloise whispered an instruction to keep close to the wall, which Jórunn followed. Presumably it was darker there.

“The cellar is down here, yes?” Heloise asked quietly. Jórunn nodded.

“Down to the left,” she said. Her heart was racing in her chest. She reached into the pocket of her cloak and produced the key she'd stolen earlier that day from the Madam’s office. Heloise took the key from her hand and Jórunn let go of her arm, allowing Heloise to unlock and open the trapdoor to the basement.

“It’s a ladder,” Heloise whispered, “give me a moment.”

Jórunn could hear the creaking of wood and the ruffling of Heloise’s clothing. Eventually she spoke again. “Alright,” she said, “take a step forward.”

Jórunn did as she was told. Heloise instructed her to sit down and guided her so that she was sitting on the edge of the trapdoor, two rungs of a ladder pressing into the flesh of her calves. From there she was able to twist her body around and climb down herself.

The basement was musty and smelled of stale wine. Jórunn stood in place as Heloise locked the trapdoor behind them, before she was once again at Jórunn’s side and Jórunn was able to take her arm.

“Nearly there, now,” said Heloise. “This way.”

She led Jórunn across the basement, taking care to navigate them safely through the assortment of storage containers that littered the floor. At the other end of the basement was another ladder, which opened up onto the streets of the Imperial City. From there, it would be a simple matter of making it to the city stables in time to catch the cart to Bruma.

Heloise went first, unlocking the trapdoor above and ensuring that the street—a back alley—was deserted. It was a warm summer evening, and Jórunn inhaled deeply, relishing the feeling of fresh air on her face despite the overpowering stench of the Imperial City. She could hear revellers in the distance, spilling out from the many taverns onto the streets, their laughter and song carrying on the breeze.

“It’s safe,” said Heloise, the reduced volume of her voice indicating that she was already outside. Jórunn took a moment to collect herself before climbing the ladder. Heloise held out her hands and helped to pull her up when she made it to the last few rungs, steadying her on her feet once she reached the ground above. It was odd, but Jórunn felt something like a lump in her throat as Heloise locked the door behind them. She wasn’t in Skyrim yet, but she was out of the brothel house. It felt like her whole life was stretching out ahead of her.

“Are you all right?” asked Heloise.

Jórunn nodded, smiling past the sting in her eyes. “I'm fine,” she said. “Just—it's a lot.”

Heloise placed a hand on her shoulder. “We can take a moment, if you'd like. The cart doesn’t leave until midnight.”

“I’m fine," Jórunn said again. "I'll feel better once I'm on it.”

“As you wish,” said Heloise. Jórunn took her arm again and they set off over the cobblestones.

Jórunn had walked these streets her whole life, but they felt foreign tonight. She was no longer in the company of the other girls from the brothel; she no longer had a strict curfew to meet, was no longer expected to preen and pout. She couldn’t say that she would miss the Imperial City, but she could at least say that—for the first time ever—the streets felt like hers.

The walk to the stables was long. It was much quieter this far from the city centre, but the air was more pleasant; gone was the stench of marketplace fish stalls, of blood from the Arena, of sweat and oil and the reek of latrines. Instead the air smelled of seasalt and woodsmoke; Jórunn could feel the heat of a brazier against her cheek.

“Wait here,” said Heloise. “I’m going to find your cart.”

Jórunn nodded as Heloise drew away. At first the thought of standing there alone and exposed sent a jolt of panic down her spine, but she reminded herself that she was in sight of the guards, and that the city stables were always relatively busy even this late in the day. She lingered by the braziers, warming herself now that the evening had grown cooler. Heloise returned a few minutes later.

“This way,” she said. Jórunn took her arm for what would be the last time and followed Heloise as she led them through a throng of vehicles, some arriving, some being loaded for departure, the smell of hay and horsehair rich in her nostrils. Eventually they reached the cart to Bruma. It left the Imperial City every other week, Turdas, at midnight. Jórunn had had the schedule memorised for what must have been months now—but actually being here, ready to board, felt dreamlike and imperfect. She had imagined this moment so many times that the reality of it slipped from her grasp.

Heloise led her to the coach driver, perched at the front of the cart. One of the horses snorted and knickered. Jórunn cleared her throat.

“Have you space for a passenger to Bruma?"

The driver grunted in the affirmative. "Plenty of room in the back. That’ll be fifty gold, or seventy-five for a return.”

Jórunn reached into her pack and found her coin pouch, sweeping her thumb over the insiginias to count out five 10-Septim pieces. She had enough money to take her to at least Whiterun and for around a month’s worth of inn accommodation. The driver, presumably having clocked her as blind, accepted the payment and hopped down from his perch to lead her to the back of the cart. Several other passengers had already boarded; a mother hummed a lullaby to her young, sleepy child, whilst two men muttered lowly in a broad Blackwood drawl. Before taking her seat, Jórunn turned to bid farewell to Heloise.

“Thank you, Heloise," she murmured, the inadequacy of those words tasting bitter on her tongue. “If you ever find yourself in Skyrim, I promise to repay you.”

In truth, she hoped never to see Heloise again. She owed the older woman a debt, but ultimately Heloise was just another wealthy client in an unhappy marriage who had developed a soft spot for Jórunn over the course of their meetings. She was a decent woman, but very much part of a life Jórunn wanted to leave behind in Cyrodiil.

Heloise laughed. “There’s no need to thank me, Jórunn. I will forever cherish the months I spent with you. You deserve a better life.” Two hands took her by the arms, so gently, even now. Jórunn followed the other woman's lead to pull her into an embrace. It was chaste, lacking the heat and desperation normally so present in Heloise's touch— but she was not paying for this intimacy. Jórunn pulled away at last and allowed Heloise to help her into the back of the cart, a hand lingering against the small of her back.

“I hope you find the home you’re looking for in Skyrim,” Heloise said. Jórunn smiled.

“Thank you. Goodbye, Heloise.”

“Goodbye, Jórunn.”

The Breton walked away, leaving Jórunn alone with her thoughts. The coach driver came by to warn them of their imminent departure. She shifted in her seat, trying to make herself comfortable. Her eyes were heavy, but her excitement, if nothing, promised to stave off any prospects of sleep. 

Notes:

credit to reddit user gotis1313 for the joke about nords being frost resistant. the rest were taken from the book ‘jokes’ which appeared in daggerfall, bc i’m not creative or funny enough to come up with my own 😔

big thanks to my beta readers again. comments and kudos are much appreciated :)

Chapter 3: Unbound (Part I)

Eastmarch, Skyrim, 8th Last Seed

It had been three days since the ambush; Raydrin and Mathyas still had not caught up with Cassathra. They were slowed leaving the Dunmeth Pass by their injuries and their growing hunger. The vegetation of Skyrim was—at least this far north—tough and sparse, and hunting without weapons was impossible. Mathyas, whose concussion had thankfully subsided on its own after the first day or so, resorted to stealing crops from the few farms they passed on the road.

Raydrin’s withdrawal symptoms were starting to make themselves known. It started as it usually did; a slight nausea in the pit of his stomach, watering eyes, increased perspiration. The sweat he blamed on the unrelenting summer sun and the rapid pace of their travels, and the little food they were eating meant he was able to keep his nausea somewhat at bay. But he knew he didn’t have long before his discomfort became debilitating, and before his mental facilities eroded to the point where simple reasoning would be impossible. And Cassathra was still nowhere to be found.

Dusk was falling. The road they followed ran adjacent to the White River, which at least made navigation a much easier exercise. They had been planning to walk until nightfall to catch up on lost time, but before darkness came they found themselves approaching a small settlement built up around a watermill.

They slowed to a stop as the village came into view. Raydrin knew it was important that they caught up to Cassathra, but his whole body was aching for sleep in a proper bed; his lack of energy wasn’t making withdrawal any easier.

He turned to Mathyas. His teeth were chattering; evidently the shivers had arrived. “Can we see if they have an inn?” he asked, rubbing up and down his arms. “And leave early in the morning?”

Mathyas pursed his lips, but Raydrin could see that he was tempted. “Let’s have a look,” he said eventually, breaking out into a walk. Raydrin breathed a sigh of relief and fell into step alongside him.

The village was small and quiet; most buildings were situated on a single road. The inn—a squat, wooden building with a thatched roof and a creaky old sign—was easy to locate as the heart of the village. A few Nords were lingering around the entrance, drinking ale and smoking tobacco from rough-hewn pipes. They cast uneasy glances at Mathyas and Raydrin as they approached, lowering their voices, but Mathyas gave them a short smile and inclined his head as they passed. The Nords nodded back. “Evening,” one of them muttered in Cyrodilic. Raydrin did his best to smile politely but managed only to grimace.

The inn was packed and overly warm. It was a Fredas evening and it seemed the entire village had turned out to enjoy it. The smell of ale, woodsmoke and sweaty Nords washed over Raydrin as soon as they entered, making his stomach turn. Laughter and drunken conversation filled the air, loud enough that Mathyas had to raise his voice to be heard over the din.

“Wait here,” he said loudly in Raydrin's ear, “I’ll go to the bar and see if they have any jobs we can do in return for a room.”

Raydrin nodded feebly, trying his best not to be sick. Mathyas disappeared into the throng of patrons. It was so busy in the inn that moving around was difficult, and Raydrin pressed himself against the wall to stay out of the way of Nords walking back and forth with tankards of ale. A few cast suspicious stares his way, but mostly they paid him no mind, and Raydrin was trying so hard not to vomit that he barely noticed anyway. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall for support, doing his best to steady his breathing.

The cacophony faded into a distant buzz. Breathe in, breathe out. The thought required nearly all of his focus. But suddenly, in his hearing, a particular voice pierced through the white noise; it was light and effeminate, a voice which to Raydrin stood out above all the others. It pulled him back into reality, and he frowned, straining his ears to focus in on it. When the owner of the voice let out a hearty laugh, his suspicions were confirmed and he froze with a sudden jolt of both shock and relief—it was Cassathra.

He pushed his way through the crowd, ignoring the cries of protest from burly Nords whose drinks he spilled as he passed. When he emerged from the horde, there she was, sure as the sun was bright, perched on a stool by a table in the corner and chatting enthusiastically to a Nord man with chestnut hair. Her red eyes were shining, but the contrasting tones of her ashen grey skin and her curly, snow-white hair made her stick out like a sore thumb in the sea of muted browns.

“Cassathra!” Raydrin called out without thinking.

Her head whipped round in surprise, her mouth hanging limply open. There was a beat of silence in which she simply stared at him in shock, unable to formulate a response. “Raydrin?” she said eventually, getting to her feet. “I— what are you doing here?”

She rushed towards him, looking him frantically up and down from her much shorter vantage point. He was too breathless to speak, and probably looked a mess; unshaven, his face bruised and cut up, his skin glistening under a sheen of sweat. “Gods, what happened to you? You look terrible.”

She pulled him into a hug, tight but short, before taking him by the hand and leading him over to the table she'd claimed as her own. Her Nord companion was staring at them both with a look of concern. “Sit down,” she said, “you look like you’re about to pass out.”

Raydrin felt like it. He lowered himself gratefully into the chair beside the Nord, mumbling a thank you as he steadied himself. His head was reeling.

Cassathra pulled up the chair next to him. “What’s going on?” she asked, her voice laced with an edge of alarm. “Did you follow me? You aren’t here to take me back, are you?”

He shook his head. “No, I— of course not." He was trying and failing to hold her gaze. “I— I came here with Mathyas. We wanted to escort you to Cyrodiil, we were worried, and- and we wanted to make sure you were safe—”

“Safe?” Cassathra cut him off. “Safe from what?”

Before Raydrin could answer, Mathyas’ voice rang out from within the crowd. “Raydrin?” he was calling. “For gods’ sakes, Raydrin, where did you go? I—” he stopped when he emerged from the sea of people, his wide eyes fixed on Cassathra. He was holding a pint of ale in each hand.

“Cassathra,” he said, for once in his life at a loss for words. Cassathra smiled at him sheepishly. When he collected himself enough to move, he stepped forward and laid his tankards atop the table, just in time to catch her in an embrace as she surged from her chair to greet him. “Vehk, Cass," he said, voiced muffled into her hair. "You have no idea how relieved we are to see you.”

Raydrin was staring at the beer-rings in the surface of the table in some vain attempt to stop his head from spinning. Extracting herself from Mathyas' arms, Cassathra dragged over a nearby chair—with much fuss and overlapping chatter—and the two of them managed to take their seats at the table, Cassathra on Raydrin’s right and Mathyas directly opposite him.

“All right, Mathyas, please be honest with me,” Cassathra implored him, grasping his forearm where it lay atop the table; his other was busy raising his tankard to his lips. “You aren't here to take me back, are you? Because I swear, if the two of you are—”

"We aren't here to take you back," Mathyas cut her off, lowering his tankard and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. It was unusually crude behaviour for him, but Raydrin supposed he was too tired and thirsty to care. “We were worried about you travelling through eastern Skyrim by yourself. There’s, ah... hostility towards Dunmer round these parts. And you were travelling on your own.”

“Oh,” said Cassathra, deflating slightly. And then, switching to Cyrodilic, she gestured to the Nord man sitting on Raydrin’s left, who until this point had remained noticeably silent. “This is my friend Darik. He’s currently on his way to Windhelm to enlist with the Stormcloaks.”

Mathyas choked on his ale. With characteristic grace, he passed it off as a cough, holding his breath for a moment to collect himself before landing a single thump to his sternum. Raydrin caught his gaze across the table, hoping that his cousin might be able to telepathically communicate their next steps, but unfortunately Mathyas just stared at him blankly before averting his gaze.

Darik coughed awkwardly. “It’s nice to meet you both,” he said, oblivious to the contents of their previous discussion, though he gave a genuine smile. He was a young man—though Raydrin always had difficulty guessing the age of humans—with a clean-shaven, squarish face, jaw-length brown hair tied back into a loose ponytail, and blue eyes the colour of glacial melt. They were difficult to look into directly. “How do you all know each other?”

Raydrin was grateful to Mathyas for engaging with the small talk. “We're family," he said carefully.

Cassathra’s demeanour had been unusually prickly until this point in the conversation, but she seemed to have relaxed since realizing that she wasn’t in any danger of being dragged back to Blacklight. “Darik’s a healer,” she said excitedly. “Look at this, he taught me a bit of restoration magic!”

She leaned forward, and Darik indulged her, doing the same. A dagger had been lying on the table and Darik picked it up, using it to lightly slice the skin on the back of his hand; it was a shallow cut, just enough to draw blood but no deeper. It was clear that they had done this several times before.

Cassathra took his wrist in one hand and held the other just above the wound. She furrowed her brows in concentration and spread her fingers wide, the tension in her arm causing her hand to tremble slightly. Raydrin watched in dazed amazement as a golden glow started to emanate from her palm. It flickered and sputtered for a moment as if she was finding it difficult to maintain, but then sparks of light danced along the cut in Darik’s hand, and the thin red line faded until nothing remained. The spell dissipated and Darik held up his hand to show off her work. They grinned at each other.

“Nicely done!" he said. "That was much faster than last time." Cassathra beamed.

“Back in Blacklight, I only ever practiced with some minor destruction spells, so I’m really happy with my progress on this," she explained, looking expectantly at both Raydrin and Mathyas in turn.

“That’s impressive, Cassathra,” said Mathyas, giving her a closed-mouth smile. Untroubled by his somewhat lacklustre reaction, Cassathra suddenly turned to face her brother.

“Raydrin, your nose looks kind of like it’s broken." She took his jaw in her hand and twisted his face from side to side to have a better look. He grunted at the wave of nausea that elicited. “I could have a go at healing it.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Darik cut her off, leaning over to gently remove her hand from Raydrin’s face, “let’s maybe build up to that. Broken skin is one thing, bone is another.” Cassathra’s eyes widened and she nodded, sinking fearfully back in her chair. Raydrin was just trying to regain control of his senses when Darik lightly touched his arm, causing Raydrin to spin around to face him like he’d been burned. “I could take a look at it,” Darik said softly. “May I?”

Raydrin blinked at him for a moment as he processed the Nord’s question, before dumbly nodding his assent. Darik placed both hands on Raydrin’s face, his fingers gently pressing against his nose. Raydrin winced slightly. “It’s definitely broken,” Darik murmured, more to himself than to the others. Raydrin couldn’t focus his eyes on what Darik was doing without going dizzy, but he felt a sudden warmth on his skin, much more pleasant than his growing fever. An odd tingling sensation began in the bridge of his nose.

“I thought Nords these days were suspicious of magic,” said Mathyas as Darik worked.

“They are,” Darik confirmed, not taking his eyes off Raydrin. “The Stormcloaks even more so. But we aren’t foolish enough not to take advantage of its uses. A sword or an axe in the right hands can be just as dangerous as a destruction spell, but no war can be won without healing magic.”

The warmth in Raydrin’s cheeks faded and Darik lowered his hands from Raydrin’s nose. But he kept his face close to Raydrin’s so that he could check over his work. “There,” he said, seemingly satisfied, “all better.” Then he frowned, pressing the back of his hand against Raydrin’s sweaty forehead. “Hey, you’re burning up. Are you feeling alright?”

Raydrin flinched away from him. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Dunmer just have hot skin.”

Darik retracted his hand and leaned back into his seat, though he didn’t seem entirely happy with Raydrin’s answer. Raydrin was unable to hold his scrutinizing gaze and averted his eyes, fixing them once again on the table.

“What actually happened to you?” asked Cassathra. “You look as if you've been attacked.”

Raydrin and Mathyas looked at each other for a moment. Mathyas inclined his head ever so slightly towards Cassathra, as if indicating that Raydrin ought to speak, but Raydrin just shrugged aggressively. Mathyas sighed. When he spoke, he had switched back to Dunmeris.

“We were ambushed by Stormcloaks on the Dunmeth Pass,” he admitted. “Or brigands, more like. Said they were patrolling the border, but they knocked us unconscious and stole everything we had. Our money, our food—all of it.”

Cassathra's eyes widened. “Were there two of them?” she asked, also in Dunmeris. “A man and a woman?”

Mathyas frowned. “There were,” he confirmed, "why?"

"I think I saw them on my second day," Cassathra said quietly. "They were approaching from Skyrim. I... I just hid behind some rocks until they’d passed.”

Mathyas stared at her. If Raydrin wasn’t in such a pitiful situation himself, he might have laughed at the expression on his cousin’s face. “Well, then,” said Mathyas eventually. What else was there to say?

“Anyway, it’s rude to speak in Dunmeris with Darik here,” said Cassathra. She switched back into Cyrodilic. “Darik, Mathyas was just saying that they were attacked on the Dunmeth Pass by the two Stormcloak soldiers that I passed.”

Mathyas pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Gods, really?” Darik asked. He rubbed his jaw, shaking his head. “I’m sorry that happened to you. It shouldn’t have—they wouldn’t have been acting on orders. I’ll see if I can report them to some of the higher-ups when I get to Windhelm.”

“Darik is joining the Stormcloaks because he wants Skyrim to have its independence from the Empire,” Cassathra continued. “I think that’s a very noble goal.”

“Of course,” said Mathyas, just flustered enough for Raydrin to notice, "of course it is."

“I know not every Nord who joins the Stormcloaks has good reasons for doing so,” Darik went on awkwardly, “but it is a cause I believe in. Skyrim has been an occupied territory for too long—we’ve been living under other people’s laws, fighting other people’s battles… We should be able to govern ourselves and worship our own gods.” He glanced nervously between Mathyas and Raydrin. “I figure that’s something Skyrim and Morrowind ought to have in common, right?”

House Redoran's interests in the Skyrim civil war were limited to questions of trade and of border security. Raydrin was aware of the hatred borne against his people by many in the Stormcloak movement, and thus saw little reason to entertain their ideology further. But for all that, he could not fault Darik’s reasoning; disdain for the Empire was a feeling he knew well.

Mathyas was nodding. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think it is.”

There was a momentary pause in the conversation. “So what happens now?” asked Cassathra, changing the subject. “Do you need money to head back to Blacklight?”

Mathyas was silent. "Actually," he said, "we were thinking we’d carry on with you until the border... as per our original plan.”

Cassathra raised an eyebrow, amused. “To protect me from all the Stormcloaks?” she chided. A snort escaped from Darik. Mathyas opened his mouth to protest, but she flapped a hand at him before he could speak. “I’m joking, I’m joking. Of course that’s fine. I’m not going to say no to company.”

Raydrin swallowed, feeling increasingly like he was about to faint. He grasped Cassathra’s arm where it lay on the table. “Harig ohn ot drushuhn iru?” he asked quietly. “I think I need to lie down.”

Cassathra's smile faded, and she looked at him properly for what felt like the first time since they'd sat down. “Nei, of course,” she eventually muttered, her pale brows furrowed in concern. Raydrin got unsteadily to his feet, feeling Darik’s eyes boring into him as he did so. Cassathra rested her hand on his arm.

“I’ll be back,” she said in Cyrodilic, standing up. “Mathyas, we should probably get another room—you can have the bed, if you'd like. I imagine you’ve both had a rough few nights.”

"Are you all right, Raydrin?" asked Mathyas.

Raydrin nodded, trying not to lean too obviously into Cassathra. "'M fine," he mumbled. "Just feeling a bit light-headed."

Mathyas frowned, but let them go. He watched as his cousins set off towards the stairs and waited until they'd disappeared from view before turning dumbly back to his companion.

“I’d keep an eye on him, if I were you,” Darik said, tilting his head in their direction. “If he doesn’t start feeling better in the next couple of days, he needs to see a healer.”

Mathyas pursed his lips. “Should we be worried?”

Darik shook his head. “It’s probably just that he hasn’t been eating well,” he said. “He should hopefully get his strength back after a few proper meals. But if he doesn’t—then you should be worried.”

 

---

 

Raydrin did not get better. In the few days it took for them to reach Ivarstead after saying their goodbyes to Darik, his condition deteriorated rapidly. His appetite faded altogether and he was attacked by bouts of extreme nausea, throwing up what little stomach contents he had and then dry heaving for the remainder of each episode. His fever grew, and with it, his delirium. He would cry out at night, tormented by images that Mathyas and Cassathra could not see. Eventully he ceased responding to communication altogether, his dilated pupils always fixed on something beyond Mathyas and Cassathra’s faces, as if he wasn’t registering them in his field of vision at all.

The cause of Raydrin’s ailment eluded Mathyas entirely. His symptoms had endured for too long and were too serious to have been caused by something he’d eaten, as Mathyas had initially suspected, and Mathyas could think of no contagious disease which would have produced such an effect.

They’d hoped to seek treatment in Ivarstead, but the village had just one apothecarist who was out collecting supplies in the field, and his apprentice, ironically, had been Darik, who had just left. They were told to press on to Helgen for aid, and a travelling merchant heading to Cyrodiil was kind enough to give them passage on his wagon. They arrived three days later, on the fifteenth of Last Seed.

Helgen’s only healer was with the Imperial Legion. The Legion had a strong military presence in the town thanks to its fortified keep, where Mathyas and Cassathra were directed by one of the locals upon arrival. They thanked the merchant for the ride and headed straight over to the keep, with Raydrin’s slumped body between them and his arms draped around their shoulders.

The healer took one look at Raydrin when they arrived in the keep’s infirmary and agreed without question to take him in. Mathyas and Cassathra were staggering under his weight at this point, and the healer helped them to hoist Raydrin’s body onto one of the beds. There was only one other patient in the infirmary, an Imperial soldier with what looked like a leg injury, who was watching them from her bed with curiosity. Raydrin was barely conscious and mumbling something feverishly under his breath.

“How long ago did his symptoms start?” the healer asked, holding Raydrin’s eyelids open with her fingers so that she could look at his eyes in turn.

“About a week ago,” Mathyas explained breathlessly. “He had a fever and kept saying he felt faint. A few days later he started vomiting, hallucinating, rambling to himself…” He cast a worried glance down at the body of his cousin, whose tan-grey skin had a yellowish tinge to it and was slick with sweat, almost glistening in the candlelight. Raydrin moaned, thrashing his head back and forth on the pillow. “He’s eaten hardly anything since then,” Mathyas continued, “and he doesn’t respond to anything that we say or do.”

The healer placed her fingers on Raydrin’s neck, checking his pulse.

“I’m going to give him some canis root,” she said, “to slow his heart rate down. That should reduce his fever. But the main thing he needs is water. He’ll be massively dehydrated.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Cassathra asked anxiously.

The healer looked the pair of them up and down. “Go to the inn, get some food, and rest,” she said, before turning back to her patient and starting to unbutton his vest. “He’ll be in good hands. I’ll send word if anything changes.”

Mathyas and Cassathra shared a glance, but neither of them protested. Both were beyond exhausted, having taken very little rest on their journey in the effort to get Raydrin to a healer as quickly as possible. Cassathra took Raydrin’s sweaty hand in her own and gave it a quick squeeze, holding it to her lips. The healer was rifling through shelves of alchemical supplies and they felt at least secure in the knowledge that Raydrin was being looked after. Casting one last glance his way, the pair of them gathered their things and left the keep in search of Helgen’s inn.

“I’m so sorry, Cass,” said Mathyas as they entered their room in the Helgen Homestead. They had arranged for their food to be brought up to them; neither of them had particularly liked the idea of eating in a crowded room filled with drunken soldiers. Cassathra dumped her pack by the door and flung herself face-first onto the bed with a long groan. “We came here to protect you and all we’ve done is slow you down.”

Cassathra rolled onto her back and held a hand up to her forehead, her eyes closed. “I won’t lie, Mathyas, the length of my journey is the last thing I’m worried about right now." Mathyas removed his cloak and sank into a chair by the unlit hearth, stretching out his legs. Cassathra sat up to look at him.

“Do you think he’ll be alright?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Mathyas admitted. He wasn't one for meaningless platitudes. “In all my sixty years I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Cassathra pursed her lips.

“Try not to worry about it,” he said, unconvincingly. “The healer seemed to know what she was doing. And we both need rest, it’s out of our hands now.”

“I suppose,” said Cassathra, picking at the furs on the bed. They were silent for a few moments, each deep in thought.

“What happens now?” she asked eventually. “Once he’s better, I mean.”

Mathyas took a second to think. “I’ll probably stay here with him for a while, until he’s well enough to travel again,” he said. “But you should set off for Cyrodiil as soon as he’s better. You don’t want to miss the start of term.”

Cassathra sighed. “I’m starting to think this whole thing was a mistake, Mathyas,” she confessed, her voice quiet. She picked up one of the pillows from the head of the bed and hugged it to her chest, resting her chin on it despondently. “I mean, what if I don’t get accepted? I have no idea whether I’ll be good enough, and I can't face the thought of going back to Blacklight if that happens…”

She paused, taking a shaky breath. Her voice was starting to sound thin and watery. “And you know, I’m realising now how selfish I was being, just running away like that… it was just impulsive, and— and reckless, and I dragged you and Raydrin all the way out here just to keep me safe but now Raydrin’s sick and I’m worried that it’s all my fault.” She buried her face in the pillow. “You were right, Mathyas,” she cried, “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey,” Mathyas said, sitting beside her on the bed so that he could awkwardly wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Whatever’s happening to Raydrin is not your fault, all right?”

Cassathra buried her face into his shoulder, weeping silently. “We have no idea what’s causing it,” Mathyas continued. Perhaps now was a time for meaningless platitudes, after all. “For all we know it could have happened either way. And he’s tough, he’ll get better. And... I just know the Arcane University will want to accept you. They’d be foolish not to. It’s obvious how passionate you are about learning. Remember how quickly you picked up the restoration magic Darik taught you!”

Cassathra sniffled, but before she could respond there came a knock at the door, making them both jump.

“I’ve brought your dinner,” called the barmaid they’d spoken to earlier. Mathyas reluctantly drew away from Cassathra to open the door, gratefully taking the two bowls of venison stew off of the tray she was holding. He returned to the bed and handed one of them to Cassathra before taking his seat beside her again. His cousin stared miserably into the bowl on her lap.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m just tired, I think.”

“It’s all right. I am too.” Mathyas looked down at his own stew. Nordic food tended to be plain, especially by Dunmeri standards, but it was hearty and comforting and the stew smelled as if at least some spices had been used in its making. “Come on,” he said, nudging Cassathra with his elbow. “Let’s eat, and then we can get some sleep. We’ll head to the keep first thing tomorrow morning to check in on him.”

Cassathra nodded, sighing. “Yes,” she said unhappily. “Thank you, Mathyas.”

He smiled. “That’s all right.”

They ate together in silence.

 

---

 

Helgen, Skyrim, 16th Last Seed

When they visited the keep the following morning, the healer shooed them away. It wasn’t the reaction they were hoping for, but at the very least it was a grim relief to hear that Raydrin had lived through the night.

The hours went by slowly. There was very little to do in Helgen, and the weather was grey, wet and humid. Mathyas and Cassathra passed the time sitting on the porch of the Helgen Homestead, Mathyas absently reading a book he’d found in their room and Cassathra practicing an alteration spell which she told him was called Candlelight. The spell would always sputter and fizzle out after a few seconds, until eventually Cassathra got too frustrated to continue and just slumped onto the bench beside Mathyas, staring out onto the road and watching the Imperial soldiers go about their drills in the rain.

The skies cleared late in the afternoon, making way for a more pleasant, sunny evening. Mathyas was nearing the end of his book and Cassathra had fallen asleep on his shoulder when the sound of loose stone crunching underfoot could be heard and Mathyas looked up to see a young Imperial soldier approaching from the direction of the Keep.

“Are you the Dark Elves with the friend in the infirmary?” he asked.

Mathyas nodded. Cassathra awoke, lifting her head and blinking sleepily at the soldier. 

“The healer told me to send for you,” he said. His voice was high and unbroken, giving away his age. He must have been a squire or an apprentice of some kind, rather than a fully-fledged soldier. “She said that your friend is alright, but she needs to speak with you urgently.”

Cassathra and Mathyas had both been holding their breath, but simultaneously sighed with relief upon hearing that Raydrin was all right. Mathyas laid his book on the bench and they got to their feet, glancing at each other as they did so. Then they hurried over to the keep in silence.

The infirmary was a dark room, torchlit and smoky, packed tight with rows of cots. A mess of tables in the centre sat laden with alchemical supplies, surgical equipment, bandages, and potion bottles. The healer stood measuring coloured powders into small glass jars; Raydrin lay motionless in his bed. They rushed over to him, catching the healer's gaze.

“Raydrin,” Cassathra breathed, kneeling at his bedside and clasping his hand in her own. Her brother was fast asleep, flat on his back. His complexion had regained its usual colour and his breathing was steady, but Mathyas noted that his already angular face looked somewhat gaunt under the layer of stubble that covered his jaw and cheeks. His short black hair had been washed and was no longer clinging to his forehead as it had been the night before.

“His fever finally broke,” said the healer, abandoning her station to approach them. “He was semi-conscious and hallucinating through the night, but I believe the worst is over. He just needs rest, now.”

“Thank Azura he’s alright,” Cassathra murmured, placing her hand on his forehead and gently brushing some of his hair out of his eyes. “Do you know what it was? Had he caught something?”

The healer didn’t respond. She circled round Raydrin's cot and took a seat on the bed across from them. “I have a theory,” she said. “But it won’t be easy to hear.”

Mathyas pursed his lips.

“What do you mean?” asked Cassathra, suspicion lining her voice.

The healer glanced between them for a few moments before sighing. “Have either of you known your friend to have taken skooma, ever?”

Mathyas stared at her. Cassathra’s mouth fell open.

“What?” she said incredulously after a beat of silence.

“I believe he’s been going through withdrawal,” the healer went on. “There’s no other explanation I can think of for his particular combination of symptoms, or for how suddenly they went away. My theory is that his illness over the last few days was the result of his body adjusting to having to perform its usual functions but without the substance on which it has grown dependent.”

Mathyas was at a complete loss for words. Her theory sounded ridiculous, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something about it just… made sense. 

Cassathra’s breathing was shaky. “Does that mean he’s better now?” she managed eventually. “He’s not... addicted anymore?”

The healer smiled at her sympathetically. “Not exactly,” she said. “He’s better in one sense. Now there aren’t any remaining traces of skooma in his blood, he shouldn’t struggle with the physical cravings or with further withdrawal symptoms, unless of course he uses again.”

“But…?” said Cassathra.

The healer sighed. “People don’t turn to skooma for no reason,” she said. “They know of the horrible side effects, of the dependency, and they do it anyway. Something has to be making them desperate.” She paused. “Your friend’s physical symptoms may have gone, but addiction is as much in the mind as it is in the body. Unless you find out what made him turn to skooma in the first place and fix it, the urge to use it will always be with him.”

“How do we do that?” asked Mathyas, speaking for the first time since the conversation had started.

“I wish I knew the answer,” was the response. “I am merely a military healer, and I’m afraid that is beyond my training. Your question would probably be better directed to a priest, or, in your case, I imagine, a Temple elder.”

Mathyas scoffed to himself softly, imagining the derision Raydrin would be met with in the Temple. He glanced down to his cousin’s sleeping body, trying to reconcile the sight with this revelation. He had known for a long while that Raydrin wasn’t exactly happy, but it pained Mathyas to think that he had been miserable enough to resort to such measures—and that both he and Cassathra had completely failed to take notice.

The healer spoke again, causing Mathyas to look up. She was smiling sadly at them both. “At the very least,” she said, “you can start by giving him some love and support.”

“Oh, Raydrin,” Cassathra murmured, sweeping her thumb over his cheekbone. “Why did you never tell us?”

They remained there for a few moments, no-one speaking. Eventually the healer got to her feet and cleared her throat.

“I’m afraid that is all I can do for you, now,” she said. “He will need a few days to get his strength back, but he will have to do that in the Helgen Homestead. There’s a skirmish planned for tonight and I anticipate that I will need as many beds free as possible.” Cassathra looked up at her from where she was kneeling beside Raydrin’s bed and nodded. “You may wait here until he wakes up.”

With that, the healer turned and left to resume her work. Mathyas lowered himself slowly onto the edge of Raydrin’s mattress, taking care not to disturb him. He and Cassathra looked at each other.

“I can’t believe it,” Cassathra said quietly, shaking her head. “How long do you think…?”

“It can’t have been too long,” said Mathyas, gazing at Raydrin’s face. His expression was peaceful. “There can be some permanent side-effects from sustained use, and... it doesn’t seem like he has any.”

“Yes,” she said, turning back to her brother, “I suppose that’s good.” Neither of them said anything for a while. Eventually she spoke again, breaking the silence.

“It feels wrong, the thought of going to Cyrodiil, now,” she said. “Not when he needs me to be there for him.”

“That’s maybe something we should talk about when he wakes up,” said Mathyas. “But for the record, I still think you should go.”

Cassathra stared at him.

“I can take care of him in Blacklight,” he continued with a shrug. “I’m not sure he’ll want your parents to know, but at the very least he’ll have me for support.”

Cassathra nodded. Her eyes were wet. “Thank you,” she whispered.

They fell back into silence; there wasn’t much left to say. At least until Raydrin woke up.

Notes:

poor raydrin. originally i was planning to write this whole chapter from his POV, but i think that would have been slightly beyond my skill as a writer.

i hope you enjoyed reading!! as always, big thank you to my beta readers haley and diana <3 comments and kudos are massively appreciated!

Chapter 4: Unbound (Part II)

Falkreath Hold, Skyrim, 16th Last Seed

Jórunn awoke with a jolt as her cart rolled over an uneven patch of road. She was disoriented for the few seconds it took to get her bearings, but her confusion gave way quickly to irritation; this must have been the fourth time she’d been jostled awake that night. 

She sighed, stretching out her limbs as far as she could in the cramped space of the cart. Her joints ached from hours of being stuck in one position. They were travelling through the night to cover ground after having been delayed by early snowfall in the Jerall Mountains—and though Jórunn longed for the cart to stop so that she could get out and stretch her legs, they would not be stopping for long now until they reached Helgen. She had to accept that she would be getting little sleep before then.

It was warm here in the southern reaches of Skyrim, once they’d descended from the Pale Pass. She inhaled deeply. The air smelled of pine and damp earth following rainfall, which was a far more pleasant combination than the odours of the Imperial City she was used to. The forests were quiet at night except for the trundling of the cart along the road, but Jórunn could hear an owl hooting in the distance. Sitting at the back of the cart, she was able to stick her head out past the canopy and feel the cool air on her skin. She was tired, but it was at least a pleasant night to be awake for.

She was gradually starting to doze off again when the cart suddenly lurched to a halt. It seemed that this time it was enough to wake the other passengers, most of whom were on their way to Skyrim to enlist with the Legion there. They started murmuring uneasily amongst themselves.

“Why are we stopping?" muttered the woman sitting on Jórunn’s right—an Orc named Usha—under her breath. Jórunn offered nothing in response.

She jumped when there came a sudden knocking against the wood by her head. “All right,” called the coach driver, “we’ve run into some fallen trees on the road. I’ll need some of you to help me move them.”

The wagon was filled with reluctant grumbling, but Jórunn could hear movement as some of the other passengers started responding to the request. She lifted her knees onto the bench and tucked them close to her chest so as to allow them to move past her. The cart creaked and shifted beneath their weight, followed by successive thuds as they jumped onto the road below.

Sighing, Jórunn closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wood. She listened to the voices outside of the cart, too quiet for her to understand what was being said until the carriage driver started calling out instructions. “All right, we lift on three,” he was saying. “One, two, three!”

Inside the cart, it was silent. It seemed that she and the remaining passengers were all too tired to talk about what was going on. They sat, and they waited.

Several minutes passed in which little else happened. Jórunn started drifting off again, too uncomfortable to fall asleep but far too tired to do otherwise. She found herself in a half-awake, dreamlike state, the voices from outside and the quiet snorting of the horses fading into a singular hum, her thoughts slowly losing any semblance of coherence.

Then there came the sound of smashing glass.

Jórunn found herself thrust violently into a state of consciousness. A whoosh of hot air sounded as if something had just burst into flames. One of the horses whinnied loudly in distress. People were shouting. She heard someone scream. 

“Don’t let the horses get away!” cried a man whose voice Jórunn did not recognize.

“Fuck,” hissed Usha beside her. Canvas rustled as she lifted the cart’s canopy, presumably to see what was going on. “Bandits,” she said, "lots of them.”

She suddenly grabbed Jórunn’s arm, making her jump. “I’ll keep you safe, but we have to be fast,” she said. Jórunn nodded, but barely had time to finish the movement before Usha had pulled her to her feet, wrapped her hands around Jórunn’s waist, and lifted her onto the ground outside like she weighed nothing.

They broke out into a run, Usha’s hand clasped around Jórunn’s forearm. Jórunn staggered at first upon discovering that they were running uphill, but quickly adjusted to the gradient, falling into step at Usha's side. They ran for about half a minute before the terrain below Jórunn’s feet suddenly changed, the solid earth of the road giving way to the spongy floor of the forest. She lost her footing, stumbling forward.

“We’re in the trees,” said Usha breathlessly as she helped Jórunn steady herself, “it’ll be easier if you jump onto my back.”

Jórunn stretched a hand out in front of her until it came into contact with Usha’s shoulders—the Orc was kneeling before her. Once Jórunn had worked out where the rest of Usha’s body was, she gingerly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Usha’s neck, bending down so that her front was pressed against Usha’s back. Usha hooked her arms around Jórunn’s thighs and got back to her feet with a grunt, lifting Jórunn off the ground. They set off again.  

It felt like they had only been running for a few seconds when Jórunn suddenly heard the whistling of an arrow followed by a dull thwok as it hit its target. Usha lurched forward, falling face-down and bringing Jórunn down with her. Jórunn grunted, winded from landing on her stomach, and rolled off of Usha’s back. Panic bubbled up in her throat, acidic and hot.

“Usha,” she cried, desperately shaking the Orc’s shoulders. “Usha!”

There was no response. A rusty, bloody smell drifted up to Jórunn's nose. She choked around a sob, her eyes watering with tears. “Usha, please."

“What's this?” came the voice of a man, deep and gruff. Jórunn yelped, scrabbling to her feet and turning to run in the opposite direction, back up the hill. Her foot caught in a loose tree root and she fell onto her front again.

“Leave me alone!” she yelled over her shoulder, crawling away on her hands and knees. “I left my money on the cart. I have nothing for you.”

“That’s alright,” said the man, his voice suddenly a lot closer. “Money’s not what I’m after.”

A pair of hands grabbed her shoulders and Jórunn was flipped roughly onto her back. She tried to cry out but one of the hands clamped over her mouth and the sound came out muffled. “Oh, I see,” he said, chuckling darkly, “you’re blind.”

Jórunn squirmed beneath his weight, unable to move. He was straddling her, pinning her arms to her sides with his knees. Fear churned her gut.

“This should be easy." His free hand got to work undoing her belt buckle. Jórunn shook her head uselessly, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. She tried to bite at the hand covering her mouth but his flesh was just out of her reach.

He was pulling her trousers down past her hips with some difficulty when the weight on top of her suddenly disappeared. He landed beside her with a grunt. Jórunn gasped out, scrabbling to move away from him. Behind her she heard punches being thrown, but she didn’t want to hang around long enough to find out who was throwing them.

“Óþverri,” someone spat.

She sobbed, digging her nails into the dirt.

“Bíddu við!” the new voice called. "Wait!"

It was another man, speaking with a thick Nordic accent. “Hold on,” he said, “are you all right?”

“Just leave me be,” Jórunn croaked. She didn’t have it in her to trust him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he continued. “My name is Ralof, I’m a soldier.”

She carried on crawling away from him, but her energy was diminishing. What was her plan? Where would she go from here? She could hear the ambush still raging in the distance.  

She slumped into the ground, surrendering.

“May I approach you?” Ralof asked. She exhaled raggedly. 

“Fine."

“What is your name?"

Jórunn hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether she ought to reveal such a thing. But she was quick to concede; she had nothing to lose. “Jórunn,” she replied, almost bitterly.

“Well, Jórunn,” said Ralof, “if you give me your hand, I'll help you up.”

She pushed herself up on one arm and held out the other in the direction of his voice, allowing him to grasp it and pull her to feet. She quickly turned around to face the other way once she was standing upright, so that she could pull her trousers up to her waist and redo her belt from behind the privacy of her cloak. Ralof said nothing until she turned to face him again.

“Were you one of the passengers on that cart?” he asked. The far-off noises of the ambush had changed; it sounded more like a battle, now, steel clashing against steel.

Jórunn nodded.

“My men and I heard the commotion and came to investigate,” he explained. “Those bandits don’t stand a chance, but... if you wait here, I can go and make sure it's safe.”

“Go ahead,” she said shakily. His footsteps receded.

Several minutes passed. Jórunn started to worry that something had happened to him, that she’d been left there by herself in the middle of the woods. But eventually the sounds of fighting in the distance came to a stop. She heard a twig snap as someone approached.

Her heart was racing. “Ralof?” she called.

“It’s me,” he confirmed. Jórunn sighed with relief, shoulders sagging. “One of the bandits got away,” Ralof continued as he got closer, “he captured one of the horses. But we were able to... eliminate the others.”

She thought of Usha, lying there on the forest floor, an arrow in her skull. “Were—” she started, faltering slightly; “...were there any survivors?”

There was a pause. “I'm sorry,” said Ralof. “You were the only one we found.”

She nodded—her throat felt tight. “Right,” she said, eyes stinging. Ralof was silent for a few moments.

“Come and join me with the others,” he said eventually. “We'll see if we can recover any of your things from the carriage and then make sure you get to a settlement safely. I’m sure it won't be a problem for you to travel with us for a few days.”

“Who are you?” she asked. “Whose soldiers?”

Ralof hesitated for a moment before answering. “We're a small company of Stormcloaks,” he said, speaking slowly, like it was a confession. “It's just a simple escort mission, so I doubt we’ll run into any trouble…”

Jórunn was silent, and Ralof paused. “That isn't a problem, is it?”

Politics had not been a frequently discussed topic back at the brothel. Jórunn was familiar with the name, but had only a vague understanding of what it meant to be a ‘Stormcloak.’

“No,” she said, “that’s fine.” She didn’t really have a choice.

“Great!” Ralof replied. “Let’s go.”

Jórunn heard him set off and realized with disappointment that he was expecting her to be able to follow.

“I’m blind,” she called after him. “I can’t follow you. You’ll need to give me your arm.”

“What?” said Ralof. The way his voice sounded indicated that he’d turned to face her again. She shrugged at him. “Ah, right... I see.” 

His footsteps crunched back towards her and she felt his arm slot into her raised hand. “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, “I- I had not realized.”

“That’s all right,” she said, inclining her head. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“Of course."

He led her back to the road, into the vicinity of several voices. The group sounded as if it was mostly made up of men, but there were at least a couple of women Jórunn could hear. She felt increasingly awkward as they approached, very aware of how much of a burden she was about to become to these people.

“Ralof,” said a voice. “Og eftirlifandi Ralofs.”

“This is Jórunn,” said Ralof in Cyrodilic—presumably for her sake. She shrank in on herself, wanting nothing more than to just disappear. “She is blind. I said that she could travel with us until we reach a settlement where she’ll be safe.”

Low murmurings rose up from within the group, and Jórunn swallowed. She was struck with the unshakeable feeling that she maybe ought to say something, but had no idea what it was she ought to say. The silence was nearly unbearable.

“Hvernig vitum við að hún er ekki Imperial njósnari?” someone eventually asked, different from the first person. “Við erum á óvinasvæði og hún var hvergi nálægt vagninum þegar þú fannst hana.” There was a hum of agreement. “Þetta gæti verið uppsetning.”

Ralof huffed beside her. “Hún getur bókstaflega ekki séð,” he said. “Ræninginn sem réðst á hana var nógu raunverulegur.”

“The girl may travel with us,” said yet a third person. It was a man, with a rich, gravelly voice, deeper than any Jórunn had heard before. Silence immediately befell the others. “Ralof, hún verður á þína ábyrgð."

“Já, Jarl Ulfric,” said Ralof. Jórunn bristled.

Ulfric?!

The ‘simple escort mission’ was clearly of much greater importance than Ralof had suggested.

“It is late,” Ulfric went on. “Let us travel a short while further and then we make camp.”

There was a chorus of 'Já, herras', and the group set off. Ralof allowed Jórunn to take his arm again.

“You didn’t mention that you were escorting Ulfric Stormcloak,” she said quietly, careful not to let the others overhear. Ralof laughed.

“Sorry,” he said. “I suppose that was important.”

“I can’t believe he let me come,” she said.

“Ulfric is a good man,” Ralof explained. “You’ll be safer in his company than anyone else in Skyrim’s. He fights like a demon.”

From the little Jórunn knew about Ulfric, the truth of Ralof’s first statement seemed somewhat questionable. But she kept her thoughts to herself. As they walked, all she could think about was the prospect of finally being able to lay down, rest her head on a pillow, and sleep.

 

---

 

Helgen, Skyrim, 17th Last Seed

“Morning,” said Cassathra with a yawn, shutting the door to the Helgen Homestead behind her. Mathyas looked up from his book as she came to sit beside him on the porch bench. “You’re up early."

“I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep,” he explained, scooting sideways to make space for her. “Any news from Raydrin?”

Cassathra had brought out a plate with an iced pastry on it and a mug of what smelled like ginger tea. She tore off a chunk of pastry and popped it into her mouth, shaking her head as she chewed. “No,” she said after swallowing, “he’s still fast asleep. I left some food by his bedside in case he’s hungry when he wakes up.”

“Right." Raydrin had woken briefly the night before, but only for long enough that they could help him make his way from the keep to the inn. They didn’t speak at all about what had happened, and he’d fallen asleep again almost immediately upon getting to their room in the Homestead.

They fell into a comfortable silence as Cassathra ate her breakfast.

It was still early enough in the day that the morning fog hadn’t yet lifted, but it felt as if there was potential for the weather to make a turn for the better. The air smelled of dew and was filled with birdsong. Mathyas stared out over the town square, lost in thought—his book lay closed in his lap. There was a small amount of activity over by the keep, a few legionnaires milling around and a Thalmor justiciar giving out instructions. They seemed to be preparing for something, but they were too far away for Mathyas to work out what.

When Cassathra had finished eating, she put her plate to one side and picked up the mug of tea, cupping it in both hands for warmth. It was still steaming as she sipped from it. Her eyes followed Mathyas’ gaze and landed on the keep.

“I still can’t believe it,” she murmured eventually, breaking the silence. Mathyas turned to her.

“Hm?”

“Raydrin,” she explained. “I- I just can’t believe that neither of us ever noticed. And—” she hesitated, trailing off. Then she sighed. “I don’t know. I guess I just never imagined someone like him ever doing… something like that.”

Mathyas hummed. It was a naive remark. He'd been as surprised as Cassathra to hear of Raydrin’s secret, but the more he thought about it, the more it had started to make sense. The odd disappearances, Raydrin's occasionally sluggish demeanour... small things—things Mathyas had got into the habit of brushing aside—were suddenly falling into place. And Raydrin had always had somewhat self-destructive tendencies. In the late seventies, after the war and after Anya, Mathyas had watched first-hand as his cousin sank into the easy escape of the bottle, and though the grief had waned and Raydrin eventually sobered up, Mathyas wasn't naive enough to suppose that those habits ever truly left a person. Raydrin indulged in escapisms wherever he could; if he could slip away unnoticed and hole up somewhere with a book and a joint of chokeweed instead of attending council meetings, he would. And Mathyas figured that skooma was inevitable for someone like that if they found themselves miserable enough.

He was interrupted from his thoughts by the sounds of trotting horses and the crunching of gravel under wheels. He looked up to find a convoy of two carriages approaching from Helgen's eastern gate, with several individual riders at both the head and rear of the procession. The riders and the carriage drivers were all legionnaires, but surprisingly most of the passengers were adorned in the distinctive blue armour of rebel Stormcloaks. As the carts got closer, Mathyas was able to see that the Stormcloaks’ hands were bound.

He and Cassathra both stood up from the bench to get a better look, moving to lean against the wooden railings of the Homestead’s porch. Behind them the door opened and the owners of the inn, Vilod and Ingrid, came to join them.

“These must be the prisoners from the skirmish that the healer was talking about,” said Cassathra as the carts trundled past, speaking quietly even though the Nords wouldn't understand her Dunmeris.

“Oh shit,” said Mathyas under his breath. “I think that’s Ulfric Stormcloak.”

Mathyas had seen Ulfric twice before; once in the fields of northern Cyrodiil, nearly thirty years ago now, and more recently at a diplomatic meeting in 4E 196, in which Ulfric had put a decisive end to all remaining trade relations between Eastmarch and House Redoran.

The Jarl was seated at the back of the second carriage, a cloth gag tied around his mouth. Ulfric was only a few years younger than Mathyas, but he had aged a great deal since Mathyas last laid eyes on him; the lines on his face served as a depressing reminder of the brevity of Men.

The carriages passed the Homestead and continued along the road until they reached the town square, where Mathyas had been watching preparations take place only moments before. An executioner’s block had been laid down and a headsman was sitting on the steps of the keep, sharpening a long axe with a whetstone.

“How grim,” Cassathra said with distaste.

“I think,” said Mathyas, “we’re about to witness the end of a war.”

“I’m not sure I want to,” she replied.

The carts came to a stop and the prisoners were ushered off of them. An Imperial soldier was reading their names from a list as they jumped one by one onto the ground below; Ulfric’s name was called first, then another Stormcloak soldier.

Oddly, neither of the other two prisoners on Ulfric’s cart were wearing the Stormcloak armour. The first, a man dressed in rags, cried out in protest when his name was called. “I’m not a rebel! You can’t do this!”

Mathyas’ mouth fell open in surprise when the man suddenly broke out into a run. They watched in shock as he stumbled past the Homestead, struggling to maintain balance without the use of his arms.

“Halt!” yelled an Imperial captain.

“You’re not going to kill me!” he shouted back.

“Archers!”

There was a whip of air and an arrow punctured his gullet. He collapsed onto his front, choking for a few moments, eyes wide as blood bubbled from his throat and mouth. Then his body twitched and fell still.

“Anyone else feel like running?” the captain demanded.

“I’m not watching this,” said Cassathra, turning and heading back into the inn.

Mathyas didn’t follow; he was held in place by a morbid curiosity, though he averted his gaze from the body on the road. He took no pleasure from watching people die, but he had attended his fair share of executions, and he didn’t want to miss one as historic as this.

The final prisoner on Ulfric’s carriage hadn’t yet dismounted; she was a young woman, possibly a Nord, with pale skin and a mane of long, black hair. There was some conversation that Mathyas couldn’t hear, and then the Imperial soldier reading from the list moved to help her get down from the cart, grasping her by the waist with both hands. Mathyas frowned slightly in confusion at this. The woman was led to stand alongside the other prisoners.

Two Imperial soldiers—standing at the top of the steps leading up to the keep—began playing on tabor drums. The rhythm was simple and militaristic; single strokes on the first and second beats, drum roll on the third, rest on the fourth. They were joined by a man wearing armour indicative of high rank, his leather cuirass embellished with gold. The officer faced the gathered prisoners and unrolled a scroll.

"The date is the seventeenth day of Last Seed in the two hundred and first year of the Fourth Era," he announced over the drums, possessing all the clarity and gravitas of a general. "We are gathered on this day in the Imperial township of Helgen to witness the summary execution of Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm, and six of his conspirators, for the wilful commission of crimes against the empire and against the peace. 

“Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak—the following charges have been laid against you.”

The accusations fell monotonously from his lips. It was an impressive record—sedition, insurrection, murder, and high treason, among others. Mathyas imagined that most charges were likely attributable to the same two or three acts.

“You are hereby declared guilty on all counts,” said the officer. “As for your officers, bodyguards, and associates; the following charges have been laid against you.” 

He went on, repeating many of the same crimes he’d listed before.

"...for enlisting and or associating with the rebel Stormcloak militia; insurrection, punishable by death. For the abetment of Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak to the murder of High King Torygg; conspiracy to high treason, punishable by death. For the deification of Tiber Septim and the spreading of false idols; blasphemy in violation of Article Two of the White-Gold Concordat, punishable by—"

The officer was cut off suddenly by some odd bird call in the distance, a hollow screech from somewhere in the mountains. He faltered, lowering his scroll, gazing upwards in confusion. When the sound didn't come again, he shook his head in what looked like mild exasperation and continued. 

“...You are hereby declared guilty on all counts,” he finished at last. He paused for a moment, staring at the scroll as if in deliberation. Then his eyes flicked upwards and landed on Ulfric. “You started this war," he said. Vitriol was beginning to taint his previously neutral tone. "Plunged Skyrim into chaos. Now the empire is going to put you down, and restore the peace."

The scroll was raised once more. He cleared his throat, returning to script. 

"By the authority of His Majesty Emperor Titus Mede the Second, I hereby sentence you to death by decollation. Your heads will be severed from your bodies in accordance with Imperial law.

"A priest will now give you your last rites. Divines have mercy on your souls.”

He stepped down from the platform, allowing a priestess of Arkay to take his place. Mathyas tuned out as the last rites were read, gazing out into the mountains and thinking vaguely to himself about how improbable it was that their passage through Helgen could coincide with such a momentous occasion. But then the first prisoner was called forwards and he returned to the present. 

The prisoner was led to the block. Mathyas flinched as the axe was swung.

“Justice!” heckled Vilod on the porch beside him.

“Death to the Stormcloaks!” called Ingrid.

Mathyas wrinkled his nose in distaste; he was certainly no fan of the Stormcloaks, but he wouldn’t have described the despotic whims of the Empire as ‘justice.’

The bird call came again. It was guttural but mournful, like no bird Mathyas had ever heard in Morrowind. 

"There it is again," said the soldier with the list. "Did you hear that?" 

"It's nothing," said the general. "Carry on."

“Next, the blind woman!” called the Imperial captain.

Blind woman?

The soldier with the list approached the dark-haired woman from before and led her by the arm to the block. He was saying something to her as they walked, his face close to hers, but he spoke too softly for Mathyas to make out what was being said.

It suddenly made sense why she’d needed help getting off the cart; what made less sense was why she was about to be executed. She was clad in rags, no Stormcloak blue to be found anywhere on her person. Mathyas thought it unlikely that the Stormcloaks would have taken a blind person among their ranks as a foot soldier, but he could think of few crimes which would warrant execution alongside men accused of high treason.

The woman was guided into a kneeling position before the block. Her face was turned towards him, laying bare to him the streaks of tears on her otherwise grimy cheeks. Executing a war criminal was one thing, but this—this was not justice. Mathyas turned away, unable to watch.

He waited for the axe to fall, but the distinctive thwok of metal hitting wood never came.

What came instead was the eagle screech from the mountains. Except this time it was close enough to hurt, and as Mathyas clamped his hands over his ears, pain bursting in the drums, he wrenched his gaze upwards and found an image that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

A great creature—a beast, a demon—its scales black as tar and its eyes like furnace-fires—had landed on the keep, and when it threw back its head with a mighty screech, all the fires of Oblivion erupted at once from its saurian jaws. Mathyas cried out and staggered towards the door in a desperate attempt to escape that unbearable noise, and was followed into the inn by the sound of muted screaming.

“Cassathra!” he yelled once indoors, his eyes stinging. “Cassathra!”

He was flung to one side when something crashed through the ceiling onto the floor, throwing up an explosion of splintered wood and furniture parts. Mathyas landed on his shoulder and felt a sudden heat against his back as the building behind him burst into flames. He groaned in pain and tried to roll onto his front, but moving was difficult—his whole body ached from the impact.

The high-pitched ringing in his ears suddenly faded and he felt someone’s hands on his shoulders. He looked up in confusion and saw Cassathra’s face gradually come into focus, her voice following shortly after; “Mathyas?” she was saying, shaking him violently. “Mathyas, are you all right? What’s going on?!”

He sat up, wincing as pain lanced through his shoulder. When his vision and hearing had fully cleared he grasped her hand with his good arm and she pulled him to his feet, letting him rest his weight against her.

“Dragon,” he said breathlessly. Cassathra’s eyes widened. “We need to find Raydrin. Now.”

She nodded and they took off in the direction of the stairs, narrowly missing a falling beam. The fire had spread to the other end of the upstairs corridor, but was thankfully yet to have reached their room; Mathyas flung open the door to find Raydrin lying where they’d left him, still fast asleep in the bed.

Mathyas ran over to him, shaking him aggressively. “Raydrin, wake up.” His cousin mumbled something and shifted in his sleep, his brows furrowing. Things weren’t moving fast enough. Mathyas slapped him lightly round the face and Raydrin jolted awake.

“Mathyas?” he said blearily, blinking at his cousin in confusion. His voice was slurred and he rubbed at his eyes. “What’s happening?”

“No time to explain,” he said, “we have to get out of here now.”

Raydrin still looked confused but seemed to be following closely enough to nod. Chaos was erupting outside; through the mottled window pane was a blood-red sky, striped with fire and brimstone. It looked like a painting—like old renderings of the Red Year, like the skies of Oblivion. Mathyas ducked suddenly when a great shadow flew past, momentarily shrouding the room in darkness. The dragon let out another unearthly howl as he and Cassathra helped Raydrin get out of the bed, and together the three of them staggered back towards the door.

“What do we do now?” Cassathra shouted over the roaring of the fire. Mathyas opened and closed his mouth uselessly, desperately trying to formulate a plan, but he was too panicked to come up with anything.

Behind him he heard the creaking of wood as some of the floorboards gave way—the building was falling apart around them. Dunmer may have been resistant to fire, but they were not resistant to getting crushed. They didn’t have time to calculate their best chances of survival. They just needed to get out of there.

Mathyas heard a loud gust of air as the thatched roof above them burst into flames. “Help me with this,” he shouted, trying to lift a fallen beam from the floor. The windows upstairs were too small to jump out of, but going back downstairs wasn’t an option. Cassathra and Raydrin moved to help him without question, lifting the beam from the other side, until with great effort the three of them were holding it in the air. Mathyas’ shoulder was screaming in pain.

“We want to ram it against the wall,” he said loudly. They nodded in understanding. “On three… one, two, three!”

They swung the beam into the wall, near the window. Some of the wooden panels splintered on impact, expanding the hole.

“Again,” called Mathyas, “lower.” They repeated the process. Eventually the hole was large enough for them to climb through and they lowered the beam carefully to the floor. The inn had been built into the mountainside and they were facing out onto the slope, which luckily meant that it wasn’t a long way down despite them jumping from an upstairs window.

Cassathra and Raydrin went first, hand in hand, closely followed by Mathyas. Raydrin stumbled slightly on impact and Cassathra helped to steady him as they took off uphill, running for a short time until they were a safe distance away from the crumbling building. When they reached a rocky outcrop where the ground levelled off, they stopped, turning around to face the town below and catching their breath.

The whole of Helgen was in flames. Plumes of black smoke rose high into the sky, choking the air, and the streets were littered with corpses. Mathyas squinted, scanning the clouds for signs of the dragon. It seemed that the beast had gone, when suddenly they were cast into shadow and a great black shape swooped overhead with enough speed and force to knock them off-balance. The dragon screeched again and they each covered their ears to block out the sound.

“What the fuck is that thing?” shouted Raydrin after it had finished.

Mathyas watched in amazement as the dragon came to a stop above the town, beating its great leathery wings against the air. It seemed to be looking for something below—survivors, maybe. The three of them were protected from its view by the trees but Mathyas’ heart was still racing in fear.

The dragon roared, a column of fire billowing from its jaws. It looked enraged.

“Hin sil fen nahkip bahloki.”

The words reverberated between the mountains, seemingly coming from everywhere all at once. Mathyas hadn’t seen the dragon’s jaws move, but he felt certain that it had been the source. With that, the dragon took off, flying eastwards. The three of them watched in silence until it had disappeared into the mountains and the last of its haunting cries faded into an echo. Below them, Helgen burned. 

Notes:

phew, at last!! things are (finally) starting to pick up now. i hope you enjoyed reading, and as always, comments and kudos are much appreciated :))

Óþverri - scumbag/lowlife
Bíddu við! - Hold on!
Og eftirlifandi Ralofs - And Ralof's survivor
Hvernig vitum við að hún er ekki Imperial njósnari? - How do we know she isn't an Imperial spy?
Við erum á óvinasvæði og hún var hvergi nálægt vagninum þegar þú fannst hana - We're in enemy territory, and she was nowhere near the carriage when you found her
Þetta gæti verið uppsetning - This could all be a set-up
Hún getur bókstaflega ekki séð - She literally cannot see
Ræninginn sem réðst á hana var nógu raunverulegur - The bandit attacking her was real enough
Ralof, hún verður á þína ábyrgð - Ralof, she will be your charge

(apologies if anyone Icelandic happens to be reading this, I used google translate :( )

Chapter 5: A Change of Plans

Ash was falling around them like snow as they descended into the ruins of Helgen. The streets were silent, save for the low crackling of flames. Only the stone keep remained somewhat intact—the other structures, built from wood, had been reduced to blackened skeletons of the homes they once were. Smoke and the acrid scent of charred flesh hung heavy in the air.  

None of them spoke as they moved through the town. What was there to say in the midst of so much death and destruction? The roads were lined with corpses, many of them soldiers, but not all; Cassathra’s throat tightened as they passed the small body of what must once have been a child, now burned beyond recognition.

They came to a standstill in the town centre, by the keep.

“We can’t be the only survivors,” Cassathra murmured under her breath, scanning the open space for signs of life. The square was littered with piles of rubble and small fires, flickering slightly in the wind. Raydrin sank onto what was left of some stone steps and hung his head in his hands.

“If there are others, they’ll probably be in the keep,” said Mathyas quietly after a few moments of silence. “We could split up to look for them.”

Cassathra nodded, her jaw set. “You're right,” she said, but her voice came out somewhat choked. “Um, you search the barracks. Raydrin and I can go through these towers.”

She was hesitant to leave Raydrin on his own. He was visibly shaken, more so than her or Mathyas, and had been thrust straight into this situation immediately after waking up from what must have already been quite a traumatic experience. She wasn’t convinced that he’d regained his wherewithal in its entirety, but mostly she felt that if she were in his position, she wouldn’t want to be alone.

Mathyas cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “I guess we’ll meet back here.”

Cassathra nodded again. Mathyas set off towards the barracks and she watched him go, moving to stand beside her brother as she did so. She lay a hand on Raydrin’s shoulder and he exhaled shakily, closing his eyes and leaning into her side.

She wanted to say something to him, but nothing felt like it would be appropriate or useful. She just let him take a moment, rubbing her thumb softly against the fabric of his shirt. He lifted his arm and laid his hand over hers—she could feel him trembling.

“Come on,” she said gently, giving his shoulder a squeeze, “the sooner we search the place the sooner we can get out of here.”

He took a deep breath and nodded. She helped pull him to his feet.

The first tower they searched was barely intact. A meteor had crashed through the wooden ceiling and knocked away most of the wall of the top two floors, creating large piles of rubble which cut off access to the upper staircases. They found the bodies of a few Imperial soldiers, most of them crushed by debris, but no survivors. They pressed on to the second tower, finding it empty.

The third and final tower was situated beside what remained of the Helgen Homestead. Cassathra approached it warily, glancing up at a gaping hole in the side of the building. Inside they were surprised to find the bodies of two soldiers, not Imperial but Stormcloak, who seemed to have died of injuries acquired before entering the building; one of the bodies was propped up against the wall, her hands pressed to a bloody wound in her abdomen.

“These must be some of the prisoners,” Cassathra said softly. The other body’s hands were still bound—both must have crawled into the tower seeking refuge only to have later died from their wounds. An execution would perhaps have been a kinder death, she thought sadly.

“Hm?” said Raydrin, looking up from where he’d absent-mindedly been investigating some rubble. “Prisoners?”

“Oh,” said Cassathra, “um, there were meant to be some executions this morning, while you were asleep… the Legion had captured Ulfric and his bodyguards.”

“Ulfric Stormcloak?” Raydrin repeated, eyebrows raised. Cassathra nodded. Raydrin was silent for a few moments, seemingly absorbing the information. “I wonder if he made it out alive,” he said eventually, more to himself than to her. She shrugged, unable to answer.

“We should leave,” she said after a few more seconds had passed. “I don’t think we’ll find anyone in here.”

Raydrin nodded and started descending the few steps he’d climbed. They were making their way towards what was left of the doorway when he suddenly stopped and grabbed her arm.

“Do you hear that?”

Cassathra raised her head slightly to listen. At first there was nothing, but then she heard it—a muffled voice coming from somewhere above them. Too far away for Cassathra to pick out individual words, but close enough to be unmistakable as the voice of a person.

Her eyes widened as she met Raydrin’s gaze and without speaking they took to the stairs, climbing them two at a time. The staircase was only intact as far as the hole in the wall that Cassathra had seen from outside, where it opened out onto a second floor filled with the rubble of what had once been the rest of the staircase.

“Hello?” Cassathra called out in Cyrodilic. “Where are you?”

The muffled voice sounded again from somewhere within the rubble. She and Raydrin immediately got to their knees and started pulling back chunks of stone, throwing them carelessly behind them. First a leg appeared, then the other—the person’s torso was wedged underneath a long wooden beam, presumably what had trapped them in the first place.

“Clear around their head first,” said Raydrin, and Cassathra nodded, shifting the rubble that lay around the general area of where the person’s head should have been. A human woman emerged, her face covered in cuts and contorted in pain. Cassathra and Raydrin worked together to lift the wooden beam from her middle, straining with effort under its weight.

At last the woman was free, sprawled over the pile of rocks. The right side of her body was badly burned. Her wrists were bound.

Cassathra dropped to her knees by the woman’s side, her hands hovering uselessly over her body as she tried to work out what to do.

“Oh gods,” she muttered, as the grave extent of the woman’s injuries started to sink in. “Gods. Should I try to heal her?”

Raydrin had knelt on her other side and was looking at Cassathra uneasily. “Are you sure you can?” he asked. Between them the woman was grimacing in pain, her breathing rapid and shallow. “Darik said—”

“Darik said skin is one thing, bones are another, right?” Cassathra replied. “She needs help.”

“Maybe we should take her to a healer, Cass…”

“The nearest village is days away, we can’t just do nothing until then.”

Their discussion was interrupted when the woman suddenly spoke, her voice strained with pain. “Can—” she started, faltering slightly. “Can... can you speak Common?”

Cassathra cringed inwardly. “Yes, of course, sorry,” she replied in Cyrodilic. Her words came out rapid and flustered. Raydrin shot her a look. “We were just discussing how best to treat your burns.”

The woman took a deep, rattling breath. “Could you untie my hands?"

She swallowed wetly.

"Please?”

Cassathra was about to do as she’d asked but Raydrin had beat her to it—he took the woman’s wrists into his hands and nimbly undid the coarse rope that bound them. Then he cast the rope to one side and let her hands to come to rest on her stomach.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Um... how many of you are there?”

Cassathra and Raydrin glanced at each other. “What do you mean?” asked Raydrin.

“I’m blind,” the woman croaked. “There are two of you. Right?”

Cassathra opened and closed her mouth in shock. The woman’s eyes were typical of a human—white sclera and light brown irises—but as Cassathra stared into them, it became apparent that they weren’t focusing on anything, just blankly gazing out at nothing in particular.

“Yes,” said Raydrin softly. “Yes, there are two of us.”

“I'm Cassathra. This is my brother, Raydrin,” Cassathra added, shifting where she knelt. “Um, there is a third, I- I mean, we’re with our cousin Mathyas, but he’s not here right now—he’s looking for other survivors in the keep…”

She trailed off uncomfortably. 

The woman nodded. “Thank you for finding me,” she said. Her voice was hoarse and raspy. Cassathra noticed that her eyes were wet. She took a shuddering breath. “I’m- um. My name is Jórunn.”

Cassathra raised her head and met Raydrin’s gaze; they looked at each other for a moment in silence, but Raydrin was the first to turn away, his eyes landing back on Jórunn’s face. His expression was unreadable.

“Well, you’re safe now,” Cassathra said. She paused for a second before continuing. “I know a little restoration magic… if- if you wanted, I could have a go at healing your burns.”

“Cassathra,” Raydrin started, “are you sure—”

“Yes,” said Jórunn, cutting him off. “Please. I- I don’t care how good you are, I just—I am in so much pain. I don’t care if it scars.” Raydrin and Cassathra both stared at her. “Please,” she said again after neither of them had spoken.

Cassathra exhaled slowly. “I promise I’ll do my best,” she said. Jórunn nodded her assent.

Raydrin got to his feet and moved to stand by the hole in the wall, rubbing the back of his neck as he gazed out over what remained of the Homestead. He wasn’t exactly being supportive, but Cassathra was at least grateful that she could work without the added pressure of his scrutiny.

She raised her hands over Jórunn’s body, starting by her arm. She’d been practicing what Darik had taught her every day since they parted ways, occasionally using Mathyas as a dummy when he was willing to indulge her—she was so thankful now that she had.

Taking a deep breath, she willed her energy flow to focus into her fingertips. Magicka crackled between her digits, wild and loose, but with concentration she was able to harness it into some sort of spell-like structure. Once she was satisfied that she could maintain it, she allowed it to surge from her flesh into Jórunn’s, sinking deep into the Nord’s blistered skin.

Skin is skin, she kept telling herself, doing her best to keep her hands steady and her breathing even. Jórunn’s whole body tensed, her eyes squeezing shut, jaw clenched. Cassathra couldn’t bear to imagine how much pain she must have been in, but she was grateful to Jórunn for keeping still—it made her work a good deal easier.

As Darik had taught her, she imagined that she was knitting together Jórunn’s broken flesh. The burns were thankfully not so bad that Jórunn was missing skin that she once had—her skin was just damaged. Cassathra could repair what was there without needing to worry about replacing it, and with the image of a healthy arm fixed firmly in her mind, along with the little knowledge about skin that Darik had passed on to her, she was able to mend Jórunn’s flesh, layer by layer.

After some minutes had passed, Cassathra was satisfied that she’d healed Jórunn’s arm as well as she was able to. She pulled back, watching as the remainder of the golden glow seeped into Jórunn’s skin, and surveyed her work—Jórunn’s arm was still slightly red, and some of the skin was a little mottled in appearance, but on the whole she seemed to have done a decent job.

“Does that feel alright to you?” she asked nervously. The muscles in Jórunn’s arm clenched as she lifted it slightly, flexing her fingers. Then she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “The skin feels a little tight, but, um- otherwise, good. Thank you.”

Cassathra sighed with relief. Raydrin returned and knelt on Jórunn’s other side; he was evidently feeling more confident now that Cassathra had met with success. She felt giddy with pride as she watched him take in the sight of Jórunn’s arm, eyes wide. He raised his head and met Cassathra’s gaze, mouthing something in Dunmeris which she could just make out to be this is amazing. She smiled at him breathlessly.

With newfound confidence, she got to work on Jórunn’s leg. The burns were along the outside of her thigh, but some of the material of her rags had stuck to her mangled skin. “This is going to hurt a bit,” Cassathra said, biting her lip. She waited for Jórunn to nod in response and then started carefully picking at the burnt scraps of fabric with her fingernails, taking care not to damage the skin any further. Jórunn inhaled sharply, squeezing her eyes shut—in her periphery, Cassathra saw Raydrin take her hand so that she had something to hold.

It was a tedious process, but eventually Cassathra was satisfied that she’d removed all of the debris from Jórunn’s skin. Summoning up the last of her magicka, she repeated the same process as before—faster this time—until at last she was finished.

“I think I’m done,” she said quietly, resting a hand on Jórunn’s arm. “How do you feel?”

Jórunn shifted, moving for the first time since they’d met her. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and raised a hand to her face, rubbing slightly at her eye. She had long, thick dark hair, currently tangled around her shoulders and dusted with ash, and as she sat up Cassathra was able to see how scrawny she was.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she murmured. “It’s so much better.”

“Are you able to stand?” asked Cassathra. “We can head out of here. Find you some food and water.”

Jórunn nodded, beginning to get to her feet. Raydrin and Cassathra both instinctively moved towards her, braced to steady her if she needed it, but she was able to stand up fully without either of them needing to intervene. Jórunn was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Raydrin at her full height, and definitely a great deal taller than Cassathra.

“I’ll need to take someone’s arm,” she said. Cassathra and Raydrin glanced at each other. Cassathra inclined her head to indicate that he should do it, given her and Jórunn’s somewhat incompatible height difference. He nodded and gently nudged Jórunn’s left arm with his right.

“Take mine."

Jórunn slipped her hand around his arm, just above the elbow. The three of them slowly descended the stairs down to the bottom of the tower.

When they made it back to the town square, Mathyas was waiting for them. He didn’t seem to have had any success finding survivors, but at his feet was what looked like a small pile of supplies. He turned to face them as he heard them approach, a flicker of recognition crossing his features when he noticed Jórunn—but he said nothing of it.

“Hey,” he said once they were within talking distance.

“This is Jórunn,” said Cassathra, in Cyrodilic. “Jórunn, this is our cousin Mathyas.”

Jórunn gave a small smile, not quite enough to reach her eyes.

Mathyas cleared his throat. “Glad to have you with us,” he said somewhat awkwardly. “I didn’t find anyone in the keep, but I did find some supplies.” He nudged the pile with his foot for emphasis. “A couple of weapons, some tents, maps, and enough food to take us to Bruma.”

“Bruma?” said Cassathra. “I thought the plan was that you—”

“Plan’s changed,” said Mathyas, cutting her off. “I thought about taking Raydrin to Riverwood and letting you go to Bruma alone, but it’s too far to travel by yourself. Not with a dragon on the loose. And you don’t have time for any detours.”

They hadn’t yet had the chance to speak with Raydrin about what they’d learned—as far as he was aware, they were none the wiser. But the healer had explicitly said he needed time to recover, and Riverwood was a lot closer than Bruma. Cassathra was worried that the journey through the Pale Pass would be too long and too intense for someone in his condition, and she needed to convey that to Mathyas somehow, but didn’t know how with Raydrin right there.

Thankfully, Jórunn spoke before Cassathra had to. “Um, is there any way you could drop me off somewhere in Skyrim first?” she said. They all turned to her. “I- I can’t go back to Cyrodiil.”

“Jórunn is blind, Mathyas,” said Cassathra. “She can’t travel by herself. We should take her to Riverwood.”

“I know she’s blind,” Mathyas replied. Cassathra desperately tried to catch his gaze so she could somehow try and communicate to him that Raydrin should be a concern as well, but he wasn’t picking up on it. “Why can’t you go to Cyrodiil?” he asked Jórunn.

She grimaced. “I just came from there,” she explained, “I was trying to get into Skyrim—”

“Is that why you were about to be executed?” he cut her off.

“Mathyas!” said Cassathra, mortified. He ignored her, expression hard.

“My cart was attacked by bandits,” said Jórunn, her voice equally as hard. “The Stormcloaks rescued me and I was meant to travel with them until we reached a settlement. But we were ambushed a day later and the Imperials were going to execute me just for associating with them.”

“Mathyas, I don’t mind missing the start of term,” Cassathra insisted. “If that’s the only reason you want to rush into Cyrodiil, forget it. We should go to Riverwood.”

“I lost all my money,” Jórunn continued, “all of it. I’ll never be able to afford to cross the border again if you take me back to Bruma." She paused for a moment. “I— I can’t go back there. Please.”

All three were silent for a moment. Then the tension suddenly drained from Mathyas' body and he sighed, sinking onto the steps. “You’re both right,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry. I— I’m just tired. I apologise for speaking so harshly.”

“I think we should get out of here,” said Cassathra. “We’re all stressed and I don’t think this place is helping. If we start heading north now we should be able to make it to Riverwood in a couple of days. We can work out how I’ll get into Cyrodiil from there.”

Mathyas was nodding. “Yes,” he said, “you’re right.” He looked up at Raydrin, who until now had remained silent. “Raydrin?” he said gently. “Does that plan sound all right to you?”

Raydrin shrugged. “Sounds fine.”

Mathyas waited a moment in case Raydrin wanted to say anything further, but when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to, simply got to his feet. “All right,” he said. “Pick up what you’ll need and we’ll get going.”

“Thank you,” Jórunn spoke up again. “For... for helping me.”

“You don’t need to thank us,” said Cassathra. “We’re in this mess together now.”

 

---

 

Riverwood, Skyrim, 20th Last Seed

The journey to Riverwood from what was left of Helgen took—as predicted—around three days. Travelling with Jórunn was a lot easier than Cassathra had expected it to be; she’d asked if they could find her a stick that she could use as a makeshift cane and it enabled her to walk alongside them without needing to be led.

They didn’t meet anyone in their travels, and mostly they walked in silence. Jórunn appeared to be quite a reserved person—she didn’t respond very well to any questions about herself, and after a couple of attempts Cassathra dropped it. She learned that Jórunn had been blind from birth, that she’d grown up in the Imperial City, and that she had come to Skyrim in search of some relatives—but that was about all the Nord was willing to share.

Raydrin didn’t seem to be in the mood for much talking, either. Cassathra kept meaning to bring up what the healer had told them whenever they made camp for the night, but it never felt right. They would put up the tents, light the fire, hunt, cook, maybe drink some of the wine that Mathyas had found in the keep—but then they’d go to sleep, and Cassathra was never able to get Raydrin on his own. Maybe she just couldn’t muster the courage to broach such an awkward topic. Either way, the longer they went without discussing it, the harder it became to bring it up at all.

They arrived at Riverwood sometime in the late afternoon, with the summer sun still high in the sky and the temperature a pleasant warm. Riverwood was a beautiful town, nestled in the heart of Whiterun’s great forests, but not so shrouded by trees that it wasn’t touched by sunlight. It was alive with activity as soon as they approached—children were playing in the cobbled streets, and the lumbermill rumbled away heard in the distance. The gentle roar of the White River flowing past was a constant but comforting presence.

They slowed to a stop. Mathyas glanced around.

“I suppose we just look for the inn,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll let us work in exchange for a room.”

They hadn’t really planned this far ahead—none of them had any money on them, and their arrangement with Jórunn had simply been that they’d take her as far as Riverwood.

“Could we not just tell them what happened?” asked Cassathra. “Surely they’d want to help us.”

Mathyas raised a brow. “‘Hello, we were attacked by a dragon, may we have a free room please?’” he said incredulously. Then he sighed, kicking a loose stone with the toe of his boot. “As far as we know, we’re the only survivors. We need to play it safe and assume people won’t believe us.”

“You’re right,” said Cassathra, shaking her head. “Sorry.”

The Sleeping Giant Inn was easy to find, being situated on the main road that ran through the town’s centre. Cassathra had lost track of which day of the week it was, but the inn was empty enough inside to suggest that it was a workday. Besides some elderly Nords talking quietly in the corner, they appeared to be the only patrons.

Mathyas approached the Breton woman behind the bar while the others lingered by the doorway. The lack of conversation made Cassathra feel awkward, but Raydrin and Jórunn both seemed content to remain silent, and it wasn’t like Cassathra could think of anything to say anyway. A few minutes passed before Mathyas returned.

“All right, she said we should speak to Gerdur at the lumbermill,” he said. “But we should hurry because it’s closing up soon. Er, Jórunn, you can wait here if you want.”

Jórunn shrugged. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “It’s nicer outside.”

The conversation was interrupted by the sound of the door opening behind them; they quickly stepped aside to allow whoever was entering to come past. Two Nords stepped in, both of them burly-looking blonde men. The first was holding the door open for the second, who was on crutches. They were chatting about something in Nordic.

The able-bodied Nord frowned slightly when he laid eyes on their group, halting in his conversation. But the Nord on crutches seemed surprised to see them—his blue eyes went wide, and a look of recognition crossed his face. Then he grinned.

“Jórunn!” he exclaimed.

Jórunn’s mouth fell open. “Ralof?”

The Nord—Ralof—hobbled over to them; Cassathra could see that his leg was in a cast.

“Jórunn, I thought you were dead!” he said. “I’m so relieved you made it out alive, by the Nine, I— I felt terrible! How did you make it out of there? What happened to your burns? Did these people help you? Sorry, I— gods, you must be so overwhelmed. I’m just so glad you’re here! May I hug you?”

Ralof was giddy with excitement. Once Jórunn appeared to have overcome her initial surprise, she smiled and nodded. “Yes."

Ralof pulled her into a bear hug, his crutches poking out to the side. Jórunn’s arms were pinned against her body but she awkwardly reciprocated as best as she was able, patting Ralof’s back with the little arm movement she had.

“I’m so sorry,” Ralof said as he pulled away. “I shouldn’t have left you, I— when I saw you got caught in the dragon fire I assumed you were done for.”

Jórunn smiled gently. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” she said. “If these people hadn’t found me, I would have been as good as done for. Cassathra here healed my burns.”

Ralof glanced between them and his eyes landed on her, presumably by process of elimination. Cassathra flushed with embarrassment.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing his head. His voice had taken a more serious tone; he turned to the others. “All of you.”

Mathyas nodded awkwardly.  

“How did you make it out?” asked Jórunn. “Were there any others?”

Ralof seemed hesitant, but eventually he spoke, his voice lowered. “Well, there are rumours that Ulfric survived,” he said, and then he shrugged, “but I do not know whether they are true. I- uh, escaped through the keep with a friend of mine. Someone I grew up with here in Riverwood. Turns out there is a network of caves under the keep and they opened up about a mile north of Helgen.”

“You can’t have got here long before we did,” observed Mathyas. Ralof nodded.

“It was last night, actually,” he said. “My friend had to carry me because of my leg, but he is built like a bear, that man. We barely stopped to rest.” He lifted his leg and tapped it with his crutch, grinning. “Town healer got me fixed up and I will be reporting back to Windhelm before you know it.”

Mathyas inclined his head towards the other Nord that had come in with him. “Is this your friend?” he asked.

Ralof burst out laughing; his companion glowered. “Hod?!” he cried, throwing his head back. “Of course not, this grumpy old bastard is my brother-in-law. Come, I insist that you stay with us tonight. We have food and drink and we will take good care of you—you all deserve the rest.”

“Are you sure?” asked Mathyas, flustered. He was clearly uncomfortable about the thought of accepting aid from strangers. “I mean, that’s terribly kind of you, but—”

Ralof waved a hand at him. “Of course I’m sure. If you survived Helgen too, as far as I’m concerned we are comrades now. We need to stick together.”

With that, he turned and started making his way back towards the door. Hod reluctantly moved to open it for him. Ralof sauntered out—as well as one can saunter on crutches—talking avidly about his sister’s fish pie, and the others followed. Mathyas awkwardly bowed his head as he passed Hod, muttering a thank you; Hod nodded back, but his features seemed to be stuck in a permanent frown.

Ralof led them through the town and up a steep hill until eventually they arrived at his sister’s house. It was a squat, stone building with a thatched roof and a small vegetable garden out front, and in the garden a young boy was playing fetch with a shaggy, grey dog. The dog bounded over to them when it saw them approaching, jumping up at Ralof and whining excitedly.

Ralof laughed, staggering backwards slightly under the dog’s weight. “Whoa, there, Stump, easy,” he said, scratching behind the dog’s ears. Eventually he got Stump to settle down and the dog landed on all fours, though it continued to linger around Ralof’s feet as they headed towards the house, wagging its tail all the way.

“He misses me while I’m gone,” Ralof explained affectionately. The boy, a small blonde child, was staring at the group from the doorway of the house; Hod jogged a little ahead of the others so that he could usher the boy inside with a large hand on his shoulders. Cassathra, who was distracted by the dog, wasn’t able to hear what they were saying.

“Gerdur?” Ralof called as they headed inside. “I’ve brought guests.”

It was dark inside their home, with very little natural light. Cassathra blinked in wonder as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, doing her best to soak up the foreignness of it all. This was the first Nordic home she had ever stepped inside and she found herself overwhelmed with the urge to investigate and learn all that she could.

A woman she presumed to be Gerdur was standing by a stone hearth situated directly in front of the doorway. She turned to face them as Cassathra gently shut the door. The boy ran into his mother’s arms, whispering something to her before he turned around to face them himself. She laid her hands on his shoulders.

“Ralof?” she said, “who are these people?”

The boy was staring at them suspiciously.

“Fellow survivors from Helgen,” Ralof explained. “This is Jórunn, the woman I was telling you about,” he gestured to her with a crutch, “and these are… my apologies, I just realized I never asked for your names.”

There was a beat of silence. Mathyas cleared his throat. “My name is Mathyas," he said stiffly. "These are my cousins Raydrin, and Cassathra." He bowed his head. “Thank you for allowing us into your home.”

Gerdur looked slightly uneasy still, but she nodded back. “Well, any friend of Ralof’s is a friend of ours,” she said. Her husband took a seat at a wooden table to the right of the entrance, pouring himself a drink from a tall jug. “I’ll pull up some more chairs and we can all sit down.”

Gerdur provided them with food and drink and they talked about what had happened. Mathyas explained how they were able to make it out in one piece, how they’d found Jórunn afterwards when looking for survivors. Jórunn took over to describe how Cassathra had healed her burns, and Cassathra felt her cheeks grow hot when Raydrin piped in to add that she’d only learned the spell a week earlier. It was the most he’d spoken in days, but he said it with pride.

“You must be a very talented mage,” said Gerdur.

“Not really,” said Cassathra, flustered, “I- I haven’t had any formal training, yet. That’s actually why we were in Helgen to begin with—we were heading into Cyrodiil so that I could apply to study at the Arcane University.”

Gerdur raised a brow. “Didn’t you say you were from Blacklight? I would have thought the College of Winterhold would be a more convenient choice.”

“Yes, well…” Cassathra trailed off, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly. In truth, she had ruled out Winterhold because of its proximity to Blacklight; if her parents had somehow worked out where she was heading, it would have been a lot easier for them to catch up to her and bring her back. The Imperial City was the least obvious choice, and for that reason, it had been the best.

But things had changed, now. It was clear that no-one in House Redoran besides Raydrin and Mathyas knew of her whereabouts, and there was no risk of her being dragged back. And with Raydrin in his current state, maybe it would be better if she was living closer by…

“The College of Winterhold allows necromancy. I wanted to study somewhere more in line with my values,” she said. It wasn't exactly a lie; Cassathra did hate necromancy, and had no interest in studying it. But it wasn't a deciding factor in determining where she would choose to study.

“I think that sounds very responsible,” said Gerdur, nodding. “Necromancy is an evil practice. And those mages up in Winterhold certainly don’t need any encouragement.”

The conversation came to a natural close. When the silence started to verge on awkward, Ralof cleared his throat.

“Well, friends,” he said, “I imagine you’ll want to clean up before dinner. The river is warm enough to bathe in this time of year, and Hod can show you where. I am sure we have some spare clothes you can borrow. We can wash what you’re wearing now in the meantime.”

Hod grunted and Gerdur rolled her eyes. “Don’t you mean ‘I’ll’ wash what they’re wearing? Or do you plan to help me?”

Ralof grinned, lifting his injured leg. “I would love to, kæra systir, but I’ll just have to stay behind and make sure the pie does not burn.”

Gerdur tutted. Then she turned to the others. “Well, if you lot hurry along now, I can start making it. Frodnar, Þú getur hjálpað mér með grænmetið.”

Frodnar, who’d been boredly playing with some toys in the corner, sighed. “Já, mamma,” he said, reluctantly getting to his feet. Cassathra figured he’d been asked to help.

Hod stood up from his chair, beckoning silently for them to follow. They agreed that Mathyas and Raydrin would go first and Cassathra and Jórunn would follow after. Cassathra didn’t mind having to wait—she felt as if she’d been moving, thinking, non-stop since leaving Helgen, and it was nice to just sit back and enjoy the domesticity of Gerdur’s home. She leaned back in her chair and let the sounds of cooking and Ralof’s childhood stories wash over her.

 

---

 

The sun was just starting to set when she and Jórunn made it down to the river, and the surface of the water looked golden in the evening light. Hod led them to a secluded pool, shrouded by pine trees, and muttered something about dinner being ready in half an hour before stalking off. When they were sure he was gone, they started to undress.

“Do you want to go first or do you mind if we go together?” asked Cassathra. She had the advantage of her companion being blind, but she wanted to ensure Jórunn was comfortable, too.

“No,” said Jórunn, pulling one of Gerdur’s tunics over her head and laying it on the rock beside her, “I don’t mind.”

Cassathra blushed and turned away. Jórunn was a beautiful woman, though her features were stern; she had a strong jaw, high, sculpted cheekbones, and dark, solemn eyebrows. Cassathra focused on undressing herself and resisted the temptation to cast glances over at the Nord, and though she knew Jórunn couldn’t see her, she found herself self-consciously sliding into the water’s protective depths as soon as she was able.

“Fuck, this is cold,” she said, inhaling sharply through her teeth. Jórunn chuckled slightly from where she was sitting on her rock, her knees drawn up to her chest.

“Is it deep enough to jump from here?” she asked.

Cassathra swam over to her, relieved to have the excuse to move her body—she felt like her muscles would completely seize up if she didn’t.

“I think so,” she said, treading water. “I can’t stand, anyway.”

Jórunn pinched her nose, squeezed her eyes shut, and lowered herself into the water with a splash. When she emerged she threw her head back and pushed her dark hair away from her face, rubbing the water from her eyes.

“You must be short,” she said, very matter-of-factly. Cassathra realized with embarrassment that Jórunn was able to stand fully and still have her shoulders above the water—and also that it hadn’t occurred to Cassathra that Jórunn would have had no way of telling her height.

Cassathra huffed, swimming back to shallower waters.

“How old are you?” she asked out of pure curiosity.

“I’m four-and-twenty,” answered Jórunn. “Could you pass me the soap?”

Cassathra picked up the soap from where they had left it on the riverbank and placed it into Jórunn’s outstretched hand. The Nord started rubbing it up and down her bare arms.

“How old are you?” asked Jórunn in kind.

“Nineteen,” said Cassathra.

“And Raydrin and Mathyas?”

“Um,” said Cassathra, thinking it over for a moment, “Raydrin is fifty, and Mathyas is nine-and-fifty.”

“Wow,” said Jórunn. She broke off some of the soap, placed the rest of the bar on the rock, and worked it into a lather. “I hadn’t realized they were that old," she said, beginning to comb it through her hair. 

“They aren’t, really,” said Cassathra, picking up the soap from where Jórunn had left it and doing the same. “Or at least not for elves. They don’t really look any older than you.”

“It’s not about physical aging,” said Jórunn. “It’s about experience. They’ve a lot more life behind them than you or me.”

Cassathra shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t tell the difference between a thirty-year-old human and a ninety-year-old elf.” She slipped underwater to rinse the soap from her hair, then returned the bar to the riverbank. “I think when you know you have more time, you don’t feel the need to mature so quickly.”

“Maybe,” said Jórunn. The conversation came to a natural stop, and both women went silently about their separate routines.

Jórunn spoke again after a few minutes. Cassathra was surprised—it was the most she’d managed to get out of the Nord since they’d met.

“I can see why they mother you so much, now.”

“What do you mean?”

Jórunn inclined her head. “Not letting you travel by yourself, insisting they escort you to Bruma... at first it made no sense to me, but I hadn’t realized there was such a big age gap between you.”

Cassathra frowned. She opened and closed her mouth as she debated whether or not to expand upon Jórunn’s theory, but eventually she decided it wouldn’t cause any harm. “It’s not just the age gap,” she started, sighing. “Raydrin used to have another sister, a twin. But she died a few years before I was born. I think it makes him more protective.”

“Oh,” said Jórunn. She was silent for a few moments. “I was actually thinking more of Mathyas, to be honest. Raydrin seems quite… quiet.”

“He isn’t usually,” said Cassathra. “Or at least, he normally has more to say. He, um… he’s recovering from an illness.”

“Ah. I see.”

Cassathra paused. “But I suppose Mathyas has been a bit weird these past few days… I don’t know. Maybe he feels he has to overcompensate on Raydrin’s behalf.”

Jórunn nodded. “If you’re done, we should head back."

“I’m done,” said Cassathra. She was surprised by Jórunn’s abruptness; she was clearly a woman of few words. They clambered to the riverbank, dried themselves off, dressed, and set off on the walk back to Gerdur’s house.

 

---

 

When they arrived, they found Mathyas sitting at the table with Ralof and Gerdur, the three of them deep in conversation. Hod was tending to the pots on the stove, and Raydrin was sitting a little way away with Frodnar, watching the boy as he played with his toys and patiently answering his barrage of questions about life in Morrowind. Stump, the dog, was sleeping by the fire. The whole scene made Cassathra feel warm.

Ralof grinned at them as he heard them enter and beckoned them over. Cassathra led Jórunn to the table so that the two of them could take their seats.

“—repay you,” Mathyas was saying. “Delphine mentioned something about taking on work down at the lumbermill?”

Ralof and Gerdur shared a glance.

“Well,” said Ralof, “there is actually something else you could do for us.”

“Now that we know of more survivors, we have a more convincing case to take to the Jarl,” explained Gerdur. “He needs to know that there’s a dragon on the loose—Riverwood is defenceless and we need whatever troops he can spare. With my word, and Alvor’s, he should take the request seriously enough to respond.”

“Problem is, Gerdur can’t leave the mill,” Ralof said. “And with my leg, I won’t be able to travel to Whiterun any time soon.”

“We were wondering,” Gerdur continued, “since you said you lived in Blacklight, whether you’d be able to stop off at Whiterun on your way back and seek an audience with the Jarl. On our behalf.”

The table fell silent as the weight of their request sank in, and Cassathra was staring intently at Mathyas as she awaited his response. Her cousin was silent for a few moments, rubbing his freshly-shaven jaw. “What about your friend?” he eventually asked, directing the question to Ralof. “The one who helped you back from Helgen?”

A bitter expression fell over Ralof’s face; he frowned, and then sighed. “He—” he started, faltering slightly, “Hadvar, is with the Legion. He left to report to Solitude this morning.” He lowered his gaze. Cassathra could see his hand on the table clench into a fist. “Bastard couldn’t even take a detour,” he muttered under his breath.

“Alvor is Hadvar’s uncle,” said Gerdur. “He and I have our differences, but we agree that something needs to be done about this. The Jarl knows us and our word carries weight. With the four of you being witnesses as well, persuading him should be easy.”

She leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the table. “Will you do this for us?” she said. “Please?”

Mathyas was shaking his head. “I- I’m not sure we can,” he said. “We still need to get Cassathra into Cyrodiil and I’m not comfortable letting her go there by herself. Especially now. We won’t be going anywhere near Whiterun for weeks.”

Cassathra’s heart was racing—but her decision was made. She spoke up.

“Actually, Mathyas,” she said, tapping her finger nervously against the table, “I don’t think I want to go to Cyrodiil anymore.”

Mathyas’ head shot up. “What?”

“I was thinking about what Gerdur said, and—well, maybe the College of Winterhold would be a better fit for me, after all.”

Everyone was silent. Gerdur and Ralof were both staring at her with raised brows.

Mathyas pointedly cleared his throat. “What about the necromancy?”

“It’s not like I have to study it if I go there,” said Cassathra, for Gerdur’s sake. “And I think it’s quite important right now that I stay close to home.”

As she spoke, she inclined her head sideways in the direction of Raydrin, who was completely oblivious to their conversation. She was hoping to convey her meaning to Mathyas without needing to spell it out for him, but Mathyas, thankfully, followed her gaze. A look of realization settled on his features, and he sat back in his chair, his body relaxed.

“Well, if you’re certain,” he said, though he still sounded somewhat uneasy. “I suppose that takes us through Whiterun.”

Gerdur sighed with relief. “Oh, Mara’s mercy,” she said, “I’m so glad that’s settled. Really, you are doing Riverwood an incredible service—we can give you everything you’ll need for the journey…”

As Gerdur started excitedly making plans and talking about the letter she’d written with Alvor for them to take to the Jarl, Mathyas caught Cassathra’s gaze over the table and mouthed, are you sure? in Dunmeris. Cassathra nodded. The Arcane University had always been a fairly arbitrary choice anyway, and she felt in her heart that this was the right thing to do. Mathyas gave a slight nod of his head and let it drop.

Gerdur paused briefly in her ramblings and Jórunn took advantage of the break in conversation to interject.

“Um, would it be alright if I accompanied you?” she asked. “I- I have relatives in Whiterun,” she explained. “It’s where I was originally heading anyway.”

Mathyas looked uncertain for a moment, but then he shrugged. “Yes, of course."

Jórunn nodded, murmuring a ‘thank you’ under her breath, but the way her whole body relaxed—as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders—suggested she was more relieved than she’d let on.

It was then that Hod announced dinner to be ready, and Frodnar bounded excitedly over to the table, Raydrin following close behind him with an amused expression on his face. The conversation shifted to something more mundane, and the atmosphere was jovial as Hod began laying out each dish. Raydrin met Cassathra’s gaze over the table and smiled. She smiled back. For tonight, at least, everyone was safe and well. 

Notes:

when Gerdur speaks in Nordic, she is asking Frodnar to help her prepare the vegetables. I chose modern Icelandic as my substitute for Nordic, because apparently out of all the Scandinavian languages it is the one that is closest to old norse—in fact they’re around 70% mutually intelligible! (i say ‘mutually’ like there are Vikings out there trying to understand modern Icelandic… anyway). Just a very cool fact 🙌

my headcanon is that skyrim is a little bit like modern day wales when it comes to language—pretty much everyone speaks common/Cyrodilic, and most people speak it as their first language, but a significant proportion of the population will speak Nordic as well. Cyrodilic tends to be the language spoken in larger settlements and the hold capitals, but in smaller, rural settlements like riverwood, Nordic is more common. it tends to be the preferred language more in eastern skyrim, and among Stormcloak sympathisers like ralof’s family.

i hope you enjoyed reading!! big thank you to my beta readers haley and diana. <3

Chapter 6: Jarl of Whiterun

Whiterun, Skyrim, 23rd Last Seed

“Checkmate,” said Sanjir with a smirk, flicking Leorn’s rook off the board so that it clattered onto the table alongside his large collection of Leorn’s other pieces. The king was exposed and Sanjir had won.

The Nord sitting across from him scowled, dragging a hand down his face. “I can’t believe you beat me again,” he muttered, staring at the board as if that would somehow undo the last few moves of the game.

Sanjir chuckled, and started refilling his plate from the rich selection of bread, cheese and fruit that had been laid out for lunch.  

“You’ll get there one day,” he said as bit down into a grape, leaning over to sympathetically pat Leorn’s shoulder. Leorn sighed and began sadly putting the pieces away.

The doors opened and a cold gust of wind blew into the room, causing the fire in the centre to dim and flicker slightly. Sanjir looked up to see who had entered, and saw Aela descending the steps towards their table. Wet strands of her red hair were plastered to her forehead and her warpaint was more smeared than normal. Her metal pauldrons, slick with rainwater, glistened in the firelight.

“All right,” she called out, “I need two volunteers.”

Leorn lowered his head and Sanjir picked up the chess board to hide his face.

“If we don’t move, maybe she won’t see us,” he whispered. Leorn snorted. They heard heavy footsteps approaching, followed by Aela pointedly clearing her throat, and reluctantly Sanjir lowered the chess board back down to the table.

“You two don’t look busy.”

Sanjir gestured to their plates. “We’re having lunch."

The rain was beating down hard on Jorrvaskr’s roof and Sanjir’s muscles still ached from his last contract; he’d only returned from it yesterday. Jorrvaskr was warm, and cosy, and he really didn’t want to do whatever Aela was about to ask them to do. “Is there no-one else you can ask?”

Aela rolled her eyes. “It’s a time-sensitive issue,” she said. “A giant’s got into Pelagia’s crops again.”

Sanjir groaned. “That man needs to build higher walls."

“Take it up with him,” she retorted. “Come on. Gear up and we’ll set off.”

Sighing, Sanjir and Leorn got to their feet and headed towards Jorrvaskr’s armoury. They dressed in silence, Leorn picked up his battleaxe and Sanjir his scimitars, then they returned to the main hall to meet Aela by the doorway.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Let’s get this over with,” said Sanjir. His plate of bread and cheese would be waiting for him when he got back.

It was a miserable day in Whiterun; it had been raining all morning, and the heavy sheet of dark clouds above them trapped in the heat from the previous day, creating a particularly uncomfortable humidity. The streets were mostly empty as the three of them headed down towards Whiterun’s main gates, with most citizens opting—in Sanjir’s opinion rather sensibly—to remain indoors. He was drenched instantly, the cold rain on his skin making him shiver despite the heat. Damn Severio Pelagia and his giants.

When the three of them reached Whiterun’s gates they found them shut, which had been the case ever since news of the dragon attack at Helgen had reached the city. The guards recognized them as they approached and opened the gates without any fuss.

Beyond the gates, a long queue of travellers had gathered on the road, all seeking admittance into the city walls. Most of them appeared to be merchants or traders, but two groups in particular caught Sanjir’s eye; three somewhat bedraggled-looking Dark Elves were at the front of the queue, negotiating with the guards as Sanjir passed, and behind them was—strangely—what looked like a pair of Alik’r warriors. It had been many years since Sanjir had laid eyes on the nomads of the Alik’r, and to see two of them in Skyrim of all places was a little disconcerting.

“—we need to speak to the Jarl,” Sanjir heard one of the Dark Elves saying. “We were at Helgen, we have valuable information about the dragon attack—”

“Of course you were,” replied one of the guards, “and Talos was my great-grandfather. Please step aside so we can see to people who actually have business entering our city.”

Sanjir couldn’t help himself—he jogged back up the hill a little and said, “What’s this about Helgen?”

The Dark Elf stared at him, brows raised. He was a fairly young-looking Mer, tall and lean, with a clean-shaven face and floppy, raven black hair slicked back with rainwater. His red eyes were piercing as he looked Sanjir up and down.

“Don’t bother yourself with them, Companion,” said the guard. “This is the third group claiming to be ‘Helgen survivors’ we’ve had today.”

The Dark Elf was seething. “We are Helgen survivors,” he said.

“Look,” said another one of the Dark Elves, a shorter, plumpish young woman with curly white hair, “we have a letter from Gerdur and Alvor, of Riverwood. We’re here on their behalf.”

“I’ve never heard of them,” said the guard. “Now leave, or I’ll make you leave. This is your last warning.”

Suddenly Sanjir heard Aela speak from somewhere behind him; she and Leorn must have come up to join him after realizing he was no longer following them. “We know Gerdur,” the Huntress said, pointedly. “The wood from her lumbermill built most of the homes in this city.”

Both the guard and the Dark Elves were silent. Aela stepped forwards. “May I see the letter?”

The tall Dark Elf glanced at her suspiciously. “Who are you?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m a Companion,” she said. “If you’re nice enough, I can get you an audience with the Jarl.”

The girl dug around in her satchel and produced a roll of parchment, the wax seal still unbroken. Aela took it from her and opened it without hesitation, covering it with her hand to shield it from the rain. She took a few moments to read it over, then handed it back to the elf.

“They need to see the Jarl,” she told the guard, inclining her head towards the gate. “Let them in.”

“I- I’m afraid I can’t do that, Companion,” the guard said nervously. “I’m under strict orders not to let in any visitors without supervision.”

“Then supervise them,” said Aela.

“We’re stretched thin as it is,” said the guard, pointing down the road; other guards were engaged in a similar questioning process with the rest of the people in the queue. The Alik’r warriors appeared to be having the same difficulties as the Dark Elves. “Our orders are to focus on vetting merchant caravans to ensure that essential goods are still entering the city,” the guard went on. “We don’t have the resources for—” he gestured vaguely to the Dark Elves, “—folks like these.”

“I could escort them,” said Sanjir. It beat trudging over to Pelagia Farm in the rain.

Aela frowned at him. “That won’t do; we’ll be too few in numbers to fight the giant. And we’ve already wasted too much time to head back to Jorrvaskr.”

There was a beat of silence, then the third Dark Elf stepped forward—another man, slightly shorter than the other and a little scruffier, but with the same sharp features and dark hair. “If you’re under-manned, I could take his place,” he said, inclining his head towards Sanjir.

Aela pursed her lips. Then she gestured with her elbow towards the sword at the Dark Elf’s hip. “You know how to use that thing?”

The Dark Elf shrugged. “Well enough to fight a giant.”

Aela considered it for a few moments before nodding. “Very well. The Dark Elf comes with us. Sanjir, you take the others to Dragonsreach.”

The guard balked. “Companion,” he started, “a-are you quite sure—”

“Part of our job is to keep the people of Whiterun safe,” said Aela, “and right now that means giving these people an audience with the Jarl. If you aren’t going to do that, we damn well will.”

The guard hesitated for a few moments. At last he sighed. “Fine,” he said, turning to Sanjir; “take them through the side gate, I don’t want the rest of this rabble getting jealous.”

Sanjir nodded his understanding and the two Dark Elves he’d be accompanying stepped forward. “Thank you for doing this,” said the girl, bowing. It was then that Sanjir realized there was a fourth person with them, a Nord woman—though he’d seen her standing there, he hadn’t realized they were part of the same group. The tall Dark Elf said something quietly to the Nord, close to her ear, and she took his arm. Judging from the makeshift cane she was holding in her other hand, Sanjir realized then that the woman was blind.

He said nothing about the odd combination and instead grinned at the Dark Elf girl who’d bowed. “You’re welcome!” he said cheerfully. “I should really be the one thanking you for getting me off-duty.”

Aela pulled the other Dark Elf to the side and was briefing him about the contract. Leorn brushed Sanjir’s shoulder as he walked past.

“Lucky bastard,” he muttered into Sanjir’s ear, making him chuckle.  

“I’ll see you back at Jorrvaskr for a rematch,” Sanjir replied, clasping his hand.

“Leorn!” Aela called, and the Nord jogged away to catch up with her and the Dark Elf; the three of them broke off into a run down the road, clearly wanting to make up for lost time.

Once they’d gone, Sanjir turned to the others and clapped his hands together. “Alright then," he said, “I’m Sanjir. Er, Dragonsreach is a bit of a trek from here, so if you’re ready, we should get going.”

They nodded. Sanjir led them up the hill—not to the main gates, but to the entrance of one of the guard towers that were situated on either side. The guard who’d been questioning them waved at the one by the door to indicate that they were allowed through, and the door was opened for them with a curt nod.

“Companion,” the guard said, acknowledging Sanjir as they passed. Sanjir bowed his head in thanks and led the group through the stone walls of the tower until they came out on the other side to the streets of Whiterun.

He thought about asking them a few questions as they walked, but they didn’t appear to be in the mood for talking. It was understandable; their ordeal with the guard must have been frustrating, and Sanjir imagined they’d likely been travelling in the rain all morning. He was desperate to find out more about Helgen—whether they really had been there and whether they’d seen the dragon—but he figured it wasn’t the best idea to interrogate them about what was most likely a traumatic experience.

They walked in silence, save for the occasional murmured exchange between the Dark Elves in what Sanjir presumed was Dunmeris. After a few minutes of walking, the Dark Elf girl cleared her throat.

“Um, what was it the guards said you were? A ‘Companion’?”

Sanjir slowed down slightly to fall in line with them. “Not from Skyrim, I take it?” he asked, smiling. She shook her head.

“I suppose you could compare the Companions to the Fighters Guild,” he explained. “We perform a similar function, but our numbers are fewer and it’s a little more… selective. The name comes from the Five Hundred Companions of Ysgramor.”

The male Dark Elf raised a brow. “‘Ysgramor’, as in Ysgramor who brought about the genocide of the Snow Elves?”

Sanjir grimaced. “Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “But the organisation has undergone a fair amount of modernisation since then.” He gestured to himself. “As you can see, it’s not quite as Nord-supremacist as it was.”

The Dark Elf didn’t seem convinced, but said nothing more. The girl spoke up again. “What made a Redguard want to join their ranks?”

Sanjir thought for a moment. “Something interesting to do, I suppose,” he said. “I didn’t really know anything about them before coming to Skyrim. But I was travelling a few years ago, and they were recruiting, and Whiterun seemed like a pleasant place to settle down for a while so I ended up staying.” He turned his attention back to the road. “I’ll probably leave and go back to Hammerfell in a few years. Or maybe somewhere new.”

She nodded; the conversation drifted to a close. They walked for a few minutes more before Sanjir spoke again.

“What are your names?” he asked.

“I’m Cassathra,” said the girl. “This is Mathyas, and Jórunn.”

The Nord woman, who so far had been completely silent, gave a short smile.

“What brings Dark Elves from Morrowind into Skyrim?” he asked. He didn’t want to name Helgen directly, but was hoping that his question would be vague enough that they’d share whatever information they felt comfortable sharing.

“We were passing through on our way to Cyrodiil,” said Cassathra, but she left it there. Sanjir could think of shorter routes from Morrowind into Cyrodiil, but he figured they were probably from the northern part of the country. He didn’t inquire about Jórunn, or the purpose of their journey.

The rest of the walk was spent in a semi-awkward silence, until at last—after about twenty minutes or so—they made it to Dragonsreach. Sanjir allowed them to pause when they reached the top of the hill and regain their breath from the steep climb. Mathyas and Cassathra took a moment to turn around and gaze at the view—it was a pity that the weather was so bad, but even on a grey day such as this, the plains of Whiterun and the great sprawl of the city below were still an impressive sight.

Once they’d got their bearings, Sanjir cleared his throat. “I should probably come in with you,” he said, “if that’s all right. It’s not anything confidential, is it?”

“I suppose not,” said Mathyas with a sigh. “Your higher-up already read the letter, anyway.”

Sanjir sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, if you’re ready, we should go in. I want to get out of this rain.”

They nodded and followed him over the bridge to Dragonsreach’s main entrance. The guards glanced at each other as they approached. One of them stepped forward.

“Companion,” she said, “state your business. The Jarl isn’t receiving visitors at this moment.”

“They bring an important message from Riverwood,” said Sanjir. “Aela of the Companions sanctioned their admittance into the city for the purpose of seeing the Jarl.”

The guard hesitated for a moment before stepping to one side, opening the door for them. Sanjir bowed in thanks as they passed.

It was a relief to be indoors; the interior of Dragonsreach was warm and gave them a chance to dry off from the rain. He led them up the steps towards the upper level of Dragonreach’s great hall and gestured to them to stop as they approached the fire pit, as the Jarl was mid-discussion with his steward and Sanjir didn’t want to interrupt. They were too far away for their conversation to be heard.

After a few moments, Irileth noticed the new arrivals and stalked over to where they were standing.

“Companion,” she said. “What is the meaning of this interruption? Jarl Balgruuf is not receiving visitors.”

Sanjir bowed. “These are travellers, ma’am, come with news from Helgen. They seek an audience with the Jarl.”

Cassathra cleared her throat and stepped forward, producing the letter from her satchel. “We have a letter from Gerdur and Alvor of Riverwood,” she said. “We’re here on their behalf.”

Irileth took the letter from her hands and read it over. She frowned, reading it several times before making up her mind, then she sighed and thrust the letter back into Cassathra’s chest.

“Very well,” she said. “The Jarl will want to speak with you personally. Wait here.”

Cassathra nodded meagrely. Irileth returned to the throne, waiting a few moments for the Steward to finish what he was saying and then bowing before the Jarl. A few words were spoken between them and then she turned back to Sanjir and the others, beckoning for them to come forwards. Sanjir hung back with Jórunn, letting Cassathra and Mathyas approach the throne by themselves.

They both took a knee and Jarl Balgruuf waved a hand at them, indicating for them to stand. Sanjir was once again too far away to hear what was being said, but he could see Cassathra present the letter to the Jarl, and the worried expression on his face as he read it over. The steward ended up joining the discussion, and though Sanjir was unable to make out individual words he could tell that the conversation was getting heated.

He turned to Jórunn and cleared his throat.

“So, Jórunn,” he said, “is this your first time in Whiterun?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

He waited for a second in case she decided to elaborate, but evidently she’d said all she wanted to say. He shifted uncomfortably, deciding not to press any further.

After a few minutes of conversing with the Jarl, the steward suddenly skulked off. Sanjir raised his head to try and see if there’d been any developments. The Jarl stood from his throne, approached Mathyas and Cassathra, and shook their hands in turn. Sanjir was expecting them to then head back over to him, but to his surprise the Jarl started leading them in the direction of his court wizard’s lab. Mathyas and Cassathra shared a glance as they followed. Sanjir frowned.

“What’s going on?” Jórunn asked quietly.

Sanjir watched with furrowed brows as they disappeared into Farengar’s lab, wondering if there was any way he could try and get a closer look.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “The Jarl just took them to see his Court Wizard.”

Jórunn raised her brows in surprise. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

“No, I can’t imagine it was,” he murmured.

Nothing happened for some time—after several minutes had passed with no sign of them being finished any time soon, Sanjir got fed up of standing and took a seat at the top of the stairs. Jórunn sank down beside him, resting her chin glumly in one hand.

Eventually Sanjir heard voices behind him and looked over his shoulder to see the Jarl and the two Dark Elves emerge from Farengar’s lab. Jarl Balgruuf was met by Irileth and the pair of them headed off together towards the room behind the great hall. Mathyas and Cassathra did not follow; instead they started coming back towards Sanjir and Jórunn, who both got to their feet expectantly. As they came closer, Sanjir realized they were arguing about something.

“Everything alright?” asked Jórunn as they came within talking distance.

Mathyas finished his sentence with an irritated flourish, and then sighed, throwing his hands up. Cassathra rolled her eyes at him, muttering something under her breath.

“Everything’s fine,” she said, switching to Cyrodilic. “The Jarl agreed to send troops to Riverwood.”

“He also—” started Mathyas, but Cassathra cut him off.

“We’ll tell you about it later, Jórunn,” she said curtly. Then she turned to Sanjir; “Um, do you know of any good inns for people on a budget?” she asked. “The Jarl’s given us permission to stay inside the city.”

He thought for a moment. “The Bannered Mare is probably the best value,” he said. “It’s in the same part of the city I’m heading, so I can take you there, if you’d like.”

She nodded. “That would be helpful, thank you."

Mathyas and Jórunn both seemed to assent—judging by their silence—so with an awkward clearing of his throat, Sanjir took the initiative. “Shall we get going, then?”

There was some muttered agreement. They set off down the steps of Dragonsreach.

 

---

 

It was the middle of the afternoon before Raydrin and the Companions made it back to Whiterun. The weather hadn’t improved at all, and Raydrin was thoroughly drenched, tired, and looking forward to drying off in a warm, cosy inn.

Aela and Leorn led him back to the headquarters of their organisation, a mead hall they called Jorrvaskr. They hadn’t really spoken much outside of discussing their strategy, as Aela and Leorn both seemed quite taciturn, but Raydrin had at least managed to glean that the ‘Companions’ were a fairly prestigious group of swords-for-hire. Every guard they passed seemed to recognize them, and they couldn’t go anywhere without receiving a bow and a reverent, ‘Companions.’

Whiterun was a pretty city, and homely. Its buildings—made from wood—were sturdy and squat, but adorned with ornate carvings and subtle architectural flourishes that leant the town a graceful air. The weather was keeping most people indoors, but as they passed through a deserted marketplace, filled with empty stalls, it was easy to imagine the streets alive with activity on a sunnier day.

Jorrvaskr was in the city centre, close to the top of the hill on which Dragonsreach had been built. It was an odd-looking building, long and flat, but with a great domed roof that looked almost like an upturned ship. Raydrin pointed at it as they climbed the stone steps up to Jorrvaskr’s entrance.

“That’s not a boat, is it?” he asked.

“It is,” said Leorn.

Raydrin blinked in surprise. He wondered vaguely how and why whoever built it had gone to the effort of dragging a boat this far inland, but he didn’t ask.

They emerged into a large hall, lined with thick wooden pillars and canopied by a complicated mass of overhead beams—presumably they were necessary to support the weight of the boat-roof. The inner part of the room was slightly sunken, with a square fire pit in the centre and three long wooden tables arranged around it. The Redguard from earlier—Sanjir—was sitting at one of them, the flames in front of him casting dark shadows on his warm brown skin. He was young, with a tall, narrow face, a long, sloping nose, and high cheekbones. His features were delicately framed by curls of glossy black hair.

He grinned at them when he saw them come in, raising his hand in a wave. “Hey!” he called. “How was the giant-slaying?”

“Fine,” said Leorn, walking around the circle of tables and taking a seat beside him, “no thanks to you.”

Raydrin suddenly felt Aela clap him on the shoulder, with enough force to knock some of the air out of his lungs. “Our friend here fought very well,” she said, and in his periphery he saw a sly smile on her lips as she came to stand at his side. His cheeks grew hot.

“See?” said Sanjir, “I wasn’t needed.” Then he turned his head to look at Raydrin. “By the way,” he said, “your friends are staying in the Bannered Mare. It’s about a five-minute walk south from here.”

Raydrin nodded. “Thanks."

Sanjir smiled. “Now,” he turned back to Leorn, “I think it’s time for our next match.” Raydrin noticed then that a chess board had been set up on the table.

Leorn was chewing on some bread, but gulped it down in response to Sanjir's challenge. “Shor’s blood, Sanjir, at least let me dry off first."

Raydrin watched as they descended into bickering, waiting awkwardly for a suitable opening in the conversation so that he could take his leave. But Aela thankfully cleared her throat beside him before he needed to.

“You did fight well today,” she told him, quieter than before. “You know, the Companions are currently looking for new recruits. I think you’d make for a decent Shield-Brother.”

He smiled awkwardly. “Ah, thank you,” he said, “I’m flattered. But I’m not really sure it’s for me.”

Aela shrugged. “Suit yourself. The offer’s there if you change your mind.”

He nodded, unsure of what to say in response. After a beat of silence, she spoke again. “If you wanted to come and drink with us tonight anyway, you’d be more than welcome,” she said. “Jorrvaskr’s doors are always open to skilled warriors such as yourself.”

The way she spoke implied there was slightly more to her invitation than she’d said out loud. A familiar tingling feeling settled in Raydrin’s abdomen. “Thanks,” he replied, smiling slightly, “I’ll think about it.”

Aela smirked. Her gaze dropped ever so briefly down to his lips before returning to his eyes, making sure there could be no doubt as to the precise nature of her offer. “Good,” she said. “Hope to see you there.”

With a polite bow and an awkwardly mumbled farewell, Raydrin turned and left the way he’d come in. The wet weather made for a bitter contrast to Jorrvaskr’s warm, dry interior, but Raydrin appreciated the cool air on his flushed cheeks. And the Bannered Mare wasn’t far.

He found the place easily, as he remembered passing it on their way up. It was mostly empty inside, which he figured was probably down to the early hour of the day, and he quickly spotted Mathyas, Cassathra and Jórunn sitting at a table in the corner.

He waved at them. Cassathra’s back was to him, but Mathyas noticed him and nodded his head in acknowledgement as he approached.

“How’d it go?” Raydrin asked, sinking onto the seat beside Cassathra.

Mathyas clicked his tongue. “About as well as everything else has gone,” he said.

Raydrin glanced between them. “Meaning…?”

“It went fine,” said Cassathra, shooting her cousin a look. “The Jarl agreed to send troops to Riverwood and he didn’t even take any persuading. But he asked us for another favour and for some reason Mathyas is unhappy about it.”

“I just don’t see why he had to ask us,” explained Mathyas. “You can barely go through one town in this country without being asked by someone for some favour.”

Raydrin was confused. “I mean, it’s just a favour, right?” he said. As he spoke, one of the barmaids came over to their table, a pretty Redguard woman.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked, directing her question to him.

“Uh, I’ll just have whatever they're having,” he said, gesturing to the other drinks on the table. She nodded and headed back towards the bar. Raydrin went on. “If he only asked you for a favour it’s not like we have to do it.”

“Well,” said Cassathra, “there is a reward…”

“—which we don’t need,” Mathyas interjected. “Winterhold is only ten days away. If we avoid staying in inns we’ll have enough to last us the journey.”

Cassathra huffed. “It’s cold up there, Mathyas,” she said, exasperated. It sounded as if they’d had this discussion several times before. “And you and Raydrin still need enough money to return to Blacklight.”

Mathyas opened his mouth to reply but Raydrin cut him off before he could speak. “What exactly does this favour actually involve?” he asked.

Cassathra sighed. “The Jarl’s court wizard thinks there’s a way of working out why the dragons are returning,” she explained. “It’s like a map of some kind, and it should tell us when and where the next ones will emerge. The Jarl wants us to try and find it for him.”

Raydrin stared at her. “He thinks there’s going to be more?”

“Why not?” asked Cassathra, shrugging. “If one has returned, it would make sense for there to be others.”

Raydrin closed his mouth dumbly. The barmaid returned and laid a tankard of mead on the table in front of him; he muttered a quiet thank you.

“Where is this map?” he asked, wiping his hand across his mouth after a taking a sip. 

“In a barrow not far from Riverwood,” said Cassathra.

“Fuck, Riverwood? We just came from there.”

“You see my point?” said Mathyas. “We can’t put off going back to Blacklight forever, and this is already taking us a lot longer than we’d planned. It’s not fair on our parents.”

“I think we should do it,” said Cassathra. “If the dragons are as big of a threat as Farengar seems to think they are, I think we should want to stay to try and do something about it. We have an opportunity to do real good, here.”

She paused for a moment before continuing. “I’d also get to practice my destruction magic, you know… it might improve my chances of getting into the College.”

Raydrin stared at her. “Why would we need destruction magic?”

“Farengar said that barrows tend to be guarded by Nord undead,” she explained, shifting uncomfortably. “He said we should expect a fight.”

Raydrin was completely baffled; he shook his head. “Why on Nirn did the Jarl think we were the best people to ask?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I think he thought we were adventurers or something. Maybe because we’ve already survived one dragon attack.”

Mathyas scoffed. “This is ridiculous. It should be clear from one look at us that we aren’t exactly the adventuring sort.”

Raydrin raised his brows. “Speak for yourself,” he said, “I helped slay a giant today. And I got invited to join the Companions.  

Cassathra’s mouth fell open. “No way. Do you think you’ll go for it?”

He scrunched his face incredulously. “What? No, of course not.”

“We’re getting off topic,” said Mathyas. “I don’t think we should go to Bleak Falls Barrow—the Jarl can very easily find someone else to do it if we say no, and it’s too dangerous for us, especially you, Cassathra. You aren’t experienced enough.”

She frowned.

“I have the same martial training as you if I need to fall back on it,” she retorted. “And I’m nearly as old as Raydrin was when he first saw active combat.”

Raydrin flinched. Mathyas stared at her, and after a beat of silence her mouth fell open as she realized what she’d said. Before she could start apologizing profusely, as she inevitably would, Raydrin cut her off.

“I agree with Cassathra,” he said, and both her and Mathyas’ heads whipped round to look at him. “Riverwood isn’t far,” he went on. “It shouldn’t take us more than a week. And I’m sure we can handle some dusty old skeletons.”

Cassathra was staring at him, her eyes wide and glistening. Raydrin could faintly see a tremble in her lower lip.

“Fine,” said Mathyas, throwing up his hands. “If you two absolutely insist on going, I’m not going to argue with you anymore. But Raydrin, I am not helping you explain this to Jothryn and Seth when we get back.”

Raydrin suddenly realized that Jórunn had been completely silent throughout this whole discussion, and he turned to her, clearing his throat.

“Jórunn,” he said, catching her attention and switching to Cyrodilic, “do you know what you’d do while we’re gone?”

Jórunn, who’d been resting her head in her hand, suddenly sat up at the mention of her name.

“Oh, um,” she started, blinking and shaking her head as if to pull herself out of some deep thought, “to be honest, I’m not really sure. I- I’ve asked around, and I can’t seem to find my relatives anywhere." She was cupping her drink in her hands, rolling it absent-mindedly between her palms. “I guess I was planning to start looking for work tomorrow morning.”

“If you want,” said Mathyas, “I can stay here with you. To help.”

Jórunn considered it for a few seconds, and then nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I would appreciate that. Thank you.”

Cassathra—who was staring resolutely into her drink with a tight jaw—still seemed to be somewhat in shock, so Raydrin took it upon himself to try and round the discussion off.

“Is that settled, then?” he said. “Cassathra and I will set off for the barrow tomorrow morning, and Mathyas will stay here with Jórunn?”

Cassathra nodded feebly. “Yes,” she murmured. Raydrin wanted to lean over the table and give her a hug, to tell her that he didn’t actually mind what she’d said, but knowing Cassathra that would be just the sort of thing to set her off. He resolved to talk about it with her later.

Mathyas shrugged. “I suppose it’s settled,” he said with a sigh. Jórunn nodded in agreement.

“All right, then,” said Raydrin.

He exhaled slowly. At the very least, he was hoping that a journey with a purpose would take his mind off the uncomfortable longing in his gut. And to that same end, he decided he’d maybe pay a visit to Jorrvaskr after all.

Notes:

thank you for reading and to my beta readers for their help and advice <3

Chapter 7: In My Time of Need

Mathyas awoke to the feeling of warmth on his face. Wherever he was, it was bright; his vision took several moments to come into focus, to begin patching together the murky pieces of his unfamiliar surroundings.

Ah—of course. He lay in their room in the Bannered Mare, back flat against the wooden floor, cushioned only by the thin lining of his bedroll. Sunlight was pouring in through the mottled window, bathing the room in a pale, summery yellow. Mathyas pushed himself up onto his elbows and blinked dazedly at his surroundings.

He appeared to be the only person in the room. The bed—which had been Cassathra and Jórunn’s turn to share last night—was empty, the furs spread out haphazardly over the straw-stuffed mattress. He didn’t know whether Raydrin had ever made it back last night from Jorrvaskr, but his bedroll was no longer where it had been laid out for him. Mathyas realized with a sinking feeling that their packs had been removed from where they were propped up against the wall.

“B'vehk,” he sighed, shuffling out of his own bedroll and getting to his feet. He’d slept through the night—unusual, for him—and, judging by the intensity of the daylight beyond their window, it was already late in the morning.

He stumbled over to the wash basin and splashed some cold water on his face. He wanted to be at least somewhat presentable before going downstairs to the main room of the Bannered Mare, but he didn’t have time to do much except throw on a shirt, comb back his hair with his fingers, and slide on some boots.

The Bannered Mare was practically empty downstairs; with the tightened restrictions on who could enter into the city, Mathyas supposed they were likely to be the inn’s only overnight guests. The fire pit in the centre of the room was stone cold and the barmaid from the previous night was sweeping the floor, humming quietly to herself. She looked up when she heard him coming down the stairs, tucking a stray curl of hair behind her ear and smiling at him.

“You look like you slept well."

“I did, thank you,” he replied, somewhat distracted as he glanced around the room.

The barmaid cleared her throat. “Your friends are sitting just round the corner,” she said, pointing in the direction of some muffled conversation and laughter, “although two of them left this morning. Can I get you any breakfast?”

Mathyas hesitated for a moment, straining his ears until he was able to pick out Jórunn’s voice from within the conversation. Then he nodded. “Yes, please,” he said. “Thank you.”

She nodded in turn and headed off towards the kitchen. Mathyas followed the sound of Jórunn’s voice, wondering vaguely who her conversation partner was if both Raydrin and Cassathra had left a few hours ago, to find her sitting round the corner at a small round table with Sanjir, the two of them laughing about something he hadn’t been able to make out. On the table lay five empty plates.

Sanjir turned his head as Mathyas approached, throwing him a wave.

“Morning!” he said cheerfully.

Mathyas nodded, pulling up a chair. “Morning,” he said, trying and failing to match Sanjir's enthusiasm.

“Cassathra told me to tell you good-bye,” said Jórunn. “She wanted to wake you but Raydrin said it would be better to let you sleep.”

Mathyas looked upwards, silently thanking the Three for his cousin’s instincts. “What time did they leave?”

“It was early,” said Jórunn. “Maybe around half-seven?”

Sanjir nodded. “Sounds about right,” he said. “Leorn left with them. The Jarl wanted a Companion to accompany them, and he was the only one with no work lined up for the week. I just tagged along to see them off.” He gestured vaguely to himself and to the plates on the table. “Which is why I’m here.”

Mathyas blinked. “Leorn…?”

“The Nord who was with me yesterday, before I left with you for Dragonsreach,” said Sanjir. “Giant blond, thickest arms in Tamriel?”

He flexed jokingly as he spoke as if to aid Mathyas in building a mental image. Sanjir was muscular, but in a lean, sinewy way; his physical size paled in comparison to the man he was describing.

Mathyas nodded in recollection. “Ah.” It was comforting to know that his younger cousins would be delving into a draugr-infested barrow under the supervision of a seasoned warrior. Raydrin was a prodigious swordsman, but Cassathra had next to no experience outside of the training yard, and Raydrin, well… Mathyas wasn’t entirely convinced that his body or his reflexes had recovered from withdrawal.

“What work do you have lined up?” he asked Sanjir, resorting to small talk.

“Just a run-of-the-mill bounty hunting contract,” Sanjir replied. “I set off tomorrow morning, but it's a two-day ride, so I should be back before the others return.”

Mathyas nodded. Before he could respond, the barmaid approached their table, laying a bowl of thick, cakey porridge in front of him. It was drizzled with honey and a sprinkling of sunflower seeds, as well as some kind of berry Mathyas didn’t recognize. He raised his head to thank her.

“You’re welcome,” was her flat reply. “If you’re going to be staying here for a few days, you should know my name is Saadia. Just call if you need anything.”

Saadia was young, and pretty; her lips were full and her short black hair was thick and bouncy. But being this close to her, Mathyas was able to notice three pink scars marring the smooth, brown skin of her face; they ran parallel to each other, diagonally from the inner corner of her left eye down to her jaw. He awkwardly thanked her again, averting his gaze, and she left to return to her work. Jórunn cleared her throat.

“Sanjir thinks he might be able to find me some work in Jorrvaskr,” she said. “Just while I’m finding my feet.”

“Oh,” replied Mathyas after swallowing a mouthful of porridge, “that’s great.”

“It’ll be pretty menial work, I’m afraid,” said Sanjir, “and I can’t promise anything long-term. But it should stand you in good stead at least until at least the rest of you leave for Winterhold.”

Mathyas blinked in surprise at how much Sanjir seemed to know of their future plans. But he said nothing of it; he supposed there wasn’t really any harm in it. His more immediate concern was that Jórunn had already found work, given that assisting her in doing so had been his only reason for staying behind. He shifted uncomfortably, guilt gnawing at his stomach.

“I’ll try and find something too,” he told her. “And we can look for something more permanent for you.”

The thought of leaving her there in Whiterun in a week’s time felt wrong; he imagined finding work as a blind person was far from easy, and Jórunn had told them little about what she used to do before coming to Skyrim. At the very least, he wanted to be able to leave knowing that she was in a good position to look after herself.

She nodded. “Thank you,” she said. Although it was clear that her eyes weren’t focusing on him, she was quite skilled at ‘looking’ at the person she was addressing. “Um, Sanjir was going to give me a tour of the city after this, now that the weather is better and it’s his day off. You could join us, if you wanted.”

Mathyas chewed thoughtfully for a few moments. If he were honest with himself, the idea wasn’t particularly appealing; Sanjir seemed friendly enough, but Mathyas wasn’t sure he’d be able to match his upbeat energy, and he didn’t want to bring down the mood. Besides, he and Jórunn seemed to be getting along well; Mathyas would probably spoil the dynamic.  

“Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll be all right. I was planning on going for a walk through the plains later, anyway. Feels weird not to after travelling for so long.”

Jórunn shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. “We’re setting off quite soon, I think, in case you change your mind.”

“Thanks,” he said. Then he turned back to Sanjir. “I will be able to do that, right?” he asked. “Leave the city and come back, I mean?”

Sanjir nodded confidently. “You should be fine. I’d just speak to one of the guards on your way out so they know to expect you when you return.”

Mathyas nodded, returning to his breakfast in silence. Jórunn and Sanjir resumed their conversation from before, which mostly involved Jórunn asking Sanjir about life in the Companions and Sanjir enthusiastically recounting various tales. As always with Jórunn, the conversation was fairly one-sided; she never offered information about herself, and when asked would answer in the vaguest of terms. Mathyas realized they were mostly waiting for him out of politeness, so he ate quickly.

When he had finished, Sanjir—credit to him—gave it a few moments so as to not make it obvious that they’d been waiting for him, and then clapped his hands against the edge of the table. “Right, I suppose we should be off, then?”

Jórunn nodded. “Sounds good,” she said. Both of them stood from their seats. She picked up her cane from where it had been resting against the table.

Mathyas waved hem off. “Hopefully I’ll catch you both later.”

They turned to smile at him before leaving. “Yes, definitely,” said Sanjir. “Enjoy your walk!”

With that the pair of them left, the door drifting shut behind them. Mathyas exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair. It took him a while to summon the energy required just to get his feet, but when Saadia returned after a few minutes to clear the table, he took that as his cue to go.

“Thank you for breakfast,” he said as he stood, pushing his chair under the table. Saadia began stacking the bowls.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

Mathyas shook his head. “No, I'm all right. I’m about to head out.”

“Of course. Have a nice day.”

He nodded, turning towards the doorway to make his own way out of the inn. He hoped that his current attire would be suitable for the weather outside, but based on what Sanjir and Jórunn had been wearing and the bright sunlight that had woken him up, he figured that one layer would be enough.

The streets of Whiterun were a lot busier than they had been the day before. The clouds had cleared, revealing a pale blue sky, and it seemed that Whiterun’s whole population had turned out to enjoy it. The roads were lined with citizens going about their daily errands, and in the distance Mathyas could hear the tell-tale sounds of a marketplace in full swing. Most of the people he passed were Nords, but many of them weren’t; it was the most cosmopolitan settlement they’d come to since arriving in Skyrim. For once, Mathyas didn’t feel self-conscious in his grey skin.

He made his way down to the city gates, which were easy enough to locate given that Whiterun had been built on the slopes of a great hill; the outer walls were nearly always visible from a higher vantage point. Mathyas did as Sanjir suggested and spoke to one of the guards on his way out, who allowed him to leave the city without issue. He grimaced as he walked past the queue of people trying to be let in, which, if possible, had grown since yesterday; his sympathy was limited, though, given that he’d had to wait in that same queue for over an hour in the rain. At least it was sunny now.

Eventually he made it to the road they’d followed up from Riverwood. The great plains of Whiterun stretched out before him. Hazy mountain ranges clung to the far horizons, both northwards and southwards, but Mathyas couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in such a vast, open space. The hill on which the city had been built lay isolated in the centre of the steppe and was surrounded by miles and miles of farmland. Mathyas found himself aimlessly heading west, deciding to himself that he would simply follow the road until—well, until he grew bored, he supposed.

He strolled at a leisurely pace, enjoying the lack of urgency. From catching up to Cassathra, getting Raydrin to a healer, escorting Jórunn to Riverwood and then delivering a message to the Jarl, it had been nearly a month since Mathyas had been free from the pressure of some time-sensitive mission. He did his best to concentrate on the scenery, to empty his mind of all thoughts relating to anything beyond his immediate surroundings, but it wasn’t long before he found himself cycling anxiously through each of his latent worries.

He and Raydrin still had no plan for what they would tell their family upon returning to Blacklight; whether they’d tell them the truth and hope that they’d leave Cassathra alone, or whether they’d have to lie and tell them she was dead. The latter seemed unbearably cruel, especially given what Jothryn and Sethrasti had already gone through, but the former involved a considerable degree of risk. And either way, both he and Raydrin would be in the family’s bad books for a long time to come.

The topic of Raydrin’s skooma habit still had not been discussed. Raydrin had been slightly reticent ever since he’d recovered, and as far as Mathyas was aware, he hadn’t relapsed. But that was more likely due to a lack of opportunity than anything else, and Mathyas didn’t want to take the risk of Raydrin using again as soon as he was able. Maybe it was a good thing that his cousin was back on the road so soon.

He was in the midst of mentally scripting what he’d say to Raydrin when he found himself coming across a small encampment. He had been approaching it for a while, but was too lost in thought to take much note of it. As he got closer, he realized that some of the groups making up the encampment had been in the queue yesterday; it must have been comprised of those who were unable to get into the city.

Tents, caravans, and parked wagons sat in great clusters along the roadside, gaudy and inviting as they showed off their wares. The encampment was—to Mathyas' surprise—decently busy; it seemed as if the citizens of Whiterun weren't about to let a paranoid jarl and a short trek get in the way of market day. Blunt, demanding voices—each fighting to be heard over the din—collapsed into a dull but riotous hum. That particular marketplace tang, of fried food and fragrant spices, clung thick and dizzying to the air. Perhaps if Mathyas hadn’t eaten so recently he might have been tempted to buy something, if only to remind himself what well-seasoned food could taste like.

He slowed to a stroll, carefully making his way through the crowd and examining each of the stalls from a distance. It quickly became apparent why these particular traders had been barred from entering the city; the wares on display couldn't really be described as ‘essential goods.’ No-one was selling game, or crops, or building materials. It was mostly hand-made crafts, assorted memorabilia, and street food. Several Khajiiti caravans were present, one of them boasting a beautiful display of Elsweyri rugs and tapestries. Mathyas stopped for a moment to examine them, taking care not to attract the attention of the salesman as he did.

He was just about to move on and continue with his walk when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He jumped, spinning round to face whoever had tapped him, and found his hand instinctively moving towards his coin purse. He came face to face with a human man, dressed in what Mathyas recognized as being the traditional garb of Hammerfell’s desert nomads. The Redguard was smiling at him bemusedly.

“Forgive me for approaching you like this,” he said. “I tried calling to catch your attention but I’m afraid you didn’t hear.”

Mathyas vaguely recalled someone within the crowd shouting ‘Dark Elf!’, but there'd been enough Dunmer present that he thought it safe to assume he wasn't its intended target. He narrowed his eyes.

“What do you want?”

“Am I correct in thinking you and your friends were allowed into the city, yesterday?” asked the Redguard. “You were in the queue, in front of us.”

Mathyas suddenly realized where he’d seen the man before. But he wasn’t sure he felt comfortable sharing his business with a stranger, this far from the city and when the stranger clearly had an ulterior motive.

“What about it?”

“You’re new here, like us,” said the Redguard. “And for whatever reason, the guards let you into the city. That makes you perfect to help us out with a little mission. We’ll compensate you generously for your help.”

At the mention of payment, Mathyas’ ear twitched. He had been planning on looking for work; and it needed to be something short-term, something that could be done within the week. But something about this felt too underhand for his liking.

In his moment of hesitation, the Redguard went on. “How long are you in Whiterun for? A few days? A week?”

Since the Redguard wouldn’t be allowed into the city, Mathyas figured there’d be no harm in telling him. His interest had been piqued, and he’d be safe if he changed his mind. “A week."

The Redguard’s mouth spread into a grin. “Perfect. That’s plenty of time.”

Mathyas was still unsure, but the Redguard clearly knew he was making headway. “I’m from a group of Alik’r warriors,” he was saying, “we’re camped right over there. If you follow me, our leader Kematu will explain what we want you to do, and then you can make your decision. But I’m sure you’ll find our terms most agreeable...”

He went on, and Mathyas found himself being led through the crowd before he could protest. They were heading towards a collection of three pale tents set up a small distance away from the market. Several other Redguards were lingering outside the tents and talking amongst themselves, all of them dressed in the same pale, baggy garb as the first. A few of them were smoking from pipes, and one man was hunched over a cooking pot suspended above a small fire, preparing something that smelled incredible. They looked up as Mathyas approached, smiling and bowing their heads.

“Kematu is just in here,” said his guide, gesturing to the largest of the three tents. The flap which functioned as the door had been rolled up. “In you go."

Mathyas nodded, awkwardly dipping his head as he slid into the tent. A man he presumed to be Kematu was sitting at a table beside a woman; they were talking lowly about something in a language Mathyas did not recognize—Yoku, presumably.

The man who’d led him in cleared his throat, saying something in that same language which must have been an announcement of some kind. Kematu and the woman both looked up; Kematu smiled when he laid eyes on Mathyas.

“Ah,” he said, getting to his feet. “Welcome, friend.”

Mathyas stood there stiffly, unsure of what to say. Kematu manoeuvred around the table to stand before him and bowed low. He was a middle-aged man, with cool, dark brown skin, and wiry black hair that had been styled back into short dreadlocks. The sides of his head had been shaved so that his dreadlocks formed a line which ran from his temple to the base of his skull. When he straightened back to his full height, his mouth was spread wide in a grin.

“Thank Satakal one of our men here recognized you,” he said. “Come, take a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

He pulled out a chair at the small table in the centre of the tent. Mathyas lowered himself into it. “No, thank you."

Kematu nodded and assumed his position in his chair from earlier.

“Of course,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why we dragged you over here. We have a proposition which I believe you may find attractive.”

Mathyas said nothing. Kematu went on.

“My men and I are Alik’r warriors,” he explained, “renowned throughout Hammerfell for our honour and strength. Our services have been hired by the noble houses of Taneth, who have tasked us with seeking out a traitor to Hammerfell and bringing them to justice. We have reason to believe this traitor is currently in Whiterun.”

It was becoming clearer, now. “You want me to help you find them,” said Mathyas. Kematu nodded.

“Precisely,” he said. “That should be easier than it sounds. The traitor is a Redguard woman, in her early twenties, and she has a scar on her left cheek. Three lines, like this.” He held three fingers up to his face, and dragged them down from his nose to his jaw. Mathyas’ stomach dropped. “There will be very few Redguard women living in Whiterun, and only one who fits that description. We would like you to find this woman and help us apprehend her.”

Mathyas’ heart had started racing in his chest. It took him several moments to process the implications of what he’d just been told, and to then formulate a response.

“May... may I ask what she did?”

Kematu raised his hands. “Of course,” he said, “I understand your curiosity. Her name is Iman. She was a noblewoman of House Suda, one of the noble houses of Taneth. House Suda has been struggling financially for quite some time now. In an effort to save her family's status, Iman took to selling intelligence to the Aldmeri Dominion. She's been doing so for years. Insights into our government, our military, weaknesses and strategies, and so on. Her treachery has left Hammerfell in a greatly weakened position, should the Dominion ever launch a further invasion.”

Mathyas nodded, but his throat felt tight. The gravity of his task was starting to sink in.

“I trust you appreciate the importance of bringing this woman to justice,” Kematu went on. “Are you willing to help us?”

Mathyas paused where he'd been drumming his fingers against the table edge. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

Kematu smiled. “Find Iman,” he said. “Tell her the truth—that you know of her identity, and that you have been asked by Alik’r warriors to hunt her down. Inevitably she will try and convince you of her innocence, but when she does, you are to act as if you believe her. Agree to help her escape the city, then return to me. We will arrange a time and a place to detain her.”

He leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the table. “If you do this for us, we will pay you five-hundred Septims.”

Mathyas’ eyes widened. Five-hundred Septims was more than they needed—a lot more. And it wasn’t as if he’d be short on money when he got back to Blacklight. It felt wrong to accept such a high sum.

“You’re sure there’s no-one else who can help you?”

Kematu shrugged. “No-one we’d be able to get a hold of any time soon,” he said. “My men who were trying to get into the city yesterday told me that you and your friends were the only people to get past the gates, other than some traders. And we need someone from outside of Whiterun, someone who won’t have taken a liking to Iman.”

Mathyas was silent for a few moments as he thought it over. Kematu thankfully allowed him to do so.

Payment aside, it seemed to be a worthwhile cause. Being from Morrowind, Mathyas could appreciate the seriousness of Iman’s—Saadia’s—crimes. He was no fan of the Aldmeri Dominion and understood what it meant to be from a country which—like Hammerfell—valued its independence above all else. Her actions were of a nature that in Morrowind would automatically be met with execution, and Mathyas saw no reason to hesitate here.

And at its core, Kematu’s proposition was something to do. It was exactly the kind of short-term work Mathyas had been looking for, that he’d told Jórunn and Sanjir he would try to find. It required cunning, and diplomacy—both of which Mathyas was more than proficient in after decades of participating in Redoran politics—and it was something to keep him occupied for the next few days.

Seeing no reason to refuse, Mathyas nodded. “I’ll do it."

Kematu grinned. “Excellent,” he said, getting to his feet and heading round the table to where Mathyas was sitting. Mathyas followed suit. Kematu took his hand in an enthusiastic shake. “I’m so pleased we were able to come to an agreement.”

Mathyas was led outside the tent again and blinked dazedly at the bright sunlight, holding up a hand to shield his eyes. “May Tava guide you in your search,” said Kematu. “And if you have any questions, you know where to find us.”

Mathyas nodded, and in something of a state of shock, stumbled away from the encampment until he was back on the road to Whiterun. For once, he was too stunned to overthink it.

 

---

 

When he got back to the Bannered Mare, Jórunn and Sanjir still had not returned. Mathyas briefly considered doing some exploring of his own, but decided instead that he needed some time alone to think things over. Saadia was thankfully nowhere to be seen, so he was able to slip through the inn without being noticed. He trudged up the stairs to his room, unlocked the door, and flopped onto the bed with a heavy groan.

How the fuck have I ended up here? he asked himself, rolling onto his back and staring up at the wooden ceiling. What on Nirn was he supposed to do now? He’d have to wait until evening before getting a chance to speak with Saadia, but it was still early in the afternoon. He knew he’d be too distracted to hold a conversation if he tried to socialise before then, and he could think of absolutely nothing to occupy himself with in the meantime. And the thought of just lying there, alone with his thoughts, sounded like torture.

With a heavy sigh, Mathyas forced himself to his feet, deciding to at least try and find something to do. A bit of exploring on the upstairs landing led him to a small bookshelf, with a scribbled note on some parchment giving guests permission to peruse the books at their leisure. He found a short collection of translated Nord poems and returned to his room to make his way through them. The next few hours passed by slowly.

That evening, he and Jórunn were joined by Sanjir for dinner; it seemed to Mathyas that the pair of them were making fast friends. “I like getting to know new people,” Sanjir had told them with a shrug. “And getting drunk with the Companions every night gets very old, very quickly.”

The Bannered Mare grew busier throughout the evening, with more and more regulars piling in for their daily leisure. The volume grew steadily until eventually a bard arrived, and a large group of drunken Nords crowded around him to join in with a bawdy singalong. By then it was too loud to be heard without raising one’s voice, and Jórunn and Sanjir had to almost shout at each other to continue playing the Hammerfellian word games Sanjir had taught her. Mathyas attempted to join in at the start, but found himself too distracted to keep up. Eventually he resorted to just eating his dinner in silence.

Jórunn and Sanjir got progressively drunker, but Mathyas abstained, wanting to keep his wits about him. He kept glancing around the room, desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of Saadia. He was starting to worry that it was her night off and that he’d have to wait even longer for his opportunity to confront her, but at some point in the evening he saw her take over from one of the other waitresses.

She got to work immediately; collecting empty tankards from around the room and delivering rounds of ale. Mathyas cast furtive glances at her from their small table in the corner, unable to help himself. Saadia, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice, but unfortunately for Mathyas, Sanjir did.

“Taking a liking to the new waitress, are we?” he asked with a grin, nudging Mathyas playfully with his elbow. Mathyas’ cheeks grew hot and he opened his mouth to respond, but quickly realized he had no better explanation. Sanjir laughed.

“Don’t worry, I don’t blame you,” he said. “If I swung that way myself I’d be tempted to make a move, too.”

Mathyas blushed and mumbled a half-hearted response, but he was unable to argue. Jórunn pursed her lips in an amused smile.

It was a Sundas evening, so the revelry didn’t go on too long. By eleven, most patrons had left, and at half-past Saadia called last orders. Sanjir yawned and announced that he should be heading back to Jorrvaskr, and Mathyas helped a very sleepy Jórunn up the stairs to their room. It was supposed to be his turn in the bed that night, but Jórunn was drunk enough that he supposed she should take it instead. He helped her out of her outer layers of clothing and guided her under the covers. When he was satisfied she'd fallen asleep, he exhaled slowly, closed the door behind him, and headed back downstairs.

The Bannered Mare was empty when he returned. The fire had grown dim and Saadia was the only person in the room. She glanced up as she heard him approach, her washcloth stilling where it was poised above a tabletop.

“Is everything all right with the room?”

Mathyas nodded. “Yes. Everything's fine."

Saadia stared at him expectantly.

"I know it’s late, but are you free to talk?”

She blew some loose hair out of her face and glanced around. “Give me a few minutes to finish clearing up, and then we can talk,” she said. She inclined her head in the direction of the kitchen. “You can wait in there, if you’d like.”

Mathyas nodded, following her instruction. He sat down on a long wooden bench and drummed his fingers anxiously against the table until eventually, as promised, she followed him in. He watched as she propped her broom up against the wall and hung her apron on the door. Then she turned to face him, brushing herself down.

“All right. What is it you want to talk about?”

He tilted his head to the side. “Do you have somewhere more private?”

Saadia narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t make a habit of inviting strange men into my room. We can talk in here.”

“I think you’d prefer a bit of privacy, Iman,” he said, slipping into the level tone of voice he reserved for council meetings. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. But then shock gave way to suspicion, and her expression hardened into something approaching defiance.

“All right,” she said, slowly, as if reining in a simmering agitation. “We can use my room.”

She stalked past him towards a ladder-like staircase in the corner of the kitchen. Mathyas gave her a few seconds’ lead before following suit. The staircase opened up onto a small landing, with two doors; Saadia was holding one of them open for him.

The moment the door was shut behind him, Mathyas’ back was suddenly flung against it. Saadia’s body was hard against his own and the cool edge of a knife pressed sharp into the skin of his throat.  

“How the fuck do you know my name?” she hissed. "Who are you? I won’t hesitate to use this.”

Mathyas’ breath caught. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he managed to gasp out from the limited space afforded by her knife. “I’m not—I’m not with the Alik’r.”

Saadia’s eyes widened slightly. She withdrew an inch or so, keeping her knife to his throat but allowing just a little extra give.

“Explain yourself. Quickly.”

Mathyas released the breath he'd been holding—it came out ragged.

“My name is Mathyas,” he said. “I’m a traveller from Morrowind. I—I was approached by some Alik’r warriors today, outside the city—they were looking for a woman of your description and asked me to help them find you.”

Saadia was silent, unresponsive, her face giving away nothing except hard contempt.

"I wanted to warn you," Mathyas went on, desperately fighting to keep his panic at bay. "Why—" he faltered, swallowing, "why would I be telling you this if I was with them?"

That seemed to do the trick. At last Saadia stepped away, releasing him from the threat of her blade. Mathyas sagged against the doorframe and held a hand up to where the knife had been, hazarding a gaze in Saadia's direction as she began to pace back and forth.

“What did they tell you?” she demanded, suddenly halting in her tracks to face him. "The Alik'r. What did they say about me?"

He blinked.

“That you’d been selling information about Hammerfell’s defences to the Aldmeri Dominion."

She cursed under her breath, shaking her head. “Lying bastards,” she spat. Mathyas said nothing, merely watching her as she resumed her pacing.

“It’s not true,” she said, stopping again. “It's the Dominion who wants me dead. I spoke out against them publicly and they hired the Alik’r to take me down."

Mathyas' instinct was to frown, but he fought against it. Hammerfell hadn't been part of the Empire for over twenty years; the Dominion had no foothold there. Why would they want someone like Saadia dead?

"They’ve been pursuing me for months," she went on. "I had to leave my whole life behind. Everything, my home, my family, I thought I'd finally be safe here, but now I— I don’t know what to do.”

She crumpled onto the edge of her bed and buried her face in her hands. “Fuck,” she whispered, wiping at her eyes. Mathyas shifted his weight.

“I... I believe you."

She raised her head to look at him. The tears in her lashes were real enough, glistening wetly in the moonlight.

"You do?"

He nodded. "I do."

Saadia sighed, shaking her head and wiping at her tears again with the heel of one hand. “You said they haven’t been allowed into the city?"

Mathyas nodded. “That’s why they asked me to help them.”

She released a trembling breath. “Fine,” she said. “Fine. I need to get out of here. I’m not going to sit around and wait for the gates to reopen. I just…”

Her voice caught in her throat; fresh tears gathered along the rim of her lower lids. “I don’t know how,” she moaned. “The thought of them just waiting for me outside the city walls, I- I can’t leave, I’m trapped.”

Mathyas’ resolve was weakening. Whether she was telling the truth or not, the fear in her voice sounded genuine.

“I’ll help you,” he said gently. He could decide whether or not he meant it later. “I'll think of some way to get you out of here.”

Saadia looked up again, blinking. "Why?" she asked. "You don't know me. Why put yourself at risk?"

"Truthfully?" Mathyas shrugged. "I have nothing better to do. My companions are gone for the week. I'm stuck in Whiterun until their return."

She remained unconvinced, her suspicion obvious behind the wet sheen of her eyes. Carefully Mathyas approached her, taking slow, tentative steps until it was clear she wasn't going to draw a knife on him again. Then he lowered himself to his knees before her.

"Saadia," he said, catching her gaze and holding it. "Let me help."

She stared back at him.

"I know I'm just a stranger," he murmured. "But can one stranger not aid another in their time of need?"

A laugh escaped her, bitter and wet. "I know better than to rely on the goodwill of strangers."

"You don't have to say yes," said Mathyas. "I came here to warn you, and that I've done. But... I can get in and out of the city. The Alik'r think they can trust me. If you need a hand, or a sword—I'm offering mine freely."

Saadia sniffled. "You'd really do that?"

Mathyas nodded. "I really would."

She sighed. When she spoke, her voice came out thick with tears. “Thank you,” she said. “I- I have savings. I can pay you.”

Something twisted in his stomach—guilt, probably. “Don’t worry about that," he said. "It… it’s going to be all right.”

Saadia tilted her head at him, her brows furrowing slightly. "What did you say your name was, again?"

He exhaled. "Mathyas."

To his surprise, she lay a hand on his cheek, touching the pad of her thumb to the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you, Mathyas," she murmured. Then she drew her hand away and wiped at her eyes again. “I need some rest. You... you should go.”

Mathyas got to his feet, though he hesitated in the doorway. "You know where to find me if you need me.”

Saadia nodded through the crack in the door. Then Mathyas closed it behind him and left. He could tell he wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night.

 

---

 

Inevitably she will try and convince you of her innocence.

Mathyas sighed, rolling once more onto his back and staring restlessly at the wooden beams up above him. He should have prepared for this, he knew—of course Saadia was going to react the way she did, obviously someone in her position would claim innocence. But knowing that and actually confronting it were two wildly different things, and though Mathyas was straining to limit his investigation strictly to the facts, the image of Saadia weeping into her hands wouldn’t leave him.

Mathyas wanted to talk to someone, to untangle and straighten out the mess of his conflicting thoughts, but it was the middle of the night, Jórunn was fast asleep, and Sanjir—the only person with a more than textbook understanding of Hammerfell’s culture and politics—was leaving for his contract first thing in the morning. 

When hours later his flesh was still buzzing in that incessant way it was wont to do, when the wee hours had arrived and seemingly everyone but him was enjoying the privilege of restful sleep, Mathyas shuffled out of his bedroll and dug around the scant furniture of their room until he located some parchment, a pen, and a half-full bottle of ink. Jórunn stirred, but did not wake; presumably the wine had made sure of that.

He lit a candle and got to work, using his thigh as a writing desk and doing his best to hold the parchment taut. Hopefully the knowledge of Tamrielic politics he’d accumulated over the years would put him in good stead. Mathyas wrote down everything Kematu had told him in one column, everything Saadia had told him in another, and then listed below the potential flaws and inconsistencies in each story. A clearer picture started to emerge, though it confirmed only the truth Mathyas was reluctant to accept.

The Aldmeri Dominion hadn’t had a presence in Hammerfell since the Treaty of Stros M’kai. The people of Hammerfell were free to speak out against them as much as they pleased, and it seemed impractical for the Dominion to send out assassins after every single person who did. They had nothing to gain from suppressing criticism in a province whose people already despised them.

If, for whatever reason, the Thalmor did want Saadia dead, it would have been unusual for them to have asked someone else to do their dirty work for them. They had more than enough resources at their disposal to send out their own assassins, and, knowing the Dominion, would probably have found it preferable to do so.

From the little Mathyas knew of Alik’r culture, it seemed further unlikely that the nomads would ever have accepted such a contract if the Dominion had actually propositioned them with one. The nomads of the Alik’r were Crowns, and no amount of gold would have persuaded them to actively work against Hammerfell’s interests as an independent nation. And unlike Saadia, who would have reason to lie if it meant convincing people to help her, Mathyas saw no reason why the Alik’r wouldn’t have been upfront about working for the Dominion from the beginning.

Lastly, if Saadia’s story was true, it made very little sense for her to have fled to Skyrim. Being part of the Empire, the Dominion’s influence was much stronger here than in Hammerfell, and as a Redguard she was easy to identify. She would have been much safer hiding somewhere in Hammerfell, and the only reason Mathyas could think of for her to have left was if she was no longer on good terms with her people. That would not have been the case if her only crime had been to speak out against the Dominion.

With a heavy sigh, Mathyas sat back in his bedroll, running a hand through his hair and scanning over his notes. It was final—Saadia was lying.

 

---

 

He returned to Kematu the following day, on the 25th of Last Seed. The warrior was pleased to see him, surprised that he was returning so soon. Mathyas told him everything that had happened with Saadia, and together they agreed that they would capture her on the evening of the 27th. Mathyas was to escort her to a secluded spot some miles from the city under the guise of helping her escape, and there the Alik’r would apprehend her. They assured Mathyas that she would be taken back to Hammerfell unharmed and tried before Taneth’s magistrates. Mathyas found that a comforting thought.

In the meantime, he shared with Saadia his plan. They agreed that Morrowind would be the safest place for her to hide, as the Dominion's influence was at its weakest in eastern Tamriel. His own involvement was simple; all Mathyas (would have) needed to do was arrange for a cart to take her as far as Windhelm, and to then escort her to the cart under cover of night. Saadia went along with it convincingly enough, providing Mathyas with the requisite funds and maintaining the pretense that it was the Dominion she was running from. It was almost enough to make Mathyas doubt his decision, but not quite; Saadia was good at what she did. That was all.

At last, the 27th of Last Seed arrived. It was the day of Harvest's End, and the Bannered Mare was at its busiest. Mathyas and Jórunn ate together as usual and she told him about her work at Jorrvaskr, though she had to raise her voice over the din of drunken farmers. It sounded unimaginably tedious to Mathyas—polishing weapons and armour, kneading bread, washing clothes—but she seemed to be enjoying it. At around eleven, they headed to bed, but Mathyas lay awake in his sleeping roll, waiting for the sounds of the festivities to die down until eventually he was confident that everyone had left. Then he crept over to Saadia’s room and tapped lightly on her door.

“Ready?” he asked when she opened it.

She nodded. Her room had been stripped bare of any personal items and she was wearing traveller’s attire, a small pack strapped to her back.

“Ready,” she said.  

They left the inn in silence and started making their way down to Whiterun’s gates. The streets were mostly empty at this time of night, save for underfed farmhands who'd overindulged in drink, but Saadia still insisted that they draw up their hoods and avoid getting close to passers-by. Mathyas felt sick to his stomach with nerves and found himself silently praying to Boethiah that everything would go to plan. He’d managed to get himself caught up in something very precarious and he wanted to be rid of the situation as soon as possible.

The journey to the arranged meeting place was slow once they made it past the city gates. Mathyas led her through the temporary encampment, now dormant and quiet, and noted with relief that the Alik’r tents had been taken down. Three square patches of yellowed grass marked the spot they’d once been.

After about twenty minutes of walking, the derelict farmhouse by which Kematu had arranged for them to meet appeared in the distance. Mathyas’ heart was pounding and his throat felt tight. It was too dark to see much further than a few yards ahead, but a small torch had been lit outside the farmhouse’s entrance, and as they got closer Mathyas was able to make out a horse and cart stationed out front. This surprised him somewhat, but he assumed it was part of Kematu’s plan; it made sense not to give Saadia any reason to think something was afoot before they even got there.

“That’s my cart?” she asked quietly as they approached, pointing with one hand.

“That’s the one,” he confirmed.

“Where’s the rider?” she asked. His stomach flipped. 

“Er... he's probably just gone to relieve himself,” he said, voicing the first thought that sprung to mind. “He’ll be here.”

She hummed under her breath. They came to a stop as they reached the farmhouse. The horse nickered softly, shaking its head. Mathyas tried not to appear as if he was looking for something, but he couldn’t help casting around a few uneasy glances, trying to catch some sign of the Alik’r warriors’ presence. It seemed out of character for them to be waiting in the dark in the name of dramatics; something ought to have happened by now.

“I- I’ll wait here with you until he arrives."

Before Saadia could respond, a searing pain suddenly flared up in his calf. Mathyas cried out, his knee buckling beneath his weight. He collapsed into the dry earth and groaned, trying dazedly to lift his head, but when he finally managed to do so, he found that a feathered dart had sprouted from his flesh and a deep red stain was blossoming over the fabric of his breeches.

“What the fuck,” he gasped out, reaching vainly for the wound in some confused attempt to do something about it. His arms felt heavy, difficult to move. Holding them up was suddenly beyond the limits of his strength, and instead they fell lifelessly to his sides. His vision was growing murky, blurring at the edges. He opened his mouth to speak again but no sound came out.

“He’s all yours,” he heard a woman—Saadia—saying. Spots were dancing over his eyes and keeping them open was increasingly hard. “I trust the Alik’r have been dealt with?”

There was a grunt in response, but Mathyas couldn’t pick out individual words. His thoughts were sluggish and slow, growing in incoherence by the second. Darkness crept into his periphery.

“Here's your payment,” Saadia went on. “Don’t try and follow me.”

He heard the whinnying of a horse and the pounding of hooves against the ground. The dart was plucked from his leg, two pairs of hands hoisted him up by his ankles and shoulders, and then Mathyas promptly blacked out.

Notes:

this quest is an absolute mess in-game. why do all the characters speak as if Hammerfell is still occupied? why does saadia look 22 if she allegedly sold Hammerfell out to the thalmor back in… pre-4E 180? and why has it taken the alik’r warriors over 20 years to track her down? mess smh

anyway, i hope you enjoyed the mathyas screentime!! sorry about the ending. and big thank you to my beta readers haley and diana <3

Chapter 8: Dragon Rising

Whiterun, Skyrim, 1st Hearthfire

“Gods, I can’t wait for a hot bath,” Cassathra groaned as they passed through the gates of Whiterun. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted one this badly.”

Raydrin was too exhausted to relate or to respond. He had one thing on his mind and one thing only, and that was getting into a bed as soon as physically possible. They had been travelling non-stop for over a week now and in that time had climbed a mountain and delved deep into a barrow that was a lot more dangerous than any of them had anticipated. Raydrin’s sword arm ached from its first proper use in a good few years, and he was desperately looking forward to sleeping on an actual mattress.

They trudged through the streets of Whiterun in silence, attracting a few stares from passers-by but otherwise being left alone. As a Companion, Leorn was easily recognized by Whiterun’s citizens, and Raydrin figured they would probably be familiar with the sight of him returning from a quest, a little run-down and a little worse for wear. Being the strongest of the three of them, Leorn had volunteered to carry the Dragonstone on their way back from Bleak Falls Barrow, for which Raydrin was endlessly grateful. When they passed the Bannered Mare, Leorn cleared his throat and they came to a stop.

“You two go on in,” he said. “I can take the Stone up to Dragonsreach.”

Raydrin knew he ought to refuse and insist that they deliver it together, but the temptation to accept Leorn’s offer was overwhelming. From Cassathra’s hesitation, it seemed she was feeling the same way.

“No,” she protested half-heartedly after several moments of silence, having to shape the word around an involuntary yawn. “We’ll come with you.”

“It’s fine,” said Leorn. “Jorrvaskr is closer, anyway. I’ll give due credit—and once you’ve rested you can swing by Jorrvaskr later to pick up the payment.”

“Thanks, Leorn,” said Raydrin, quite happy not to fight him on this. Leorn nodded.

“I’ll see you both later,” he said.

Cassathra raised her hand in a small wave. Leorn turned and carried on up the road. Raydrin and Cassathra spent a few seconds watching him go before sharing a quick glance and heading into the Bannered Mare.

It was absolutely packed inside, the smell of ale and woodsmoke and the sound of drunken conversation washing over them immediately upon entering. Raydrin cast a brief look around the tavern, but wasn’t able to pick out the faces of Jórunn or Mathyas from within the crowd.

“Should we just head up to the room?” mumbled Cassathra, rubbing at her tired eyes.

Raydrin frowned. “They’ll probably be out,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll go ask the innkeeper if she knows where they are.”

Cassathra nodded, slumping down into a seat at an empty table near the door. Raydrin turned and made his way through the crowd towards the bar. The innkeeper, a middle-aged Nord woman with auburn hair pulled back into a loose bun, was wiping down the counter. She lifted her head when she heard him approaching and her hand fell still.

“Ah,” she said, her eyes raking over his person. “Are you Raydrin?”

He stopped in his tracks, blinking in surprise. “I am,” he answered, too tired to mask the suspicion in his voice.

“Your friend checked out a few days ago,” the innkeeper went on. “The Redguard from the Companions told me to give you this when you returned.”

She crouched behind the counter, rummaging around for a few moments in search of something, and then got back to her feet with a small slip of paper in hand. Raydrin took it from her with a mumbled ‘thank you’ and read it as he made his way back over to Cassathra.

“What’s that?” she asked as he approached, lifting her head from where she’d been resting it on the table.

“It’s a note from Sanjir,” he replied, somewhat distractedly. “It says we need to find him at Jorrvaskr.”

Cassathra frowned. “That’s all?” she asked. He nodded, handing her the note.

She scanned it over, but in her tired state ended up having to read it several times.

“How odd,” she said eventually, her voice flat. “I suppose we should head there now.”

Raydrin nodded. “I suppose we should.”

Cassathra reluctantly dragged herself to her feet and they left the inn once more. It was cooler outside; dusk was approaching. The evening sun bathed the cobblestones in gold and illuminated the face of Dragonsreach up above them. They trudged through the city until they made it to Jorrvaskr and then climbed the stone steps leading to its entrance, their shoulders sagging from the weight of their exhaustion. 

The main hall was mostly empty. Raydrin caught sight of Aela sitting at a table in the corner, talking quietly to one of the twins, but Raydrin had been too distracted when he met them to remember how to tell them apart. She had dressed down for the evening, her face stripped of its signature warpaint. 

Raydrin managed to catch her gaze and she smiled, raising her hand in a small wave. But the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her expression was hard to read, and Raydrin found himself the first to look away. It wasn’t quite the reception he’d hoped for and he wasn’t in the mood to try and work out why.

An elderly human woman approached them, carrying a broom. “May I help you?” she asked, her voice soft and creaking.

Raydrin nodded and handed her the note. “We’re here to see Sanjir?”

She read the note slowly, holding it at arms’ length and squinting at it. A look of realisation then crossed her features.

“Ah,” she said, “you must be Jórunn’s friends.”

Raydrin raised his eyebrows in surprise. What the fuck is going on?

“Is Jórunn here?” he asked incredulously. 

The woman nodded. “Yes, she’s been staying with us for a few days now. Doing odd jobs and helping me keep the place in order while my assistant is sick. Lovely girl, and ever so helpful. At first I wasn’t sure, you know, given her blindness and everything, but she’s a fast learner.”

She leaned on her broom, sighing. Raydrin and Cassathra both stared at her.

“Anyway,” she continued, shaking her head, “you’ll be wanting to see Sanjir. He should be in his room. This way.”

She led them through the hall towards a doorway in the far-left wall, which in turn led to a staircase heading downwards. They descended into Jorrvaskr’s basement and Raydrin flushed at the thought of what he’d been doing the last time he was brought down here. The stairs emptied them out into a long, stone corridor, lined on each side with wooden doors, and it was beside one of these doors that they eventually came to a stop. The elderly woman rapped her swollen knuckles lightly against it.

“Sanjir?” she called. “Those Dark Elves are here to see you.”

There were some shuffling noises from inside the room before the door swung open and Sanjir appeared in its place. He smiled when he saw them, but it was a half-smile, like Aela’s; his eyes looked almost sad.

“Come in, come in,” he said softly, opening the door wider for them. He then nodded to the elderly woman. “Thanks, Tilma.”

Tilma bowed before leaving to return to her work. Raydrin and Cassathra shuffled awkwardly into the room and Sanjir shut the door behind them. The room was small, but Sanjir had made it colourful and cosy despite the grey stone of the walls and floor. A large tapestry was hung up over the bed, and the bedsheets had a beautiful geometric design woven into them, made up of deep reds and vibrant golds. A rug with a similar design was laid out over the floor. There was a small set of shelves pressed up against one wall, filled with clutter and stacks of books. Sanjir gestured to a pair of chairs by a small table in the corner and Raydrin and Cassathra lowered themselves onto them. Sanjir himself sat on the edge of his bed.

“Is everything alright?” asked Raydrin. Sanjir shook his head.

“No,” he said, running a hand through his hair. He glanced between them for several moments, his mouth open as if he was about to continue, but then he dropped his gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, defeated. “I- I don’t know how to tell you this. Your cousin Mathyas, he—well, he’s disappeared.”

Raydrin stared at him. 

"I—"

Sanjir looked up then, hesitantly. A pregnant silence had fallen, and neither Raydrin nor Cassathra seemed able to break it. Sanjir said nothing either, glancing nervously in between them. Raydrin felt far away from himself, from that room. 

He swallowed thickly, forcing himself out of his stupor. “Um,” he began, having to cough to get around the sudden dryness in his mouth, “what do you mean ‘disappeared’?” 

Sanjir’s shoulders relaxed. A short, relieved sigh escaped him. 

“He vanished overnight,” he said, speaking softly but clearly. “Five days ago, now. I was away on contract, but according to Jórunn they ate dinner together as normal, went to bed, and then when she woke up he was gone. And he hasn’t come back.”

Raydrin inhaled sharply through his nose. He looked over at Cassathra, but she was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide and glistening wetly in the candlelight. Her spine was rigid and she was visibly trembling. 

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but his mind had gone blank. She didn’t seem to register that he was even looking at her. 

He twisted back towards Sanjir, but had to drag his gaze away from Cassathra. 

“Do you know anything else?” he asked faintly. 

Sanjir sighed. “A bit,” he said. “He didn’t take anything with him—his bedroll, his pack, all of his gear was still in your room. One of the waitresses at the Bannered Mare disappeared on the same night, but her room had been stripped bare.”

He paused for a moment, glancing between them again, before reaching over to open a drawer in his bedside table. “We also found this in his room,” he muttered as he pulled out a slip of parchment. “It’s in Dunmeris, so we couldn’t read it.”

“Surely you could have found someone to translate it for you,” Raydrin snapped. “What if this tells us where he’s gone? He’ll be days away, now.”

His tone was accusing, but Sanjir’s expression didn’t change. He was still looking at them sadly, his jaw tight. 

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said. “With extra troops being deployed to every other town in the hold, our guard force doesn’t have the men to spare. Especially since Mathyas isn’t a Whiterun citizen.” He sighed and handed the slip of parchment to Raydrin. “We thought it might be private, so we wanted you two to be the first to read it. Here.”

Raydrin snatched the document from Sanjir’s outstretched hand and brought it close to his face. The Daedric alphabet in Mathyas’ elegant script was instantly recognizable. At the top of the page, he’d written what appeared to be two names—‘Saadia’ and ‘Kematu’—and underneath each name was a list of seemingly unrelated characteristics. It was mostly written in shorthand, with very few full sentences or punctuation marks.

“What does it say?” asked Sanjir.

Raydrin shook his head. “I’m not really sure,” he said uselessly. “There are two names at the top, and then underneath there’s some stuff about Hammerfell, the Treaty of Stros M’Kai, Alik’r warriors… and he keeps referring to ‘DA’ but I don’t know what that’s supposed to be.”

“I think it’s ‘Derjuhn Aldmeris’,” said Cassathra. Raydrin jumped at her voice, whipping his head round to look at her. “Aldmeri Dominion.”

She’d been leaning across the table to read over Raydrin’s shoulder, and pointed to the paper. “Look, it says ‘DA have own assassins’ and ‘DA have more influence in Skyrim.’ That must be them. Especially if the Treaty of Stros M’Kai is also referred to.”

“What are the names?” asked Sanjir.

“The names at the top are Saadia and Kematu,” answered Raydrin. “But he keeps mentioning someone called ‘Iman’ as well.”

“Saadia was the name of the waitress who went missing,” said Sanjir. “What does it say about her?”

“It says ‘spoke out against Aldmeri Dominion’ and ‘Aldmeri Dominion hired Alik’r to assassinate her’,” said Cassathra slowly, translating as she read.

“I saw some Alik’r warriors trying to get into the city, the same day you were,” said Sanjir. “But the Alik’r would never work for the Thalmor. That doesn’t make any sense.” He frowned, a dark knot forming between his brows, his lips pressed into a paper-thin line. “What does it say about Iman and Kematu?”

“There’s nothing about Kematu,” said Raydrin. “But under his name, it says that Iman was a noble of ‘House Suda’, and that she sold information about Hammerfell’s defences to the Aldmeri Dominion. And then that the noble houses of Taneth hired the Alik’r to pursue her.”

Sanjir was tapping his knee with one finger. “All right, now that makes more sense,” he said. “Iman must have been somewhere in the city if the Alik’r were trying to get in. Does it say anything else?”

Raydrin sighed. “Not a lot. Under the stuff about Saadia it just says, ‘Treaty of Stros M’Kai’, ‘Alik’r equal Crowns’ and the bits about the Aldmeri Dominion. But that’s it.”

They fell silent, each of them deep in thought. Raydrin kept staring at the paper as if doing so would make things clearer, but it had left him with more questions than answers—a lot of what Mathyas had written seemed contradictory or irrelevant; Raydrin couldn’t for the life of him work out how or why Mathyas had gotten involved with whatever this was; and even if they did manage to make sense of what he’d written, it wouldn’t help them explain what happened to him. That much was clear from the outset.

Eventually Sanjir spoke again. “At the very least, he seems to be aware that the Alik’r wouldn’t have been working for the Dominion,” he said. “Since he talks about the Dominion having their own assassins.”

Cassathra nodded. “You’re right,” she said, pointing to the page. “I think this whole section is a list of reasons why the bit above makes no sense.”

“And that’s under Saadia’s name, right?” asked Sanjir.

Raydrin and Cassathra both nodded.

“Okay,” he went on, “so we know that Saadia disappeared on the same night he did. Her room was empty, so it seems she had planned to leave. And here, Mathyas seems to be aware that the story about Saadia is untrue… but we don’t know whether this was something Saadia told him herself or whether he heard it from someone else.”

“And we still don’t know how Saadia’s story links in with Kematu or Iman,” said Cassathra. “Or why this all led to Mathyas disappearing.”

Sanjir was silent for a few moments, rubbing his jaw. “He was a bit distracted in the days leading up to his disappearance—I noticed it before I left, and Jórunn said the same thing. He kept looking over at Saadia when we were eating. He looked nervous. I- I just assumed he was thinking about making a move.”

If the situation hadn’t been so serious, Raydrin would have snorted at that. Mathyas wasn’t the type to get nervous about that sort of thing, and didn’t tend to be proactive in pursuing his interests. More often than not, he could reasonably rely on the other person being the one to make the first move.

There was a sudden knock at the door, making Raydrin jump. A metal cup landed on the floor with a hollow clang—Cassathra had knocked it off the table in her surprise.

“Hey, I’m done with work,” called a voice. It was Jórunn’s.

“Come in,” Sanjir called back, shooting Raydrin and Cassathra a look. The door opened and Jórunn stepped into the room. “Raydrin and Cassathra are here,” Sanjir told her.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were back,” she said. “How was the journey?”

“It was fine,” said Raydrin flatly. She turned her head towards him as he spoke, now aware of his location in the room. Then she gave him the same sad, sympathetic smile they’d received from pretty much everyone else here. Sanjir helped guide her towards the bed and she sat down beside him.

“… have you told them?” she asked him quietly.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re currently trying to make sense of the letter we found in his room.”

“Having any luck?”

He sighed. “Not really.”

“Is there anything else we know about Saadia?” asked Cassathra. “You know, have you spoken to the innkeeper or anything?”

Sanjir shook his head. “We asked Hulda if she knew anything, but apparently Saadia liked to keep to herself. She only took up the job a month or two ago.”

Cassathra frowned. “So we have nothing, then,” she said. Her voice sounded tight, like she was barely holding it together. “We have absolutely no leads.”

Raydrin lay the paper down on the table, his jaw clenched. The shock was starting to subside, and in its place the reality of their situation was taking hold.

“Hey, that’s not true,” said Sanjir. “He was clearly involved with the Alik’r somehow. There’s an encampment about a mile southwest of the city, made up of people who couldn’t get past the gates. They might still be there. And if they aren’t, you can head in the direction of Hammerfell and try to catch up with them.”

Cassathra nodded, but she was biting her lip and wouldn’t meet Sanjir’s gaze. Raydrin could tell she was trying not to cry. He was feeling the same.

“And this Iman person may still be in the city,” Sanjir went on. “I don’t have any work lined up for the next few days. I could ask around, if you wanted.”

“I’ll help, too,” said Jórunn. “Tilma thinks her usual assistant should be back to full health in the next day or so.”

“You should get some rest, first, though,” Sanjir said softly. “You both must be exhausted.”

“We don’t have time,” Cassathra replied, shaking her head. Tears were gathering in her lashes, rolling down her cheeks. “He wouldn’t have left on purpose without telling us. Something bad has happened to him, I- we should go to the encampment right now, we can’t afford to wait—”

“You won’t be of any use to Mathyas if you’re about to pass out,” Sanjir insisted. “If the Alik’r are still there, they’ll be there until the morning. It can wait.”

Raydrin reached across the table and laid a hand on Cassathra’s shoulder. Her whole body was shaking with tears, and she pressed her face into her hands.

“We’ll wait for Leorn to get back and then we’ll use the money to take out a room at an inn, okay?” he murmured. “It’ll be all right.”

His words were hollow and he knew it. He had no way of knowing whether things would be alright—if he thought about it too intently, it became clear that the chances of things turning out ‘all right’ were actually very, very slim.

He felt vulnerable without Mathyas there. His cousin was the voice of reason, the one who would know what to do. They didn’t always agree on things, but Raydrin needed Mathyas to rein his ideas into something at least vaguely practical. Without him, Raydrin didn’t trust himself to make the right decisions.

And more than that, he just missed his cousin.

 

---

 

They returned to the Bannered Mare later that evening. They booked a new room, different from the first, and Cassathra broke down fully the moment the door was closed. Raydrin led her by the hand to sit beside him on the bed.

“Hey,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her, “hey, it’s going to be okay.”

She shook her head against his shoulder, sobbing. “It’s not,” she said, “it’s not. This is all my fault, I never should have left…”

She trailed off, weeping too hard to continue. Raydrin could feel her trembling in his arms and rubbed soothing circles into her back. “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly. “None of this is your fault.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t left,” she cried. She was clinging to him. “He wouldn’t have disappeared, you wouldn’t have got sick—”

“Hey, hey, what does me getting sick have to do with anything? Cassathra, you couldn’t have prevented that. You mustn’t blame yourself, for any of this.”

She shook her head again. “We should have paid more attention,” she said, her voice muffled from speaking into his chest. “We should have noticed how much you were hurting.”

Raydrin froze. His hand stilled where he’d been stroking her hair.

Cassathra pulled away from him, sniffling and wiping her eyes. “We know,” she said thickly. “The healer at Helgen told us.”

He stared at her. She cupped his cheek in her hand, brushing her thumb under his eye. “I’m so sorry, Raydrin,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Words evaded him entirely. He opened and closed his mouth, trying in vain to come up with a response, but his mind had gone blank.

They know.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her head once again on his shoulder. She was still crying, great sobs wracking her body. Raydrin stared straight ahead, his arms loosely draped around her, but his heart was hammering against his ribcage and he was breathing hard through his nose.

A heavy feeling of shame had settled in his stomach. Cassathra’s embrace felt suddenly stifling, oppressive. He didn’t deserve her love or her affection—he felt vile. Vile for using skooma in the first place, vile for missing it. What a wretched, pathetic creature he was.

A long while passed before Raydrin gathered the wherewithal to speak again. Cassathra’s cries had diminished.

“We’ll find him,” he said quietly. He pressed his lips to the top of Cassathra’s head, rocking her gently. But his skin was crawling.

“We’ll find him.” 

 

---

 

After a restless night’s sleep, they rose early; they didn’t want to risk the Alik’r leaving before they got the chance to speak with them. Jórunn met them at the city gates, joining because she was the only person to have spent any time with Mathyas before his disappearance, and they wanted her there in case she recalled something useful. The three of them set off towards the encampment in silence.

It was a mild day. The air was cool and a thin mist clung wetly to the ground. A sheet of grey cloud stretched out above them, blanketing the valley from horizon to horizon. After about twenty minutes of walking they came across the encampment, having otherwise passed only a guard tower and a few farm buildings on the road. The camp was quiet as they approached, its occupants having not yet woken.  

They made their way through the sea of tents and caravans, slowing down to a stroll. Raydrin and Cassathra cast furtive glances over the encampment in the hopes of catching some sign of Alik’r presence, but the tents were all too similar to be easily distinguished.

“You look lost, friends,” came a voice from somewhere behind them. They turned to find a Khajiit woman sitting on the wooden steps of a caravan, her legs stretched out in front of her and a long pipe in her hand. “May I help you?”

She inhaled from the pipe and puffed out a ring of smoke, which drifted towards them before disintegrating in the breeze. Raydrin caught a whiff of chokeweed.

“We heard that a group of Alik’r warriors might be staying somewhere in this camp,” said Cassathra. “Do you happen to know where they are?”

The Khajiit lady took another puff on her pipe. “There were some Redguards here a few days ago,” she said. “Nomad-types. But they’ve packed up and left, now.”

Raydrin’s heart fell.

“How long ago did they leave?” asked Cassathra. Raydrin could hear the disappointment in her voice.

The Khajiit thought for a few moments. “Maybe four, five days ago. Lanasi remembers because they set off in the evening. Most strange.”

Raydrin and Cassathra shot each other a look.

“Do you remember which way they went?” Raydrin asked.

The Khajiit pointed down the road, towards the west. “Lanasi believes they headed that way,” she said.

They were silent for a few moments. “Well... thank you for your help,” Cassathra said eventually. The Khajiit nodded. After a few awkward glances, the three of them turned and headed back the way they came.

“N’chow,” swore Cassathra once they were out of earshot. She rubbed at her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. Raydrin came up beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

“It’s alright, Cass,” he said as they walked, “let’s not panic. We know that the Alik’r left the same night Mathyas and Saadia disappeared, and we know they were heading west. That’s a solid lead! We’ll head back, pack our things, and set off straight away, all right?”

Cassathra nodded, leaning into his side, but her eyes were squeezed shut and he could see a tremble in her lower lip. He rubbed his hand up and down her arm, trying his best to be comforting. “El ean meshti,” he repeated lowly, switching to Dunmeris. It’s going to be alright.

“There’s also a good chance Iman is still in the city,” added Jórunn from where she was walking on Cassathra’s other side. “Sanjir and I can send word if we find anything.”

“Exactly,” said Raydrin. “This isn’t the end of the world.”

Cassathra took a deep, shuddering breath. Then she shook Raydrin’s arm off her shoulders. “I suppose,” she said quietly. He could tell she wanted the conversation to end.

They fell back into silence, keeping to themselves as they walked. Raydrin knew he had to be there for Cassathra, but he was rapidly losing the little faith he’d had to begin with. The futility of their task was becoming clearer, the odds of them finding their cousin increasingly slim. His feet were heavy with the weight of what they had to do—he found himself longing for a simpler time, when he was back in Blacklight with nothing to worry about except finding his next score.

He shook his head. That was a train of thought he did not want to go down. He just needed to focus on one task at a time—for now, getting back to Whiterun.

They had been walking for maybe ten minutes when a feeling of unease suddenly settled in his stomach. The hairs on his arms stood on end. Raydrin slowed to a stop, frowning as he tried to work out what had set him on edge. He was scanning the valley for something visual, when—out of nowhere—it hit him.

“Do you feel that?” he asked. Cassathra and Jórunn, who had both walked ahead, turned around and faced him.

“Feel what?” asked Jórunn.

“The wind,” he said. “It’s stopped.”

They were silent. Cassathra stared at him.

“What about it?” she asked, her voice laced with an edge of impatience.

“It's a steppe,” Raydrin explained. “The wind never stops.”

Neither of them responded. In the absence of anyone speaking or the thud of their footsteps against the road, the silence rang out as a faint, high-pitched whistle.

And then, in the distance, there was an all-too-familiar screech. Raydrin’s heart stopped.

“Dragon,” whispered Jórunn.

He ran towards them before he could think about what he was doing, grabbing Jórunn’s hand on the way and pulling her into step beside him. The shock of the movement threw her off balance and she staggered slightly as she tried to match his rhythm, but then she found her footing and the three of them were running side-by-side.

“Where are we going?!” cried Cassathra.

“I was thinking ‘away from the dragon’!” Raydrin shouted back. From somewhere behind them, it screeched again.

Raydrin couldn’t remember the last time he had run so quickly for so long—his lungs were burning. The dragon still sounded far-off, but he had seen how much distance dragons could cover in a very short space of time and didn’t want to take any chances.

The watchtower they’d passed earlier came into view on the right-hand side of the road. A group of several Whiterun guards were sprinting towards them.

“Citizens!” one of them called as both groups slowed to a stop. “Get to the watchtower! Stay inside!”

From beside him, Jórunn said, “It’s more dangerous inside than out. You’ll get cooked alive in there.”

Raydrin blinked in surprise at her forthrightness. The guard raised an eyebrow.

“And how would you know that?” she asked.

“We were at Helgen,” Jórunn explained. “Your best bet for survival is to spread out. And avoid the head.”

The guards glanced hesitantly between the three of them. Raydrin and Cassathra both nodded in confirmation.

“Has anyone been sent to the city for reinforcements?” Raydrin asked.

The guard who seemed to be in charge of the group nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. “You three worry about getting yourselves to safety. Right now, we need to get to that encampment.”

She turned to the others, raising her hand. “Move out!” she called. The guards continued on their way.

Raydrin watched them go. He saw the dragon, then—it was just a dark silhouette against the sky, too far away for any kind of detail to be made out. But he could see it beating its great wings against the air, hovering in place over what Raydrin guessed was the encampment. His heart sank when a column of flame erupted from its jaws.

He looked away, turning back to the others.

“The watchtower could have a cellar,” said Cassathra quietly. “We might be safe in there.”

Raydrin shook his head. “If the building catches fire, we’ll be trapped. Or the smoke will choke us out.” He paused for a moment, thinking. Then his eyes widened. “But it might have some weapons we could use."

They broke out into a run once again, Jórunn’s hand wrapped around Raydrin’s arm. The watchtower wasn’t far—it was an old, crumbling building, cylindrical in shape and about three storeys high. The tower itself was surrounded by the ruins of other structures, the remains of what had probably once been a fort. A segment of collapsed wall acted as a ramp leading up to the tower’s entrance.

They clambered up it, Raydrin taking care to guide Jórunn over the cracks in the floor. They emerged into a circular room with a wooden table in the centre and a lantern atop of the table. A stone staircase leading to the second floor followed the curve of the outer wall. The room was otherwise empty.

“Wait here,” said Raydrin. Jórunn let go of his arm. “I’ll go look upstairs.”

Cassathra nodded. Raydrin hurried up the steps two at a time, finding himself in a second room almost identical to the first. To his relief, there was a weapons rack on the far side—he made his way over to it and started rifling through its contents. The selection was limited, but he was able to find two iron longswords for him and Cassathra. They were identical in design to the ones Mathyas had found in Helgen Keep, which unfortunately had been left in their room at the Bannered Mare. Raydrin felt a pang of sadness at the thought of his cousin but brushed it aside—now wasn't the time. 

He was about to start heading back downstairs when the ground beneath him suddenly shook and he lurched forwards onto his front. Raydrin rolled over with a groan. From somewhere above him there was a shrill, unearthly howl. It was close enough this time to elicit a searing pain in his ears.

Cassathra called his name from downstairs and he scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the swords from where they’d fallen on the floor and broke out into a run down the steps, racing to join them below.

“Take this,” he said breathlessly as he approached them, holding out one of the swords to Cassathra.

“What do we do?” she asked. There was a tremble in her voice.

The dragon screeched again.

“The reinforcements won’t be here for a while,” he said. The building shook and there came a great crashing noise as part of the tower tumbled to the ground. All three of them stumbled to one side.

“We can’t stay in here,” said Jórunn once they’d steadied themselves.

“But we can’t go outside,” said Cassathra. “We’ll be easy targets.”

The conversation came to an abrupt halt when, from outside, they heard the beating of wings against the air, followed by the heavy thump of something landing on the ground. Raydrin swallowed.

Over Cassathra’s shoulder and through the open doorway of the tower, Raydrin watched as the dragon landed on the ramp. It wasn’t the dragon from Helgen—it was paler, its scales a dull grey colour, and smaller in size. But it had the same face as the one from Helgen, long and narrow, with the same black, beady eyes.

Those eyes were fixed on them through the doorway as it slunk towards the tower, clinging onto either side of the narrow walkway with its long talons. Smoke spewed from its nostrils. The long spines on its back bristled. Raydrin grabbed Jórunn’s hand.

“Run!”

They ran, taking off towards the stairs just in time to escape the burst of flame that erupted into the room. Raydrin felt the heat on his back and heard the dragon gnashing its jaws behind him. The doorway was too narrow for its head to fit through and two pairs of talons curled around each side of the arch. The dragon then pulled and the wall gave way, great chunks of stone crumbling to leave a gaping hole. 

The dragon backed away when it saw them running up the stairs. Raydrin could no longer see it from his angle. But as they came up to the second floor, he heard the beating of wings outside and realized with dread that the dragon was returning to the top of the tower. With the hole it had torn into the building’s roof, that was bad news.

“Back down, back down!” he yelled. They turned to run in the opposite direction.

It was the right call—the room was engulfed by flame moments after they fled. The dragon howled in fury above them. When they made it back down to the ground floor they pressed themselves against the wall, steering clear of the hole where the doorway used to be and taking a moment to catch their breath.

“This isn’t working,” Cassathra moaned, hanging her head back against the stone. 

Raydrin nodded. “I think we’re going to have to fight it."

She stared at him. “What?!”

“Its main attack is fire,” he explained. “That puts the two of us in a better position than most. If we take it outside and keep it distracted long enough for the reinforcements to arrive, Jórunn can wait in here and might actually have a chance of survival.”

As if to emphasise his point the dragon roared again from somewhere outside. Cassathra was frowning, chewing on her bottom lip as she thought it over. Then she looked up at him and nodded.

“You’re right,” she said. “Jórunn, will you be alright in here?”

“I don’t think I really have a choice,” said Jórunn with resignation. “Go.”

Raydrin wanted to say more but he was acutely aware of how little time they had. He and Cassathra made their way to the door. He gave his sword an experimental swing.

“We’ll be back,” he called to Jórunn, looking over his shoulder. She had sunk to the floor, leaning against the wall. She raised her hand in a half-hearted wave.

“Good luck,” she replied.

Raydrin and Cassathra took their leave.

It was almost as if the dragon had been waiting for them—as they climbed down the stone ramp, it lowered itself slowly to the ground in front of them, landing in the ring of what had once been the rest of the fort.

“Avoid the head,” he said to Cassathra as they approached. “Aim for its wings—that way it can’t fly off.”

Cassathra nodded in understanding. They split off from each other just as the dragon started huffing smoke—a sure sign that fire was about to follow. Raydrin rolled to one side to ensure he was outside its range and landed somewhere by its flank just as a jet of flame surged from its jaws.

He realized with a start that he had somehow landed under its wing. It beat down its wings in frustration and Raydrin had to roll out of the way again to avoid being trapped. When it looked like it was about to take off, he drove his sword upwards, piercing straight through the thin, leathery flesh.

It howled in pain, throwing back its great head. Raydrin tried to slice forwards, but the skin of its wings wasn’t as frail as their slight transparency would suggest and his sword was lodged firmly in place.

Before he could rethink his plan and pull his weapon back, the dragon retracted its wing and twisted its body clockwise, clearly trying to recoil from the source of its pain. Raydrin was flung to one side and the hilt of his sword slipped from his grasp—he landed a few feet away with a grunt and watched uselessly as the dragon writhed about in an attempt to rid itself of the foreign object.

Though he couldn’t see much of Cassathra—being on the opposite side of the dragon—he could see her feet through the dragon’s legs. She rolled away from it as it twisted towards her, making sure to keep her distance from its head, and when she got back up he heard the tell-tale signs of a flame spell being cast.

The dragon seemed unbothered. Raydrin pulled himself to his feet.

“I think it might be immune to fire,” he called.

Fire was the only destruction magic Cassathra knew. It had been very useful against the draugr of Bleak Falls Barrow, with their dry, withered flesh, but it didn’t appear to be having the same effect on the dragon.

“I’ve worked that out, thanks,” Cassathra called back.

Raydrin’s shouting seemed to have reminded the dragon of his presence—it suddenly whipped round towards him. In doing so, the swinging of its tail knocked Cassathra onto her front, and Raydrin realized too late that he was now standing directly in front of its head.

He turned and ran, figuring that he was better off getting hit by fire than staying within biting-distance. As anticipated, the dragon roared, and Raydrin was engulfed in a blistering heat the likes of which he’d never experienced. As soon as he was certain he was far enough away, he dropped to the ground and rolled to the side, repeating the motion until all the fire in his clothing had been put out. Any longer and the natural resistance of his skin would have hit its saturation point.

He scrambled to his feet, scanning the area in an attempt to locate where his sword had fallen. The grass around him was blackened and smoking and the air tasted acrid on his tongue.

The dragon was still staring at him, pawing at the ground with its foreleg. It huffed from its nostrils, but the expulsion was different from before—it was less smoky. Like the puff of cold air following a sigh on a winter’s day.

The dragon opened its jaws and unleashed a blast of freezing air and ice. Raydrin cried out and lunged to the side, but the attack grazed his right arm before he could escape it completely. It was cold enough to burn and his arm felt suddenly numb.

“Fuck,” he hissed. The dragon was a fast learner. Behind him he heard Cassathra engaging in an attack. He was pushing himself to his feet when the glint of metal a few feet away suddenly caught his eye.

His sword! He dragged himself over to it, relying entirely on his left arm, and grasped its hilt. His non-dominant arm would have to do for now.

Raydrin got to his feet and spun round, determined not to leave Cassathra on her own for long. She was bounding from side-to-side, doing her best to steer clear of the dragon’s head, when it suddenly and without warning took off into the air.  

The puncture wound in its wing didn’t appear to have affected it much; its flying was slightly lopsided, but it was otherwise able to remain airborne. Without ranged weapons, Raydrin and Cassathra were completely helpless.

“Cassathra!” he shouted, catching her attention. He beckoned with his arm. “This way!”

She ran towards him and he grasped her hand, pulling her into step beside him and leading them both behind a crumbling segment of wall. They crouched behind it and tried to stay low, listening as the dragon roared overhead.

“What happens now?” asked Cassathra.

“We just try and stay alive,” Raydrin replied. He prayed that Jórunn would be ignored inside the tower.

From the direction of Whiterun there was suddenly the sound of thundering hooves. Raydrin looked up to see a cavalry of around thirty horses galloping towards them. At the cavalry’s front was—to Raydrin’s surprise—a Dunmer woman, and as they got closer, he realized that some of the Companions were within the ranks too. At the cavalry’s rear were three ballistae.

Raydrin and Cassathra clambered up onto the wall to get a better look. The dragon set itself on the reinforcements almost instantly—it flew upwards and upwards, rapidly gaining height, and then pressed its wings tightly against its body to plunge down towards them with an enormous amount of speed.

The Dunmer woman called out some orders, but she was too far away for Raydrin to hear what they were. The cavalry dispersed in a haphazard fashion just as a great plume of fire billowed from the dragon’s jaws. It spread its wings and swept over the ground, and though most of the cavalry appeared to have escaped its trajectory, the three ballistae were obliterated.

The dragon took to the air once more, circling round to face its attackers. With its wings now spread, a flurry of arrows cascaded upon it. Most just bounced off its scales, but a small number of them managed to hit the mark—it thrashed its head in anguish, spewing flames into the sky and faltering slightly where it was hovering in the air.

It was then that the dragon locked its eyes onto Raydrin and Cassathra. For a moment or two they were frozen in place, too petrified to move, but when the dragon drew its wings into its body and began swooping down towards them, Raydrin flung an arm around Cassathra’s waist and together they dived off the wall onto the opposite side.

The wall shielded them from the dragon’s ice breath just as it swept overhead. They clung to each other in fear as it took off for the skies once more. But it seemed to be struggling to control its direction; to Raydrin’s amazement it collided with a howl against the top of the tower, knocking off what remained of the third floor.  

It circled back around, its wings flapping uncontrollably, and landed without grace about twenty yards away. The dispersed cavalry started gathering around it and Raydrin got to his feet to watch, pulling Cassathra up with him.

The dragon was still kicking—it lunged at anyone who rode past its head, gnashing its jaws and blowing fire. Several of the Companions galloped in line down its flanks, and one by one they leaped from their horses onto the dragon’s wings. Raydrin recognized Aela, Leorn, Sanjir, and a few others whose names he couldn’t remember. They clambered up onto its back, using its spines as leverage. Raydrin watched in awe as they began slashing and hacking at the vulnerable spots in its armour.

The dragon writhed in agony. It tried to shake the Companions off, but other cavalrymen had cast ropes over its wings, effectively pinning it to the ground. Leorn was crawling up the dragon’s thick neck, using its spikes to hold on. When he was far enough along that his weight prevented the dragon from lifting its head, he sat upright, raised his battleaxe, and with one swift blow, plunged it into the dragon’s skull.

The dragon twitched for a few moments, and then fell still.

The cavalry cheered. They started trotting in circles around the dragon’s body, thrusting their weapons triumphantly into the air. Raydrin was too stunned to do much except stand there and watch, but he was shaken from his trance when Cassathra wrapped her arms around him.

He dazedly reciprocated, releasing the breath he’d been holding. Cassathra’s grip was tight around his ribs, and when she pulled back, her eyes were wide.

“Let’s go check on Jórunn,” she said. Raydrin nodded.

They climbed back up towards the tower, casting their swords to one side. “Jórunn?” Raydrin called as they approached the hole where the doorway used to be. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” she replied from the far wall, pushing herself to her feet. “Is it dead?”

Raydrin nodded as they approached, but then caught his mistake and said, “Yes. The reinforcements brought it down.”

Jórunn exhaled shakily. “I’m glad you’re both alive." Raydrin came to stand beside her and she took his arm. “I— I was listening from in here, but I couldn’t tell. I was so worried.”

“I’m glad we’re alive too,” said Raydrin. “And that you’re all right.”

Jórunn nodded. Together they started making their way out of the tower.

They were heading towards the cavalry, picking their way through the rubble, when Jórunn suddenly faltered at Raydrin’s side. Her hand slipped from his arm.

“Is everything alright?” he asked, stopping and turning to face her.

She was swaying slightly. Her skin had gone a rather pale colour. “Yes, I—” she started, but then she leaned forwards and Raydrin instinctively moved to steady her. “I— I feel sick,” she admitted feebly. Raydrin helped her lower herself to her knees. He was about to start going through some breathing exercises when he felt Cassathra tap him on the shoulder.

“Raydrin,” she said softly. She inclined her head in the direction of the dragon. “Look.”

He did.

The dragon's corpse was glowing. Its scales seemed to shrink in on themselves, and a golden light was seeping out from between the cracks. The body pulsated, alternately bulging and contracting, and the scales quivered in place as if they were straining against a great pressure. It looked like it was about to explode.

“Get back!” shouted the Dunmer. The cavalrymen scattered, sprinting in a panic away from the body.

But the anticipated explosion never came. Instead, the scales dissolved; muscle and flesh melted away, leaving behind the naked skeleton of what had once been a mighty beast. Threads of light drifted away from the body like leaves on the breeze, a shimmering river of silver and gold, and they snaked their way through the air until they settled in—to Raydrin’s shock and amazement—Jórunn.

Her brown eyes were wide, her body shaking. Raydrin was paralyzed. The glowing light seemed to cling to her skin, threads of gold sweeping over her face, her hair, sinking into her eyes and lips, rustling lowly as they tangled together. Raydrin could only watch in a stunned silence as the golden light was absorbed into her skin, eventually dissipating entirely. The whispering faded along with it.

The valley was silent for several long moments. Everyone was staring at Jórunn, waiting for her to say or do something, but she didn’t move. Eventually Raydrin mustered the wherewithal to approach her, carefully getting to his knees.

“Jórunn?” he said softly, reaching out with one hand.

Jórunn opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She was trembling, loosely shaking her head.

“I... I—”

Raydrin laid a hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from him like she’d been burned, gasping out.

“I don’t believe it,” said a voice from somewhere behind them. Raydrin turned and saw one of the Whiterun guards approaching. “She… she’s Dragonborn.”

Jórunn’s eyes were wide. Slowly she raised her head.

“What?” she whispered, almost too quietly to be heard. Her knuckles were a bony white.

“Dragonborn,” the guard repeated. “Like the Dragonborn emperors—mortal men with the souls of dragons."

Everyone was silent.

"M— my grandfather told me tales," the guard went on, clearly flustered, "from back when there were still dragons in Skyrim… the Dragonborn would slay dragons and steal their power.”

Raydrin stared at him.

“That’s what you just did, isn’t it?” said the guard. “You absorbed that dragon’s power?”

Jórunn was shaking her head. “I- I don’t know,” she whispered. Her voice was thin. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

“Leave her alone,” said Cassathra suddenly. She knelt on Jórunn’s other side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Jórunn’s eyes were wet with tears. “She’s clearly overwhelmed.”

“What are you talking about, ‘Dragonborn’?” leered another guard. Raydrin realized then that the rest of the cavalrymen had gathered around them; the Companions were there too, and Raydrin met Leorn’s gaze through the crowd. Sanjir, beside him, was staring at Jórunn with concern.

“Old Tiber Septim himself was Dragonborn,” said the first, defending his claim. “All the Septims were, right down to Martin.”

“I never heard of Tiber Septim killing dragons.”

“There weren’t any dragons to kill. They’re just coming back now for the first time in… forever.” He turned to Jórunn then, his eyes wide from within the shadowy slits of his helmet. “Only makes sense for the Dragonborn to come back now, too.”

“What do you say, Irileth?” asked someone from within the crowd.

All eyes turned towards the Dunmer woman who’d been giving the orders. She was staring at Jórunn with a frown and rubbing her jaw in thought.

“I don’t know about this Dragonborn business,” she said eventually. Her voice was low and stern. “But the three of you,” she continued, pointing to Raydrin, Jórunn and Cassathra, “should head to Dragonsreach and let Jarl Balgruuf know what happened. He’ll know what to do with you.”

She then turned to the others. “As for the rest of you,” she called. “Dragonborn or no, we need to clear up this mess. Guards, you carry on to the encampment and look for survivors. Companions, you can help me dismantle the skeleton and take it back to Whiterun. Farengar will want to study this.”

The cavalrymen were slow to disperse, talking amongst themselves, but gradually they started heading back towards their horses.

Cassathra was doing her best to comfort Jórunn, who seemed like she was in shock. 

“It’ll be all right,” Cassathra murmured. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

Jórunn nodded, but she was rocking back and forth, her breath coming short. Raydrin could tell she was on the verge of a panic attack. He placed his hand on her back and moved it in slow circles, trying in vain to soothe her.

What a fucking mess, he thought. If only Mathyas were here.  

Notes:

extra special thank you to my beta reader haley for this chapter! bits of it were absolutely dead before she looked at it, but w her help and advice she helped completely transform them. i'm extremely grateful for her knowledge and wisdom and for the effort she puts into helping me <3

thanks for reading!

Chapter 9: Sea of Ghosts

29th Last Seed

Mathyas was… moving.

No. He was sitting—sitting on something that was moving. He was upright, and his head kept rolling backwards, repeatedly and rhythmically knocking against something hard.

That was the first thing he registered when he woke up. The second thing he registered was that he was about to throw up.

He lurched forwards, vomiting onto the floor between his feet. His stomach felt like a taut drum, and with every jolt of the cart someone was pounding against it.

A cart—he was in a cart. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized somewhat numbly that his wrists were bound. The coarse ropes were harsh against his skin.

“You're awake,” said a voice. Mathyas sat up and blinked dazedly into the darkness, trying in vain to locate its owner.

Four other faces gradually came into focus; there were two Argonians, a Khajiit, and another Dunmer. The five of them were in a covered wagon of some kind, and it was dark outside. Their hands were also bound.

Mathyas felt like death. He had a splitting headache and he was cold and shivery all over.

“Where am I?” he rasped.

They stared at him.

“What’s going on?”

One of the Argonians sighed, turning her gaze to the murky darkness beyond the back of the wagon.

“Our best bet is slavers,” she said grimly. Hers was the voice that had spoken to him before. “We know as little as you.”

Her last word was clipped by a loud, hollow knocking from the front of the wagon.

“No fucking talking,” someone spat. His voice was deep and gruff, the accent Nordic.

Mathyas looked down at his bound hands. He was dizzy. His thoughts were confused and nonsensical, his mind jumping rapidly from one to the next. He had been with Saadia, leading her to the Alik’r… what happened after that? How long ago had that taken place? Where was he now?

Where were Raydrin and Cassathra?

His hands were bound. He was in a cart, and he was being taken somewhere by slavers.  

“I think I’m going to be sick again,” he croaked.

The others watched with blank stares as he retched, doubling over and heaving up nothing onto the floor below. His stomach was empty; how long ago had he last eaten? 

He lingered in that position for several moments, breathing heavily, until his nausea subsided and he leaned his head back against the wall of the cart. He knew he needed to try and do something, anything, to save himself from the indignity he was about to go through—he could leap out of the back of the cart and make a run for it, heedless of the possibility of dying in the process.

But he was so tired. He felt wrung out. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand, let alone run for his life.

A lump caught in his throat. The cart stank, and Mathyas felt dirty, hungry, and cold. He closed his eyes, hung back his head, and waited for the trundling of the wagon to gradually lull him back to sleep.

 

---

 

Four days passed like that. They were fed stale bread and foul-tasting water and forced to share a single bucket for their waste. Nothing could have prepared Mathyas for how painful it was to be forced into the same cramped position for days at a time, unable to lie down, or even to stretch his legs. His wrists were raw and bloodied and he felt constantly dizzy from the lack of food. But it was the monotony that was perhaps most excruciating.

Their captors spoke in Nordic, which made it difficult to get a sense of what was going on. Mathyas’ best guess was that he and the others were in the custody of a small group of bandits. His memory of what happened to him gradually returned, including the few words Saadia had said, right before he blacked out:

Here's your payment.

So she had worked out his bluff and hired these brigands to help in her escape. How she'd caught onto his ploy, he had no idea, but it was clear to Mathyas that he had underestimated her. He thought longingly of that week in Whiterun and wished in vain that he could go back and do it differently.

The fates of Kematu and the other Alik’r warriors were unknown to him. But if he had to guess, he could only assume they’d been killed. It was the Alik’r who posed the greatest threat to Iman, whom the bandits had likely been asked to deal with in return for payment. Mathyas was just unlucky enough to be caught in the middle; he was an added bonus for these criminals, and nothing more.

On the evening of the fourth day, the cart came to a stop. Mathyas had been dozing, not quite asleep but not fully awake either, and blearily he opened his eyes at the change in movement.

The captives glanced between each other. They were forbidden from speaking under threat of violence, and none of them had been willing to put that to the test. Mathyas knew not of their names nor how they’d ended up in this situation.

There came voices from outside. Mathyas shifted slightly in his seat, straining to listen to what was being said. The conversation was in Nordic, but he was able to pick out the word ‘Windhelm’. Ah—that confirmed his vague suspicions that they’d been travelling north for the past few days.

After several minutes the conversation came to an end, and one of the bandits knocked loudly on the side of the cart. Mathyas jumped at the sudden noise.

“Everybody out,” the bandit called, switching to Cyrodilic. Mathyas and the other passengers started slowly and uneasily responding to the order, but seconds later the bandit pounded on the cart again, louder this time. “Hurry up!” he shouted. “I said get a fucking move on.”

They clambered from the back of the wagon one by one, which was hard to do without the use of their hands. Mathyas was relieved to be able to extend his legs fully, but his joints ached from disuse, and standing up made him feel dizzy.

He looked around once he’d steadied himself and dazedly began to take in his surroundings. The wagon had stopped beside an immense body of water, with a small, rickety jetty protruding from the bank. The sky was growing dark and a thin mist clung to the surface of the water, but Mathyas was just able to make out the silhouette of a large city in the distance, connected to land by a great bridge. It was Windhelm—the expanse of water was an estuary, he realized, the widest part of the White River before it bled into the Sea of Ghosts. His heart picked up at the thought of how close they were to Blacklight.

“Down you go,” said one of the other bandits, and Mathyas was roughly shoved between his shoulder blades. He stumbled forwards and fell in line with the other captives, who were being led down the riverbank towards the jetty. It was a short, steep descent. Two rowboats awaited them at the bottom.

The four bandits split themselves into pairs and each pair took charge of a boat. Before the captives got in, the bandits untied the ropes around their hands and redid them, this time with the captives’ hands behind their backs. Mathyas was then forcefully made to board, a hand pushing down on his head. He was followed by the Khajiit. The Argonians and the Dunmer took the other boat.

They pushed out from the jetty, gliding through the water in the direction of the city. Mathyas shivered; night was falling, and in the northern reaches of Skyrim it was cold no matter what time of year it was. In his confused state, he briefly considered jumping into the water and trying to swim for it, but the idea was shot down moments after it came to him. His hands were bound, and even if they weren’t, the cold shock would have rendered him incapable of swimming. And it wasn’t like his captors would let him get away that easily anyway.

By the time they made it to Windhelm’s docks, it was nearly dark. It must have been late; the nights were short this far north and at this time of year, which Mathyas knew because it was the same in Blacklight. He kept glancing eastwards, to the distant peaks of the Velothi Mountains. The craggy horizon—and the knowledge of what lay beyond—elicited a stirring in his heart that could be described only as grief.

The docks were quiet, silent save for the creaking of wood and the gentle rustling of water as waves splashed against the harbour. The bandits started discussing something, speaking to each other in low murmurs. They then moored up at an otherwise empty pier, far away from most of the other vessels, and pulled the captives up onto the boardwalk one by one.

Mathyas’ heart was racing in his chest. He’d been in something of a daze until now, but seeing all the other vessels, being back in civilisation, meant the reality of his situation was suddenly feeling a lot less like a terrible dream he was going to wake up from and a lot more like a very real and immediate threat.

They were at Windhelm docks; that meant they were going to be shipped somewhere. If Mathyas’ memory served him well, Windhelm’s docks were frequented by ships from all over eastern Tamriel, though Morrowind was perhaps the most common destination of its exports. Slavery had been illegal in Morrowind for over two hundred years, but it remained a widespread occurrence and something House Redoran had been half-heartedly trying to stamp out. Mathyas’ stomach turned at the thought of being sold to some morally depraved Telvanni wizard—most of whom had been alive during abolition and continued to oppose it to this day—to be used as a thrall, or worse, a test subject.

Fuck. He needed to do something. He needed to get out of there or die trying.

They stood there on the boardwalk for a while, evidently waiting for something specific to happen. Mathyas glanced around in the hope that something in the vicinity would inspire a plan, trying not to be too suspicious about it, but he was coming up blank.

After maybe ten minutes of waiting, a dark figure appeared in the distance, climbing down the steps that led up from the docks into the city. The bandits seemed to recognise them and slowly began making their way over, captives in tow.

Mathyas was running out of time. They met with the figure, another Nord man, who started explaining something to the bandits in their native tongue. He kept glancing between the captives as he spoke, looking them up and down and stroking his chin, until eventually they seemed to come to an agreement.

“Aillt í lagi—dýrin fara til Hafnar Telvannis. Myrku álfarnir fara til Ebonheart.”

They shook hands. Mathyas’ arm was grabbed by one of the bandits and he flinched.

The bandit sneered beside him. “Come on then, elf,” he hissed, close to Mathyas’ ear. Mathyas wanted to pull his arm away, but with his hands tied behind his back he couldn’t. Maybe that was a good thing—he didn’t want to piss them off before getting the opportunity to escape. He needed to seem obedient, submissive. To lull them into complacency.

They were led up the stairs to the upper boardwalk, which provided access to the larger ships and vessels. With five captives and now five captors, every one of them had someone holding onto their arm, which made it difficult to get any leeway. They followed the boardwalk along to the outer docks, and then at last onto a long, isolated stretch of pier, with two large Imperial galleons moored at the far end.

This was it. If Mathyas didn’t act now, his fate was sealed. But on a thin wooden walkway with nothing on either side of it but the icy waters below, there was nowhere for him to go.

His nerves were alight. When one of the Argonians suddenly yelled out something in Jel, Mathyas jumped so hard it felt like his heart stopped beating, and he whipped his head around just in time to watch as both Argonians leapt from the side of the boardwalk with their respective captors still attached.

They landed with a splash in the waters below. For a split second of silence, Mathyas could only stare at the space they’d once occupied.

Do something! his mind was screaming at him. Now’s your chance!

The bandits sprung into action, yelling out the names of their fallen comrades. Mathyas took advantage of their distraction by knocking his body against a crate with a lantern on it. To his luck the lantern fell onto the jetty instead of into the water, and with the sound of smashing glass the spilled oil burst instantly into flame.

The flames licked at Mathyas’ legs and the bandit holding onto him. The bandit cried out, releasing his grasp on Mathyas’ arm. The fabric of his trousers had caught alight too, but he had at least a few seconds before it caused him any pain—and he would take a burned leg over captivity any day.

With nothing holding him back and the remaining three slavers caught up in the fire, Mathyas started running. He didn’t look back. It was hard with his hands tied behind him and he stumbled to begin with, but he didn’t allow himself to stop—he couldn’t. He heard yelling over his shoulder and the sound of heavy footsteps on the jetty and knew he was being pursued.

Leaning forwards to counteract the weight of his arms behind him, Mathyas sprinted down the boardwalk along the city wall, running as quickly as he was physically able and faster than it felt like he’d ever run before. The flames were crawling up his leg and the growing pain eventually cut through his panicked thoughts, alerting him to the fact he would need to put the fire out if he wanted to be able to run much further. But he didn’t have time—his pursuers were faster than him, and even a second’s delay could make the difference between being caught and escaping to freedom.

Crying out as the pain became excruciating, he staggered sideways, knocking unintentionally into a tall stack of barrels. He fell forwards and landed on his front, but there was a loud crashing noise behind him as the barrels tumbled onto the boardwalk. He instinctively started rolling from side to side, sobbing at the pain in his leg as his awareness of it grew.

After a few rolls the fire had been put out, and the barrels had bought him some time at least. Grunting with effort, Mathyas forced himself onto his knees, and from there he was able to tuck his bound hands under his legs and bring them round so that they were at the front of his body. His leg was badly burned, but adrenaline had him up and running again before he could give any thought to his pain.

He was faster now; balancing was still a challenge, but he was able to build more momentum with the limited use of his arms. His pursuers were on their feet again and close behind him, but they had lost their advantage of greater speed.

At last Mathyas reached the steps that led into the city, and he bounded up them two at a time. He emerged onto a dimly lit, shabby-looking street, and turned right at the top, not really thinking about his destination beyond away from his captors.

It was the dead of night and the streets of Windhelm were deserted, at least in this area. There was shouting behind him, closer than he would have liked, but he pushed himself to run faster despite the pain in his leg and the burning in his lungs. He didn’t dare look over his shoulder; he just needed to lose them somehow.

Mathyas twisted through the narrow streets, deliberately changing direction as often as he could, until eventually he could run no further. He ducked into a hollow doorway to catch his breath and prayed that his pursuers hadn’t followed him onto the road.

His prayers went unanswered. He heard shouting from the end of the street and saw the orange glow of torchlight in his periphery. They were here, they had found him, he had seconds before they would reach his hiding place.

Mathyas couldn’t run anymore. His lungs had had it; he was dizzy from pain. And his burned leg was in such agony he could barely stand. But if he stayed where he was, the chances of them catching him were too great.

With his heart pounding and the footsteps getting closer, Mathyas turned in the doorway and pushed on the door with his bound hands. It was unlocked. He slipped inside. He could deal with the consequences later.

He leaned back against the closed door and shut his eyes, breathing deeply. The sound of footsteps passed outside and eventually faded out of earshot. The room fell silent—Mathyas was safe.

The lump in his throat finally burst. He slid down to the floor and let the tears fall, pressing his face into his still-bound hands. His body was shaking so violently it hurt, and his breathing was rapid and shallow, each breath tearing through his lungs like wildfire.

He was alive—he was alive and he was free. But Mathyas felt so small, so violated, and the remnants of adrenaline in his system prevented him from feeling any kind of relief. He just trembled and shook, too shocked to even properly cry.

“A- are you alright?”

He jumped, his whole body recoiling as he looked up.

At the top of a tall, dark staircase was what looked like a young human boy, holding onto a lantern. The lantern cast harsh shadows onto the child’s face, illuminating the stark whites of his eyes where they were visible all around his pupils.

Mathyas’ heart was racing. He knew how it looked; he was a dirty, bedraggled Dunmer with bound hands and a burned leg, crying at the bottom of this child’s staircase in the middle of the night.

He raised his hands, trembling. “I- I can explain—”

The child tilted his head. “Are you from the Dark Brotherhood?” he asked.

Mathyas blinked at him. “What?”

The boy took a step backwards, lowering the lantern. His young face was contorted into a frown.

“You can’t be,” he said, his eyes flicking down to Mathyas’ bound wrists. “They wouldn’t… send someone like this.”

Mathyas was shaking his head. “I’m not from the Dark Brotherhood,” he rasped. “Please, I- I’m not here to hurt you.”

The boy shuffled his feet, kicking his toe into the wall. “You wouldn’t be here to hurt me,” he muttered, sounding almost… disappointed? Then he looked back up, and stared at Mathyas through narrowed eyes. “Well, if you aren’t from the Dark Brotherhood, who are you?”

Mathyas opened his mouth to answer, but found that he had no answer to give. Where should he begin? With his name, his predicament? Should he lie?

“You aren’t an escaped prisoner, are you?” the boy asked suspiciously when Mathyas failed to respond.

Mathyas shook his head again. “No,” he said. “I… I was captured. By some bad people. I- I managed to escape, but they chased me, and—” he paused, taking a shaky breath. “I came in here to hide from them.”

The boy stared at him for a few moments more. Mathyas’ heart was racing in fear at the thought that he was about to shout for his parents, or kick him out. But then the child’s expression suddenly relaxed.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Mathyas released a shuddering sigh of relief. "Mathyas."

“You can stay in here until the bad men have gone,” the child went on, his mouth spread in a big, friendly smile. “But… there’s some mess upstairs and you have to promise not to say anything.”

Mathyas frowned. The boy seemed overly confident in his offer.

“I promise,” he said slowly, humouring him despite his uncertainty. “Are... are your parents around?”

The boy’s expression suddenly fell. He looked away, his dark eyebrows knitted together. “I don’t have any,” he said quietly. “I’m here by myself.”

Mathyas blinked, trying to conceal his surprise. “How old are you?”

“I’m thirteen,” said the boy defensively. “I’m old enough to look after myself.”

Something was very, very wrong. A feeling of unease had settled in Mathyas’ already unsettled stomach, but he couldn’t exactly leave; as far as he knew, his captors would still be out there looking for him. And now he had an orphaned thirteen-year-old to consider.

He had a lot of questions, but he figured they could wait. He was still too disoriented to work out which question he should ask first.

“I suppose you’re right,” Mathyas lied. “What’s your name?”

“Aventus,” said the boy.

Mathyas nodded. Then he lifted his hands. “Could you untie me, please, Aventus?”

Aventus smiled and started coming down the stairs. His lantern rocked to and fro with each step, casting dancing shadows upon the walls.

“Your leg is burned,” he said rather matter-of-factly as he undid the rope around Mathyas’ wrists. The rope dropped to the floor with a dull thud and Mathyas winced at the bloody ligature marks he’d been left with.

“I’ll live.” In truth, it was a bad burn and he needed to treat it. But for now he just wanted to focus on making it through the night without being captured again. “Do you have a key for the door?” he asked.

Aventus’ eyes widened. “Drat!” he exclaimed. “I forgot to lock it again—I keep doing that…”

Mathyas stared at him in concern. Old enough to look after himself... 

“The key is upstairs,” Aventus went on. “You can come with me, but... please remember your promise not to say anything.”

Mathyas nodded and got unsteadily to his feet. He faltered slightly as he put his weight onto his left leg, hissing in pain as his burned skin was forced to stretch and contract. Aventus helped to steady him.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m all right.”

Aventus took that at face value, letting him go. With a big smile, he turned and started trotting up the stairs. Mathyas followed but at a slower pace, staring quizzically into his back. Aventus was a naïve child, overly trusting. That had worked in Mathyas’ favour, but Aventus was lucky it had been Mathyas to break in and not someone of a less savoury character.

He suddenly remembered Aventus’ odd comments about the Dark Brotherhood. Gods, this situation was getting more and more concerning. He had so many questions he knew he ought to ask, but he was still too shaken to want to ask any of them. He just wanted to feel like he was safe for the night, even if that involved lying to himself for now.

They reached the top of the staircase, emerging into a modest domicile. Aventus hadn’t been lying about the mess; it was clear that a child had been living there alone for a long, long time. The wooden floor was strewn with litter and loose hay; several pieces of furniture were broken. The stone hearth to Mathyas’ left was unlit and filled with ash, and great clumps of cobweb clung ghost-like to the rafters. An unmade bed sat against the far wall. In the corner nearest to the top of the stairs, there lay a crooked wooden table, covered in scraps of uneaten food. The room was dimly lit; other than a few candles, Aventus’ lantern was the only source of light.

“Here’s the key!” exclaimed Aventus as he picked it up triumphantly from a dusty set of shelves. “Wait here. I’ll go lock up.”

Mathyas nodded, allowing Aventus to hurry back down the stairs. In the wake of his receding footsteps, Mathyas limped further into the room, eyeing a wooden chair beside the cold fireplace. He was making his way over to it when he was suddenly hit by a pungent, acrid smell, and he stopped, looking around the room in search of its source.

By Azura, it was foul. It was a smell beyond the likes of which one would expect from the home of a neglected child, worse than anything that could result from poor hygiene alone. It smelled like rotting flesh.

He turned around. Opposite the fireplace was another doorway he hadn’t seen on his way in. There was no door, but it was dark beyond, too dark to see. Heart pounding, Mathyas reached for one of the candles on the fireplace mantle and slowly limped towards it. When he was close enough for the candlelight to illuminate the floor before him, his eyes flew open in horror and a wave of disgust swept over him, like fleshfly larvae writhing beneath the skin. 

There on the floor, in the centre of the small room, were the scattered remains of a dead body. The corpse had decayed beyond recognition, but the flesh was still intact enough for it to be clear that it was the body of a human woman. Her loose skin was a blackish colour all over, drooping towards the floor where it had come free from the meat below. A dark, congealed liquid clung to the skin around her eyes, mouth and nose. Her naked abdomen had burst open. Where her skin had fallen away completely, Mathyas could see the streaky sinews of her shrivelling muscles. Her limbs and head had been cut away from her torso.

Mathyas recoiled, covering his mouth and gagging. If he had eaten more recently, he almost certainly would have been sick. But his empty stomach just rolled on nothing, revulsed as he was by the sight before him.

He heard footsteps behind him, but he didn’t turn. He was too stunned to move, unable to tear his eyes away from the corpse.

“I know it’s bad,” said Aventus, his voice high with panic. “Please don’t say anything!”

Mathyas turned, then, breathing hard through his nose, and stared at the child. Aventus’ eyes were wide and pleading. His instinct was to yell, but he couldn’t even speak; Aventus looked so scared, and he was so young.

After several moments, Mathyas collected himself. He went back into the main room, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the body as possible. Aventus stepped aside to let him pass. He lowered himself into the chair by the hearth and closed his eyes, breathing deeply in an attempt to settle his stomach.

Aventus hesitantly approached and kneeled on the floor before him.

“Mathyas?” he said timidly.

Mathyas opened his eyes. He met Aventus’ gaze and held it.

“Aventus,” he said, doing his best to speak softly, “can you tell me what’s going on here?”

Aventus chewed on his lip, his brows furrowed in worry. Mathyas noticed he was rubbing his hands nervously along the fabric of his trousers.

“I- I didn’t kill her,” Aventus said quickly. “I found her. I mean, there’s been some murders in Windhelm recently and I think she was one of them, and— and I found her on the street one night before anyone else did. But I promise I’ll bury her when I’m done with her. I’ll bury her, I swear!”

Mathyas exhaled slowly. “When you’re ‘done with her’?”

Aventus blinked up at him, wide-eyed and fearful.

“I— um..."

He wrinkled his nose, squeezing his eyes closed and turning his face away in shame.

"I'm... using her to perform the Black Sacrament," he confessed at last. "I— it’s how you contact the Dark Brotherhood. I want to make a contract.”

Mathyas could only stare. Nothing that had happened over the last few days felt real, but this—this was truly too much for him to process.

In his silence, Aventus continued. “My mother, she… she died. She got sick, last winter. They put me in the orphanage, here in Windhelm, but…” he paused and closed his eyes, then took a deep, shuddering breath. “It was horrible,” he said quietly. “The mistress, Grelod, she…”

Aventus trailed off. Mathyas could see his eyes welling with tears. He got off his chair and knelt on the ground in front of the boy, laying a hand hesitantly on his shoulder. Aventus pressed his little face into his hands. 

“She did such terrible things,” he sobbed, his voice high and boyish. “To me, to the others. I can’t—I can’t—”

He broke off in tears again. Mathyas just awkwardly patted his shoulder, wanting to comfort him but not wanting to overstep any boundaries. Especially now, in light of that... revelation.

“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Aventus was shaking his head. “I ran away,” he went on, his voice watery through his tears. “I wanted to contact the Dark Brotherhood and ask them to kill Grelod, but… it’s been weeks. I keep trying but they won’t come. And now, now I don’t know what to do with the body!”

He wailed, then, and to Mathyas’ surprise leaned forwards and flung his arms around his neck, sobbing brokenly into his shoulder.

Mathyas' heart cracked in two. He was probably the first living company Aventus had had in weeks; it was no wonder the boy had been so relaxed about letting him stay.

He patted Aventus’ back, letting him cry it out.

“It’s all right,” he said uselessly, as if saying it would somehow make it true. “It’s going to be all right.”

They stayed like that for several minutes. It was a long while before Aventus’ cries died down. He sniffled and drew away, rubbing at his eyes. His tan face was red and puffy.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice thick. “You probably don’t want to stay here anymore.”

He was absolutely right—Mathyas couldn’t think of anything worse than spending the night in the vicinity of a rotting corpse, especially with an open wound in his leg. But he didn’t want to risk returning to the streets of Windhelm, not with his slavers still on the loose. 

And more than anything, he couldn’t leave Aventus. The boy was traumatized and had been living with a corpse for weeks. He needed help.

“If—” Mathyas started, slowly, like he wasn’t sure what he was saying. “If someone were to kill Grelod, would you go back to the orphanage?”

Aventus blinked at him in surprise. Then he nodded quickly, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Yes, definitely,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to spend another moment in this wretched place.”

Mathyas nodded. An idea was forming. “And you’d be happy to get rid of the body?”

Another nod. “Yes, of course.”

Mathyas took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe what he was saying—it seemed his experience over the last few days had truly robbed him of his remaining sanity.

“If you can get me a cloak and a knife, I’ll do it for you tonight,” he said. “And then we can bury the body when I get back.”

Aventus’ eyes widened. “Really?” he gasped. “You mean it?”

Mathyas nodded. What are you doing, you fool?!

“Yes,” he said. “But Aventus—” he paused then, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder and looking at him sternly, “taking a life is not something to be done lightly. You don’t have to tell me what Grelod did to you, but I want you to think about this really hard, and I want you to be absolutely certain that she deserves it, and that the world would be a better place without her in it.”

Aventus nodded. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life,” he said. His voice was clear and steady. “That woman is evil.”

“All right,” said Mathyas. “Let’s do it.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Aventus cried, flinging his arms around Mathyas’ neck again. “Thank you so much, you’re my hero! I- I’ll pay you, I have a valuable family heirloom, I was going to give it to the Dark Brotherhood assassin, but you can have it!”

Mathyas’ heart leapt a beat. He hadn’t thought that far ahead but at the mention of payment, it suddenly occurred to him that he would need a way of getting back to Blacklight. Hopefully Raydrin would eventually return and find him there.

“It’s a deal,” he said, and Aventus pulled back. “Now—let's find that cloak and dagger.”

 

---

 

With a hood securing his features and a weapon in his hand, Mathyas felt a lot more confident returning to the streets of Windhelm. Before he left, Aventus fetched him some water and found some clean cloth so that he could wash and bandage his burn wounds. It was crude, but it would do for now.

It was still pitch-black when Mathyas finally left, but he knew he didn’t have long before the sun started rising. He was vaguely aware of his bone-deep exhaustion, but lack of sleep was something he’d learned to cope with a long time ago. Adrenaline was still carrying him a long way.

He followed Aventus’ directions and made his way carefully towards the orphanage, periodically checking over his shoulder and doing his best to remain vigilant. Windhelm was a dark, cold city, the tall stone walls around every corner oppressive and stifling. Eventually he came across a building which matched Aventus’ description, hidden behind a lychgate above which Nordic runes had been carved into the stone. Mathyas checked the street briefly, ensuring he was alone, and then stepped through the gate.

According to Aventus, the staff rooms were at the back of the building, on the first floor. The stone blocks which had been used in the building were jagged and protruded from the wall face, which made climbing up it a simple enough exercise. Mathyas stopped to catch his breath when he reached a decorative ledge, before sidling along it and glancing through each of the small, stained-glass windows in turn.

Seeing inside was difficult, and he knew that climbing inside would be even more so. But through one of the windows, he was just about able to make out a shock of white hair on the pillow, and according to Aventus only one woman here matched that description.

Got you.

He made himself comfortable on the ledge and dug his nails under the window pane, pulling lightly. It didn’t budge. He took the dagger Aventus had given him and slid it into the gap between the window pane and the wall, pushing upwards until he heard a latch click. Then he angled the hilt of the dagger away from him and used it as a lever to push the window open.

He was in. The room was small and a narrow cot was pressed into the corner. An elderly woman lay in it, facing away from him and snoring loudly. She shivered as a gust of cold air swept in from outside.

The window was too little and too high in the wall to hook his leg over it, so Mathyas had to push himself up to it with his arms and slide through it head-first. Maneuvering was difficult; his limbs were numbed by the cold and his burned leg had started to throb uncomfortably, wrenching an involuntary grunt from his lips as he tried to wriggle into position. He was just about over the threshold and was starting to lower himself to the floor when an acute stinging sensation cut into his forearm; his flesh had caught on the jagged edge of the window pane, and with a loud tearing of fabric and a muffled cry Mathyas landed on the floor in a haphazard pile. 

He froze, holding his breath as he stared at the woman in the bed and waited for some kind of reaction. Grelod stirred and mumbled something unintelligible, but did not wake. 

Mathyas sat there in the shadows for a short while, waiting for the shooting pain in his arm to fade into a dull throb and for his nervous breathing to lapse back into a steady rhythm. No-one came to investigate the loud noise he’d made. Vaguely and enviously, Mathyas wondered how Grelod was able to sleep so soundly and wished he could do the same. When enough time had passed for him to collect himself—and to be satisfied that no-one in the building had heard him—he swallowed and got to his feet.

His heart was pounding as he slowly crept over to the bed. Grelod’s face was thin and pale from where it lay on her pillow, her aged skin creased with deep wrinkles. Her brows were knitted together even as she slept, as if she were scowling.

Mathyas stopped for a moment, staring at her. He had no proof that this woman deserved to die—just Aventus’ word. But whatever she did to these children, it was bad enough that Aventus was prepared to live with a rotting corpse for several weeks just to see her gone.

Mathyas pressed his dagger to her neck, held his breath, and sliced her throat.

 

---

 

They buried the girl’s body at dawn, carrying it out of the city in a large sack and walking until the ground was soft enough to dig. Aventus cried, and they stayed there for a long time, Mathyas’ arm slung around his shoulder.

When they finished paying their respects, they returned to Aventus’ little apartment. Mathyas helped him tidy up and lit the hearth to make a proper breakfast for them both. They agreed that Aventus ought to wait a while before returning to the orphanage, so as to avoid rousing suspicion.

Aventus then gave Mathyas his payment, but the ‘valuable family heirloom’ was no more than a thin metal plate. Mathyas smiled and took it gratefully, but inwardly his heart sank—this would barely get him one night in an inn, let alone enough supplies for a trip back to Blacklight. It seemed his time in Windhelm was not yet over.

The time came to say goodbye. Aventus wrapped his arms tightly around Mathyas’ middle for several long moments, pressing his little face into his torso.

“Thank you,” he whispered. His voice was high and scratchy, tight with repressed emotion. 

Mathyas patted the dark hair on the crown of his head and then placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders, gently pushing him away. He got down on one knee, bringing himself to Aventus’ eye level.

“You’ll be alright?” he asked, sweeping one knuckle beneath Aventus’ eye to wipe away a stray tear.

Aventus nodded, his gaze fixed to his feet and his lips pressed into a ragged line.

“And you promise you’ll go back to the orphanage in a little while?”

Aventus nodded again, but when his face crumpled into a tight knot, Mathyas pulled him into a final hug and let him cry into his shoulder. He felt small hands curl into fists against his back.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Aventus sobbed.

Mathyas closed his eyes, breathing deeply. Of course Aventus would have developed such an attachment in such a short space of time; the boy had no-one else. 

“You’ll be looked after at the orphanage now,” he told him, pulling away and brushing loose strands of hair from his forehead. “There are people there who will care for you and love you. And you can reunite with your old friends.”

Aventus nodded again, but he wouldn’t meet Mathyas’ gaze. Mathyas gripped his upper arms. “Aventus,” he said, getting him to look up. “Thank you.” He huffed a humourless laugh. “I’m pretty sure you saved my life.”

A shuddering breath wracked Aventus’ body. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Will you come visit?” he sniffled.

Mathyas smiled sadly. “I’ll try."

In truth, he hoped never to have to return to Windhelm. But Aventus didn’t need to know that. All being well, the boy would forget about him soon enough.

He left Aventus, then. After getting turned away from all of the central inns, Mathyas headed to what was known as Windhelm’s Grey Quarter, the shabby, impoverished district of Windhelm he’d run through on his way out of the docks. If he’d been more awake, he undoubtedly would have been outraged at the conditions his people were forced to live in. Unfortunately, as it was, he had just enough energy to get a room in the ‘New Gnisis Cornerclub’ and then he immediately passed out.

The following day—which he was told was the 4th of Hearthfire—Mathyas took up some odd jobs at the docks. He estimated it would take him three days to save enough money for his requisite travel supplies.

It was heavy, tedious work. By the time he finished he was sore all over. But the constant movement was good for his leg, at least. When his shift finished, late in the evening, he headed back to the Cornerclub and waved at the proprietor as he headed up to his room. In a way, it was nice to be surrounded by the culture of his homeland again; but in truth, this watered-down version just made him miss it more.

He shut the door to his tiny room and sagged against it, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. Mathyas felt oddly calm, like all of his emotions had drained out of him. His usually constant thoughts had been quiet ever since he left Aventus, his mind obstinately refusing to afford any consideration to his recent experiences. The burning desire to return to Blacklight had kept him preoccupied with practicalities. 

He pulled his raggedy shirt up over his head and slid towards the wash basin, splashing his face with cold water. There was a feeling of dirtiness he couldn’t scrub away, like it was sitting just beneath the skin. Mathyas lifted his head slowly, almost hesitant to gaze upon his reflection. The man he came face to face with looked nothing like him; his complexion was a dull, pale grey, the bags under his eyes heavy and prominent. His usually tidy black hair was a dishevelled mess and his jaw and cheeks were covered in a layer of scruff he lacked the energy to shave away.

Mathyas scoffed inwardly. He looked like Raydrin. 

It was a long while that he spent staring at himself, blankly searching his own face for the answer to a question he did not know. When he was eventually able to tear his gaze away, he was about to flop onto the bed and sleep—or try to—for the next twelve hours, but something caught his eye before he could. Behind his reflection, pinned to the wall above his bed with a cheap knife, was a scrap of paper. Mathyas turned and stalked towards it, tearing it down and staring at it with wide eyes. His heart rate picked up.

In the centre of the page was a black, inky handprint, the fingers spread wide. And beneath that, just two words:

We know.

Notes:

ok a couple of things about this chapter: first, i moved the orphanage to Windhelm as part of my overall goal of making skyrim feel bigger. why would a whole country have just one orphanage? and why would a child in Windhelm be sent all the way to riften? how did Aventus get back ??

on a more serious note, I also wanted to talk a bit about slavery and what I think that looks like in Tamriel come 4E 201. We all know that slavery was outlawed in Morrowind at the end of the third era, but ofc, as in real life, that doesn’t make it go away—it just looks a bit different. Because it’s now an illegal enterprise, it’s tied up in other criminal activities, so instead of being primarily an agricultural practice, slavery has moved into the spheres of drug production/smuggling and sex trafficking.

In my mind, Ebonheart is the heart of skooma production in Tamriel come 4E 201, and that is where mathyas and the other dunmer would have been sent. The Khajiit and the Argonians would have been sent to Telvanni territory, and probably would have been used as test subjects in illegal magical experiments, as mathyas had predicted :(( but you will be happy to know that they all got away, even if mathyas wasn’t there to see it.

Chapter 10: Into Darkness

Notes:

track for this chapter is gilraen's memorial by howard shore

Whiterun, Skyrim, 2nd Hearthfire

Jórunn jumped in surprise at the feeling of Farengar’s fingers prodding her eye, pulling the lids apart.

“By the Eight,” she hissed, recoiling away from him and swatting at his hand, “you could at least warn me beforehand. Or better yet, ask.”

“Ah, sorry,” the mage apologised, though he didn’t sound particularly sincere. “I’m getting carried away. This is simply too exciting.”

He withdrew his hand and she heard his footsteps receding away from her, followed by the scratching of a quill against parchment. Jórunn huffed and leaned back in her chair, wishing she was anywhere but there. Farengar had been examining and interrogating her for what felt like hours now and she wanted to be alone. The wizard’s incessant and invasive questions were aggravating.

“Well, as far as I can see, there don’t seem to have been any physical changes,” he said. “And you’re certain you don’t feel any different?”

Jórunn was in too much of a state of shock to know whether or not she ‘felt’ any different. She felt tired, and overwhelmed, and drained in the way one would expect to feel in the coming down from a panic attack. Did she feel like she’d absorbed the soul of a dragon? It was hard to say.

“Just tired,” she said, somewhat reductively. She thought briefly about adding, ‘and pissed off’, but held her tongue.

Farengar hummed. “In that case, the only thing left to test is your Thu’um. Your dragon soul should lend you greater power than mortal men.”

Jórunn’s stomach turned. Greater than mortal men. Farengar spoke about her like she was otherworldly, like she wasn’t human. It made her skin crawl.

She swallowed thickly, smacking her lips. “My what?”

“Your Thu’um,” Farengar repeated impatiently, “your ‘Shout’, ‘the Voice’, whatever you choose to call it. As Dragonborn, it should come naturally to you.”

Jórunn felt the blood drain from her face. “Shouting?” she asked. “As in the thing Ulfric used to kill High King Torygg?”

“Precisely,” said Farengar.

“I can do that?”

“Of course you can do that,” he bit back. “Did you or did you not just absorb the soul of a dragon and all of its knowledge?”

Jórunn shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me to do.” 

“I’m asking you to shout, child,” said Farengar. “Just give it a go and we’ll see what you’ve got.”

Jórunn was sceptical—she didn’t want to just open her mouth and yell something. The wooden walls of Dragonsreach were thin and she was embarrassed at the thought of everyone in the Jarl’s hall overhearing her.

“Go on,” Farengar urged. “Don’t be shy.”

Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, Jórunn took a deep breath and opened her mouth in preparation. But before any sound could come out there was a knock at the door. She released her breath as a relieved sigh instead.

“Ugh,” Farengar muttered. And then, in a louder voice, he called out, “Yes?”

The door opened and someone stepped in. “Jarl Balgruuf is ready to see you now,” said a voice Jórunn recognized as belonging to the Jarl’s steward. The familiarity of his Cyrodilic accent was oddly comforting. He coughed awkwardly. “I suppose you’ll be needing to take my arm.”

She stood quickly, eager to escape Farengar’s study. “Yes, please,” she said, taking a couple of cautious steps towards the doorway. She held out her hand and felt the steward’s arm slot into it.

“We aren’t finished yet,” Farengar sniffed from behind her. “I’ll be expecting you back here as soon as you’re done.”

Jórunn had no intention of going back if she could help it. She said nothing in response, just following the steward’s lead as he guided her into Dragonsreach’s main chamber. They stopped somewhere near the fire, close enough for her to feel its heat on the side of her face. She could hear Raydrin and Cassathra murmuring lowly in Dunmeris from the other side of the room, but besides the crackling of flames, the hall was otherwise silent.

The steward’s arm slipped out of her grasp and she heard his footsteps receding away from her. Shifting her weight from side to side, Jórunn couldn’t help but feel exposed and somewhat vulnerable. She was in a great hall, far too grand for someone like her, and it was an environment she was wholly unfamiliar with. Was she facing the right way? How was she supposed to address the Jarl? Gods, she felt so small. This was no better than Farengar’s study; she just wanted to go back to her room in the inn and crawl under the covers.

“Relax, child,” said a voice. Jórunn panicked, turning slightly to ensure she was facing its source and bowing low, too nervous to do otherwise. The Jarl just chuckled. “There’s no need for that,” he said, and slowly she raised her head. “You are in the company of friends, here.”

Soft footsteps approached from Jórunn’s left, and she heard Cassathra quietly say, ‘Hey’, beside her. Jórunn forced a smile of acknowledgement, but Cassathra’s presence did little to ease her anxiety.  

“We have been discussing your… predicament,” the Jarl explained. What had Irileth said his name was? Balgruuf? “You will be pleased to know we have reached a decision as to what will happen now, moving forwards.”

Jórunn wasn’t pleased at all. Unless his plan involved her going back to the inn and forgetting this had ever happened, she wasn’t interested.

“The noise you heard on your way back to the city was a summoning,” the Jarl went on. “A summoning from the Greybeards. They are an order of monks, masters of the Voice, and whatever happened between you and that dragon, they clearly sensed it. We believe the best thing for you now would be to travel to them and seek their guidance.”

Jórunn’s jaw tightened. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself.

Several moments passed in silence until eventually she felt a hand slide onto her shoulder.

“Jórunn?” Cassathra murmured.

She exhaled. “Do I have a choice?” she asked bitterly, directing her question to the Jarl. Cassathra’s hand fell away.

“The Greybeards have summoned you to High Hrothgar,” someone spat. His voice was not Balgruuf’s; she didn’t recognize it, and the anger in his tone made her flinch. “That hasn’t happened in centuries, at least. Not since Tiber Septim himself was summoned, when he was still Talos of Atmora!”

She shook her head, mouth open. “But I’m- I’m not Tiber Septim,” she said feebly, ashamed at how obvious the tremble in her voice was. “I can’t do something like that.”

“You must, child,” said Balgruuf. His voice was closer. “And moreover, you should. High Hrothgar is a very peaceful place—very, disconnected from the troubles of this world. To be summoned there is a tremendous honour, and I believe it will calm your worries.”

Her throat felt tight. This was all wrong; she just wanted to be allowed to get on with her life. Jórunn was a prostitute from the Imperial City, and she was blind, and that was all she’d ever been. She never asked to follow in the footsteps of someone like Tiber Septim.

“How am I supposed to get there?” she asked, straining to keep her voice level. “I— I can’t travel by myself.”

She jumped when someone standing on her right cleared their throat. It was Raydrin.

“I’ll be coming with you,” he said softly. “That is, if you’ll have me.”

Jórunn turned to him, shaking her head. “But what about Mathyas?” she murmured. “You still need to find him, I- I can’t ask you to abandon that.”

“The guards returned from looking for survivors in the valley,” said Cassathra from her left. She spoke stoically, though underlying her words was the nearly imperceptible edge of disappointment. “They... they found the bodies of the Alik’r warriors not far from the encampment. They’d been dead for several days.”

“We no longer have the lead heading west,” Raydrin went on. “All we have left is the possibility that Iman is still in the city.”

“I’m going to stay here for a while and look for her. If that lead dries up too, I’ll head on to Winterhold by myself.”

Jórunn’s eyes were welling with tears. “I can’t ask you to uproot your life like that,” she said to Raydrin, her voice choked with desperation. She just wanted something—anything—which meant she didn’t have to go.

Raydrin laughed humourlessly. “It’s a bit late for that,” he said with resignation. “I have no real desire to go back to Morrowind. And at least if I’m on the move, there’s some chance I’ll run into something that leads us to Mathyas.”

The Jarl cleared his throat. “Jórunn,” he said gravely, “if it is not Raydrin, it will be someone else. Going to the Greybeards is not just an honour, it is a duty.”

Jórunn pinched the bridge of her nose, desperately trying to keep her tears at bay. “I never asked for this,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I never asked for this.”

“I know,” said Balgruuf, with genuine sympathy. “But such things are not for us to decide. The dragons are returning, and at both sightings to date, you have been present. That is no coincidence. If Akatosh made you Dragonborn, he did so for a reason. You cannot run from your fate nor from your responsibilities.”

A sob escaped her then; Jórunn was too overwhelmed to feel ashamed. Someone wrapped their arms around her, someone slightly taller than her, and she wept openly into their shoulder. It was Raydrin.

“At least, this way, you will be with someone you know,” Balgruuf finished.

It was a small comfort. She didn’t ‘know’ Raydrin, not really. She’d travelled with him for a week, and in that time they’d barely spoken a word to each other. She didn’t know him, she didn’t know anyone. She was completely and utterly alone.

Raydrin pulled away from her, but his hands stayed on her arms. “You aren’t going to be alone, all right?” he murmured. “I know I’m not much, but I’ll be there. You won’t be alone.”

Jórunn nodded, furiously wiping the tears from her eyes. In that moment, strangely, she wanted nothing more than to be alone.

“We have agreed you should set off as early as possible,” said the Jarl, and Raydrin’s hands fell from her arms. “Ivarstead is eight days away on foot, and I am happy to supply everything you may need for the journey. You will leave tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you should get some rest. I know this will be a lot for you to digest.”

Cassathra placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s head back to the inn, all right?”

Jórunn appreciated their attempts to comfort her, but being touched repeatedly and without warning was rapidly fraying her last nerve. She hated the attention, hated feeling needy, and she hated the way all these people had gathered to discuss her. It was stifling.

“I’m sorry,” she said thickly. There were no words to describe how sorry she was.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” said Cassathra.

Raydrin’s hand nudged hers, and she took his arm, exhaling shakily. Together they made their way down the steps of Jarl Balgruuf’s hall towards the entrance of Dragonsreach, and Jórunn cried, thinking back to her life as a brothel worker in the Imperial City. For the briefest of moments, she wished she’d never left.

 

---

 

Sleep evaded Jórunn that night, despite the exhaustion in her bones and the ache behind her eyes. Farengar’s words echoed around her head, the way he’d treated her like a specimen, like some divine artifact worthy of study. Greater than mortal men.

Not since Tiber Septim himself was summoned.

A wave of nausea washed over her. She groaned and rolled onto her other side, changing positions yet again in the hope that maybe this time it would feel comfortable. She wasn’t sure she’d ever feel comfortable again. The thought that the soul of another being—an ancient, otherworldly being at that—had entered into her body, had become part of her, made her feel violated and claustrophobic. She didn’t want this thing inside of her. She didn’t want its power. A human soul was heavy enough.

Was she even human anymore? Had she ever been? Jórunn curled in on herself, trying not to cry. Raydrin and Cassathra were in the room next door and the walls of the inn were thin; she’d overheard them arguing about something earlier, before bed. She didn’t want them to pity her more than they already did, and she’d cried enough that day. It hadn’t helped.

The most frustrating thing was the sense of inevitability. She couldn’t help but feel angry at herself for leaving the Imperial City, for thinking she deserved more than the life of a brothel worker. But Jarl Balgruuf had spoken of fate. Was this always going to happen? Was she always going to have ended up with her head on the block at Helgen? Maybe that was why she’d felt such a compulsion to leave. Did she have any control over her future at all?

Jórunn pressed her hands to her face; she was never going to fall asleep at this rate. The existence of free will was too much for her to question so late at night, and without a willing conversation partner, she was just going to go round in circles. She rolled onto her back and folded her hands across her stomach, trying to empty her mind of any articulated thoughts. Eventually she slid into a restless sleep.

She awoke the following morning to the sound of gentle knocking at her door. Jórunn slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, rubbing her eyes. Her temple throbbed.

“Yes?” she said thickly once she’d got her bearings, overenunciating to get around the dryness in her mouth.

“It’s me,” called Raydrin. His voice was muffled by the door. There was a beat of silence, and then some shuffling sounds. “May I come in?”

Jórunn sighed. She ran a hand through her hair, made sure her night shirt was still covering everything it needed to. Then she cleared her throat and called back, “Yes.”

He stepped into the room, closing the door softly behind him. If she were more awake, Jórunn would have turned her head in his direction, knowing it made sighted people feel more comfortable. But as it was, she was too tired to bother.

“Hey,” he said. He spoke quietly, hesitantly, almost.

Jórunn forced a quick smile. “Hey.”

“Did you sleep well?”

She paused for a moment, chewing her lip. Should she be honest with him? Or was he just making small talk?

“Not really,” she said eventually. If they were going to be travelling together for a while, she thought she should at least attempt some level of genuine interaction. And he was being friendly.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “I don’t think I’d have slept well, either.”

Jórunn huffed humourlessly. “Indeed.”

“Don’t worry about today, though,” he went on. “I’m not going to push you. I know Jarl Balgruuf said the journey was eight days, but we can take as long as we need.”

She nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

Jórunn’s body was soft and unaccustomed to the toils of long-distance travel. The blisters she’d accumulated on the journey from Riverwood had only just healed, and the thought of being back on the road within the next hour or so made her shudder.

Raydrin cleared his throat. “Um, Cassathra and I are having breakfast downstairs, in about fifteen minutes. If you’d like to join us.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I will.”

“Do you need help—” he paused, then, and she could practically hear the cogs turning in his head, “um, with anything?”

She thought for a moment. She was pretty sure she remembered the layout of the room from the day before, and her few possessions weren’t exactly spread out. Raydrin had packed most of them already, having spent the previous afternoon getting together everything they needed for the journey while Jórunn bawled her eyes out in her room. All she had out was her wash kit and the set of clothes she was to change into.

“No, thank you. I think I’ll be all right.”

“Okay,” said Raydrin. “Well— I’ll see you downstairs, then.”

“See you downstairs.”

The door opened, and there was a pause before it closed. “You’ll call if you need anything?”

She nodded. “I’ll call.”

The door finally fell shut.

Jórunn sighed, drawing her knees up to her chest and burying her face in her hands. It was all too real, now. The day before hadn’t been a bad dream; she was the Dragonborn, and she was about to set off on a journey to meet with the Greybeards. The life she wanted to have was gone forever.

After wallowing in self-pity for several minutes, she threw the warm furs aside and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, taking a moment to stretch her limbs before she got to her feet. She felt around her bedside table until she located her cane and then headed vaguely in what she remembered being the direction of the wash basin. Her face she rinsed with soapwort and her teeth she rubbed with a rough linen cloth. When she’d brushed her hair and worked out how to get into the new set of travel clothes that had been laid out, she took a deep breath and made her way downstairs.

Cassathra called her name and Jórunn followed the sound of her voice, relieved that they’d sat at a table close to the bottom of the stairs. They’d left the Bannered Mare and taken out rooms in an inn called the Headless Horseman, the layout of which Jórunn was unfamiliar with. Cassathra helped her take a seat and she lowered herself gratefully into the chair, resting her cane against the table edge. The room was quiet; besides some men talking lowly to each other a short distance away, they appeared to be the only patrons.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Cassathra politely.

Jórunn sighed, placing her elbow on the table and resting her head in her hand. “No,” she said. “My mind wouldn’t stay quiet.”

“I can imagine,” Cassathra replied. “Sorry to hear that.”

Their breakfast arrived shortly after and they ate in silence, each content to keep to their thoughts. It was a large meal and more food than Jórunn had an appetite for, but Raydrin gently encouraged her to finish it in the interest of ensuring she had enough energy for the journey. She reluctantly followed his suggestion, hoping it would pay off later.

When they were done, Raydrin and Cassathra discussed something briefly in Dunmeris, and then Raydrin cleared his throat.

“If you’re ready, we can head down to the stables now.”

Jórunn exhaled shakily. She didn’t feel ready at all. She wanted to put off leaving for as long as she could.

“Sure,” she said instead.

Chairs scraped against wood as they each got to their feet and Raydrin helped her put on her pack, showing her how to position it so the weight was properly distributed. By the Eight, it was heavy—far heavier than what she’d had to carry leaving Helgen. A feeling of dread settled in her stomach, daunted by the thought of having to carry it until they stopped for the night. Jórunn wasn’t sure she was cut out for this.

“Does that feel comfortable?” Raydrin asked as he tightened the shoulder straps.

Jórunn nodded, though a lump had formed in her throat. She wanted to voice her anxieties, but what good would it do?

“I think so,” she said quietly.

“We can adjust it as we go along,” he said. “You’ll know if it’s not right.”

The innkeeper bid them farewell and they set out onto Whiterun’s streets, slowly making the descent towards the city gates. Jórunn felt weighed down with every step, both physically and mentally, but tried to take in the sounds of the city while she still could. Soon, it would just be her, Raydrin, and the road.

They reached the city stables and came to a stop. “Sanjir’s here,” said Cassathra from her side, a note of surprise in her voice.

A moment later and Jórunn heard the man in question call her name, evidently having noticed their arrival. His footsteps grew louder as he approached and she smiled in his direction, though she knew his presence was going to make leaving even harder.

“I’m so glad I managed to catch you,” he said breathlessly, “I was worried you’d already left. When I heard what Jarl Balgruuf said—gods, it’s unreal, isn’t it?”

The lump in her throat tightened—why couldn’t she stop crying? Sanjir had been so nice to her in the short time she’d known him, so genuine and helpful. The thought that he’d made the effort to come and say goodbye was overwhelming.

“I’m going to go talk to the stablemaster,” said Raydrin awkwardly. “See if we can get a packhorse.”

His footsteps receded and Jórunn swallowed, trying to steady her voice.

“It still hasn’t sunk in,” she said, shaking her head. “Everything happened so fast.”

“I’m so sorry it had to be you,” said Sanjir. “I’d have offered to accompany you myself, but—”

“—your place is here,” Jórunn finished gently, giving him a sad smile. “It’s okay.”

Sanjir sighed. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know you this past week,” he said. “I wish the circumstances of your leaving were better.”

An empty laugh left her lips. “So do I.”

Sanjir was silent for a few moments, and then he asked, “May I hug you?”

She nodded. “Of course. If you can reach around the pack.”

He laughed. She felt his arms encircle her, pulling her into a tight embrace. Jórunn reciprocated as well as she could, though her range of motion was restricted somewhat by her shoulder straps.

“Thank you for being so good to me,” she murmured into his shoulder.

“You don’t have to thank people for such things,” he replied. He pulled away, then. “I hope spending some time with the Greybeards brings you peace.”

She nodded, but was doubtful. “Thank you, Sanjir.”

“And if you ever find yourself back in Whiterun, you know where to find me.”

Jórunn smiled. Her eyes were stinging. “I’ll make sure to swing by.”

She had forgotten Cassathra was present during the course of their conversation, but the Dunmer suddenly cleared her throat. Jórunn turned her head.

“I’m really sorry to interrupt,” Cassathra said, and she sounded genuine, “but, um, Sanjir, do you mind if I speak to Jórunn in private for a few moments? It’ll be quick.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll just be down there.”

The crunching of his footsteps eventually faded away. When he was out of earshot, Cassathra released a shaky breath.

“Okay,” she said, “there isn’t really an easy way of saying this, but I don’t have long. So I’ll just say it.”

Jórunn frowned. Cassathra was speaking with an uncharacteristic firmness.

“Do you remember back in Riverwood, I mentioned Raydrin had been recovering from an illness?”

Jórunn vaguely recalled it coming up in conversation. “Yes…?”

Cassathra took a deep breath. Several moments passed before she was able to continue.

“He—” she started, faltering slightly. “He’d been going through withdrawal. Skooma withdrawal.” She paused. “It’s been a few weeks, now, since he last used, and he already seems a lot better—he hasn’t relapsed or anything, at least that I know of. I- I just thought, since you’ll be travelling together for a while, that you should know.”

Jórunn blinked. It took a few moments for her to process what Cassathra had said; Raydrin and skooma seemed so incongruous, her mind was reluctant to accept any kind of association between them. But then again, Jórunn had slept with enough addicted nobles to know that money and pressure could be a deadly combination in that regard.

“I’m not asking you to take care of him or anything,” Cassathra went on. “He’s no-one’s responsibility but his own, and you have enough on your plate. I’m just aware of the fact that, maybe, the only reason he hasn’t relapsed is that he hasn’t had the opportunity. I think a sense of purpose and responsibility will do him some good, so you’ll probably be fine. Just… if the opportunity presents itself…”

Jórunn nodded. “I’ll keep it in mind,” she said. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You have the right to know,” said Cassathra. “But don’t say anything to him—it’s not something he’s proud of.”

“Of course,” said Jórunn.

“He’s on his way back up,” Cassathra quickly muttered. “If he asks, we were talking about Mathyas.”

Sure enough, Jórunn heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and as they grew in volume she shook her head to snap herself out of the previous conversation.

“Alright, some good news,” Raydrin announced as he came into earshot. “The stablemaster is loaning us a packhorse. All we have to do is leave it with the stablemaster in Ivarstead, and I told him the Jarl would pay for it. Which means we—” he paused then, and Jórunn felt a hand clap her pack, “don’t need to carry these.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” said Jórunn, already undoing the belt-like shoulder straps and shimmying herself out of the pack. The relief as it dropped to the ground was instant. Raydrin laughed lightly.

“Give me a moment,” he said. She heard him grunt as he lifted it from the floor. “I’ll go load up, and then we can get going.”

He disappeared again, leaving Cassathra and Jórunn alone once more.

“I guess this is goodbye, then,” said Cassathra forlornly. Her words sent a pang straight to Jórunn’s heart.

“I think so,” said Jórunn. “Hug?”

Cassathra’s arms were around her almost instantly. She was a good hugger, her body soft but firm, but Jórunn had forgotten how short she was for an elf; the crown of her head only just reached Jórunn’s chin. Jórunn rested her cheek on Cassathra’s thick, bouncy curls.

“Thank you for healing my burns,” she said. “I’ll never forget what you did for me that day.”

Cassathra laughed wetly, her voice sounding choked. “Thank you for trusting me enough to let me try,” she said, squeezing Jórunn’s torso. Then she pulled away. “Good luck with everything. I know you’ve got what it takes.”

Jórunn’s eyes were wet; those words meant a lot to her, more than Cassathra could know. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Good luck finding Mathyas, and with the College. You’ll make a great mage.”

Cassathra sighed. “Oh, Mathyas,” she breathed. “It still hasn’t sunk in. I cry whenever I think about him.”

“You’ll find him,” said Jórunn, with more conviction than she truly felt. “I’m sure of it.”

Raydrin returned then. “Ready?” he said.

Jórunn nodded.

He and Cassathra shared what sounded like a heartfelt farewell in Dunmeris; Jórunn had no idea what was being said, but Cassathra burst into tears, and Raydrin was crying, too. Sanjir re-joined them and he and Jórunn hugged again despite having already done so.

“Good luck to you both,” he said. “And may the Divines bring you safe travels.”

Raydrin thanked him. Their packhorse was a pony, a gentle mare called Miriam, and Raydrin took her by the reins while Jórunn followed with her cane.

They set off down the track. Jórunn’s heart was in her mouth; behind them was Whiterun, and the life she had once dreamed of. Ahead lay the long, lonely road.

 

---

 

5th Hearthfire

Mathyas awoke with a start to the splash of ice-cold water.

His neck snapped to attention, a gasp of musty, foul-tasting air forcing its way down his throat. His vision was blurred, drops of water clinging to his lashes. It was dark, wherever he was; it took several moments for his eyes to adjust to the low light.

“Hello, Mathyas,” said a voice from within the shadows. It was feminine but husky; her tongue curled around his name, savouring each consonant. It made his stomach turn. 

His skin was slick with water and his clothes were damp. Mathyas shivered; the cold was quick to seep into his flesh. He was wearing the same clothes he’d fallen asleep in, and he was in a chair—but he realized then with a feeling of dread that there were ropes around his chest, holding him in place. His temple throbbed with the same splitting headache he’d woken up with on the cart, days ago now.

Have they found me?

“Wh- where am I?” he asked. His throat was dry, his lips cracked; the words came out hoarse.

Ahead of him, there was only darkness. He was in a low room of some kind, the walls and floor made from a black, rotting wood. The only source of light was a dim lantern placed somewhere behind him. He could hear what sounded like muffled voices over his shoulder. His heart felt like it was trying to beat out of his chest.

The floorboards creaked. A dark figure slid forwards from the shadows, though they clung to her, blurring the edges of her form. A mask covered the lower part of her face, revealing only a narrow slit of pale skin and two eyes, glinting from beneath her hood. Her white sclera gave her away as a human.

“Does it matter?” she purred. She was holding a bucket in her hand and dropped it, letting it clatter to the floor. “You’re safe. Alive.”

Safe? It seemed unlikely.  

“That’s more that can be said for old Grelod,” the woman went on. “Hm?”

Mathyas’ stomach dropped. He remembered the note he’d found in his room, the black handprint—we know. She’d said his name, too—what didn’t they know?

He stared at her in silence, his panic-addled mind clawing desperately for some response. He could defend himself. Pretend he didn't know anything. Say nothing. 

“Who are you?” was what came instead. "What do you want from me?"

The woman laughed.

“I’m just tying up some loose ends,” she said. “There’s no need to worry; I’m not criticizing you. It was a good kill. Neat, tidy. Efficient. You’re resourceful, Mathyas, and quick on your feet. I like that.”

His captor closed the distance between them and stretched a hand out towards his face. Mathyas flinched, craning his neck back, trying in vain to escape her touch. But she pressed a gloved finger to his chin and dragged the leather—slowly—along the line of his jaw. He swallowed. Then she pinched the corners of his mouth together between her thumb and forefinger, the movement sudden and hard enough to hurt. Mathyas writhed, unable to speak.

“Unfortunately, you took something that didn’t belong to you,” she said. She let go of his face with a rough flourish and he gasped. “That little Aretino boy was looking for the Dark Brotherhood. Grelod was, by rights, our contract. A kill that you stole. I’ve brought you here to repay your debt.”

The Dark Brotherhood?

Oh, gods. 

"...You're going to kill me?"

The woman laughed again, this time throwing her head back. “Of course not,” she said, watching him in a way that made it clear she was smiling beneath her mask. “What a waste of talent that would be.” 

Unease trickled down his spine, syrupy and thick, turning slowly into dread. 

“Then what do you want?”

She grabbed the back of his chair and, in a surprising show of strength, spun him around to face the other way. At the opposite end of the room, illuminated by the lantern, were three people. They were each on their knees, their hands tied behind their backs and their heads covered by cloth sacks. The lantern cast long shadows on the wooden slats behind them. From the muffled noises they were making, it was clear they’d been gagged beneath their masks.

When the woman spoke again, her voice came from somewhere close to his ear. Her gloved hands were on his shoulders, fingers drumming rhythmically against his collarbones.

“You owe the Dark Brotherhood a kill,” she crooned. “I’ve come to collect. One of our guests here has a contract out on them—and that person can’t leave this room alive.”

Mathyas was breathing hard, skin crawling, chest heaving.

“Come on, Mathyas,” she sang in his other ear, a tuneful lilt to her voice. “You took a kill, now you give one back. If you agree to my terms, I’ll untie these ropes.”

“How do I know which one to kill?” he asked feebly. His mind was swimming in confusion. He was groggy and disoriented—the idea of killing for the Dark Brotherhood as a way of making up for having already killed for them made no sense to him.

She straightened to her full height behind him, her hands sliding up his neck and into his wet hair. “You’ve got a big brain,” she said, tapping his skull. “Use it.”

“What if I kill the wrong one?” he croaked.

“Then you’ll have even more blood on your hands than you already do,” she said. Her smirk was audible in her voice. “But I’ll consider your debt repaid.”

He swallowed. “And then... then I can go?”

“Someone must die,” she confirmed. “Then—and only then—may you walk away.”

His eyes flicked between the three people in front of him. The thought of killing one of them was sickening. Grelod was deserving, and she was old—killing an innocent just to save his own skin was harder to justify. And even if he did manage to work out which victim had a contract out on them, there was no guarantee the contract had been made for good reason. He could be murdering in the name of a petty grudge.

But his captor's words echoed around his head. Someone must die. Mathyas hadn’t been ruled out. She hadn’t specified what would happen to him if he chose not to comply, but he could make an educated guess.

So what choice did he have?

“From your silence, it’s clear you’ve made up your mind,” she said. He felt the ropes loosen around his chest before they slithered to the floor with a dull thud.

He looked up at her over his shoulder as if that would elicit some mercy. She stared down at him through narrowed, steel-grey eyes.

“Well?” she prompted.

Trembling, Mathyas got to his feet.

He opened his mouth, glancing uselessly between her and the victims. His words came out silent. “How—" he rasped, faltering. He swallowed and tried again. "How should I…?”

The woman unsheathed a dagger from her hip and held it out to him. Mathyas stared at it for a long moment before meeting her gaze, begging in vain for an alternative he knew she wouldn't offer. But she just stared back at him, unflinching.

He lifted one hand and accepted the weapon. 

For the briefest of moments, Mathyas considered using it against her. He could stab her in the chest, free the other captives, make a run for it.

But the woman had read his mind. “Don’t even think about it,” she hissed. She reached across her torso and gripped the hilt of a sword, unsheathing it just enough to show Mathyas a glint of steel. He swallowed and turned to face the captives. Their shadows twitched and flickered in the candlelight. 

How do I approach this?

He’d sat as a judge in House Redoran’s senior tribunal too many times to count. But here... Mathyas was judge, jury, and executioner. He had no way of acquiring evidence against any of these people. He could try talking to them, asking them questions, but who would answer honestly to being asked whether someone would pay to kill them?

Mathyas considered just picking one of them at random and getting it over and done with. But he quickly pushed the thought aside. To kill one of them without even trying to ascertain the contract’s true target would be unforgivable. The very least these people deserved was the chance to present their case.

The captives squirmed as he approached, recoiling away from him and whimpering through their gags. The self-hatred that elicited was nauseating. Dagger in hand, Mathyas turned over his shoulder to look at his captor. "May I take off their masks?”

She shrugged. “Do what you want.”

He took a shuddering breath. The person closest to him appeared to be male, wearing a rough, makeshift-looking armour. Mathyas stepped towards him.

“I’m— I’m going to take your mask off, now,” he said. The man was trembling.

He pulled the cloth sack up over his head, revealing a middle-aged Nord, and then carefully removed the gag from his mouth. The Nord gasped for air, sobbing. Mathyas could see where his tears had left streaks of clean skin through the grime on his cheeks. He got to his knees so he was eye-level with him, though he maintained his distance.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. The Nord shook his head, still crying. “I don’t want to have to do this.”

Nothing was said in response. Mathyas could understand that. He cleared his throat.

“Do... do you have anything you want to say in your defence?”

His voice sounded so weak.

The Nord simply cried. “I’m just a soldier,” he wept, shuddering with each sob and hiccup. “I’m—I’m no-one. I’m not important enough for—for...”

The words evaded him. He trailed off with a shake of his head, keening through his teeth. 

"...the Dark Brotherhood," he finished through a teary grimace. 

Mathyas closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. “Who are you a soldier for?” he asked. It was a non-leading question. He didn’t want to manipulate these people.

The Nord hiccupped. His face was wet with tears and snot. “I’m a mercenary," he said. "A… a sellsword.”

“What kind of mercenary work did you do?”

“I… I don’t know. The usual.”

“…the usual?”

The Nord's face crumpled, a fresh bout of tears overtaking him. “I’ve killed people, if that’s what you’re asking,” he confessed with a wail, nearly unintelligible through his tears.

Mathyas swallowed. “What kind of people?”

He just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he cried, trailing off into a whisper. “I don’t know.”

Mathyas got to his feet. He wasn't going to get any further with that one. He moved over to the next prisoner, throwing a glance towards their captor as he did so. She’d taken a seat in his chair and was watching him intently. The expression in her eyes as she met his gaze was unreadable. Mathyas turned away.

He unmasked the second person, a middle-aged human woman. She glared at him when he removed the sack and spat at his feet when her mouth was free. Mathyas couldn’t blame her.

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it already,” she hissed. “Coward.” In the background, Mathyas could still hear the sellsword's sobs.

He closed his eyes, feeling a lump rising in his own throat. What was he doing? How could he live with himself after this?

Some selfish, ugly part of him—some inexplicable desire to live—forced him to push onwards. His voice was choked. “Do you have anything you want to say in your defence?”

Her upper lip curled into a snarl. “Do you?” she spat. “I shouldn’t have to defend myself. I’m a mother of six. I’ve no husband. Kill me if you want, I don’t care. You’re the one who’ll have to live with yourself if you deprive those children of a mother.”

Mathyas could only stare at her. His eyes were wet.

He turned to meet the gaze of his captor over his shoulder, pleading.

“Do you know if any of this is true?” he asked desperately.

“I know as much as you do,” she said. He hated the smug way she spoke. “An assassin asks no questions. We aren’t murderers. We seek no motive.”

“This isn’t fair,” he said. “I— I can repay my debt, I’ll do as you ask, just—just please tell me who the target is.”

His voice cracked when he next spoke.

“Don’t make a murderer out of me.”

“Oh, Mathyas,” she said, tutting. “You did that by yourself.”

The dagger clattered to the floor. He pressed his face into his hands. He wanted to cry, but no tears came—despite the tightness in his throat, the pressure behind his eyes, it seemed his terror made no allowances for crying. It was like he was running from slavers all over again.

He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He had killed before—on the battlefield, killing Grelod. Whatever he did now, he needed to do something if he wanted to get out of there.

Move, Mathyas.

He shook his head, closed his eyes, and forced himself to his feet. He moved on to the third captive, removing the mask and gag to reveal a male Khajiit.

“I know the drill,” the Khajiit purred. “I have nothing to say in my defence.”

“Please,” said Mathyas. “I’m trying to help you.”

“You? ” said the Khajiit incredulously. “I know how your people view my kind. You probably made up your mind the moment you removed my mask.”

Mathyas shook his head. “I- I’m not like that.”

The Khajiit let out a hissing laugh. “Sure, greyskin,” he said. “Kill me if you want. I have my enemies. Maybe the contract is on me, maybe it isn’t. I cannot help you.”

Mathyas got to his feet, picking the dagger up from the floor and starting to pace. It felt so heavy in his hand. He rubbed the back of his neck, pinched the bridge of his nose, tried to steady his breathing. He needed to think things over, but his mind was so overridden with guilt and fear that coherent thoughts were impossible.

There was nothing left to be done except deal the killing blow. No way of putting it off any further. He could ask more questions, but he knew deep down they wouldn’t help him find the answer. He was no better off than when he’d started; essentially faced with a random choice. Maybe if he had time to sit down with his thoughts, he could make some attempt at reaching a logical conclusion. But he was tired, he was in pain, he’d been drugged and captured for the second time in the space of a week, and the only thought he was capable of reaching was a burning, instinctive need to survive. Anything else was just background noise.

“Come on,” hissed the Khajiit. “Don’t leave us hanging.”

The Nord started crying harder. Mathyas knew in his heart he wouldn’t kill the woman; whether she was telling the truth or not, he thought of Aventus and realized he couldn’t take that risk. Between the Nord and the Khajiit, one was staring death in the face, the other pleading for his life, but both had acknowledged the possibility that someone would want them dead. And now Mathyas had his potential biases to consider.

His heart would burst if he put it off any longer. His body moved of its own accord—his mind went white. In three long strides he moved over towards the Nord, pulled him upright by his hair, and sliced through the meat of his neck before he had time to react. Hot blood splattered across Mathyas’ face. The human and Khajiit both cried out. The Nord’s body fell to the floor with a heavy thud, his torso rolling onto Mathyas’ feet. The dagger landed beside him with a clatter.

Heart pounding, Mathyas staggered backwards, staring in revulsion at his victim as he twitched and gurgled on the floor. A pool of crimson was steadily growing from his slashed throat, his rheumy eyes trying and failing to focus on Mathyas' face. He wanted to vomit.

“Nicely done,” said his captor appraisingly from behind him. He fell to his knees, unable to tear his eyes away from his victim. His captor moved into his peripheral, slinking past him towards the remaining two captives. Mathyas watched in horror as she picked up her knife from the floor and slashed both of their throats in turn. Their kneeling bodies crumpled to the ground.

The woman turned to face him, wiping the blade on a piece of cloth and then sheathing it at her hip. She pulled down her mask to reveal a thin pair of lips pressed into a tight little smile.

Mathyas stared at her, eyes wide. “Wh—” he panted, “why? Why?”

She unfolded the bloodied cloth and then refolded it so the outward-facing segments were clean, then held it out for him to take.

“For your face,” she said. When he didn’t move, she nudged her hand forwards. “Go on.”

Trembling, Mathyas took it from her and wiped the blood from his cheeks, nose and jaw. He couldn’t speak. The cloth he crumpled into a tight fist, squeezing so hard his knuckles went numb. The woman watched him.

“All three had contracts out on them,” she explained, her arms folded across her chest. “My Brotherhood doesn’t make a habit of killing innocents.”

He shook his head, mouth hanging limply open. “… then why—?”

She stretched her hand out towards him, offering to help him stand. Mathyas hesitated for several moments, before eventually accepting, allowing her to pull him to his feet.

“I ordered you to kill someone,” she said. “And you obeyed. You have that capacity, when your safety requires it.”

She gestured towards the chair he’d been tied to earlier, indicating that she wanted him to sit. Too stunned to do much else, he did.

“But more importantly,” she went on, “you have empathy. A moral code. That combination makes for a good assassin. Mindless bloodlust can lead to both inefficiency and a lack of subtlety, I’ve found.”

Mathyas opened and closed his mouth uselessly, too dazed to work out what was going on.

“What are you saying?” he asked dumbly.

“My name is Astrid,” she said. “You’ve repaid your debt. The key to the shack is yours.” She dug it out from one of her many pockets and tossed it onto his lap. He stared at it.

“I’m free to go?” he asked, looking up.

“Of course,” she said. “But first, I have a proposition for you.”

Mathyas' jaw clenched. The smell of blood and death was cloying in his nostrils, and he was certain that whatever her proposition entailed, he wanted no part in it.

Astrid took advantage of his silence by continuing. “I would like to formally extend to you an invitation to join my Family,” she said. “The Dark Brotherhood. I believe we can help each other.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “What can you possibly have to offer me?”

“What can you possibly have to lose?” she asked. “We can heal your burn wounds. Offer you comfort, and shelter. A family.”

“I have a family,” he spat.

“Oh, really,” she said derisively, arching one delicate brow. “It seemed to me you had a rather lonely little existence in Windhelm.”

Mathyas glared at her. He wasn’t in the mood to explain to her his circumstances. If anything, she probably already knew.

“Wherever your family once were,” she said, “you’ll have a hard time finding them again. Think about it, Mathyas—could you really go back to them, after everything you’ve done? Now you know what you’re capable of?”

He got to his feet. “I’m leaving,” he said. He looked around for the door and then strode towards it, the key clutched in his fist.

“Be my guest,” said Astrid behind him.

Mathyas unlocked the door, flung it open, and inhaled deeply at the gust of fresh air that blew over him. But after the initial relief, he shivered; the cold air went straight through his damp clothes to his core, cooling the already-cold water on his skin and in his hair.

It was the dead of night. Ahead of him, Masser and Secunda loomed high in the sky, partially concealed by great mountain peaks and stray wisps of cloud. A pine forest stretched out as far as the eye could see, blanketing the wide valley and the base of the mountains that surrounded it. The valley was shrouded in darkness and a fine, silver mist, visible only under the moonlight. Mathyas could barely see more than a few feet ahead.

He heard footsteps behind him as Astrid approached.

“We’re in the great pine forest of Skyrim,” she said coolly over his shoulder. “One of her wildest and remotest regions. The nearest settlement is days away. The woods are populated only by bears, and wolves, and all manner of savage beasts.”

A hand was placed on his shoulder, then. The hairs on his arms stood on end.

“You’re wounded, Mathyas,” Astrid murmured, reaching up to speak close to his ear. “You smell of blood. You have no map. No means of hunting, or defending yourself. You’re soaked through, and if the wolves don’t kill you first, the cold will.”

He could feel her breath on the back of his neck.

“Of course, you could always wait in here until daylight breaks,” she went on. “I’m sure the corpses will keep you company. But out there, the pines are so tall, the tree canopy so thick, no sunlight can penetrate it. The forest is a never-ending night, a dusk with no dawn. You’ll struggle even finding the road.”

Mathyas swallowed thickly.

“Our Sanctuary is twenty minutes south from here,” she said. “We have food, hot water, fresh clothes. A warm bed. We can tend to your wounds, take care of you. You’ll be welcomed into our family with open arms.”

He stared out over the valley, gaze fixed onto the horizon. Mathyas could feel the resignation setting in, the thought of his past life slipping ever further from his grasp. Whatever he did in the future, then and there, there was only one thing he could do.

“The choice is yours,” finished Astrid at last.

The choice was between life and death; it had been made for him. Exhaling shakily, Mathyas closed the door, shutting out the cold. He turned to face Astrid and her lips spread into a smile.

“Welcome to the Brotherhood.”

Notes:

not much to say about this chapter, except maybe RIP to both jórunn and mathyas. but i hope you enjoyed it! things are finally picking up now, haha.

big thanks to my beta readers diana and haley, and thank you to both new readers and everyone who's still following along. your comments and kudos are always hugely appreciated <3

Chapter 11: Seven Thousand Steps

Falkreath Hold, Skyrim, 6th Hearthfire

It was dark, and Mathyas was cold. Astrid hadn’t been lying about the density of trees in Skyrim’s great Pine Forest; as they maneuvered through them on their way to the Sanctuary, the thick trunks seemed to close around him, oppressive and claustrophobic. He’d lost all sense of direction ages ago.

Astrid made him walk a few feet ahead. The torch she carried was the only source of light, illuminating the mossy forest floor with a flickering, orange glow. Besides their muffled footsteps—and the occasional snap of a twig, or the hoot of an owl—the woods were silent.

Mathyas stumbled along in something of a daze. He was so cold he could barely feel his fingers, and Astrid had given him nothing in the way of a cloak or a coat for the short journey. Maybe she wanted to ensure he was sufficiently desperate—he didn’t know. He couldn’t process what he’d done, let alone where he was going. In his mind’s eye, the image of his victim’s blank, unseeing stare wouldn’t leave him.

After what felt like a lot longer than twenty minutes, they reached a road. Mathyas deliriously considered making a break for it, but his body refused to put will into action; he just stared down it longingly, wondering where it might have led.

“This way,” Astrid murmured, tapping him on his shoulder. He followed dumbly as she led him across the road and down a steep bank, unable to think about much besides the promise of a warm bed.

The road had been laid atop a rocky outcrop, which jutted outwards into a sunken glade. The shadows were an inky black, shrinking away from the spilled light of Astrid’s torch. She led him down into the glade, around the outcrop, and into a sharp, narrow chasm, like a great knife had been slashed through the rock. It was only just wide enough to walk through, and Mathyas’ shoulders brushed against its damp, mossy sides.

His heart was in his mouth. He was heading into darkness, his body blocking most of the light from behind him. Then they turned a corner and the chasm opened up.

“Step aside,” said Astrid. He did, wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to stay his shivering. With his body no longer in the way, the light from her torch was free to illuminate the scene before them. A doorway had been carved into the rock, and in it lay a plain, black, metal door. Its wet surface glistened in the orange torchlight.

For several moments, nothing happened. Mathyas watched Astrid dazedly, confused as to what was going on.

Then—from seemingly everywhere at once—there came a low, hollow whispering. It went straight through him, like a knife scratching a plate at the wrong angle.

It sounded like a death rattle.

“What... is the music... of life? ”

“Silence, my brother,” came Astrid's somewhat monotonous reply. 

A noise sounded like a key turning in a lock, then the door started shifting. An unpleasant screech followed as the base of the metal door scraped over the rock floor. Mathyas shuddered.

“I know it’s a little… on the nose,” said Astrid, turning to him. “We don’t know how to change it.”

He stared at her, completely stupefied. The reality of his situation was sinking in, his mind screaming at him to get out of there—dying from exposure or getting eaten by wolves suddenly seemed a lot more appealing than going through the black door. The ‘sanctuary’ could only be described as such to the extent that it provided warmth and shelter, and the applicability of the descriptor ended there.

Astrid gestured towards the open doorway with one arm. “After you,” she said, the corner of her mouth curling upwards slightly. Her torchlight flickered in the reflective sheen of her eyes.

Mathyas swallowed. Just focus on getting through the night, he told himself. He’d had that thought more times in the last week than in the rest of his years combined. You can figure out what to do in the morning.

He tore his gaze away from Astrid’s, steeled himself, and crossed the threshold.

The change in temperature was almost instant; the door fell shut behind them, and with it went the cold, night air. They were in a stone passageway, a stairwell angled steeply down into the earth. Mathyas descended slowly, giving his eyes time to adjust to the dim lighting; as they descended, a brazier came into view, casting a flickering, orange glow on the flagstones. The flames had mostly reduced to embers, and as they passed it, Astrid added the remnants of her torch as fuel.

The passageway veered sharply to the right, and then opened into a small, round chamber. It had the appearance of a military office; the walls were lined with shelves, and a large stone table covered in various maps and documents was positioned off to the side. The only indication that it was home to a cult of fanatically religious murderers were the banners draped on the walls, crested with the black hand.

The office had two further doors, and Mathyas stopped, unsure of which way to go. Astrid—evidently satisfied that he wasn’t going to run off—took the lead.

“Most of our members are away on contracts,” she explained as she passed him. She’d pulled her hood down, revealing shoulder-length, straw-blonde hair. “But Festus is thankfully still around—he should be able to take a look at your leg.”

She led him down another short flight of steps, and Mathyas followed, staring in resignation at the back of her head. They emerged into an enormous natural cavern, which, in truth, was actually quite beautiful. The artificial flagstones gave way to solid rock, and the great ceiling was supported by thick columns of stone, narrower in the middle where the stalactites and stalagmites had merged. To the right of the cavern was a pool of crystal-clear water, shimmering blue-green under shafts of moonlight. Mathyas was relieved to find that there was at least some natural light down here. The edge of the pool was lined with ferns and leafy plants. A gentle waterfall flowed into it from the rock-face, splashing quietly in the background and effusing a fine mist.

The view was spoiled only by the circular, stained-glass window which had been built into the rock above the waterfall; in the centre of the jewel-toned mosaic was a skull. It served as a stark reminder that, for all the beauty down here, the Sanctuary was home to people who had no regard for the value of mortal life.

“I don’t want to overwhelm you tonight,” Astrid continued as she led him through the cavern. “We’ll give you some food—and a hot bath, if you want it—and then you can get some rest. I’ll explain the way things work around here tomorrow.”

Mathyas was silent as he followed her up a dirt slope. “Nazir should be back in a few days,” she went on. “When he is, you’ll report to him. Until then, you can recover your strength.”

The slope led up to another small room, similar in appearance to the office they’d passed through. It looked to be a makeshift lab of sorts; wooden shelves covered in alchemical supplies and books lined the walls, and there was some magical equipment Mathyas was unable to identify. A bald, pale-skinned human man was hunched over it, dressed in dark robes and muttering to himself. Even from the back, Mathyas could tell he was old.

Astrid cleared her throat. “Festus,” she said. “I’d like to introduce you to our new recruit.”

Mathyas grimaced at the title.

When Festus didn’t look up, Astrid cleared her throat again. “He has a burned leg I need you to take a look at.”

Festus groaned, hanging his head back. “Can it wait?” he grumbled. “I’m right in the middle of a new spell.”

“Come now, Festus,” Astrid crooned. “Is that any way to make our newest family member feel welcome?”

He finally turned, then, and shot Mathyas a glare over his shoulder.

“Fine,” he said, rolling his eyes. The skin of his face sagged with wrinkles, his throat drooping towards the floor. “Sit down over there. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Mathyas awkwardly lowered himself into a wooden bench against the wall. Astrid turned to him.

“I have a few things I need to sort out,” she said, “but I’ll be back in a little while. You’ll be in good hands.” Mathyas nodded and watched as she left. She headed out the way they’d come in, calling out, “Be nice, Festus,” over her shoulder as she did. Festus hmphed and muttered something unintelligible in response.

Eventually he finished whatever it was he was doing and stalked over to where Mathyas was sitting with a wooden crate in his hands. He placed it on the floor in front of him.

“Rest your leg on that,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Mathyas obeyed. He was torn between knowing that his wound definitely needed treatment and not wanting to give these people any more leverage over him. The last thing he needed was a sense of debt on top of his fear.

He pulled his left trouser leg up to his knee, revealing his rudimentary attempt at bandaging his burns. Back in Windhelm, he’d been washing the wound and changing the bandages daily, but he had no idea how much time had passed since then. How long had he been out when Astrid kidnapped him? It couldn’t have been longer than a day, but somehow they’d made it across a whole country in that time. It made him dizzy to think about.

Festus wrinkled his nose. With wizened old hands, spotted with age, he slowly began unwrapping Mathyas’ bandages, and Mathyas hissed in pain at the friction. Eventually his leg was laid bare, along with his reddened, blistered skin. It was bleeding in places where the scabs had been torn away.

“What on Nirn is a Dark Elf doing with burns like these?” muttered Festus under his breath; it was clear the question was rhetorical. He tutted. “Ridiculous.”

Mathyas said nothing, just watching as the old man got to his feet and perused the shelves in search of a clear glass bottle. When Festus returned, having removed the cork, the sharp smell made clear that it was rubbing alcohol.

Mathyas steeled himself. Festus poured some of the liquid onto a wad of gauze and began cleaning Mathyas’ wounds, not particularly taking his time over the task. Mathyas gripped the edge of his seat as Festus worked, his jaw clenched. He wanted to swear, but didn’t want to acknowledge out loud how much this was hurting.

When Festus was satisfied the wound was clean, he threw the gauze aside.

“Now for the fun part,” he said with too much glee for Mathyas’ liking. “There’ll be some scarring, mind you. I don’t want any complaints.”

He raised both hands, and with the ease and swiftness of a seasoned mage, summoned a healing spell to his palms. To begin with, there was an uncomfortable heat around Mathyas’ leg, an itching sensation beneath the skin. But the discomfort faded as Festus worked, replaced by an odd but somewhat pleasant tingling sensation. Mathyas watched as his flesh knitted itself together, the redness giving way to his usual blue-grey complexion; but as Festus had promised, where the burns were worst, his skin stubbornly refused to smooth over. He was left with raised patches of mottled, purple scars.

The spell dissipated and Festus got to his feet. “Alright,” he said, throwing the gauze and the old bandages into one of the braziers. “That’s as good as it’s getting. There’ll be some tightness for a few days, but I’m sure Babette can give you something for that.”

“Babette?” asked Mathyas, looking up from where he’d been investigating his fresh scars.

“Someone called?” came a voice, and Mathyas turned in surprise to see a child entering the room from another doorway.

“What the fuck?” he exhaled, the question escaping him before he could stop himself. Festus threw his head back with a derisive cackle.

“Gets them every time,” he muttered.

The child approached, a young human girl with dark hair. As she stepped into the light, Mathyas realized there was something off about her, if the raw haunch of meat in her arms wasn't indication enough. Her skin was nearly white, lacking all of the warmth and colour even the palest humans were supposed to possess, and her eyes were a faded yellow.

“Don’t let my appearance throw you off,” she said with a smirk. “I’m older than you. A lot older.” Mathyas swallowed. Her voice was so young. “Getting bitten by a vampire when you’re ten will do that to a girl.”

He was too stunned to respond. He watched as she headed over to the far side of the room, where the man-made walls and ceiling gave way to misshapen rock, and the floor disappeared, leading to some kind of pit. “I’m just here to give Lis her dinner,” she said cheerfully. It was too deep for Mathyas to see what was down there.

Babette threw the meat into the pit, and there were some scratching sounds as something moved, followed by the wet squelching of flesh being torn apart. Mathyas stared at the child.

“Who is Lis?”

He really meant ‘what is Lis?’, but he supposed ‘who’ would go down better.

“Lis is our pet frostbite spider,” said Babette like it was the most normal thing in the world. She came over to him. “Now, I’m more interested in who you are.”

Mathyas leaned back, uncomfortable under Babette’s scrutiny. “What’s your name?” she asked, hands on her hips as her big eyes raked over his face.

He thought briefly about lying, but Astrid already knew. It wouldn’t make a difference. “Mathyas,” he said, somewhat hoarsely. Babette held out her clean hand.

“Welcome to the Sanctuary, Mathyas,” she said, and Mathyas—unsure of what else to do—reluctantly accepted the handshake. Her skin was cold and dry to the touch.

“Our friend here needs an ointment for his leg,” called Festus, who had since returned to his work.

“Ah, of course,” said Babette. She stepped back and took a look at Mathyas’ freshly healed calf, eyes narrowed. “I don’t have anything on hand,” she said, “but I’m sure I can whip something together by the morning.”

Mathyas nodded, self-consciously pulling his trouser-leg back down. “Thank you,” he muttered. Please stop helping me, he thought.

It was then that Astrid returned. “I see you’ve met Babette,” she said.

The vampire in question smiled, nodding in acknowledgement. Mathyas just stared ahead, trying his best to think in full sentences.

“Come with me,” said Astrid, turning to him. “I’ll lead you to your room, now.”

He got to his feet, remaining silent. Astrid was carrying a bowl of food, but Mathyas realized that he had no appetite at all, despite not having eaten in a while. He’d warmed up, and he just wanted to sleep. To not have to think about anything.

He followed Astrid down a complicated and confusing series of passageways until eventually they came out onto a stone landing, looking down over another large cavern. Mathyas could see what looked like a living area below, with a long dining table in the centre and a great fireplace built into the rock. On their mezzanine, the wall of the landing was lined with several wooden doors.

“It’s just down here,” said Astrid softly, leading him along the walkway. They reached the room she’d allocated as his and she held the door open for him. “In you go.”

It was a small room, and musty-smelling, with a narrow wooden cot pressed against the damp wall of the cave, a chest of drawers with a bowl and a jug of water on top, and beside that, a rickety chair. Mathyas’ eyes were on the bed and the bed alone.

“Here’s your dinner,” she said, placing the bowl on the chest of drawers. “Would you like me to put on some water for a bath?”

Mathyas watched her for a moment, and then shook his head, trembling slightly. He was too tired for that. Too tired to eat, even.

Astrid nodded. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll have someone swing by to bring you a change of clothes. And Mathyas—you did well, tonight.” He said nothing. Astrid smirked. “I’m sure you’ll make a fine addition to our family.”

With that, she left. The door shut softly behind her.

Mathyas slumped onto the bed. He drew his knees up to his chest and hung his head in his hands.

He had killed someone—again. Someone defenceless, unable to fight back. It was of no comfort to him that his victim would have died anyway; Mathyas had killed him. Mathyas had been the one to hold him up by his hair and slice his throat. He had that in him, and worst of all, he’d done it to save his own skin. He was selfish. He had no honour.

He shivered, skin crawling as he recalled the way Astrid’s hands had slid over his shoulders and neck, the way she’d pinched his face. She’d brought him here, healed his leg, given him food and a bed—and he would have died without her. But that was by her design. For whatever reason, she wanted him there. And if he didn’t figure out some way of escaping—without being tracked, drugged, and brought right back—she was going to make him kill again.

What if he did escape? What then? The thought of returning to Blacklight, resuming the life of a councillor’s son and all the duties that entailed, of sitting in the senior tribunal and deciding who could live and who would die and holding himself out as an honourable man, a man worthy of someday ruling over others—he wasn’t sure he could do it anymore.

There was a knock at his door that pulled him out of his thoughts. After taking a few moments to collect himself, he swallowed, and weakly called, “Come in.”

A Dunmer woman entered the room. Mathyas watched in surprise as she laid a pile of neatly folded clothes onto the dresser, beside his untouched food. She was young, around his age, though she could have been anywhere between thirty and a hundred. Her features were sharp, her long, dark hair tied back into a loose bun.

“Juohn,” he said, mostly out of habit. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“I don’t speak Dunmeris,” she said flatly. “I grew up in High Rock.”

He blinked at her. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

She didn’t react.

“My name is Gabriella,” she told him. Her voice was low and smooth. “Do you need anything else?”

He shook his head.

Gabriella shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said, heading back to the open doorway. And then, before she shut the door behind her; “Welcome to the family.”

Mathyas stared at the door for a long while after she’d left, unwilling to move. His racing thoughts had come to a stop, leaving him with silence and a vague, indefinable feeling of guilt.

Eventually he was able to collect himself and get to his feet. He drank some of the water, rinsing his face and his hair with what remained; the run-off was pink, dirtied by the scraps of congealed blood he'd failed to wipe away in the shack. He removed his bloodied clothes with a shudder and dressed quickly in the replacement set that had been left out for him. They were too loose in some places and too short in others, but they were warm, clean, and dry, and that was all that mattered.

He blew out the few candles that had been lit and slid under the furs, drawing them all the way up to his neck. The room was mostly dark, save for the thin strip of light seeping through from under the door.

Mathyas closed his eyes. He hoped his exhaustion would bring sleep quickly, but when his heart was still racing minutes later, he realized he wouldn’t be so lucky. He felt like he was trying to fall asleep in a bed of snakes. These people—with their child vampire and their domesticated frostbite spider—belonged to a cult. Though they’d been cordial enough since his arrival, less than an hour before, they had forced him through one of the most terrible and needless acts of cruelty he'd ever beholden. Astrid knew full well he was here against his will and she didn’t care.

Mathyas realized he’d need to work hard in the coming days to keep his wits about him. He was emotionally vulnerable, and that made him easy prey.

He rolled over, thought of his family, and tried to fall asleep. It was a long while before he did.

 

---

 

Whiterun Hold, Skyrim, 3rd Hearthfire

The first hour or so of their journey went by slowly, though not unpleasantly. This came as a surprise to Jórunn, who quite literally had never seen the appeal of travelling; she’d been told of the joys to be found in discovering new sights, in watching the scenery change, but she could travel to the ends of the world and back and it would all look the same to her. Like nothing at all.

But it was relaxing, walking along at their steady pace; the terrain was easy and the weather was mild, and Jórunn enjoyed not having to think about anything except putting one foot in front of the other. She wasn’t so under-stimulated so as to be driven mad by her thoughts—as she had been lying in bed the previous night—but for the first time in days, she didn’t have to worry about what was going to happen next. She could just listen to the gentle clip-clopping of Miriam’s hooves against the dirt track and that was enough.

As on their journey from Helgen, her companion seemed content to walk in silence. It made sense that Raydrin would be feeling the same way as her in that regard; he was on the same journey—a journey with no obvious end in sight—and more to the point, had very recently lost a close family member. His reticence was understandable.

But sometime late in the morning, Raydrin cleared his throat. Jórunn pulled herself into the present, out of her wandering thoughts.

“Um,” he started, as he usually did, “I—I’ve been meaning to say…”

He paused for a moment, and Jórunn was quiet, waiting patiently for him to continue. “If you wanted to talk about—you know. Everything that’s happened. I’m here. I may not be able to say anything to help, but I can listen, at least.”

They were silent for a few paces as Jórunn thought his offer over.

“Thank you,” she said eventually. “I think I need a bit longer just to... I don’t know. I wouldn't even know where to start.”

“That's all right,” said Raydrin. “The offer will be still be there when you need it.”

“Same goes to you, though,” she added. “If... if you want to talk about Mathyas.”

He didn't reply for a moment.

“Thanks,” was all he said when he did.

Neither of them had anything further to add and they lapsed back into silence, though it wasn’t uncomfortable. Jórunn thought it somewhat amusing that neither of them had wanted to take the other up on their offer, but it was nice, at least, to know that he’d listen if she wanted him to.

They stopped for lunch a short while later, sitting down against the stone walls of a crumbling old ruin. Miriam grazed while they munched on their travel rations. Jórunn decided it would be worth talking about something, even if the topic wasn’t of any weight.

“I'm surprised how experienced you seem with travelling like this,” she said.

Raydrin let out an airy laugh. “Why surprised?”

Jórunn exhaled. "It’s… I don’t know. It’s not what I expected from nobles. It’s so practical.”

Raydrin crunched on some hardtack for a little while. “Maybe you're thinking of Cyrodiilic nobles,” he said eventually, and he spoke slowly, like he was still thinking it over. “In House Redoran, at least, its nobles are put through the same basic military training as its armies.”

Jórunn nodded, picking at her own hardtack reluctantly. “So this is your first time putting it to practice?”

“No,” said Raydrin. “I spent a couple of years in Cyrodiil during the Great War.”

She blinked. “I didn’t realize any Dark Elves had fought in the war.”

“Not many of us did,” he confirmed. “We joined late, when it seemed like the Dominion was close to winning. It was just House Redoran. I think we realized an Aldmeri victory would be bad news for Morrowind.”

“Oh,” said Jórunn. Then, dryly, she added, “I hadn’t realized I was travelling with such a wizened elder.”

In truth, Raydrin’s age was of no surprise to her. It was something she’d talked about with Cassathra already—but he didn’t know that.

“Funny,” he said, but it wasn’t in a disparaging way.

It occurred to Jórunn then what else Cassathra had told her, back in Riverwood—that Raydrin had once had a twin, who died a few years before Cassathra was born. Cassathra hadn’t specified how she’d died, but Jórunn quickly did the arithmetic and the numbers added up. She suddenly regretted making light of Raydrin’s time in the war, on the off chance her theory was correct.

But then again, it wasn’t like he’d wanted to talk about anything heavy.

“So what’s your story?” he asked after she’d been quiet for a few moments.

Jórunn blanched. She’d known that was going to happen at some point. “My story?”

“You know,” he said. “Where you grew up, what your childhood was like, and so on. Why you left.”

Jórunn’s ‘story’ was not something she wanted to share any time soon—or ever, if she could help it. She realized she ought to have spent some time coming up with an alternative to have at the ready, but it hadn’t crossed her mind. She would just have to improvise.

“I was born in the Imperial City,” she said. She could start with the easy stuff—the stuff that was true. “My father was a Cyrod, though I never knew him. My mother was a Nord, and she died when I was young. I grew up in an orphanage.”

The reality was that Jórunn’s mother had been a prostitute, just like her. She got knocked up by some Cyrod client she never heard from again, and she drank. Her baby was premature and blind, though she hadn’t lived to find out. Jórunn was raised by the other prostitutes, and started seeing clients as soon as she got her first blood. She was fourteen years old.

In a way, it was kinder than the alternative; it would have been easier for them to just drown her or throw her out onto the streets, when they realized some months after her birth that she couldn’t see. The Madam made sure to remind Jórunn of that fact whenever she’d expressed a desire to leave. She saw Jórunn as an indentured servant, and by all rights, she supposed she was. Jórunn owed the Madam her life. It was a debt without end.

“And then?” Raydrin prompted.

“Um…”

Jórunn had to pause in order to wrack her brain for something plausible. “When I was sixteen, I left the orphanage,” she said. “I managed to get in contact with some relatives of my father, and they allowed me to move in with them. We were quite poor, but we got by.”

Raydrin said nothing, and she continued. “I spent eight years there,” she said, the lies coming easily now. “I suppose one day I just decided I needed a change, and Skyrim seemed to be the obvious choice—a way of discovering that side of my heritage, you know?”

The latter part was true, at least.

“So the relatives you were looking for in Whiterun were your mother’s?” Raydrin asked. He was sweet—asking questions to show he was paying attention. Jórunn quickly thought back to everything she’d already told him to ensure it wasn’t contradictory and then nodded.

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t actually have any relatives in Whiterun; she’d just needed a reason to keep travelling with them. “I don’t really know what I was planning. I think I was hoping to get an apprenticeship of some sort. Apothecary work, maybe.”

“And now you’re here,” said Raydrin, somewhat solemnly.

“Yes,” she said. She tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “Now I’m here.”

She heard Raydrin get to his feet beside her and then the patting of fabric as he brushed himself down.

“I’m ready to set off again whenever you are,” he said. “But there’s no rush.”

“No, we can leave now,” Jórunn agreed, picking up her cane. “I’ve eaten all the hardtack I think I can stomach.”

Their journey resumed, and the afternoon passed in much the same manner as the morning—though with a little more conversation. Whenever they encountered someone or something of interest, Raydrin would tell her about them (or it), and they’d make wild speculations as to their story; in the case of people, where they were going, their purpose, and so on, and in the case of landmarks, their history, and how they had got there. It was fun, but it quickly became apparent that Raydrin was highly educated and that Jórunn was not.

They stopped to make camp in the late afternoon—away from the road, close to the southern bank of the White River—as Raydrin didn’t want either of them to overdo it on the first day. They were heading east, around the top of the mountain range to which the Throat of the World belonged, and were then planning to handrail the mountain range southwards to Ivarstead.

“There’ll be some climbing tomorrow,” Raydrin had explained as he drank from his waterskin. “We want to preserve our energy.”

They could have headed south from Whiterun—back down to Riverwood—and from there taken a mountain pass towards Ivarstead. But the two routes were roughly equal in length, and Raydrin ‘couldn’t bear’ to make the journey to Riverwood again. Jórunn could understand that.

Raydrin started setting up the tent and Jórunn stood there awkwardly, feeling redundant. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked, absently stroking Miriam’s neck. Raydrin was silent for a few moments; he was probably working out a polite way of saying ‘no.’

“You will have to show me,” she went on, “and it’ll take you a bit longer the first couple of times. But I can learn—and it’ll be worth it if we’re going to be travelling for a while. Saves you from doing this by yourself each night.”

He was quiet for a short while longer, but eventually he agreed. “All right,” he said. Together they worked out a way for Jórunn to help pitch the tent, and Raydrin was patient with her, explaining how the various components fit together and taking the time to show her how to recognize them by touch. When the tent was set up, he began putting together a small campfire.

Jórunn listened to what sounded like the pounding of wood, several rhythmic, consecutive thwoks.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm—" thwok, "—digging—" thwok, "—a fire hole."

Jórunn blinked. The pounding eventually ceased.

"It's someting I learned when I was staying with the Ashlanders for my pilgrimage," Raydrin explained. "You light your fire in a hole and—" he paused again, grunting, "—connect it to another hole upwind. Keeps the smoke away when it's windy, so, you know," he chuckled; "if it's good enough for the Ashlands, I figured it should work in the steppe of Whiterun."

Jórunn tucked away her questions about his pilgrimage for later. 

“I’m going to try and hunt while it’s still light,” Raydrin told her when the fire was lit. “Will you be all right by yourself for a short while?”

Jórunn nodded from where she was sitting cross-legged in the opening of the tent, warming her hands. “That’s fine,” she said.

“All right,” said Raydrin. “I’ll be back.”

He returned with a rabbit some time later and got to work making a stew. Jórunn asked him about the process of preparing game, and Raydrin described to her what he was doing at each stage. The meat he cooked separately and the bones he used to make a stock.

“If only I had some ash yams,” he muttered when the stew was bubbling away.

Jórunn raised a brow—they sounded disgusting. “Ash yams?” she ventured.

“They’re a tuber from Morrowind,” he explained. “Kind of like potatoes, I suppose. You can boil them, mash them, stick them in a stew… a real Dunmeri comfort food.”

The finished product was—to his credit—surprisingly tasty, and a good deal better than the attempts at cooking Mathyas and Cassathra had made on their way to Whiterun. They ate in a companionable silence.

They then started preparing for bed. Life on the road was not very glamorous, and tending to their basic needs without the conveniences of home was a logistical challenge; Jórunn realized she and Raydrin were going to get very comfortable around each other. This hadn’t really bothered her on the way to Whiterun, given that, back then, both parties had been under the impression they would never see each other again. But now she had no idea how long they’d be travelling together.

She lay awake in her sleeping roll later that night, listening to Raydrin’s steady breathing as he slept beside her. He wasn’t a snorer, thank the gods, but Jórunn’s thoughts were more than loud enough to keep her awake on their own. She thought back to what Cassathra had told her that morning, and wondered whether Raydrin was missing skooma, or whether he was happier now that he’d made it through withdrawal. If anything, it was likely that both statements were true; Jórunn had enough experience with addicts to know that such contradictory feelings were often the norm.

She also thought of herself, and her current predicament. With each day they were getting closer to High Hrothgar, and once they arrived, there would be no running from her fate. She still didn’t feel any different despite having allegedly absorbed a dragon’s soul, but Jórunn wasn’t entirely sure she even understood what that meant. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that, at the very least, the Greybeards would be able to answer these questions for her. Eventually she fell asleep.

The journey worsened from then on. Jórunn had failed to appreciate the accumulative effect of fatigue, the way the pressure points on her feet would get worse with each day and not better. Hiking uphill was a great deal more taxing than walking through the plains, and Jórunn shuddered at the thought that—after Ivarstead—they would be climbing the Throat of the World without Miriam.

The days where it rained were the worst. Everything would get wet—their clothes, the tent, their sleeping rolls. They would get wet and then stay wet until the rain eventually subsided, and then they would have to spread everything out over the rocks and wait for it all to dry. Which was a pain.

After eight days—on the eleventh of Hearthfire—they reached Ivarstead. They took out a room in the Vilemyr Inn and, to Jórunn’s relief, Raydrin agreed they would spend a day in the town to recover their strength before beginning the ascent. Jórunn was happy to doze away in their room, giving Raydrin the time to care of some errands. He washed their clothes, resupplied their rations, purchased some mountaineering equipment and left Miriam with the stablemaster, as per the arrangement he had with the stablemaster in Whiterun. Jórunn was going to miss that pony.

“I’m not looking forward to this,” she said as they ate their breakfast the following morning. She picked at her porridge, too nervous to eat.

“Me neither,” said Raydrin grimly. That, at least, made her feel a bit better.

Jórunn had never hiked a mountain in her life. Until a month ago, she’d never even left the Imperial City. The thought of climbing the tallest mountain in Tamriel—with a pack that weighed half of what she did strapped to her back—was daunting in a way she could not describe.

But they could put it off no longer.

“How many steps are there, again?” she asked as they lingered at the base of the track, Raydrin checking over their map one last time.

“Seven thousand is the official number,” he replied distractedly. "But I think their definition of 'step' is rather narrow."

Jórunn sighed. “Lovely.”

“If you want to take my arm at any point, just say,” he told her, and she heard the rustling of paper as he folded the map back up. “The terrain isn’t going to be easy. I don’t know which is better, with your cane.”

She huffed. “We’ll see how we go.”

It was something of an anti-climax, those first few steps; they didn’t really feel any harder than what Jórunn had done so far. She supposed, in the grand scheme of things, they were just a few random steps in the middle of what was already a long journey. The real climax would be reaching High Hrothgar.

But minutes in, she realized her dread had been justified. The slope quickly steepened, and with every step, Jórunn was lifting not just the weight of her own body, but the weight of her pack as well. It was exhausting and it was tedious; the steps were uneven and of different heights, so she had to use her cane to gauge the level of every single one. They crawled up the mountainside at what felt like a snail’s pace and somehow, it still felt like too much.

Jórunn was panting with effort. With the morning sun beating down hard from the east, she was soon drenched in sweat, and it clung uncomfortably to the skin of her neck, her back, her scalp, even. Though she considered removing some of her layers, the thought of having to take her pack off to do so quickly put the idea to rest. Whenever they stopped for more than a minute or two, the cold winds were quick to steal the heat from her skin; she was fluctuating constantly between two extremes, and she needed every layer she had.

I can’t do this, she kept thinking to herself. It became a mantra, repeated with every step—I can’t do this. I can’t do this. It was the only thought she was capable of having. Anything more complicated was interrupted by the mental effort it required just to put one foot in front of the other, or rather, above, and the prospect of doing this for the next few seconds was exhausting, let alone the whole day.

After the longest hours of Jórunn’s life, they stopped for lunch. It took her minutes to get her breath back. Raydrin was faring a little better, but not by much.

“I feel too sick to eat,” she said feebly when she was capable of forming words again.

“We can take as long as we need,” Raydrin told her. “But you should try and eat something at some point—the afternoon will be harder if you don’t.”

Jórunn nodded and drank deeply from her waterskin. Raydrin had told her not to worry too much about water consumption, as soon they would pass the snow line, and they’d have all the water they needed. This was of little comfort.

“You’re doing well,” said Raydrin as he took a seat beside her. She heard his pack fall to the ground with a thud. “This isn’t an easy climb, even for the fittest.”

Jórunn drank again. “I can see why the Greybeards don’t leave,” she said hoarsely. “Those old men would never want to go back up.”

Raydrin laughed. They sat there for a while, bundled in their cloaks to keep out the cold, until eventually Jórunn’s stomach settled enough for her to eat. Then they sat there for a good while longer.

The afternoon was as tough as the morning. In a way, the pain made for a good distraction; Jórunn was so busy thinking about how much her feet hurt that she didn’t have time to process the fact they were less than two days away from their destination. But then they stopped to make camp for the night and it was suddenly all she could think about.

The ground levelled out and they found a small overhang in the mountainside to shelter them from the winds. They dropped their packs and Raydrin whistled. “Damn,” he said. “What a view.”

Jórunn sighed. “Great.”

“Sorry. Let’s make camp while we still have the energy.”

They pitched the tent, lit the fire, and Raydrin went off to hunt, as per their routine. Dinner was a quick and simple affair, as both of them were too tired for much conversation. They went to bed soon after, and Jórunn fell asleep almost as soon as she was in her sleeping roll—she slept for a long, long time.

When they awoke the following morning, they both lay in the tent for an extra hour or so, neither of them really willing to move. They took their time over breakfast and in packing up after themselves, and Jórunn felt ill at the thought of having to set off again. Every muscle in her body was stiff with pain, and her sore feet were screaming in protest when she forced them back into her boots.

With a great deal of effort, they set off. They passed the snow line sometime late in the morning, and if Jórunn thought it had been difficult before, nothing could have prepared her for hiking through the snow. Her cane became essentially useless, and every step required just that little bit more effort. She took Raydrin’s arm and they braved it together. She was grateful at least that it wasn't actively snowing.

The climb was steeper in the morning than in the afternoon, when the slope levelled out somewhat. It was getting easier, now; not physically, but mentally, at least. Jórunn had grown used to the level of effort that was required of her, and when she realized that the pain plateaued past a certain point, the rest of the challenge became purely psychological. And she knew by now that she could do it.

When at some point in the afternoon the winds died down very suddenly, Raydrin explained that they’d entered into a narrow ravine.

“How far are we from High Hrothgar, do you think?” she asked, only just able to speak.

“At this pace, we’ll probably get there around tomorrow lunchtime,” he said.

Jórunn took a few moments to breathe. “Can you see the top of the mountain?”

He laughed. “I wish,” he said. “Because we’re on a slope, you can only ever see so far—then you get to the top of that section, and you realize there’s another one right behind it.”

“That sounds frustrating,” said Jórunn, though she didn’t really understand what he meant.

“It is,” Raydrin agreed.

They fell back into silence, save for their laboured breathing and the crunching of snow beneath their feet. Then Raydrin’s arm suddenly slipped from her grasp; she felt it across her middle instead, like he was holding her back. She stopped as he hissed something in Dunmeris.

“What is it?” Jórunn whispered.

She heard it, then—an angry, bestial roar. Something slammed into the ground; she felt the tremors reverberate through her. Clumps of snow hit her in the face.

“Get back!” Raydrin cried, knocking her with his arm. She stumbled backwards, largely against her will, and lost her footing in the snow. With her centre of gravity somewhere behind her, Jórunn landed on her pack and groaned, rolling over.

Get back? What the fuck was he expecting her to do with that?! She couldn’t fucking see.

She heard something huffing and grunting, some kind of animal, and then the sharp ringing of metal as Raydrin drew his sword from its sheath. Jórunn’s heart was hammering against her ribs. She shimmied out of her pack, realizing her chances of survival would be greater without it.

“Should I run?” she cried.

“I would stay very, very still,” Raydrin replied, and Jórunn froze where she was scrabbling to her feet. The creature was still breathing heavily. Then it roared again, and there came a sound like something beating its chest.

One of them attacked, though Jórunn did not know who moved first; she could hear the whoosh of displaced air, the swing of Raydrin’s sword, the frustrated grunts and roars of the creature and the crunching of snow beneath Raydrin’s feet. Jórunn had no idea what they were up against or who was winning. She knew Raydrin had told her to keep still, but the creature sounded sufficiently distracted—and she couldn’t help herself. She crept backwards, painfully slowly, making sure with each step that her footing was secure before placing her weight down. She just needed as much space as possible between her and it.

Jórunn wanted to call out Raydrin’s name; her heart was in her mouth at the thought that something might happen to him. But she didn’t want to distract him, or make him worry. She could only stand there and pray to each Divine in turn that he would be alright.

The creature howled in pain and Jórunn hoped that that was it—that Raydrin had landed the killing blow. But then there came a short rush of air and a dull thump, and Raydrin cried out. Like he was hurt.

“Raydrin!” Jórunn yelled, her voice cracking.

He groaned in response. That was better than silence; he was still conscious, at least.

But then she heard footsteps pounding towards her, and they were far too heavy to be his. Something was panting. Her every muscle seized in alarm.

Raydrin weakly called her name. And then, much louder and with a sudden urgency; “Duck!”

She did. Air rushed over her head and the creature roared in frustration. With her feet buried in loose, powdery snow, the movement threw her off-balance and Jórunn found herself teetering backwards until she landed on her back again.

“Roll to the side!” Raydrin cried.

She rolled. Something heavy pounded the ground beside her.

“The other way!”

Same again.

Jórunn was too panicked to think for herself. Raydrin’s instructions fell silent, and she lay there in the snow, paralyzed, unable to move. Then the creature howled, and the sound was distant, like it was angled away from her.

“Move!” shouted Raydrin, and his voice was a lot closer all of a sudden. Jórunn scrambled to her feet and started pushing her way through the thick snow, back down the ravine. With no cane and no Raydrin, there was no way for her to tell where she was heading, or even when her foot would make contact with the ground. After just a few steps the snow gave way beneath her feet and she stumbled forwards onto her front again. Her face went numb.

There was a wet squelch from behind her, like metal slicing through flesh, and the creature howled again—the same desolate noise it had made earlier. Raydrin let out a strangled yell, but it was abruptly cut short. Her stomach lurched. Jórunn dragged herself through the snow with her arms, feebly grasping for purchase on whatever she could find, when behind her those heavy footsteps started pounding their way over to her again. She yelped when something grabbed her by the ankles and suddenly she was being pulled backwards through the snow.

Raydrin screamed her name—this time, there was no instruction attached. It was just desperation.

The creature roared and beat its chest and Jórunn twisted herself over so she was on her back. One thing was clear; it was going to kill her.

She opened her mouth to scream, but what came out of her mouth was nothing like a scream, or even like her voice at all. It felt like it came from somewhere deeper than her lungs, deeper than her stomach, even. Her mouth shaped a word that she did not know, monosyllabic and guttural, but it felt familiar somehow—and on her tongue, it tasted like raw heat.

Instantaneously—and with a great whoosh of air—that heat was all around her. The creature screeched in agony and she felt its weight suddenly disappear from her legs. It staggered away from her, each step reverberating through the ground, and what felt like an era later but could only have been seconds, there was a crack of bone and the wet tear of flesh and then its howling was cut short. Jórunn lay there on her back, too stunned to do much else.

“Fuck,” she heard Raydrin say, a few yards away from her. He spat. And then, closer: “Are you all right?”

She heard him approach, and then felt something press against her arm as he knelt beside her. She opened and closed her mouth feebly, unsure of how to respond.

“I- I don’t know,” she stammered. Raydrin took her arm and pulled her up into a sitting position and then his hands were on her face, brushing the snow from her skin and her hair. He’d taken his gloves off and his skin was hot—typical for a Dark Elf, in Jórunn’s experience.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

Jórunn shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you,” she murmured. “Are you okay? I heard—I thought—”

“I’m fine,” he replied. “Just a little winded.”

“What was that thing?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. She was trembling all over.

“I think it was a troll,” Raydrin told her. Her mouth fell open. “But it’s very dead now. You made sure of that.”

“How?” she croaked.

“Don’t ask me,” he said. “All I know is you Shouted it into a fucking crisp. Which is why we’re currently enjoying this lovely meaty smell.”

“Oh gods,” said Jórunn. She was overwhelmed with relief and the somewhat sickening realization that she had done that. It hadn’t all been a mistake.

Raydrin must have seen or sensed that she was feeling that way, because his arms were suddenly around her. “Hey,” he said, “hey, it’s all right. We’re safe now. We’re safe.”

She wasn’t crying—hyperventilating a little, maybe. Raydrin stroked her back and they waited it out.

“Sorry for knocking you over at the start,” he said. “I think I panicked a little.”

Jórunn laughed wetly. “It’s fine,” she said, sounding choked. “It got the job done.”

“Do you think you’re ready to get moving again?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing here.”

She nodded, exhaling slowly. “Let’s go.”

Raydrin pulled her to her feet and they found where she’d dumped her pack. Then, slowly, they resumed their trek.

That night’s camping was by far the worst. They were well past the tree line and so had no fuel with which to light a fire—and that meant no hot meal. To keep the tent dry, they pitched it on a flat section of rock, which rendered lying down an uncomfortable ordeal and falling asleep nearly impossible. They lay there in their sleeping rolls for what felt like hours, bundled up in all the layers they had. They were too cold and too tired to do much else.

By the following morning they had reached the western side of the mountain and so were mostly walking in shadow. They trudged along in silence, save for Raydrin occasionally pointing out various hazards in Jórunn’s way. Then, as per his prediction, he stopped sometime around noon and Jórunn heard him exhale beside her.

“I think that’s it,” he breathed.

“You can see it?” asked Jórunn. She felt sick with nerves. “What does it look like?”

He was quiet for a few moments. “Large,” he said. “Imposing. Looks more like a military fort than a monastery.”

Jórunn grit her jaw. “That makes me feel so much better."

“Sorry,” Raydrin muttered. Then he cleared his throat. “Ah, Jórunn... before we get there, can we talk for a moment?”

She shifted her weight uncomfortably, unsure she liked where this was going. “What about?”

Raydrin sighed.

“It’s up to you,” he began, “but... if you wanted me to, I could leave you now. I mean, if you’d prefer to spend time with the Greybeards alone, I could go back down to Ivarstead for a few weeks or months or however long you want to spend here and then come back to pick you up at the end of it.”

Jórunn’s heart sank. “Is that what you want to do?” she asked, trying and failing to mask the disappointment in her voice.

Raydrin was silent. It could only have been for a second or two, but it felt like forever. “No,” he said at last. “That isn’t what I want.”

She released the breath she was holding. “Then I want you to stay with me,” she said. “If it’s... if you're willing.”

“More than,” he breathed. “Come on. Let’s head up.”

She took his arm—easily, now—and together they began the final ascent up to High Hrothgar. Just seven thousand steps and her life had inalterably changed its course; there was no going back to the Imperial City now. Not anymore.

— END OF ACT I —

Notes:

big thank you to my beta readers haley and diana! and thank you for your kudos and comments, i appreciate the support of every one of you <3

Chapter 12: ACT II. The Way of the Voice

Raydrin had been truthful in his description of High Hrothgar as large and imposing, but it was beautiful too, in a dramatic kind of way. Situated on the brink of a sheer cliff face, jutting out from the mountainside, its charcoal grey stones stood in stark contrast to the pale blue sky behind it. Its entrance was grand, a wide stone staircase splitting off into two and curving around the central tower at the forefront of the building, but behind the tower and running perpendicular to it, the rest of the monastery was long and squat, all hard angles and geometric shapes. Tiny, square black windows blinked down at him from between the blocks of stone.

The two sets of steps each led to a separate entrance, positioned symmetrically on either side of the tower. He hesitated where the steps diverged, unsure of which way to go.

“Everything all right?” asked Jórunn from beside him, her hand now a familiar presence where it was clasped around his arm.

“All good,” he said, arbitrarily choosing to go left. The steps were slick with ice, so they climbed slowly. “How about you?”

“Nervous,” said Jórunn.

“I can imagine,” Raydrin replied. “But you’ll be alright.”

He knew that was unlikely to be of any practical comfort to her, but he genuinely meant it. Jórunn was quiet.

Eventually they made it to the top of the staircase, finding themselves in a hollow doorway. Drifts of snow piled high against the walls, and in the stone overhang above the door, the face of a dragon—familiar to him, now—had been carved into the rock. The door itself was a dark bronze, engraved with an elaborate Nordic knot design.

Raydrin shivered, looking over his shoulder. The view was unlike anything he had ever seen; they were surrounded in all directions by white, craggy mountain peaks, wild and untouched by human hands. He’d never experienced a cold this intense either, and though it didn’t seem to be affecting Jórunn that much, he desperately wanted to be out of its clutches.

Jórunn cleared her throat. “What happens now?” she asked pointedly.

Raydrin turned his attention back to the door, having to tilt his head back to view it in its entirety.

“I guess we just knock,” he said. He did. The ice-cold of the metal could be felt even through the wool-lining of his gloves.

Several long moments passed. Jórunn was still holding onto his arm, though he imagined it was more for comfort now; her grip was tighter than he was used to. Raydrin was about to knock a second time, but before his knuckles could make contact with the door it was drawn back suddenly, and there was an unpleasant sound as it jolted over the stone, like it wasn’t used very often. Raydrin and Jórunn both stepped back in surprise. 

The face of an elderly human male emerged from the shadows, peering around the edge of the door almost suspiciously. Raydrin noted to himself that he really did have a grey beard.

“State your business,” he said. His voice had a soft, woolly texture to it.

Raydrin was silent, waiting for Jórunn to answer. When she still hadn’t done so several moments later, he turned to look at her and nudged her gently with his elbow. She shuddered as if breaking out of a trance.

“Um,” she began, closing her eyes for a moment; “we’re responding to a summons?”

The monk raised a brow. “‘We’?”

Jórunn visibly cringed. “I’m responding to your summons,” she clarified. “This is Raydrin. He, um... he guided me here.”

The monk seemed to relax somewhat; he opened the door slightly wider, revealing grey, woollen robes. “Ah,” he said, an odd sort of smile forming on his withered lips. “So you are the one who is Dovahkiin.”

Raydrin was watching Jórunn carefully; she blinked, her expression blank. “What?”

“Dragonborn,” the monk clarified. “I trust you have some knowledge of this already?”

Jórunn bit her lip. Her grip around Raydrin’s arm was like a vice. “A little.”

The monk nodded. “Very good,” he said. “I am Master Arngeir—I speak for the Greybeards. Come, you must be tired.”

He opened the door fully, revealing the monastery’s shadowy interior. He was in a low-ceilinged corridor, built from the same grey-black stone as the building’s exterior, and he was lit on either side by two flickering braziers. Raydrin could feel the warmth emanating from them, burning against his bitterly cold skin.

He tugged his arm gently, indicating to Jórunn that he was about to start walking. Arngeir cleared his throat.

“Thank you for guiding her here,” he said, his eyes fixed on Raydrin. “But she must continue alone, now.”

Raydrin’s stomach lurched. Both of them stopped dead in their tracks, and Jórunn’s hand slid down his arm, stopping just below his elbow.

“No,” she said. “He’s staying with me.”

Arngeir frowned. “Few are granted access to our halls, Dragonborn,” he said. “We must first deem them worthy.”

“My name is Jórunn,” she said, expression hard. “Raydrin is my guide, and he is worthy by every measure. I’m not doing this without him.”

Raydrin swallowed. Jórunn, as always, was looking straight ahead, but her jaw was set and her dark brows were drawn, and her insistence that he stayed with her was… touching.

Arngeir glanced between them, silent for several moments. Raydrin wondered whether he had even realized Jórunn was blind. Eventually he seemed to relent. “Very well,” he said, sighing. “The Dark Elf may stay. However, I must insist on two conditions.”

Raydrin gave a hesitant nod.

“You must abide by our rules and our way of life for the duration of your stay here,” said Arngeir. “And you must agree to contribute towards the day-to-day running of our monastery.”

He relaxed; the conditions were far less onerous than he was anticipating. “I can do that.”

Arngeir pursed his lips. “Then you may enter,” he said at last. He stepped to one side, gesturing down the corridor with his arm, and after a brief pause, Raydrin started walking. He and Jórunn awkwardly shouldered past him into the protective warmth of High Hrothgar’s interior, meanwhile Arngeir shut the door behind them, banishing the cold to the harsh mountainside.  

It took Raydrin’s eyes a long while to adjust to the low light; it had been a bright day outside, the clouds sitting below them, and the sunlight had only been amplified by the brilliant white snow. The corridor was short, and as they reached its end, they emerged into a large chamber, several storeys high and built entirely from that same dark stone. Two great shafts of sunlight illuminated the centre of the chamber, but beyond their reach, the edge of the room was shrouded in darkness, lit only by candlelight and a few braziers.

Raydrin drifted to a stop. Behind them was the clunking of metal as Arngeir presumably locked the door, which afforded Raydrin a moment to absorb their surroundings. The air was somewhat fragrant, not at all musty like he was expecting; beneath the powerful scent of woodsmoke was the faint whiff of something delicate and floral. Immediately to Raydrin’s right and built into the wall between the two entrances was what looked to be a stone shrine, adorned in dozens of candles and situated beneath another dragon carving. At the far end of the room, two short, wide staircases led up to a raised landing. Banners were suspended above them, drifting in the heat generated by the braziers. Each was embroidered in a language Raydrin did not recognize.

“This is the Inner Sanctum,” said Arngeir, coming up behind them. “If you follow me now, I will lead you to our guest quarters. There you may unpack your things and take some time to rest.”

He walked ahead of them. Raydrin and Jórunn followed in silence save for the occasional murmured instruction. Arngeir led them through a large archway to the left of the chamber and up a short flight of steps, from the top of which they emerged into a long, narrow corridor.

“In the meantime,” he went on, “I will inform the others of your arrival. I am afraid we have already eaten, but I will have some food brought to you.”

“How many of you are there?” asked Jórunn.

“There are four of us,” Arngeir replied. “We are not a large order. Our numbers have been dwindling as of late.”

The corridor was striped with bluish shafts of sunlight, hailing down from Raydrin’s right. To his left, the wall was lined with wooden doorways, and it was beside one of these that Arngeir eventually stopped.

He turned to face them and cleared his throat. “My apologies, young Dragonborn,” he said. “In my old age I have already forgotten your name.”

“It’s Jórunn,” she said flatly.

Arngeir opened the door, the wood creaking as he did. “This shall be your room, Jórunn,” he said. “And the name of your guide?”

“Raydrin,” he said. Arngeir nodded, bowing his head. The fact he did so with Raydrin but hadn’t with Jórunn indicated that he’d probably figured out she was blind. Raydrin was surprised he’d said nothing of it.

“Your room is adjacent,” Arngeir went on, tilting his head slightly over his shoulder in the direction of another door. “Though due to the unexpected nature of your visit, it has not yet been made up.”

Raydrin nodded. “That’s fine.”

“I trust I may leave you the task of helping Jórunn familiarise herself with her room?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Very well,” said Arngeir. “Then please, make yourselves at home. Someone will attend to you shortly.”

Raydrin paused for a moment to see if Arngeir would be the first to leave, but evidently the Greybeard was waiting for them to enter the room. Raydrin shifted his gaze uneasily away from Arngeir’s and tugged his arm forwards, leading Jórunn past their host and through the open doorway. Arngeir shut the door behind them and they were silent as they waited for his footsteps to fade out of earshot.

Jórunn breathed a sigh of relief. “We made it,” she said. Her hand drifted from his arm, and Raydrin watched as she unstrapped her pack and lowered it to the floor before kneeling down to rummage through it. Her cane was fastened to the outside, and once she’d located it she got back to her feet.

“How are you feeling?” asked Raydrin as he rested his own pack by the doorway. He’d been wearing it for so long he felt weightless without it, like he could float away.

“Honestly,” said Jórunn, “mostly just relieved to not be climbing a mountain anymore.” Then she held out her hand. “Show me the room?”

Raydrin gave her his arm and did as asked. It was not a big room, and sparsely decorated. A small, square window was built high into the wall, facing out over the monastery’s entrance and letting in a little light. A pot of blue flowers had been placed on the stone windowsill. Raydrin helped Jórunn to locate the bed, as well as a chest of drawers, a wooden bathtub, and a table and chair. The bed was made up with fresh sheets and warm furs, and a wash bowl and jug of water had been placed on top of the drawers. The Greybeards had clearly been confident that their summons would be answered.

Jórunn took a seat on the edge of the bed, running her fingers through the thick furs. Raydrin debated sitting beside her, but ended up staying where he was, standing by the window. The glass was warped and opaque with frost.

“Arngeir seems… nice,” said Jórunn. She toed off her boots and drew her legs up onto the bed, crossing them in front of her. Raydrin lowered himself into the chair.

“He does,” he replied, tracing the wooden knots in the table with one finger.

“Does he have a grey beard?”

Raydrin grinned. “He does.”

A half-laugh left Jórunn’s lips. “He sounds so old,” she said. “I bet I’m the first woman he’s seen in decades.”

Raydrin laughed fully at that. “You’re probably right.”

A beat of silence followed; Raydrin cleared his throat as their laughter dissipated. “Thank you for fighting for me to stay here,” he said. In his head, he had more to say, but as he opened his mouth nothing came. I hadn’t realized—

“Ugh, don’t thank me,” Jórunn groaned, covering her face with one hand. “I already feel bad enough for dragging you up this fucking mountain. Now I’ve gone and forced you into monkhood.”

Raydrin snorted. “I’m not sure my beard is grey enough for that.” He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. “In another hundred years, maybe.”

Jórunn arched a dark brow. “I didn’t even know you had a beard,” she said. “You’re already halfway there.”

He was about to reply when they were interrupted by someone knocking sharply at the door. The smile was wiped off of Jórunn’s face.

“Come in,” she called.

At first Raydrin thought it was Arngeir who entered the room. He had difficulty distinguishing between pale old humans at the best of times, but when said humans were wearing identical grey robes and had identical grey beards, it was nearly impossible. The man was carrying a tray of food and bowed as he entered. He quietly made his way over to where Raydrin was sitting and placed the tray on the table. Raydrin leaned away from him awkwardly.

“Thank you,” he muttered.

The man bowed again. His silence was unnerving. Raydrin watched as he made his way back over to the door, half-expecting him to just leave without speaking at all, but then he stopped in the open doorway and turned to face them.

He pointed towards his chest. Raydrin realized he was trying to communicate something to them, and he nodded slightly to show he was paying attention.

The Greybeard raised the hand he was using up to his open mouth, and then mimed something coming out of his mouth, upwards, like a song. Then he shook his head, wagged a finger, and used the same hand to pinch the corner of his mouth between his thumb and forefinger, dragging them over his lips like he was sealing them shut. 

“Is everything alright?” asked Jórunn nervously from the bed.

“Everything’s fine,” said Raydrin, relaxed now that he understood. “Are you telling us you can’t speak?”

The Greybeard nodded enthusiastically. He was smiling, too, the kind of smile that made his crow's feet crinkle up. He was already a great deal more expressive than Arngeir had been.

“Jórunn can’t see you,” said Raydrin, gesturing to her with one hand. “She’s blind.”

The Greybeard nodded again, his eyes closed; it was the kind of nod that showed understanding. He coughed loudly, and Jórunn angled her head slightly towards the noise. Then he turned back to Raydrin and put his fingers in his ears, inclining his head as if to indicate that Raydrin ought to do the same. Uneasily, he did.

Everything fell silent, or rather, it was replaced by the dull throb of Raydrin’s pulse, audible only to him. He was watching Jórunn with mild concern; it couldn't have been easy sitting there, with no way of knowing what was going on. She was chewing on her lip, her brow creased with discomfort. Then the Greybeard mouthed something, and as he did, a low rumble pierced through Raydrin’s silence. He felt it, even. Jórunn’s eyes widened, her lips parted. She turned to face the Greybeard fully, her face etched with confusion.

The Greybeard gestured to Raydrin that he could lower his hands. He did, and if anything, the silence of the room was actually quieter than the silence of his skull.

“What was that?” asked Jórunn.

The Greybeard, of course, was unable to respond. He looked at Raydrin, a sympathetic smile on his lips, and inclined his head towards Jórunn. Then he lifted his arm and drew a semi-circle in the air with his palm, a broad sweeping motion. It was a wave goodbye. Raydrin nodded.

“He says he’s leaving now,” he announced.

The door closed behind him. Raydrin and Jórunn found themselves alone once again. Both were quiet for a few moments.

“What did he say to you?” Raydrin found it in him to ask.

Jórunn was frowning. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was almost like… ugh. I don’t know. It wasn’t like he really said anything. I just sort of… felt it?”

Raydrin hummed. “Weird,” he said. “He seemed friendly, though. Very smiley.”

“That’s good,” said Jórunn. “Did he bring food?”

Raydrin laughed. “He brought food. It’s just bread, cheese and dried fruit. Tell me what you’d like and I'll make you up a plate.”

 

---

 

The rest of the day passed in a surprisingly relaxed manner. They were left to their own devices for an hour or so before Arngeir returned sometime mid-afternoon and invited them to a tea ceremony.

They reconvened in the Inner Sanctum, by the shrine between the two entrance corridors. The candles had been moved to make room for tea, and six cushions had been placed in a semi-circle around it, facing the wall. Raydrin and Jórunn awkwardly took their seats whilst Arngeir prepared what smelled like a lavender infusion.

He introduced them to the other Greybeards; Borri, Wulfgar, and Einarth. Wulfgar was the one who’d brought them their lunch earlier, and he gave Raydrin a friendly wink when he was introduced. Arngeir was by far the oldest, and the only one of them who spoke. He explained that the others’ Voices had become too powerful for ordinary use, and that they had not yet reached the level of mastery required to control it. They communicated instead using a complicated-looking sign language, which Arngeir translated for Raydrin and Jórunn’s sakes.

Raydrin was still bundled up in most of his layers. High Hrothgar was not as cold as the outside had been, but still could not be described as ‘warm’—and Raydrin was the only Dunmer in a room of five Nords, all of whom seemed quite comfortable with the temperature. He pulled his sleeves over his hands and held his tea close, trying his best not to shiver visibly.

“Your training will start tomorrow,” Arngeir was saying, addressing Jórunn. The candlelight cast a warm glow on his light skin. “That should be enough time to ensure you have recovered from your journey. After tea, I shall give you both a tour of the monastery, and then you are free to do as you wish. Raydrin, I will explain to you what your responsibilities involve then.”

Raydrin nodded, taking a sip from his tea. “Fine with me.”

“For now,” Arngeir went on, “I imagine the Dragonborn has many questions. Please, Jórunn, ask us whatever you wish.”

Raydrin turned to her. Jórunn had been mostly silent thus far, rolling her clay teacup absently between her palms. Her silence stretched for a few moments longer, but just when it was starting to verge on awkward, she raised her head.

“I, um... honestly, I—I don’t really know where to start.”

Arngeir nodded. “I suppose that is quite natural. Tell me, what knowledge do you have already of what it means to be ‘Dragonborn’?”

She thought for a few seconds, scrunching her nose. “I suppose just that the Septims were all Dragonborn.”

“As good a place as any to begin,” said Arngeir. Raydrin noticed that the other Greybeards were signing a separate conversation between themselves at the other end of the shrine.

“The Remans and the Septims were Dragonborn in one sense,” Arngeir explained. “They were dragon-blooded, selected by Akatosh as worthy of sharing in his blood. As you will likely know, the line of Dragonborn emperors ended with Martin Septim at the close of the Oblivion Crisis.”

Jórunn nodded.

“You, my child, are something altogether different. In addition to your dragon blood, you also possess a dragon’s soul. Dragons are not mortal creatures—they are the immortal children of Akatosh, existing outside of time as it is experienced by mortals. For a dragon, there is no ‘life’ after ‘death’—upon the destruction of their physical forms, their souls are subsumed by their brethren. This ability belongs to you, now, as well.”

Jórunn had gone pale. Raydrin wanted to reach out and offer her some comfort, but in the course of their travelling, he’d come to realize that she didn’t like being touched without warning except in very specific circumstances. Right now, when his presence beside her probably wasn’t at the forefront of her mind, it was not one of those times. He grit his jaw and did nothing.

“Dragons have the innate ability to use the Thu’um,” Arngeir continued, “or the Voice, in your tongue. Language is intrinsic to their very being. Words in Dovahzul are more than just words—they are manifestations of a physical power. The goddess Kynareth granted Nords the ability to speak as dragons do, but for mortals, the Voice requires a lifetime of dedication to master. For you, the dragon speech is in your soul; you will find very soon that it comes quite naturally to you.”

Jórunn took a shaky breath. She looked so small. “I don’t… I still don’t understand how I’m Dragonborn,” she said. “Or why. I don’t know what this means, or— or what’s expected of me.”

The Greybeards glanced at each other. Raydrin had already forgotten how to differentiate between Einarth and Borri, but one of them signed something quickly to Arngeir, who then nodded and turned back to Jórunn.

“I’m afraid that is a question we cannot answer,” he said sympathetically. “You are the first Dragonborn of this era, so there is no doubt that you are somehow connected to the dragons returning. And I will admit, I have never heard of a Dragonborn with an… impairment the likes of yours, before.”

Jórunn huffed.

“But take comfort in the knowledge that Akatosh will have given you this gift for a reason,” Arngeir went on. “Whether it is a blessing or a curse, that is for you to decide. But Akatosh will not have shared his blood with someone he did not deem worthy.”

Jórunn placed her hands on her knees, anxiously rubbing the fabric of her woollen leggings. “So what happens now?”

“We are here to prepare you as best as we can for whatever destiny has in store for you,” said Arngeir. “When you absorb the soul of a dragon, you also absorb that dragon’s knowledge. We will show you how to tap into that knowledge and use it to Shout, and this power should put you in good stead.”

“That explains how you were able to Shout yesterday,” said Raydrin, speaking for the first time in a while. Everyone turned to him.

“The Dragonborn has Shouted already?” asked Arngeir, a subtle edge of surprise to his otherwise level voice.

Raydrin nodded. “We ran into a troll on our way up the mountain,” he said. “It was about to kill Jórunn, but—” he turned to her then, trying not to talk about her like she wasn’t there, “you Shouted something short and it was like you were breathing fire. The same attack was used by the dragons at Helgen and Whiterun.”

The Greybeards glanced at each other; a few moments passed in breathy silence as they presumably discussed what Raydrin had told them. He was fascinated by the quick, fluid movements of their hands, the way they utilised each finger and their faces and their arms. Arngeir half-mouthed what he was saying as he signed, the occasional word slipping through into something audible, but it wasn’t enough for Raydrin to work out what they were discussing.

Eventually Arngeir turned back to them. “We believe Jórunn’s panic may have enabled her to tap into knowledge she was otherwise unaware of,” he explained. “Ordinarily we would encourage a Dragonborn at the beginning of their journey to do so through meditation, but it is possible that a near-death experience accelerated that process.”

“I can’t remember what it was that I said,” Jórunn piped in. “Or anything else, for that matter. I couldn't do it again.”

Arngeir nodded. “That makes sense,” he said. “We will show you how to unlock your knowledge of Dovahzul more permanently starting tomorrow. But we will also take care to train you in our philosophy; the Way of the Voice. It is easy for Dragonborn to fall prey to the hubris that comes with such easy mastery of the Thu’um. The Way of the Voice will teach you patience, and humility, so that when the time comes, you will hopefully choose to use your power for good.”

Jórunn nodded. “All right,” she said. She sounded resigned.

“I understand this will be a lot to take in,” said Arngeir. “If you are finished with your tea, we can move on to the more mundane task of showing you around. Then your time is your own.”

“Let’s do that,” said Jórunn through gritted teeth, fumbling around for her cane where it had been propped up against the shrine and getting to her feet. Raydrin followed, observing as he did that she hadn’t drunk any of her tea.

The other Greybeards began cleaning up after them while Arngeir gave them a tour of High Hrothgar. The north wing, which Arngeir had led them through earlier, contained the monastery’s living quarters, including bedrooms, the kitchens, and bathing facilities. The south wing was more for official purposes, containing studies, a reception area, and a great dining hall which Arngeir told them was reserved for important meetings. The fire pit in the centre of the room was stone cold. A long corridor ran adjacent to both wings, connected by the raised landing in the Inner Sanctum, which Arngeir explained led to an outdoor courtyard. “But we shall save that for another time,” he’d said.

“How come there are so few of you?” asked Raydrin as they were heading back to their quarters. “If it takes a lifetime to master the Voice, why don’t you have any younger initiates?”

Arngeir was walking ahead, so his expression couldn’t be seen, but his silence was indicative enough that Raydrin had maybe broached a touchy subject. It was a long while before he replied.

“It has been a difficult decision to reach,” he said, “but the others and I have decided that the age of great Nord Tongues has come to an end. Despite our best efforts, the Thu’um is used too often for arrogant and tyrannical purposes. Recent political events demonstrate this all too well.”

It took Raydrin a moment or two to process what Arngeir meant, but his mouth fell open once he did. Arngeir’s voice was solemn, his words heavy.

“Ulfric Stormcloak was a promising student,” he went on. “Even he could not resist the temptation to use his knowledge for personal gain. As Dragonborn, we will make an exception for you, Jórunn. But otherwise, we believe it best that the knowledge of the Voice dies with us.”

Raydrin and Jórunn were both silent, absorbing Arngeir’s words. Raydrin was surprised at how much they saddened him; the Voice was not a part of his culture, but the loss of such priceless knowledge seemed to him a great tragedy. Just one more reason to dislike Ulfric Stormcloak, he thought.

Arngeir left them by their quarters, and Jórunn asked if she could have some time alone. Raydrin thought that was fair enough. They’d pretty much spent the last ten days solidly in each other’s company, and he imagined she had a lot of things to work through.

“Just knock if you need anything,” he told her, and she thanked him quietly before closing her door. Raydrin flopped down onto the bed in his own room—which had since been made up for a guest—and spent a long while summoning up the energy to make a bath. Then he got out of his clothes and into the hot water in record time.

When the skies had started to darken and Raydrin’s room was lit mostly by candlelight, there came a knock at his door. His hair was still damp from his bath. “Come in,” he called, hoping it was Jórunn. But it was Wulfgar. Raydrin was pleased at least that it was him and not one of the others.

Wulfgar smiled and bowed a hello. Then he opened his mouth and mimed spooning food into it.

“Oh—is that ‘dinner’s ready’?”

Wulfgar shook his head. He pointed at Raydrin, and then at himself, and then mimed chopping and stirring.

“Oh,” said Raydrin. “You want me to help with the cooking.” Arngeir had mentioned that as one of the tasks he’d be expected to help out with. But he didn’t mind—cooking was something he enjoyed.

Wulfgar nodded enthusiastically. Raydrin had decided he liked Wulfgar. He looked to be the youngest of the four of them: his beard was the least grey, and the most impressive. He beckoned with one arm and Raydrin followed, placing the book he’d started to read face-down on his bedside table. Wulfgar led him to the monastery kitchens, where the ingredients they’d be using had been laid out atop a long wooden table. Some kind of meat was already roasting—Raydrin could smell it as soon as they walked in. Wulfgar put him to work chopping a variety of root vegetables, and in the meantime started putting together what looked like a dough. Raydrin had no idea what they were making, but it seemed from what he could tell to be very standard Nord stodge.

Dinner itself was a somewhat awkward affair. The food was decent; they’d made a venison and potato stew with herb dumplings. It wasn’t the most flavoursome thing Raydrin had ever eaten, but it beat what he’d been able to make on the road and was exactly the kind of hearty meal he needed to warm him up. But they ate in silence. The Greybeards, if they wanted to speak to each other, would do so using sign language, and Raydrin and Jórunn were both too awkward to try speaking to each other out loud. Raydrin watched the Greybeards and attempted to pick up on some of their signs, but their language remained a mystery to him. He imagined Jórunn was feeling even more alienated.

They went to bed soon after, both exhausted. The Greybeards gave Raydrin a copper warming pan and he pulled the thick furs tightly around himself, trying to soak up all the warmth from it he could. He wished in that moment that he wasn’t so resistant to heat, and then thought sympathetically of Cassathra, who would soon be living in the coldest city in Tamriel. Just thinking about it made him shiver.

That, of course, made him think of Mathyas. He’d sent a letter up to the College from Ivarstead, but it would be weeks before Cassathra could read it, and even then, how would she respond? Raydrin wouldn’t be living at a permanent address for a while. He desperately wanted word of their cousin, but he knew deep down that the chances of Cassathra having found anything were slim.

Raydrin still hadn’t processed it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone so long without Mathyas’ company, and with everything else going on, it was easy for him to forget that Mathyas was missing, that he’d disappeared under what looked like violent circumstances. And that—if Raydrin were honest with himself—he was most likely dead, or at the very least that Raydrin would never see him again.

He rolled onto his side, his eyes stinging. He wasn’t used to having to square up to his emotions like this. He missed being able to just smoke them all away, and he knew he would have done if he could. Raydrin didn’t want to think about Mathyas. Mathyas was gone. It would be easier to just forget.

Maybe that was part of the reason he’d wanted to stay with Jórunn; perhaps, subconsciously, Raydrin had known that staying at High Hrothgar would do him some good. But right now, he wanted nothing more than a hit. He felt so awake without skooma. Too awake. Too alert, too present. He regretted not going back down to Ivarstead when he still had the chance; he could have caught the first cart to Riften and within days it would have been within his grasp. Grief and guilt alike would be smoked away.

Raydrin groaned, rolling onto his back and pressing the balls of his hands into his eyes. You’re such an arsehole. The lump in his throat was tight and painful, threatening to give way any second. He was never going to fall asleep like this. He just needed something small, something to numb his thoughts—a little nightcap.

He threw the covers aside and shivered immediately upon making contact with the cold air. Then he fumbled around in the dark in search of his boots and made his way out into the corridor.

High Hrothgar was difficult to navigate at night; the braziers had mostly gone out, now just low embers glinting from the shadows. Raydrin pulled his jacket tightly over his chest and did his best to remember how to get to the kitchens, hoping that the Greybeards were of the wine-making variety of monks. The kitchen was pitch black, so Raydrin removed one of the torches from its wall fixture and used it in his search. To his luck, the Greybeards had amassed an impressive wine collection at the back of a dusty old pantry—Raydrin picked the least fancy red he could find, hoping it wouldn’t be missed, and then set off back towards the kitchen door.

He jumped in surprise upon opening it, amazed to find Jórunn making her way past. She flinched at the sound of the door opening and her cane fell to the floor with a clatter, her head whipping around to face him.

“Shit!” she exclaimed, and then her hands flew up to her mouth. “Sorry!” she added, whispering now. “Sorry, I—I know I shouldn’t be wandering around, I just—I couldn’t sleep—”

“Relax,” said Raydrin, “it’s just me.”

All the tension left her body. “Thank the gods,” she murmured. “I was worried it was going to be someone who couldn’t speak. I can’t tell you how awkward it is.”

Raydrin laughed softly. “Glad to be a pleasant surprise."

Jórunn bent down and felt around the floor for her cane. “What are you doing up?”

He shrugged out of habit. “I couldn’t sleep either,” he said. “I came looking for wine.”

“Did you find any?” she asked, getting to her feet.

“A whole pantry's worth. Got a bottle of lora.”

Jórunn snorted. “So those old monks do know how to party.”

Raydrin hummed, the smile fading from his face as he realized he didn’t know where to go from there. He was slightly embarrassed that he’d been caught, and regretted admitting his true purpose. It wasn’t exactly healthy or indicative of good character.

“Are you planning on drinking the whole bottle?” asked Jórunn after a beat of silence.

“Er,” said Raydrin, glancing down to it, “probably not. Just enough to make me sleepy.”

She tucked some of her hair behind her ear. Her dark curls were loose and messy, tumbling over her shoulders in tangled waves; she’d clearly been tossing and turning. “Mind sharing the other half?”

Raydrin was quiet for a moment. “No,” he said eventually. “I guess it won’t seem quite as depressing with company.”

“That’s probably true,” Jórunn agreed with an amused smile, and then she held out her hand. “Come on.”

Raydrin led them back to their rooms and they decided to drink it in his. “The layout is the same,” he said, and Jórunn took a seat on the edge of his bed whilst he lit a candle for his own sake. Then he sat down a little way from her and uncorked the bottle.

“I don’t have any cups,” he apologised. “Is that all right?”

Jórunn nodded, drawing her legs up to sit cross-legged as she had done before. She was wearing leggings and a loose sleeveless tunic. Raydrin was amazed she was warm enough.

He let her drink first, and then took a long swig himself. They were quiet for a few moments.

“Do you want to talk?” he asked softly.

Jórunn chewed her lip before stretching out a hand, silently asking for him to pass the bottle back. He did, and she drank deeply, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand when she was done.

“It—” she started, faltering for a second while she worked out what she wanted to say. “I think I realized today that I’m in this for the long haul.” She spoke slowly, running her thumb up and down the neck of the bottle, her unseeing gaze fixed somewhere on the stone floor of his room. “Whatever’s going on, and however I’m supposed to be involved… it’s not going to be over quickly, is it?”

Raydrin exhaled. “I don’t think so, no.”

“I’m scared,” she confessed. “And mostly—I’m sorry. I’m sorry you got dragged into all this. I’m not expecting you to commit to anything.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

Jórunn held the bottle out to him and he took it from her grasp, watching her from the corner of his eye as he drank.

“Even so,” she carried on. “I’m not necessarily apologizing… I’m sad for you. You’re in this as much as I am, and there’s no good reason for you to be. I’m sorry you had to uproot everything.”

“It was already uprooted,” he said bitterly. “Listen, Jórunn… If you want me to be, I’m in this for the long haul too. I’m not going to abandon you.”

Raydrin guiltily recalled having wished to do so just twenty minutes earlier, but he put that down as the addict in him speaking. Right now, he meant every word.

“You really don’t want to go back to Morrowind?” Jórunn murmured, turning her head towards him even though her gaze was elsewhere.

“Without Mathyas and Cassathra there? Not a chance,” he said. “Even then, I… I don’t miss it.”

Jórunn bit her lip. “Why?” she asked quietly. Her brown eyes were wide and shining in the candlelight.

“Sorry,” said Raydrin, “I just realized how privileged that sounds coming from me.”

Jórunn shook her head. “Don’t worry about that.”

Raydrin was silent for a long while. “I don’t exactly have a great relationship with House Redoran,” he admitted eventually. He took a hearty drink before continuing. “Ideologically, I mean.” He smacked his lips, and then nudged her hand with the bottle to pass it back to her. “And it wasn’t always supposed to be me inheriting my father’s council seat… I mean, it is now, but it’s not something I think I’d be good at or that I want.”

Jórunn nodded and drank. “That makes sense,” she murmured.

The conversation drifted to a close. Raydrin was relieved Jórunn didn’t ask any more questions. This hadn’t been what he’d wanted to happen when he snuck out for some wine—he’d wanted to take his mind off the things making him sad. Maybe Jórunn had picked up on that.

They drank for a while in silence, and as they neared the bottom of the bottle, Raydrin began to feel it; his head was heavy, his muscles relaxed, his eyes drifting shut. Jórunn yawned beside him.

“I definitely feel sleepy now,” she said, blinking slowly. “Thanks for sharing your wine with me.”

“No problem,” he replied, putting the empty bottle on his bedside and watching as she got to her feet.

“And, um,” she paused, “thank you for saying you’ll stay. It... it makes me feel a lot better about this whole thing.”

Raydrin nodded. “I meant it,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to do this alone, either.”

Jórunn was facing him; she smiled slightly. “Night, Raydrin,” she said. 

“Night, Jórunn,” he replied.

He watched her leave. When he was satisfied she’d made it back to her room in one piece, her door latching into place behind her, Raydrin blew out the candle and slid back under his covers. The wine warmed him as he fell asleep.

 

---

 

They awoke early the next morning and ate breakfast together in the same silent manner they'd eaten dinner in the night before. Raydrin was coming to realize that the diet at this altitude was even more limited than in the rest of Skyrim; very little grew here, so the Greybeards were restricted to root vegetables, the limited dairy produce they were able to cultivate from the few mountain goats they reared, and bread made from the grains that were delivered to them by the locals of Ivarstead. Raydrin ate his porridge with reluctance. He rarely had an appetite this early in the morning, but he knew he needed to start regaining the weight and muscle he’d lost in recent months.  

When breakfast had been cleared away, they convened in the Inner Sanctum. Raydrin led Jórunn to stand by the Greybeards and then took a seat on the stone steps, soaking up the warmth from a nearby brazier.

Arngeir raised an eyebrow at him. “Raydrin, I must request that you spend this time elsewhere,” he said. “We would prefer to train the Dragonborn alone.”

“Are you sure he can’t stay?” asked Jórunn. “Just for moral support.”

Raydrin spread his hands. “I'll be quiet. You won't know I'm here.”

Arngeir sighed, his eyes rolling upwards in exasperation. “Fine,” he said. Then he turned back to Jórunn, who was standing with the Greybeards in a rough circle in the centre of the chamber, illuminated from above by shafts of morning sun.

Arngeir spent a while explaining to Jórunn how this was going to work. A lot of it went over Raydrin’s head, though he believed he’d caught the gist of it; the ‘Thu’um’ was more than just the dragon language on its own, but rather the channelling of something akin to magic through the use of language. With each Shout, Jórunn would be breathing the words into existence. When she absorbed the soul of the dragon back in Whiterun, the knowledge she’d absorbed with it was the knowledge of how to turn the dragon language into Shouts—but the words themselves she would need to pick up over time, albeit with relative ease.

“The Voice has many uses, of which violence is only one,” Arngeir was saying. “The Way of the Voice dictates that it should only be used for the glory and worship of the gods, and not for the glory of men. However, in times of true need, it may be justified to wield the Voice in its capacity as a weapon—we can assume that the revelation of a Dragonborn is one of those times.”

Jórunn nodded, her expression steeled into something neutral. But her knuckles were white where they were wrapped around her cane.

“To that end, there are a few Shouts we have decided to teach you,” Arngeir went on. “However, we will start with the one we believe shall be most useful to you in light of your impairment.”

The other Greybeards began moving around in preparation for something, communicating in silence as they did.

“This is something of an experiment,” Arngeir clarified. “The Shout we wish to teach you is one we call ‘Aura Whisper’—Life, Seek, Hunt. For us, at least, it enables us to perceive the auras of nearby entities, no matter what obstacles may lie between us. We do not know whether it will work for you in the same way; but we believe it may be possible that the Shout is able to bypass whatever physical irregularity prevents you from seeing.”

Raydrin could tell that had made Jórunn panic—all of the colour drained from her face, her eyes growing wide.

“Do we have to start with that one?” she asked. “I— I’m not sure I want to—”

Arngeir cut her off. “Your worry is understandable,” he said. “However, I can assure you the effects of this Shout are quite subtle.”

“But you can see,” said Jórunn. “I’ve never seen a thing in my life.”

Raydrin hadn’t thought about it like that before, but he suddenly understood why Jórunn would be so terrified by the prospect of the Shout. His heart ached in sympathy, and he desperately wanted to break his promise not to say anything.

“Jórunn,” Arngeir said sternly, “we understand that this is frightening for you. But frost trolls will not be the only danger you encounter in the coming months. There will be times when an awareness of your enemy’s location will make the difference between life and death.”

Jórunn turned to face Raydrin, her expression pleading.

“Arngeir,” Raydrin started, clearing his throat, “may I go and stand by her?”

The Greybeards stared at him. Raydrin shifted uncomfortably. “For moral support,” he clarified.

Arngeir’s expression was hard, but he nodded. “Very well."

Raydrin hurried to his feet and came to join her; Jórunn mouthed a thank you as he approached. He gave her his arm and she clutched it with both hands, her grip almost hard enough to hurt.

“The first word of the Shout is ‘life’—or ‘laas’, in Dovahzul,” Arngeir explained. “The word ‘laas’ may be spoken aloud by anyone, and with years of training, it may be spoken as a Shout. But you, uniquely, have the ability to do so almost immediately.”

One of the Greybeards stepped forwards then—it was either Einarth or Borri, but Raydrin could not tell which.

“Master Einarth will now share with you his knowledge of the word ‘laas’, and its essence as a Word of Power,” said Arngeir. “Your dragon soul will then enable you to project the word into a Shout.”

Einarth approached them, and Raydrin murmured this into Jórunn’s ear so that she knew what was going on. She nodded, swallowing visibly.

Einarth made eye contact with Raydrin, having the decency to look at least a little sympathetic. Then he held up one hand, allowing it to hover close to Jórunn’s face, and he paused like he was waiting for something.

“Ah, Jórunn, I think he wants permission to place his hand on your forehead."

He could feel her trembling. “Okay,” she said quietly. Einarth nodded at Raydrin in thanks, and then carefully placed his palm against Jórunn’s temple, his knobbled fingers pointing upwards. Jórunn flinched slightly at the contact, but remained in place.

Einarth opened his mouth and released a sound, and Raydrin supposed it sounded vaguely like a whisper, but it was definitely something else. He barely heard it; and unlike Wulfgar’s Shout from the day before, he didn’t feel it, either. It seemed to have had more of an effect on Jórunn, who inhaled sharply, her mouth falling open.

Einarth stepped back. Jórunn was staring ahead with wide eyes.

“You should now be able to project the Word of Power into a Shout,” Arngeir explained as Einarth rejoined him and the others. “Please, take as long as you need.”

Jórunn was breathing heavily. Her brows were furrowed and her lips pressed into a thin line.

“I’m right here,” Raydrin murmured. “I’m not going anywhere. It’ll be all right.”

She nodded, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then, after several long moments, she took a deep, shuddering breath and whispered, “Laas.”

Silence befell the room. All eyes were on her, and the seconds dragged by as everyone waited for her to react, or open her eyes. After what felt like an era, she did, blinking a few times.

“Do you see anything, child?” asked Arngeir.

Raydrin was holding his breath. Jórunn was quiet for a few moments, but then eventually she shook her head.

“No.”

Raydrin felt his whole body relax. Arngeir released an odd sighing sound, a breathy, disappointed, “Oh.” His shoulders fell.

“But—” Jórunn began, and everyone’s attention refocused on her. “I do… feel something.”

Her hands fell from Raydrin’s arm, and she stepped away from him. “It’s like… I can tell you’re there.”

She placed her hand on his shoulder then, and unlike in the past, when she’d done so slowly and with uncertainty as she worked out where he was, the movement was precise. Raydrin inhaled.

“And I can feel the Greybeards, too,” she said, though she didn’t turn to them. “I know where they are like… like I know where my bed is in a familiar room. I expect you to be there and then—” she removed her hand from his shoulder, “you are.”

“Fascinating,” said Arngeir, staring at her with wide eyes. “One moment, please, Jórunn.”

He turned to the other Greybeards and they began conversing in sign language. Raydrin was watching Jórunn carefully, trying to read her expression.

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

“I think so,” she muttered. She turned away from him. “It’s gone, now, anyway.”

Raydrin didn’t know what to say. Jórunn seemed to be deep in thought, her blank gaze fixed somewhere on the floor. After a few moments Arngeir cleared his throat, drawing Raydrin's gaze.

“In hindsight,” said Arngeir, “this makes perfect sense. The purpose of the Shout is to provide its user with knowledge of the locations of nearby lifeforms; our bodies then interpret this information in a way that makes sense to us. For those of us with sight, the manifestation is visual. It seems only natural that for you, Jórunn, the knowledge is interpreted in a way that you are already familiar with.”

Jórunn raised her head, though it was a few moments before she spoke. “That does make sense,” she said quietly.

Arngeir’s lips pulled into a tight smile, his head tilting forwards in a nod. “You did well, Dragonborn,” he said. His praise was met with little response from its intended target, the woman whose name was Jórunn and yet who was never addressed as such. Raydrin longed to know what was going on behind her steeled countenance. “Come,” the Greybeard continued, drawing his attention again. “Let us continue. This is only the beginning.”

Notes:

an uneventful chapter but necessarily so. i hope it was enjoyable in any case!! thanks for reading and for your continued support, and thank you as always to my lovely beta readers <3

Chapter 13: Kyne's Peace

"I am alive because that one is dead. I exist because I have the will to do so. And I shall remain as long as there are signs of my handiwork, such as the blood dripping from this blade."

- Boethiah’s Proving

---

 

Falkreath Sanctuary, Skyrim, 10th Hearthfire

Mathyas was holding his breath. His hand was on the verge of cramping, and if the last tumbler didn’t click into place soon, he would have another broken lockpick to show for his failures.

Had it already clicked? He'd lost the ability to tell. He was holding his ear close to the padlock, but he’d been doing these for so long now that his focus was beginning to wain. He was averaging around four hours of sleep each night and his concentration reserves were low.

After fumbling around for what felt like minutes but couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, slowly twisting and manoeuvring the pick in search of that ever-elusive angle, he finally heard it: the faint click he was looking for. Mathyas released his breath and relaxed somewhat, but had learned now not to rush the next step; too much pressure on the tension wrench and the pick could still snap. He pushed down gently on the wrench with one finger and found to his relief that the plug gave way, turning with ease. The padlock sprung open.

He sat back in his chair, surveying his work. Sprawled across the table before him was a vast array of padlocks and a multitude of different lockpick types, given to him by Gabriella as a means of practicing what she’d been teaching him. Some of the padlocks he’d failed to unlock, now jammed and broken with a mangled pick stuck inside, but the majority he’d been able to open. His success rate of maybe eighty per cent was a great deal higher than it had been three days ago.

Mathyas was still vaguely hoping that he’d never have to put this knowledge to use, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t finding some satisfaction from the intellectual challenge. It was taking his mind off his wider circumstances, at least.

He dragged a hand down his face, rubbing his tired eyes. He was about to start working on the next one when he heard footsteps from above and looked up with alarm, thinking it was Gabriella returned from her hunt. He was meant to have finished before she got back.

‘Relief’ was maybe not the right word to describe what Mathyas felt, but it was not Gabriella descending the wooden steps into the Sanctuary’s dining area. It was two people Mathyas had not seen before; two humans, a man and a woman, clad in travelling gear with thick, wool coats draped about their shoulders.

Mathyas studied them as they approached, wondering vaguely if he ought to say or do something. But in the end he held this tongue. The man was tall and broad, his skin a deep russet brown. He had a full beard, neat and tidy, and though his coiled hair was still a rich black, the lines on his face spoke to his maturity; he was past young adulthood, though perhaps not yet on the cusp of middle-age. The woman—small and lithe—was younger, her fair skin still smooth and unblemished. Her hair was curly also, but a vivid, fiery orange, the tight ringlets pulled back into a messy updo. Myriad freckles decorated her cheeks.

The woman took little notice of Mathyas, saying something quietly to the man and then stalking with purpose to the end of the hall that had been designated as a makeshift kitchen. The man, however, approached him, pulling up a chair at the table and sitting across from him. Mathyas met his gaze with caution.

“So,” he said as he sat down, pushing back his red hood and revealing a full head of dark, curly hair. “You must be the newest member of our little family.”

Mathyas squinted. “I suppose.”

“You ‘suppose’?” he said, brow raised. “Such indecision won’t get you far in this line of work.”

Mathyas bit his tongue, resisting the urge to point out he wasn’t in ‘this line of work’ by choice. Voicing such thoughts would not put him in a good position to actually act on them.

The man huffed in response to Mathyas’ silence. “My name is Nazir,” he said. His voice was deep and smooth, his cadence pleasantly steady. “Astrid warned me you might be a bit reticent. Tell me,” he grinned, “what did you think of her little recruitment exercise?”

Mathyas’ stomach lurched at the memory. “I thought it sadistic,” he eventually admitted. “And unnecessary.”

Nazir chuckled. “Sadistic, perhaps. But your victim would have died either way. Astrid just wanted to be sure you had what it takes.” He leaned forwards then and draped his forearms across the table, fingers laced together neatly. “Personally,” he said, “I’m not so convinced. If you ask me, Grelod was a fluke—I think you got lucky.”

“You and me both.”

Nazir reached out towards a padlock—one of Mathyas’ unsuccessful attempts—and investigated it closely, running his thumb over the snapped lockpick end still sticking out of the keyhole. “Lockpicking is clearly new to you,” he said dryly. “Do you know how to move silently, unseen?”

Mathyas sighed. “No.”

“Do you know how to kill someone without making a sound?”

“No.”

“An illusionist, then? An alchemist?”

“No.”

Nazir sat back, his expression hard. “I’m curious then as to what you can do.”

Mathyas was silent for several moments, trying to work out whether it was actually in his interest to be honest here. Maybe if he convinced them he was useless enough, they would kick him out.

"Likely nothing that would satisfy you," he said. "I'm as confused about my being here as you are."

"Skeptical though I am, I refuse to believe Astrid would recruit someone so baselessly."

"You said it yourself," said Mathyas. "Maybe Grelod was just a fluke."

Nazir stared at him, unimpressed. “Are you a House Dunmer, Mathyas?”

Mathyas hesitated for a second before answering. “Redoran.”

“Ah," said Nazir, smirking. "A swordsman, then."

Mathyas swallowed. "I trained as a soldier," he said. "Not an assassin."

Nazir waved a hand at him. “Irrelevant for my present purposes. Come—I would like to challenge you to a duel. Let’s see if the warriors of House Redoran are as formidable as their reputation suggests.”

He got to his feet. Mathyas blanched. “You mean now?”

Nazir shrugged. “Why not? It’s still light outside. And you look as if you could do with the fresh air.”

“I have to finish these padlocks before Gabriella gets back.”

“And I am Gabriella’s superior,” said Nazir.

Mathyas swallowed, wondering if it was possible to say no. He hadn’t properly used his sword arm since leaving Blacklight, and more than that, he was physically exhausted. House Redoran’s ‘formidable’ reputation lay in the strength of its collective military force, but Mathyas wasn’t sure that would translate well to a one-on-one duel with one of the famed swordsmen of Hammerfell.

“Relax,” said Nazir. “It’ll be a bit of friendly sparring—nothing more.”

Mathyas snorted at that, sceptical given Nazir’s derisive treatment of him so far. But a bit of exercise probably would do him some good.

“I don’t have a sword,” he said as he got to his feet.

“You can take one from the armoury,” said Nazir. “But first—” he paused, then, and tilted his head in the direction of the red-haired woman who’d come in with him. She was sitting at the opposite end of the long table to them, reading a book and picking absently from a plate of fruit; “I should introduce you to our second-newest recruit. She joined us herself just a few months ago.”

Mathyas followed Nazir to the table's end, though the woman in question did not look up from her book.

“Vivienne,” said Nazir as they came to a stop, “this is Mathyas. Mathyas, Vivienne.”

Still she spared them not a glance. Nazir cleared his throat, and then, after another moment or two—Mathyas presumed she was finishing off a sentence—she finally obeyed.

“Hello,” she said. Her eyes—a dark brown—were narrowed, her thin brows drawn into a scowl. She had a heart-shaped face, round cheekbones tapering down into a slim, pointed chin, and though her mouth was small, her lips were full, giving them a pursed appearance.

“Hello,” said Mathyas.

She glanced between them, eyebrows raised, and then returned to the pages of her book, biting loudly from her apple.

Nazir sighed. “Lovely as always, Vivienne.”

She hummed between crunches.

Nazir caught Mathyas’ gaze with a roll of his eyes and inclined his head, gesturing for Mathyas to follow. He did, allowing Nazir to lead him up the ramp towards the living quarters and from there in the direction of the Dark Brotherhood’s armoury.

“She’s cocky because she’s good, unfortunately,” said Nazir as they walked, though Mathyas wasn’t convinced they were out of Vivienne's earshot yet. “If I were you, I’d try and stay out of her way. She’s not a... pleasant individual.”

“Because the rest of you are so charming,” said Mathyas. Nazir just laughed.

“Touché.”

They reached the armoury—a room which until now had been kept under lock and key—and Nazir gave him free rein.

“How was Vivienne recruited?” Mathyas asked as he absently perused the Brotherhood’s impressive weapon collection. “I mean, was it—” he sighed. “Did she ‘steal’ a contract too?”

Nazir shook his head from where he was leaning against the doorframe. “She sought us out,” he said. “Her parents were assassins in the old Wayrest sanctuary, but they were killed in ‘eighty-eight, back when it was sacked. I think she’s been waiting a long time to join the Brotherhood again.”

Mathyas nodded, vaguely recalling having read about the Wayrest sanctuary in one of the books Astrid had given him. He considered for a moment asking Nazir how he had come to join the Brotherhood, but decided against it; he’d known the man for five minutes.

He picked up a steel broadsword—the end of the blade slightly flared, making it the closest thing he could find to the Redoran style he was used to—and then turned back to his opponent.

“All right,” he said, weighing the flat of the blade in his left hand to get a feel for its balance. “I think I’m ready.”

Nazir smirked. “Good choice,” he said. Then he stepped to one side, gesturing through the open doorway with both arms. “After you.”

Mathyas hesitated for a brief moment, gaze lingering on Nazir’s face—at the strangely impassive smirk, and the dark, impenetrable gaze. Finding nothing of any use, he swallowed and stepped awkwardly past him. He was familiar enough now with the layout of the Sanctuary to find his own way to the exit, and led them there in silence, Nazir following a few paces behind. Mathyas felt vaguely uncomfortable under what he imagined to be his scrutiny.

At last they made it to the forest, emerging from the Black Door into an open glade. Mathyas had come up here himself each morning since his arrival, always unable to sleep and nursing a cup of tea while he listened to the early birdsong and waited with dread for the day to begin. Not once in these precious hours had he ever seen anyone pass by on the road, but it wasn’t like he could have done anything if he had. Simply leaving wasn’t an option; Astrid had tracked him down before, and she could do it again. Mathyas was stuck here until he was familiar enough with how the Brotherhood operated to be able to form an escape plan that would actually work.

They ventured deeper into the clearing until they reached a sunny patch, where the evening light filtered down from between the pines. The ground levelled out and a few rocks formed a natural circle of sorts, haphazardly delineating the bounds of their duel-ring. Mathyas wondered if it was used for this purpose often.

Nazir shrugged off his cloak, laying it down carefully on a flat surface of rock. The air was cool, if a little humid. The earth smelled damp like it always did; Mathyas was beginning to realize that the rain in this part of Skyrim was near constant. The climate here was far removed from the dry, coastal scrub of Blacklight.

Beneath his cloak, Nazir was wearing clothes typical of Hammerfell fashion, albeit with a few extra layers; loose trousers, a wine-red tunic, and a dark leather jerkin with clasps down the front. He undid the top few clasps.

“Are you not tired after travelling?” Mathyas asked as he gave his sword a few test swings, acclimatizing himself to it.

Nazir drew a scimitar from the scabbard at his hip. “I am,” he said. “But you won’t always have the luxury of rest.”

They watched each other carefully, sizing each other up. Nazir stepped to the side, beginning to circle him. Mathyas had never clashed swords with a scimitar before, but he knew the theory well enough; the blade being curved, the scimitar was primarily designed for hacking and slashing over thrusting, and was therefore a very close-quarters weapon. Until they started fighting, Mathyas had no way of knowing whether Nazir would stick to that traditional style, but he decided he was going to remain on the defensive either way. He wanted to keep his distance.

“Are we playing by any rules?” he asked.

Nazir shrugged. “We try not to kill each other.”

Try?

Before Mathyas could reply, his opponent suddenly lunged at him. He ducked sideways, reflexively parrying the attack and using the full length of his blade to push Nazir backwards. Nazir struck again, back on the affront almost immediately. He was fast and aggressive, giving Mathyas little opportunity to do much except deflect. He found himself edging towards the outside of the circle.

Mathyas focused on protecting himself, keeping his blade close to his body so that Nazir’s stayed away. He wanted to preserve his energy, wait for Nazir to tire out.

“You’re—” he paused, ducking, “very aggressive for—an assassin.”

Nazir chuckled breathlessly, blade sweeping over Mathyas’ head again. “I usually adopt a more subtle approach with my targets,” he said between breaths, his voice broken up by the repeated clash of metal.

Nazir was clearly picking up on Mathyas’ deliberate passivity, because he drew back before he could get too tired. They circled each other again, catching their breath.

“Your footwork is good,” Nazir observed off-handedly.

Mathyas scowled. “You don't have to patronise me.”

Nazir just laughed.

Mathyas attacked first, quicker to recover his energy. He relied on thrusts so that the range and point of his weapon would keep Nazir off of him. Each blow was met with an expert parry, Nazir still using the full length of his blade to try and get closer, and the glide of its edge against Mathyas’ own blade was a style he was unaccustomed to. He found his arms tiring from the effort of repeatedly pushing Nazir back.

They fell into a rhythm, eventually lapsing into the ‘friendly sparring’ Nazir had promised. It became less about trying to get the other cornered and more about the enjoyment to be had from physical exertion. Overhead parry, other side, down below; slash, duck, thrust, recoil, repeat.

Mathyas had missed this; fighting with an equal, letting his muscles and instincts take over from his brain for a little while. As time went on, he felt like he was developing an understanding of Nazir’s technique, and maybe Nazir was feeling the same—he’d said himself he’d never taken on a Redoran before. He was as unfamiliar with Mathyas’ style as Mathyas was with his, and there was some satisfaction to be had from this meeting of east and west.

After a minute or two, Mathyas started to feel on edge. He was letting his guard down, which was maybe deliberate on Nazir’s part. And despite his hesitance earlier, he now felt like he had something to prove.

He pressed forwards, swinging an overhand cut instead of the conservative thrusts Nazir had come to expect. The attack was parried, but a flicker of surprise crossed Nazir’s face at Mathyas’ sudden aggression.

“I was wondering when you were going to try something interesting,” he said coolly, twisting Mathyas’ blade over with ease. He cut back from the other side and Mathyas sprung away from it, bringing his sword round to meet the attack in the nick of time. Mathyas was cutting at Nazir, trying to keep his movements small and fast, but Nazir simply mutated each cut into a thrust so it was easier to deflect.

Mathyas had ended up on the offensive, which wasn’t where he wanted to be. The breadth and short length of Nazir’s scimitar made it very good at deflection. Mathyas pulled a feint, thrusting towards Nazir’s shoulder instead of cutting from above, and then smacked the flat of his blade against Nazir’s forearm when it was brought up to block him.

If it had been a real fight, Mathyas would have cut him then; but at most, he’d left a bad bruise. Nazir growled and launched a flurry of short attacks, and though Mathyas was able to parry them all, he could feel his reaction times slipping. He wouldn’t be able to maintain this for long.

Copying Nazir’s earlier technique, Mathyas waited for the next overheard slash, and then glided his blade along the edge of Nazir’s so that he could turn his scimitar over. Nazir’s defences were left open and Mathyas cut in with a quick lunge. But Nazir was too fast. Instead of gliding—as he’d been doing before—he parried with the back of his blade, locking Mathyas’ sword under his and pushing down, until the scimitar’s point was pressing into the flesh of Mathyas’ chest.

Nazir had won.

He smirked, and Mathyas dropped his sword so that it fell to the forest floor with a muffled thud. There was just a scimitar’s length between them. This close, Mathyas was able to notice a faint scar on the right side of Nazir’s face, two jagged pink lines cutting across the graceful curve of his cheekbone. It looked like an animal scratch. Mathyas swallowed.

“Well fought,” said Nazir, lowering his weapon at last. “I’ll admit, you were better than I was expecting you to be.”

Mathyas frowned. “I’m not taking that as a compliment.”

Nazir chuckled. He sheathed his sword and returned to where he’d left his cloak, spreading it out over the ground and taking a seat. Mathyas watched him as he laid his scabbard beside him and started fumbling around in the folds of his cloak for a waterskin flask. He drank from it deeply and then held it out to Mathyas.

“Want some?”

Mathyas hesitated, but was quick to give in. He lowered himself onto the cloak beside Nazir and took the flask from his hand, taking a long, satisfied swig.

“You aren’t going back inside?” he asked when Nazir leaned back against the rock, his eyes drifting shut. He opened one in response to Mathyas’ question and lifted a hand to shield his gaze from the bright shafts of sun.

“Why would I?” he asked. “If you’re desperate to return to the dingy cave, feel free.”

Mathyas snorted. “Fair enough.”

They fell into silence, and Mathyas found himself picking absently at the damp grass. He was glad Nazir had offered him the water; during the fight, he hadn’t noticed how hot he was getting, but now—sitting down—he was suddenly aware of the sweat clinging to the rapidly-cooling skin on the back of his neck.

“So what happens now?” he asked after a long while, cutting through the silence—although, in the forest, teeming with life, it was never really silent. “I mean… Astrid said that I should ‘report’ to you when you got back. What does that involve?”

Nazir shifted slightly where he’d been dozing, his hands folded across his stomach.

“So I’ll be taking over your training,” he said, his eyes still closed. “You seem to be making decent progress with the lockpicking. Alongside that, I’ll teach you the art of moving silently and without being seen.”

Mathyas grit his jaw, gazing out past the boundary of the clearing and into the dense, shadowy forest beyond.

“To be honest, you shouldn’t have any trouble with it,” Nazir went on, clearly misunderstanding the reason for Mathyas’ silence. “Once you’ve grasped the basics, it’s mostly just common sense and a bit of strategic thinking. You’ve already shown yourself to be agile and quick on your feet, and you’ve a good build for it. I think it should come quite naturally to you.”

“Good to know.”

“After that, you’ll be given your first few jobs.”

Mathyas' blood ran cold.

“You won’t be getting any live contracts just yet,” Nazir added, “which I’m sure you’ll be disappointed to hear. We want to start you off with some rec work.”

He had to bite back the sigh of relief that threatened to spill from his lips. “What does rec work involve?”

Nazir sat up with a grunt. “Mostly locating instances of the Black Sacrament,” he said. “Finding out if the rumours are true, speaking to the client if they are, getting the details of the contract, and so on.”

“I didn't know that was how it worked.”

“It won’t be for much longer,” Nazir clarified. “We’re expecting a delivery within the next month or so. The Night Mother’s Keeper is meant to be bringing her up to Skyrim. Supposedly, that will remove the need to track down instances of the Black Sacrament ourselves.”

From his flat tone, it didn’t seem like Nazir was convinced. He glanced at Mathyas from the corner of his eye. “You know about the Night Mother, I take it?”

Mathyas nodded slowly. “Astrid gave me some books to read about the Brotherhood’s history.”

“Nasty business, in my opinion,” said Nazir, wrinkling his nose. “We’ve been trying to phase out the Black Sacrament for a while—setting up points of contact in each of the major cities so that people in the know can make contracts that way. But it’s not exactly easy to get the word out. And people just keep doing it.”

Mathyas hummed. “I hadn’t got the impression from Astrid that she was particularly into the whole… religious side of things.”

Nazir let out a short bark of laughter. “Definitely not,” he said. “In her view, it was religious fanaticism that brought the Brotherhood to its knees in the first place.”

“What’s your view?”

Nazir was silent for a moment. “I agree with her,” he said eventually. “Most of us do. I think the only people who are genuinely excited about the Night Mother returning are Vivienne, and perhaps Festus.”

Mathyas snorted. “That's not surprising.”

“But we can recognize the Night Mother’s uses,” Nazir went on. “We’re struggling without her. Contracts are hard to come by, and tracking them down is time consuming and inefficient.”

Mathyas did not reply, and the conversation  ground to a halt. From what he’d come to learn of the Brotherhood’s history, the idea of taking advantage of the Night Mother’s uses without proffering ‘due reverence’ seemed to him a dangerous one. But he didn’t voice his thoughts; it wasn’t like it was within Nazir’s control either way.

“Come on,” Nazir said after a few moments, brushing himself down and getting to his feet, “let’s head back. It’s getting too buggy out here for my liking.”

He held out a hand, and after a brief pause, Mathyas took it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. As they trudged back to the Sanctuary together, there was an uncomfortable twisting in Mathyas’ gut; a combination of nerves and anticipation. He was feeling oddly better in the knowledge that they weren’t expecting him to kill anyone just yet. If he played his cards right, and was able to come up with a plan before that could change, there was a chance he’d be able to make it out of there without further bloodshed.

And that was a comforting thought.

 

---

 

High Hrothgar, Skyrim, 22nd Hearthfire

A week into their stay at High Hrothgar, Raydrin came up to the kitchen for breakfast—running late, to his embarrassment—and was surprised to find that Jórunn was not there. The Greybeards turned their heads as he entered the room, their hands faltering mid-conversation. He could see that their plates were mostly empty, the meal drawing to its close.

“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, hovering by the door. Wulfgar looked amused, but Arngeir merely nodded at him in solemn acknowledgement. Raydrin cleared his throat and inclined his head towards Jórunn’s empty seat. “Jórunn isn’t here?”

“The Dragonborn is feeling unwell,” said Arngeir. “She will be taking the morning off from her training.”

Raydrin frowned. “Did she say what it was?”

“No,” Arngeir replied, his attention already fixed back to his cup of tea. “No, she was rather vague, to my mind.”

Raydrin hesitated for several moments, unsure of what to do. She couldn’t have caught something; there was no-one besides them she could have caught it from. It couldn’t have been food poisoning, either, because then they’d all have it. Maybe she had a migraine?

Or maybe… ah. 

“I might go and check on her, I think,” he said at last, awkwardly approaching the table in order to make up a plate of fruit and bread. The Greybeards watched him in their usual scrutinising way.

“Very well,” said Arngeir, sounding like he didn’t particularly care either way. “Remember you are to collect firewood with Master Borri today.”

“Mm-hm,” Raydrin replied, already on his way out. 

Poor Jórunn, he thought to himself as he headed back to their quarters. If his theory was correct, it was no wonder she’d been vague; he couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be in that position on a mountainside with five men.

The walk to her room gave him just enough time to finish his apple, and then he rapped his knuckles lightly against the door. “Jórunn?” he called, voice soft. There was a beat of silence followed by a muffled groan. “It’s just me,” he said. “May I come in?”

The silence persisted for several moments until eventually he heard a quiet, “Yes.”

He pushed on the door and took a moment to peer around it. Then he stepped in fully. The room was bright, the wooden shutters wide open; but Raydrin figured that was probably always the case. The view from the window was a solid sheet of grey, the whole of High Hrothgar shrouded entirely in cloud. He was not looking forward to his and Borri’s trek down below the tree line.

Jórunn was lying on her side, on top of the furs, curled into a fetal position with her arms pressed against her stomach. His heart ached a little at the sight of her. Raydrin laid his plate on her dresser and shut the door behind him before tentatively approaching. Her head turned at the sound of his footsteps.

“Is it all right if I sit?” he asked. Jórunn hesitated for a moment before shuffling closer to the stone wall, making room for him on the edge of her mattress. He carefully sank down beside her.

“I’m all right,” she said quietly, facing the wall. Her voice was strained, taut with pain. “It’s just a little stomach-ache.”

Raydrin cleared his throat. “Forgive me if I’m prying,” he said. “But, is it—um. That time?”

He saw her tense slightly, opening her eyes. A pregnant silence fell between them and he worried he’d maybe overstepped some line, but then Jórunn sighed, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “Shit,” she muttered. “I forget you grew up with sisters.”

Raydrin laughed lightly. “Do you always get it this badly?”

"I wouldn't know," she said, voice plain. "This is the first time I've had it in a while."

The admission left Raydrin in silence; its implications, once he processed them, were sad.

“I, um..." he cleared his throat. "I don’t know if it'll have the same effect for you... but Cassathra used to take green tea when she was in pain. I can take a look to see if they have any, if you like.”

Jórunn was silent for several moments, chewing on her lip. But at last she nodded. “Worth a try,” she said feebly. “Yes. Please.”

Raydrin pulled himself up off the mattress. “I’ll be back in a little while,” he said. “You want any breakfast?”

“Just the tea is fine,” Jórunn replied. She hugged one of the pillows to her chest and curled herself around it.

Raydrin headed back to the kitchen to find it empty, the Greybeards having finished and cleared away their breakfast. He’d been helping with the cooking most nights and so was familiar enough now with the pantry to locate the tea almost immediately. But none of the jars were labelled; he had to go through each one and smell them individually until he identified which of them was green. To his luck—or rather, Jórunn’s luck—they had some in stock.

When he made it back to her room, a tray of tea paraphernalia in his hands, she’d curled back into the fetal position. He laid the tray on her bedside table and returned to his seat from before, pouring her a cup. She sat back up, knees drawn to her chest.

“Thanks,” she murmured as he handed it to her, fingers curling around the cup. She took a delicate sip and then sighed, a deep, heavy sigh. “What are your plans for the day?” she asked, speaking a little more softly than normal.

Raydrin let out a low groan. “I’m heading down the mountain to collect firewood with Borri,” he said. “It’s going to be an all-day job, I think.”

Jórunn winced. “Ouch. I can’t say I’m jealous.”

“What about you?” he asked. “When you’re feeling better, I mean.”

“More meditation,” she said, swallowing a mouthful of tea. Her tone was flat and unenthused. “Some praying to Kyne, some Shouting off the mountainside… some philosophical discussions about peace while I’m freezing my arse off in the snow.”

“How exciting,” said Raydrin. “Sounds like such a departure from every other day you’ve spent here.”

Jórunn huffed a bitter laugh. “Yes,” she said. “Arngeir really knows how to drive the point home.”

He was about to reply when she suddenly grimaced again, pressing her face into her knees and letting out a long whine. Raydrin took the tea from her hand and put it to one side, coming to sit beside her at the head of the narrow bed.

“It fucking hurts,” she whimpered, her voice muffled from where she was speaking into her legs. They’d spent enough time in each other’s company now that Raydrin felt comfortable slinging an arm around her, rubbing his hand up and down her shoulder. She leaned into his side, making an odd sort of moaning noise like she was trying to hold it in.

“This might sound odd,” he said awkwardly, “and feel free to say no. But… I know massaging it can sometimes help with the pain.”

He felt her stiffen at his side. “And Dunmer have warm skin,” he pressed on, clearing his throat. “Which I know is also helpful. But you really don’t have to say yes. The more I speak the more I'm realizing how awkward this is. Just… the offer is there, if you want it.”

Jórunn sniffled. “You’d be comfortable doing that?” she asked, hesitantly, like she didn’t believe him.

Raydrin was quiet for a moment. “If you’d be comfortable letting me,” he said at last.

She drew away from him, nodding. “Yes,” she said, and he could see her swallow. “Please.”

“All right." Raydrin released the breath he was holding. “Ah—if you lean back a bit... yes, like that. And stretch your legs out. Is that comfortable?”

Jórunn nodded from where her head was propped up on the pillow. Raydrin shifted backwards down the bed a little way and hoisted one thigh up onto the mattress, making it easier to twist his upper body to face her.

“All right,” he said again, suddenly starting to regret his offer; he’d done this for Cassathra countless times, but he hadn’t anticipated just how awkward it would feel with someone else. “Let me know if it’s too much, or too little.”

Jórunn nodded again, eyes squeezed shut. “Okay.”

Raydrin inhaled deeply, feeling somewhat relieved that she couldn’t see what he imagined to be the anxious look on his face. Then—once he was satisfied he had her assent—he pressed his hands lightly over her abdomen, one on each side of her navel.

She shuddered a little under his touch, and he watched her face carefully, trying to work out whether he was actually helping. He began by lightly pressing his thumbs into the soft flesh, kneading slowly so as to avoid causing friction between her skin and the starchy fibres of her shirt. She didn’t seem uncomfortable—just deep in thought. Her jaw was still tight from pain, her brows furrowed slightly. When several moments passed without any change in reaction from her at all, it occurred to Raydrin that he was moving his hands rather passively, and that he perhaps needed to apply a little more concentration in order to actually achieve what he’d set out to do.

He progressed to using his whole hands, rubbing in slow circles and applying a steady pressure. Jórunn exhaled suddenly and he felt her relax, allowing herself to sink into the furs. Her lips parted and she laid a forearm over her eyes.

“You can push my tunic up a bit,” she mumbled. “If that’ll help.”

“I think it might,” he said, pausing momentarily to hike her shirt up to her ribs, exposing the pale skin of her stomach. By Azura, she was skinny—it was no wonder her body had been struggling to support a monthly cycle. Raydrin placed his hands back on her, able to apply a little extra pressure now that he wasn’t worried about friction. He made a mental note to encourage her to eat more in the interest of making their treks across Skyrim easier. What had her family in Cyrodiil been feeding her? They must have been poorer than he’d realized.

Jórunn laughed a little breathlessly. “You weren’t joking about having hot hands.”

Raydrin snorted. “Is it too much?”

“No,” she said, closing her eyes again. “I think it’s helping.”

He maintained that rhythm and pressure, slowly working where he knew the pain would be, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Jórunn gradually unwound beneath his ministrations, the tension visibly seeping from her face and her hands and at last her whole body.

“Earlier on,” Raydrin began, eventually breaking the silence. Jórunn removed her arm from her face to show that she was listening. “You said ‘sisters.’ Not sister.”

Her eyes widened, her jaw clenching. “Shit,” she whispered. She was quiet for several moments, the stiffness returning to her frame, and Raydrin regretted having chosen now of all times to bring it up. “Shit, sorry. I’ll be honest, Cassathra did mention it to me.”

Raydrin exhaled softly from his nose. “I figured."

“I’m so sorry,” Jórunn repeated, covering her face with one hand. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right,” he said, easing the pressure a bit and sweeping the pads of his thumbs over her stomach. “It was a long time ago, you know? It’s not like it’s some big secret.”

She seemed hesitant to accept that, but after a second or two of silence, she did, breathing out a long sigh. “Did you do this with her?” she asked after a dense pause.

“Gods, no,” said Raydrin. “She would sooner have punched me in the face.”

Jórunn snorted. But the muscles of her face still seemed tight with discomfort, or embarrassment, maybe.

“Cassathra is a lot younger than me," Raydrin went on, trying to ease her mind a little; he truly didn’t mind speaking about it, despite what everyone seemed to think. "I was almost too close with Anya for something like this—if that makes any sense.” 

Jórunn smiled. “No. I think I get it.” She said nothing for a while, then shifted a bit under his hands. “Anya,” she murmured, testing out the unfamiliar name. Raydrin hummed. It was almost refreshing to hear her name like that, spoken aloud by someone other than him. Back at home, she was treated like a curse, rarely if ever talked about directly. Even Mathyas had come to tiptoe around the subject in recent years. It frustrated Raydrin to no end.

He scrunched his face, shaking his head to flush any thoughts of Mathyas from his mind. Not right now.

Jórunn moved again, pushing herself upright and lifting her hands so they were free to tug down her tunic. Raydrin withdrew his own, wiping them on his thigh.

“Thank you,” she said. “It doesn’t feel as bad.”

“I’m glad,” Raydrin replied, smiling gently even though she couldn’t see it. “I, ah, I better go and find Borri. Your tea is on your bedside table if you still want it.”

She nodded and reached for it, carefully running her fingers over the surface of the table until they came into contact with the base of the cup. “Good luck with your tree chopping,” she said, cradling the tea close to her body.

“Ugh. Thanks.” He got to his feet and stretched his arms above his head with a groan. “Good luck with your training. I hope you start feeling better.”

Jórunn smiled over the top of her cup. Raydrin dragged his gaze away and left.

 

---

 

29th Hearthfire

Two weeks into their stay at High Hrothgar, Raydrin found that he’d settled into something of a routine. In a way he was almost enjoying it. Maybe ‘enjoy’ was the wrong word, but he couldn’t think of anywhere he’d have rather been given his current circumstances. Over a month off skooma, and he was admittedly feeling more alert with each day, but he could tell he still wasn’t quite right; there was a vague sense of mental discomfort, an unsettled feeling he couldn’t shake. His sleeping was poor, his dreams vivid and lingering. On top of that, Mathyas’ disappearance was ever solidifying itself in Raydrin’s mind as a permanent and unalterable state of reality. The simple but labour-intensive lifestyle of the Greybeards made for a good distraction in both regards, as Raydrin was kept busy enough with his tasks and chores that he rarely had the opportunity to get lost in his own head.

When he wasn’t helping out with the maintenance of the monastery, he found other things to occupy his time. The Greybeards had an impressive collection of books—mostly on history and lore but with the occasional piece of fiction or poetry—and Raydrin was slowly making his way through them. He spent a good deal of time in High Hrothgar’s courtyard, listening to Jórunn training in the distance while he worked through his sword drills. When Jórunn had time off, the two of them would go for long walks down the mountain, partly because they wanted to maintain the level of fitness they’d both reached, but mostly because they enjoyed the conversation. He was also teaching her a few basic sword moves she could use in combination with the Aura Whisper Shout; hopefully to be used as a last resort, but he figured they were better safe than sorry.

It was around mid-morning, maybe a couple of hours after breakfast, and Raydrin had just finished his exercises for the day. Building muscle was a slow process, he knew, but he was at least feeling stronger than he had been two weeks ago. He lay on his back on the rug in his room, staring at the stone ceiling and waiting for his sweat to cool. It wouldn’t take long in the cold air of High Hrothgar.

He was roused from his thoughts by a knock at the door and pushed himself up into a sitting position. “One second,” he called, glancing round his room in search of his shirt. He tugged it over his head and got to his feet.

It was Einarth on the other side and Raydrin barely concealed his grimace. He and Einarth were meant to be milking the Greybeards’ mountain goats that morning; it was one of his least favourite jobs.

Einarth signed what Raydrin had come to learn was are you ready? He nodded, reaching for his furs and snow boots.

“Let’s get this over with.”

It was a sunny day outside, but due to heavy snowfall the night before, the snow was thick and powdery. Raydrin squinted against the brilliant white, giving his eyes a few moments to adjust from High Hrothgar’s dark interior. They trudged their way over to the goat pen and started setting up.

He heard a Shout in the distance—two words, Fus Ro—and looked up. He could just make out the shapes of Jórunn and Arngeir at the top of the watchtower, tiny black silhouettes against the pale blue sky. They were sitting cross legged, facing away from him and down over the mountainside. After several seconds of staring at them, Einarth cleared his throat, and Raydrin turned back to him sheepishly.

“Sorry,” he said. Einarth had tugged one of the goats forwards and was leading her up to the milking stand, where Raydrin tied her legs in place with rope to stop her from kicking. He put the bucket beneath her udder and got to work.

When they were finished with all four nannies, maybe half an hour later, they headed back inside. Raydrin was left to distribute the milk into bottles on his own and he set some aside for making cheese. By then it was approaching noon, and it was his turn that day to prepare lunch. Jórunn and Arngeir came back inside and the six of them convened in the kitchens over soup.

He was washing up the dishes when he heard someone cough over his shoulder. Raydrin turned to find Wulfgar there and smiled. Wulfgar pointed towards the soup pot and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, before rubbing his belly, a satisfied expression on his face. Raydrin laughed. “Thanks.”

Wulfgar started helping him with the dishes, drying them up and putting them away. When they were done, Raydrin was making his way back towards the kitchen door—looking forward to a rare afternoon off before he’d be cooking dinner that night—when he felt Wulfgar tap him on his shoulder. Raydrin turned to him in confusion. Wulfgar made a ‘wait here’ motion and headed to a set of shelves, perusing them briefly before pulling out a book. He then laid the book on the wooden table in the centre of the kitchen and beckoned for Raydrin to join him.

Raydrin did, coming to stand at his side. It was a book of recipes; Wulfgar was flicking through the pages in search of something, before triumphantly finding the recipe he was looking for. He tapped the page excitedly and slid the book over to Raydrin so he could see what it was.

It took Raydrin a few moments to decipher the handwriting, but once he’d accustomed himself to the messy scrawl, he was able to make out the heading: ‘High Hrothgar Mintcake.’ The recipe looked simple enough, if nothing like what Raydrin would have expected from a ‘cake’: it was just water, sugar, and peppermint oil, boiled together and then allowed to harden.

He looked up at Wulfgar. “You want me to help you make it?”

Wulfgar nodded with a grin. 

Raydrin was set to work extracting the peppermint oil. It turned out the Greybeards were in the habit of making mint cake, and that they always kept jars with oil and peppermint leaves on hand for that purpose. Raydrin strained the oil as instructed and then made up fresh jars for the next batch.

From the enormous quantity they were making, it was clear the Greybeards didn’t do this very often. Raydrin was made to stand over a vast pot for what felt like forever, stirring the mixture constantly. Wulfgar would look over his shoulder every now and then to see how it was progressing. When it turned a milky white, they poured it into moulds and left it to harden.

Raydrin headed back to his room in something of a daze. He had maybe an hour before he needed to start cooking dinner, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy to try and read anything in that time. He flopped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, not really thinking about much, until at some point there was a knock at the door, cutting through the nothing. He recognized it as Jórunn’s knock.

“Come in,” he called, sitting up. She entered the room tentatively, shutting the door behind her.

“Hey,” she said, hovering by the doorway. “Are you busy?”

Raydrin bit back the urge to laugh given what he’d been doing just moments ago. “No,” he said. “Are you done with training for the day?”

“Yeah. We started a new Shout this afternoon.”

“You can sit, if you want,” said Raydrin. “Then you can tell me all about it.”

Jórunn nodded with a small smile, tucking some of her hair behind her ear. Raydrin shifted up the bed slightly and she sank down beside him, familiar enough now with the layout of their rooms to do so with ease.

“The Shout is Feim Zii Gron,” she told him, laying her cane on the mattress beside her. “Or ‘Fade, Spirit, Bind.’ It makes me intangible for a short while.”

Raydrin wrinkled his nose. “That sounds terrifying.”

Jórunn let out a short laugh. “It was mostly just nauseating, to be honest. But it should hopefully come in useful.” She paused, then, and he could see her brows furrow together, like she was trying to work something out. She sniffed the air. “Is that… why do you smell of peppermint?”

He chuckled sheepishly. “Oh, um. I was helping Wulfgar make mint cake this afternoon.”

“Mint cake?" Jórunn frowned. "Sounds like you're having a jolly old time here after all."

“To be fair,” said Raydrin, “I spent most of my morning milking goats.”

She was silent for a moment, but then she shrugged, giving him that at least. “Very true,” she said. “What are you up to now?”

“So… I need to start cooking dinner in a little while.” Raydrin looked up, absently taking note of the darkening skies outside his window. “But I was going to try and do some reading before then.”

“Ah—I can leave you to it, in that case?”

Jórunn started getting to her feet. Raydrin reacted almost embarrassingly quickly.

“No, it’s okay! You can stay if you want to. I mean… I’m starting a new book anyway.” He paused for a moment, debating whether to follow up on that line of thought. “Maybe we could—well, maybe I could read to you.”

Jórunn stilled once she was fully upright, her hand clenching around her cane. She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. Raydrin bit his lip, on the verge of regretting his offer.

“What’s it about?” she asked eventually.

He released the breath he was holding. “Um,” he said, reaching towards his bedside table and grasping for the book. A quick glance at its synopsis and he was definitely regretting his offer. “Actually, I take it back. I think it’s a political drama.”

But Jórunn was already sitting down. “I don’t mind politics,” she said with a snort. “Any more detail?”

Raydrin read for a couple of seconds. Then he cleared his throat as he prepared to summarise. “It’s about an old Breton king who divides his kingdom between his three daughters," he began. "But he banishes the youngest for dishonouring him.” 

Jórunn nodded. 

“Meanwhile a bastard noble betrays his legitimate brother as part of a plot for the vacant throne... It mostly just looks like a lot of intrigue and family drama, that sort of nonsense.”

“Sounds juicy,” said Jórunn. Then she smirked and elbowed him in the ribs, though her gaze was still fixed straight ahead. “If reading about the petty troubles of the noble classes hits too close to home, we can find something else.”

Raydrin laughed. “I’ll let you know if it’s an accurate portrayal.”

Jórunn made herself comfortable and Raydrin started to read. Much to Arngeir’s annoyance—and Wulfgar’s unending amusement—dinner was very, very late that night.

Notes:

for context, I know the mint cake thing seems random as hell, but it’s actually canon (sort of)!! In ESO you can buy ‘high Hrothgar festival mints’. I used Kendal mint cake as the basis for the recipe here. For American readers, Kendal mint cake is a delicacy from the Lake District, and it's well loved by British climbers and mountaineers for being extremely calorie/sugar dense - i.e. lots of energy for not a lot of weight. I thought that fit the Greybeards pretty well!

anyway, thank you to my beta readers, and thanks for reading! i hope you enjoyed <3

Chapter 14: The College of Winterhold

Winterhold, Skyrim, 3rd Frostfall

Winterhold was a cold city; a lot colder than Cassathra was expecting it to be. Foolishly she’d assumed that living in Blacklight for nineteen years would have toughened her up in the face of frigid weather, but Winterhold was inexplicably more frigid than her home city despite being only slightly further north. The Inner Sea must have warmed Morrowind’s coast more than she gave it credit for.

She lay awake in her bed in The Frozen Hearth—perhaps the most appropriately named inn she’d ever patronized—and was trying desperately to convince herself that she wasn’t regretting this. Would the College be this cold? Gods, it was only Frostfall. Already the cold permeated the thick walls of the inn and her furs and her nightclothes. Her feet felt like blocks of ice.

When a particularly violent shiver racked her body, Cassathra pushed herself up with her hands and propped her back against the headboard, bringing the furs up with her and wrapping them tightly around her shoulders. With just her hands free in front of her, she lit a small flame spell and brought it close to her face, trying to soak up all the warmth up from it her Dunmer skin would allow.

The flames cast a soft, orange glow over her palms, contrasting prettily against the bluish hue of her normally tan-grey complexion in the moonlight. Cassathra sighed, gazing out into the shadowy darkness of her little room.

She couldn’t be dishonest with herself; she regretted coming here.

She regretted leaving Blacklight, and not returning to Ebonheart to complete the last three years of her studies like she was supposed to. She regretted leaving Whiterun. Nearly a month she’d spent there, waitressing in the Bannered Mare and sleeping in Saadia’s old room, using every second of her free time to look for even a trace of Iman or some clue that would lead her to Mathyas. But she had nothing to show for it. Sanjir had helped her for the first week or so, but had soon given up when it became apparent that it was a lost cause. In the end, she’d given up too; that had brought her to this inn.

Cassathra drew her legs up to her chest, resting her chin between her knees and holding one arm out so she could watch the flame spell dance between her fingers. She’d given up on her cousin. She had been the only person looking for him, and now he had no-one. Mathyas deserved better than that, but she didn’t even know where to start.

She bit her lip, trying to push down the rough lump in her throat. Cassathra had cried over Mathyas enough already and it wasn’t like it had helped. One of the last things Raydrin had said to her before leaving with Jórunn was that she ought not to blame herself, that it wasn’t her fault. But how could it not be? There was almost a direct line of causation between her leaving Blacklight and Mathyas’ disappearance. If she hadn’t left, he never would have vanished. It was as simple as that.

The flame spell flickered and died, casting her once again into shadow. She was too tired to maintain it. Cassathra didn’t know whether studying magic was genuinely something she wanted anymore or whether she was here because she had no other choice. What if she didn’t get into the College? How could she ever return to Blacklight with no Raydrin and no Mathyas, knowing full well it was her fault that they’d ever left in the first place? To go back now would be an insult to them both. She couldn’t bring more dishonour on her family than she already had.

She sighed, shuffling back down into a horizontal position and curling onto her side. She needed to at least try and secure her place at the College tomorrow; otherwise everything they’d done for her would have been for naught. Winterhold may have been cold, and small, and it was certainly no Imperial City.

But it was all Cassathra had left.

 

---

 

Despite having slept very little, Cassathra awoke the next day to the first shafts of sunlight streaming down through her window. She brought a hand up to her face and pressed her fingers into her eyes, trying to rub away the bleariness. It was a long while before she summoned the energy to get out of bed.

She ate a lonely breakfast in The Frozen Hearth’s main dining area, which—other than the innkeeper and herself—was completely empty. When she was done, she reluctantly pulled on her furs and snow boots and set out into the bitter air before she could talk herself out of it.

Winterhold was an odd little city. It lacked the stature and magnificence of Whiterun, dominating the plains from its great hill; instead it sprawled, like a village that had outgrown itself. The houses were simple: small, squat, and built from a dark wood. There were no delusions of grandeur here. At one point on her trek to the College, Cassathra passed a building that—were it not for the guards stationed outside—she would never have realized was the Jarl’s longhouse. This was what remained of Skyrim’s once-great capital? Cassathra had read about the Great Collapse in her history textbooks, but no amount of reading could quite have prepared her for… this.

She wasn’t walking for long before the College came into view. It was a hulking mass of black in the distance, its impressive silhouette dwarfing the northern skyline completely, demanding to be looked at. As she approached it, the city slowly gave way to nothing, the houses around her steadily petering out until eventually it was just her, the road in front of her, and the College at its end. There was no wall or gate to suggest that she had left the city, but the distance between it and the College felt deliberate. Cassathra swallowed, resolutely pushing aside her feeling of vulnerability in order to set off through the snow.

The nearer she got, the less featureless the College became. It was on a separate landmass to the city, which Cassathra only realized when she was close enough to see the sheer drop between the edge of Skyrim and the Sea of Ghosts. A thin bridge, too narrow to be walked even two abreast, connected it to the mainland, and her stomach turned at the thought of having to cross it in the ice. She’d never been very good with heights.

She approached the stone steps leading up to the bridge and slowly came to a stop when she realized something was amiss. The light refracted weirdly in places, a faint shimmer she could only make out if she stared at the same spot for long enough. A quick glance to her left and right and Cassathra realized with a sinking feeling that the effect continued in either direction.

She swore under her breath, placing the flat of her hands against the protective ward that surrounded the College. They were met with resistance, the magnet-like sensation of being pushed back. Cassathra withdrew her hands and glanced upwards with a frown, trying to rack her mind for a possible solution. She had not come all this way just to be hindered by a fucking ward.

The only restoration magic she knew was the healing spell that Darik had taught her, and the theory she was even less familiar with. But some trial-and-error was the only option she had available.

She summoned a healing spell to her palms and placed them once again against the barrier, praying to the Three that it would do something—or at the very least give her a clue as to what would. The ward crackled and fizzed upon contact, clearly reacting in some way to Cassathra’s magic, but otherwise did nothing.

Cassathra hummed, chewing on her lip. She could try destruction magic? It was restoration’s antithesis, but she doubted her measly flame spell would do much against a ward put up by extremely powerful wizards with the intention of keeping people out.

It was all she could think to do. Stubbornly Cassathra summoned fire to her hand and thrust it forwards at the ward, watching with disappointment at the way it sputtered out immediately upon contact, like it was being doused with water.

She laughed bitterly as she lowered her hand, unsurprised by the result but disappointed nonetheless. A few seconds later and her humour faded, giving way to hot frustration. She was so close. What was she supposed to do now?

Cassathra slumped to the ground with a huff, leaning back against the ward. Vaguely she could feel the cold of the snow beginning to seep through her many layers, but she had a few minutes before it would verge on uncomfortable. She hung her head back, closing her eyes.

She was sitting there for some time before anything happened, but her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of crunching snow underfoot. Cassathra opened one eye to find that an Altmer woman, tall and willowy, was approaching her from the direction of the city.

“What’s this?” said the woman in an amused tone, and Cassathra scrambled to her feet in a panic. “Another hungover student who’s forgotten how to get inside? Or a nosy visitor?”

The woman came to a stop before her and Cassathra awkwardly brushed the snow from her thighs, too flustered to respond straight away.

“Um,” she started, lifting a hand to shield her gaze from the bright morning sun, “neither? I- I’m an aspiring applicant.”

The Altmer arched one brow. “An aspiring applicant? How curious. Are you aware that the academic year starts in two days?”

Cassathra bit her lip. “To be honest, I thought it had started already.”

That was met with a derisive snort. “Organization tends to be the bare minimum that we expect from our students,” said the Altmer, pushing past Cassathra and slipping through the ward with a casual flick of her wrist. “Perhaps try again in a year when you’ve pulled yourself together.”

“Wait!” Cassathra called after her, pressing herself against the ward and watching with dread as the woman started climbing the steps up to the bridge. “I can explain why I’m so late! Please, I—I was originally heading towards the Arcane University, but we were at Helgen and we had to change our plans—”

“You were at Helgen?” the woman cut her off, pausing and looking down at Cassathra from over her shoulder.

Cassathra breathed a sigh of relief; she was making headway. “Yes.”

The Altmer turned to face her fully then. “What is your name, child?”

“Cassathra,” she said. “Cassathra Dutheri.”

The Altmer was making her way towards her back down the steps, a bemused smile tightening her thin lips. “Dutheri?” she repeated. “As in Dutheri, the noble House of Blacklight?”

Cassathra nodded feebly.

“Ah.” Realization dawned across the Altmer’s face then, and her lips curled into a smirk. “You must be one of the missing heirs.” Cassathra’s stomach turned at that. “I heard you caused quite a scandal back in Morrowind. Although I will admit, I am less curious about that than I am as to what brought a Redoran to our door.”

“I… I ran away,” Cassathra admitted. “I wanted to study magic but my parents would never let me. I taught myself a few spells in secret and left for the Imperial City.”

“Intriguing,” said the Altmer. “Care to give us a demonstration?”

“Of my magic?”

The Altmer nodded.

Cassathra swallowed, feeling her stomach twisting with nerves. This was what she’d lost sleep over last night: the thought of being put on the spot and suddenly forgetting everything she’d learned, losing her one chance of getting into the College because of some pressure. Maybe she was still desperate to study magic after all.

“They’re just novice spells, mostly,” Cassathra clarified, her voice tight. “Um, I know a bit of destruction magic.”

She paused then, and took a deep, shuddering breath. She’d cast a flame spell so effortlessly just minutes ago, but it was easy for the spell to simply putter out at the start if the caster wasn’t concentrating properly. Cassathra raised her hand and pointed it at the snowy ground, trying to empty her mind of any distracting thoughts.

The relief she felt when fire surged from her palms was enough to pull at every muscle in her body. She relaxed, her shoulders sagging, and cut the spell off after holding it for several moments. “I can cast Candlelight, too,” she went on, throwing up the orb with ease now that she was feeling more confident. “And I know some restoration.”

With that, Cassathra dug beneath her cloak and drew her dagger from her hip, raising her other hand in order to slice through the flesh of her palm. Cutting her palm instead of the back of her hand was a stupid idea, and Cassathra had to bite her lip to stifle the whimper that threatened to spill out, but she had been too giddy with exhilaration to think it through.

In too deep to go back on herself now, Cassathra sheathed her dagger and summoned a healing spell to her uninjured hand, using it to gradually knit together her broken skin. When she was done, she lowered her hands stiffly to her sides and had to clench them into fists several times in order to ease her trembling. Her palm was slick with blood.

The Altmer hummed. “And you’re self-taught, you say?”

Cassathra nodded. “Mostly,” she said. “From the few books I was able to get my hands on. But the healing spell I was taught by someone else.” She paused, then, and added, “A week after it was first shown to me, I was able to treat one of the burn victims at Helgen. She had bad burns all up the side of her body, but I healed them all with almost no scarring.”

The Altmer was rubbing her jaw, deep in thought.

“I’m a good student,” Cassathra continued. “I excelled in my studies at the University of Ebonheart. I had translated a few sample essays and tutor reports to bring with me, but they were lost in the fire at Helgen. So you’ll have to take my word for it.”

When the Altmer was silent for a long while, Cassathra felt her heart sink into her stomach. “Please,” she said quietly. “Please just give me a chance.”

The Altmer huffed. “There’s no need to beg,” she snipped. “Have some dignity, at least. I will be honest, we normally require new students to know at least a few apprentice-level spells before admitting them into our College.”

Cassathra’s stomach dropped.

“But,” the Altmer continued, “to have reached your level with the limited resources at your disposal is… impressive, I will admit. And I can sense that your magicka is strong… you were born under the Apprentice, correct?”

Cassathra nodded. “Does this mean you’ll let me in?”

The Altmer laughed, a high-pitched, tinny sound. “Not just yet,” she said, “though I find your persistence amusing. No, our application process is usually slightly more rigorous than a few spells cast in a doorway. But I am curious to put to the test whether you are as fast of a learner as you claim to be. Do you have any plans for the day, Cassathra Dutheri?”

She shook her head. “I was just going to beg a bit more.”

The Altmer snorted, but she waved her hand, and Cassathra could see the shimmery veil of the ward fall away in front of her. “Humour is definitely in short supply around here,” she said with a chuckle. “But come. I would like to teach you some spells, and ask you some more questions, and then we may properly consider whether you deserve a place here.”

Cassathra slipped through the hole in the ward with a great sigh of relief, falling into step alongside the Altmer as she led them up to the bridge.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t thank me just yet,” the Altmer replied as they walked. “My name is Faralda. Tell me, Cassathra, what is it that you hope to get out of your studies here?”

Faralda’s stride was long; Cassathra had to pick up her pace to keep up with her. “Ah… I think I mainly just want to find out how magic works,” she said breathlessly. “Being Redoran, I only ever saw it being used from afar, but I was always amazed by the way magic users could just… I don’t know, structure their energy a certain way and then channel that into something physical. I almost want to study the theory more than I want to be able to practice it myself. But ideally, of course, I’d want to get to a point where I can build on that knowledge to create my own spells.”

Faralda hummed. The bridge was as nerve-wracking as Cassathra was expecting it to be, and she swallowed as they went over a section where the wall had fallen away completely. At various points, the bridge widened into little circular sections, in the centre of which were small stone wells that projected columns of what looked like pure magicka—a soft blue light—straight up into the sky. Cassathra wondered if the wells were responsible for holding the ward in place.

“Do any schools of magic appeal to you in particular?” Faralda continued.

Cassathra was silent for a few moments. “Not really,” she said. “I was hoping to get to try them all before deciding whether I want to specialise. But I guess I’m not really that interested in destruction… I’d much rather rely on my sword arm for that sort of thing.”

Faralda tutted at that. “What a shame,” she said, though her voice was light, like she was amused. “I am the head of the Destruction Faculty here.”

Cassathra balked, then swore under her breath. “B’vehk, sorry,” she said quickly. “I— I didn’t mean that I wouldn’t be interested in it. I just—um. I mean, I’m hoping it will turn out to be more interesting than I think? It’s not like I really know much abou—”

“Goodness, you are a nervous one, aren’t you?” They were approaching the entrance to the College now, and Cassathra tilted her head back in order to take it in. Somehow it was even more imposing up close; a great mass of colossal, windowless towers, the walls smooth and hewn out of a dark stone.

They dipped into a long archway which ran through the central tower at the forefront of the building, and a large courtyard came into view at the opposite end. The courtyard was circular and dotted with pine trees; a paved pathway cut straight down the middle of it, leading from the entrance of the College to the main tower at the back. In the centre of the courtyard the path opened up into a circle, with another one of those magicka wells located in the middle of it. Behind that was a great statue of a mage; tall as the pines, their hands spread wide and their robes cascading around them.

Cassathra swallowed at the sight of students milling about the courtyard. Most of them were walking to and fro with large stacks of books in their arms, but some were sitting on benches and chatting excitedly to each other. She was watching them with a mixture of curiosity and dread when she heard Faralda clear her throat behind her.

“This way,” she said. Cassathra followed in silence as she was led into a room to the right of the entrance corridor. It looked to be an office of some kind; an elderly Nord woman was sitting behind a desk, sifting through a stack of papers. The far wall was lined with pigeonholes.

“This is the porter’s lodge,” said Faralda. “Take a seat. I’ll be with you in a little while.”

Cassathra nodded, lowering herself into a wooden bench opposite the porter’s desk. Faralda said something quietly to the Nord and then slipped away through a door at the back.

The room was silent save for the shuffling of the Nord’s papers. Muffled laughter from the students outside could just be heard through the thick stone walls. Cassathra shifted awkwardly in her seat, unsure of what to do with herself. Eventually she sighed and let her hands come to rest in her lap.

A minute or two passed in which little else happened. Cassathra looked up at the sound of someone coming in the same way she had, from the direction of the courtyard. Three students entered the lodge: two of them Dunmer, and the third a Nord. They seemed to be gossiping about something—recounting stories from the previous night’s drinking, it sounded like—but they lowered their voices upon noticing Cassathra. She shifted uncomfortably and averted her gaze.

The students headed over to the pigeonholes and collected their post in silence before leaving the way they’d come in. When their voices had faded out of earshot, the porter cleared her throat and Cassathra turned to her.

“What is your name, child?”

“Um… Cassathra.”

“Cassathra Darethi?”

She frowned; that wasn’t her surname at all. But it was close enough for her to realize that the woman probably knew something. Cassathra was about to correct her when it occurred to her that it perhaps was not the best idea to be throwing around her family name, particularly in a college where Dunmer made up a large percentage of the student body, and where news of the ‘missing heirs of Blacklight’ seemed to be relatively common knowledge.

“Uh, yes?”

“We’ve been expecting you,” said the Nord.

Cassathra’s mouth fell open. “You have?!”

The woman nodded. “A letter addressed to you arrived a few days ago. We almost threw it away, but whoever wrote it clearly believed you were going to be here.”

She dug around under her desk for several moments before producing a small envelope, which she then held out to Cassathra over the desktop. Cassathra stood and took it gratefully from her outstretched hand.

On the front of the envelope, Raydrin’s handwriting in the Aldmeri alphabet was unmistakable. Cassathra realized then that her brother had probably misspelled their name on purpose.

She swallowed, her eyes starting to sting. She was about to open it and read it right there when she was interrupted by the opening of a door, and Cassathra looked up to see Faralda returning.

“Right then,” she said. “All ready, Miss Dutheri?”

“It’s Darethi,” said the porter, barely glancing up from her paperwork.

Faralda looked confused for a moment, but then she met Cassathra’s gaze and Cassathra shrugged. A knowing smile crossed her lips.

“Ah,” she said. “My mistake.” She gestured through the open doorway. “After you.”

Cassathra bowed to the Nord before following Faralda’s instructions, and reluctantly she tucked Raydrin’s letter into her satchel as she did. She would just have to read it later.

Faralda led her into a long stone corridor, curving slightly around the outside of the College. The walls were tall, the windows too high to be seen through. The stone looked almost blue in the sunlight streaming down from them. It occurred to Cassathra then that she was actually quite warm; it was the first time she’d felt a comfortable temperature in days. She wondered if magic was used to regulate the College’s interior.

They rounded the curve to ascend a spiral staircase and then Faralda ducked through a wooden doorway, waiting for Cassathra to follow before she closed the door gently behind her. It was a small, round office, the walls lined with bookshelves and a wooden desk located in the centre.

“Take a seat,” said Faralda, gesturing to a cushy chair opposite the desk. Awkwardly, Cassathra obeyed.

The Altmer did not follow; instead she began perusing the bookshelves, searching for only a few seconds before she found what it was she was looking for.

“I apologize for inflicting a spell from your least favourite school on you,” she said with an amused smirk as she came to lean against the edge of the desk. Cassathra swallowed. “As a Dunmer, you have a natural affinity for fire-based destruction magic,” the Altmer continued. “But I believe a little challenge will do you some good. This is an apprentice-level textbook for frost magic. I would like you to read the introduction and the first chapter, and when you have done that, I would like you to perform the spell you find there. We will talk about your progress and your methodology afterwards.”

Faralda handed her the textbook and Cassathra accepted it stiffly, letting it come to sit in her lap. She felt a little sick.

“How long do I have?”

Faralda shrugged. “A couple of hours. I have a few errands I need to run, but I’ll return around lunchtime to check in on you. In the meantime, make yourself at home. There’s tea if you want some.” She gestured to a table at the back of the room with what looked like a magical tea set on it. Cassathra had never seen such a thing in her life and could only guess as to how she was supposed to use it.

Faralda then headed back towards the doorway. “Good luck,” she said over her shoulder, pausing on her way out. “And don’t get too nosy. This office has a few… explosive defence mechanisms.”

With a smirk and a little wave, Faralda then left. Cassathra was on her own.

She sighed, looking down at the book in her lap. It looked denser than the beginner textbooks she’d found in Blacklight, less accessible. But there was only one thing for it.

She shrugged off her cloak, made herself comfortable, and got to work.

 

---

 

When Faralda eventually returned, Cassathra’s head felt like it had been stuffed with so much information in such a short space of time that she’d never have room for anything else ever again. She still had a page or two left to read, but their contents seemed to be mostly closing remarks, so she supposed she would have to cut her losses. She swallowed thickly and pressed the book closed with trembling hands.

“How did you get on?” asked Faralda, perching herself against the edge of her desk.

“Um,” Cassathra started, unsure of how honest she ought to be. “It was… a lot.”

Faralda laughed. “That is to be expected. I would be amazed if you’d taken in everything from just one reading.” Her golden eyes flicked down to the book. “Do you feel like you want to give it a try?”

Cassathra bit her lip. “Can I practice it first?”

“Where would the fun in that be?” Faralda grinned. “Come now. The sooner you try it, the sooner this’ll be over. Just give it your best shot.”

She got to her feet and circled round the desk, gesturing with one arm for Cassathra to stand. With her heart in her mouth, she did.

Faralda cast a ward spell, holding it up in front of her in much the same way Cassathra was used to holding her shield.

“This is a powerful ward,” she said. “So do not worry about hurting me.”

Cassathra nodded, but her mind felt thick and soup-like. She was thinking less about how to throw a magical ice spike and more about what was at stake; if she messed this up, that was it. Her dreams, gone. Everything they’d lost, for nothing. She was trying to recall the theory from the introduction, the advice it gave to new students, the enormous mass of information crammed into the first chapter about how one ought to structure their thoughts in order to manifest ice from nothing; but in trying to remember everything, her mind simply came up with nothing. What to focus on? It had all blurred together.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, resorting to the basics in the absence of anything else. Tapping into her magicka was something that came naturally to her now, but Cassathra thought it wouldn’t hurt to use the breathing and meditation exercises her beginner textbook had taught her when she first started. At the very least, they would ensure that the connection remained strong.

When she was feeling more aware of her energy flow, she turned her thoughts to ice; its properties, how it was formed, what made it unique. It was fire’s antithesis in almost every way. Where fire was chaos, ice was order. Millions of tiny crystals structured together uniformly to produce something hard, rigid, impenetrable.

But in other ways, they were two sides of the same coin. Did ice not burn, in its own way? It was just as capable of blistering the skin, of numbing sensation.

Cassathra thought back to the chill she’d felt in her room last night, trying her best to actualize it. Destruction was the most physical of all schools of magic. Fire required its user to relax, to keep their movements fluid and their body open. Ice would require rigidity and tension. Cassathra straightened her spine and planted her feet firmly into the floor, keeping her knees slightly bent. She tensed the muscles in her arms, felt her magicka spike in anticipation, and then thrust her hands forwards with all the force she could muster.

Cold flared in her palms and a split second later there was a loud crack as her ice bolt hit Faralda’s ward. It splintered into an explosion of tiny shards, but the magically-created fragments disappeared into nothing as easily as they had come into existence.

Cassathra lowered her hands, panting. Her heart felt like it was about to burst from her chest.

“Very good,” said Faralda with a smirk. She dispelled her ward. “My, you really are a natural.”

Cassathra's jaw went slack. “I am?”

“Of course.” Faralda came over to her then and put her hands on Cassathra’s arms, pulling her up straight. The Altmer was at least a foot taller than her. “I chose to test you with a destruction spell not only because it is my area of expertise, but because destruction is the most intuitive school of magic. It taps into our most base instincts.” She prodded Cassathra in the sternum, just beneath her collarbones. “That makes it ideal for determining whether someone has an instinct for magic. And you, my child, have it in abundance.”

Cassathra swallowed, barely able to hold Faralda’s intense gaze. “Thank you,” she said quietly, unsure of herself.

Faralda laughed. “It’s a shame you aren’t interested in destruction,” she said. “Your warrior’s background and your physical training make you the ideal student. But there is time for you to change your mind, I’m sure.”

She headed back to her desk and took her seat, indicating with one hand for Cassathra to do the same. Cassathra pulled up the chair she’d been using earlier and sat opposite.

“I would like to formally offer you a place at our College,” said Faralda. “We normally take in a cohort of between and twenty and thirty new students each year. I have been able to find a space for you in Tolfdir’s tutorial group. Your peers are already apprentice-level, but I have no doubt you’ll be able to catch up with them quickly.”

Cassathra felt a lump rising in her throat. Faralda was digging around in her desk drawers until she eventually produced a wad of parchment.

“I’ll need you to fill out these forms,” she said, “but you can do that later today, if you wish. Due to the lateness of your arrival, I’m afraid you have missed most of our induction events. But if you would like, I can lead you to your accommodation now, and one of your classmates will be able to show you around properly sometime this afternoon.”

Cassathra nodded, but she was trying desperately hard not to cry in this scholar’s office, and she didn’t want to speak in case that set her off.

Faralda leaned forwards, resting her forearms on the desk. Her expression softened. “You’ve been through a lot to get here, haven’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Cassathra managed, wiping furiously at the tears welling in her eyes. “I’m just overwhelmed.”

“That’s quite all right,” said Faralda, smiling gently. “Take as long as you need. We’ll head to your room whenever you feel ready.”

 

---

 

Faralda gave her a cup of tea and a biscuit—the water was boiled using flame magic, predictably—and then when Cassathra was feeling better, led her to her room. The student body slept in what Faralda called the Hall of Attainment, one of the two main towers situated on either side of the College’s entrance. They passed through the courtyard—subject to the curious stares of the other students—and headed inside, emerging into a great cylindrical building lined with student bedrooms. A magicka well in the centre of the building illuminated the stone walls with a cool, bluish glow.

The Hall of Attainment was quieter than the courtyard had been, though a few students were lingering around the stairwell. Faralda led Cassathra up to the third floor and into her room.

“There we go,” muttered the Altmer under her breath, lighting the candles on the walls and tables with a few well-aimed and incredibly precise flame spells.

The room was modest. It was a squarish shape—though the back wall was slightly curved—with stone walls and a stone floor, the square flagstones arranged in a neat diagonal pattern. There was a single wooden bed in the centre, a wardrobe and a desk off to one side, and a round table with two chairs on the other. A small, arched window above the bed looked out over the courtyard below. The bed itself was bare.

“Obviously you may decorate it however you wish,” said Faralda, looking down at her. “Some bedding will be brought to you later today.”

Cassathra nodded as she took a seat on the unmade bed. The mattress at least was soft and springy.

“Is it alright if I head back into the city at some point?” She twisted round to look at the Altmer. “I need to check out of the inn and get my things.”

“Of course,” said Faralda. “I’ll ask one of your classmates to show you how to get past the ward.”

“Thank you.” Cassathra turned away again, taking another glance around her room.

“Do you have robes?” Faralda went on. Cassathra shook her head. “Not to worry. When you’re more settled in, you can take the clothing you already have to Sergius Turrianus and he will enchant it for you.”

Faralda headed towards the desk and laid down the papers. “Fill in these forms at your leisure,” she said, “and ask if one of your classmates can show you how to get to Mirabelle Ervine’s office. The completed forms need to be given to her. Otherwise, the only thing I can think of is that you should head to the library at some point to get your reading lists and textbooks from Urag.”

Cassathra nodded again, but with so many names being thrown at her she wasn’t sure she would remember everything.

“Do you have any questions?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she said eventually. “I’ll ask my classmates if I think of any.”

“That sounds very sensible,” said Faralda. “I shall leave you to it then. Someone will be around in a short while.”

She headed towards the wooden doorway and prepared to leave. But before she did, she turned back to Cassathra and smiled at her from over her shoulder. “Congratulations, Miss Darethi,” she said with a knowing smirk. “I think you’ll make a superb addition to our College.”

The door shut quietly behind her.

Cassathra sighed, rubbing her hands over her face. What a day it had been, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.

She dug around in her satchel and drew out Raydrin’s letter, almost tearing it open. The temptation to read it back in Faralda’s office had been overwhelming, and though Cassathra was just about able to resist it, it had been lingering at the back of her mind ever since it was given to her.

Though the envelope had been addressed in Cyrodilic, the letter itself was in Dunmeris. She smiled—her eyes watering slightly—at the familiar sight of her brother’s handwriting in the Daedric alphabet. It was messier than his Cyrodilic handwriting, likely because he was more comfortable with it. Cassathra drew her legs up onto the bed and started reading.

12th Hearthfire

Dear Cassathra,

               If you’re reading this, you made it to the College, which is good news. I hope you’re settling in alright and that the journey wasn’t too uncomfortable.

Jórunn and I arrived in Ivarstead yesterday. We’re spending a day here to recuperate a bit before starting the climb up the Throat of the World tomorrow. We’ve actually been getting on quite well, I think, though it’s hard to tell with her sometimes. At the very least she’s been coming out of her shell a bit. I think I have too.

I suppose I should tell you how I’m doing. I’ll admit, it took me a while to get used to the fact you know about the skooma. But now I’ve had some time to think about it, I want to say—I’m sorry. I should have told you. I’m sorry for all the trouble it caused, and I’m sorry about the way it’s been affecting our relationship these last few years. You deserved a much better older brother than the one you got, and I am so, so sorry. I wish we could have spoken about it more but everything happened so fast.

You also deserve honesty, so I will be honest; I do miss it. A lot. Maybe I’m just using this letter as an excuse to vent—in fact I probably am. But in other ways I am feeling better. It’s nice not having to worry about it day to day. And I want you to know that I plan on staying clean.

I wish I could ask you how you are. I wish I could ask you about what the College is like, and whether you’re making friends, and whether you’re finding your classes interesting. I’m sure you are. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll have a stable return address for a long time, so this conversation will have to be one-sided for now. I’ll write to you as often as I can, and I’ll let you know as soon as I find a way for you to reply (if you want to of course).

I guess I should also say that I hope you had luck in your search for Mathyas. But if you didn’t—that’s okay. It’s not your fault. If anything the fault is mine; Mathyas didn’t initially want to follow you into Skyrim, and it was me who persuaded him to. Looking back on it, I think my reasoning was less to do with wanting to keep you safe (because let’s be honest, you and I both know you’re more than capable of handling yourself) and more because I wanted an excuse to leave. So really it’s my fault he left. I don’t know if this will be of any comfort to you, but I guess the bottom line is, I don’t want you to be blaming yourself, alright? It won’t accomplish anything. And he wouldn’t want you to either.

Jórunn is currently sleeping as I write this. I found this book of Nord poems in our room and I thought this particular verse was quite pretty. I took the liberty of (badly) translating it into Dunmeris for you.

               Os almesen bahr sut ist os jigdo’ag
               Ku’elm yi daelkhun morh dor muhrsag
               Devehr ohm malath, lacor ot morjul
               En havgag hagil luvahr as dayn magnu

I hope you’re well. I miss you already. If our travels ever take us up north, I’ll make sure to drop by.

               Love, Raydrin

By the time she made it to the letter’s end, Cassathra’s eyes were blurry with tears. She held the letter away from her face so that she wouldn’t smudge the ink.

“Oh Raydrin,” she whispered, covering her mouth with one hand and shaking her head. “You’re such a bastard.”

You deserved a much better older brother than the one you got.

How dare he make a claim as ridiculous as that only to acknowledge in the very next paragraph that she was unable to reply? Unable to refute it? That was so like him. Bastard. Bastard.

Cassathra read it again several times, missing him more and more with every word. He’d written this weeks ago now. What had changed since then? Was he still safe? Alive? She wanted so badly to reply but she resolved to do so anyway, whether he would receive it or not. She’d just have to give it to him whenever she could.

A knock at the door drew her out of her thoughts and she jumped a little, laying the letter down beside her. “One second,” she called, getting to her feet and brushing herself down. She wiped her cheeks and fixed her hair, and when she was happy she didn’t look like she’d just been crying, went to open it.

She was met with three people on the other side: three young people, other students by the looks of it. Her first and overwhelming impression was that all three of them were very tall—at least seven or eight inches taller than she was. Even the shortest—another Dunmer girl—was tall enough that Cassathra's eyes were level with her collarbones. She snapped her gaze up to their faces and glanced nervously between them. In addition to the Dunmer was a human and a Khajiit, both of them men. The Dunmer and the human both smiled at her. She smiled back.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hey,” said the human. He had fair skin, a soft, broad face, and a short mess of dark brown hair. His smile was friendly. “Um, Faralda told us you’ll be joining our tutor group?”

“Oh!” said Cassathra. “Yes, yes, I will be. Um, what are your names?”

“I’m Onmund,” he said. “This is J’zargo,” he gestured to the Khajiit, “and Brelyna,” he pointed to the Dunmer.

Cassathra frowned. The name Brelyna seemed… familiar to her, vaguely. She looked up at the other Dunmer, trying to work out if there was anything she recognized in those features. Brelyna had a tall, slender face, to match her tall, slender body. Her cheekbones were high, her nose thin, her chin delicate and pointed. Her grey skin had a cool, almost purplish undertone to it.  

“Oh my gods,” said Cassathra. “Brelyna Maryon?”

Brelyna cringed somewhat fearfully. “Er, yes?”

“We used to play together in Blacklight when your parents were attending council meetings!” Cassathra exclaimed, switching to Dunmeris. “It’s me, Cassathra!”

Brelyna stared at her for a few moments in confusion, but then her scarlet eyes suddenly widened in realization. “B’vehk, it is you!” she said. Her voice was quiet and soft despite the surprise in her tone. “A—are you alright? I heard you’d gone missing.”

Cassathra laughed sheepishly. “I had, technically. Um—I ran away in order to come here. My parents wouldn’t have let me study magic otherwise.”

Brelyna frowned. “It took you two months to get here from Blacklight?”

“We took a slight detour.”

“As lovely as J’zargo is sure this reunion is,” the Khajiit cut in, “it perhaps would be nicer to talk in Cyrodilic, no?”

“Sorry J’zargo,” Brelyna apologized. “Cassathra here is an old childhood friend.”

“We spent time together when our parents were tucked away in council meetings,” said Cassathra. She grinned at Brelyna. “When yours bothered to show up in person, anyway.”

Brelyna smiled back. “They hated it, didn’t they?”

“You definitely weren’t my parents’ ideal candidate for a playmate.”

“Are your parents Grand Councillors too, Cassathra?” asked Onmund.  

She nodded. “My father is,” she said. “Redoran, though.”

"Redoran?" said J'zargo. "This one was under the impression that the Redoran are wary of the arcane arts."

"They are," Cassathra confirmed with a grimace. "I, um... I'm not exactly here with my parents' blessing."

Onmund blinked at her in surprise, and J’zargo let out a deep, guffawing laugh. “Such drama among our Dunmer classmates, eh, Onmund?” he said, elbowing the Nord in his side. Onmund chuckled a little nervously.

“Yes, it is quite a coincidence that you two know each other,” he agreed. His gaze then slid back down to Cassathra’s. “It’s nice to meet you, though. Um, the three of us were about to go and grab lunch—we were wondering if you wanted to join us?”

Cassathra glanced between them. “Are you sure?”

Onmund’s eyes widened. “Of course!” he said. The other two nodded eagerly. “It’ll be nice to get to know you before having classes together. Besides,” he added, nudging his head towards Brelyna, “it sounds as if you two have some catching up to do.”

Brelyna nodded and gave her a tiny little smile. “We do,” she confirmed.

“All right,” said Cassathra, smiling back. “That sounds nice. Er, thank you for inviting me.”

She shut and locked the door—her door—behind her, and the three of them led her to the College’s dining hall. Listening to their chatting and occasional bickering on the way, Cassathra felt a warmth she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

Notes:

if you see me writing about destruction magic like it's atla bending - no you don't.

anyway, i hope you enjoyed this chapter!! big thanks to my beta readers haley and diana for their advice and support <3

Chapter 15: Wind Guide You

High Hrothgar, Skyrim, 6th Frostfall

Arngeir had left Jórunn a while ago, though she couldn’t say for sure how long she’d been sitting there, alone, at the top of the training tower. The mountain was silent, save for the low whistle of a cold and bitter wind. It numbed her cheeks and made them burn with a stinging heat.

She didn’t know what it was that kept her from heading back down to the warmth of High Hrothgar. A moment’s peace, perhaps, but then every moment in this place had started to feel peaceful. Nearly a month had passed since their arrival, and with the monotony of each day, Jórunn’s anxieties over her future had steadily dulled, giving way instead to the comfort found in stability. Vaguely she was aware that their time here would not last forever, but she had stopped worrying about it; at the very least, she could go to sleep each night knowing what the next day had in store for her, knowing that she’d be safe and fed, and that was enough for now.

Jórunn didn’t initially notice the sound of the door opening, that hollow clang of metal grating over stone; it wasn’t until Raydrin said her name that she turned her head.

“Hello."

“Gods, I’m amazed,” said Raydrin, snow crunching beneath his feet as he came to sit beside her. “Arngeir told me you might be up here, but I wasn’t sure I believed him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s fucking freezing.”

His arm nudged hers and then the back of his hand was pressed against her cheek, burning for just a moment before he drew it away. A month ago that would have bothered Jórunn, the touching without warning, but she didn’t mind it now. Raydrin had become quite adept at judging when she would and wouldn’t want it; she couldn’t remember the last time he’d got it wrong.

“Jórunn, your face is like ice,” he said. “You’re really comfortable out here?”

“‘Comfortable’ is maybe a bit far, but it’s tolerable.”

He muttered something in Dunmeris, a phrase she was beginning to recognise as some kind of swear.

“It’s basically pitch black,” he went on. “You must have been out for an hour, at least.”

“It’s dark already?” she asked, blinking in surprise.

"It is," he confirmed. Then he chuckled. “At this rate, you’ll have to be the one leading us back.”

Jórunn rolled her eyes. “I don't want to go back just yet. It’s nice out here.”

“Ah,” said Raydrin. “As much as I'd love to sit here and get frostbite with you, I actually came to tell you that supper’s ready.”

“Oh.” Jórunn turned away again, flattening her gloved hand against the ground. “Who cooked?”

“I did.”

“That’s all right, then.”

Raydrin laughed and Jórunn pushed herself to her feet with a grunt, taking her cane into one hand and holding out her other. A few seconds later she felt his arm slot into the shell of her palm.

“What were you thinking about up there?” he asked as they descended the steps of the tower. They were indoors now, and so sheltered from the cold winds, but the staircase was still only marginally warmer than it had been outside.

Jórunn scrunched up her face. “Not much, to be honest.”

Raydrin snorted. “Not much?”

“It's hard work, not thinking,” she said. “Arngeir's been meditating his whole life trying to master it. But thankfully as Dragonborn it comes quite naturally to me.”

He laughed again, and Jórunn did, too. She liked making Raydrin laugh; he'd been sharing his mirth more readily the last week or so. They retreated together into the warmth of High Hrothgar, stomping the snow from their boots and shucking off their furs. Then they headed to the Greybeards’ living quarters and the little table they used for their evening meals.

“Welcome, both of you,” said Arngeir as they took their seats; Raydrin placed Jórunn's hand on the back of her chair before drifting away. “I was about to send someone to check if you were all right.”

Raydrin chuckled from somewhere across the table. “Worried that Jórunn was going to accidentally Shout me off the mountain?”

Arngeir cleared his throat. “The cliffside can be perilous in the dark. It does not do well to joke about such things.”

Jórunn bit her lip, trying to stifle her laughter. From Raydrin’s odd cough, it sounded as if he was doing the same.

“What are we having?” she asked, searching for a change in subject. She heard a plate being placed in front of her.

“It’s a Nordic take on Blacklight oxen meatballs,” Raydrin explained. “I had to substitute… well, everything, but I think it turned out all right.”

It smelled good, at least. Under the earthiness of the meat, it was almost sweet; Jórunn was picking up on cloves and allspice, and maybe a little fennel. It wasn’t a Dunmeri spice mix by any means, but it was probably the closest Raydrin could get with what the Greybeards had available.

Raydrin then lowered his voice, speaking only to her. “The meatballs are north, there’s mash potato south-west, and roast vegetables south-east. And the meatballs are covered in a sauce.”

It was the system Jórunn had asked them to use to help her locate where her food was on the plate. Quietly she thanked him, and when she heard the tell-tale sounds of metal clinking against plates as the others began to eat, did the same.

Mealtimes were her least favourite parts of the day. She hated knowing that a conversation was taking place around her, a conversation she could neither see nor hear. But the ruffling of fabric and the breathy noises the Greybeards sometimes made as they signed were constant, and even Raydrin had confessed to her recently that he was starting to pick up on a few of their words. Occasionally she and him felt comfortable enough to spark up a quiet conversation of their own, but for the most part they ate in silence. It made Jórunn miss the companionable mealtimes back at the brothel.

The food, as always with Raydrin’s cooking, was great. Jórunn had to consciously slow down so as to avoid eating it too quickly. Vaguely she thought that she was glad to have ended up travelling with someone who knew their way around a kitchen, though how a noble had come to develop such an instinct she had no idea.

When the meal was drawing to its close, it took a different turn from its usual course. Arngeir cleared his throat loudly.

“Jórunn,” he began, “Raydrin. There is something we would like to discuss with you both.”

Jórunn pushed her empty plate forwards and laid her forearms on the table, swallowing. Arngeir sounded serious; or at least, more serious than he usually did. And to address them this way during a meal was rare. Jórunn got the feeling she knew what was coming, a sinking feeling, heavy and uncomfortable in her chest.

“Over the course of the last month, we have watched you progress and grow,” said Arngeir. “Not just the Dragonborn, but her companion, too. When you arrived here many moons ago, we felt your distress, your discomfort, your fear. But since then, you both have become… at ease with yourselves. It has been a pleasure to watch, and a pleasure to have you.”

There was a moment of silence before Arngeir continued. “Wulfgar would like to add that he has particularly enjoyed Raydrin’s cooking.”

Across from her, Jórunn heard Raydrin give a short little laugh, laced with an edge of nervousness. There was something comforting in the fact he was feeling as uneasy about this conversation as she was.

“As I was saying,” Arngeir went on. “Jórunn. To teach you has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. I had heard stories of the abilities of the Dragonborn, but to see it for myself… and to have been the one to guide you through these early stages—”

He faltered for a moment, and Jórunn set her jaw, wringing her hands on the table.

“You have given an old man hope," he finished. "I wake up every morning grateful that Akatosh selected such a worthy candidate for this role. I know you do not want it, and I cannot lie and tell you that it will be an easy burden to bear. But I have no doubt that you will rise to the occasion. You have shouldered this responsibility with a grace and maturity far beyond your years, and I sleep easy knowing the Thu’um is in good hands.”

Jórunn had been facing Arngeir as he spoke, but the more he went on, the more she found herself shrinking into her chair. She turned her head to the table, not wanting her face to be on display.

“I believe the time has come when we have taught you all that we can. There is still much of the Thu’um you have yet to learn, but this will come to you over time; and it is important that you learn this as the Dragonborn should, with patience and humility.”

Arngeir lapsed into silence, but neither Jórunn nor Raydrin said anything to fill it. For all of Arngeir’s praise, it was clear where he was going: their time here was up. And Jórunn couldn’t have felt less ready.

Was the bar truly that low? Jórunn was by no means a bad or a cruel person, but she had always thought of herself as rather selfish when it came down to it—and yet Arngeir spoke of her like a saint. But then again, her competition was Ulfric Stormcloak, so perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she was shining through as a model student.

Jórunn’s thoughts faltered when, beneath the table, she suddenly felt Raydrin’s leg press against hers, just the spot above her ankle. It was ever so gentle; she recognized the contact immediately for what it was, an attempt to comfort her, to remind her that he was there in a way the Greybeards couldn’t see. Maybe her distress was more evident on her face than she’d realized. Jórunn pressed back, acknowledging the touch, and then raised her head to throw him a quick, sad little smile. His leg shifted against hers and was gone.

“For these reasons,” Arngeir continued when it became clear that neither of them had anything to say, “we have decided that you are ready to leave us now. Reports are coming in with our supplies from Ivarstead that several more dragons have been sighted across the province. And as much as we would like for you to stay here and continue your studies, the Dragonborn’s place is not on a mountainside. It is time for you to put to use all that we have taught you.”

“But what should we actually do?” asked Raydrin. “We can’t just walk down the mountain and wait for the dragons to come to us.”

“You are right, of course,” said Arngeir. “I imagine your path will become clear to you soon enough. But until then, we have a task that you may choose to do if you so wish. It will provide valuable experience for Jórunn, and enable you to put to use your new skills in a more… controlled environment. But ultimately, this is a personal favour we are asking of you, so there is no obligation.”

Jórunn cleared her throat. “What is it?”

“In the ancient fane of Ustengrav, deep in the swamps of Morthal, there is a relic we would like you to retrieve for us. It is the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, the founder of our order. The Way of the Voice will die with us, and so it seems only appropriate that the Horn of our founder is here, in High Hrothgar, for our order’s final hours.”

Jórunn swallowed. Raydrin didn’t say anything either; the silence pressed on awkwardly.

Arngeir coughed. “Whether you do this for us is up to you, Dragonborn. You may discuss it with your companion after dinner if you wish. But in any case, with winter approaching, it is best that the pair of you should leave sooner rather than later. The descent down the mountain will not be getting any easier.”

“We’ll talk about it later, all right?” Raydrin murmured from where he was sitting across from her. Jórunn nodded, unable to formulate words.

The Greybeards started clearing away dinner and Jórunn and Raydrin were left to their own devices. Raydrin grabbed a bottle of wine on their way past the kitchens and they convened a short while later in Jórunn’s room.

“Ah, just a second,” said Raydrin, leaving just moments after his arrival. She didn’t hear the door shut behind him.

“What is it?” Jórunn called after him, listening to the sounds of him rummaging around in his room next door.

He didn’t reply, but he returned a few seconds later with something he placed down on her bedside table. “You don’t have any candles,” he explained. “Couldn’t see shit.”

“Ah. Sorry,” she laughed.

Raydrin poured the wine and gave her arm a nudge to indicate that he was about to pass her a cup; gratefully she took it from him, and they were silent for a few seconds as they each made themselves comfortable on her bed.

“What are you thinking?” he asked eventually, and from the smack of his lips she could tell he’d just taken a sip.

“I don’t know,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

Raydrin was quiet for a short while. “I’m thinking… I’m thinking I’d do it if you wanted us to,” he said. “It wouldn’t be my first time delving into a Nordic ruin. And Arngeir’s right that we don't really have anything better to do.”

“You really think I’m ready for it?” she asked, wondering vaguely whether one bottle of wine was going to be enough.

“I do,” said Raydrin. “Between the force Shout, the aura detection Shout, the ethereal Shout, and,” he paused for a second, “the sprint Shout, I suppose, you’ll be well set if we find anything lurking down there. Our system is coming along well now. And like Arngeir said, we’re likely to face much worse at some point. It makes sense to get the practice in.”

Jórunn hummed, carefully putting her wine on the bedside table and drawing her knees up to her chest.

“We don’t have to do it,” Raydrin went on. “Ultimately it’s your choice, and I’m happy with whatever. But I think… I think it would be a good idea.”

“Hm,” Jórunn said quietly, still mulling it over. After a few moments she let out a bitter laugh. “Gods, I’m fucking terrified, Raydrin.”

He said nothing for a second or two. “I am as well,” he admitted. Then he added, “Sorry. That probably isn’t what you wanted to hear.”

Jórunn shook her head. “It’s fine. I think that makes me feel a bit better, actually.”

“I suppose you don’t have to decide right now,” Raydrin continued. “We can always head back down to Ivarstead and see how you’re feeling when we get there.”

Jórunn picked up her wine again and took a long swig. “No. No, you’re right. We should just do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Whatever we find in Ustengrav is likely going to be easier to deal with than a dragon,” she said. “So I’ll be fucking terrified either way. But the sooner I get started, the better, really.”

Raydrin was silent for a moment, then he took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I was thinking we could set off the day after tomorrow. That gives us some time to pack.”

Jórunn's heart sank. “All right," she said. "No point delaying the inevitable. ”

They drank together for some time, and the conversation shifted towards more mundane things. By the time they were nearing the bottom of the bottle, they were making increasingly wild speculations as to what was going to happen next in the book they were reading, another Breton novel about a tortured prince tasked with murdering his uncle.

“Do you think the Greybeards will notice if we steal it from them?” asked Jórunn. “I’m not sure I can leave without knowing what happens.”

“It was covered in nearly an inch of dust when I took it off the shelf," said Raydrin. "I think we’ll be fine.”

They finished their wine and Raydrin pulled himself to his feet with a reluctant groan. “I should leave you to it,” he said, speaking softly in case the Greybeards had already gone to sleep. He collected the cups and the wine bottle and then paused on his way out.

“Jórunn,” he said, and she turned towards him slightly to show that he had her attention. “We’ll be all right. Ustengrav, I mean—it’s going to be all right.”

She nodded, squeezing out a smile. “Thanks, Raydrin.”

There was a moment’s pause before the door fell shut, and Jórunn wondered if he was going to say something else. But then the door latched into place and she was on her own. She rinsed her face, rubbed her teeth, and slid into bed. Eventually she drifted into a restless sleep.

 

---

 

8th Frostfall

The time to leave came around faster than Jórunn could have anticipated; Tirdas passed in a blur of packing and planning, and despite Jórunn’s inability to sleep, night shifted into dawn in the blink of an eye. They ate a hearty cooked breakfast—prepared for them with care by Wulfgar—and then convened in the Inner Sanctum for final checks.

“I forgot how much I hated this,” said Jórunn once her pack was fastened securely to her shoulders. Her blisters had long since healed, but being back in her hiking gear made the old sore spots twinge like phantom pains.

“You’re fitter and stronger than you were a month ago,” Raydrin insisted. “And we’re going downhill. It’ll be easier this time.”

Despite the confidence with which he spoke, Jórunn thought it a bold claim. It was colder and windier than it had been a month ago, and the thought of trying to climb down a snowy mountain with a heavy weight on her back didn’t sound like it’d be ‘easy’ by any means.

When the first rays of sun hit the snow, they started saying their goodbyes. It was a little odd; Jórunn had been limited in her capacity to bond with the other Greybeards, and Arngeir didn’t particularly seem like the emotional type. But to her surprise, he asked her if she wanted to hug, and despite her reservations, she said yes. It was a short, awkward hug, bony and distanced, but when Arngeir spoke he sounded almost choked up.

“It has been an honour teaching you, my child,” he said. “I do not doubt that you have what it takes. Remain true to the Way of the Voice, and there will be no challenge you cannot overcome.”

Jórunn nodded, smiling slightly. She felt somewhat guilty that she felt no lump in her own throat, no sting behind her eyes, but truthfully it was yet to sink in that she was actually leaving.

“Thank you for everything, Arngeir.”

“I am sure we will see each other again soon,” he said. “Of course, you may return any time you wish to seek our guidance.”

She could hear a half-conversation happening somewhere beside her as Raydrin bid farewell to the others, responding verbally to their signed communication. She envied the ease with which he had entered into a quasi-friendship with them, in particular with Wulfgar. He laughed at something one of them said, and then the conversation drew to a natural close. The time had come.

They headed outside and started climbing down High Hrothgar’s steps. Jórunn was holding onto Raydrin’s arm, as she would be doing until they passed beneath the snow line.

“They’re waving goodbye,” he told her when they reached the bottom, and they both turned to do the same.

“Are they still waving?” she asked after several moments.

“Still waving,” Raydrin confirmed. “Come on, I think we should just go. Old people are like that.”

Jórunn nodded and they began their descent. With High Hrothgar behind them and the whole of Skyrim ahead, it occurred to Jórunn then that this next stage of their journey was a great deal more uncertain than it had been on their way up. The Greybeards had posed almost as many questions as they had answered, and Jórunn still had next to no idea of what was actually expected of her. But there was nothing for it; with Raydrin’s arm in her hand and his easy conversation in her ear, Jórunn could put one foot in front of the other and take each moment as it came. Wherever the gods wanted her to go, she wouldn’t be going there alone.

 

---

 

Falkreath Sanctuary, Skyrim, 13th Frostfall

It was raining and it was dark when Mathyas finally returned to the Black Door, but he stood there, staring at it, some remote and hopeful part of him disappointed to find that it was real. The Black Door stared back at him, solid and unmoving.

“What… is the music… of life?”

His mouth was dry.

"Silence, my brother."

The Door opened up to him—leisurely, like a yawn—revealing the torchlit warmth that lay beyond. Mathyas wound tight his jaw and did the only thing he could.

He rounded the corner to Astrid's office to find her sitting at her desk, poring over some document and rubbing at her temples. When she heard him approach, she looked up, a pleased smirk tugging at her lips.

“Mathyas,” she said, laying her papers down flat. “You’re back sooner than I was expecting.”

He pushed back his hood and wiped the rainwater from his face. “Two of the leads were cold.”

“And the third?”

He shucked off his pack, bending forward to lean it against his shins. The leather was dripping wet; he took care as he loosened the buckle to ensure that the contents remained dry.

“The old woman in Granite Hill wants her bastard nephew killed,” he said, rifling through one of the inner pockets to produce a small leather logbook. He tore out the first page and reached over the desktop to hand it to her. “Here are the details.”

“Bastard in the literal or the figurative sense?” Astrid asked with an amused smile, plucking the paper from his hand.

“Both, I suppose.”

Astrid whistled. She scanned the paper quickly and then put it to one side.

“I’ll admit,” she said, “it’s a pleasant surprise to see you. A few of the others had placed bets on whether or not you’d come back.”

Mathyas blinked at her, unsure of how to respond. What would have happened if I hadn’t? he wanted to ask, though he decided against it. It wasn’t worth the risk. The answer might have been ‘nothing,’ but Mathyas doubted it, and he didn’t want to alert her as to his ultimate intentions in case it wasn’t.

“Am I free to go?” he asked instead, thinking longingly of a hot bath.

“Not just yet,” said Astrid. “I actually have a job for you.”

Dread sank like a stone in Mathyas’ stomach. A job? He prayed it would be another reconnaissance mission.

“It’s a bit sooner than I had originally planned,” Astrid went on, “but I think you’re ready for your first contract.”

Mathyas froze.

“I’m choosing you because it’s well-suited to your particular skillset,” she explained. “From what I gather, the target is the leader of a small group of bandits. I believe he will require someone who knows less about the art of stealth and more about how to hold their own in an open fight.”

“Are you sure I’m your best choice?” he asked, trying to steady his voice. “Arnbjorn would probably be better suited—”

“Arnbjorn is otherwise engaged,” said Astrid. “And besides, you need to get started sooner or later. This will make a nice first contract for you.”

Mathyas stared at her for a long while, unsure of what to say. He didn’t want to accept it outright, but Astrid’s hard expression suggested that turning it down wasn’t really an option.

If the target was a bandit… that was justifiable, wasn’t it? Bandits made their living from the exploitation of others. It was bandits who’d tried to sell him off at Windhelm. He’d killed them before, and they lived outside the law by choice. It wouldn’t be wrong.

He swallowed. “Where can I find him?”

“That, I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Astrid. “We haven’t spoken with the client directly yet—this contract we picked up through one of our city links. You’ll have to go to Markarth and speak with the client yourself. She’s the apprentice at an apothecarist called the Hag’s Cure, a girl named Muiri. She’ll be able to give you more details.”

Mathyas exhaled slowly. “When should I go?”

Astrid shrugged. “As soon as possible, really. But of course feel free to take a few days to rest.”

He waited for her to continue, and when she failed to do so, moved to pick up his pack and continue on his way. But then she cleared her throat.

“One more thing,” she said. Mathyas hesitated by the doorway to the sanctum, turning to her over his shoulder. “The Night Mother’s Keeper arrived earlier today. If you’re curious, we’ve put her coffin up in the room behind the window. But you may run into the Keeper around the Sanctuary—and I feel I should warn you that he’s a little… abrasive.”

Mathyas felt the blood drain from his face. The Night Mother? Shit. Shit. He wasn’t expecting her to arrive so soon.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said feebly. Gods, he was beyond fucked.

Astrid nodded and let him go. With his heart in his mouth, Mathyas left her office and made his way through the sanctum towards the Sanctuary’s living quarters.

He heard the Keeper before he saw him; several voices were emanating from the dining hall, and one of them he did not recognize. It was a strange voice, high and scratchy, jumping between registers like its owner was trying to sing and talk at the same time. Mathyas grimaced.

It was around dinner time and most of the Brotherhood’s members seemed to be present. At one end of the long table, Vivienne and Festus were sitting with the source of the unfamiliar voice, a human man who was loudly and enthusiastically recounting an incomprehensible anecdote. Oddly, he appeared to be wearing some kind of costume. Mathyas squinted. What was the word for it? Jester. One of those silly little men employed by Breton monarchs to entertain the court. What business one could have in the Dark Brotherhood, Mathyas had no idea.

At the other end of the table, Nazir, Arnbjorn and Veezara were sitting in silence, picking reluctantly from their plates. Mathyas caught Nazir’s gaze from the landing and was met with an expression of such contempt, such exasperation, that he found himself smiling in spite of himself, failing to hide his laughter as Nazir’s gaze slid purposefully over to the jester, then back to Mathyas, ensuring there could be no room for doubt as to the exact nature of his feelings towards the new Keeper.

Without stopping to introduce himself, Mathyas headed straight towards his room, wanting to unpack and decompress. He didn’t have the energy to talk with the others, to mask his hatred and resentment, to humour the irritating, scratchy-voiced jester. He wanted to warm up from the rain and ease his aching muscles.

With the Night Mother here, his situation had become a great deal more precarious. If she was truly as powerful as she was believed to be, she was practically omniscient. Was there anywhere he could go where she wouldn’t know of his whereabouts? Would he even be able to make it that far, or would she have read his thoughts beforehand?

Contracts would be pouring in easily, now. There was no more need for Brotherhood members to track them down themselves. That had been Mathyas’ one hope—that he would be able to get out of there before having to take on any real contracts—but in one fell swoop, that hope had been dashed.

Slamming his door behind him and sinking onto the side of his bed, one thing became clear. Mathyas was in deep, and his chances of getting out were slim.

 

---

 

Sleep evaded him that night, as it usually did. Mathyas had been off-kilter ever since Windhelm; being alchemically induced into sleep by both the slavers and then Astrid had destroyed what was left of his body’s ability to drift off naturally.  

He was trying all of his usual tricks—counting guar, holding his tongue to the roof of his mouth and exhaling to the count of seven—but still Vaermina’s realm eluded him. What was he doing wrong? How had something so simple become such an insurmountable challenge?

This was the third time he’d gotten out of bed to wander the Sanctuary; it was an old habit he'd developed, on the nights he found himself awake. He used to drift towards the family shrine, chatting idly with the relics until he was sleepy enough to try again. The Brotherhood's dying hearth was no substitute for a proper Waiting Door, but it would have to do for now. Mathyas stared blankly at the embers, soaking up their warmth. Maybe he’d head back to bed in a few minutes.

“You don’t sleep very well, do you?”

“B’vehk,” Mathyas swore, jumping at the sudden noise. Hot tea spilled over his fingers. He turned over his shoulder to see Nazir approaching him from the shadows, grinning at him in amusement. He was wearing a loose tunic and linen trousers tucked haphazardly into his boots, his curly dark hair falling freely about his face.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Mathyas admitted with a sigh, placing his tea cup on the floor and wiping his hand on his thigh.

Nazir chuckled. “It’s an occupational hazard.”

“What are you doing awake?”

“I got hungry,” he explained, pulling out a loaf of bread from one of the cupboards beside the fireplace. “Didn’t really have an appetite earlier.”

Mathyas exhaled softly, the barest hint of a laugh. “Was it Cicero?”

Nazir grunted. “Some of that man’s stories…” He shook his head. “And at dinner, too. So uncivilised.”

Mathyas watched as Nazir cut two slices of bread from the end of the loaf and began lathering them each with butter and honey. Nazir turned to him over his shoulder. “Want some?”

He shook his head. “I’m all right.”

The two men were silent for a while as Nazir went about his food preparation, and Mathyas turned his attention back to the fire. Gods, his eyes were so heavy.

When Nazir was done, he pulled out a chair from the table and dragged it over to the hearth, twisting it round so its back was facing the flames. Then he straddled it, leaning his front against the back of the chair and holding his plate of food out in front of him.

“Is it always like this?” he asked. Mathyas threw a sideways look at him.

“My sleeping?”

Nazir nodded and took a bite out of his bread.

Mathyas was silent for a few moments as he thought it over. “Back at home,” he said eventually. “I… I had things I could do to keep it under control. But when I’m stressed… it gets away from me.”

Nazir swallowed his mouthful and put the bread back on his plate. “Are you stressed, Mathyas?”

He laughed bitterly. “What do you think?”

“What is it you’re stressed about?”

Mathyas fell silent, turning away from Nazir and looking back into the flames. Where to begin? He was stressed about his future; whether he’d ever be able to escape this cult and return to Morrowind, or whether this was his life now. He was stressed about being made to kill again. He was stressed about his cousins; Cassathra and the fact she would undoubtedly be blaming herself, Raydrin and his self-destructive tendencies in the face of loss. And he was stressed about his mother. What would she be thinking? She’d lost her child, her only heir. Inevitably she and his uncle would be facing pressure from the House to give up their council seats now that no-one was there to inherit them. Mathyas would never forgive himself for the grief he was putting her through.

His eyes slid back over to Nazir, who was watching him carefully as he chewed on his bread. In Mathyas’ tired state, the temptation to just unload on him was overwhelming. But he was awake enough to rein it in. He’d keep it simple, stick to what Nazir would actually be able to help with.

“How do you justify this to yourself?” he asked softly.

Nazir tilted his head to one side. “What do you mean?”

“Killing,” said Mathyas. “For money.”

He regretted those words as soon as they left him. What a stupid fucking question. It wasn’t like Nazir would have given much thought to the moral justifiability of his actions; for all his niceties, he was still an assassin. By choice. And now Mathyas had gone and made his own feelings on the matter abundantly clear.

Thankfully, Nazir’s reaction was fairly neutral. He raised one eyebrow at Mathyas.

“I would have thought a Dark Elf of all people would be comfortable with the idea,” he said coolly, before pausing for a moment in order to finish his bread. Mathyas was silent as he waited for Nazir to elaborate. “Are Morag Tong assassinations not sanctioned in Morrowind?”

Mathyas snorted. “The Morag Tong limits its activities to the political sphere,” he said. “They don’t accept contracts on civilians as a rule.”

Nazir brushed some of the crumbs in his lap onto the empty plate and then laid it on the floor beside him. He cleared his throat.

“Have you ever been to an execution, Mathyas?” he asked. Mathyas hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. “Did you ever wonder whether the headsman was asking himself; does this person deserve to die?”

Mathyas was silent. In truth, the answer was no; he was usually preoccupied with working out his own answer to that question.  

“It is not the headsman’s job to decide,” Nazir went on. “Like the Morag Tong, he is simply a tool of the state. He does his job, and he goes home. If he questioned the justifiability of his actions, we would not have any headsmen.”

“But that’s different,” said Mathyas. “There’s procedure, process. A lot has to happen before someone is sentenced. It’s not just someone’s whim.”

“Is that true?” Nazir shot him a look. “Does procedure guarantee justice? Can you honestly say of every execution you’ve been to that the person on the block deserved to die?”

Mathyas was about to reply when an image suddenly flashed in his mind; a dark-haired blind woman, kneeling hunched over a wooden block, tears streaming from her unseeing eyes. He swallowed. Helgen felt like a lifetime ago, now. In many ways, it was.

“Reduced to its bare essentials, the ‘state’ is nothing but a collection of high-powered individuals exerting their will over society. They and they alone are legally entitled to decide who is and who isn’t deserving of death.” Nazir’s gaze was fixed on the fire, his stare hard. “The Brotherhood takes that power away from the state and places it back in the hands of the people.”

Mathyas scoffed. “That’s a pretty fucked up way of looking at it. Empowerment of the individual shouldn’t come at the expense of someone’s life.”

Nazir looked up again. “Mathyas,” he said, firmly but gently, “you’d be wise not to delve into this question too deeply. I don’t think you’re going to find the justification you’re looking for.”

Mathyas held his gaze for a moment or two, but then groaned, leaning forwards and hanging his head in his hands. He heard Nazir sigh, followed by the scraping of wood over stone as the Redguard shuffled his chair towards him.

“All right,” said Nazir, “think of it this way. Do you feel guilty for killing Grelod?”

Mathyas twisted his neck slightly, looking up at Nazir from one eye. Then he shook his head.

“Because you think she was deserving, correct?”

He nodded.

“That was a decision you made yourself.” Nazir prodded him in the shoulder. “It wasn’t an inherent quality of Grelod’s person. And there’ll be people out there who’d disagree with your assessment of her, and who’s to say which assessment is correct?”

Mathyas sat up with a sigh, scrubbing a hand through his already dishevelled hair. He wasn’t one to have questioned his own moral principles much; he’d grown up surrounded by the absolutism of the New Temple, and the Redoran belief that divine law was necessary to know right from wrong. Though he was by no means an absolutist to the same extent, he generally tended to go with his gut feeling. Morality was obvious, surely? Mathyas couldn’t imagine anyone looking at a woman who abused the children in her care to the extent that Grelod did and making a positive assessment of her.

“I have rarely had to kill someone who I didn’t think was, at least in some capacity, deserving,” Nazir continued. “Not many people are prepared to perform the Black Sacrament in the name of a ‘whim’. If they hire our services, they do so for the same reason you killed Grelod; they make an assessment of someone, and they decide that person deserves to die. That decision is theirs and theirs alone.”

Mathyas found himself unable to hold Nazir’s gaze, but before his eyes could slide away completely, Nazir prodded him in the shoulder again and they snapped straight back up.

“As an assassin,” he said, “you are simply paid to give effect to their decision, because you have the requisite skillset. You are a weapon, and they are its user. The guilt—or lack thereof—lies with them.”

Nazir’s human irises were a warm honey brown, nearly swallowed by the black of his pupils in the low light. Those eyes were flicking from side to side, searching Mathyas’ own.

“Does that help?” he asked.

Mathyas sighed, finally tearing his gaze away and pressing his fingers to the growing headache in his temples.

“It’s an awful lot of mental acrobatics,” he said. “But... I suppose it’s given me some food for thought, at least.”

“Good.” Nazir got to his feet, then, and Mathyas watched him as he tucked his chair back under the table and added his plate to the growing stack of dirty dishes on the wooden countertop. Before he left, he stopped and turned to face him. “And Mathyas,” he said; “try and get your sleeping under control soon. A tired assassin is a dead assassin.”

Mathyas looked away. Like it was that easy.

He waited for Nazir’s footsteps to fade out of earshot and then finished off his tea, now lukewarm and bitter. His own feet were heavy as he dragged himself back up to his room.

Food for thought. Indeed. At this rate, Mathyas didn’t feel like he was ever going to fall asleep again.

Notes:

thanks for reading and to my lovely beta readers for all their help with this chapter! i hope you enjoyed it <3

just as a warning, for the next two or three chapters i will be moving to a biweekly posting schedule instead of every week. i hit a bit of a roadblock with my current chapter and have been quite unmotivated to write these last few weeks, which combined with a summer internship i've been busy with and having to prepare for moving to germany next month, has resulted in my backlog of completed chapters slowly dwindling. For my own peace of mind i like to be writing 7 or 8 chapters ahead of what i'm posting, so the slower posting schedule will be in place until i catch back up. i apologize for the longer wait times!

Chapter 16: Ustengrav

Hjaalmarch, Skyrim, 21st Frostfall

“Ugh,” hissed Jórunn from somewhere over Raydrin’s shoulder, her exclamation succeeded immediately by a loud slap. “These fucking bugs are driving me insane.”  

Raydrin grimaced in agreement, swatting absently through the faint cloud of gnats currently swarming them both. The salt marshes of Morthal were proving to be just as unpleasant as he’d anticipated. The smell was obnoxious, the insects persistent and numerous, and the deergrass terrain was wreaking havoc on his ankles. He couldn't put his foot down anywhere without risking the ground giving way beneath him, and he'd been soaked up to his knees since that morning. The blisters were going to be a nightmare, he could tell.

They had set off into Drajkmyr Marsh at dawn, having spent the night in one of Morthal’s few inns. Morthal was a dreary, unwelcoming little city, but Raydrin supposed that its character was inevitable given the locale. The swamps of Hjaalmarch were cold and wet, shrouded in a persistent fog, and they could boast neither beauty nor utility. Why anyone would build a city here was beyond him.

Jórunn suddenly cried out beside him, tugging downwards on his arm as she stumbled forwards with a splash. Raydrin lurched out to steady her, pulling her to her feet and out of the shallow bog.

“Shit, sorry. Are you alright?”

She gave nothing in the way of response besides an exasperated huff. But her grip on his arm was tighter as they pressed onwards, and Raydrin took greater care in picking out their route.

They didn’t spend long stopping for lunch. The midges were unbearable when they sat still, and they hadn’t been able to find somewhere dry.

“How is this worse than the climb up to High Hrothgar?” muttered Jórunn bitterly. She tugged her hood forwards, casting a dark shadow across the cut of her brow.

Raydrin hummed in agreement. “I miss Blacklight,” he said. “It was so dry.”

Sometime in the late afternoon, when dusk was drawing in, Raydrin saw it through the fog—though it wasn’t until they were standing before it that he recognized it for what it was.

“I think…” he began, tugging his arm away from Jórunn’s grasp and clambering tentatively up the side of the entrance, “…this might be Ustengrav.”

Ustengrav was a large, moss-covered mound of stone, built by human hands, which gave way in its centre to a deep, hollow opening. Stone tablets jutting from the wall formed a staircase of sorts, curving round the inside of the hole and leading to its base.

“Well, Ustengrav smells vile,” said Jórunn from behind him. “What is that?”

Raydrin saw it then. He had to crane his neck a little, but tucked away under the steps was a pair of feet, and presumably beyond that would be a pair of legs and then the rest of the body. A grimace shuddered through him. He held a hand up to his nose.

“It looks like Ustengrav is home to some slightly fresher corpses than we were expecting,” he said, climbing back down the side of the mound and nudging Jórunn’s arm. “I say we make camp a little distance away and just steer clear of it tomorrow morning.”

Jórunn nodded grimly.

No sooner had they taken their first few steps than a bolt of fire suddenly shot past their faces, barely missing them and leaving a lingering heat in its wake.

“Fuck,” Raydrin swore, looking over his shoulder to find three people running towards them. ‘Running’ was maybe the wrong word; one of them was running, the tallest, an Altmer clad in inky black mage’s robes. But the other two, both humans, were almost… staggering. They travelled with a surprising speed given the jerkiness of their movements, and Raydrin had a horrible feeling he knew the reason why.

He heard Jórunn cast Aura Whisper under her breath and pulled her suddenly to one side when the mage threw another fire bolt.

“One mage and two fighters,” he told her breathlessly as they broke out into a run. “I think the fighters are reanimated. So we should focus on the mage.”

Jórunn cursed. Raydrin tossed another glance over his shoulder, seeing that the Altmer had stopped a fair distance away but that the fighters were still hot on their heels. Did corpses tire out? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

He fell forwards suddenly when a great, invisible force burst into existence somewhere behind him. It was seconds later before Raydrin realized what had happened; Jórunn had Shouted over her shoulder, flinging the two fighters backwards but with the unfortunate side effect of an almost equal and opposite reaction.

“Sorry,” Jórunn apologized, gripping his arm with both hands and hoisting him to his feet. “I’ll get better at that.”

“I’ll go deal with the fighters,” he said. “Er—stay ethereal, alright?”

Jórunn nodded and Raydrin took off in the opposite direction, not wanting to lose the advantage of their enemies being stunned. The thralls were jerkily pulling themselves to their feet and in the distance Raydrin could see the necromancer’s hands twisting like a puppeteer’s as he manipulated their limbs. It made his stomach turn. But it wasn’t difficult to put them out of their misery; in two swift arcs he’d sliced through the meat of their necks, and their heads fell to the damp earth with consecutive thuds. It wasn’t a dignified death, but it would be permanent this time.

He turned around, searching for the mage. The black silhouette was now scampering away from him, his long, gangly limbs flailing around as he hopped across the bogs.

“Shit,” Raydrin hissed, reaching for his bow. He’d never been the best archer in the family—Mathyas had always been the one to claim that title—but he’d be damned if he let a necromancer get away so easily.

The Altmer’s movements were too jerky to risk aiming for the head, but he was stupid enough to be running in a straight line. Raydrin drew his arrow, aimed, and fired an easy shot into the mage’s shoulder. He fell onto his front with a cry.

It wouldn’t have killed him—and Raydrin wanted his arrow back. He jogged through the marsh and found the Altmer crawling on his front through the deergrass, dragging himself forwards with his uninjured arm and grimacing in pain with each movement.

Raydrin placed his foot on the small of the Altmer’s back, pushing him into the wet earth with a squelch.

“P—please,” the Altmer gasped, his face twisted with pain, “show mercy.”

“What are you doing here?” Raydrin asked, leaning his weight forwards. “Are there others?”

“I’m—” the Altmer started, straining with the effort it took to punch out each word, “not telling—you—anything—greyskin.”

A crackling noise sounded, drawing Raydrin’s attention to the Altmer’s free hand. It was stretched out in front of him, blackened with mud, and what looked like the beginning of a frost spell was dancing between his fingers. Raydrin instinctively reached for the hilt of his sword, but the spell puttered out only moments later.

“You've no magicka left." Raydrin grasped the arrow near its base and pushed it deeper into the meat of the Altmer’s shoulder, twisting it slightly and wrenching a strangled cry from the Mer. “Are. There. Others?”

“Stop!” the Altmer begged, “please, I— there are others. Inside the ruin—argh!”

He cut himself off when Raydrin gave the arrow another twist. “How many?”

“Seven of us,” the Altmer sobbed. His face was young, his cheeks dusted with downy hairs. “There are six others inside. Please,” he shuddered, “spare me.”

Raydrin yanked the arrow from the Mer’s shoulder and cast it aside. Then he drew his sword, holding it over the necromancer’s back. “Death is a kinder fate than you deserve,” he muttered, plunging the blade downwards. The Altmer fell still, silent save for a short, hoarse wheeze.

There came a muttered curse from somewhere behind him.

Raydrin turned over his shoulder to find Jórunn standing a few feet away, cane in hand and expression oddly neutral.

“Are you all right?” he asked, picking his arrow up off the ground and wiping it on the Altmer’s robes.

Jórunn was silent for a few moments. “I’m fine,” she said eventually, carefully, rolling her cane between her palms. “It wasn’t like I really had to do much.”

“Shouting the fighters down earlier was a good call,” said Raydrin. “It was probably seeing that that made this guy nearly shit himself.”

Jórunn raised an eyebrow. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I’ve never seen you so…”

She trailed off.

Raydrin swallowed nervously.

“I just hate necromancers,” he explained after a moment’s thought. “Defiling a person’s body like that. It’s foul.”

Jórunn didn’t respond straight away. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“It’s getting dark,” said Raydrin. “And he said there are more of them hiding in the ruin. We should get out of here before they come looking for their friend.”

Jórunn nodded, holding out her hand. “Agreed,” she said, smiling faintly as he gave her his arm. “I don’t want to find out what swamp creatures are attracted to the bodies.”

Raydrin wrinkled his nose. They walked for a further twenty minutes or so before coming to a stop when they felt a comfortable distance away. Then they pitched their tent on the flattened peak of a small knoll—the soil was dryer there—and ate a cold dinner with no fire.

“I think there’ll be a fair amount of fighting tomorrow,” Raydrin said when they were bundled up in their tent. “My best guess is that the ruin used to be occupied by bandits and the necromancers only recently moved in.”

Jórunn nodded from where she was lying beside him—she was on her back, her hands folded across her stomach. “So lots of reanimated corpses to fight,” she said, resigned and grim.

“Unfortunately,” said Raydrin. “And if Ustengrav is anything like Bleak Falls Barrow, there’ll be some much older corpses deeper down.”

They spent a little while talking about tactics. The Greybeards had not deigned to teach Jórunn the fire breathing Shout she’d used on the way up to High Hrothgar, but the two of them agreed then that she would try to remember it if she could. Raydrin was just going over the short-form names they’d invented for each of Jórunn’s Shouts when he stopped and faltered mid-sentence, glancing upwards.

“Everything all right?” asked Jórunn.

Raydrin was silent for a dense moment. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I just… I thought I heard a twig snap.”

“You’ve been saying things like that for a while now.” Jórunn rolled onto her side, facing him. She propped her elbow on the pillow and laid her head in her hand, her dark hair falling in loose waves around her forearm. “Ever since Ivarstead, actually.”

“Have I?” Raydrin dragged a hand down his face. “I’m sorry. I think I’m just being paranoid.”

“Is there something you think we should be paranoid about?”

Her voice was gentle. The question seemed like a genuine attempt to help, to try and get to the root of what was bothering him. But it occurred to Raydrin then that his paranoia—his increasingly persistent suspicion that they were being watched—was likely just a symptom of long-term withdrawal, and it wasn’t like he could tell her that. He dreaded to imagine what she’d think of him if she knew.

“No,” he said, trying to reassure her. “I think we’ll be fine. It’s just me.”

Jórunn seemed reluctant to accept that. But she acquiesced a few moments later with a hesitant nod. “Okay.”

“We should get some rest,” said Raydrin, reaching for their small oil lamp and blowing out the flame inside. “Hard day tomorrow.”

In the darkness, he could just about make out her shape as she slid downwards into her bedroll, laying her head against the small, uncomfortable travel pillow. He did the same, watching her features slowly become clearer as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

“Night, Raydrin,” she said softly, closing her eyes.

“Night, Jórunn,” he said in return. But it was a long while before he fell asleep.

They awoke the next day with the sunrise. Raydrin didn’t say it, but he was relieved to find that all of their things were still accounted for. He made a hot breakfast for them both—now less worried about the fire giving away their location—and then they packed up their things, beginning the short trek back to Ustengrav.

“We should leave our things here,” said Raydrin when they were standing before the barrow’s entrance. A few feet away, the corpse he’d seen yesterday was hovering annoyingly in his periphery, constantly drawing his gaze over despite his revulsion. The smell was cloying in his nostrils, the corpse having progressed to a moderate stage of decay. He imagined the swampy air helped to accelerate the process. It was swollen and bloated, a horrible greyish colour that had no place on human skin. Raydrin tore his eyes away.

“Good idea,” said Jórunn, but her voice was muffled from where she was covering her nose with one hand. “Is there somewhere we can leave our packs?” she asked. “Somewhere… away from the body?”

“There’s a chest here,” said Raydrin, gaze sliding towards it. “Let me see if it’s open.”

Taking care to steer clear of the body, Raydrin shucked off his pack and circled round to the chest, finding himself pleased to discover that it was unlocked. It had been entirely depleted of its contents, so there was ample room for their things. They removed all of their non-essentials, putting the remainder of their things into one pack which Raydrin volunteered to carry through the ruin. But as he was loading the chest, he found his eyes constantly drifting upwards to the corpse, giving in to an inexplicable compulsion to satisfy some morbid curiosity. There was something about it that just felt… off.

He was getting back to his feet when it hit him. There was no blood surrounding the body—there was no visible wound or injury either, no evidence at all that he’d died at the hands of another. Natural causes, then? A dark liquid clung to the skin around his mouth, not dark enough to be blood—perhaps it was vomit.

Raydrin studied it closely, giving into the compulsion wholesale. The body was surrounded by barrels, on which a few loose items were scattered: unlit lanterns, rotting scraps of food, several bottles. Most of the bottles were empty, but a couple were full. Raydrin’s heart stopped. The liquid inside them was a dark, opaque purple. Only one liquid in Tamriel was that colour, and it was the one liquid that could explain the corpse at his feet.

Raydrin reached for one of the bottles, quietly removing the cork and holding it up to his nose. The smell struck at something deep in his gut, fanning the flames of a longing he hadn’t felt this intensely in a while. He exhaled slowly—an instinct, a reflex—and imagined vaguely that that scent was in his lungs, in his throat, pouring from his mouth and nostrils and streaming through his blood.

This wasn’t the good stuff. This was skooma in its liquid form, processed and diluted like he’d drunk in the beginning, back in the days when it was still enough to get him high. But even then… even coming from this weak, shitty drink… that scent was still intoxicating. Still beautiful. Still the most beautiful thing he’d ever tasted.

“Raydrin?”

He shuddered, turning over his shoulder to find Jórunn standing a few feet behind him. Her dark brows were creased with concern, but her voice sounded so loud, invasive almost. How had he forgotten that she was there?

Raydrin looked back down to the person at his feet. It made sense now. Could this have been him? A bloated grey corpse with vomit on its lips, whose final moments were spent experiencing a happiness so fake and artificial and yet at the same time the closest thing to reality Raydrin was convinced he’d ever felt?

This man died alone in the middle of a swamp. That could have been him.

But that wasn’t enough to stop him from grabbing the other bottle and shoving them both quickly into his pack.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding far away from himself. “I just… um…”

Jórunn raised an eyebrow at him. He felt in a daze.

“Just thinking.”

She huffed. “Well, when you’re done, can we get out of here? The smell is making me feel sick.”

Raydrin nodded out of habit before realizing his mistake, saying, “Yes,” instead. He hiked their pack up onto his back and nudged her side, feeling her fingers snake upwards from his wrist to his arm. It was instinct and muscle memory—not thought—that had him tugging her forwards.

“Raydrin, are you all right? You seem… off.”

“I’m fine,” he lied. “Thanks, though.”

The door to Ustengrav stood before them, wooden with swirling metallic accents. Raydrin automatically went to open it, but he stopped at the last second, hesitating—he’d had a plan, hadn’t he? What was it?

“We’ll, um… we’ll go in quietly.” His voice was trembling and he grimaced at how obvious it was. “The necromancers might be on guard, and we don’t know how deep inside the ruin they’ll be.” Jórunn nodded. “But assuming we don’t run into them immediately, you can cast Aura Whisper and we’ll try and be cautious about it.”

“Sounds good,” she nodded.

Raydrin took a deep breath—a vain attempt to calm his racing heart—and pushed on the old doors. They gave way easily under his hands.

“One second,” he said once the doors were shut behind them, using his spare hand to lightly touch Jórunn’s own where it was wrapped around his arm. “I— I need a few seconds for my eyes to adjust.”

“Is it dark?” she asked.

“Very.”

Jórunn sniffed. “Gods, if anything, it smells even worse down here.”

She was right; it was damp and musty, but beneath that was the same putrid stench they’d been subjected to outside. Raydrin grimaced when a little further down the stone slope, he saw the body of yet another bandit, this one lying in a splatter of dark brown blood. The lone torch on the walls of the cave cast harsh shadows over the planes of his face.

“More dead bandits,” he murmured, pulling his arm from Jórunn’s grasp in order to remove the torch from its wall fixture. “But at least the necromancers were nice enough to light the way for us.”

Jórunn snorted as he came back to join her. “Laas yah nir,” he heard her whisper under her breath, in a voice that didn’t sound quite like hers.

“Feel anything?”

Her face was scrunched up in concentration, her skin a warm orange under the flickering torchlight. “Yes,” she said. “It’s faint, though—they’re far away. Two people.”

“Okay,” said Raydrin. “That shouldn’t be too bad. Um… we’re heading down a slope now. The ground is a little uneven.”

Jórunn nodded. They began their descent.

Raydrin felt sick. What was he doing? He’d taken advantage of Jórunn’s blindness and pocketed a dangerous potion right in front of her, only to then turn around and lie blatantly to her face.

He didn’t know why he’d kept it. It wasn’t like he actually wanted to use again. He should just take the bottles out of his pack and throw them at the wall, let them smash, let the skooma ooze out and seep between the cracks of stone. Forget he ever found it. Better yet, he should tell her the truth and apologize. There ought to be no secrets between them.

That idea was quickly cast aside; the thought of telling Jórunn made Raydrin feel physically nauseous. He knew he couldn’t do that—not yet, in any case. But at the very least he could get rid of the skooma. He had that strength. He’d gone nearly three months without it and he was doing fine. He didn’t need it anymore. He didn’t.

The bottom of the slope led them to a short flight of steps, and beyond that, into a great cavern. Small groups of candles formed odd pockets of light, but the space was otherwise dark, lit only by the flames of Raydrin’s torch. As they passed a large pillar in the centre of the cavern, his light illuminated the body of another bandit, propped up against it. Maybe the necromancers had done them a favour after all.

They stopped by the pillar, hearing voices up ahead. Jórunn squeezed his arm to let him know she’d heard them too.

It seemed they still had the advantage of stealth. Raydrin tapped Jórunn’s thigh twice, a signal for her to let go of his arm. Then he handed her his torch, confident that the pillar was wide enough to shield the light from view. He removed his pack and reached for his bow, and then—after a quick glance around the side of the pillar to find two mages in the distance, maybe a hundred or so feet away—took position in the shadows.

Raydrin notched an arrow and slowly drew the string back to his cheek, sizing the pair of them up and trying to work out which one would be harder to deal with up-front. Both were young and slight by the looks of them, similar to the Altmer he’d killed yesterday. But he only had one shot.

He exhaled slowly and released the string, relaxing when a split second later one of the mages crumpled to the ground, an arrow embedded in their skull. The other whipped their head in his direction, already summoning a spell to their palms.

“One down!” he hissed, sliding back round the pillar just in time to avoid the ice bolt shooting past him. He took the torch from Jórunn’s hand and replaced it with his own, pulling her with him into the open space. The mage was reanimating the bodies of nearby bandits—leaving their friend untouched, he noticed—but before they could finish they were blown over by Jórunn’s Shout.

“Go ethereal!” he yelled over his shoulder, drawing his sword and sprinting towards the mage. They were scrabbling to their feet and launching another ice bolt at him as soon as they were up. He swiped at it with his blade, shattering it before it could land. By then he was nearing them, and they backed up against a stone table, knocking a tankard to the floor.

“W—what kind of magic…?” they stammered, glancing furtively over his shoulder in search of Jórunn. They were another Altmer, a woman with red hair. A frost spell burst forth from her hands, a last-ditch attempt at defending herself. A horrible numbing sensation spread out from the centre of Raydrin’s chest, but it wasn’t enough to incapacitate him. A second later and he was swinging his sword in an arc across her torso, slashing her open from hip to shoulder. Her cry was cut short and she hinged backwards onto the table.

Raydrin groaned, his sword clattering to the ground. The frost spell would wear off, he knew, but until it did, his chest felt like thousands of tiny splinters had lodged under his skin.

“Are you okay?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned with a grimace to find Jórunn.

“All good,” he wheezed. “I just need a moment before we carry on.”

“I don’t think we have a moment,” she said. “There are four more heading towards us.” Then she scrunched up her face. “Five, now.”

“Ugh,” Raydrin spat, reaching for his sword. “Are you still good to Shout?”

Jórunn tended to feel sick after Shouting a few times in quick succession. He didn’t want her to overdo it.

She looked grim. “I’ll have to be.”

He heard footsteps and muffled voices growing rapidly in volume. Raydrin turned and saw torchlight flickering on the walls of a tunnel, an opening off to the side of the chamber that he hadn’t seen on his way in. He lowered himself into a fighting stance, flexing the muscles in his back.

“Tell me when,” said Jórunn.

“I will,” he replied.

Seconds later a group of four mages burst into the chamber, reanimated bandit in tow.

“Now!” he yelled, and with a Fus the group was flung back into the cave wall. That covered two of the mages; they landed on the ground with dull thuds and did not stir, and though they were unlikely to be dead, the impact had at least knocked them out. The other two were pulling themselves to their feet with low groans, giving Raydrin time to swoop in and dispatch the bandit.

He cried out suddenly when a blast of something hot encased his shoulder, realizing a second later that the material of his gambeson had caught alight. Raydrin swore and dropped his sword, furiously trying to pat out the flames. He thanked the Three he was wearing leather gloves, then wondered to himself what kind of idiot would use flame magic against a Dunmer.

He turned, finding himself face to face with… well, another Dunmer. That made sense; from the little he knew about magic, he at least knew that his kind had an affinity for fire-based spells. He had no time to pick up his sword again, but his torch would serve as a blunt weapon. Before the mage could cast another spell, Raydrin gripped the torch in both hands and clubbed him over the head.

Where was the fourth? Raydrin glanced around, eyes landing on a human woman whose hands were twisting in that familiar puppeteer-style. It was a reanimation spell—but he’d decapitated the bandit they’d come in with. Who, then…?

Shit. “Jórunn!” he cried, twisting round to see the two mages they’d killed earlier slowly staggering to their feet. “Go ethereal! Now!”

She immediately obeyed, her physical form flickering out like a candle in the wind. It still freaked him out to see her like that, just a faint, shimmering outline. But she’d be safe for the time being.

Raydrin turned back to the necromancer, taking advantage of her surprise to knock his torch into the side of her head. She crumpled to the ground, giving him time to retrieve his sword and drive it through her abdomen before she could stand. To make it quick, he then sliced through her neck as well, doing the same to the two Jórunn had knocked out earlier.

He spat, looking around and surveying the damage. The two corpses by Jórunn had fallen where they stood, but there was no sign of his companion anywhere.

“Jórunn?” he called.

It was a few seconds more before she flickered into view. She doubled over promptly and then vomited onto the cave floor.

“Oh, Jórunn.”

Raydrin sheathed his sword and hurried over to her, putting his free hand between her shoulder blades. She puked a second time, making him grimace.

“It’s all right,” he said gently, rubbing slow circles into her back as she caught her breath. “It’s all right. Take your time.”

Jórunn just groaned feebly. Eventually, once her nausea had subsided a little, she pushed up off her knees into an upright position. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, wiping her glove across her mouth. Her pale skin had lost all trace of colour. “That shouldn’t happen every time.”

Arngeir had explained the side-effect to them both; Jórunn’s dragon soul enabled her to rapidly pick up a skill that most humans took a lifetime to master, which unfortunately meant her mortal body would take a little longer to catch up. It was his hope that her negative physical symptoms would diminish with sustained practice, but until then, they would have to deal with this.

“Do you want water?” he asked. Jórunn nodded meekly.  

Raydrin handed her the torch and jogged over to where he'd left their pack, propping it up against his shins so he could access the opening. He was pushing past rations and their field kit when a flash of purple glinted beneath the torchlight, and Raydrin’s throat suddenly clenched, his heart sinking deep into the pit of his stomach.

The skooma. How could he have forgotten?

He stilled, staring at the bottles for a few moments in quiet resentment. Now would be a good opportunity to throw them aside and be rid of them. He didn’t need to keep them—he didn’t want to use again. He didn’t. He didn’t.

So why couldn’t he just fucking throw them away?

Raydrin grit his jaw and brought Jórunn her waterskin, turning away as she swilled the water around her mouth and spat a few times.

Forget necromancers. He was the scum of the earth.

Jórunn handed the flask back to him and he returned it to their pack.

“Ready?” he asked. “Or do you want to rest a bit longer?”

“A bit longer, I think,” she said. “I’m not sure how useful I’ll be if we come across anything else.”

Raydrin nodded in understanding and led them both to a section of wall—far away from the carnage of their fight—where they could sit for a short while. When Jórunn was feeling well enough to eat something insubstantial, they got to their feet and pressed deeper into the ruin.

The way was lit for the most part. Someone, whether the necromancers or the bandits, had clearly made themselves at home; bedrolls and scraps of furniture were littered about the place, as were storage containers and tables piled with food. Whoever it was, they’d also cleared out the draugr from the area, which rendered the next part of Jórunn and Raydrin’s journey fairly uneventful. They picked their way through the network of tunnels, exploring and making idle chit-chat.

“What’s it like?” asked Jórunn. “Is it similar to Bleak Falls Barrow?”

“I suppose so,” said Raydrin. “It’s mostly just a lot of urns.”

Jórunn hummed. Raydrin realized guiltily that she was probably expecting more than that, so he cleared his throat and continued.

“But bits of it are beautiful, too,” he said. “Um… there are these swirling patterns carved into the stone, everywhere you look.” He paused for a moment and then laughed humourlessly. “I almost feel guilty.”

“What for?”

“This is a tomb,” he said. “Whoever built it clearly held their dead in high regard. And we’re just traipsing through it.”

Jórunn offered nothing in response.

It wasn’t long before they reached the uninhabited sections of the ruin; darkness crept in and they found themselves reliant on the little ring of light provided by Raydrin’s torch, beyond which there was only solid, impenetrable black. Raydrin was glad to have Jórunn with him, just as he’d been glad to have Leorn and Cassathra with him on the journey through Bleak Falls Barrow. It wasn’t like he was afraid of the dark, but he knew now the sorts of things that could be lurking there, and these he had good reason to be afraid of. Not that he shared this with Jórunn.

Draugr were slow, clumsy and loud, and unlike living beings, their bodies lacked structural integrity. Raydrin had explained this to Jórunn the evening before in the interest of calming her nerves. But the ease with which the creatures could be killed did little to alleviate the horror of coming face to face with the walking remains of what had once been a person, their bodies rotted and decayed, hollow eye-sockets glinting from the dark with the unnatural blue of undeath.

Jórunn’s blindness offered a rare advantage in this regard. But that didn’t stop her hand from clenching around his arm when the eery silence was shattered suddenly by the crack of a sarcophagus lid bursting open, followed by the guttural chattering of the creature’s rotted vocal cords coming back to life.

“Laas,” Jórunn squeaked.

“Don’t panic,” breathed Raydrin, drawing his sword. “Where is it?”

“Straight ahead,” said Jórunn. The darkness rustled, shuffling footsteps getting closer. “There’s two of them.”

“Wait for my signal,” he said, lifting his torch up higher. And then, at the first glint of blue: “Now!”

“Fus!”

They staggered back together—but kept their footing this time—and the two draugr released some garbled imitation of a shriek as they were flung backwards into the darkness. Jórunn evaporated into nothing and Raydrin swept forwards, frantically waving his torch around in search of their enemies.

The first he found with its neck at a ninety-degree angle, hauling itself clumsily to its feet, battleaxe in hand. Raydrin severed what remained of its neck and then through the wrist clutching onto the axe, planting a kick into its gut and sending it back onto the ground. He stomped through its middle until he felt bone snap, but had no time to make sure it was dead before he heard something lumbering up behind him. He spun round to find the rotted mess of the other draugr’s visage bursting from the shadows and its rusted sword slashing at him from the side.

He parried the cut and swung his torch up with his other arm, mashing the flames into the side of its face. The draugr’s dry, withered flesh caught instantly alight and it staggered backwards, hissing and sputtering, grasping at its face, which gave Raydrin the opportunity to duck forwards and slice through its middle.

It collapsed onto the floor in two halves—torso first, legs second—and then fell still.

The flames crackled away.

 

---

 

It got easier; their second encounter was less terrifying than the first, and their third encounter less terrifying than the second, until eventually they found themselves lapsing into a confident rhythm. Jórunn’s Shouting made all the difference. They figured out that she could detect the draugr before they even awoke, enabling Raydrin on a couple of instances to sneak up on and kill them without ever having to engage in an open fight. Otherwise, throwing them into a wall with Jórunn’s Force Shout proved to be a particularly effective method of elimination.

As they progressed through the ruin, Ustengrav opened itself up to them like a flower, revealing the beauty that lay hidden in its depths. The narrow, winding tunnels fed into a gargantuan underground cavern at the heart of the ruin, big enough to contain several palaces and illuminated from above by a great fissure in the stone. At the cavern’s base was what appeared to be an underground river of sorts, replenished by a small waterfall flowing from the rock face. Ancient pine trees—some of them nearly half the height of the cavern—stretched upwards from the ground, a rare sight of life in this place of death and stone.

It seemed that the tomb had been built into the cavern deliberately, with great, artificial columns of stone holding it up alongside the naturally occurring pillars. Raydrin and Jórunn wove in and out of the cavern all afternoon, traversing narrow stone walkways that connected each of the pillars and gradually heading downwards. Raydrin did his best to describe the phenomenon to Jórunn in a way that she could understand with her lack of a visual framework, but he struggled to find words that could adequately convey the beauty of it.

As the shafts of sunlight from above gave way to dusky blues, the walkways deposited them finally at the cavern’s base.

If the grotto looked beautiful from above, that was nothing compared to seeing it up close. In the heart of a place as oppressive and claustrophobic as the ruins of Ustengrav, this small grove was a sanctuary, an undiscovered jewel. The emerald green of the moss-covered stone saturated the pool of water in a rich, cerulean glow. A blanket of pine needles cushioned their every step. Leafy ferns hugged the edge of the water, and the gentle splashing of the waterfall lapsed into a steady hum. A fine, dewy mist clung to the picture like the veil of a dream.

“We should have brought the tent,” Raydrin muttered as he led Jórunn through the trees. “But we might be lucky enough to light a fire.”

The grotto was not entirely natural; besides the pool, a mighty curved, stone wall had been built into the rock, at least thirty feet high and etched with inscriptions Raydrin now recognized as Dovahzul. He realized then that he’d seen something similar before; in Bleak Falls Barrow, behind the sarcophagus containing the Dragonstone.

“There’s a wall here with Dovahzul inscribed into it,” he told Jórunn as he pulled her over. A circular stone platform was at the base of the wall and a short set of steps led down from the platform into the pool beside it. The water lapped gently against the stone.

“It might be a word wall,” Jórunn murmured; “Arngeir told me something about these.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “Lead me to it?”

Raydrin did as asked, bringing them to a stop just a foot away from the wall. Jórunn let go of his arm, removed her gloves, and stretched her hands out until they came into contact with the stone, tentatively placing the flat of her palms against it. When she’d got her bearings, she lowered one hand and—using the index and middle finger of the other—started tracing the deep grooves of each rune.

Her brows furrowed with something, but whether it was concentration or confusion, Raydrin didn’t know. He watched her with bated breath as he awaited her reaction.

After tracing a few letters, Jórunn pulled her hand away. “It’s weird,” she said. “I feel… I feel like I can understand it.”

“You can?”

“I don’t know how,” she said. “But… I—I can feel this word is Heyv. Duty.”

Raydrin blinked at her in surprise. “You can feel the letters?”

She shook her head. “It’s not like that,” she said. “They’re just random shapes to me. But when I touch them, it—it’s like I can sense their meaning.” She put her hand back on the wall, brushing her thumb over the rune. “I never learned ‘Heyv’ with Arngeir,” she muttered.

Raydrin studied her carefully for a few moments, trying to gauge her emotions, work out what she was thinking. “Do you want to try reading the whole thing?” he asked.

Jórunn turned to him, silent for a short while as she considered it. Then she gave a small, firm nod. “Lead me to the start?”

Raydrin took her by the hand and did as asked, placing the flat of her palm over what he assumed to be the first letter. Was Dovahzul written from left to right? He knew that Cyrodilic was, even if Dunmeris wasn’t. But that didn’t mean anything.

Jórunn got to work, stretching her hand high above her head and carefully running her fingers over each rune. She was muttering something to herself, too quietly for Raydrin to hear, but he wasn’t sure he’d have understood it if he had. When she was part way along the bottom line—now having to crouch in order to reach it—she suddenly paused and beckoned him over.

“Give me your hand,” she said.

Swallowing, Raydrin crouched beside her and obeyed. Jórunn pressed his fingertips against the wall, over one word in particular. The stone was cold and wet to the touch, but the jagged lines meant nothing to him. He wondered where she was going with this.

“I can tell this word is Feim,” she explained. “‘Fade’—like the first word from Ethereal.”

“What does the rest of it say?”

“I haven’t finished yet,” Jórunn laughed. “Give me another minute.”

Raydrin let her get on with her task, watching patiently as she slowly made her way along the wall. She stopped when she reached the bottom right corner and pushed off her knees to her feet.

“It’s not very interesting,” she told him. “It… hm. I’m not really sure how to translate it.”

Until now, the only language Jórunn could speak had been Cyrodilic—Raydrin supposed that translation would be a new skill to her.

“Forget the words,” he said. “Translation is more about conveying an idea.”

Jórunn scrunched up her face in concentration, still tracing one finger idly against a mossy inscription.

“Well…” she started. “I suppose, basically, it’s a sort of warning… it says that men should live with courage and honour, or they’ll ‘fade unremembered into darkness.’”

Raydrin hummed. “Sounds like a Redoran could have written it,” he said, watching Jórunn’s expression of concentration shift into an amused smile. They were silent for a few moments, until eventually he cleared his throat. “Did Arngeir ever say anything about you being able to, er… ‘read’ like that?”

Jórunn wrinkled her nose. “Not really? He did say that Dragonborns are supposed to be able to understand Dovahzul without having learned it. And that reading it is meant to help them develop a deeper appreciation for the words in each Shout.”

“Do you feel like you got a deeper appreciation for anything?” asked Raydrin.

Jórunn laughed. “Sort of. I suppose it was interesting to see Feim used in context.” She touched the wall again, but then stepped away with a sigh. “I think I’m done here. We… we should make camp.”

Raydrin found a clear patch of earth where they could lay their bedrolls down comfortably. He lit a campfire and positioned their bedrolls either side of it.

“Right,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going for a swim.”

Jórunn looked up from where she was sitting on the edge of her bedroll, warming her hands by the fire.

“Did we bring our wash kits with us?”

“No. Tragically, we left them outside.”

Jórunn sighed. “Oh well,” she said, tugging away the band that held her plait in place and combing through her hair with her fingers. “Bathing with no soap is better than no bathing at all.”

Once her curls were loose, she got to her feet and stepped away from the fire, beginning to strip down to her smalls. Raydrin turned the other way. This was by no means the first time they had bathed together, but still Raydrin tried to avoid looking at her wherever he could. Jórunn was an attractive woman, and he couldn’t risk letting himself getting distracted by… that, not when she was relying on him as her guide. And it felt wrong that he could look at her when he had the privacy afforded by her blindness.

When they had finished undressing, Raydrin led her back to the word wall. He climbed down the steps by himself, stopping when the water was halfway up to his knees, then turned around to face her.

“Give me your hands,” he said softly. She held them out. Raydrin took both of them in his and slowly walked backwards, letting Jórunn set the pace as she found each step and descended into the water. He tried to keep his eyes to her face, but he found his gaze trailing downwards, to the slender column of her neck, the elegant hollow of her clavicles, along to her shoulder and then to the faint, pinkish burn scars hugging her arm and hip—

“Is it shallow enough to stand?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Raydrin, swallowing. “It just comes up to my chest.”

She was waist-deep now but had reached the bottom of the steps. With a splash she lowered herself the rest of the way, nearly landing on him in the process. Raydrin steadied her with a laugh, his hands on her shoulders, but he removed them quickly once she was on her feet.

“Sorry!” she said, her laugh clear and light as a bell. “I didn’t mean to nearly knock you over.”

“It’s a good thing I’m so strong and robust,” said Raydrin. “Might have drowned, otherwise.”

“Oh yeah?” Jórunn grinned. “I’ll have to Shout at you sometime. We’ll see how strong and robust you are then.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” he said. “Genuinely terrifying.”

He ducked his head beneath the water, rinsing the grime from his face and his hair. It had only been a couple of days ago since they’d last been able to bathe—back in their inn in Morthal—but in the meantime Raydrin had traipsed through a swamp and a tomb, and he was glad for the opportunity to wash away the sweat, mud and blood.

He held his head back, gazing upwards. From this angle he was able to see the stars overhead, blinking down at them from the fissure in the stone. It wasn’t yet late; darkness fell early in Frostfall. But it was nice at least to have some sense of time. He’d felt so disoriented emerging from Bleak Falls Barrow.

“It’s not as cold as I was expecting it to be,” he said, absently scrubbing his arms with his hands.

“It’s not cold at all,” Jórunn scoffed, splashing him. “Dunmer are such babies.”

“Ouch.”

When they’d cleaned up as best as they could, they returned quickly to the fire, relying on its warmth to dry themselves off. It came as something of a relief when Jórunn was fully clothed again; she really was a good-looking woman, especially now she was beginning to put on a bit of weight and muscle.

With no cooking supplies and nothing to hunt, they ate a cold, bland dinner and then settled down for the night. Raydrin unstrung his bow and wiped the blood from his sword, ensuring they’d be in good condition for the following day. Jórunn was lying across from him, on the other side of the fire, seemingly gazing into the flames despite him knowing that she couldn’t see them. She was on her stomach, using her crossed forearms as a pillow.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She shifted, blinking as if to remove herself from some daze. “Hm?”

“You did a lot of Shouting today,” Raydrin clarified. “Are you feeling any, ah… side-effects?”

Jórunn thought for a moment. “Not really,” she said. Then she yawned. “I’m just tired, I think.”

“You can sleep, if you want,” he said. “I’m nearly done."

She smiled, turning so that she was on her side and drawing her bedroll all the way up to her neck. “Thanks, Raydrin,” she said. “Night.”

“Night.”

It didn’t take her long to fall asleep; her breathing became slow and steady, her face more relaxed than it was during the day. She must have been exhausted. Raydrin put his things away and watched her for a few moments, forearms resting on his drawn-up knees. The flames cast a warm glow on her skin, flickering shadows on the smooth planes of her face.

It occurred to Raydrin then that if he was going to use the skooma, now was the time to do it. It wasn’t strong stuff; at most, it’d make him feel really good for an hour, then he’d sleep it off and have no ill effects the following morning.

He glanced over to where he’d laid their pack, swallowing. His mouth felt dry. No matter how much he tried to lie to himself, Raydrin missed it so badly. He missed that euphoric feeling, how it sucked away all the bad and made life look so beautiful. He missed not having to care about anything else, being incapable of caring about anything else. It was such a trouble-free existence.

And as much as his mind knew that logically, using skooma was about the worst thing he could possibly do in that moment, his body was having a hard time listening to anything except the urge to satisfy his longing. Raydrin wanted it, was that not enough? Was his desire not a sufficient reason in and of itself, enough to outweigh any considerations of practicality?

He returned his gaze to Jórunn, to her peaceful expression. His stomach sank with the realization that he had no choice but to push that desire aside; Raydrin couldn’t do that to her. As safe as this place felt, they were still in a dangerous ruin. If something were to happen during his high, she’d be almost completely helpless. The thought of anything happening to her was enough to stamp out his growing temptation, so Raydrin slid down into his bedroll with a frustrated grunt. If he had to go to sleep with a crawling sensation beneath his skin, an uncomfortable twisting in his gut, then so be it.

After the longest night of his life, Raydrin awoke to the feeling of sunlight on his face. He rolled over, finding his companion still fast asleep. The fire between them had reduced to embers, but it had warmed them through the night. Raydrin did nothing, deciding to wait for Jórunn to wake up naturally. It was an hour or so before she did.

They ate a small breakfast and Jórunn packed up their bedrolls, whilst Raydrin scattered the stones from the campfire and toed the ash into the ground. He wanted to leave the grotto as untouched as it was when they found it.

When they finished packing their things, Jórunn took Raydrin’s arm and they began their climb back up to the middle level of the cavern. For now, their way was illuminated by the sun from up above, but Raydrin readied another torch for when they inevitably found themselves back in the dark. From there, they continued on their trek, crossing the bridge formed by a naturally-occurring arc of stone and delving deeper into the ruin. It wasn’t long before they came across their first obstacle.

“Fuck’s sake,” said Raydrin. “The way ahead is blocked.”

Jórunn grimaced. “Blocked how?”

“There’s a tunnel up ahead with three metal grates in the way.”

“Three seems a bit excessive.”

Raydrin gave his arm a sharp tug, pulling it from her hand. He was on his way to the tunnel to see if there was any way of opening it from the outside when an odd noise made him stop, and he glanced around in search of its source.

“What was that?” asked Jórunn from behind him.

“I don’t know,” he muttered, still searching. But then he saw it; he was standing next to a small monolith of sorts, a misshapen rock that came up to about his shoulder. Like the rest of the ruin, it was engraved with an intricate swirling pattern, but unlike the rest of the ruin, the grooves were glowing a scarlet red.

“What the…?”

Raydrin stepped back. As he did, the red glow faded away. Simultaneously he heard a loud clanging from the direction of the tunnel, and he turned just in time to see one of the metal grates fall back to the floor.

“Nords and their damn puzzles,” he muttered.

“Have you worked it out?”

“I think so,” he said, coming to stand beside Jórunn and nudging her with his arm. There were two more of the monoliths ahead, three in total. Three stones for three gates.

Raydrin pulled her forwards, stopping when they reached the first. As before, the swirls turned red and a discordant noise—like a badly-made gong—rang out. The first gate opened.

“There are these three stones,” he explained, taking Jórunn's hand and placing it on the stone’s surface, “each corresponding to one of the gates ahead. Standing beside them activates some kind of enchantment and the gate opens.”

“Should I just stay here, then?” she asked. “You can go through and then I’ll move on to the next one.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding, “yes, okay, that should work.” Raydrin pulled her cane from their pack and handed it to her, giving her arm a quick squeeze before he drew away. “I’ll direct you!” he called as he jogged into the tunnel, pausing before the second gate and turning round to face her. Jórunn was still standing by the first stone, an expectant expression on her face and her cane in hand. But hopefully—if his directions were good enough—she wouldn’t need it.

“Meshti,” he muttered to himself, quickly working out the maths. Then, in a louder voice, he called, “alright, turn maybe… thirty degrees to the right?”

Jórunn thought it over for a moment and then did as instructed. She wasn’t exactly facing the second stone, but it was close enough.

“Okay, now take six paces forward.”

She obeyed. As she left the vicinity of the first stone, the gate in front of Raydrin suddenly slammed to the floor. For a brief moment, he was gripped by panic; if something were to go wrong now, he was trapped at the bottom of an ancient ruin between two metal grates with no way of getting out by himself. But he shook his panic away—as long as Jórunn was there with access to the stones, the situation was within their control.

Jórunn jumped slightly at the sudden noise when she activated the second stone, and simultaneously Raydrin heard the gate behind him lift upwards. Part of him felt triumph at their success, but the other part of him was thinking: this is the puzzle the Nords designed to protect one of their revered leaders? It was so… simple.

“Now turn ninety degrees left,” he called, stepping backwards past the second gate. “And another six paces forward.”

They repeated the same process as before and at last Raydrin was past the third gate. He hadn’t really thought this far ahead, but to his relief he didn’t need to; a pull-chain was situated in the wall, and with a sharp tug, all three gates sprung open.

He jogged back to Jórunn, letting her take his arm. “That was easy,” she said. “Although I can’t think how you’d solve that with just one person.”

Raydrin snorted. “Guess we’ll never have to find out.”

They pressed onwards, ascending a long, narrow flight of steps. The further they climbed, the more dread settled in Raydrin’s stomach; in a fane as old as Ustengrav, a few cobwebs were inevitable, but the cobwebs here were much thicker and stickier than the cobwebs one would find in a cupboard. They clung to the walls and floor like netting draped haphazardly across the deck of a fishing trawler. Raydrin found himself reminded distinctly of Bleak Falls Barrow.

He raised his torch a bit higher, bracing himself to swing it at anything that came close.

The stairs opened up into a pitch-black chamber, the natural light from the cavern behind them now gone in its entirety. Raydrin swallowed, trying not to think too hard about what could be lurking beyond the small pool of light at his feet. The shadows were like ink, evaporating around the edge of their torchlight.

A few steps appeared ahead and they climbed them up to a raised platform. They both jumped in surprise when the ground underneath them sank beneath their feet, clicking into place an inch lower.

“B’vehk,” Raydrin swore. He twisted around, shining his torch on the rest of the platform. “Pressure plates,” he hissed.

“As in traps?!” asked Jórunn, her voice hitching with alarm.

“I mean—I assume so. But it doesn’t seem like we actually triggered anything.”

Her grip was a vice around his upper arm. “Can you see others?”

Raydrin swallowed. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “The floor is covered in them.”

“This one could be broken,” said Jórunn. “The others might not be.”

“You’re right,” said Raydrin, pulling his arm away. “Hold this,” he handed her the torch. “And don’t move.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Raydrin got to his knees—careful not to exceed the bounds of their pressure plate—and started rummaging through their pack, searching for something non-essential he could throw as an experiment. It wasn’t long before he realized only one thing fit that description; with a sigh, he reached for one of the skooma bottles, and was about to draw it out when something wet suddenly landed on his shoulder.

“The fuck?” he hissed, recoiling and twisting his neck to look at it. The leather of his jerkin was fizzing and a horrible acidic smell drifted up to his nose. “Shit, I—Jórunn, go ethereal, now!”

“I’m still holding the fucking torch!”

Raydrin got to his feet and grabbed it from her, relieved when a split second later her physical form suddenly vanished from view. He held up the torch in the direction the attack had come from, his stomach turning in revulsion when it illuminated the two big hairy frostbite spiders clinging to the ceiling above them. Their many black, glossy eyes glinted like mirrors in the torchlight.

He waved the torch at them, trying to be menacing, and swapped it to his left hand so he could draw his sword with his right. The spiders recoiled from the light, legs clicking as they scuttled backwards, but one of them flung another glob of venom at him, which Raydrin batted away with his torch. 

“Get back!” he cried. “Muhri madir!”

They seemed to obey his command, but only so one of them could start scuttling down the walls. Raydrin realized with dread that it was coming towards him, but at least this way he could actually swing a hit at it.

It seemed Mephala was smiling down on him that day; before he could get the chance, the spider landed on one of the pressure plates and a burst of flame suddenly erupted around it. It writhed as the fire ate quickly into its delicate flesh, releasing a shrill sort of hissing sound, but the sound soon withered and died. The fire remained, the pressure plate still activated by the spider’s weight.

Raydrin looked back up at the second spider just in time to see it suddenly launch itself off the ceiling at him.

“Fuck!” he yelled, reflexively swinging his torch at it. The spider was knocked to one side and landed a few feet away, but to his alarm just squirmed until it was back on its front and then started scurrying towards him.

It flung a glob of venom at him that landed on his thigh, hissing as it started eating through the leather of his greaves. Raydrin lowered himself into a fighting stance, swinging at the spider at soon as it was within reach. He sliced through the meat of its pincers, casting them to the side, and the spider let out an enraged whistle. Another slice and he cut through its front legs, and then its head. The spider fell still. Raydrin sheathed his sword.

“Raydrin,” said a voice from behind him. A hand was on his shoulder, pulling at him. “Raydrin. Hey. Are you all right?”

Deep breaths were tearing through his lungs, but it was more a result of adrenaline than any kind of physical exertion. He was spun round, coming face to face with Jórunn, who had since emerged from her intangible form. She found his other shoulder with some fumbling and then put her hands on his face.

“Are you all right?” she repeated.

Raydrin nodded feebly, collecting himself as the adrenaline wore off.

“I’m fine,” he said breathlessly. He touched her arm with his free hand, gently easing her hands down. “I’ve— I’ve faced worse.”

Jórunn raised her brows. “You have?”

He nodded. “In Bleak Falls Barrow,” he explained. “It… there was a much bigger one. But then we had Leorn with us, and…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “Anyway. The good news is that I think the rest of these pressure plates are broken.”

Jórunn’s lips parted. “How do you know?”

“The spider didn’t activate any as it ran towards us,” he said. “I think we’re safe on this platform.”

“It’s fire, right?” she asked, wetting her lips. “That the plates trigger?”

“Yes.”

She was quiet for a second or two. “Just how fireproof are you again?”

Raydrin frowned. “I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“I can turn ethereal,” she explained, “and you can make your way through them slowly, working out which ones are broken as you go. Or you can just run really fast and hope for the best.”

“Jórunn—that’s a fucking terrible idea.”

“Do you have anything better?”

He stared at her for a few moments. Then he sighed.

Jórunn slid her hand down to his arm and gave it a tight squeeze. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s head to the edge of the platform and we can work out where we go from there.”

He hoisted their pack onto his shoulders and reluctantly followed her suggestion, grumbling in Dunmeris as they went. At the platform’s edge, his torch illuminated a patch of rubble up ahead, a little island of safety in a sea of fiery death traps.

“Can you go ethereal now?”

Jórunn grimaced but nodded, whispering under her breath and flickering out a second later.

“Right in front of you, there are two steps leading down,” he told her. “After that, take ten paces forward and you’ll hit a pile of rubble at the end. You’ll be safe to materialize there.”

Vaguely he could make out her outline as she followed his instructions, and it occurred to Raydrin then just how much trust this woman was placing in him, day in and day out. He swallowed and shook his thoughts away. When he was satisfied she’d made it to the other side, he began to follow, testing the edge of each plate with his foot until he was confident it was safe to use. It was a slow, tedious process, but gradually he was able to pick out a route. After what felt like an era, they emerged into safety, the pressure plates giving way to plain old stone. Jórunn reached the platform before he did, and by the time he caught up with her, she’d thrown up again.

“That one—” she groaned, “is the fucking worst.”

Raydrin grimaced, rubbing her back in sympathy as they waited for her nausea to diminish. It came as no surprise that the Shout where her flesh and bone temporarily dissolved into Void essence was the one to have the worst physical impact.

When she was feeling better, they continued onwards, Raydrin leading the way with his sword so he could slice through the thick curtains of cobweb. But they were nearing the end; though Raydrin’s view was limited to the small radius of his torchlight, it quickly became apparent that they had emerged into a chamber of a different kind to the rest. They descended a great, wide flight of steps and found themselves on a long stone walkway, bordered on either side by shallow pools of water. From the resounding echo of their footsteps, the chamber was clearly huge.

They faltered suddenly when the stone walkway shuddered beneath their feet, a deep rumbling noise sounding from either side of them.

“Raydrin?” asked Jórunn anxiously, her hand tightening around his arm. Raydrin steadied himself and then held up his torch, trying to illuminate what was going on.

An enormous statue was emerging from the pool of water, hewn from a blackish stone and glistening wetly in the torchlight. A quick glance to his other side and Raydrin saw the same thing happening on their left. The statues were too large and stylized for him to be able to tell what they were, but they could have been birds of some kind, or dragons perhaps. Probably dragons.

When the statues had risen to their full height, the rumbling stopped. The chamber was cast back into silence, save for the rustling of the disturbed water as it lapped against the edges of the walkway.

“What was that?” Jórunn whispered.

“Just some Nord dramatics,” he told her quietly. “Nothing to worry about.”

She released a soft breath and they continued slowly on their way, jaws set and faces grim. At the end of the walkway, the ground opened up onto a landing, in the centre of which was a raised block of stone. An elaborate sarcophagus lay on it, flickering into view as Raydrin approached.

He inhaled sharply. “Jórunn,” he said, “I think this is it.”

“You can see the horn?”

“I can,” he said. He led her up the steps to the raised platform and tugged his arm away, leaning forwards to inspect the horn more closely. The sarcophagus was carved from stone, and at each corner was a dragon head atop a pike, facing outwards. Their teeth were bared, stone lips curled into snarls of fury. In the coffin’s centre, a sculpture of a hand reached upwards, and in its palm lay the horn.

It was a dark, jagged thing, carved from a material he did not recognize.

“There’s a sarcophagus here with ‘Windcaller’ inscribed into it,” Raydrin told her, bending down to trace the letters with his free hand. “But in Daedric, oddly enough.”

“Good to know we came to the right place,” said Jórunn.

Raydrin carefully removed the horn from its resting place, weighing it in his palm. It was surprisingly light for its size.

“Want to hold it?”

Jórunn shrugged. “May as well.”

He handed it to her and she explored it, dragging her palm up and down the length of the horn, running her fingers over its adornments.

“Feels like a horn,” she said after several moments. Raydrin snorted, taking it from her gently.

“Hold the torch for a second,” he said. “I’ll pack it up and we can get going.”

With the horn safely bundled in their pack—wrapped in a soft cloth to prevent it from getting damaged—Jórunn took Raydrin’s arm and they turned back the way they came. Raydrin could only pray that he had remembered the safe route through the flame traps.

 

---

 

The journey back through the ruin was a lot quicker than the journey in had been—by Raydrin’s estimation, it could only have been early evening by the time they made it back to the first chamber. The candles and braziers lit by the necromancers had long since gone out, but the smell was enough for there to be no mistake that their scattered corpses were still right where they’d left them. Raydrin and Jórunn passed through the chamber quickly, eager to be back outside.

“I never thought I’d be so excited to get back to a swamp,” Jórunn grumbled when at last they made it to the ruin’s entrance.

“Just think,” said Raydrin, pulling on the door, “a day from now we’ll be drying off in a warm, cushy inn, then it’s an easy cart ride back to Whiterun.”

Raydrin was more excited for Whiterun than he cared to admit; they’d stayed there on their way up and paid a quick visit to Jorrvaskr to say hello to Sanjir and Leorn, but to Raydrin’s disappointment, Aela had been away on a contract. He was hoping she’d be around this time.

Jórunn hmphed, but the feeling of fresh air on their faces quickly dispelled any grievances she had. Raydrin inhaled deeply, glad to clear the smell of damp from his nose. But something gave him pause; laced beneath the earthiness of the swamp was the familiar scent of… campfire smoke.

Raydrin nudged Jórunn’s side with his elbow as the door fell shut behind them, getting her to stop.

“Be careful,” he said in a lowered voice. “I think there might be someone nearby.”

A quick glance upwards to a plume of grey smoke against the dark night sky confirmed his suspicions.

“There’s an easy way to find out,” Jórunn murmured back, whispering a soft Laas. Raydrin watched with bated breath as he awaited her answer.

Jórunn’s eyes widened. “They’re just up there,” she whispered, pointing over her shoulder with one finger in the direction of the smoke. “One person.”

Raydrin nodded, his jaw set. “Guess we just have to get out of here and hope for the best,” he said, tugging her forwards and in the direction of the steps. “If I tell you to Shout, you Shout.”

Jórunn hummed.

They climbed the steps slowly—in single file, having no room for anything else—with Raydrin’s arm trailing behind him and his wrist clasped in Jórunn’s hand. As they neared the top, the orange glow from the fire quickly seeped into view. Raydrin readied his hand on the hilt of his sword just in case.

A few feet away from the base of the mound, a small figure sat hunched over a campfire, perched on a tree stump with a tent off to their side. They were a woman, human by the looks of it. As the pair of them emerged from the top of Ustengrav’s entrance, she raised her head. A faint smirk settled on her lips, her eyes glinting in the firelight.

“Ah,” she said. “So the Dragonborn and her companion appear at last.”

Jórunn’s hand tightened around his arm. Raydrin grasped the hilt of his sword.

“How do you know who we are?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

The woman spread her hands. Her skin was fair, orange in the firelight and lined with age. Raydrin got the distinct feeling that he’d seen her somewhere before.

“I am no enemy of yours,” she said. Her voice was smooth but firm, her words spoken with the clarity and confidence of someone familiar with authority. “In fact, you may even consider me a friend.”

Neither Raydrin nor Jórunn said anything. In their silence the woman continued.

“My name is Delphine,” she said. “You may not know me, but I can assure you I’m an ally.” She then gestured to two other tree stumps around the fire. “Come, both of you. Take a seat, eat some food, and then I'll tell you why I’m here. There is much we have to discuss.”

Notes:

ironically i think raydrin and jórunn's kill count in this chapter is higher than mathyas' kill count throughout the entire fic.

thanks to my beta readers haley and diana for their help! if you're still following along please do consider leaving a comment, long or short. it'd make a writer's day. <3 and thank you for reading! :)

Chapter 17: Paranoia

“My name is Delphine,” said the stranger. “You may not know me, but I can assure you I’m an ally. Come, both of you. Take a seat, eat some food, and then I’ll tell you why I’m here. There is much we have to discuss.”

Jórunn instinctively squeezed Raydrin’s arm, the only way she could think to communicate without speaking out loud. What was he thinking? Was it a sensible idea to take the woman at her word? The thought that Delphine somehow knew who she and Raydrin were had Jórunn’s every nerve on edge.

“What do you want to do?” she heard Raydrin ask, quietly and close to her ear. It was probably still loud enough for Delphine to hear, but it was clear that the question was not for her.

Jórunn swallowed. Truthfully, she had no idea... but if this woman really was the ally she claimed to be, it seemed foolish to just walk away without even trying to ascertain the truth. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to hear her out."

Raydrin was silent, like that wasn't the answer he was hoping for. 

But he conceded at last. "All right," he muttered. With a gentle tug he was pulling her forwards, towards the heat of the fire. Jórunn could always Shout if the woman tried anything.

Raydrin guided her to sit on what he told her was a tree stump and Jórunn tried to make herself comfortable, though she ended up sitting stiffly and with her hands in her lap because she couldn’t think of anything else to do with them. The fire was a grudging comfort—its heat kept the bugs and the smell of the marsh at bay.

“Can I interest either of you in a bowl of stew?” Delphine asked.

“We’ll be eating our own food until you tell us who you are,” said Raydrin from Jórunn’s right.

Delphine chuckled. “Very wise.”

Jórunn heard the familiar sound of Raydrin rummaging around in their pack, and a few moments later he was asking for her hand so he could pass her some hardtack and dried fruits. Jórunn longed to eat something hot and substantial, but said nothing, knowing that caution was undeniably the best approach here.

“You made it through Ustengrav quickly,” Delphine observed. “And you emerged in one piece, too. I’m impressed.”

“You’ve been waiting for us this whole time?” asked Jórunn.

“You better have a good explanation,” Raydrin hissed before Delphine could respond.

She cleared her throat. “You will have to forgive all the cloak and dagger,” she said, “but I have my reasons. I’ve been following the two of you since Ivarstead.”

Jórunn’s jaw faltered mid-chew, her stomach lurching as the full implications of Delphine’s words sank in. Raydrin swore in Dunmeris at her side. “I knew I wasn’t imagining things."

“Since Ivarstead?” Jórunn repeated. “Why wait until now to reveal yourself?”

“It’s difficult to explain,” said Delphine. “So for now, let’s step back a little. I take it both of you have heard of the Blades?”

The name sounded vaguely familiar to Jórunn, but she wasn’t confident enough in her general knowledge to want to answer. Raydrin's education and familiarity with worldly affairs stepped in to fill her deficiencies. 

“You mean the bodyguards of the old Dragonborn emperors?” he said. “The victims of that, ah... Thalmor head-rolling stunt?”

“Indeed.” Delphine's tone had changed; she sounded a little irritated. “I am one of the few surviving members. For the last twenty-six years, I’ve been living in hiding, trying to escape the Thalmor’s clutches. When I heard a Dragonborn had been found, it seemed too good to be true. I had to be sure it wasn’t a Thalmor ploy... Hence all the cloak and dagger.”

“What changed?” asked Jórunn. “Why are you sure now?”

“You made it through Ustengrav, did you not?” asked Delphine. “The ends of the ruin can only be reached with the Thu’um. The Greybeards haven’t taken on any new students since Ulfric Stormcloak, so for you to have learned it so quickly, you must be Dragonborn.”

Jórunn frowned; she hadn’t really used the Thu’um outside of their fights, which could just have easily been fought without it. She couldn’t think of any point in their travels where the Thu’um had been the only way of progressing.

“What do you mean?” Raydrin asked, clearly thinking the same thing. “We never had to use the Voice to get through the ruin.”

“But what about the gates?” asked Delphine. “You have to be a supernaturally fast sprinter to get through the stones in time.”

It took Jórunn a moment to realize what Delphine was referring to. When it clicked, she let out a long ‘Oh’ of understanding. Beside her Raydrin started laughing, and she joined in, unable to help herself.

“What is it?” asked Delphine. “What’s so funny?”

“You don’t need the Thu’um to solve that puzzle,” Raydrin explained, still chuckling to himself. “You just need a second person. Jórunn and I did it together.”

“In that case,” said Delphine, her already-unamused voice hardening as she spoke, “you better prove to me that you can Shout, and fast.”

Raydrin’s laughter suddenly died. “We don’t have to prove anything to you,” he said. “You still haven't given us reason to trust you.”

“And in case it’s escaped your notice,” Jórunn added, “I’m blind. What business would I have going into a dangerous ruin if I weren’t the Dragonborn?”

“You could be faking for all I know,” said Delphine. Hot anger started pooling in Jórunn’s cheeks. “Or the Thalmor could have deliberately picked you as their plant in the hopes it would throw me off.”

“You little bitch,” Jórunn spat. “How dare you—”

She faltered at the feeling of Raydrin’s hand on her shoulder.

“She isn’t worth it,” he said softly. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Jórunn grit her jaw, breathing deeply in some attempt to stay her anger. She gave in at the squeeze of Raydrin's hand. “Fine,” she said bitterly. Raydrin gave her his arm.

They were heading back the way they came—presumably to collect the rest of their things from where they’d left them in the chest—when behind them, Delphine cleared her throat.

“You’re making a mistake if you leave now,” she said. Raydrin hesitated, bringing Jórunn to a stuttering halt. “If you truly are Dragonborn, the Thalmor won’t be too happy about your return. And it won’t be long before they do something about it.”

Jórunn’s stomach clenched at that. She swallowed.

“As a Blade,” Delphine went on, “it is my sworn duty to serve and protect you. Hear me out. I think we can help each other.”

“Give us one reason to believe a word you’re saying,” said Raydrin, tugging his arm from Jórunn’s hand. From the direction of his voice it sounded as if he'd spun the other way, and awkwardly Jórunn turned to follow.

“Truthfully, there isn’t one,” Delphine admitted. “I have no proof of my claims. But I’ll take you at your word if you take me at mine.”

Jórunn and Raydrin were both silent.

“Think about it—what alternative do you have? The Greybeards have given you as much guidance as they’re ever going to. Those old pacifists haven’t the faintest clue how to solve a crisis like the one we’re currently facing. I can help you find your way.”

“We already have a plan,” Raydrin spat. That much was true. On their way back through Whiterun they were going to collect a deciphered copy of the Dragonstone from Farengar and use it to work out where to go next.

“I can show you how to avoid the Thalmor’s spies,” said Delphine. “And I can show you where and when the next dragons will emerge.”

Jórunn stilled. “How?”

“The Court Wizard of Whiterun located an ancient stone tablet for me,” she explained. “It’s a map of—”

“That little s’wit,” Raydrin scoffed, cutting her off. “Farengar did fuck all. I collected the Dragonstone for him.”

There was a beat of silence. “You did what?”

“I climbed up a mountain and delved into Bleak Falls Barrow and got the Dragonstone for Farengar,” he said. “Me and two others.”

Delphine said nothing for a long while, clearly trying to absorb this information. Eventually she cleared her throat. “Did Farengar know that you’d be accompanying the Dragonborn?”

“He better have,” said Raydrin. “It was his fucking Jarl who came up with the arrangement.”

Jórunn flinched at that. Arrangement. Raydrin had assured her many times that he wasn’t accompanying her out of a sense of obligation, but that made it sound so… impersonal.

Delphine groaned. “Trust that scatty wizard to fail to mention it,” she said. “We could have sorted this all out back in Whiterun.”

“Did the Jarl not say anything either?” asked Jórunn. “Surely Balgruuf could have confirmed it for you.”

“My arrangement with Farengar is more… unofficial in nature,” Delphine explained. “Having a direct connection with the Jarl himself would have put both of us at risk.”

“So it was you Farengar wanted the Dragonstone for?” Raydrin asked.

A moment passed in silence, then Raydrin slowly exhaled. Had Delphine nodded?

“The dragons aren’t just coming back,” she went on, “they’re coming back to life. The Dragonstone is a map of ancient burial sites, and based on the dragons that have been sighted so far, Farengar thinks he’s worked out a way of predicting which ones are going to come back next. If the pattern holds, the next one will emerge in Kynesgrove on the seventh of Sun’s Dusk.”

“And what exactly do you want us to do?” asked Raydrin.

“Well, I want you to come with me, of course,” said Delphine. “You can prove to me that the Greybeards haven’t yet infected you with their spineless and pacifistic ways, and together we can see if being there when the dragon emerges gives us some clue as to how we stop it from happening again.”

Jórunn frowned. Delphine had no right to speak about the Greybeards that way. “So you want me to kill the dragon,” she said flatly.

“You’re the Dragonborn, are you not?” said Delphine. “The ultimate dragon slayer. The only person who can kill a dragon permanently by devouring its soul.” Jórunn grit her jaw at that, her stomach turning at how monstrous it made her sound. “Without you,” Delphine went on, “there’s no way of dealing with this problem that isn’t just delaying it.”

“The seventh of Sun’s Dusk is only two weeks away,” said Raydrin. “It’ll be a push getting to Kynesgrove in time.”

“You’re right,” said Delphine. “Which is why I suggest we set off first thing tomorrow morning.”

All three were silent for a long, dense moment. A log on the fire crackled and spat. But then Raydrin touched Jórunn’s shoulder, making her flinch slightly in surprise. “What do you say?” he asked, again lowering his voice. “I’ll do whatever you think is best.”

Jórunn swallowed. She appreciated the way Raydrin deferred to her like this, doing his best to preserve the shred of agency she still had left. But sometimes she genuinely just had no fucking clue. Could someone not just tell her what to do?

“Um… I guess it’s just what we were planning on doing anyway, right?” she mumbled. “And if Delphine wanted to hurt us, she would have done so by now.”

“All right,” Raydrin sighed. “So... you’re happy going to Kynesgrove with her?”

Jórunn nodded. “I am.”

Raydrin cleared his throat. “I guess that’s settled, then,” he said, raising his voice to address Delphine as well. “But we’re stopping at Whiterun and speaking to Farengar first chance we get.”

“Fine by me,” said Delphine. “Will you eat some stew, now?”

 

---

 

Winterhold, Skyrim, 24th Frostfall

It wasn’t until Cassathra made it to the bottom of her page that she realized she’d taken in exactly none of its contents, and with an exasperated sigh she dragged her gaze back up to the top. Why was enchanting so confusing? And why was she still reading the back-and-forth essays of a petty academic dispute so late on a Fredas evening?

The disagreement in question was about why enchantments on items worn by the user didn’t fade with time, unlike enchantments on other types of objects. Mostly the theoretical explanations were going straight over Cassathra’s head, and in truth it wasn’t like she cared much either way. Did it matter? Was it not enough to just accept that that was the case and get on with it?

Cassathra groaned quietly, dragging a hand down her face. Undeniably that was the Redoran in her speaking, and though it pained her to think about, she knew exactly why she was still working so late. She had an essay due for a tutorial with Sergius that Morndas and hadn’t even begun to think about what her own argument would be. Maybe she should just accept that whatever she ended up writing would be an arbitrary mess and cut her losses.

No. She’d worked too hard and lost too much to get here; being lazy with her work wasn’t an option. Would the College kick her out if she couldn’t keep up with the content? It wasn’t worth thinking about.

With a sigh, she pushed herself away from her desk and set about preparing some tea. A break was what she needed; a break and a drink of something invigorating.

She was about to start measuring out the tea leaves when a sudden knock at the door made her jump in surprise, flinging the leaves off her spoon and onto the desk.

“B’vehk,” she cursed, hurriedly trying to brush the scattered leaves into the palm of her hand. Then she called, “One second!” to whoever it was that had knocked.

“El’dur hlaghin lo,” came the muffled reply, only just audible through the thick wood of the door. Cassathra breathed a sigh of relief—it was just Brelyna.

When she’d cleaned up the mess, she went to open the door, smiling as she greeted her friend.

“Hey,” she said, relieved to be able to take a break from reading and talking in Cyrodilic.

“Hey,” said Brelyna, smiling at her faintly. Unusually her straight dark hair was loose, falling in a silky sheet around her shoulders. Cassathra still wasn’t used to how tall her friend had become since they were children; when they’d first met, they were the same height. “I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”

Cassathra shook her head, laughing. “Nothing important,” she said. “Just the Sinarril article.”

Brelyna’s eyes widened. “By the Three, you’re still working?” Her tone was one of shock, but even then, her voice was still as soft and as quiet as ever. “It’s a Fredas evening,” she went on. “Even I’ve stopped working.”

Cassathra rubbed her eyes. “I’m still so behind,” she sighed. “I haven’t even started Sergius’ essay yet. I spent so long trying to crack Oakflesh that I only started the reading last night.”

Brelyna pushed her lower lip out sympathetically. “You shouldn’t push yourself too hard,” she said. “You’re already picking up those spells faster than the rest of us ever did. I’m sure it won’t take you long to catch up.”

“Maybe so,” Cassathra shrugged, “but until I do—I’m stuck working late nights.” Then she stepped back, opening the door wider to allow Brelyna in. “Anyway, what brings you over?”

“Oh!” Brelyna chuckled nervously, tucking some hair behind her ear. “Um, nothing really. It just occurred to me that we’re already three weeks into term and I’ve hardly seen you outside of classes. So, I— I was wondering if you maybe wanted to, um. Have some tea and a catch-up.”

Cassathra smiled. “That sounds nice. I was just about to take a tea break, actually.” She glanced at the cup of cold water on her desk and the spoon of tea leaves beside it. Then she shifted her gaze back to Brelyna’s. “Although I will have to get back to work afterwards,” she added. “So it can’t be for long.”

Brelyna nodded. “That’s all right,” she said softly. “Er—would you like to come to my room instead?” She paused, and then cleared her throat. “It might be good to get out of your workspace for a little while.”

Cassathra turned to her desk again, to her unfinished notes and the open tomes and the stacks of papers she hadn’t even started making her way through. If she left for Brelyna’s room, would she come back to them, realistically? They’d be out of sight and out of mind.

But maybe that was what she needed.

“All right." She turned back to Brelyna with a small nod. “Your room sounds good.”

Brelyna looked maybe slightly more relieved than she’d wanted to let on. “Okay,” she breathed. “Great. Um.” She gestured back to the door. “Shall we?”

Cassathra picked up her key from her desk and led them to the doorway, opening it first for Brelyna and then following herself. It occurred to her then that she’d never been inside Brelyna’s room before, having merely knocked on the door a few times before they both headed elsewhere. Had she really been so antisocial since her arrival?

Brelyna’s room was on the second floor of the Hall of Attainment, so they climbed down the stairs in a semi-tense silence until they reached it.

“Here we go,” Brelyna muttered under her breath as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. She stood to one side to let Cassathra go in before her, and awkwardly Cassathra did, bowing her head with a mumbled thank you. When they were both inside with the door shut behind them, it came as something of a relief.

“You can take a seat wherever,” said Brelyna, gesturing vaguely to the chairs by the table and to her bed. “Er—is canis root tea alright?”

Cassathra was in too much of a daze to respond straight away. The basic layout of Brelyna’s room was the same as hers, but on nearly every available surface—the windowsill, the desk, even hanging from the ceiling in places—were plants. Most were mushrooms of some kind, as was typical for a Telvanni, but there were a few leafier plants as well. It made her room smell earthy and fresh, like grass after rainfall.

“Cassathra?” said Brelyna when she still had not responded.

She shook her head, lowering herself into one of the chairs. Brelyna’s bed felt too personal for their current level of familiarity with each other.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just admiring all of your plants. You’re such a Telvanni.”

Brelyna snorted at that, lowering the teapot she’d been holding. “You’re one to talk. Your room is so functional. It just screams Redoran.” The smile on her face quickly faded, then she squeezed her eyes shut, wincing. “Gods, sorry. I just realized how rude that sounded. I— I didn’t mean it like—”

Cassathra cut her off with a short laugh. “It’s fine,” she said, tucking her hands under her thighs. “It’s true. I keep meaning to go into town to buy some decorations, but I just… I don’t know, I haven’t got round to it yet.”

Brelyna’s grey cheeks had a reddish tinge to them, and she stared at Cassathra for a few seconds as if to reassure herself that she genuinely hadn’t taken offence. But then she swallowed—visibly—and nodded with a small smile. “I could come with you, if you wanted,” she said. “Er—not to invite myself along or anything. But I’m more familiar with the city than you are and if you wanted someone to show you where the good shops are I could—”

“Yes,” said Cassathra, grinning. “Yes, that would be lovely, honestly.”

“All right,” Brelyna exhaled slowly with relief.

She was more nervous than Cassathra remembered her being. What had happened to her in the last ten years? Cassathra had assumed that her shy disposition in class was particular to that specific context, but even now—in a relaxed, social environment with someone she’d known since she was a child—she carried herself like she was in a high-stakes negotiation.

Brelyna held up the teapot again. “Canis root tea?”

Cassathra nodded. “Sounds perfect.”

In silence Brelyna went about preparing the tea, pouring water from a jug into the teapot and bringing it to the boil with a flame spell in her palms. When the canis root had been added and was brewing away, she brought it over to Cassathra on a tray with two cups.

“Could you move the plant pot, please?” she asked, inclining her head towards a mushroom plant on the small table.

“Yes, of course,” Cassathra muttered, shifting it to one side to make room for the tray. Brelyna placed it down and took a seat in the chair opposite.

“I am sorry about all the plants,” she said. “I know it’s a little excessive. It’s just that growing things is the only thing I’m any good at.”

Cassathra laughed lightly. “Aw, Brelyna, that's not true.”

“It is!” she insisted. “My parents used to say I should have been born in Valenwood instead.”

Inwardly Cassathra thought that was a rather horrible thing to say to a child, especially one with the pressure of being a councillor’s heir on their shoulders. But she didn't voice her thoughts.

“You’ve done really well on all the essays we’ve handed in so far,” she said instead.

Brelyna scoffed softly, starting to pour the tea. “What use are essays when I’m so terrible at casting spells?” she said. “Understanding the theory is all very well, but actually putting it into practice…” She faltered, and then sighed. “I don’t know. It’s never come naturally to me.”

Cassathra wanted to say that she understood, but truthfully she didn’t. She’d never felt the pressure of having to one day inherit her father’s council seat; that was always Raydrin’s burden to bear, and she had been content to just get on with her schoolwork and attend her swordsmanship classes without ever having struggled with either of those things. She couldn’t imagine the weight of the pressure on Brelyna’s shoulders, a Telvanni heir with no natural aptitude for magic.

“Do you enjoy it?” she asked, cupping her tea in both hands and taking a sip.

Brelyna looked at her, chewing her lip in thought for a few moments. “I suppose?” she said. “I’m definitely enjoying it more now that I can study magic on my own terms. I do find it interesting, and I want to get better at it.” She sipped at her tea, then looked away with a sigh. “I’ll just have to work a bit harder to get there.”

Cassathra opened her mouth to respond but there was a knock at the door before she could.

“Oh, Brelynaaa,” someone sang, their voice Cassathra recognized as belonging to a certain Khajiit. J’zargo knocked again before either of them could respond. “Anyone in?” he called. “Your social life has arrived.”

There was a soft thump from the other side of the door, then a grunt, followed by what sounded like the indistinct voice of Onmund. Cassathra and Brelyna shot each other an amused glance before Brelyna got to her feet and moved to open the door for them. 

“Ah!” J’zargo exclaimed when he laid eyes on Cassathra, sauntering past Brelyna into her room. Onmund followed, looking rather more sheepish about the intrusion. “Two in one! You have saved us from having to climb the stairs, my friend.”

“What’s this about, J’zargo?” asked Brelyna with a bemused smile, shutting the door behind them.

“Faralda’s tutorial group are going for drinks at The Horker’s Pup tonight,” he explained, “and J’zargo has been invited along. Generously I am allowing the three of you to come with me, if you so wish.”

Onmund scoffed and rolled his eyes. “We’ve all been invited,” he clarified. “We thought it might be a nice way of hanging out outside of class.”

“Oh, um—” Brelyna faltered, looking a little startled. “Cassathra and I were just in the middle of tea.”

“Tea?” exclaimed J’zargo. “Tea, on a Fredas?!” He shook his head, muttering something in Ta’agra. “J’zargo cannot accept this. We will not be known as the tutorial group that drinks tea. I insist you come for drinks with us.”

“Cassathra has work she needs to do,” said Brelyna, gesturing to her.

Cassathra shifted awkwardly; in truth, taking the night off and going for drinks sounded really appealing. But Brelyna was clearly looking for a way out, and Cassathra didn’t want to abandon her or make her do anything she wouldn’t be comfortable with.

“Um, actually, I’ve decided I probably won’t be doing any more work tonight,” she said. “And to be honest, going for drinks sounds quite nice.”

Brelyna’s face fell just the tiniest bit at that, and Cassathra quickly cleared her throat. “But I don’t mind either way,” she added. “Brelyna, if you’d rather stay here, I’m more than happy to do the same.”

Brelyna’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, er—definitely don’t stay on my account! I really don’t mind if you’d rather go.”

“And I really don’t mind either way,” said Cassathra. Then she switched briefly back to Dunmeris. “I want to spend time with you,” she said. “If you were up for drinking, I’d go drinking. But if you’d rather stay here, so would I.”

J’zargo and Onmund were both silent, glancing between them as they waited for one of them to say something. Brelyna was biting her lip, staring at Cassathra as she mulled it over.

“There’s no pressure,” Cassathra continued, still in Dunmeris, “but you might enjoy it. I’ll stick by you the whole time. And if you want to leave at any point, we can just go, no questions asked.”

It was a few more seconds before Brelyna spoke again, but eventually she gave a small nod. “All right,” she said in Cyrodilic, turning to the others. She sighed. “Let’s go for drinks.”

J’zargo whooped, and behind him Onmund was grinning. Cassathra got to her feet, brushing down her skirt.

“Are you sure?” she asked Brelyna in Dunmeris as they left, Onmund and J’zargo leading the way.

Brelyna nodded. “I am,” she said. “I’m a little nervous, I’ll admit. But... hopefully it'll be fun.”

“If it isn’t, we can just leave,” Cassathra reiterated. Brelyna smiled thinly in response.

The four of them dispersed briefly to don their coats and snow boots, before they reconvened by the entrance to college, outside the porter’s lodge. A couple of the students from Faralda’s tutorial group were already there, a pretty Breton by the name of Hester and a tall, gangly Altmer called Ferendil. They were bickering about something as Cassathra and Brelyna approached, but Hester looked up when she heard the snow beneath their feet and threw a little wave. Cassathra waved back.

“Hey!” she called, grinning at them. “Brelyna and Cassathra, right?”

Cassathra nodded. “It’s not a problem if we tag along, is it?”

Hester shook her head, flapping a hand at them. “Not at all,” she said. “The more the merrier.”

“Great,” Cassathra breathed. “J’zargo was a little unclear about, ah—the nature of the invitation.”

Hester threw her head back with a laugh, a high-pitched, tinny sort of sound. “Of course,” she snickered. “Trust that cat to make it all about him.”

“As I was saying,” said Ferendil, “I know it’s controversial, but I really do think Gustave’s argument has merit. If you think about it, there really is no reason to treat restoration as a separate school to alteration, other than a difference in cultural perception. It would make way more sense to treat it as a sub-category of alteration, especially when you think about how—”

“Oh my gods,” groaned Hester. “I can’t believe you’re still defending that old hack. All divisions between schools of magic are artificial anyway! It makes sense to separate out spells pertaining to the body!”

“But what about wards?”

The pair of them resumed their debate from before and Cassathra and Brelyna shared an amused look, unable to join in; the two tutorial groups were not covering the syllabus in the same order and the theory under debate was unfamiliar to them. It wasn’t long before the others arrived, J’zargo and Onmund and the remaining pair from the other group. Together the eight of them set off across the bridge and into town, their hoods drawn up and their hands stuffed into their pockets to keep out the cold. The conversation was merry and jovial as they walked, though Cassathra and Brelyna were both quiet, content to listen and laugh.

By the time they made it to The Horker’s Pup, her cheeks were burning from the cold and the heat from the inside of the tavern made her chilled skin flare. It was surprisingly busy inside, far busier than the Frozen Hearth had been—but then Cassathra realized the patrons were mostly students, which probably explained it. Clearly this was the College’s local haunt.

They pushed together two smaller tables and clustered themselves around them, having to raise their voices to be heard over the din. J’zargo bought the first round while Aerolf the Nord recounted a semi-amusing tale from one of their tutorials.

“Ferendil was so hungover he was about to pass out,” he was saying, “meanwhile Hester was there trying to bullshit her way through explaining an essay she hadn’t read, and this whole time I am just fucking—shaking with laughter, because right there on Nirya’s desk is a sexy letter from Sergius she’s left out!”

The group erupted into laughter—in Cassathra’s periphery she noticed that even Brelyna was grinning at the story. She hoped that she was genuinely enjoying herself, but the other Dunmer seemed relaxed enough to suggest that was the case. Cassathra was glad they’d come.

They chatted throughout the first few rounds and then turned to tavern games when the drink was flowing, using a pack of playing cards J'zargo had brought with him. Onmund, too, was coming out of his shell some; in all of their classes and tutorials thus far he’d been quiet, soft-spoken, reluctant to put himself out there, but a little alcohol had worked wonders as a social lubricant.

The tavern games regressed into drinking games and then Hester was teaching them a game from High Rock, a game that involved players drinking whenever someone came up with an experience that had happened to them and downing their drink if they were the only person it applied to.

“It’s better when you already know each other a bit,” she explained, “but it’s quite good as a way of getting to know people. Just make sure the claims aren’t too specific!”

It didn’t take long for Cassathra to realize she was one of the more sheltered and inexperienced players there, but it was amusing to discover the various antics of the others.

She was about to give up on ever being made to drink when it came round to J’zargo’s turn. His lips pulled back to reveal sharp teeth, in a wide, almost predatory grin.

“Alright,” he began, absently dragging one claw round the rim of his tankard. “Never has J’zargo ever secretly run away from home in order to study magic.”

The group felt silent. Cassathra felt heat pooling in her cheeks. It wasn’t that she didn’t want the others to know; J’zargo’s statement was too vague to put her at any risk that it would somehow get back to her parents. But she was about to become the centre of attention and she knew it.

Not wanting to wait for J’zargo to call her up, Cassathra awkwardly raised her tankard to her lips. Seeing movement, the others all turned to her, drunkenly gasping and making excited exclamations of surprise. When it was clear that she was the only person to whom the statement applied, they leaned forwards and began their now-familiar chant:

“We… like to drink with Cassie, ‘cause Cassie is our mate! And when we drink with Cassie, she gets it down in eight! Seven! Six…”

The countdown descended and Cassathra felt her eyes watering from the effort of repeatedly swallowing, the taste and scent of mead now overwhelming as it pulsed down her gullet. For a brief moment she feared that she wasn't going to manage, but just as her friends reached the end of their song, she smacked her tankard on the table with a relieved gasp and wiped her hand across her mouth before they could finish saying, “one! ”

They burst into applause and laughter, and Cassathra felt Onmund’s large hand clap her on the shoulder. Brelyna was laughing too.

She smiled, vaguely aware that her motivation to work the next day had been completely obliterated but enjoying herself too much to really care. For the first time since Helgen, Cassathra felt truly, deeply relaxed.

 

---

 

Markarth, Skyrim, 24th Frostfall

Markarth was the strangest place Mathyas had visited since his arrival in Skyrim. He was familiar with the Dwemer ruins that littered the landscape of Morrowind, the lingering remnants of a race whose history was so tied up with his own. But never had he set foot in a Dwemer settlement as large and as intact as this one. And to see it populated and bustling, by Nords nonetheless… it almost didn’t sit right. These people had carved out a home in what essentially was a graveyard.

The Hag’s Cure was located within the city walls, the dwarven part of the city built into the craggy cliffsides of the Druadach Mountains. But the city sprawled far beyond these bounds, a great tangle of winding roads and isolated clusters of buildings constructed wherever the ground was level enough. Markarth clung to the mountainsides like mussels to a boat, like moss to a tree. It was as grey and jagged as the rocks that surrounded it, so much so that it was hard to tell where the city ended and the mountains began. In a climate as harsh and as unforgiving as this one, it was a city built to last.

Mathyas arrived in the early afternoon and booked out a room for himself in the Silver-Blood Inn. The Hag’s Cure wasn’t far, but he didn’t want to speak to Muiri just yet. Markarth was the first proper city he’d set foot in since waking up in the abandoned shack many weeks ago, and he wanted to take advantage of all it had to offer. That meant scouting out its library.

He dumped his things in his room and locked the door behind him. Then he headed to the bar, clearing his throat to catch the attention of the disgruntled barkeep behind it.

“Excuse me,” he said, resting his gloved fingers on the edge of the repurposed stone countertop. “Do you know if the city archives are open to the public?"

The barkeep turned, laying a half-dry tankard on the counter and raising a bushy eyebrow at him. “You one of those scholar-types?”

Mathyas coughed. “I suppose.”

“The University library is in the Keep,” the barman grunted. “Attached to the Dwemer museum.”

Mathyas thanked him quietly and took his leave, able to locate the Keep quite easily once he was outside. It sat at the city’s peak, near to the top of the mountain, and was embedded deep into the side of the cliff face. The climb was steep and long.

Inside, the Keep was like a maze. Silence bounced off the stone walls in stark contrast to the bustle of the city outside, and Mathyas was acutely aware of the sound of each footstep as it reverberated around the great dwarven chambers. He passed officials and administrators speaking to each other in low murmurs, and kept awkwardly stopping to ask them for directions until he found his way to the archives.

It was an enormous room; at least three storeys high, with rows of stone bookshelves lining the walls and narrow balconies girdling the higher shelves. Mostly the library was empty, but there were a few people here and there, perusing the shelves or sitting hunched over stacks of books. They looked to be students, many of them Altmer or Breton.

Mathyas approached the librarian’s desk, getting the attention of an elderly Altmer woman. She looked up from a book and lowered her eyeglasses to peer at him over the top.

“May I help you?” 

Her voice was faint and creaking, almost too quiet for Mathyas to hear. 

He dropped his voice to a whisper. “This is probably a long shot,” he said, “but I was wondering if you have any texts on the Dark Brotherhood?”

The librarian arched one pale eyebrow, staring at him incredulously.

“The Dark Brotherhood?” she repeated.

Mathyas cringed. “I’m doing a research project.”

Her yellow gaze lingered on him for a second or two, before she dragged it away and fixed it instead on an enormous, leather-bound logbook. She flicked through it quickly, clearly very familiar with the act, until eventually she landed on the page she was searching for. The seconds dragged by as she ran her bony finger down the list, the writing too tiny for Mathyas to attempt to read it himself. When she stopped and gave the parchment two firm taps, he found his shoulders sagging with relief.

“We don’t have much on the subject,” she told him. “Take a seat. I can bring the books over to you.”

Mathyas released the breath he was holding. “Thank you.”

“Is your research project on anything in particular?”

He shook his head. “I’ll take everything you’ve got.”

The librarian left to locate the texts in question, and Mathyas found himself an isolated desk in the corner of the room, tucked away behind some shelving. The library had no windows to let in natural light—as was typical with Dwemer architecture—but the tables had been adorned with many candles to allow for reading. Mathyas found himself staring intently at the small flames, watching them flicker from side to side as he waited for the librarian to return. It was a few minutes later before she did.

“There you are,” she tutted, laying the stack of books down on the desk beside him. One by one she handed them to him, reading out the name and the author each time. “The Brothers of Darkness, by Pellarne Assi,” she said. “But with amendments from Riccardo Catullus. What’s this… er, Sacred Witness by Enric Milres. Then… The Night Mother’s Truth by Gaston Bellefort. And lastly, Fire and Darkness by Ynir Gorming.”

She looked down at him expectantly. “I’m afraid that’s everything,” she said. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Mathyas shook his head, pulling the books towards him. “No, thank you,” he said. “That will be all.”

The librarian nodded and left him to his research. Mathyas stared at the short stack of books for a long while after she’d gone, summoning the courage to start making his way through them. There was no overlap with the texts that Astrid had given him; all of those had been written from within the Brotherhood’s ranks, and Mathyas imagined they were carefully selected so as to avoid giving him anything he could use to his advantage. But with these, at least, he could try and build a more objective picture… even if his hopes of finding anything useful were low.

The Brothers of Darkness came first. It was written in the Second Era and so was largely out of date, and mostly just seemed to be a chronology of the Brotherhood’s splinter from the Morag Tong. Pellarne Assi wrongly identified the main difference between them as lying in the Brotherhood being ‘a business as much as it was a cult,’ which made Mathyas want to laugh; the Brotherhood was by far the more ‘cult-like’ of the two. Clearly Pellarne Assi was just as susceptible to the misconceptions surrounding the Tong as everyone else outside of Morrowind, despite claiming to be an historian on the subject.

After skimming the first few chapters, Mathyas gave up and put it to one side. There was nothing of any practical value to be found, and the many inaccuracies regarding Morrowind and its religion were frustrating him. He pulled up The Night Mother’s Truth instead. At least this one had been written within the last era.

‘Although her name has been lost to time, the Night Mother was once a mere mortal, a Dark Elf woman who lived […] in the Imperial Province of Cyrodiil,’ wrote Gaston Bellefort with complete confidence and not one source. It was an amusing theory, but of little use to Mathyas, whether there was truth in it or not. The essay went on to argue that the Night Mother began as a Tong assassin and a worshipper of Mephala, but that Sithis—dissatisfied with the Tong—transformed her into the ‘spectre’ she was known as today. Mathyas sighed and pressed the book closed. There was almost nothing in it he didn’t already know.

Fire and Darkness came next. Ynir Gorming adopted an opposing stance to Pellarne Assi, arguing in his introduction that the Morag Tong had always worshipped Sithis alongside Mephala. This contention mostly seemed to arise from a place of prejudice; ‘After all,' Gorming wrote, 'the history of Resdayn, the ancient name of Morrowind, is rife with assassination, blood sacrifice, and religious zealotry.' Mathyas scoffed. These ignorant Imperials.

He skipped to the end, skimming over the historical accounts. The book’s conclusion made him freeze. ‘The Night Mother, my dear friend, is Mephala,’ wrote Gorming. ‘The Dark Brotherhood of the west, unfettered by the orders of the Tribunal, continues to worship Mephala. They may not call her by her name, but the daedra of murder, sex, and secrets is their leader still.’

Mathyas sat back in his seat, eyes wide. His instinct was to disregard it as rubbish, as he had with all the other outlandish claims regarding Mephala and the Tong. But something Mathyas could not put his finger on—something pressing and awkward—refused to let him do so. Was this not exactly the sort of thing the Webspinner, the Plot Weaver, would thrive off of? The Daedric Prince known for their love of mysteries and secrets? Of conflict and treachery? To divide their own worshippers and pit them against each other under the guise of another figure… it had Mephala all over it.

Gorming’s explanation lay in the establishment of the Tribunal. The ascendancy of ALMSIVI brought with it the expectation that Vivec would be worshipped in place of their ‘Anticipation’, which Gorming argued was the cause of the Brotherhood splintering off from the Tong. The Tong worshipped Vivec in exchange for continued tolerance of their existence, whilst the Brotherhood—or Mephala loyalists, in Gorming’s view—fled Morrowind and established their own sect.

Was this the missing piece? The answer to the question of why the Brotherhood ever broke off from the Tong in the first place? It made perfect sense. And truthfully, Mathyas could identify no flaw with the theory.

He shut the book and pushed it away from him, running a hand through his hair. This changed everything. Mathyas had never been the most devout follower of the New Temple, but Daedric princes were not individuals he wanted to mess around with in any context, let alone when the Prince in question was one to which he was meant to owe his allegiance. There was no way of knowing whether Gorming’s theory was true… but was it worth the risk of trying to find out?

In something of a daze, Mathyas turned to the final book, swallowing thickly and trying to get his thoughts back into some semblance of order. This was a problem he couldn’t think about right now.

Sacred Witness was different from the others; instead of being written by historians, it appeared to have been written by someone who—like Mathyas—had been roped into joining the Brotherhood. He exhaled slowly, relieved to have found something which had the potential to offer him an actual solution. Why hadn’t he started with this one?

The author, a Breton named Enric, spent the first few chapters rambling about his life, and Mathyas found himself skimming it in an anxious attempt to get answers as soon as possible. The only point of interest was an account of a conversation between Enric and both Gorming and Assi in a Sentinel skooma den, in which the Breton helpfully summarised the two historians’ opposing viewpoints. It was jarring to read Gorming’s theory a second time, an uncomfortable feeling settling in Mathyas’ gut at the reminder. He pressed onwards, flicking through the pages with a growing urgency. Eventually he ended up skipping ahead to the final page on a frustrated impulse. Surely the answers would be there, if anywhere?

‘I helped the Night Mother and the Dark Brotherhood in acts too despicable, too bloody for me to set to paper,’ Enric wrote. ‘My hand quivers as I think about the people I betrayed, beginning with that night. I tried to write my poetry, but ink seemed to turn to blood. Finally, I fled, changing my name, going to a land where no one would know me.

'And I wrote this. The true history of the Night Mother, from the interview she gave me on the night we met. It will be the last thing I ever write, this I know. And every word is true.

'Pray for me.’

Though Enric offered no answers—no solution to Mathyas’ predicament—there was something both comforting and unsettling in the way Mathyas saw himself in those words. Already he recognized the fear, the sense of regret. But the final sentences had his heart sinking like a stone. They gripped his lungs, forcing the air out of them with a sharp gasp.

‘Editor's Note: Though originally published anonymously, the identity of the author has never been in serious doubt. Any layman familiar with the work of the poet Enric Milres will recognize Sacred Witness's familiar cadence and style in such books of his as 'The Alik'r.' Shortly after publication, Milres was murdered, and his killer was never found. He had been strangled, and two stones, a black one and a white one, crushed into his eyesockets. Very brutally.’

Mathyas swallowed his growing nausea. Enric had fled, changed his name, and travelled a great distance to be rid of this cult. But still it was not enough to save him.

Mathyas closed his eyes and clasped his hands together, pressing his forehead against them. He had never been the type to rely on prayer—but in that moment, it was all he had left.

 

---

 

By the time he emerged from Understone Keep, the skies were growing dark, and Mathyas cursed himself for losing track of how long he’d been in the library. He’d meant to return to the inn so that he could eat and bathe before visiting Muiri, but he didn’t have time anymore; the Hag’s Cure would be shutting soon, if it wasn’t shut already.

He made his way straight there, desperately trying to empty his mind of any thoughts relating to what he’d read. Mathyas couldn’t afford to be distracted; he was about to accept a contract, and he needed to be focused, professional. But still he could not shake the tight feeling in his stomach, or steady the faint trembling of his hands. If he’d thought his situation was bad before… gods. Gods. 

He hurried down the winding streets and the many flights of stairs until at last he made it to his destination. Like many of the other buildings in the city centre, the Hag’s Cure had been built into the mountainside. Its front door was a gold-coloured metal, embossed with a geometric pattern as was typical of Dwemeri design. Running his hand through his hair and taking one last, deep breath, Mathyas pushed on the door, half-expecting it to be locked. When it gave way in front of him, he let out a ragged sigh of relief.

“We’re closing up in fifteen minutes,” called a voice as the door shut behind him, coming from somewhere he could not see. He had emerged into a short, low-ceilinged corridor, well-lit by candlelight and lined with patterned rugs. Straight away the smell of herbs washed over him, earthy and fragrant. Mathyas swallowed and started making his way down the corridor, his nerves growing as the reality of his reason for being there started to sink in. Did he really have to do this?

He envisioned himself making a run for it—taking the Brotherhood's money, changing his name, starting a new life elsewhere. But then a strangled corpse with black and white eyes flashed through his mind, and Mathyas shut down that pipe dream with a full-body shudder. 

The corridor opened up into a larger chamber. It was still small and cosy by dwarven standards, but definitely larger than a typical apothecarist. The walls were lined with wooden display shelves, stocked neatly with colourful potion bottles and rows of glass jars. A workshop was situated at the back of the shop, beneath a canopy of dried herbs. The silhouette of a woman had her back to him—from the repetitive movement of her elbow, she seemed to be grinding something in a mortar. She glanced at Mathyas over her shoulder as he descended the steps into the shop.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked, putting the mortar and pestle down on a worktop and brushing a few loose strands of hair from her eyes. She was small and fair—Breton or Reachfolk, if her looks were anything to go by—with sleepy eyes and fine, ash-brown hair cut close to the jaw.

Mathyas exhaled quickly. “Yes. I— I’m looking for Muiri.”

Those sleepy eyes seemed to narrow in suspicion. “If you’re here to try and woo me, I’m not interested."

Mathyas blinked at her in surprise. Then he laughed, short and nervous. “I’m not here to try and woo you,” he said. “I’m—”

He faltered, unsure of how to progress. Muiri raised an eyebrow. “Yes?” she said. “Out with it.”

Mathyas cleared his throat. “Is there anyone else in the shop?” he asked, lowering his voice. “It’s… something best discussed in private.”

Muiri stepped away, suspicion morphing into fear. “Whatever it is, it can be discussed in here,” she said, failing to mask the slight waver in her voice. “If you don’t explain yourself right now, I’m calling the guards.”

Mathyas sighed, casting one quick glance around the room to make sure that no-one else was present.

“Look,” he said. “I—I’m here to accept your offer of a contract.”

She stared at him blankly, eyes still wide.

“The contract regarding a certain bandit?” he clarified.

“Oh!”

Muiri gasped, a small, pale hand flying to her mouth. She took another step back. “I... the Sacrament,” she whispered. “Gods. I... I can’t believe it worked.”

Mathyas swallowed his grimace. The idea that this nervous young woman had anything to do with the Black Sacrament seemed absurd. But then, if a child as young as Aventus had been prepared to go to those lengths…

He nodded. “It worked,” he said. “I’m here to arrange the details.”

“I’m sorry,” she shook her head as if to collect herself, “I— I feel so stupid for not realizing sooner. I just… you're not what I was expecting an assassin to look like.”

Mathyas resisted the urge to laugh. If only she knew.

“What are assassins supposed to look like?” he asked.

Muiri chuckled nervously. “Good point,” she conceded. “Right, er... I suppose we should get to business?”

He nodded. “Let’s.”

For a few seconds Muiri just glanced around, flustered and gesturing vaguely to her surroundings as if she was trying to decide what to do with herself. “Um—” she started, “how do you want to…?”

“Is there somewhere we could sit?”

“Right. Yes—of course. Sitting sounds good.” Muiri laughed again, clearly trying to calm her nerves. “There’s a table over there.”

She led him back to the opposite end of the room, near to the base of the steps he’d climbed down on his way in, and gestured to one of two chairs at a round wooden table. Awkwardly she pushed aside a few stacked plates and bowls, trying to clear away any evidence of living. “Um, make yourself comfortable,” she said. “Can I get you anything to eat, or drink?”

Mathyas felt a sudden gnawing in his stomach at that, having not eaten anything since that morning’s breakfast. But he could wait. “No, thank you,” he said. It seemed almost too civilised—like they weren’t there to discuss someone’s murder.

Muiri took the other chair and brushed down her skirts, hands darting around before eventually coming to rest in her lap. She had a sallow sort of complexion, revealing the web of delicate blue veins on the backs of her hands. There was dirt under her fingernails, in spite of their bluntness—presumably from working with plants all day. A herby, medicinal scent clung to her still. 

“So,” she said.

Mathyas drew his notebook and a piece of charcoal from the pocket of his cloak, placing them both on the table in front of him.

“We should probably start with the target’s name,” he said, readying the charcoal.

Muiri nodded, taking a long, shaky breath. “Alain Dufont."

Mathyas scribbled it down.

“Where can I find him?” he asked.

“He and his men are holed up in a dwarven ruin, near Windhelm,” she said. “Raldbthar. It's a two-day hike west of the city, in the Shearpoint Mountains. I'm afraid that's all I know.”

Mathyas nodded, adding that to his notes.

“What does he look like?” he asked when he was finished. “I mean… is there a way I can tell which one is him?”

Muiri thought for a few moments. “He’s… tan,” she said finally. “Tall for a Breton, just under six feet. And he’s got dark brown hair. He likes to keep a short beard.”

Mathyas bullet-pointed each item and then glanced quickly over his notes, checking he’d got everything. “All right,” he said. “I think that’s everything I need. As for payment, it’ll be a thousand Septims. Is that something you can manage?”

Muiri nodded. “Not right now,” she said. “But if you come back here when you’re done, I’ll have it ready.”

“That’s fine,” said Mathyas. Anything to delay returning to the Sanctuary. Then he paused a moment before speaking again. “Is it…” he faltered. “Is it all right if I ask what he did?” Muiri stared at him. “Why you want him dead, I mean.”

Muiri’s gaze shifted downwards, fixing on the table. Her lips were pressed into a thin line.

A short phrase appeared in Mathyas’ mind, then; a vague memory he hadn’t realized he’d forgotten. An assassin asks no questions. Astrid had said that to him the night they first met.

We aren’t murderers. We seek no motive.

Maybe it was better to be a murderer, Mathyas thought. Killing for good reason seemed to him a great deal more defensible than killing for money.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he added softly when Muiri still hadn’t answered.

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “it’s all right. I want to.” She was silent for several seconds, still staring at the table, and Mathyas waited patiently for her to summon the courage to continue. When she was ready, she drew in a deep breath.  

“I was friends with a family in Windhelm,” she said quietly. “The Shatter-Shields. They’d recently lost a daughter… Friga. She—she was murdered.”

Mathyas swallowed. What had Aventus said to him, when he was explaining how he’d found the body? There have been some murders in Windhelm recently. What if…?

“I was in a tavern, drinking away my grief,” Muiri went on, dispelling that train of thought before it could continue, “and it was then that I met Alain. He approached me, listened to my sorrows. Offered me comfort.”

Muiri shut her eyes then, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We became lovers,” she admitted through gritted teeth. “But it… it was all lies. Alain used me. He used me to get close to the Shatter-Shields, to earn their trust in their time of mourning. And then he robbed them blind.”

Mathyas could only stare at her in sympathy, unsure of what to say. Selfishly he felt a sense of relief, relief that he could kill this man and feel relatively little guilt about doing so. But at the same time… it was clear that Muiri was acting out in her rage and her grief. And the Brotherhood was taking advantage of that by enabling her. Would she regret this in ten years? Would it actually help to vindicate her?

“The Shatter-Shields thought I was in on it, of course,” she said bitterly. “They all despise me now. I ended up having to leave Windhelm and carve out a new life for myself here. The Shatter-Shields had once been like a family to me, but now…”

Her voice cracked. Muiri buried her face in her hands. “Now they think I’m a monster,” she wept, sounding high-pitched and choked. “Alain stole them from me. He ruined my life.”

She wept silently for several moments, stifling whatever noises threatened to spill between her fingers with deep breaths. The urge to comfort her—to put a hand on her shoulder and tell her it would be alright—was near-overwhelming, but Mathyas resisted it. Muiri was paying him to kill someone. He couldn’t lose sight of that fact.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually, wiping at her tears. “I know that probably isn’t what you were expecting.”

“It’s fine,” Mathyas replied. “It… it helps to know why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

Muiri nodded, taking a shuddering breath. “That makes sense,” she murmured.

“And I’m sorry that happened to you,” Mathyas added. “I’ll… I’ll make sure Alain gets what he deserves.”

Muiri smiled slightly at that, a sad, bittersweet smile. “I know everyone says forgiveness is the way to find peace,” she said. “But my anger, it’s so…”

She faltered, and then sighed. “I would have killed him myself if I had the nerve. It’s not right that a man like that is just out there, enjoying the spoils of his cruelty. He never showed any remorse. And—it’s not like he’s going to stop exploiting people.” Muiri looked up at Mathyas then, meeting his gaze. “You’ll be doing the people of Skyrim a favour."

Mathyas exhaled softly through his nose. “Yes, I think I will be.”

“There is…” Muiri groaned and dragged a hand down her face before continuing. “There is something else you can do,” she said quietly. “And I’ll pay extra, of course.”

Mathyas swallowed. “What is it?”

Muiri took a deep breath. “It’s Nilsine Shatter-Shield,” she said. “Friga’s twin sister. Originally, it was just Alain I wanted dead. But Nilsine, she… she threw me out to the dogs. My whole life I’d been her best friend, but when I needed her trust the most, she wouldn’t listen to me. She accused me of turning against her.”

Muiri leaned forwards, resting her elbows on the table. “If you’re going to be in Windhelm anyway, I was thinking… maybe, you could kill Nilsine as well?”

Gods, Mathyas had been right to feel nervous. To kill the daughter of two already-grieving parents? For making the simple mistake of believing the wrong person? Killing Alain was almost objectively justifiable, but it didn’t sound like Nilsine had done anything wrong outside of causing Muiri personal pain.

“I—I’m afraid not,” he lied. “We have a policy of one target per Sacrament.”

Mathyas had no idea whether that was true or not—and it occurred to him then that perhaps it was a stupid thing he’d just done, the sort of thing the Night Mother would find out about—but it was all he could think to say. He knew he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to kill someone like Nilsine.

“Oh,” said Muiri, looking a little disappointed. “I suppose that’s fair.”

He cleared his throat. “If that’s everything, I should head off,” he said, scraping his chair back and getting to his feet. “I’ll leave for Windhelm first thing in the morning.”

Muiri followed. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Um—thank you in advance. For doing this.”

Mathyas smiled slightly but said nothing, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t be disingenuous. He deserved no thanks for what he was about to do.

“I’ll return within the month,” he said instead as he put his notebook away.

“All right,” Muiri nodded. “I… I suppose I should wish you good luck.”

“Thank you."

They stared at each other for a few moments more, neither of them really knowing where to go from there. Mathyas then smiled a final time and awkwardly took his leave. The skies were black when he returned to the streets of Markarth.  

Mathyas felt an odd sense of calm as he climbed down the steps to his inn. For the next month, he would be all right; killing Alain wouldn’t be an issue, and for now, that was all he had to do. But after that? His options were to carry on killing or to invoke the wrath of a ruthless and sadistic death cult, and potentially an omniscient Daedric prince.

He needed all the luck he could get. 

Notes:

I hope everyone still reading is doing well! i’ve had an absolutely crazy week—moved to munich on wednesday and have been super busy dealing with german bureaucracy ever since. if any of my readers are german or live in the area, hmu!

i also have a little bit of bad news. i have a lot of work to do this September and so decided at the beginning of the month that i would take a mini hiatus from writing. for the duration of the hiatus, i’m afraid i will not be posting any new chapters. i do have the next four chapters written and completed, but i fear that if i catch up with myself i will lose the little motivation to continue writing that i have left lmao. so for now, there will be no new chapters until october, from which point i will continue posting one chapter every two weeks until I have regained my 7-8 chapter advantage. thanks for understanding!

Chapter 18: A Blade in the Dark

The Pale, Skyrim, 4th Sun’s Dusk

The snow was a brilliant white when Mathyas emerged from the ruins of Raldbthar, momentarily dazzling him beneath the heat of the midday sun. He lifted his right hand to shield his eyes and winced, his left hand still clamped over a bloody wound in his abdomen. Alain Dufont was dead, but he and his men had put up a fight. With Windhelm now two days away on foot, Mathyas would need to treat his injuries himself.

He staggered forward a few paces, lowering himself with a hiss onto the steps leading up to the ruin. It couldn’t have been more than half an hour since he’d gone in. His travel pack was right where he’d left it, as were the scattered bodies of the three bandits he’d fought outside. Their blood glistened crimson against the pure white of the snow.

Mathyas grit his jaw and took several deep breaths as he reached for his pack, the movement causing his wound to smart. His field kit, thankfully, was strapped to the outside of the pack for easy access, and Mathyas quickly fell back against the steps once he had it in hand. Already the cold of the snow was starting to seep through the leather of his armour, a sharp chill against his heated flesh. He didn’t want to stay here for long.

Keeping one hand pressed to his wound at all times, Mathyas tugged his gloves off with his teeth and grimaced at the harsh taste of blood and leather. With trembling fingers, he started to undo the buckles down the front of his jerkin, and from there he could unclasp his gambeson and untuck his undershirt from the waistband of his trousers, hiking it upwards until his wound was exposed.

It looked worse than it was. It was a shallow wound, really, a horizontal slash across the left side of his stomach, maybe three inches long. But his shirt was soaked through with blood, and his blue-grey flesh was jagged and puckered around the edge of the wound. Mathyas wasn’t going to die, but his journey back to Windhelm had got a whole lot more uncomfortable.

He cleaned it first, using rubbing alcohol and a strip of cloth to wipe away the blood until he could see the extent of the damage more clearly. With a grimace, Mathyas realized it was going to need stitches. He put one of his gloves back on and grabbed a handful of snow, pressing it to his skin and holding it there for as long as he could stand, until it had melted into pinkish, bloody water. The ice burned to begin with—in a different way to the rubbing alcohol—but the burn slowly faded, along with sensation and the feeling of pain. When the sharp sting had given way to a dull, barely-there throb, Mathyas wiped his hands dry and dug out a needle and suture thread, a small coil of catgut.

“Meshti,” he groaned, hanging his head back. “Meshti. Ohn muganich isk.”

He didn’t want to do this. He had stitched up wounds before, but always on others, never himself.

Mathyas closed his eyes and took three deep breaths before pushing his fear to one side and setting about his preparations. There was no use putting it off. The cloth he rolled into a tight braid, which he placed between his teeth so he’d have something to clamp down on. Then he wiped down a section of the catgut and threaded the needle, having to attempt it several times with all the trembling of his hands.

When everything was ready and the needle was in position, Mathyas spent several moments simply looking down at the wound, trying to muster up the courage to make that first puncture. He had the needle pinched between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, the wound held closed with his left, but still he could not put will into action. Just start, he was telling himself. But his hand would not move.

Why was pain so much easier when it was inflicted by someone else? He’d already been stabbed for Azura’s sake, and what was a needle compared to a sword?

Mathyas knew it was just the anticipation, the knowledge of what was coming. If it were someone else, he could close his eyes, think of other things. But sewing himself up would require his concentration. He grit his jaw down on the cloth and inhaled sharply through his nose. Then he pushed the needle through his skin, pulling the thread with it.

A muffled grunt escaped him at the sting, but it wasn’t as bad as he was expecting. The pain paled in comparison to the unsettling friction of the thread scraping against each layer of skin. He repeated the motion, pulling the thread through to the other side and taking slow, deep breaths each time the needle pierced his flesh. Gradually a criss-crossing pattern emerged, enabling him to tug on the thread and pull the wound closed. The snow had made the process more bearable than it could have been, and after a few minutes of fumbling around, he was done—his open wound was open no more. The stitches were messy, but they’d hold until he could find a healer.

Mathyas leaned back against the steps, closing his eyes and removing the cloth from his mouth so he could take deep, clean breaths of air. His wound was still pulsating, and the strip of bare skin across his stomach was growing numb in the cold mountain breeze. But he was safe. He was alive, he was on his own, and Alain Dufont was dead.

When his heartbeat had slowed to a more reasonable rate, Mathyas pushed himself back into a sitting position, wincing slightly at the motion. He’d need to get moving again soon. With reluctance, he wiped away the fresh blood, applied a small amount of healing salve to the wound, and then wrapped a few layers of bandage around his middle. His hands he washed with snow and his gloves and armour he then fixed over the top.

Alain Dufont was dead. Mathyas draped his cloak around his shoulders and laid his forearms over his drawn-up knees, gazing northwards at the Anthor mountains in the distance. Alain Dufont was dead, and Mathyas felt no different, not really. He’d burst through the doors of Raldbthar and slaughtered the bandits who lived there like a common mercenary, counting Alain as just one of his many adversaries. Alain died with no concept of who Mathyas was, no idea it was Muiri who’d sent him. Vaguely Mathyas thought that he should maybe have tried to say something, but what difference would it have made? Alain Dufont was dead. And he’d have died either way.

Mathyas recalled a story that Sanjir had told him, back in Whiterun, in an inn, during that fateful week before everything went wrong. The punchline to the story escaped him now, but the context had lingered; Sanjir and a few of the other Companions had been hired to delve into a dwarven ruin and clear out the bandits who lived there to make way for some scholars about to embark on an excavation. For all intents and purposes, his own contract had been no different.

He wasn’t really sure how to feel about that. Mathyas couldn’t tell whether it spoke highly of his own actions or poorly of the Companions, but if there was anything to conclude from the story, it was that the line between a warrior and a murderer was very, very thin. At least Mathyas could say he had fought the bandits on equal terms, face to face, with a sword they could fight back against and a countenance they could see. He’d fought them like a Redoran. He hadn’t ‘assassinated’ anyone, not really—not yet.

With a heavy sigh, Mathyas pushed himself to his feet, grunting with pain at the contraction of his abdominals. The sooner he got back to Windhelm, the sooner he could get fixed up. Until then, there was nothing he could do except put one foot in front of the other and slowly begin making his way down the mountain.

 

---

 

Windhelm, Skyrim, 6th Sun’s Dusk

After locating a healer in the Grey Quarter and spending an inordinate amount of money on getting his wound sealed up, Mathyas found his way back to the New Gnisis Cornerclub, with his coin purse a little lighter and a fresh scar to add to his growing collection.

It was odd, being back. Two months had passed since his last stay here, but it felt like years. With everything else that had transpired, Mathyas had given remarkably little thought to his experience with the slavers, and in a way, it had come to feel like a dream. Like a story he’d heard, about something that had happened to someone other than him. But it wasn’t. He had stayed here, in those few days between his escape and his second kidnapping, almost deliriously going about his work at the docks and thinking of nothing but his return to Blacklight. His efforts seemed laughable, now. What was his plan? What was his story going to be when he returned home out of the blue, with no Raydrin and no Cassathra? It wasn’t like his old life was just going to pick up where it had left off. Even then, everything had already been irreversibly changed.

It was clear to him now that he’d spent those days in survival mode. His memories of that time were fuzzy, but the Cornerclub evoked such a strong feeling of unease and anxiety that there could be no doubt as to his mental state at the time. Mathyas dumped his things in his room—which thankfully was different from the first—and then left in a hurry, not wanting to spend any more time there than necessary. There was some good to be found in his return to Windhelm, a certain someone he wanted to see.

The way to Windhelm’s orphanage came back to him easily, or maybe it had never left him. Mathyas retraced his steps from that night, thinking to himself how different the streets had looked in the dark. It was almost poetic, returning now to the scene of his first crime. He really had come full circle. And to think that he was going to see Aventus again, having now become the very thing the boy had once wanted him to be… if it wasn’t so tragic, Mathyas might have laughed.

It was mid-afternoon when he made it to the orphanage, and to his surprise, he could hear the sound of children laughing, playing outdoors despite the cold. Mathyas approached the frost-covered iron gate and pushed on it gently, finding it open. From this side of the wall the yard was visible, but a quick glance at the children there confirmed that Aventus was not one of them. The ages ranged from as young as five or six to as old as sixteen, but none of the children were Mer. Mathyas wondered if that was by design.

He looked around, trying to locate an adult he could speak to. A young-looking human woman caught his gaze from across the yard, and after he smiled and waved to indicate that he meant no harm, she started to approach. Mathyas waited by the gate, not wanting to intrude any further than he already had done. It was ironic; the last time he was here, he’d broken in.

“May I help you?” she asked, a slight edge of suspicion to her otherwise friendly voice. Mathyas supposed that was fair enough.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Yes,” he said. “Er—do you allow visitors? I understand if not. Just wondering.”

“We do,” she said, but she was raising an eyebrow at him. “Who is it you want to visit?”

“Aventus,” said Mathyas. “Aventus Aretino.”

For a split second it occurred to him that maybe Aventus hadn’t actually come back here, that he hadn’t returned like he promised he would. The thought had Mathyas’ heart in his mouth. But to his relief, the woman nodded.

“How do you and Aventus know each other?”

Mathyas had to steel his expression into something neutral. Why did her question make him want to smile? There was nothing amusing about the circumstances of their meeting.

“Er,” he started, “I was a friend of his mother’s. My name is Mathyas, he should know who I am.”

His lie seemed to have passed whatever test the woman had in mind. She nodded again.

“Very well,” she said. “He’s somewhere inside—I’ll go and speak to him, see if he wants to come out.”

“Thank you,” said Mathyas.

“I’m afraid your meeting will have to take place outside, if that’s all right,” she added, though with a note of sympathy in her voice. “It’s just so I can keep an eye on you both. I’m sure you mean no harm, but you must understand the need for caution.”

“Of course,” said Mathyas. “...should I just wait outside the gate, then?”

“Yes, if you please,” she said. Mathyas bowed and turned back the way he came while the woman headed up the path to the orphanage’s entrance. It was a few minutes that he spent on the street outside, leaning against the wall as he waited. When he heard the scraping of the gate again, he looked up, feeling more nervous than he thought he would.

For a long moment, he and Aventus just stared at each other. The boy had changed since he last saw him; he looked a little taller, and perhaps a bit healthier, too. His cheeks were full, his face less gaunt, and his black hair—now an inch or two shorter—was no longer matted and greasy. His eyes widened first, and then his mouth spread into a grin.

“Mathyas!” he cried, and Mathyas grunted from the impact of Aventus barrelling into him. His old wound twinged a bit. “Oh, it’s really you! I knew you’d come back!”

Mathyas awkwardly wrapped his arms around the boy, glancing upwards to grin sheepishly at the woman he’d spoken to before. She was smiling at them both, looking almost relieved that they clearly knew each other.

“I did,” he said, putting his hands on Aventus’ thin shoulders so he could push him away slightly. “Wow, look at you. I think you’ve grown since I last saw you.”

Mathyas remembered always hating that phrase as a child, but it made Aventus beam. It occurred to him that Aventus probably didn’t have any adults in his life who could say that to him.

“It was his eleventh birthday yesterday,” said the woman. Then she laughed. “But of course, you probably already knew that.”

Eleven?! Mathyas thought…

“Of course,” he said instead, not wanting to throw the woman off. He smiled down at Aventus knowingly, trying to ease the obviously panicked expression on the boy’s face. “Almost a grown-up now, aren’t you?”

“Come on,” said the woman, gesturing through the still-open gate. “Let’s head into the yard, get the two of you off the street. Mathyas, can I get you anything to eat, or drink?”

He shook his head, letting Aventus lead him through the gate. “No, thank you." The woman nodded and shut the gate behind them. Aventus grasped him by the wrist and started pulling him in the direction of a quiet corner of the courtyard. It was still in full view of the other children and staff members, but far enough away for them to be out of earshot.

Mathyas brushed some snow off a low set of steps and took a seat whilst Aventus sat on the ground a few feet away. For a few long seconds neither of them said anything, just gauging the other and trying to figure out where to start. Eventually Mathyas cleared his throat.

“I suppose I should wish you a happy birthday,” he said, smiling slightly. “Although I remember you telling me you were a bit older than that.”

Aventus’ cheeks turned a dark shade of red. “I’m sorry for lying to you,” he mumbled, looking away. “I… I didn’t want you to tell the guards that I was living there by myself.”

Mathyas snorted quietly. He’d have done nothing of the sort either way, but he could see why a ten-year-old would have followed Aventus’ logic. “It’s quite all right,” he said. “My fault, really. I’m old, I forget what young people are supposed to look like.”

Aventus tilted his head. “How old actually are you?”

“I’m nine-and-fifty,” said Mathyas. “Sixty in a few months.”

Aventus’ jaw fell open at that, and Mathyas laughed. “That’s the problem with being an elf,” he said. But he hadn’t really come here to talk about ages and birthdays. He cleared his throat, leaning forwards a little. “Anyway,” he said, “um. How have you been?”

Aventus had been sitting cross-legged, but at Mathyas’ question he drew his knees up to his chest, resting his chin in between them. “Um…” he said, “okay. The new mistress, Constance, is really nice… and my old friends were really happy to see me.”

Mathyas nodded. “That’s good,” he said. “How, um—how long have you been back?”

“I came back two weeks after… well, you know. Like you told me to.” Aventus was brushing his gloved hand over the surface of the snow beside him, collecting a fine white powder on the fibres of the wool. “Constance keeps asking me where I was. I hate it. I don’t want her to know.”

“You don’t have to tell her,” Mathyas said softly. “She’ll understand. And she’s only asking because she cares about you.”

Aventus scrunched up his face, shaking his head. “I know,” he sighed. “The others—they keep asking as well. It makes me so… angry. I don’t want to think about it ever again.”

Mathyas nodded. He could understand that.

“Why don’t we talk abou—”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” said Aventus suddenly, cutting Mathyas off before he could finish his question. He lifted his gaze, meeting Mathyas’ and holding it. “When you left, I— I thought… I was worried the bad men would find you again.” Then he closed his eyes, squeezing them shut. “And I was worried about you getting caught for— um.”

Mathyas smiled sadly. “I’ve been all right,” he lied.

He couldn’t tell Aventus the truth. If the boy knew the reality of what Mathyas’ life had become since Grelod’s murder, there was the risk that he’d blame himself. But if Mathyas lied and made the Brotherhood out to be something that it wasn’t, it would encourage Aventus’ dangerous fantasies of one day joining himself.

“And I’m tough, I know how to handle myself,” he went on. “You don’t have to worry about me, Aventus.”

“Where do you live?” asked Aventus, and Mathyas blinked at the sudden change in subject. Aventus was absently making snowballs in his hand and then dropping them back into the snow.

Mathyas hummed. Good question. “I live in Morrowind,” he said.

“I’ve never met a Dark Elf from Morrowind before,” Aventus continued, eyes still on his snowballs. “I thought all Dark Elves came from the Grey Quarter.” He looked up again then, meeting Mathyas’ gaze. “How long did it take you to get here?”

“So… I’m from Blacklight. Morrowind’s capital. It’s not far from Windhelm, just a week on foot.”

Aventus’ eyes widened. “Does that mean you can come visit again soon?”

Mathyas smiled. “I’ll come as often as I can.”

He had no idea how often that would be, but to his surprise, he found that he meant it. Why was he doing this? He’d known Aventus for less than twenty-four hours, and yet here he was promising to come and see him again in the future.

That was a lie; Mathyas knew exactly why he was making such promises. Aventus had saved his life, and he had saved his. Their paths had crossed at a point in their lives when both were hurting and afraid and they had helped each other. Mathyas’ actions that night may have condemned him to this living hell, but if he’d given Aventus and the other children at this orphanage the chance of a better childhood, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. He’d needed this. He’d needed to come and see Aventus in a place where he was loved and cared for, to reassure himself that it hadn’t all been for naught.

They moved onto talking about what Aventus had been up to in the orphanage, and the child happily regaled him with fun facts about the things he’d been learning in classes. Mathyas humoured him and asked questions, taking interest in Aventus’ enthusiasm. He’d never thought of himself as being good with children, but maybe he was better than he thought. After all, it didn’t feel like long since Cassathra had been Aventus’ age; Mathyas was well-practiced.

When Constance called the children in for dinner, Mathyas bid Aventus farewell and took his leave. Unlike their last goodbye, it was Mathyas’ turn to get a little choked up. But he made sure to stifle the tremble in his voice until he’d gone, not wanting Aventus to pick up on it. His cold, snowy walk back to the Cornerclub was spent taking deep breaths and trying to ease the sting in his throat.

He took his own dinner in the Cornerclub, occupying a small table in the corner and going over his maps as he ate. The food was a simplified take on Dunmeri cuisine, but gods, if it wasn’t the best thing he’d eaten in months; a traditional northwestern curry made with strips of breaded bantam guar meat and a spicy carrot sauce, served with sticky saltrice and washed down with ginger mazte.

“You’ve stayed here before, haven’t you?” asked the barkeep, Ambarys, as he came to collect Mathyas’ plates. Mathyas looked up from his route-planning, stunned into a dumb silence. “A couple of months ago. You were doing work down at the docks.”

Mathyas nodded, swallowing. “Nei.”

Ambarys laughed heartily. “By Azura, you’re looking better than you were back then. I remember I kept worrying you were going to die on me, you looked so ill.”

Mathyas couldn’t help the nervous laugh that escaped him. “That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

Ambarys shook his head. “Nothing to apologize for, lad,” he said. Despite the harshness of his voice, the familiar sounds of Dunmeri phonemes were soothing to Mathyas’ ears; he hadn’t realized how much he was missing his native tongue. “I’m glad you’re doing better. What brings you back to Windhelm?”

He coughed on his mazte a little. “Um—I’m here for work.”

“Are you a native?” Ambarys tilted his head to one side. “That’s a Blacklight accent I hear, if my old ears aren’t mistaken.”

Mathyas stared at him. “Yes,” he said eventually, once he’d collected himself. “Yes, I’m from Blacklight.”

His mother was the Lady of it, but Ambarys didn’t need to know that. 

The older Dunmer sighed wistfully. “I spent a good many years there, in my youth,” he said, gaze drifting to some corner of the ceiling. “Magnificent city. I hope to see it again someday.”

Mathyas breathed softly through his nose. “So do I.”

Ambarys lowered his gaze again, smiling down at Mathyas from his standing position. “I’m sure you will, lad,” he said. “Plenty of time yet. You’ll find your way back.”

Mathyas was unable to respond; he just turned his attention back to the table. When Ambarys left with his dishes, all he could manage was a mumbled ‘juohn.’

He finished planning his journey to Markarth and then downed what was left of his mazte, retiring to his room early. Mathyas was exhausted after days of travelling on foot and from travelling with a wound, but he knew from experience that physical exhaustion was by no means guaranteed to bring sleep quickly. He wanted to give himself as much time as possible.

When he awoke the next morning, it was to the feeling of sunlight on his face. Mathyas had slept through the night. And for the first time in a long time, he awoke feeling well-rested.

 

---

 

Kynesgrove, Skyrim, 7th Sun’s Dusk

After a long two weeks, the seventh of Sun’s Dusk finally arrived; though with all the travelling they’d done, it felt less like the date had been approaching them and more like they had been approaching it. Each day on the road felt largely the same to Jórunn—save for a brief excursion to Whiterun—and so the journey, while on it, had been slow and monotonous. But as she looked back on it now, it was as if those two weeks had passed in the blink of an eye. Had there ever been a time before Delphine? Jórunn could scarcely remember what their lives were like before the cranky old Breton had come into them.

The three of them reached their destination on the evening of the sixth and set up camp outside the burial mound so that they’d be there when—or if—something happened. Dawn broke on the seventh and still they waited, getting into their fighting gear and readying their weapons for an attack that was yet to come. Jórunn had woken up feeling sick with nerves, but as the hours dragged by, she found herself getting antsy and bored. She just wanted this over with.

She and Raydrin found themselves a flat section of ground to lounge on as they waited whilst Delphine paced impatiently a short distance away. Raydrin was dozing beside her, catching up on the sleep they’d lost on the road. The late autumn air was crisp and bitter but alleviated somewhat by the warmth of an uncovered sun. Jórunn, sitting cross-legged, found herself absently picking at tufts of grass and constructing a small pile on Raydrin’s stomach as he snoozed. If he minded, he didn’t say anything.

She raised her head at the sound of Delphine’s approaching footsteps, hearing Raydrin shift slightly beside her.

“Sit up,” Delphine chided, followed by a soft thump and Raydrin grumbling quietly as he obeyed. “That dragon could appear any second. I don’t want the two of you half-asleep when it does.”

“Could the Dragonstone not have given us a more exact time?” Raydrin asked around a yawn. Delphine made an irritated noise.

“Arriving at this date involved enough guesswork on its own,” she said. “It’s a good thing we aren’t too late, but we could be early. It might be days before something happens.”

“Then you can’t expect us to be alert that whole time,” Jórunn scoffed. “We can ready ourselves at short notice when the need arises.”

“The need, Dragonborn, has already risen,” Delphine said. “People’s lives are depending on you being ready to fight this dragon. I’m sorry that involves some personal discomfort, but ‘ready at short notice’ just isn’t enough.”

“Hey,” said Raydrin. “There’s no need for that. And her name isn’t ‘Dragonborn.’”

“In any case,” Delphine went on, ignoring him, “I think we should go over our tactics again.”

“Have we not done that enough already?” he asked with a resigned sigh.

“If it’ll keep the two of you awake, it won’t hurt to go over it once more.”

Jórunn held her tongue, lacking the energy to get into a fight. She was happy to let Delphine lecture them both; if there were any benefits to be had from being blind, it was not having to look at someone to convince them they had her attention.

Their ‘tactics’ were nothing particularly complicated. Jórunn would use the intangibility Shout whilst Raydrin and Delphine tried to down the dragon with arrows. Once it was landed, she’d stick with Raydrin and they’d attack it from one wing whilst Delphine took the other, using Aura Whisper in combination with the few basic sword moves he’d taught her to try and kill it.

“I thought you said it was more dangerous to know the basic forms in the first few months because it makes you more predictable,” she’d pointed out when they first came up with the idea.

“Against other swordsmen, yes,” Raydrin had replied. “Against a dragon, no.”

Delphine had then scoffed something about the Greybeards’ decision not to teach Jórunn any of the more overtly violent Shouts, to which Jórunn had argued that she saw no issue with their choice to prioritise the Shouts that would keep her alive. The discussion ended there.

When Delphine finished repeating herself, they fell back into a tense silence, though Raydrin did not return to his nap. Jórunn couldn’t think of anything to talk about that either hadn’t already been said or that wouldn’t have been wildly inappropriate in the circumstances, so she said nothing. Evidently Raydrin was feeling the same.

Midday approached and they ate a quiet lunch, a small and quick affair because Delphine didn’t want them to get too distracted. Midday gave way to afternoon and afternoon to dusk, and then Jórunn found herself shivering slightly in the rapidly cooling air. Raydrin cleared his throat.

“We should maybe be thinking about lighting a fire,” he said quietly.

“Don’t be fooled just because it’s getting dark,” said Delphine. “The seventh of Sun’s Dusk has many hours in it yet. We need to stay alert.”

Jórunn heard the scuffing of his feet as he stood up and the receding of his Dunmeri grumbling as he walked away. She rubbed at her tired eyes, fighting to keep them open. It was still early, barely evening yet, but sitting around and doing nothing all day was—oddly enough—exhausting.

It was a few minutes later that they first heard it. It was not the great rumbling that Jórunn was expecting, the sound of shifting earth as the dragon pushed free from its underground tomb; it was a distant, desperate howl, hollow and melancholy, and familiar to Jórunn’s ears as it reverberated between the mountains.

Her body turned to stone. A terror that felt like someone else’s, a terror that was not her own, clutched at her heart, gripped it in the vice of ice-like fingers. Suddenly she was not by a burial mound near Kynesgrove, but in Helgen, hunched over the headsman’s block one second, confused and disoriented the next, and then burning, searing hot agony eating into her flesh, a pain so terrible and a fear so great she could only regret her escape from the swift and painless end of the headsman’s axe. Slowly those cries had faded into nothing, but how long had Jórunn lain there, alone, in pain, wondering if she was going to die before someone had found her? The howl of a dragon had almost been preferable to the unbearable silence it left in its wake.

There was no doubt that this dragon was the beast from Helgen. Her saviour, her downfall. Jórunn found herself frozen in place, unable to think, unable to move. There was only panic.

“Get to cover!” Delphine hissed from somewhere to her right, and then Raydrin’s hands were on her arm.

“Jórunn,” he was saying, pulling at her. “Jórunn. Hey. Are you there?”

How was he so calm?! Even now, in the face of a fucking dragon of all things—

Raydrin was calm.

The howling of the dragon was still far off. They weren’t in any immediate danger, and Raydrin was calm. The familiar and comforting sound of his voice—soft, low, bordering on the edge of raspy—his steady cadence, the way her name sounded on his tongue with a slight curl around the R, his usual lack of urgency—it was enough to pull her back to the present.

“I’m sorry,” she said thickly.

“Don’t be,” he replied. His hands—which had been cupping her jaw—slid down to her neck and then to her arms. “We should probably get moving, though.”

Feebly Jórunn nodded, fumbling around in the nothingness until she located his arm. Then they were running, stumbling over the uneven ground. It was only for a few seconds. Raydrin suddenly pulled her downwards, easing her into a crouched position, and her back was against a rock.

“What’s going on?” Raydrin asked. It was clear the question was directed at Delphine.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I have a feeling that when that dragon gets here, we’ll find out.”

“I think it’s the dragon from Helgen,” Raydrin said. “That one was black too.”

“It is,” Jórunn confirmed from where she was kneeling, her voice tight. The others were both silent, and in the near-distance, the dragon screeched again. “I—I recognize its cries. And…” she closed her eyes, swallowing, “I can feel it.”

“You mean with Aura Whisper?”

She shook her head. “I just—recognize it. I feel this… pull.”

“Whatever you’re feeling,” Delphine said, “that thing is getting closer. Raydrin, are you ready?”

“Ready,” he confirmed.

Jórunn was about to cast Aura Whisper to get a sense of just how close it was, but she didn’t need to; before she could, she heard the slow beating of great, leathery wings, and felt the rush of displaced air over her head. She swallowed, closing her eyes and hanging her head back against the rock. Both Delphine and Raydrin were still.

“Sahloknir.” When the dragon spoke, its voice came from seemingly everywhere at once. It was rumbling and deep, low enough for Jórunn to feel in her stomach. Her blood felt on fire. “Ziil gro dovah ulse.”

“Do you know what that means?” Raydrin asked her quietly, evidently having not yet been noticed. Jórunn shook her head.

“Slen tiid vo!”

There was a mighty crack and then a great thundering noise, the crashing of rock and earth as it tumbled over the ground. Jórunn cast Aura Whisper under her breath out of instinct, and then felt her blood run cold when—faintly to begin with, but growing in intensity—she felt the presence of something slowly beginning to materialize beneath the earth.

“It’s resurrecting the buried dragon,” she groaned.

“What do we do?” asked Raydrin.

“Nothing for now,” Delphine muttered. “Just wait.”

“Alduin, thuri!”

It was the second dragon speaking this time, its voice different from the first. Each word felt familiar to Jórunn but in a way she could not place, sitting just on the tip of her tongue but ultimately out of reach. Their meanings were slippery and elusive, falling through her fingers whenever she felt she had them in her grasp. “Boaan tiid vokriiha suleyksejun kruziik?”

“Geh, Sahloknir, kaali mir.”

Sah–lok–nir. It had said that word before. The dragon's name. 

“Ful, losei Dovahkiin? Zu'u koraav nid nol dov do hi.”

Jórunn froze. Dovahkiin. Dragonborn. It was addressing her. A hand slid over her shoulder, squeezing gently. But neither Raydrin nor Delphine said anything. Were they expecting her to do something?

When the dragon next spoke, it was in Cyrodilic. But still inhuman, still otherworldly. “You do not even know our tongue, do you?” it said. The voice was textured, like a hundred men chanting just out of sync. “Such arrogance, to dare take for yourself the name of Dovah.”

Jórunn shook her head. She’d never taken that name for herself. She’d never asked for her body to be invaded by a soul that didn’t feel like it belonged to her. But being addressed directly like this, to be spoken to in her own tongue by this creature; she understood then for the first time how far removed the dragons were from mindless beasts.

And yet still she could not bear to think of herself as one of them.

“Sahloknir, krii daar joorre.”

There was that name again. It sounded like a command.

The last of her Aura Whisper was starting to fade away, but just before each presence flickered from Jórunn’s awareness, she felt the first dragon begin to lift itself once again into the air.

“Leave it!” Delphine barked over the great beating of its wings. “It’s too late now. Focus on the second one.”

“Raydrin,” said Jórunn, grasping feebly for his arm, “Raydrin, what do I do?”

“Stay here,” he said. “Keep using Aura Whisper and go ethereal if it comes near you, okay?”

She nodded.

“Raydrin!” Delphine called, now a short distance away. He touched her face again.

“I’ll be back,” he said. He was gone before Jórunn could wish him luck.

She hung her head back against the rock, breathing deeply and trying to quell her growing nausea. It seemed her stomach was already protesting in anticipation of the amount of Shouting she was about to do. When her breathing was even and her stomach was as settled as it was going to get, she exhaled slowly and released a quiet Laas Yah Nir under her breath.

The dragon—Sahloknir—was somewhere behind her, and still airborne if the flapping of its wings was anything to go by. She could feel Delphine and Raydrin manoeuvring leisurely across the glade, presumably in the stage of their plan where they were trying to land the dragon with bows and arrows. Each time Sahloknir Shouted, one of them would move quickly to the side, and from their continued silence Jórunn could only assume things were going to plan.

It couldn’t have been long before something changed, but it felt like ages Jórunn spent sitting there, listening to the occasional screeches of the dragon and waiting for further instructions. Taunts in Dovahzul rumbled frequently from Sahloknir’s jaws, but despite Jórunn’s best efforts, she couldn’t pick up on more than the odd word. Why was it not coming after her? Could it not feel her presence, the burning of her soul, the way she could feel its?

She spoke too soon. Her Aura Whisper faded out, and in the few seconds she spent collecting herself before renewing it, she suddenly heard both Raydrin and Delphine yell her name. “Go ethereal!” he screamed.

Jórunn obeyed before she could think about it, a hurried Feim. Not even a second later she was engulfed by the whoosh of hot air, and presumably a blast of fire she could neither see nor feel. She couldn’t feel anything except that horrible, nauseating weightlessness, the numbing and disorienting lack of all sensation.

“Hiding will not save you.”

“Jórunn!” Raydrin yelled again. “Jórunn!”

Could he not see that she was safe? Oh. She was behind a rock. Jórunn wanted to call out that she was alright, but she had no mouth with which to do so. For the time being, she was just a consciousness, what had once been her body now nothing more than a human-shaped mass of Void essence. But for all Raydrin knew she could have been killed in the fire.

The dragon took off again, its presence flickering out like a flame in the wind. 

“Fuck,” she heard Raydrin swear a short distance away. “I’m out of arrows.”

“Did you land even a single hit?” Delphine shouted.

“I told you I’m not good with moving targets!"

“Ugh,” Delphine spat. “Dragonborn, some of those Shouts of yours would come in real handy right now.”

Yes, they would, thought Jórunn bitterly. What was Akatosh thinking, choosing a blind person as his champion? This power was completely wasted on her.

The only even remotely aggressive Shout she knew was Unrelenting Force, but what good would that be against an airborne dragon? The fire breathing Shout she’d used on the frost troll would work, but it had come to her in a moment of panic that could only be induced by the immediate and inescapable threat of certain death, and Jórunn didn’t want to recreate that any time soon.

“You are weak, Dovahkiin,” taunted Sahloknir from high above. “Come forth and face me like a true Dovah.”

Seconds later she materialized back into her corporeal form, but a quick Laas confirmed that the dragon would not be able to get her from its vantage point. A plan had formed, and with two quick breaths, Jórunn had put it into action before she could talk herself out of it.

She turned to face the rock she’d been crouching behind and pushed herself up onto it with her hands, getting to her feet once she was on top.

“I’m right here,” she called indignantly. “Come and get me.”

Sahloknir made a sound that was almost akin to a laugh. “Thurri du hin sille ko Sovngarde.”

When it was finished with its crowing, it gave her what she wanted. “Yol Toor Shul!”

Simultaneously Jórunn murmured a quiet Feim and flickered out of corporeality just as she was encased by a blast of hot flame, as she had done before. But now she had her answer: Yol—Toor—Shul. Individually she had no idea what each word of the Shout meant, and for that reason there was a high chance this wouldn’t work. But she’d done it before. Somewhere, deep down, she had that knowledge. And now she had the words to use, she was nearly all the way there.

“Nikriin,” said Sahloknir. “You rely on the coward’s Shout.”

When she materialized once again, she was welcomed into tangibility by the sensation of her stomach rolling as it—along with all its contents—were forced to settle back into existence. It was nearly enough to make Jórunn throw up, but she swallowed down her nausea with a rough gag. Another Laas to remind herself where Sahloknir was and then the time came to test her plan; she inhaled deeply, opened her mouth, and pushed the word Yol up from her throat.

In many ways, it felt like Fus but with more heat. Sahloknir let out an enraged screech, and somewhere below her Raydrin whooped.

“Yes!” cried Delphine. “Do that again!”

Sahloknir howled a second time. “Your Voice is strong,” it choked. “For a mortal.”

Jórunn felt violently nauseous, and realized with dread that the dragon was starting to lower itself to the ground. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do that again without being sick, but already her last Aura Whisper was beginning to fade. Where was Raydrin?

She clambered feebly back down behind the safety of the rock, but her question was answered when moments later she felt someone’s hand grasp her arm.

“Time for stage two,” he said grimly. Jórunn nodded and gave him her other arm so he could pull her to her feet, and then his hands were gone, followed by the metallic ring of his sword being drawn from its scabbard. Swallowing, she held out her own hand, letting his arm slot into it and following the movement of his body as he led her back into the exposure of the glade. They were met by the sound of snapping jaws.

“Dovahkiin,” Sahloknir snarled, and with a new Aura Whisper Jórunn felt its long neck move as it whipped round to face them. “I see now. Hin miin los krent.”

Weakly she summoned another Yol to her lips, letting the flame burst forth. Sahloknir hissed in fury and pain, lunging forwards to bite at her. But Raydrin had pulled her to the side before it could. The sudden movement was enough to tip her over the edge of her nausea and with a lurch she was throwing up, supported only by Raydrin’s arm.

“Woah,” he said, trying to pull her back upright, “easy.”

Delphine was keeping it distracted from its other side; Jórunn heard the tearing of flesh followed by a desolate howl, then the dragon was spinning round to locate the source of its pain.

“I’ve cut its wing!” Delphine yelled. “Do the same!”

Raydrin was pulling her forwards, and Jórunn vomited again as they ran. With the head preoccupied attacking Delphine, Raydrin was free to slice through the leather of its other wing, effectively preventing it from flying off. Sahloknir’s words had ceased altogether, replaced completely by the desperate cries of an animal in pain. It was oddly… heart-wrenching.

The aura that was Delphine was then flinging itself onto the dragon’s thick neck, straddling it between two spines. Its writhing was reduced by the new weight holding it down.

“Now, Dragonborn!” Delphine called. “Now’s your chance!”

“Your sword, Jórunn,” said Raydrin softly from her right. Jórunn’s mouth felt dry.

Clumsily she drew it, though its weight in her hand was familiar to her now. Raydrin had left her, but she could still feel his presence at her side as he sliced through Sahloknir’s wing again, eliciting another howl. Jórunn slowly approached, trying to ease each of her limbs into the beginner’s form Raydrin had taught her. Delphine was raising her arms above her head and repeatedly plunging downwards into Sahloknir’s flesh, into the cracks between its scales.

“Slice the underside of its throat,” Delphine ordered over the sound of metal against flesh. “The skin is softer there.”

Jórunn swallowed, raising her sword. This felt less like the culmination of a great battle and more like a ritualistic animal sacrifice. The dragon was pinned to the earth by Delphine’s weight on its neck and by its tattered wings, unable to even use them to defend itself where Raydrin was keeping the one on Jórunn’s side occupied. Its jaws were useless, its attackers outside the range of its Shouts. This creature was completely and utterly at their mercy.

Jórunn readied her sword, exhaled slowly, and then swiped it in an arc through the meat of the dragon’s neck. The flesh gave way easily around the sharp edge of her blade, and Sahloknir’s tortured cries abruptly shifted into a toneless gurgle.

“Again!” Delphine cried.

Closing her eyes, Jórunn obeyed. Something wet splattered across her torso, hot droplets landing on her cheeks. Sahloknir’s aura felt dim, and her awareness of his form was becoming fuzzy and vague. It was only a few moments before it flickered out altogether.

She fell to her knees, dropping her sword. Immediately she felt that horrible tugging sensation in her stomach, like the pounding of a drum skin. A great pressure built in her head, behind her eyes, beneath every inch of her skin; it was like she could no longer contain herself, like something in her was fighting to get out. Her flesh was hot, burning, tight and dry, and Jórunn gasped, forcing air down into her empty lungs. Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension, fighting against the intrusion of something unwanted and unwelcome. But there was no use. A fierce heat flared in the centre of her chest and then it was inside her, spreading outwards into the tips of her fingers and toes. It was agony, it was ecstasy, it was overwhelming, but it was gone as soon as it had arrived. Jórunn was left feeling cold, empty and boneless, sobbing into the earth.

Raydrin knelt beside her, pulled her into his embrace. She clung to him, weeping openly into the crook of his neck. Why did it hurt? Why had it hurt more than the first time?

“Nicely done,” said Delphine. “I think the three of us make a good team.”

“Not right now, Delphine,” Raydrin murmured. His hold on her tightened, the slight pressure almost grounding. “You’re all right,” he said quietly, cradling the back of her head with one hand, stroking her hair. “It’s going to be all right.”

Raydrin held her, and Jórunn cried. She had killed the very thing whose soul was now inside her. She could feel it in a way she hadn’t with the dragon at the watchtower; a feeling of anger, fury, resentment that was not her own. This she would carry with her for the rest of her life. How many others would there be before this was over with? How many souls as heavy as this one would she have to bear?

Sahloknir. That had been its name. It had died with nothing but hatred for Jórunn, and now it was part of her.

There was nothing she could do but weep. 

Notes:

Thanks for reading! And sorry again about the longer wait—the next chapter will be posted in a couple of weeks as normal, and is a College-focused chapter, so should be fun. Please consider leaving a comment if you're still reading, long or short, to lmk what you think! <3

Chapter 19: Under Saarthal (Part I)

Winterhold, Skyrim, 9th Sun’s Dusk

Cassathra hadn’t meant to leave her packing to the last minute, but here she was, late on a Sundas evening, scrambling to get her things together for a trip they’d leave for at dawn. The ruins of Saarthal were a whole day away on foot and Cassathra knew she’d need to get to bed soon if she wanted the journey to be bearable.

She scanned over her checklist again, trying to work out what she still needed. She had her bedroll, a change of underclothes, her small wash kit, a notebook and charcoal for taking notes… ah. She still needed five days’ worth of food and the other half of the tent she’d be sharing with Brelyna.

“Still packing as well?” asked the girl in question when she opened her bedroom door to find Cassathra standing sheepishly on the threshold. Brelyna looked tired, her usually neat hair tied back into a messy braid, her robes replaced by woollen sleepwear.

Cassathra laughed quietly. Brelyna was rubbing at her eyes but nevertheless was smiling.

“We’re terrible,” Cassathra murmured with a grin, trying to keep her voice down in case people were sleeping. “Anyway, I won’t keep you. I’m just here to pick up my half of the tent.”

Brelyna nodded and turned to start sifting through the sprawl of camping gear spread out over her bed. She returned a moment later with the desired item, a heavy roll of waxed canvas she had to carry in both arms. Cassathra released a muffled grunt when it was handed to her.

“I’m sorry it’s so heavy,” Brelyna apologized with a grimace. “Are you sure you don’t want me to carry it?”

Cassathra laughed; she was more than used to carrying a tent by now. And Brelyna was so waiflike and delicate, it made sense for her to carry the much lighter poles and tent ropes.

“It’s fine,” said Cassathra. “I’ve got to put these bulging Redoran muscles to use somehow.”

For a split second Brelyna seemed caught off-guard—but then she laughed, albeit somewhat nervously.

“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” she said. Cassathra nodded.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she agreed. “Sleep well.”

Brelyna smiled, shutting her door. “Night, Cass.”

Cassathra hurried back upstairs to quickly dump the tent in her room and then made her way to the college kitchens to collect her rations. The College was surprisingly flexible about students taking food from the pantry; hot meals were prepared and provided for three times a day, served in the College’s large dining hall to the west of the Hall of the Elements, but there was an unspoken agreement that students could help themselves outside of mealtimes provided the agreement was not abused.

The kitchens weren’t empty when Cassathra arrived. Hester and Ferendil were sitting hunched over one of the long wooden tables, surrounded by scattered notes and tomes and talking quietly as they ate from plates of bread and cheese.

“Essay crisis?” asked Cassathra sympathetically as she approached.

Hester groaned, taking a long drag from her small roll of tobacco. One of the windows had been opened a crack, letting in a bitter cold, but the pungent smell still lingered.

“You know how it is,” said Hester, exhaling slowly. “What brings you down here so late?”

“I’m packing for Saarthal,” Cassathra explained, laying her muslin out on the table and beginning to fill it with dense, dried foods.

Hester laughed. “Oh, how miserable,” she chortled. “We were there just last week, weren’t we Fen?”

The Altmer in question grumbled in affirmation but did not look up from his essay.

“Filthy old place,” Hester went on. “And so terribly boring. I hope your group has more fun than we did.”

Cassathra chuckled awkwardly. In truth she was looking forward to the trip and the opportunity to get out of college for a few days, but she wanted to maintain the ease of the conversation.

“We’ll have to try,” she said with a flustered grin. “I’m sure Tolfdir won’t notice if we sneak some rum in our packs. To keep warm, you know.”

“Oh, you rascal,” Hester laughed. “If only we’d thought of that.”

Satisfied that she’d packed enough to keep herself fed, Cassathra bid the two of them goodbye and headed back to the Hall of Attainment. She was hurrying, excited by the prospect of finally being able to go to sleep, but in her rush ended up turning blindly round a corner and colliding head-first into—

Ancano.

Cassathra staggered backwards, nearly dropping her muslin.

“Ugh,” spat the Altmer, the irritable new thaumaturgy tutor. He’d barely been there longer than she had, having joined the College’s faculty at the beginning of the academic year. Cassathra was yet to have had any tutorials with him, but he’d already made a name for himself as one of the College’s strictest and most demanding tutors. He wiped one golden hand down the front of his robes, as if Cassathra had stained them somehow. “You would expect students of the arcane arts to be intelligent enough to watch where they’re going, but perhaps not.”

“Sorry,” Cassathra gasped. If she’d been more awake, she maybe would have held her tongue, but as it was, she found herself continuing. “I mean, it’s not like you didn’t also crash into me.”

Ancano’s black-gold eyes narrowed into a glower. “You would be wise to hold your tongue, apprentice,” he leered. “Maybe in Morrowind such churlishness is tolerated, but you will not find that to be the case in your tutorials with me.”

Cassathra frowned. “Sorry,” she said flatly. “I’m tired, and I’m heading to bed, and I wasn’t looking where I was going. But at least in Morrowind we wouldn’t be petty enough to get upset about something like that.”

His eyes widened just the slightest bit. It was a flat-out lie; any Redoran official would have reacted exactly the same way Ancano had done. But the Altmer didn’t sound as if he knew any better.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” she muttered, circling past him, “I’d like to get back to my room. Good night, Master Ancano.”

The corridor was silent as she stalked away from him, save for the resounding echo of her footsteps, but the sound of her heartbeat in her skull was inescapably loud. What in Oblivion did you just do? Ancano said nothing, but she could feel his gaze boring into her spine as she rounded the curve of the corridor. That was undoubtedly going to bite her in the arse when she eventually came to have tutorials with him.

Cassathra slumped against her door with a great sigh of relief when she made it back to the safety of her room. Her heart was still thundering against her ribs, but the incident was over. Hopefully Ancano would forget about it soon enough.

She shoved her things into her pack—clothes and wash kit first, then tent, then notebook, and finally her food—before jumping into bed. She was still trembling when she eventually fell asleep.

 

---

 

It was snowing when the five of them convened outside the College lodge. The skies were still dark, and wouldn’t be getting much lighter if the thick, flowery snowflakes were everything to go by. Tolfdir, Brelyna and Onmund were already waiting by the time Cassathra arrived, but J’zargo was yet to show. Tolfdir, being by far the most awake of them, took it upon himself to make most of the conversation in the meantime.

The journey was not pleasant. Over a month had passed since Cassathra had last done any serious travelling, and she was amazed by how much stamina she’d lost in that time. On top of that, the route to Saarthal got off to an intense and demanding start, requiring their party to head west from the city and straight into a steep, rocky mountain pass. The wet snow and harsh winds only added to their discomfort, and Cassathra’s cheeks were burning in the cold.

“How does Tolfdir manage to keep himself so sprightly?” asked Onmund quietly sometime in the afternoon, squinting at the back of their instructor a few long paces ahead. His tall, gangly outline was somewhat obscured behind a flurry of snow.

“J’zargo can think of a few ways to keep oneself spry in one’s old age.”

It took several moments for the others to catch on to J’zargo’s meaning, but they each groaned when they did.

“J’zargo, please,” Brelyna whined. “Don’t talk about Tolfdir like that. He’s too sweet.”

“What? It was a compliment.”

After making it through the mountain pass, it was a steady descent for the remainder of the journey. But walking downhill in the snow posed its own set of challenges. Maintaining one’s balance required constant vigilance and tension, and by the time the day was drawing to its close, every muscle in Cassathra’s body felt knotted and stiff.

“Not far now,” said Tolfdir, still somehow cheery despite the objective misery of their situation. “If my old memory serves me well, we should be seeing the beginnings of the ruins just on the other side of this hill.”

“In this snow, J’zargo doubts we will be seeing anything.”

“Yes, well, there is that,” Tolfdir conceded. “I hope the weather is more pleasant on our journey back. It would be a terrible shame for you to miss the expanse of Saarthal in all its glory.”

Unfortunately, J’zargo’s prediction turned out to be true. Though they occasionally passed the odd structure, crumbling and misshapen shards of black that jutted upwards from the fields of white, the snowfall was otherwise too heavy to see more than a few feet ahead. If this truly had ever been a city, it was difficult to tell.

Eventually their path began to slope downwards, taking them into a deep gorge. The winds diminished as they descended, allowing the snowflakes to drift leisurely towards the ground instead of whipping around them as they had been doing all day. In the calm, their vision cleared. When Cassathra was able to piece together what it was she was looking at, there was nothing she could do but gasp.

“Here we are,” Tolfdir announced, his voice a little hoarse from talking over the winds all day. “The ancient crypts of Saarthal. The crypts, now, are largely all that remain of the city.”

What Cassathra had originally assumed to be organic formations of rock slowly revealed themselves as man-made structures; the toppled remains of gargantuan pillars, broken arches and crumbling walls, the faded impression of a stone bas-relief carved straight into the immense cliff face. Wooden scaffolding—now half-buried under a few feet of snow—had been threaded through the ruins, allowing access to the bottom of the gorge and to what Cassathra could faintly make out to be a metal doorway at the base of the crypt’s external façade.

“Ysmir’s beard,” exhaled Onmund beside her. Cassathra swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” said Tolfdir. “You are currently gazing upon Tamriel’s oldest known settlement of men. Or at least, what remains of it.”

From the silence of the others, it seemed that Cassathra was not the only one at a loss for words. After a long day of travelling, she had lost the ability to articulate exactly what it was that Saarthal made her feel.

“Come along, apprentices,” Tolfdir continued, cheerily beginning to make his way down the scaffolding. “Let us find some shelter at the bottom, and there we shall make camp for the night.”

Their silence persisted as they clambered deeper into the gorge. It had been one thing to gaze down upon the ruins from above, but quite another to be walking among them. If Cassathra’s excitement had dulled at all over the course of their journey, it was now back in full force; come morning, they’d be delving into the crypts of Saarthal themselves.

“It’s weird,” she said once they reached the bottom. “I… I’ve been to Dwemer ruins before. And another Nord barrow, actually. But this… feels different.”

“You’ve been to a barrow?” asked Onmund with an edge of surprise in his voice, looking up from where he was digging his tent out from his pack.

Cassathra shucked her own pack off her shoulders and wiped a stiff, frozen curl of hair away from her face. “Bleak Falls Barrow,” she said. “It’s near Riverwood, in Whiterun.”

“I know Bleak Falls Barrow,” said Onmund. He wasn’t looking at her, focusing instead on the task at hand. “I grew up in a village not far from Riverwood.”

“Oh.”

Cassathra felt heat rise in her cold cheeks and found herself turning away. Had she offended him somehow? Onmund wasn’t usually so… terse.

“What were you doing there?” he asked after a dense few moments.

Cassathra was in the middle of unrolling the base of the tent with Brelyna. “I was sent there by the Jarl,” she said. “He wanted us to retrieve an artifact relating to the dragon crisis.”

“Ah,” said Tolfdir with a smile, having miraculously already pitched his tent. “So we have a seasoned adventurer in our midst.”

Cassathra said nothing. She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about Bleak Falls Barrow.

“You will have to share some of your wisdom with us tomorrow,” Tolfdir continued. It was a relief when he then moved on. “J’zargo, my boy, if you aren’t going to help Onmund with your tent, would you mind helping me light the fire? We’ll need some flat stones to make the campfire’s base—dry them with a flame spell first.”

J’zargo—who had been slouching miserably on a rock and watching Onmund pitch their tent—got to his feet with a long grumble. “Khajiit are not built for this weather,” he complained.

“But you’ve got a whole extra layer of insulation,” Brelyna protested.

“Our fur is to keep us from looking like naked babies, like the rest of you,” he retorted. “It is not to keep us warm.”

He stalked off with Tolfdir to look for campfire stones and the remaining three of them were left to finish making camp. Cassathra had never set up a tent in the snow before, not when she’d been travelling with Raydrin and Mathyas nor when she'd made the journey up to Winterhold. But it was a different task entirely. Keeping the inside of the tent dry whilst they were putting up the outer structure was a challenge in itself, and Cassathra’s hands were too numb from the cold to be precise about attaching the poles and tying the ropes and so on. It came as a great relief when it was finally standing.

“Onmund, would you like some help with yours?” she asked when they were done, relieved to have an excuse to break the stony silence. The Nord released a muffled word that sounded something like ‘please’ from where he was buried under a pile of canvas. Brelyna and Cassathra released him from his fabric prison and helped him finish it off.

“Sorry for being short with you earlier,” said Onmund, dragging a hand down his face from where he was sitting in the opening of his and J’zargo’s tent. The thick ring of fur around his face was white and crusted with snow. “I guess I just… I don’t know. It just feels a bit weird, rifling through the tombs of my ancestors like this.”

Brelyna and Cassathra shared a glance.

“I’m sure Tolfdir will make sure we conduct the research in a very respectful and hands-off sort of way,” Brelyna said softly. “It’s his history, too. And I suppose… I suppose we’re doing this research so that we can better preserve their memory, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Onmund sighed. “And I guess if you were sent to Bleak Falls Barrow by the Jarl it was probably important.”

“We get where you’re coming from, Onmund,” said Cassathra. “Ancestry is important in our culture too. We’ll try and be respectful.”

Onmund just gave her a closed-mouth smile. It was then that Tolfdir and J’zargo returned, stomping down a flat patch of snow and using their stones to construct a platform. Tolfdir placed a slow-burning flame rune on the stones and then together, under the darkening skies, they began to eat.

When they were nearly finished with their provisions, Tolfdir started rifling through his pack. The conversation paused as the others stopped to watch him, distracted by the ruffling of fabric.

“Can I interest any of you in some wine?”

He held up the bottle in one hand, his mismatched green-and-hazel eyes twinkling in the firelight. They glanced to each other.

“Come now, we’re all adults here,” he said. “There’s no reason this field trip can’t be fun.”

Cassathra bit her lip, trying not to laugh. There she’d been joking about smuggling in some rum, when all along the alcohol was going to be provided—and by their teacher, nonetheless.

“J’zargo, for one, would be most interested in sharing your wine, Master Tolfdir,” the Khajiit said.  

Tolfdir smiled and poured some into a small clay cup. “Anyone else?” he asked, leaning around the fire to hand the cup to J’zargo. “Do not feel as if you have to say yes. I just thought you might enjoy a little treat after a day of hiking in the snow.”

“I’ll have some, please,” said Cassathra. Brelyna and Onmund both added their agreement.

“Did you really carry that extra weight all this way just for us?” asked Brelyna as she sipped from her cup.

Tolfdir laughed. “I’m not as feeble as I look,” he said. “It was my pleasure.”

They drank their wine and chatted for an hour or so, mostly responding to Tolfdir’s questions as he asked them about themselves. It was the first time they’d really been able to interact with him outside of classes, and Cassathra found herself liking him more and more. Most of what the others told him she already knew, but about Tolfdir she learned that he’d grown up in a merchant family in Solitude, that he’d travelled to Wayrest as a young man to study at the academy there, and that he’d served for twenty years as the Court Wizard of Haafingar under High King Istlod. He recounted various tales from his own time as a student, some interesting, some amusing. They learned that his wife had once been a fellow member of the College faculty but that she’d died just over a decade ago. The pair of them had a daughter, currently working as a lecturer at the Arcane University.

When they’d finished their wine and were too tired to continue, the five of them retired into their tents, bundled up in every layer of fur they could get their hands on. The fire had warmed them superficially but the cold ran deep, and Cassathra found herself shivering even in her bedroll.

“Want to huddle for warmth?” she asked through the chattering of her teeth, trying to make out Brelyna’s outline in the darkness of their tent. The other Dunmer appeared to be lying on her side, facing away from her.  

Brelyna was silent and Cassathra worried that she’d overstepped some line. Sharing body heat in cold climates had been taught to her as a practical necessity in her basic military training, but the Telvanni had a reputation for being more… wary, perhaps, about physical touch.

“You don’t have to say yes,” she added. Then she laughed, hissing through her teeth. “It’s just really fucking cold.”

“No, it’s a good idea,” said Brelyna eventually, though her voice sounded tight. “Very, um. Practical.”

Cassathra rolled over and heard Brelyna shuffling behind her, until she felt the back of Brelyna’s bedroll press against her own. It was a dull heat, muted by the layers of insulation between them, but it was better than nothing. And Cassathra was ready to take whatever she could get.

“Is that okay?” asked Brelyna, and Cassathra nodded even though her friend couldn’t see it.

“Mm-hm,” she said. Her eyes were already drifting shut. “Night, Brelyna.”

It was silent for several moments before Brelyna replied.

“Night, Cass.”

 

---

 

“Cassathra? Brelyna? Is that the two of you I hear down there?”

Cassathra huffed, sitting up from where she’d been investigating what they believed to be the faded remnants of a rune.

“We’re just at the end of the tunnel!” she called back, shooting an amused glance over at Brelyna. Brelyna smiled, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear before returning to her notes.

Tolfdir’s approaching footsteps as he clambered towards them reverberated dully around the odd acoustics of Saarthal. The interconnected tunnels and chambers of various sizes seemed to both absorb all sound and bounce it off, creating an echo that sounded simultaneously muted and hollow.

It was not at all like Bleak Falls Barrow, not really. That had been the resting place of a high-ranking Dragon Cult leader and his servants; it was all grand chambers and mighty caverns, a tomb designed to truly honour its inhabitants. But this? This had been the crypt of a city. Saarthal’s interior was distinguished by narrow, winding passages and an efficient use of space.

And it felt older, too. Farengar had explained that Bleak Falls Barrow was built long after the end of the Dragon War by a small faction of remaining Cult loyalists, but Saarthal dated to a time before the Cult’s more tyrannical control of Skyrim had been fully established. The people who lived here had been ordinary Atmorans; traders, hunters, builders, carpenters. They had lived each day as people did now, and when they died, their bodies were brought here. It was sobering.

“How are the two of you getting on?” asked Tolfdir, coming to crouch beside them and peer at their work. Cassathra’s magelight flickered out of view, plunging them into darkness, and quickly she threw up another one.

“We think these engravings might once have been some kind of permanent rune system,” Brelyna explained, gesturing to the swirling patterns that lined the walls and floor. “The majority of early Atmoran settlers were preliterate, so it makes sense that they would have used images instead of words to bind their magic.”

“Preliterate, you say?” asked Tolfdir. “Are we certain about that, Brelyna?”

Brelyna’s cheeks flushed. “I- I’ve definitely read that somewhere. In several places, I think.”

“I have too,” Cassathra added.

“As have I,” said Tolfdir. “However, I believe that theory is most oft propounded by Altmeri scholars. They argue that Ysgramor developed a runic transcription of Nord speech based on elvish principles. That may well have been the case, perhaps for ease of translation and trade—but could Atmorans not have had their own form of writing beforehand? It could be that the images we gaze upon now are an early form of writing, even if they are not recognizable as such to our modern eyes.”

Cassathra and Brelyna shared a glance, both feeling slightly embarrassed at having failed to consider that themselves.

“In any case,” Tolfdir went on, “we are not linguists. Please, Brelyna, do continue.”

She swallowed, looking back down to her work. “Well, we believe the runes may have controlled some sort of mechanism for opening these doors,” she explained. Cassathra detected a faint trembling in her voice. “They’re too faded now to work anymore, which is why the doors are open, but we can see the gaps in the ceiling where the doors would have come down from. And the runes run all the way along this tunnel, connecting the doors to those pillars you went past on your way in.”

“Interesting,” said Tolfdir. “Do you have any theory as to why the tombs beyond these doors would warrant an extra layer of protection?”

“Not yet,” said Cassathra. “We were going to take a look at them once we finished taking note of these markings.”

Tolfdir nodded, stroking his beard. “Excellent work, both of you,” he said. “However, I am afraid I must now ask you to split up. Brelyna, child, could you please carry on with your work here? Cassathra, I believe J’zargo is in need of some help with his current task. Would you please go to him and offer your assistance?”

Cassathra shrugged. “Sure. Where is he?”

“He is at the deepest point of the excavation,” said Tolfdir. “So far we have been unable to progress past it. I will lead you there now.”

“I guess I’ll see you at lunch?” she said to Brelyna as she pushed herself to her feet. Brelyna smiled.

“See you then.”

Tolfdir led her through the winding ruins and further into the depths of the excavation, explaining to her what her task would be along the way.

“Our latest find is the burial chambers of what we believe to have been quite a wealthy family,” he said, picking his way over a pile of rubble. “Their tombs are lined with keepsakes of rather more value than we have found in the rest of the crypts. J’zargo has been asked to remove all non-magical artifacts and to catalogue them for safe-keeping for the duration of the excavation. I would like you to follow behind him and catalogue whatever enchanted items you may find.”

“Am I doing anything with them, or just taking notes?”

“You must package them safely so that they may be brought back to college,” Tolfdir explained. “We will be studying the enchantments in a safe environment before returning them to their rightful owners. J’zargo will show you how to properly store them.”

It was a long while before they reached their destination; Cassathra had failed to appreciate how deep the excavation ran. The way was shrouded in darkness for the most part, save for the eerie blue glow of her and Tolfdir’s Candlelight, but when they reached the chamber in which J’zargo was working, Cassathra was pleased to find that several braziers had been lit to illuminate the space.

“Ah,” said J’zargo, turning to them both with a grin. “Some company at last.”

“Cassathra will be following behind you and cataloguing the enchanted items,” said Tolfdir. “I trust that you can acquaint her with everything?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful,” Tolfdir smiled. “I shall leave you to it, then. If you need me, I’ll be checking up on our dear Onmund.”

As promised, J’zargo showed Cassathra the progress he’d made so far and gave her a demonstration of how to properly wrap up the artifacts for safekeeping. He’d already gone through a significant number of the tombs, and so was far enough ahead that they were unable to talk as they worked. This Cassathra regretted; J’zargo could be good company when he wanted to be. But she supposed, at least, that they were less likely to get distracted this way.

She got to work, carefully rifling through each of the tombs in search of enchanted relics. J’zargo had done most of the hard work, really, filtering out the magic from the mundane and leaving the former behind; all she had to do was attempt to identify the type of enchantment, record whatever she could, and then lay each item down in the appropriate protective casing.

It was tedious work. Cassathra was yet to have developed an instinct for enchantments, and so most items required a long and monotonous process of trial-and-error. Clothing and leather had largely perished by this point, so for the most part she was dealing with jewellery and ceremonial weapons. It was weird, she thought, as she held up a pair of gold hoop earrings to the light of a brazier and watched them glint and glitter, how little some fashions had changed since the Merethic Era.

She was on her fifth tomb when she noticed something rather odd. Maybe she’d spoken too soon; this didn’t look anything like what might have been fashionable in the Merethic Era, or the Fourth Era or at any point in between. An amulet of some kind lay draped around the withered neck of the embalmed corpse, the centrepiece having since slid down from the body’s sternum to rest beside their ear. The cord was thick and leathery, almost bark-like in appearance. Dull golden beads clung to it at irregular intervals. The amulet itself was a faded yellow in colour, possibly made from ivory or bone, with a symmetrical but otherwise quite primitive pattern carved into it. What looked like two teeth—long fangs of some sort—had been attached to the cord either side.

“Ad’bahr ohn bidi’im,” she muttered under her breath, tentatively reaching a hand towards it. She felt some kind of reaction without even needing to touch it; a thrumming energy, a tingling sensation across the skin of her hand. The enchantment on this amulet was powerful enough to be felt even by Cassathra’s measly instincts, even without a soul gem to respond to. It was palpable.

Very carefully, Cassathra pressed the pad of one fingertip against it. She felt a faint buzz, but otherwise nothing. Whatever the enchantment was, it seemed safe for her to interact with.

Taking care not to touch or otherwise disturb the body, Cassathra unclasped the cord from around its neck and slowly lifted it from the coffin. The amulet itself was weighty, pulling down on the cord like it didn’t want to be removed from its resting place. No sooner had it lost all contact with the coffin than there was a mighty clanging sound from behind Cassathra. No—not just behind. All around.

She whipped round in search of the source of the noise, the amulet clutched so tightly in her grasp that the crescents of her nails were digging painfully into the meat of her palm. Between each of the pillars that closed off her part of the chamber, dense metal grates had fallen to the floor. Clouds of disturbed dust hung heavy in the air.

“What in Azurah’s name did you do?” came J’zargo’s voice from the other side of one of the grates, his furred hands wrapping around the bars.

Cassathra’s heart had forgotten how to beat. “I- I don’t know,” she managed feebly. “I just… picked up this amulet.”

“Have you tried putting it back?”

“Har har.”

“J’zargo is quite serious.”

Cassathra threw him a glare, irritation cutting through her anxiety. She placed the amulet back on the chest of the mummy, only half-hoping that it would do something, but was nevertheless disappointed when it didn’t.

She closed her eyes. “Fuck.”

J’zargo cleared his throat. “Have you tried squeezing under the bars?” he asked. “You are probably short enough to fit.”

“J’zargo!”

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologized with a laugh, spreading his hands. “J’zargo will go and find Tolfdir if that would help.”

“It would.”

“Do not worry, Cassathra,” he said. His voice had taken on an unusually serious tone, one she wasn’t used to hearing from him. “We are at a College of incredibly powerful mages. J’zargo knows it may seem scary right now, but you will not be trapped down here for long.”

Cassathra swallowed. “Thanks, J’zargo.”

He blinked at her slowly with a firm nod of his head—a gesture Cassathra had come to recognize as the Khajiiti equivalent of a smile—before disappearing into the shadows of the ruin. Cassathra was on her own.

She huffed, sinking down to the floor and hanging her head back against the dusty wall. J’zargo was right—logically, she could think of nearly five ways just off the top of her head that magic could be used to get her out of here. But that wasn’t enough to shake the growing weight on her chest or the tightness in her lungs. Cassathra was trapped at the bottom of a dusty old crypt whose inhabitants had been dead for millennia. And even if she did get out of there, what had she started? It was clear that whoever built this place had wanted that amulet to stay put for a reason.

It felt like hours passed in the time it took for the others to return, but it couldn’t have been longer than ten minutes. Cassathra could have cried with relief when she first heard the echoing of footsteps and the flickering of Candlelight against the cave walls.

“Cassathra!” Brelyna cried, hurrying towards her. J’zargo appeared to have brought everyone, or at least, everyone had come with him. “Oh, gods, what happened? Are you all right?”

“Better now,” Cassathra feebly laughed, offering Brelyna a weak smile through the bars of the metal grate. Brelyna’s scarlet eyes were wide with concern as she gazed down at her.

“Oh dear,” muttered Tolfdir, coming up from behind. “Quite a mess you’ve got yourself into here, Miss Darethi.”

“I’m so sorry, Tolfdir,” she said. “I—I don’t know what I did. I was just working through the enchanted artifacts like you told me to but one of them seemed to trigger this when I picked it up.”

“No need to apologize, my dear,” he smiled. “One of the perils of working in an old ruin, I’m afraid. And it’s nothing we won’t be able to fix with a little portal magic or a well-placed flame rune.”

Cassathra swallowed, doing her best to nod as if she were calm.

“But hopefully it will not come to that,” Tolfdir went on. “First it may be worth taking a look at the particular artifact you picked up. Do you still have it on you?”

With a weak nod Cassathra went to retrieve it from where she’d left it, handing it to Tolfdir through one of the square gaps in the grate. The creases in his face deepened as he took it from her, his wrinkled brow knotting into a frown.

Tolfdir was silent for longer than was comfortable, inspecting the amulet with a close scrutiny. Cassathra wanted to be patient but didn’t have it in her.

“Master Tolfdir?” she nervously prompted, causing him to shake his head as if snapping out of a trance.

“It’s quite strange,” he said, still somewhat absently. J’zargo, Onmund and Brelyna were each gazing at the amulet over his shoulders. “Stylistically it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. And the enchantment is powerful, but not one that I recognize.”

He turned to the others, holding the amulet up for them to see. “Do any of you recognize such jewellery?”

They just shrugged uselessly. Tolfdir sighed.

“Whatever the enchantment is, it does not feel dangerous,” he said. “I am going to put it on to see if that helps us at all. But I would recommend standing back, just in case.”

The four of them stepped away from him, giving him a much wider radius than perhaps was necessary. But Cassathra at least didn’t want to take any chances.

The cord was long enough that Tolfdir was able to simply slip the amulet straight over his head, without needing to unclasp it. Cassathra’s breath caught in her throat as it came to rest on his shoulders, the ivory pendant hanging squarely in the centre of his chest. There was no immediate reaction, no visible effect or anything to suggest that something had happened. But Tolfdir’s face contorted into a deep frown, his hand coming up to stroke his beard as he was wont to do when he was thinking.

“Most odd,” he said after the longest few seconds of Cassathra’s life. “Cassathra, my child, would you please put this on? It is quite safe, I assure you.”

He held it back out to her, the beads and pendants clacking together as it dangled. Cassathra hesitated for a moment, and then reluctantly took it from him, slipping the cord over her head.

There was nothing for a second or two, and for a brief moment Cassathra could have believed it to be an ordinary necklace. But then she felt it; a sharp tugging sensation in her gut, like her navel was being pulled towards her spine. She twisted round in search of its source, frowning.

“What is that?” 

“So you feel it too?”

Cassathra blinked at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “What were you feeling?”

“It felt as if something wanted to pull me in the direction of that wall,” said Tolfdir, gesturing to the wall at the back of Cassathra’s temporary enclosure. “Or something behind it, at least.”

Cassathra swallowed. “I think that’s what I’m feeling too.”

“My best guess is that this amulet has been magically bound to another object,” Tolfdir went on. “By wearing it, its user is able to tap into that connection.”

“Do we know what’s behind that wall?” asked Onmund. “Or how to get to it?”

Tolfdir shook his head. “The chambers we stand in now are as deep into Saarthal as we have been able to progress,” he said. “As far as my colleagues and I have been able to tell, we have reached a dead end.” 

“But there has to be more, right?” said Brelyna. “It seems too… small.”

“The crypts have to end at some point. But you are right, Brelyna, that a city as expansive and as long-lived as Saarthal would likely have needed much larger crypts.”

“Wait,” said Cassathra. Over the course of their discussion she’d gone to investigate the wall in question, gently resting the flats of her palms against the cold stone. “The resonance is much stronger here. I can almost hear this… I don’t know, like a sort of humming sound, I guess.”

“Does anything about the wall strike you as odd, Miss Darethi?” called Tolfdir from far behind her. “Any markings, or residual magical energies?”

Cassathra carefully swept her hand over the wall’s rough surface, brushing away centuries of dust. Loose granules of stone came free and rolled down to the floor. A sharp gasp forced her lips to part.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, there are markings.”

“What kind of markings, child? Do you recognize them?”

Cassathra shook her head, grasping feebly for the right words. “I—I think it’s Old Nordic,” she managed. “Writing, I mean. The characters look familiar to me.”

“But they are different from the runes we’ve seen elsewhere in Saarthal?”

Cassathra turned to him over her shoulder. Four faces stared back at her from behind the iron grate, eyes wide. All she could offer them was a small nod.

“Atmorans may or may not have been preliterate,” said Tolfdir, “but Old Nordic was not in common usage until the beginning of the First Era. Long after Saarthal had been abandoned.”

He was silent, allowing the apprentices to put two and two together by themselves. When none of them said anything, he sighed. “This wall was not built by the proto-Nords of Saarthal,” he explained, his voice heavy. “It was added later.”

“By someone who wanted to seal off the rest of the crypts,” added Brelyna. Tolfdir turned to her.

“Precisely,” he said. “Why, I cannot say. Especially without being able to read the inscriptions myself. But,” he gestured to Cassathra then, inclining his head, “I believe the answer may lie in whatever object is connected to that amulet.”

Cassathra swallowed, looking down to the ivory pendant currently nestled against her chest. Their field trip to the excavation of Saarthal suddenly felt much larger than her and her fellow students, larger than anything she wanted to be part of.

“So what happens now?” asked J’zargo.

Tolfdir stared at her.

“Cassathra, my child. Are you familiar with the process of releasing pure magicka?”

Cassathra frowned. “You mean without channelling it into a spell?”

Tolfdir nodded.

“I just know that it’s potentially quite dangerous,” she said. “And that every textbook I’ve ever read has strongly recommended against it.”

“It can be quite volatile, this is true,” Tolfdir agreed. “However, in situations such as this, it is most useful at determining whether an unidentified object possesses any magical properties. If there is a way to get through that wall, it may react to your unleashed magicka in a way that reveals itself to us.”

Cassathra glanced sceptically at the wall, nerves twisting her stomach into knots. “I’ve never done anything like that.”

“It is quite a simple exercise,” Tolfdir reassured her. “Normally I would advise a little more preparation in advance of trying it for the first time, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Your calm temperament will put you at an advantage.”

Calm temperament? Maybe Tolfdir had only seen her good side.

“Simply tap into your magicka as you do before casting a spell,” he explained. “But instead of preparing the spell mentally, you must let your mind go blank. Focus instead on controlling your magicka output and releasing it in a small, steady stream. Think of this and nothing else. Too much magicka or a wandering mind can produce the potentially dangerous results you have been warned about in your textbooks.”

Cassathra’s gaze flicked between that of the other apprentices in some futile attempt at seeking reassurance. But they merely stared back at her blankly, albeit a little sympathetically.

“Do you think you can do this, my child?”

Cassathra bit her lip. “I- I don’t know, Tolfdir—”

“It is not so difficult as it sounds,” he tried to encourage her. “You have been casting spells for long enough now that you have developed the necessary discipline and self-control. Just place your hands against the wall and imagine that you are pouring water into a glass.”

Water into a glass. That didn’t sound so hard. She could do that.

“You’ve got this, Cassathra,” said Onmund from behind her. She could only give a nervous laugh in response.

Carefully she approached the wall, closing her eyes and placing her hands against it. For a long while she simply went through her old meditation exercises, breathing slowly and deeply and focusing only on her counting until her heartbeat had relaxed and her mind felt depleted. She located her magicka well and dipped into it, trying to concentrate on her energy flow. Cassathra hadn’t needed to concentrate like this since she’d been a beginner; normally she could just draw from her magicka and channel it instantly into a spell. But this was different. She needed to hold onto it and wrestle it without the structure that a spell provided.

Empty mind, she was telling herself. Empty mind. Cassathra thought of black. She took control of her magicka flow, letting it pool inside her head, in the tips of her fingers. Then she opened the valves and let it go.

Instantly there was a great crack of stone and Cassathra found herself flung backwards, crying out as her back met the ground. A hot, sharp pain flared in the centre of her chest.

“Cassathra!” someone shouted. There were hands on her shoulders, her face, pulling her upright. The others were touching her. What had happened to the metal grates?

“Ow,” she groaned, wincing as pain shot through her tailbone. Everything ached.  

“Cassathra, adur ohl meshti?”

It was Brelyna. Cassathra blinked dazedly as her friend’s face slowly came into focus, her wide eyes like rubies in the centre of Cassathra’s blurred vision.

“I’m okay,” she wheezed, confident that nothing was broken or bleeding. Just bruised. “I think.”

“Tolfdir,” said J’zargo, pointing to Cassathra’s chest from where he was gazing down at her. “The amulet has also been destroyed.”

Cassathra looked down at herself, blinking in confusion at the empty space where the pendant had once been. Her robes were blackened around it.

Then she looked up, her mouth falling open as she took in the gaping hole in the wall. It was a clean break, a perfectly rounded archway leading to a shadowy tunnel beyond. It looked as if it was always supposed to have been there. The ground around it was littered with rubble and chunks of stone.

“So it has,” said Tolfdir. Cassathra caught Onmund’s gaze and grimaced, trying to convey how sorry she felt for accidentally blowing up some of his ancestors’ history, for breaking her promise of being ‘hands-off and respectful’ about their research. He returned her gaze with a sad, sympathetic smile.

“Are you all right, my child?” Tolfdir asked.

Cassathra nodded, now able to sit upright by herself. “I think so.”

“That was quite a display there,” he continued. “I apologize for underestimating the extent to which you have control over your magicka.”

“I’m sorry, Tolfdir,” she sighed. “I really tried.”

“No need to apologize, my dear. If the amulet was destroyed too, it could be that this was inevitable. The wall may not have needed much magicka at all in order to have reacted in the way that it did.”

Cassathra gulped, unsure of what to say. She hadn’t felt like she was releasing much magicka—and the explosion had been almost instantaneous anyway.

“At least you’re out of that trap now,” said Brelyna, smiling at her gently. Cassathra couldn’t help but smile back.

“Indeed,” said Tolfdir. “However, this ordeal is not over yet. Tell me, Cassathra—do you still feel that pull?”

Cassathra stared at him, trying to work out what she was feeling behind the wall of pain. Eventually she nodded. “I do.”

“As do I,” said Tolfdir grimly. “What about the rest of you?”

The three of them muttered various statements of agreement, nodding and shrugging their shoulders. Tolfdir sighed.

“I will admit, this is not how student field trips are supposed to go,” he said. “Whatever was bound to that amulet is still down there. With the destruction of the amulet, the connection was severed, but now the magical energy radiating from that thing is powerful enough to be sensed even by us.”

The four apprentices were each silent, simply staring at Tolfdir as they waited for him to elaborate.

“I am under a duty to investigate,” he said with resignation. “You may choose to accompany me if you are curious, but there is no obligation to do so. Delving into the unexplored parts of the ruins could be dangerous, to put it lightly.”

“J’zargo would like to accompany you, Master Tolfdir,” said the Khajiit with a solemn bow of his head. Tolfdir nodded.

“Then accompany me you shall,” he said. He glanced between the others. “What say the rest of you?” he asked. “There is no pressure. It will not reflect badly on you if you choose to stay here.”

Cassathra inhaled deeply. “I’ll go,” she said. It was impulsive, but the knowledge that she would regret staying behind was enough to pierce through her sense of fear.

“I’ll come too,” said Brelyna.

“So will I,” said Onmund.

Tolfdir smiled. “Your courage is truly admirable, apprentices.” He held out a hand towards Cassathra, pulling her to her feet. “We must tread carefully now, and look out for each other. The way forward will not be safe.”

Chapter 20: Under Saarthal (Part II)

Cassathra had been in something of a daze ever since the explosion, and so it was a long while after they began traversing the dark, damp tunnels of Saarthal’s unexplored depths that the reality of their situation truly sank in. This section of the ruin had been sealed off for millennia; they were the first people to have ventured down here since potentially the beginning of the First Era. The excavation behind them was not the first excavation in the crypts of Saarthal, nor would it be the last, but this? This was unchartered territory. With every footprint left in the dust, they were making history.

Architecturally, there was little difference between the ruins ahead of them and what they had left behind. Narrow tunnels wove in and out of larger chambers, the walls lined with stacks of sarcophagi and engraved in the same swirling pattern they’d been investigating earlier. The lack of any noticeable difference—beyond the absence of scaffolding and excavation equipment—had Cassathra on edge. What was down here that had made someone want to seal it off?

“Uh, Tolfdir?” asked Onmund after an extended period of silence. “What exactly is it that we’re looking for?”

Tolfdir was only a black silhouette ahead of them, his outline framed in white by the soft glow of his Candlelight. “I cannot say,” he said. “But I feel the pull more strongly with each step. Whatever it is, its presence is powerful. I imagine we will know it when we see it.”

His answer seemed to satisfy Onmund, who said nothing further. The group was silent again for a short while until Brelyna piped up.

“Will the excavation site be expanded down here, Master Tolfdir?”

“Most definitely,” he said. “Ultimately these halls will be combed through in much the same fashion as the sections of the ruins we have already covered. But of course, we must first hire local workers from Winterhold to set up scaffolding and structural reinforcements to ensure that the site is safe. And this will be a lengthy process.”

“I don’t imagine it’s easy finding people who are willing to do the work,” Onmund commented.

“We are always met with some resistance, this is true. But the College pays good money, and Winterhold is in need of nothing if not more work. We have found in the past that quite a few of the local Nords enjoy the opportunity to get, ah, hands on with the history of their people.”

The narrow tunnel they were making their way through suddenly opened up into a circular chamber and the conversation drew to a close. They dispersed from their single file line, their five Magelights drifting upwards into the open space and illuminating a greater area under their cool, bluish glow. Gradually a clearer picture began to emerge out of the darkness; the stone floor beneath their feet formed a ring around the outer edge of the room, giving way in the centre to a gaping hole covered only by a metal grate. The grate was crossed by a narrow stone bridge, leading from the tunnel they’d come out from to a door on the far side of the room. It was too dark for Cassathra to see much deeper than a few feet into the hole.

“What a curious little antechamber,” muttered Tolfdir, more to himself than to the apprentices. “I’ve never seen anything like this in Nordic ruins.”

Cassathra ventured forwards, climbing up onto the bridge with slow, deliberate steps. Her Candlelight followed, gaining height in a jerky bouncing motion. The darkness above her shrank away from the light, revealing the outer ring of a dome-shaped ceiling. Bulbous chunks of stone spaced at regular intervals around the edge of the ceiling slowly emerged from abstraction as what appeared to be faces, their swollen, puffy eyes fixed down on the centre of the chamber—on Cassathra. She swallowed under their lifeless scrutiny, tearing her gaze away.

“By the Nine,” breathed Tolfdir, drawing her attention. He was standing by the edge of the grate, peering down into the shadowy depths of the hole beneath it.

“What is it?” asked Brelyna, coming to stand beside him. Tolfdir summoned a Magelight to his palm, thrusting it downwards. The orb phased through the metal grate and plunged into the ink-black pool below, trailing light behind it. Tolfdir’s Magelight was stronger and more powerful than those of the apprentices, enough to illuminate the wide expanse of the tunnel in its entirety. What it revealed knocked the air straight out of Cassathra’s lungs.

Embedded into the outer walls of the hole, and arranged in rows upon rows of neat, ordered lines, were upright sarcophagi, the tops of the coffins facing inwards. Tolfdir’s Magelight plummeted ever deeper, casting a ring of blue light around the edge of the tunnel but leaving blackness in its wake. The sarcophagi grew smaller and smaller by the second, blurring into each other until the Magelight disappeared from view altogether and the hole was plunged again into darkness. There was no telling how deep it ran. But one thing was certain—beneath their feet were the corpses of hundreds if not thousands of people, their bodies now stacked like wares in a shop display. And the only thing stopping Cassathra from joining them was a thin stone bridge and a rusty metal grate that was thousands of years old.

The blood suddenly drained from her head, pulling her downwards. 

“Cassathra!”

Her body collided with the bridge on its way down, knocking a pain into her shoulder strong enough to pierce through her overwhelming vertigo. She landed on something hard and uncomfortable with an involuntary cry, and then she was falling again, the metal grate beneath her giving way with a creak and a rusty moan. 

Cassathra’s stomach leapt into her throat; she was in freefall. She shrieked and flailed as she fell, her hand striking against something cold, and then impulsively she grabbed it, swinging with a grunt into the wall of the pit a second later. 

“Cassathra!”

Four faces were staring down at her from above, stretching out their hands. 

“Here, my child!” cried Tolfdir. “Keep your eyes on our faces!”

Naturally that made Cassathra look down, and she heaved at the sight of the pitch-black nothing below her. She had one hand wrapped around a rusted metal bar, the other dangling at her side. A dull, echoing clang sounded out as presumably what was left of the rest of the grate hit the bottom of the pit. 

She squirmed and whined as she tried to grab the grate with her other hand, too panicked and nauseated to do so with any modicum of coordination. The grate groaned under her weight as she flailed. Uselessly she tried to grab one of the four hands above her, and equally as uselessly her classmates tried to stretch their arms out further, but with her little stature they were just out of reach. She would need to clamber up the grate herself, and she probably had just seconds before it, too, came loose and plummeted downwards.  

With one hard grunt, Cassathra kicked her legs back and then swung herself into the wall, using the momentum to throw her other hand up and seize the grate. Her muscles were already screaming from the effort of holding on, but slowly she was able to pull herself upwards, lifting one hand to grab the next bar up, and then the other, and then the other, until she was climbing up what remained of the grate towards the edge of the pit. 

She was nearly over the top when there was a sudden boom from somewhere above, and she looked up just in time to see a huge black shape plummeting towards her. Again she yelped, flattening herself against the wall, and a cold gust of air rushed over her back as the object hurtled past. More booms followed, a series of great cracks from above and… below. One by one the objects fell past her and hit the bottom of the pit in a deafening cacophony of sound that made Cassathra’s ears hurt and her head swim. 

Her arms were grabbed by two sets of hands and she was hauled up onto solid ground, rolling onto her back and catching her breath. 

“Up, up!” J’zargo was saying, still pulling on her. “There is no time!”

Cassathra was shoved upright and then hoisted to her feet, two elbows hooked under her armpits. She was so dizzy she couldn’t see straight. She wanted to throw up. 

“What’s going on?” she slurred. She could hear… scuttling. 

The others didn’t answer. Tolfdir flung Magelight after Magelight from his palm, up to the ceiling, down into the now-gaping hole. The blackness evaporated away from the light, revealing dozens of chalk-white, bloated figures clinging to the inside of the pit, humanoid in shape but so spider-like in movement, crawling over the walls towards them. Their withered mouths and hollow eye sockets gaped like inkwells from the milk-white flesh of their faces. 

Simultaneously those huge black objects continued falling from above, and Cassathra squinted upwards into the brightness of Tolfdir’s Magelights to see what she now understood was a great hole in the ceiling, a continuation of the vertical shaft below them. The objects were coffin lids, she realized. The creatures were bursting from their coffins. Like the draugr of Bleak Fall Barrow, they were waking up. 

“Hurry, students!” Tolfdir called. “Back to the exit!”

They scrambled into a run, racing around the edge of the circle in the direction they’d come from. But a sudden shriek behind them had them skating to a halt. Cassathra whipped round, freezing in dread and horror at the sight of Brelyna on her front, being dragged back by one of the creatures, a puffy white hand wrapped around her ankle. The creatures were swarming, pouring over the top of the pit. Immediately Cassathra and the others sprung forward, grabbing Brelyna by the wrists and trying to pull her away. 

But the creature’s grip was fierce. With Onmund and J’zargo still grasping Brelyna’s forearms, Cassathra let go, hurrying around and kicking outwards at the creature’s swollen face. Its spine gave way with a crack under her foot, but still it continued pulling, seemingly unbothered by the fatal injury. Cassathra reached instinctively for the hilt of her sword, only to realize with a sinking feeling that it was not there. 

She hadn’t even brought it with her. This was meant to be an archaeological excavation, and swords were not needed on archaeological excavations. Not ordinary ones, anyway. 

She conjured a bound sword, momentarily surprised by the miraculous ease with which she was able to cast the spell, and then swung it down through the creature’s wrist. Brelyna’s foot came free and she lurched away from the creature under the force of Onmund and J’zargo’s pulling. Cassathra kicked it again, knocking it over the edge of the pit and with it, several others. But more and more just took its place. 

Cassathra staggered backwards in a daze, uselessly thrusting a flame spell at them, unable to tear her eyes away from their grotesque forms. Then two hands grasped her by the arms and she was pulled back in line with the others. 

The doorway they’d emerged from was blocked, the walls around it already swarming with the creatures as they scuttled down from the ceiling and onto the main floor of the chamber. They were surrounded on all sides, backing up against the wall, closing in on each other.

“Get behind me, apprentices!” Tolfdir commanded. Nervously they obeyed. Tolfdir held one arm out protectively in front of them, raised his other, and then thrust forward a shockwave of green light that swept outwards in a ring across the chamber. The creatures closest to them suddenly froze, falling still, dropping to the floor. It was a paralysis spell, Cassathra realized. Tolfdir twisted his bony hand into an odd sort of shape and a flurry of blood-red magicka wound outwards from his palm and into one of the creatures, which then floated limply off the floor, suspended in the air by Tolfdir’s telekinesis. He whipped its motionless body from side-to-side, slamming it into the others, knocking them from the platform and sending them tumbling over the side of the pit into the darkness below. When enough of them had been dealt with, and when those that remained started to twitch and stir as the paralysis wore off, Tolfdir lowered his palm and beckoned for the apprentices to follow.

“To the door! Quickly now!”

They ran together, Brelyna’s hand clasped tightly in Cassathra’s clammy palm. They were just a few feet away from the door when there was a great crack of stone from above, and they looked up to see one of the decorative stone faces that adorned the outer edge of the ceiling—straining under the weight of all the creatures crawling over it—suddenly come loose from where it was attached to the wall and land with a mighty crash on the floor below.

The way was blocked. 

The creatures were already swarming again, unnervingly silent as they scuttled over every available surface. 

“Use your wards!” Tolfdir ordered. “I will try and clear the way.”

They obeyed, throwing up the shields of magicka like they’d done in their very first class with the teacher. With the four of them combined, their wards were just enough to create a seal around their group, but when Cassathra looked over to the pile of rubble that had once been their escape route, it was so overwhelmed by the creatures that Tolfdir’s telekinesis spell seemed to be having little effect.

“It’s no use,” he gritted out, straining under the effort of his spell. “We need to make for the other exit.”

“And trap ourselves down here?!” Brelyna cried over the chaos raging around them. 

“Nordic ruins are often circular in design,” Tolfdir replied. “With any luck, there’ll be a way out.”

“And if we are to find no such luck?” asked J’zargo. 

Tolfdir said nothing, but in his grim silence the apprentices didn’t protest. 

He let the telekinesis go, replacing it instead with a great dome-shaped ward that surrounded the five of them in a shimmering blue light. The creatures that had been trying to get at them were flung back, hissing and shrieking in pain. Slowly they began making their way around the edge of the chamber, staring in horror through the veil of Tolfdir’s ward at the sheer multitude of the creatures and their relentless attempts to do them harm. When at last they made it through the doorway on the other side, Tolfdir’s ward finally dissipated and in its place he threw up a Candlelight spell, bright enough to illuminate the dark tunnel ahead. 

“Run!”

And so they ran. 

Cassathra found herself at the back of the single file line, occasionally looking backwards over her shoulder at the pale faces trying to lunge at her from the shadows. They were relentless but stupid, tripping over each other in their haste, slowing each other down. Cassathra thrust frost spell after frost spell at them in a desperate attempt to keep them off of her, but with each one she knocked down there were several more just behind it. 

They wound through the narrow tunnels, in and out of larger family tombs, pursued all the while and picking up more of the creatures on their way. Cassathra’s lungs felt like they were bleeding with the effort of maintaining such a speed, but the abject terror she felt was able to pierce through any sense of physical discomfort. She’d fled from one dragon, fought another. She’d fought the draugr of Bleak Falls Barrow. But never had she feared for her life quite so intensely as she did right now. 

They burst into a long, wide, low-ceilinged room, similar in layout to the claw chamber of the Barrow. Cassathra’s heart dropped when, at the far end of the room, she saw that the way was blocked by an iron grate. 

They were going to die down here.

“Get to the far end!” cried Tolfdir. “Hurry now!”

The students obeyed, if only out of the base impulse to put as much distance between themselves and the monsters as possible. It was only when they could run no further that they stopped, gasping for breath, turning around to face the way they came. 

“Tolfdir—” Brelyna croaked, her voice catching. 

Their teacher had his back to them at the far end of the hall, a blackened silhouette illuminated only by the Candlelight hovering above him. His feet were spread wide in a defensive stance, his hands raised high. The creatures scrambled over each other as they surged from the narrow doorway, their pale, icy skin glowing blue under the Magelight. 

A pure-white light burst forth from Tolfdir’s hand, a solid wall of magicka that swelled forth and swept like a tidal wave over the influx of creatures. Cassathra didn’t know what it was—another paralysis spell, maybe, or perhaps some kind of restoration magic—but whatever it was, it halted the creatures in their tracks, stunning them into motionlessness. They shifted and stirred as the creatures behind them continued to push forwards, but Tolfdir’s spell had bought him a few seconds, at least. With his other hand, he shot the red thread of a telekinesis spell up at the low, arched ceiling, and Cassathra could hear him straining with effort as he pulled back on the spell, and then—just as the next wave of creatures burst forth from the hole—there was a mighty crash and the ceiling suddenly gave way, a great cascade of rubble and loose earth that tumbled down and flattened whatever had been in its path. 

“Tolfdir!” cried the students in unison when their tutor was flung back by the weight of his spell, rushing to meet him. Tolfdir groaned lowly as they helped him sit up, his thin, frail body so light in their arms. 

A short distance away Cassathra heard a high-pitched whistle, like air being released from a bag. She looked up to see the torso of one of the creatures, its legs crushed under debris, contorting and thrashing on the dusty floor. Its waxy, embalmed skin darkened and withered, shrinking in on itself until it was clinging to the creature’s bones. When at last the creature fell still, it looked like little more than an ordinary, shrivelled draugr. 

“Oh, my dears,” Tolfdir croaked. He was shaking his head, over and over, his temple in his hands. “I’m so sorry. I am so terribly sorry. You must forgive an old man.” 

As the shock faded away, a knot of tears took its place, rising uncomfortably in Cassathra’s throat. “I’m sorry,” she choked, interrupting his mutterings. “I– I don’t know what to—”

“Oh, my child, whatever for?” Tolfdir raised his head, staring at Cassathra with watery eyes. He took her round face in his hands, brushing her tears away with his thumbs.

“I fell,” Cassathra wept, shaking her head. “I fell, I woke them up, it’s my fault…”

Brelyna, kneeling beside her, wrapped her arms around Cassathra, shuddering against her as she worked through her own tears. Onmund was covering his face with one hand, J’zargo staring blankly at the floor, his large, silvery eyes like saucers in the low light. 

Tolfdir shifted forward onto his knees and took Brelyna and Cassathra into his embrace. After a brief moment of hesitation, Onmund joined them. 

“We’re safe now, apprentices,” Tolfdir muttered through the sound of Cassathra’s hiccups. He leaned back, extending one hand to lay it on J’zargo’s shoulder. “We’re alive. That’s all that matters.” 

“What were those things, Tolfdir?” Brelyna whispered, her ruby eyes wide and glistening with tears. As if to punctuate her question, they heard a sudden shuffling noise in the distance, muted and muffled by the stone rubble. The creatures who’d escaped being crushed were still there on the other side, lingering in the tunnels. Tolfdir stared uneasily at the rubble before turning his gaze back to Brelyna. 

“I believe they were draugr,” he said at last. “Nord undead tasked with guarding old treasures and tombs.”

Cassathra sniffled, frowning. Then she shook her head. 

“They’re not draugr,” she mumbled, her voice hoarse. Four faces turned to her in surprise, awaiting her elaboration. Tolfdir’s bushy eyebrows were drawn in confusion.

“What do you mean, my child?”

Cassathra blinked, staring back at her friends, glancing between them in turn. She knew what she meant, but she could barely even begin to articulate it. Her mouth just hung open, wordless, faltering.

“I– I fought draugr before,” she eventually managed when none of them had said anything to fill her silence. “In Bleak Falls Barrow. They… they were different. Decayed. Like that.” 

She pointed over her shoulder at the shrivelled remains of one of the creatures, half-buried under a pile of stone. Slowly the others followed her gaze.

“And the draugr had weapons and armour,” she went on. “They—” she faltered, sniffling, “—they could think for themselves. Th- these things… I don't know. They felt more like thralls.”

Tolfdir was staring at the floor, brows furrowed, stroking his beard in thought. “I think you may be right,” he said eventually, speaking slowly, carefully. “Saarthal predated the Dragon Cult’s reign of tyranny in Skyrim,” he said, though it felt less like an explanation and more like he was testing his own thought process out loud. “Whereas draugr populate the old Cult temples, cursed with undeath to protect their revered leaders and old treasures. To find them in the halls of the dead of an old city… it would not make sense.”

He looked back up then at the creature, his gaze sad. “Something must have been halting their decay,” he said quietly, reaching his conclusion. “I have never heard of any necromancy capable of having such an effect.”

“Flesh magic, perhaps?” offered J’zargo, clearing his throat.

“Perhaps,” agreed Tolfdir. “Whatever it is, it is old and extremely powerful.” 

“So those things were just the ordinary dead of Saarthal?!” asked Onmund with a watery voice. “Kept reanimated this whole time?”

For several seconds Tolfdir could only stare at him sympathetically. Then he nodded once, his expression grim. Onmund cursed and buried his face in his hands.

“I believe whatever is responsible for this is the object we are seeking,” Tolfdir went on. “I can feel its pull more strongly now than ever.”

“We should find it and stop it,” and J’zargo, clenching his hand into a fist.

Tolfdir sighed. “You are young and courageous, and that is no bad thing,” he said. “But for now, our priority should be to make it out of the ruins in one piece. There could be more of those things further down.”

His words came as an unwelcome reminder of the reality of their situation. Cassathra glanced around, at the cave-in behind them and the iron grate ahead. They were deep underground, with no food and no water, surrounded by a perpetual blackness with nothing but their Magelights to illuminate their way. She swallowed thickly. Maybe getting eaten alive by reanimated dead would have been a better way to go than starving to death.

“But how do we get out?” asked Brelyna, wiping the sleeve of her robes across her nose. “The way is blocked.”

“This looks to me like a Nordic puzzle chamber,” said Tolfdir, glancing around. “Ah– see there? Pillars. I imagine they will be the key to our way out.” 

He looked between his students, still kneeling in a circle around him. “My dears,” he said, “I understand that this situation is stressful. And I cannot apologize enough for bringing you into it. But if we persevere, we may escape it yet. Are we ready to continue?”

Hesitantly the apprentices mumbled their agreement. Tolfdir inclined his head in a single nod and then got to his feet with a grunt, extending one hand out to J’zargo. “Then let us try.”

They shuffled slowly down to the far end of the hall, where four pillars—two against each wall—were positioned in a square. The pillars were three-sided, and on each side were abstract metallic embossments, impressions of what looked like animals. 

“Cassathra, Onmund,” said Tolfdir, standing by the first pillar on the left, “you are the strongest of us here. Would you mind trying to twist this round so that we may see what it does?”

Nervously Cassathra nodded, but she didn’t dare speak for fear of crying again. Tolfdir’s composure and level-headedness were helping to keep her rising panic somewhat at bay, but gods, if she wasn’t desperately missing Raydrin, and Mathyas, and even her parents. How had she ended up here?

She and Onmund braced their hands against the pillar, finding purchase in the deep grooves. 

“Clockwise?” she said with a sniff.

“What?” asked Onmund. 

She realized with embarrassment that clocks were probably not found in high enough frequency outside of Morrowind—and outside of the wealthier echelons of society—for Onmund to know what she meant.

“Er, twist it to your left,” she clarified. Onmund nodded and they started to move. 

The pillar had barely shifted an inch when Onmund suddenly cried out, crumpling to the ground with two darts sprouting from his shoulder and thigh. Other darts hit the wall behind him in a chorus of hollow, tinny sounds, clinking and glancing off the stone. Cassathra stepped away from the pillar like she’d been burned.

“Vehk, Onmund,” she hissed, falling to her knees beside him when the darts had stopped. For a moment her hands just fluttered uselessly around his two wounds as she waited for her panic to recede. In her periphery she could see Tolfdir lowering himself to his knees, his brows creased and his lips parted in worry. 

“You’ll be okay,” she murmured, trying not to wince each time Onmund moaned in pain. From the darts scattered around the floor she could see that the heads were thin, but they were likely to have punctured deep into his flesh. And the small barbs around the tips would tear muscle and skin alike on the way out.

“The whole puzzle is probably rigged,” said J’zargo with a scoff over her shoulder. “If they were so desperate to keep people out.”

“Onmund, my dear,” said Tolfdir, “this is going to hurt.”

Onmund wheezed feebly. “That’s all right.”

“Cassathra, would you be so kind as to conjure a dagger and cut his robes around the wounds?” asked Tolfdir. “I will need access to the skin.”

Cassathra nodded, doing as asked and carefully getting to work. The bloodied rags she discarded to one side. “Now,” Tolfdir went on, “on my command, you must pull the dart out from his shoulder. Immediately apply pressure and a small amount of healing magic. But just for a second or two—I will then take over.”

Cassathra nodded, placing one hand around the puncture site and gently taking the length of the dart in her other. “Sorry,” she mouthed at Onmund. He just grimaced at her in his attempt to smile.

“On three,” said Tolfdir. “One, two, three!”

Onmund’s cry was muffled through his teeth, but it still went straight through her as she yanked the dart clean from his flesh. Hot blood spilled over her fingers as she pressed down on the hole, momentarily distracting her from the task at hand. She brought a healing spell to her palm and released it slowly, pulling away a second or two later to let Tolfdir take over. They repeated the process in Onmund’s thigh and then at last they were done.

“Is there any chance the darts could be poisoned?” asked Brelyna from behind them.

Tolfdir shook his head. “They probably were at some point,” he said. “But any poison would have lost its potency long ago. Onmund, my boy, how are you feeling?”

Onmund grunted, beads of sweat glistening under the Magelight as they rolled down his face. “Not too bad,” he wheezed. “It’s just a dull ache.”

“I will press forward whilst the others stay here with you,” said Tolfdir. “When I know that the way is safe, I will return.”

“Er, one slight problem, Master Tolfdir,” said J’zargo. “The way forward is still blocked.”

“Nothing a little ethereality spell can’t fix,” said Tolfdir.

“Or we could use destruction magic to clear the way for all of us.”

Onmund groaned. “Please don’t.”

“I have had quite enough students come to harm already, thank you,” Tolfdir said with firmness. “I must insist that I continue alone. You should be safe here in the meantime.”

“Tolfdir—”

“Enough, J’zargo.”

The apprentices fell silent, staring at Tolfdir in surprise at his rare flash of irritation. The old Nord got carefully to his feet, brushing himself down. His eyes were slightly narrowed, his jaw set.

“Look after each other while I am gone,” he said, casting an ethereality spell and flickering out of view. Cassathra could just about make out his shimmering outline as he strode towards the iron grate. When he next spoke, his voice sounded hollow and echo-y. “I will return.”

With that, he was gone.  

J’zargo sighed, scuffing the ground with the tip of his boot. Onmund hung his head back against the wall and winced slightly as he stretched his legs out in front of him.

Cassathra shuffled towards him. “How are you doing?” she asked.

He tilted his head down to look at her. “I’m all right,” he sighed. “How about you?”

She drew her knees up to her chest, tucking her chin into the space between them. “I’ve been better.”

“Yeah,” said Onmund bitterly. “You can say that again.”

“This is ridiculous,” J’zargo suddenly scoffed. “We are all adults. We should be able to make our own choices.”

“He just wants to keep you safe, J’zargo,” said Brelyna. “Can you imagine how he’d feel if something happened to one of us?”

“Something has happened to one of us,” said Onmund, making Brelyna cringe.

“Yes, sorry.”

“It would not be his fault,” J’zargo continued, folding his arms across his chest. “We are not his responsibility. J’zargo resents being patronised this way.”

“Well, when J’zargo becomes a master wizard like Tolfdir, he can do all the patronising he wants,” said Cassathra. J’zargo made a ‘Pah!’ sound and turned away.

They fell back into silence, each content to sit with their own thoughts. Brelyna’s Magelight flickered and died and quickly she threw up another one.

It was only a second or two later that they heard a sudden noise in the distance. It was a muffled crash, followed by a beat of silence. But then there was more; great booms of magic, the unmistakable sound of spells being cast. The apprentices glanced between each other.

“That sounds like a fight to me,” said Cassathra.

“We should help him,” said Brelyna.

“How?” asked Onmund, gesturing to the grate. “We can’t get through. And he told us to stay here.”

“Not a problem for J’zargo,” said the Khajiit, dropping into a lowered stance and thrusting a frost spell forwards at the metal bars. Onmund called out, doing his best to protest, but J’zargo only ceased his casting when the base of the iron grate was white with a layer of ice.

“If he can order us around for our safety,” said J’zargo, “we can break those orders for his. Stand back.”

Giving the others only a few seconds to scramble to shelter, J’zargo fired a flame bolt at the gate’s base and covered his face with his arms when the metal bars exploded outwards in a fiery blast.

“Who is with me?” he demanded when the dust settled, turning to face them. Tolfdir’s fight could still be heard in the distance. “Come on. There is no time to hesitate.”

“I’ll go,” said Cassathra, coming to stand beside him.

“I can’t,” Onmund sighed. “My leg—”

“I’ll stay here with you,” Brelyna cut him off, kneeling beside him on the ground. Then she turned her head to look between Cassathra and J’zargo. “You’ll be okay?”

Cassathra nodded.

“Then go,” said Brelyna. When they hesitated a moment further, she flapped her hand at them. “Go!”

Reluctantly Cassathra turned, letting J’zargo pull on her arm. The hole in the grate was small and they had to crouch to get through it, taking care to steer clear of the jagged metal edges. They broke out into a run on the other side, manoeuvring through a short series of narrow tunnels before bursting into a gargantuan chamber, larger than any they’d been in so far. In the heart of the chamber was a sight that made Cassathra’s stomach lurch.

An enormous orb—equivalent to the height of at least two people in diameter—was hovering in the centre of the room, a dark blue-green in colour like the sea under a starry sky. It was surrounded by a shimmering wall of… energy, it seemed like, maybe a ward of some kind. Instinctively Cassathra knew it was the thing they were looking for, the source of the heavy, dense feeling in the air, of that strange tugging sensation in their stomachs and over their skin. She could feel it thrumming, crackling in the air like static following a shock spell. It was hypnotizing.

After tearing her eyes away, Cassathra looked downwards from her and J’zargo’s landing. There in front of the orb was Tolfdir, caught in a fight with one of those bloated, pale wraiths. But this one was different; it was armed and armoured, equipped with the same ancient-looking gear Cassathra had seen in Bleak Falls Barrow. Its helm was adorned with two long, prong-like ibex horns, its hand wrapped around the hilt of a war axe. Tolfdir was pulling chunks of stone towards him with a telekinesis spell and launching them at the creature, but though his efforts were keeping it off of him, they seemed to be doing little to bother it.

“J’zargo,” Cassathra hissed, grabbing his arm, “come on.”

The Khajiit’s pupils were wide in the blue light of the orb, glinting like two moons in his skull. With a shake of his head he pulled his gaze away, following Cassathra as they stumbled down a wooden ramp to join Tolfdir on the level below. Their teacher staggered back in shock when he saw them.

“Apprentices!” he called over the crashing of rock. “Leave! It is too dangerous!”

“We know!” Cassathra called back, catching the attention of the wraith. “That’s why we’re here to help you!”

With a garbled cry the creature started lumbering towards them, axe in hand. Cassathra conjured a sword to her hand and parried the swing of its axe as it lunged at her. 

“The orb is giving it some kind of immunity!” Tolfdir shouted from somewhere beyond Cassathra’s periphery. “Keep it busy! I’ll try to find a way to sever the connection.”

“I can deal with it up close and keep it off of you,” Cassathra called out to J’zargo as she ducked and blocked another swing. She stepped to one side, circling around the creature to bring it with her. Behind it J’zargo leapt up onto a long stone altar, clearing his line of fire so he could launch sharp jolts of a shock spell at it. 

The creature seemed unbothered by the spell, pursuing its attack of Cassathra with a relentless fury. After the last sparks of J’zargo’s shock spell danced over its discoloured skin and then died away, its back was suddenly illuminated by an orange wall of flame, eating into its swollen flesh as Cassathra lunged and swiped at it. The flames blackened its skin and produced an acrid, pungent smell, but showed no signs of causing it any pain or slowing it down. Still Cassathra fought to keep it off of her.

“Maybe try frost magic!” she called over the crackling of the fire, grunting as she drove the tip of her blade past a chink in its armour and into its shoulder. “It can’t feel pain!”

“Aim for its neck, Miss Darethi,” called Tolfdir over the clashing of metal and the thrumming of the orb. “A headless creature cannot be reanimated.”

Vaguely Cassathra remembered having learned that somewhere before and cursed herself for forgetting. J’zargo’s frost spell was slowing it down, making it clumsy and predictable, but that seemed to be the spell’s only effect. The creature launched an overhead swing at her and Cassathra ducked, taking advantage of her suddenly lower vantage point to kick out at its kneecaps. It lost its balance and staggered backwards, hitting the altar against its lower back, and in its momentary distraction Cassathra raised her sword and swung it in an arc through the creature’s neck. Its head soared from its shoulders before landing with a metallic clang a few feet away.

Cassathra was panting with relief, staring at the creature and wiping her hands down her robes after her conjured sword evaporated. But then the creature straightened upwards, lowering its weight back onto its feet. Cassathra’s heart leapt up into her throat.

“Tolfdir!” she cried, instinctively summoning a ward to her arm and bashing it into the wraith to buy her a few seconds as she scurried backwards. “How much longer?!”

Behind her Cassathra heard the crackling of electricity followed by a sudden warp of energy. A ring of blue light flared outwards from the orb and swept over the walls of the chamber before vanishing.

“There!” yelled Tolfdir. “That should do it!”

Enraged, the headless creature started staggering towards her, though its movements had become jerky and contorted. Its body twisted and writhed, hissing air as the skin deflated and shrivelled. Before her eyes Cassathra watched thousands of years of decay take place in seconds, taut, pale skin giving way to wrinkled brown tendrils of flesh. In the creature’s place there now stood an ordinary, if headless, draugr.

“I have to maintain this,” Tolfdir called. “Try and deal with it yourselves!”

Despite being unable to see, the draugr lunged at Cassathra with its axe. Even without its head it still towered over her. She bashed the attack with her ward, sending the draugr staggering away from her, and then took advantage of its momentary confusion to summon a new sword with the dwindling remains of her magicka and swipe her blade clean through the elbow of its sword-arm. The axe—and attached hand—went flying. Cassathra drew her sword back, ready to stab into the exposed flesh of its stomach, but before her blade could meet its target, it… evaporated. Where her hand had once been wrapped around a hilt, there was now nothing.

Her magicka had run out.

In her surprise and hesitation, the draugr lunged forward with its remaining arm, one sticky hand seizing Cassathra by the neck. Her feet lifted off the floor. She cried out but there was no sound, just a pathetic wheeze as she scrabbled helplessly at its forearm. Her nails found purchase in its flesh and she raked them back, gouging ribbons through the loose sinews and scraping bone, but the draugr was unfazed. Darkness crept into the outer edges of her vision.

Just seconds later an ice bolt slammed into the side of the draugr's body, throwing both her and it in the opposite direction. They landed on top of the altar before rolling haphazardly onto the other side. Cassathra was on her back, disoriented, confused, head swimming from the lack of air-supply and from the impact. Then the air crackled with electricity and she looked over just in time to see flashes of white-hot light burst from the draugr, dancing along its skin and over the metal of its armour. It released a hollow whistling sound from what vocal cords it had left, jolting and convulsing on the floor. 

With a yelp Cassathra scrambled to her feet, steering clear of the draugr and scurrying back round the altar to join J’zargo in the centre of the chamber. The draugr tried to follow, hauling itself up onto the altar, but with half an arm and no head it was lopsided and slow. J’zargo’s shock spell was still clinging to it, smoke rising from its withered flesh. Then it caught alight, filling her nostrils with the acrid smell of burning skin. 

They watched and caught their breath as the draugr tried to crawl over the altar towards them, the flames spreading quickly through its dry, sinewy flesh. It twitched and writhed as the fire ate through its structural integrity, shrivelling in on itself, until at last it fell still, the ancient force that had been holding it together for so long now finally giving up. Still it burned, casting a warm orange light as skin blackened and curled.

It was dead.

“Oh gods,” breathed Cassathra, closing her eyes. Beside her she heard J’zargo shift.

“Are you alright, Cassathra?”

“I’m fine,” she said, wiping at her eyes. She turned to him with a sigh. “How about you?”

“J’zargo is fine, as well.”

Impulsively Cassathra hugged him, squeezing him tightly around his middle before pulling away a moment later. The Khajiit seemed startled but had no chance to say anything before Tolfdir joined them from behind, his approaching footsteps soft but hurried.

“Oh, my dears,” he exhaled, slowing to a stop as they turned to him. He was outlined in blue by the orb behind him. “I cannot say how relieved I am that you are safe.”

“We’re sorry for disobeying you,” said Cassathra.

“It’s quite all right. Truthfully, I am glad that you did—I am unsure that I would have been able to sever the creature’s connection with the orb whilst holding it off on my own.”

Cassathra swallowed, but neither she nor J’zargo said anything. In the brief pause that followed, Tolfdir cleared his throat. “What of Onmund and Brelyna? Tell me, are they safe?”

“They’re right where you left us,” said Cassathra. “Brelyna stayed behind with him.”

Tolfdir’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Oh, what fine people you all are,” he breathed. “You give an old man hope.”

“J’zargo hates to change the subject,” said the Khajiit, “but, ah—may he ask what that is?”

Tolfdir turned and followed J’zargo’s gesture to the orb behind him with a sigh.

“Truthfully? I have no idea."

For the first time, Cassathra could give the orb a proper look; it appeared to be metallic, but the way light reflected off its surface made it look like it was… liquid, somehow. Thick black lines swirled over the orb like vines, interwoven with thinner, blue lines that glowed faintly and looked almost like some kind of writing. If she stared at it for long enough, it seemed as if it were pulsating.

“The inscriptions are like none I’ve ever seen,” Tolfdir went on. “And never in my life have I come across anything that radiates such a powerful magical aura. Why, it’s practically tangible.”

“What did you do, earlier?” Cassathra asked. “With the draugr, I mean.”

“That creature was sapping energy from the orb,” said Tolfdir. “I had to create a small-scale enchantment on myself to redirect the connection towards me. But the orb was too powerful for the enchantment to last more than a few seconds, which is why I had to continuously maintain it. If it weren’t for the two of you, I likely never would have had the chance.”

“Do we think the orb is what was reanimating the other bodies?”

Tolfdir nodded grimly. “I believe it is most likely. With an object as powerful as this one, it seems quite probable that its power would come to be soaked up by physical objects in its proximity. In this case, unfortunately, the old dead of Saarthal.”

There was a solemn pause as the true implications of his words sank in. Cassathra found herself glad that in Morrowind they cremated their dead.

“So what are we going to do with it?” asked J’zargo eventually.

Tolfdir cast a further glance over his shoulder, wary and ill at ease. “A discovery as monumental as this should warrant a significant departure from routine,” he said. “I will require the opinions of my colleagues, who should be brought down here to investigate it themselves. Together we will decide what ought to be done with it. It could be that we transport it back to College for safekeeping, in which case I will need their assistance to set up the teleportation spell.”

He turned back to them then, laying his hands on their shoulders and looking between them seriously. “We’ll go and find your classmates,” he said, “and then we shall see if we can find our way out. If not, I imagine our absence will be noted at the College soon enough. The important thing is that we stay together. 

“I must stay here and keep an eye on the discovery,” he went on. “Onmund, too, will be unfit to travel for a day or so. The pair of you—and Brelyna, if she so chooses—must therefore head back to College as soon as we get out of here and tell Savos all that has happened. I will write a letter for you to take with you.” 

Cassathra nodded, trying not to show in her face how overwhelmed she was feeling. In her periphery she could see J’zargo doing the same.

“Come on, now,” said Tolfdir. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

In a stunned silence, Cassathra and J’zargo turned and began their slow climb back through the ruins, Tolfdir following just behind. Cassathra’s stomach was in knots, her heart beating like a rabbit’s in her chest. This… thing, whatever it was, had been sealed off and abandoned millennia ago. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it was maybe better off to leave it that way.

 

---

 

Winterhold, Skyrim, 12th Sun’s Dusk

“Are you quite sure it was the Archmage Tolfdir wanted you to see?” asked Mirabelle Ervine as she led Cassathra, Brelyna and J’zargo up the winding stairs of the College’s main tower. She cast a brief look over her shoulder at Cassathra as they walked, arching one thin brown eyebrow.

“Yes,” Cassathra confirmed, nodding even though Mirabelle had since turned back to face the way they were heading. “He mentioned Savos by name.”

“And you can’t tell me what this is about?”

“Er—” Cassathra paused, “well, I suppose we can. Tolfdir wrote a letter for us to give to Savos—um, the Archmage—which explains everything. You can read it if you want.”

“Yes, I rather believe I should,” Mirabelle agreed, slowing to a stop when they reached a long rectangular landing. The walls were tall, and quickly Cassathra snuck an upwards glance at the enormous stained-glass window carved into the stone high above them. It was circular in shape and a beautiful blue-green in colour, with the shape of an eye—the Eye of Magnus, the College’s symbol—situated in its centre. Cassathra imagined that the south-facing window looked beautiful in the summer, when the northern days were long and bright. For now it was just murky and dark.

Mirabelle cleared her throat, stretching a hand out towards Cassathra. “The letter?”

Sheepishly Cassathra handed it to her from the pocket of her cloak, chewing on her lip in the long while it took for Mirabelle to read it over. The Breton’s sceptical expression slowly relaxed, the muscles in her forehead shifting from a frown into an expression of mild horror and surprise. She looked up once she was done, glancing between the three of them.

“Well,” she said, coughing a little, “I can see why he wanted you to speak to Savos, now.”

She gestured to one side, to a wooden bench pressed against the wall. “Wait here,” she said. Her tone was a little gentler than it had been beforehand. “I’ll go and speak to him.”

Cassathra and Brelyna obeyed, taking a seat as Mirabelle slid through the heavy wooden door that led into the Archmage’s quarters. J’zargo remained standing, craning his neck to try and catch a quick glimpse of its interior before the door shut behind her.

“J’zargo,” Cassathra sighed. “Don’t be so nosy.”

“What?” he asked. “J’zargo just wants to know what his future quarters will look like.”

Cassathra rolled her eyes, lacking the energy to play along with his posturing. Beside her Brelyna got to her feet. Cassathra looked up in surprise.

“Um,” Brelyna started, “if it’s all right, I think I might let the two of you go in without me.”

Cassathra’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

Brelyna nodded. “I’m just quite tired after… well, everything. I’m not sure I have it in me to meet the Archmage right now.”

Cassathra did her best to offer her a reassuring smile. “That’s okay,” she said. “Do you still want to come to dinner with us afterwards?”

Brelyna smiled back, a small, restrained little smile. “Yes,” she nodded. “I’ll probably just be in my room.”

“We’ll come and get you when we’re done,” said Cassathra.

“Okay,” said Brelyna. “Er—I’ll see you then.” She looked up, throwing a little wave over to J’zargo. “Bye, J’zargo.”

“Bye,” said the Khajiit.

She was gone, her footsteps soft as she hurried back down the steps. It was only a few seconds later that the door to the Archmage’s quarters suddenly swung open, and Cassathra was so high-strung she nearly jumped out of her seat.

“He wants to talk to you,” Mirabelle announced. She opened the door wider, gesturing through it with one arm. “In you go.”

Cassathra glanced at J’zargo, swallowing. He just shrugged. She could see he was trying not to smile.

Carefully Cassathra got to her feet, brushing down her robes and setting her jaw as she followed J’zargo through the open doorway. Behind them Mirabelle gently shut the door.

The Archmage quarters were enormous, as big as the Arcanaeum. Cassathra realized with surprise that the room occupied the whole of the top floor of the tower, with walls at least two storeys high. The centrepiece of the chamber was a large, dodecagonal garden built into a lowered section of the floor, filled with a colourful array of flowers and shrubs and lichen-blanketed rocks. Three Magelights illuminated the garden from above, dancing between the gnarled branches of a small, pale juniper tree. Cassathra’s heart ached at the sight of plants she recognized from her homeland.

Curving around the back of the garden was a five-panelled wall, partitioning off the far side of the chamber from public view. It was from behind this wall that a figure then emerged, his features slowly becoming clearer as he approached. Savos Aren was a rather ordinary looking Dunmer, of middling age and height. His cheeks were hollowed, his nose broad, his skin a pale bluish-grey. A long, salt-and-pepper beard clung to his chin and jaw. Most striking about him was how young he looked; maybe ‘young’ was the wrong word, but Cassathra had been imagining someone much older. The Telvanni magisters she was used to seeing in and around the Rootspire looked ancient in comparison.

Savos smiled at them, a short, tight smile.

“Welcome,” he said, gesturing vaguely with one arm to a pair of chairs and a table positioned against the wall. “Please, take a seat.”

They obeyed, and quietly the Archmage exchanged a few words with Mirabelle. Then he drew up a chair, sitting opposite them. Mirabelle remained standing, lingering off to one side.

“Can I interest either of you in some tea?” he asked, and again Cassathra and J’zargo shared a glance. She returned her gaze back to Savos with a shake of her head. It was as if she’d forgotten how to speak.

“Very well,” Savos went on, folding his hands together in his lap. His voice was even and satiny, almost condescending in a lofty, unwitting sort of way. “Mirabelle tells me you are in Tolfdir’s tutorial group, correct?”

“Yes,” said J’zargo at the same time that Cassathra nodded. Savos hummed.

“And your field trip to Saarthal did not go quite to plan?”

Again J’zargo answered in the affirmative.

“I will admit,” Savos began, “your discovery is of a most alarming nature. I am sorry that your education was disrupted in this way. It sounds as if you went through quite the ordeal.”

His words sounded mechanical, lacking any kind of conviction.

“J’zargo found the experience to be most valuable,” said the Khajiit. Savos raised a brow.

“Indeed,” he said flatly. “To have gone through all that Tolfdir alleges you did is quite impressive. It comes as a relief that you all made it out safely.”

When neither of them said anything, he pressed onwards. “Did either of you see the artifact yourselves?”

Cassathra nodded. “We both did.”

“Could you describe it to me? I’m afraid Tolfdir’s letter was quite vague on this point.”

Carefully they did, taking it in turns to convey their impressions of the object they had found and the series of events leading up to its discovery. Cassathra described the horrible creatures they were pursued by, the preserved undead whose continued reanimation could be explained only by the power steadily leaking out from the object. Savos listened all the while, nodding as they elaborated upon Tolfdir’s theory that the object had been sealed away sometime in the First Era. At last they came to a stop, having exhausted all that there was to tell. Cassathra was almost out of breath.

“I will send out a team to him at once,” Savos announced, stroking his beard. “The artifact must be brought back to College.”

“Archmage—” Mirabelle started, “are you certain that is wi—”

“If this thing is as powerful as it is claimed to be, it must be brought here for safekeeping,” he insisted. “The dead of Saarthal have been denied rest for too long. And with the seal now broken, the object should be removed as soon as possible to prevent further harm. At least here it will be in the hands of those who know what to do with it.”

Mirabelle opened her mouth as if to protest but then gave in with a bow of her head. “Yes, Archmage.”

Savos turned back to Cassathra and J’zargo. “As for the two of you,” he said. “You and your classmates should take the rest of the week off to recover. Normal teaching will be disrupted anyway whilst my teaching staff investigate the discovery. On Morndas, you will continue preparing for your winter exams as normal. However, there is something else I would like you to do for me.”

Cassathra caught a flicker of surprise cross Mirabelle’s features. She looked away quickly before the Breton could notice her staring. “Of course,” purred J’zargo beside her.

“Speak with Urag,” said Savos with a faint smile. “I would like you to research Saarthal, see if you can find anything that helps us identify your discovery. Until now, our efforts have been focused on the Merethic Era, which as you will both know predates Nordic written history. But it may be worth combing through First Era records to see if there is any mention of anything there. Urag will be able to offer more advice.”

Cassathra could only nod. Part of it excited her, the opportunity to contribute to something so much larger than herself, the knowledge that she and the others were being trusted with such an undertaking. But still she could not shake her feeling of unease.

“We will not let you down,” said J’zargo, and feebly Cassathra mumbled her agreement. Savos nodded.

“Excellent,” he said. “For now, you are dismissed. Please, go and enjoy your dinner. I believe the hall stops serving food soon.”

After a moment’s hesitation—maybe to make sure they’d understood what he meant—Cassathra and J’zargo both got to their feet, walking in silence towards the door. Mirabelle moved to open it for them.

“Before you go,” called Savos, getting them to stop and turn in the doorway. “What are your names?”

“J’zargo, sir,” said the Khajiit with a low bow.

“Sir?” repeated Savos with a quirk of his lips. “How quaint.” He then turned to Cassathra. “And you?”

“Er, Cassathra,” she said. After a pause, she added, “kena.”

Savos smiled at them. “Well done, both of you,” he said. Then he nodded, inclining his head towards the door. “Off you go, now.”

They turned through the door and were gone.

When they were out of earshot, walking back down the stairs with heavy footsteps and aching muscles, J’zargo flicked his tail against Cassathra’s back. She was too short for him to elbow her in the ribs, as he’d complained to her several times before.

“What did you say to him?” he asked.

Cassathra threw an upwards glance at her friend, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“At the end, you called him something. In Dunmeris.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “I just called him ‘kena’. It’s an honorific for scholars.”

J’zargo hissed half-heartedly. “That is unfair. You cannot use Dunmeris to build clout with the Archmage.”

“Unfair—what? J’zargo!” She shoved him in the shoulder. “I’m not playing along with your stupid rivalry.”

The Khajiit just laughed. “You are foolish to think you have a choice in the matter.”

They returned to the Hall of Attainment and met with Brelyna, who had been unpacking the rest of her things. Dinner was eaten in silence, devoid of their usually quite animated conversation. What was there to say? And it felt odd, without Onmund there. Cassathra hoped he was doing all right.

“This research project the Archmage has given us,” said Brelyna, looking up from her bowl of fish stew. “Do you not think it sounds a little… futile?”

Cassathra sighed, leaning forward and sinking her chin into her hands. “Kind of,” she admitted. “I mean… with everyone here being as well-versed in the history of Saarthal as they are, it seems unlikely that they’d have missed something as big as that in the literature.”

Brelyna hummed, furrowing her delicate brows in thought.

“Ah,” said J’zargo, “but you forget; there is much of Saarthal that is yet unexplored. J’zargo imagines that once the College has had time to properly investigate the new sections of the ruin, we shall have a better idea of where to start.”

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to investigate those ruins anytime soon,” Cassathra muttered. They finished their dinner in silence.

On the way back to the Hall of Attainment, Cassathra told Brelyna about the garden they’d seen in the Archmage’s quarters.

“You’d have loved it,” she said. “He had so many mushrooms. I have no idea what any of them are called but they were definitely from Morrowind.”

“Oh, I’m so sad I missed that,” Brelyna pouted. “If only I’d known.”

“Is Savos a Telvanni, do you think?”

Brelyna chewed on her lip as she thought. “Maybe,” she said eventually. “If he was ever associated with the House at some point, he probably isn’t anymore. But then I always thought ‘Aren’ was an old Hlaalu name anyway.”

They reached the door to Brelyna’s room and she paused in her doorway, turning back to face Cassathra. “What are you going to do now?”

Cassathra sighed. “I’m probably going to see if Urag is still around,” she said. “Just to get things started. And then… I don’t know. Have a bath, I suppose.”

Brelyna stared at her for a moment or two, and then stretched out her long, slender arms, taking Cassathra’s shoulders in her hands. “Are you alright, Cass?” she asked, ever so softly. 

Cassathra could only shrug, feeling vaguely like she was about to cry again. “I’m okay,” she said, sounding more convinced than she felt. “Are you?”

Brelyna nodded, giving Cassathra’s arms a quick squeeze. “I’m okay,” she whispered. Then she pulled Cassathra into a hug, short but tight. “Sleep well.”

Cassathra closed her eyes, inhaling Brelyna’s scent. The must of Saarthal was gone, replaced by the faint lavender of her soap. “You too.”

The Arcanaeum was still fairly busy when Cassathra arrived, littered with students hunched over their desks and bracing themselves for a late-night study session. Urag, too, was yet to retire. He looked up from his book as Cassathra approached his desk, peering at her from over the rims of his half-moon eyeglasses.

“Can I help you?” he asked, somehow speaking gruffly and quietly at the same time.

Cassathra explained to him the task they’d been assigned, doing her best to keep her voice to a low murmur. Urag hmphed when she finished speaking.

“Trust Savos to send an apprentice on a wild goose chase and then somehow expect me to be able to help them,” he tutted. Cassathra could only grimace at him sheepishly. “To be honest,” Urag continued, “the chances of you finding anything are slim. But if you come back in a few days, I’ll see what we have available and point you in the right direction.”

“Thank you,” Cassathra breathed, placing her hands together and bowing her head. “We appreciate it.”

“Seriously don’t mention it,” Urag grumbled. “Now off to bed with you. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

Cassathra was more than happy to obey, and left the Arcanaeum to collect her wash things from her room. The baths were empty when at last she found herself there, which came as a relief. The warmth of the water loosened the knots in her muscles, washing away the grime of Saarthal. She was so tired it was almost enough to lull her to sleep, but she maintained her wherewithal enough to realize that was a bad idea. When she eventually mustered the energy to emerge from the water’s comforting depths, she dried herself quickly and started the chilly walk back to the Hall of Attainment.

The sight of her room—in the same state of cluttered organization she’d left it in—was relieving in a way Cassathra could not describe, but equally she couldn’t help but feel… out of place, as she sat at her desk and set about getting ready for bed. She wanted her room back in Blacklight, the room she’d grown up in. This place felt new and strange, and though she’d done her best to make it her own in the month she’d spent living here, Cassathra felt more aware of the fact that she was away from home, estranged from her family, in a foreign land where most people hated her more than ever before. 

She sighed, starting to comb her fingers gently through her damp curls to disentangle them and applying a very controlled, low-grade heat spell as she did so. She was about to pin them back and reach for her satin wrap when a voice behind her made her freeze.

“Hello, Cassathra.”

Her heart skipped a beat, if not several. Her skin crawled, her stomach clenching at the realization that there was someone in her room. Slowly Cassathra twisted round in her seat, dreading what she would find but unable to do otherwise. There, perched on the edge of her mattress and looking like he’d always been there, was Ancano, watching her smugly. Cassathra opened her mouth to speak but the words lodged in her throat.

“How—um. H- how did you get in?” she eventually stammered when it became apparent that Ancano was waiting for her to say something. He dragged his gaze up from where he’d been boredly inspecting his nails.

“A little ethereality spell,” he said coolly. “I am the thaumaturgy tutor here, you know.”

Cassathra swallowed, clenching her jaw. Anger was starting to cut through her feelings of fear and violation, anger that he could do something like this and act so snide about it. But above all, Cassathra was scared. A teacher had forced his way inside her room. For what reason, she couldn’t say—but at the very least it was clear that she was in no position to be fighting against it.

“What are you doing here?” she asked instead, doing her best to keep her tone even and inoffensive. It came out flat and strained.

“I have a few questions I want to ask,” said Ancano, leaning forwards. His eyes were black like a beetle’s in the candlelight. “I thought we could do with the privacy.”

Her stomach turned at that. Cassathra nodded, trying to steady her breathing. “Okay.”

“You and your classmates came back early from Saarthal,” he said. “With the fourth one missing and no Tolfdir. Then the Archmage deigned to see two apprentices in a private meeting. Why?”

The tension drained from her body, her shoulders sinking with relief. Oddly, Ancano’s question had put her somewhat at ease. Was that really all that he wanted from her?

“We found something down there,” she said carefully. “Tolfdir sent us back early to let the Archmage know.”

Something like surprise flashed across Ancano’s features, but ever so quickly it was gone. Cassathra got the feeling that her answer wasn’t what he was expecting, or at the very least, that he was expecting more resistance.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“We don’t really know,” she said with a shrug, her confidence beginning to return. “You’ll see it for yourself soon, anyway. Savos wants to send all the faculty staff down there to help Tolfdir bring it back to College.”

His eyes widened slightly at that. For a few moments, he was silent, staring at her intensely. Cassathra stared back.

“Well,” he said, getting to his feet. “In that case, that will be all.”

It was so… anticlimactic. “You can’t just do that, you know,” said Cassathra as he began making his way to her door. He paused, looking down at her from over his shoulder.

“Do what?” he scoffed.

“Threaten people like that,” she said. “Invade their privacy. You could have just asked.”

He leered at her, his golden brows furrowing into a scowl. “Your Archmage has a reputation for making unwise decisions,” he said. “Given the departure from routine, what with your early return, I knew something serious was going on and made it my business to know about it. I have only the best interests of the College at heart.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have broken into a student’s bedroom,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“The issue called for discretion,” he said, turning to face her fully now. “And if you have any wisdom at all, you will be discreet about this little meeting, Serjo Redoran Cassathra Dutheri.”

Cassathra’s jaw went slack. She stared at him, searching his face for confirmation that he was implying what she thought he was implying. The cruel glint in his eye said everything it needed to.

“Thank you for cooperating so nicely,” he said, flickering out of view a moment later. His disembodied voice then continued: “I do so look forward to our tutorials together.”

When she was sure he was gone, Cassathra sagged into her chair, her body going limp. It was clear to her now. Ancano had been suspicious of something secretive going on and had singled her out as the person to target because he knew he could draw it out of her if he wanted to. Instead, his leverage over her was being used to keep her mouth shut about his actions, lest she be dragged back to Blacklight.

Cassathra reached for the latest of Raydrin’s letters, rereading the words that were so familiar to her now. She held the parchment away from her face and tried to hold back her tears. 

Notes:

it’s been years since I properly played this game so I have no idea how Ancano is supposed to sound. I just channel Preminger from barbie as the princess and the pauper and call it a day.

thanks for reading, and thank you to my beta-readers! if you enjoyed this chapter, please consider leaving a comment to let me know what you thought :)

Chapter 21: Secunda

Riverwood, Skyrim, 17th Sun’s Dusk

With the dragon dead, their small party of three left Kynesgrove on the morning of the eighth and began the long trek back to Delphine’s base in Riverwood. Their journey took them south to begin with, handrailing the Darkwater River upstream to the basin of Lake Geir, where they left Windcaller’s horn with the locals of Ivarstead to be delivered to High Hrothgar along with an apologetic note. From there it was a steep climb westward through the snowy mountain passes of southern Skyrim before at last they descended into the forests of Whiterun.

Raydrin’s memories of Riverwood were fuzzy at best, now little more than the faded impression of a warm summer evening laced with a pervasive and stifling feeling of unease. He’d spent those days in Helgen’s aftermath trying to thread together some semblance of reality, trying to disentangle it from the sticky fingers of his delirium.

But even his unreliable memories of Riverwood were a far cry from the Riverwood they now found themselves in. Gone was the heat of Last Seed, replaced instead by a wet cold and a bitter wind. The flowery snowflakes gave way to fat raindrops as they climbed down from the mountains, heavy enough to be felt individually as they drummed against the crowns of their heads. It was dark when they arrived, so much so that the town was barely visible, just a collection of murky shapes in the blackness. But the main street running through the centre of the town was lit by small hanging oil lamps, illuminating the guards that now patrolled beneath them. It was nice to see that their first trip to Whiterun hadn’t been for nothing.  

Delphine led them with confidence towards the lone inn nestled in the heart of Riverwood, the Sleeping Giant. Warm orange light and muffled chatter spilled out from the small glass windows above them, too high in the wall for them to see through. Although it was late, it was evidently not yet late enough for the evening to have quietened down.

“The inn?” said Raydrin in surprise as they climbed the steps up to its porch. “I thought you said you lived here.”

Delphine pulled back her damp hood and turned to him and Jórunn over her shoulder. “I do,” she said, smirking and throwing open the warmth of the indoors. Beside him Raydrin heard the familiar snapping of Jórunn’s cane as she folded it back up and looked down to see her hand finding its place above his elbow. She didn’t need to say anything now for him to understand why; manoeuvring through a crowded room was easier for her this way. He led her up the steps in silence and they followed Delphine over the threshold.

The small clusters of patrons that remained took little notice of them as they entered; indeed, the sound of the door closing behind them was drowned out by the din. The warmth of the firepit on Raydrin’s face was pure bliss, somehow better than he could ever have hoped for. It had been weeks since they’d last slept in a proper bed, within the shelter of proper walls, and such comforts were unfamiliar to him now.

He led Jórunn through the sea of tables as Delphine navigated them towards the bar. The barkeep—a young, broad Nord with long dark hair—looked up as they approached, and then blinked in surprise when he properly took them in.

“Delphine,” he exclaimed. “By the gods, it’s really you. I thought you were dead.”

His tone was sardonic and flat. Delphine hung her head back with a laugh. “Sorry to disappoint,” she said. “But the inn’s mine for a while longer yet. How was business?”

Raydrin tried his best to not let the surprise show on his face, but couldn’t help the quick opening and closing of his mouth. Delphine was an innkeeper? It seemed so… out of character. And they’d been to this inn before, hadn’t they? Was that why he’d found her so familiar when they’d first met?

The barkeep sighed, placing both hands on the edge of the countertop and leaning his weight forwards. “Pretty average,” he said. “Somehow I managed to avoid burning the place down without your constant supervision.”

“So there’s some competence in you after all,” Delphine bit back. Then she stepped to one side, gesturing to Raydrin and Jórunn with her arm. “Orgnar, this is my niece, Jórunn, and her partner, Raydrin. They’re from Windhelm. They’ll be staying here for a few days.”

Orgnar glanced between them somewhat suspiciously, which Raydrin could understand. Other than the fact they were both human, there was little similarity between Jórunn and Delphine. Instinctively Raydrin wrapped his cloak tighter around himself, not wanting it to be obvious that he was wearing leather armour underneath. Eventually Orgnar nodded with a slight shrug.

“Nice to meet you,” he said gruffly.

“We’ll eat dinner in my room,” Delphine went on before Raydrin and Jórunn had the chance to respond. “Do we have any guest rooms available?”

“Just one,” Orgnar replied.

“Excellent. The two of you can share that. Oh, and put some water on for a bath, would you, Orgnar? It’s been a long journey.”

Orgnar sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Sure thing, Delphine.”

Their exchange came to an end. Delphine turned back to Raydrin and Jórunn, inclining her head to one side. “This way,” she said. Wordlessly they followed.

“You never told us you were an innkeeper,” said Raydrin once they were safely inside Delphine’s room, unclasping his damp cloak and handing it to her when she asked for it. She draped their wet gear around the small, unlit hearth and began stacking logs to make a fire.

“Even fugitives have to make a living somehow,” she said while she worked.

“We’ve been here before,” he said. “A few days after Helgen. We were passing through.”

Delphine straightened up when the kindling was crackling away and turned round to face them. “You have? I’m sure I’d have remembered that. Did you stay the night?”

Raydrin shook his head. “We stayed with the lady who runs the lumbermill. I can’t remember her name now.”

A look of recollection crossed Delphine’s face and she closed her mouth from where it had fallen open. “Ah—of course. You were the Dark Elves with no money.”

Hesitantly Raydrin nodded, recalling how Mathyas had been the one to try and negotiate a room in exchange for work. That night in Riverwood had been one of their last together.

“It’s a small world,” Delphine went on when he didn’t say anything. “Anyway, feel free to make yourselves at home. I’ll go and get your room ready. Then you can bathe and clean up a bit before we meet back here for dinner.”

She was being surprisingly hospitable, more so than he would have expected from the way she’d treated them both on the road. When the door was shut behind her, Raydrin pulled Jórunn over towards the beginnings of the fire and they lowered themselves to the floor, trying to soak up as much warmth from it as they could.

“Are you all right?” he asked after a while, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

Jórunn was silent for a moment, and then sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Yes, sorry,” she said. “I’m just really tired.”

“I am too,” he said, turning his gaze back to the flames. “But I mean... in general. You’ve been quite quiet for a while now.”

Though he didn’t say it, Jórunn had been different ever since Ustengrav. And then the fight at Kynesgrove had amplified that tenfold. Raydrin missed the Jórunn he’d grown used to spending time with, in those weeks at High Hrothgar and on the journey northward to Hjaalmarch. Things were different with Delphine around, he knew, but even then…

Jórunn’s unseeing gaze was fixed straight ahead, the flames glinting across the reflective surface of her eyes. “I don’t know, Raydrin,” she said quietly. “It’s not that kind of tired.”

Raydrin said nothing in response. He knew what she meant, painfully so, or at least he liked to imagine that he did. But he knew from experience how little there was to say to something like that.  

When their room was made up, they took it in turns to bathe and then reconvened in Delphine’s quarters a short while later. The logs on the fire were burning a deep orange now, warming the space nicely. Delphine looked almost a different person; her long, dirty blonde hair, still damp from her bath, was loose from its usual braid, and her travelling gear was replaced by a plain blue dress and leather bodice.

“Don’t you two look miserable,” she said as they took their seats at the long wooden table. “Come on. A hot meal and a proper night’s sleep will do you a world of good.”

Raydrin released an amused puff of air. The hardened warrior they'd been travelling with had slid all too easily into the role of motherly innkeeper.

Delphine piled their plates high, picking from an assortment of roasted winter vegetables, mashed potato, and a chestnut and pheasant casserole. It was plain but hearty. He told Jórunn where her food was located on her plate and they began to eat.

When their hunger had been sated somewhat, Delphine lowered her fork to the table, took a long swig from her mead and then wiped her hand across her mouth. “So,” she announced, tearing off a chunk of bread and dipping it into her stew; “I thought we could talk quickly about what’s going to happen next.”

Raydrin nodded slowly around his mouthful of potato, throwing a quick glance over at Jórunn. There was little reaction from her for a few moments, but then she swallowed some food and shrugged. “Alright.”

“If Kynesgrove showed us anything, it’s that there isn’t really much we can do to stop each dragon from being resurrected,” said Delphine. “The dragons appear to be resurrecting each other. I believe a chain is already in motion, and it’s not realistic for the three of us to go gallivanting all over Skyrim trying to deal with each dragon individually. The practical thing now would be to divert our efforts towards tackling the cause—the thing that set off the chain to begin with.”

Raydrin swallowed a bit of carrot. “Which is?”

“My current—and only—theory is that it’s the Thalmor.”

Jórunn suddenly coughed beside him. “Or it could be the dragon that was actually doing the resurrecting,” she said. “It was the same dragon we saw at Helgen, the first one anyone saw. It makes sense.”

“But how could there be one dragon without something there to resurrect it in the first place?” countered Delphine. “Think about it. No-one sees a dragon for thousands of years. Then, at one of the most pivotal political moments in the history of the Empire, one shows up out of nowhere. It’s in the Dominion’s interests for the Empire to be as weak as possible. You think it’s just a coincidence that a dragon shows up at the last second to prevent the one thing that would enable the Empire to resecure its position in Skyrim?”

Raydrin watched for Jórunn’s reaction, the way she was chewing on her lip. “I suppose that’s true,” she muttered at last.

“My best guess is that they brought back one dragon for the sake of interfering with the execution and then the situation got out of control,” Delphine went on. “As of yet, no dragons have been sighted outside of Skyrim, despite their significant historical presence in Elsweyr. Even if the Thalmor aren’t responsible themselves, I’d wager they know who is.”

“All right,” said Raydrin, laying his cutlery down on his now-empty plate, “suppose that it is the Thalmor. What are we supposed to do about that? We’re three people. They’re the government of Tamriel’s most powerful state.”

“We’re going to have to employ a bit of good old-fashioned reconnaissance,” Delphine smiled. “So far, the two of you have managed to keep your heads down. That’s good. And with Balgruuf still being as strict as he is about who can get in and out of Whiterun, word of a blind Dragonborn and her Dark Elf companion hasn’t had much opportunity to spread. So I think it’s safe to say that the Thalmor aren’t aware of you yet.”

“I don't like where this is going,” said Raydrin. 

“Each year, the Thalmor host an annual Saturalia ball at their Embassy here in Skyrim,” Delphine continued, ignoring him. “I have a contact inside the Embassy who can get you an invite. If the two of you can get inside, maybe under the pretence of being a noble and her guide, you can sneak away and find the ambassador’s office while everyone is busy with the party. There’s bound to be some documents there.”

Raydrin and Jórunn were both silent.

"You can't be serious," said Jórunn eventually.

"Do I sound like I'm joking?" asked Delphine.

“The security up there is going to be airtight," said Raydrin. "On the extremely high chance we get caught, that’s it. The Thalmor aren’t known for their mercy.”

“The odds of success are low, this is true, but I’d say the odds of facing up to a dragon are about the same,” Delphine squinted at him. “My contact, Malborn, will be able to help you. Identifying gaps in the security and such. I’ve already sent word ahead that he should be expecting you. You should set off for Solitude in a few days.”

“Fucking hell, Delphine,” Raydrin snapped. “It’s only our necks you’re putting on the line.”

“There’s really no-one else who can do it?!” added Jórunn, suddenly furious. “What about you, all nice and cosy here in your fucking inn?”

“Don’t you speak to me that way,” Delphine spat, slamming a hand down into the wood of the table and rattling the cutlery. “I’ve spent the last twenty-six years of my life being hunted by the Thalmor. I put one foot in that place, I’m dead.”

She leaned back in her seat, pushing her plate away from her. Her upper lip curled. “We are completely alone in this,” she said. “I have no allies left, no-one I can trust. Jórunn, I know you didn’t ask for this, but whether you like it or not, this responsibility is yours. And Raydrin, you should have known when you signed up for this that the stakes would be high.”

They both were silent, Raydrin grinding his teeth to hold back the string of Dunmeri curses he wanted to unleash.

“Right now, this Saturalia ball is our one chance to get anywhere close to the Thalmor,” Delphine continued. “I’ll do all that I can to make it as easy as possible for you. But if you don’t go, your only other option is to mindlessly chase around the Dragonstone hoping that each encounter with a dragon isn’t your last.”

She stood up then, starting to loudly and aggressively stack their empty plates. “The choice is yours,” she finished. “For now, I want you out of my room.”

Jórunn grasped Raydrin’s arm, her fingers like iron, and wordlessly the pair of them left. When the door to their own room was shut behind them, Jórunn buried her face in her hands and let out a muffled scream.

“Fuck,” she hissed, spitting the word out like it was poison. Raydrin could see the tension in her pale knuckles as she flexed and curled her fingers, trying to squeeze something that wasn’t there. Jórunn released a long string of curses and gently Raydrin took her by the arm, leading her to sit beside him on the bed. She was pliant and malleable, too preoccupied with her rant to protest to him puppeting her about.

“I can’t believe that woman,” she spat, “who does she think we are? I can’t sneak into the fucking Thalmor Embassy! I won’t even get past the fucking door! They’ll take one look at me and know I’m just a street rat, she can’t make us do this, she has no right to—”

“Hey,” he cut her off, “you aren’t a ‘street rat’. And we’re not doing anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”

“She’s right though, Raydrin,” Jórunn continued, her tone shifting into one of defeat, her voice turning watery. “I’m the Dragonborn, people are depending on me. I- I can’t just run away because I’m scared. She’s right, I don’t have a fucking choice—”

“Jórunn, hey— Jórunn.” He put his hands on her shoulders, twisting her round to face him. “Listen to me. Delphine is just paranoid, okay? If she wants someone to get into the Embassy that badly, she can find someone. But you always, always have a choice. Alright?”

He could see the tears welling in her eyes. She shook her head, her fingers digging uncomfortably into his arms. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t know why I’m so angry—"

“You’re allowed to be angry,” he said, but she just shook her head again.

“I feel it so strongly,” she said, choking on it. “It’s so much. It doesn’t feel like mine. Ever since Kynesgrove, I—”

She trailed off, her voice collapsing into a croak. Her brown eyes were wide and glistening, her mouth hanging limply open and then closing again like she was deciding what to do with it. Eventually her face crumpled into a knot and she dropped her temple to his shoulder. “I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Raydrin. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

At some point his arms had circled round her and he found himself rubbing absently up and down her back. He didn’t know what to say. It was… worrying, what she was implying.

“I’m just tired,” she said, filling his silence. Just tired. How many times had Raydrin said that as a catch-all for the vast multitudes of his feelings? He was tired too, from the journey, from their constant travelling, but some kinds of tiredness ran far deeper than that.

“We can talk about it with Delphine in the morning,” he said, changing the subject and hating himself for it, “when we’re all feeling a bit better. It might be that it won’t be as bad as we’re thinking it is. And if it is, we can convince her to find someone else. She'd be stupid to risk the Dragonborn’s life for something like this.”

Jórunn drew away from him, extricating herself from his arms. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“Yes,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “I just need to get some sleep, I think.”

“Yes. Yeah.” Raydrin got quickly to his feet, finding himself at a loss. “I... I can take the floor tonight. I think I got the last bed.”

Jórunn let out a choked laugh. “I honestly can’t remember, it was so long ago. But thanks.”

With their bedrolls drying off by the hearth downstairs, Delphine had laid out a spare one for them on the floor. The pair of them cleaned up and changed into fresh sleepwear before sliding into their respective berths.

“We don’t have to be up for anything tomorrow, do we?” asked Jórunn around a yawn. Her cheeks were still a little puffy and red but otherwise she seemed to have relaxed.

“I don’t think so,” said Raydrin. “Other than Part Two of our argument with Delphine.”

“Ugh. I’ll sleep in, I think.”

“Oh, absolutely. I fully plan on spending all of tomorrow in bed.”

Jórunn snorted. “Um, thanks, Raydrin. Night.”

Raydrin blew out his candle, plunging them into darkness. “Night.”

She fell asleep quickly, which came as a surprise to him. It was likely just physical exhaustion, overriding any anxieties she had. Raydrin lay there on his back, listening for a few minutes as she twisted and turned and shifted on the mattress until she was comfortable. Then her breathing evened out, steady and calming. Raydrin wished he could be so lucky.

He’d never struggled much with his sleeping in the past; that had always been Mathyas’ affliction, though it wasn’t something his cousin had often talked about. But Raydrin had spent so long now smoking himself to sleep that it was difficult to fall asleep without it.

He knew deep down that they had to agree to Delphine’s plan. With Evening Star fast approaching, it was unlikely that Delphine would be able to find someone else in time. And as much as her Thalmor theory had seemed random and paranoid to him at first, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Did they have any better ideas? Taking the dragons down one by one didn’t seem like a very sustainable approach to a rapidly growing crisis.

But he couldn’t bear to ask Jórunn to do such a thing. She’d been stripped of enough agency as it was. If he could be the one person in her life who wouldn’t tell her what to do, where to go, he was going to be that person, crisis be damned.

Raydrin glanced over to her on the bed, to the vague shape he could make out in the darkness. He felt so useless. There was something wrong, he could tell, but he hadn’t the faintest clue how to go about fixing it. And it made him ache to see her this way.

He rolled over, shaking his head against the pillow and squeezing his eyes shut. It didn’t feel right. Within minutes he was acutely aware of how uncomfortable he was, how there was pressure building in the wrong places and how his muscles were being pulled and made to work just to maintain his position. Raydrin tried again to no avail, rolling onto his other side before eventually deciding to try lying on his back. There was a dull ache in the base of his spine when he stretched his legs out but doing otherwise required his leg muscles to work. There was no winning.

He sighed, opening his eyes. Somehow it was more effort to keep them shut. His skin felt like it didn’t fit, like it was too tight in some places and too loose in others. Weeks he’d spent sleeping in a cold tent, but on the one night he could fall asleep in a warm, dry room he found himself completely unable to do so. Maybe his body just fucking hated him.

When the minutes turned into hours, he sat up, fumbling around on the floor beside him until he located his flint and steel. Raydrin lit his candle and stared at the flame for a long while, watching blankly as his surroundings came into murky focus. He reached for his pack, rifling blindly through its contents until his fingers brushed against the cool surface of a glass phial. He’d done this often over the last few weeks; just holding one of the bottles in the palm of his hand when he was tucked away inside their tent, staring at it for as long as he could stand.

If he wanted to throw them away, he would have done so by now. Maybe it was time for Raydrin to just be honest with himself.

He pulled his jacket on and found his boots, trying to move quietly so as to avoid waking Jórunn. She stirred when he walked past the bed, releasing a soft hum.

“Raydrin?” she murmured.

Under the light of his candle, he could see her eyes were still closed.

“It’s me,” he confirmed. “I can’t sleep. I’m just going for a walk.”

Jórunn stretched outwards, arching her spine with a quiet moan before curling back in on herself. “I’ll come with you,” she mumbled, clearly still half-asleep.

Raydrin smiled. “It’s okay. You should stay here and rest.” His fingers twitched with the sudden and inexplicable urge to reach out and touch her cheek, but he resisted it. “I’m sorry for waking you.”

She just slurred something incoherent in response, already turning her face back into the pillow. Raydrin lingered for a few moments longer before slipping quietly out of the door.

The rain had stopped when he made his way outside, though the air was still damp.

“Odd time to go for a walk,” said one of the guards on duty as Raydrin crossed Riverwood’s threshold.

He chuckled nervously and shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought I could do with some fresh air.”

“Don’t go too far, all right?” said the guard. “There are wolves in these woods.”

Raydrin nodded and thanked her, continuing on his way. He stuck to the road, gradually losing himself in the sound of the White River to his right and the way the pool of light at his feet swung rhythmically to and fro. He lost track of how long he walked. He’d spent so long just putting one foot in front of the other that he could have walked all night if he let himself, the destination less important than the long process of getting there. Eventually he veered off, finding a sandy patch of riverbank that was level enough for him to sit.

The cold was quick to seep in once he stopped moving. If Raydrin had been thinking straight when he left, he probably would have put on more layers, and he definitely would have brought his sword with him in case he needed it. But he felt faraway from himself—the cold numbed his face and his fingers, but it didn’t bother him.

Laying his lantern on the wet sand beside him, Raydrin reached into his jacket and took out the phial. It had been burning a hole in his pocket the whole time he was walking, feeling heavier and heavier with each step. He weighed it in his palm, watching the dim lamplight reflect off the cheap glass. 

For the first time since Ustengrav, Jórunn was safe. Delphine wasn’t around.

And Raydrin missed skooma so fucking badly.

The cork came free from the bottle with a quiet pop. Vaguely Raydrin was aware that what he was doing was dangerous. He was by himself, about to drink from a bottle whose producer he didn’t know or trust. And he didn’t have any measuring tools with him, no way of weighing out what he’d come to learn was a safe dose.

But he couldn’t bring himself to care. He didn’t need much—just a few sips, less than he would have normally had. It had been months since he last used. His tolerance would be lower. He just needed a few sips. Just a few sips hit to get him over this long, hard day.

He held the phial up to his lips and drank.

Sweetness flooded his mouth. It was acrid, sickly. Thick, sticky, beautiful. One sip was all he could stand to have, all he could bear on his tongue. He lowered the phial with a grimace, but he hadn’t swallowed yet. He held it in his mouth for a few moments, letting it dissolve, letting the sweetness and richness fade. Then he closed his eyes and gulped.

It was like waking up from a dream. Raydrin came to himself with a shudder, blinking a few times as he adjusted to the realization that he had a corporeal body and that it was sitting on a riverbank in Skyrim in the middle of the night. And that skooma was trickling down his throat, soon to be absorbed into his blood and carried to his brain.

Regret and shame swept over him, tight around his lungs. Slowly Raydrin curled in on himself, drawing his knees up to his chest and pressing his face into his hands. What had he done? Fuck. Fuck. What had he done?

A sob forced its way up his throat and he choked on it, kicking his heels out into the sand. How he wanted to be rid of himself, to be rid of his body with its vice and its weakness. He wanted out. Before the skooma could take effect, he wanted out.

With a guttural yell Raydrin grabbed the phial beside him and hurled it into the river. The water was so loud as it rushed past that he didn’t hear it splash, so black that he didn’t even see where it landed. Good. It would be swept away before he could change his mind and dive in after it.

Instinctively he scrambled forward towards the water’s edge, too tired and desperate to even get to his feet. Raydrin pushed two fingers down the back of his throat and held them there until he vomited, purging the skooma from his body before it could enter his system. He rolled onto his back when he was done, his stomach empty and his throat burning. Raydrin lay there on the sand and sobbed. It was self-hatred, self-pity, regret for taking the skooma, regret for throwing it away. He didn’t know. He just cried.

 

---

 

Markarth, Skyrim, 17th Sun’s Dusk

The Druadach Mountains were well and truly within winter’s clutches by the time Mathyas found himself back on Muiri’s threshold. Drifts of snow piled high against Markarth’s walls and frost clung in swirls to the golden door of the Hag’s Cure, glittering silver under the moonlight. Mathyas simply stood there for a long while, staring at the door and letting the cold seep into his cheeks. When his thoughts had grown as numb as his flesh, he pressed a gloved hand to the metal, pushed, and slipped into the shadowy darkness beyond. 

The feeling of warmth was immediate, but the light was less so; Mathyas was mostly blind for the few seconds it took for him to make his way down the short entrance corridor. The shop itself was dimmer than it had been earlier that day, illuminated only by small pockets of orange light. A low fire crackled and spat at the far end of the shop. Muiri’s hunched silhouette was warming herself by it, but she got to her feet when she heard him approach. For a few long moments they simply stared at each other.

“Hello,” she said eventually, not moving. Her body was so still she reminded Mathyas of a frightened animal, something mousy and small, whose fight or flight instincts were yet to kick in.

He cleared his throat, standing by the counter and laying one hand on it. “Hello.”

“I'm sorry for sending you away earlier,” she said. “I didn’t want Bothela asking questions.”

Mathyas huffed. “It’s fine.”

“How—um… how was the journey?”

“Uneventful," he shrugged. "I travelled by carriage for most of it.”

Was dealing with the Brotherhood’s clientele always like this? The awkward pleasantries, the tip-toeing around the subject? Mathyas would have imagined an assassin’s dealings to be quick and to the point, coin purses exchanged wordlessly in the dark. But then Muiri didn’t strike him as a typical client. And neither did Aventus.

Maybe Mathyas was just naïve.

“Ah,” said Muiri. “That explains how you got back so soon.”

She was standing beside the chair she’d been sitting on when he came in, absently running one hand along the back of it.

“Am I too early?” asked Mathyas. “Do you need more time to gather the funds?”

“Oh, no, not at all! I—I have the money. I just…” she paused, offering an awkward and sheepish smile, “I was just making small talk.”

“Ah.”

The silence crept back into their exchange, persistent and heavy, and then Muiri suddenly became animated. It was like she’d remembered how to move.

“Wait here,” she said, shifting past him, heading to a short flight of stone steps that presumably led to the shop’s living quarters. “I’ll just grab—um. Your payment.”

Mathyas watched her disappear behind a closed door, wondering absently whether he ought to take a seat, but Muiri returned just a few moments later. She laid a pouch of coins on the counter in between them, standing a few feet away from him.

“There you are,” she said, gesturing to it. “A thousand Septims, as promised.”

Hesitantly Mathyas reached for it, tugging on the drawstring and peering inside its shadowy depths to do a rough assessment of the contents. He could just about make out the insignia of several 50-Septim pieces, but he didn’t bother to count them to see if they added up to twenty. He doubted Muiri would have short-changed him and it wasn’t like he’d particularly care if she had. This was blood money. Most of it would be added to the Brotherhood’s collective funds anyway.

“Thank you,” he said, nodding as he attached the purse to his belt. That was it; his first contract, complete. What was wrong with him? How had he got here, doing contracts for the Dark Brotherhood?

“I should be the one thanking you, really,” said Muiri. She wasn’t looking at him, tracing knots in the wooden countertop with one finger. “I can’t… I can’t tell you how much better I feel, knowing he’s dead.”

Mathyas said nothing, unable to think of anything to say. He was about to announce his leave when Muiri suddenly looked up. “It wasn’t too much of a challenge, I hope? I mean… Alain, and his men—they didn’t put up too much of a fight?”

He was silent for a moment or two, taken aback by her interest. “Nothing too bad,” he said eventually. “I was slashed, here,” he pressed a hand to the left of his lower abdomen, “but it’s healed now. I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sorry.” Muiri stepped forwards. “I—I know I was paying you, but… I feel bad knowing I put someone at risk doing my dirty work.”

Mathyas found himself swallowing. “It’s fine. Part of the job, I suppose.”

She said nothing in response, but for several long seconds she just looked up at him, pale, sleepy eyes flitting back and forth as she… what? Searched his face?

The intensity of her gaze was making his skin prickle.

"I should go," he said.

Her eyes grew wide.

"You don't have to rush off," she said. "It's cold outside. Are you hungry? I could make us something to eat. You... you could stay a short while."

Mathyas blinked at her in surprise.

"It's late, Muiri," he said after a moment's careful thought. "Thank you for the offer, but—"

“You wouldn’t be imposing,” Muiri cut him off, taking another step towards him. “If it’s late, you must be tired. You...” 

She drew in a ragged breath, then released it, slowly.

“You could stay here, if you wanted to.”

Mathyas was still. Her offer hung between them, unclaimed.

“I have a room at an inn,” he said at last, lacking all conviction.

Muiri was just an arm’s length away from him now. “You’ve done me such an enormous service,” she murmured, lowering her gaze from his face and extending a hand towards his shoulder. “I’d like to say thank you—”

Mathyas caught her wrist, holding it a few inches away from him.

“I’m not sleeping with someone who feels like they owe me.”

Her expression hardened slightly. She pulled her wrist away.

“Then I phrased myself badly,” she said. “I don’t feel like I owe you. I… I want this. I think you’re attractive, and,” she shook her head, chuckling almost self-deprecatingly, “—for some reason, I feel as if I can trust you.”

Mathyas grit his jaw, holding back a bitter laugh. He longed for the days when he could have held himself out as a trustworthy man.

He stared at Muiri for a long time, studying the lines of her face, her now-hopeful expression. In hindsight, it came as no surprise that she was reaching out to him this way, seeking the basest of all comforts from a dangerous stranger. She was the victim of a recent heartbreak, a betrayal, and Mathyas had been the one to come into her life and vindicate her. She was hurting and she was lonely.

But then so was he.

He took a deep breath. “You trust me?” he said. The statement came out like a question.

Muiri laughed nervously, glancing to one side. “Should I not?”

“I don’t know.”

She closed the space between them. This near to each other, their height difference was more apparent; Muiri was probably around average height for a Breton, but Mathyas was tall for a Dunmer, and the crown of her head only just came up to his chin.

She grasped the coin purse at his hip, putting it back on the counter beside them. “You killed Alain,” she said, speaking with firmness now. “And I paid you. That was our contract.”

Then she placed a hand on his jaw, tilting his head down. Her skin was cool to the touch, yet it burned like ice against his windchapped cheeks. 

“This,” she went on, standing on the tips of her toes and lowering her voice to a murmur, “is because I want to.”

When she grazed her lips over his, Mathyas barely felt it. The kiss was feather-light, fleeting, lacking any kind of pressure. She drew away for a moment only to repeat the experiment a second time, brushing her nose against his in a way that felt deliberate, like a nuzzle.

Mathyas did not move. Muiri pulled away then, searching his eyes—trying to gauge him.

He just stared at her. He didn’t know why he was being so hesitant; a sweet, pretty woman was practically throwing herself at him, but he felt paralysed under her gaze, under her delicate attentions. If they were two different people, he would have no doubts at all; if he weren’t an assassin, if she hadn’t paid him to kill her ex-lover. If the circumstance of their meeting wasn’t borne out of bloodshed.

Muiri lowered herself onto her heels, her hand sliding down from his jaw to his neck and then drawing away completely. “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking away. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

The cold skin she left in her absence was all the convincing Mathyas needed. He pulled his gloves off, laying them beside the coin purse on the counter. Then he touched her face, bringing her eyes back up to meet his. Confusion had knotted her features, but with the sweep of his thumb over her brow, he smoothed it away. He could feel the heat of her blush under his palm, smell the petrichor clinging to her clothes and her hair. When he remembered what it was he was doing, he slid his hand round the back of her neck—with more confidence now—and leaned down to kiss her.

She made a muffled noise of pleasure, a relieved sigh that he felt as it fanned over his lips. Their kiss was slow, explorative—almost chaste, in a way. Muiri quivered like a small bird against him, her hands fluttering nervously around his body like she couldn’t decide where to put them. The gentleness of her touch was near-overwhelming. He wanted her to grab and to pull, but she held him like he was made of glass, and desperately Mathyas tried to retain his wits about him enough to return the treatment in kind, letting his hands settle carefully in the dips of her waist. 

He pulled away when the craning of his neck turned into a dull ache and straightened to his full height. Muiri’s eyes were glassy and hooded, her lips shining wetly in the low candlelight.

“We don’t have a particularly compatible height difference,” he muttered.

Muiri laughed breathlessly. “No, we don’t.”

He cast a quick glance around the room, searching for a solution, before scooping Muiri into his arms and hoisting her up onto the countertop beside them. She tossed her head back to laugh again, showing off the pale column of her throat. Her arms circled Mathyas’ neck and she parted her knees, allowing him to press his hips against the counter.

“What’s your name?” she asked as he kissed up her neck, her hands trailing upwards to unclasp his cloak and push it over his shoulders.

Mathyas pressed his quiet laughter into her skin. How had they made it this far without it?

“Tedras,” he murmured, mouthing the word against her throat. It was the first Dunmer name that had come to mind, an old lover he’d taken in his thirties. Muiri gasped as he nipped and suckled on a patch of flesh just under her ear.

“Is that your real name?” she asked feebly.

Mathyas shook his head. Muiri just laughed again.

He took her rosy cheeks in his palms and brought his lips back to hers and they kissed with more insistence now, parting their lips and opening themselves up to each other. Mathyas found himself thinking about how they ought to progress, despite normally being one to let things take their natural course. Muiri was propped up on the countertop, her legs wrapped around his hips, and briefly he entertained the thought of taking her like this, of hiking her skirts up to her waist and burying himself between her thighs. Or he could turn her around and bend her over the counter, pushing into her from behind.

Neither felt right; Mathyas wasn’t sure he wanted it rough and ready. He didn’t think Muiri would, either. He wanted to treat her like an old lover, like someone he cared for. He wanted to know he still had it in him to be gentle. 

So they headed upstairs, discarding clothes along the way, sliding into the warmth of Muiri’s bed. She traced each of his scars; the fresh one on his stomach, the nick in his eyebrow, the ligature marks around his wrists and the burns on his left leg. And she apologized for all of them as if they were her fault. Mathyas said nothing, swallowing each apology with a kiss. If he hadn’t killed Alain, someone else would have. It wasn’t Muiri’s fault that it ended up being him. He deserved a thousand apologies for all that had happened to him, but he owed a thousand more, and he wasn’t sure he was in a position anymore to accept them or to offer forgiveness. What was forgiveness coming from someone like him?

Her inexperience made itself known to him as they progressed. Mathyas discovered it in the way she gasped and pulled at his hair as he shifted down her body, getting him to stop and look up to find her staring at him, wide-eyed, as though she couldn’t believe where he was heading. Alain never touched me like this, she sighed as she shuddered under his fingers and his tongue. He discovered it in the way she tried to insist that she return the favour, despite him telling her that actually he wasn’t in the mood for that, that he hadn’t just pleasured her because he was expecting it to be reciprocated. And he discovered it in the way that she just lay down expectantly, as though sex was something that was going to be done to her and not something that he wanted her to be part of. 

Alain’s ghost lingered all over her. There were no scars, nothing to show for the months they spent together, but he was there in everything she did. Mathyas wanted desperately to make up for it all, but what was one night in the face of all that time? 

“Do you want to try going on top?” he asked, sweeping his hand over her navel, over the dull ridge of her hipbone. 

Muiri's cheeks flushed from where she was lying against the pillow. “I’ve never done that before.”

“You don’t have to,” Mathyas went on, offering what he hoped was an assuring smile. “But you’ll hopefully enjoy it. You have more control over how it feels.”

She was staring at him in what looked like disbelief, but eventually she nodded. “All right,” she whispered. So he rolled them over, pulled her into his lap, his arms around her waist and his lips against the hollow of her throat. 

As she rocked against him, Mathyas found himself staring over her shoulder at the wall behind her, listening absently to her soft panting and quiet moans. Her nails raked painfully down his back, leaving trails of burning skin in their wake, and Mathyas gripped the soft flesh of her thighs and her hips and her ass like he wanted his fingers to meet, like he couldn’t squeeze her hard enough.

What are you doing?

Vaguely he thought to himself that he felt less like a participant and more like a voyeur, as though he were watching the pair of them from some external, bodiless viewpoint. Maybe he just couldn’t quite believe it was really him on that bed wrapped up in Muiri’s arms, beneath her thighs. He was an assassin for the Dark Brotherhood and Muiri was his first client and here they were fucking away like they were just strangers who’d locked eyes across a crowded tavern. But the last and only other man to be inside Muiri like this was the very man Mathyas had killed, the man he'd left to rot with a dozen others in a dwarven ruin just two weeks ago. 

He wanted to hate Muiri. He ought to have done. But he couldn’t. With her soft body in his arms and her sweet voice in his ear, there was nothing Mathyas could feel for her but pity and affection. She was naïve, foolish and hurting, but that was all. She wasn’t a bad person. If Muiri was a bad person, what did that make him?

He held her dead weight against him when she came, and followed her over the edge a few moments later. They pressed their faces into each other’s shoulders and spent a long while simply catching their breath, twitching and shuddering with each slight movement. Muiri’s hot, sweaty skin burned in contrast to the rapidly cooling air of her room. 

When they returned to their senses, she started to shift, just slightly. She squeezed her arms around him, lifting one hand to stroke the short hair at the nape of his neck. Mathyas closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, his hands drifting up and down her back before eventually coming to rest just under her shoulders. He had softened inside her, but her heat around him was comforting, and welcome. 

“Tedras,” she murmured, sliding her fingers into his hair. “Tedras. Are you all right?”

His mind scrambled to form a reply, but when he opened his mouth, he found that his throat was tight and dry, the words coming out silent. Was he crying? The skin of Muiri’s shoulder was damp and he realized then that his eyes were stinging, hot tears gathering in his lashes. He turned his face into the crook of her neck, ashamed.

“Hey,” she crooned, squeezing him, “hey, it’s all right. It’s okay.”

He trembled against her, shuddering through his stifled tears. Muiri cradled his head and pressed kisses to the edge of his brow, her other arm wrapped tightly around his back. “Shhh,” she said, “I’m here, love, I’ve got you.”

Mathyas desperately wanted to say something—to apologize, to lie, to try and explain himself—but he didn’t dare speak in case that tipped him over the edge. He couldn’t do anything except cling to Muiri and hide his face against her shoulder, breathing deeply and waiting for this—whatever it was—to pass. Muiri stroked his back and his hair, murmuring words of encouragement. What was wrong with him?

“Wait here a moment,” she said, slowly extricating herself from his lap, “I’ll be right back.”

Mathyas watched in a dazed silence as she headed naked into the main room of the shop, disappearing among the shadows. He felt exposed and vulnerable without her there, but took advantage of her absence to wipe furiously at his eyes, clearing his throat a few times to try and rid himself of the persistent lump. The furs he pulled up to his waist and a hand he ran through his tangled hair. By the time she returned, he’d managed to somewhat collect himself.

She came to join him on the bed, handing him a pewter cup of water.

“There you go,” she said, stroking his leg under the furs as he drank from it. The water soothed his aching throat; he put the cup to one side once he was finished.

“I- I apologize,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes again. “I’m not sure what came over me.”

“It’s alright,” Muiri replied, taking his face in her hands and pressing a kiss to his temple. Mathyas exhaled, squeezing his eyes shut. “Thank you for that,” she went on, speaking softly. “It was really lovely.”

Mathyas let out a wet laugh, shaking his head, not meeting her gaze. “Up until now, I imagine.”

“No,” said Muiri, “it’s still lovely.” She reached for him, pulling him into her arms. He dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Tedras.”

He just sighed.

“And I meant what I said earlier, about you being welcome to stay if you want. You’ll have to leave early so I can open the shop, but it’ll beat heading back to your inn.”

Mathyas nodded, his throat clenching again. The wave of relief that washed over him was pathetic. 

“Come here,” Muiri said, lying down on the bed and pulling him with her, drawing the furs up to their waists. It was a tight fit, but Mathyas didn't mind. They lay there, facing each other, legs intertwined. Neither of them spoke. Muiri laid a hand on his jaw and stroked his cheekbone with her thumb. Her brows were ever so slightly creased with concern, but she was subtle about it.

It was a long time that they lay there, neither moving nor speaking. Mathyas’ heartbeat gradually slowed, his breath coming even. The urge to cry had left him.

Muiri eventually cleared her throat. “There’s something I wanted to ask you,” she said quietly. Mathyas nodded, and she drew in a deep breath. “When you told me you couldn’t kill Nilsine, because it was against the rules…”

His breathing hitched a little, but he said nothing, allowing her to continue.

“…were you telling the truth?”

Mathyas could only stare at her. He had no resolve with which to lie to her—not anymore.

“No,” he said, giving just the slightest shake of his head. Muiri nodded, absorbing the information. Her hand was still on his cheek.

“I thought that might be the case,” she murmured. “I was thinking about it, in the days after you left. I—I wanted to thank you for refusing to do it. It was impulsive of me to ask, and I think… I think I’d have regretted it, if you had killed her.”

Mathyas squeezed her waist; there was nothing he could say.

Muiri was silent for a few moments, gaze wandering around the room as she thought over her next words.

“Are you really with the Dark Brotherhood?” she asked.

He inhaled sharply.

“Yes."

“Do you want to be?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“I thought so,” Muiri murmured. She inched closer to him, bringing her face near to his. “You don’t seem like the type. Never did.”

Mathyas smiled. “That’s good to know,” he said, and he meant it. “What was it that made you think that?”

Muiri shrugged, lips parting into a smirk. “I don’t know. I guess I expected an assassin to look a little rougher. Or feel a little seedier.” She brushed some of his hair out of his eyes, tracing her fingers down from his forehead to his cheekbone. Mathyas shuddered when her wrist grazed the tip of his ear. “But you feel so… honest. And look so regal.” She laughed. “Like a Dunmeri prince.”

That made Mathyas snort. Morrowind hadn’t had a monarchy for two hundred years, but she wasn’t far off.

Muiri sighed, pressing herself against him and laying her head on his shoulder. Mathyas shifted to make it comfortable for them both, rolling onto his back and giving her his arm to use as support for her neck.

“So how did someone like you end up in an organisation like that?”

He was silent, watching the candlelight dance across the stone ceiling. Then he sighed. “I killed someone,” he confessed. It felt weird, saying it out loud like that. “It turned out she had a contract on her. The Brotherhood said I ‘stole’ it from them, and to repay my debt, they made me join.”

Muiri’s fingers curled against his chest. “I’m sorry.”

Mathyas shook his head. “Don’t be. I did this to myself. I was a killer before they found me.”

Neither of them said anything for a short while, but he couldn’t blame Muiri for her silence. What was there to say to something like that?

Against his better judgement, Mathyas found himself continuing. “Maybe I deserve this, you know? I killed that woman with no remorse. It’s only right that I find myself among other remorseless killers.”

Muiri propped herself up on one elbow, looking at him seriously. “Tedras,” she said. “I know I don’t know you very well. And… I can’t exactly comment on what you did.” She put her hand back on his face, brushing her thumb over the corner of his mouth. “But even I can tell you don’t deserve this. Okay? I think… I think you’re a good person. And maybe you made a mistake. But good people make mistakes all the time. You don’t have to resign yourself to becoming something you’re not.”

Mathyas shut his eyes, but it was too late to stop the tear that rolled down towards his hairline. Muiri pressed it away with her fingers, and then her lips.

“Come on,” she said, drawing the furs up to their shoulders. She eased him over to face her and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into the soft warmth of her chest and tucking his head under her chin. He could feel the steady thudding of her heartbeat. “Let’s get some sleep.”

Mathyas clung to Muiri and released a shaky breath against her skin. He supposed he could try. 

Notes:

I think all four protagonists have cried at some point within the last two chapters... oops

Big thank you to diana for beta-reading this chapter. I hope people enjoyed it :))

Chapter 22: Whispers on the Grapevine

Whiterun, Skyrim, 25th Sun’s Dusk

Sanjir was too hungover for this; too hungover to be listening to Vilkas drone on as he outlined their route to the village of Black Moor, and from there to the small cave just north of the town whose damp caverns had recently become home to a clan of vampires. With each throb of his temple Sanjir was reminded painfully of yesterday’s indulgences, and of the tavern crawl he’d embarked on with Jórunn and Raydrin to commemorate the latest of their infrequent visits. This was the third time the Dragonborn and her guide had stopped off at Whiterun whilst travelling on some dangerous quest, but each time was a cause for celebration, and the Companions had taken to treating it as such. Unfortunately, Sanjir was now suffering the consequences.

Leorn, of course, had never been a keen drinker, and so was listening to Vilkas intently, offering the occasional suggestion as they pored over their maps. His suggestions were meant as little more than attempts to maintain the illusion that this was a collaborative exercise; as far as Vilkas was concerned, the route was already decided, and Sanjir imagined this had probably been the case for at least a day or two. Their higher-up was nothing if not thorough.

He stifled a yawn, holding the back of his hand to his mouth in a feeble attempt to disguise it. Vilkas was too engrossed in his work to notice. Beside him, on the long, wooden bench at their table, Ria was looking equally as tired, blinking slowly at the maps with her forehead resting in one hand. Sanjir was glad he wasn’t the only one.

Just when it seemed Vilkas was close to having covered everything there possibly was to cover, the door behind him suddenly swung open, and Sanjir sat up in surprise to watch as Aela entered their small office. Vilkas, too, paused mid-sentence and turned over his shoulder to see who had come in. His finger faltered over the map, hovering mid-point.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Aela, sounding not in the least bit apologetic. Sanjir had to wrestle down his grin at the sight of faint bruises littering the column of her throat; she and Raydrin were getting lazier and lazier with each visit. “But there’s been a summons from Jarl Balgruuf.”

Vilkas straightened and brushed down his blue woollen shirt with one large, pale hand. “Of course,” he said, clearing his throat. He turned to the others. “I believe we are finished here. We leave at noon. I would start making preparations for the journey.”

“Not just you, Vilkas,” Aela cut in with a sigh, clipping the end of his last word. “The summons is for all of us.”

Sanjir’s eyes widened at that, his gaze flicking to meet Leorn’s across the table. Balgruuf wanted to see all of them? That was… unusual. Sanjir was struggling to recall if it had ever happened over the few years he’d spent with the Companions. Normally when Balgruuf wanted to address the organisation at large he would do so through Kodlak, or one of the Circle as he had done with Aela today. But to summon them all up to Dragonsreach?

“Very well,” said Vilkas after a long pause. He wasn’t normally one to show much emotion when he spoke and his lack of intonation here was no exception. But Sanjir was almost certain he could detect a slight edge of surprise to Vilkas’ words. So he thought it odd, too.

When moments later the three of them had still failed to show any signs of movement, Vilkas growled lowly under his breath and bristled. “Well, you heard the woman,” he said. “Out with you.”

Uneasily Sanjir and Ria got to their feet, circling round the table and joining with Leorn as they headed to the open doorway. Aela stepped to one side as they passed, her expression hard and her lean arms folded across her chest.

“The others are waiting upstairs,” she said. “We’ll head up together.”

What a sight they were going to make, Sanjir thought as they trudged down the long corridor of Jorrvaskr’s basement. Not every member of the Companions was actually in Whiterun, as was the norm, but to see all of those that remained hiking up to Dragonsreach together… they’d attract some stares, at the very least.

“Any idea what this is about?” Sanjir overheard Vilkas asking quietly behind them.

“I have a theory,” said Aela, sounding grim. “But I’ll keep it to myself until the Jarl confirms or denies it.”

Sanjir threw another upwards glance at Leorn, who returned the look with the quirk of one thick, blonde eyebrow. Neither of them said anything, but Sanjir got the distinct feeling that the terrorized villagers of Black Moor would have to wait.

When everyone remaining had convened in Jorrvaskr’s great hall—the five of them as well as Njada and Athis—they left the warmth of their mead hall and started the steep climb up to Dragonsreach. The steppe of Whiterun Hold was by far Skyrim’s driest region, but with winter starting to tighten its hold on the land, the air was crisp with a bitter and arid cold. Sanjir’s breath came out in clouds and his lungs felt tight and stung with every inhale.

They did indeed attract stares as they walked, from guards and the few citizens who were braving the cold to run their errands. Where ordinarily they would be met with bowed heads and pleasant greetings, they were met instead with confused looks and grim silences from each pallid countenance they passed. The two guards stationed outside Dragonsreach’s doors said nothing as they allowed them entry, and Sanjir’s chilled skin was starting to crawl with an antsy, agitated feeling.

“Companions,” said Irileth, twisting round at the sound of the doors falling shut behind them. With a wave of her hand she dismissed the serving girl she’d been talking to who then scurried away with a quick bow of her head. “Thank you for arriving so promptly.”

Sanjir couldn’t tell whether that was meant sincerely or not.

“Jarl Balgruuf is waiting for you in his war room,” Irileth went on. “Please, follow me. Quickly, now.”

Evidently not.

The housecarl—joined by Aela at the head—led them swiftly up Dragonsreach’s grand staircase, discussing something with the huntress in a low murmur that Sanjir couldn’t quite make out. The throne room was uncharacteristically empty as they maneuvered past the firepit, but the war room was humming with the monotonous droning of several overlapping voices. A sudden silence fell as the Companions spilled over the top of the stairs.

Several long seconds passed before Jarl Balgruuf cleared his throat. “Welcome, Companions,” he said. “We appreciate you joining us.”

Sanjir’s stomach sank under the weight of an oncoming dread. Clustered around the edge of the Jarl’s long war table was the Jarl himself, flanked on either side by his steward, Proventus, and his brother, Hrongar. Kodlak Whitemane had been given a seat at the head of the table, looking… frailer, somehow, than he ever had in Jorrvaskr. It occurred to Sanjir that this was the first time in months he was seeing their Harbinger outside the walls of their hall, and the flickering torchlight of Balgruuf’s war room cast harsh shadows in the sunken hollows of Kodlak’s face. His wrinkled skin, once the leathery brown of a seasoned warrior and outdoorsman, was a thin, papery white, the texture of crinkled parchment, and his clear, pale eyes were watering as he peered at his men. Kodlak then looked away, his jaw wound tight. He looked… ashamed.

Standing loosely around the opposite side of the table to the Jarl were several more individuals of military significance in Whiterun, namely Tsunvald, Captain of the Guard, and Kynja, the leader of Whiterun’s cavalry forces. The Court Wizard Farengar was lingering by the far wall, and beside Kynja was a woman Sanjir hadn’t seen before, her face flushed and sweaty under a layer of smeared grey warpaint. She was clad in riding gear—had she just got back from somewhere?

“We appreciate you having us, my Lord,” said Aela with a stiff bow. “May I inquire as to the purpose of this summons?”

Balgruuf looked grim. He opened his mouth and sighed, like just finding the words took great effort. “One of Kynja’s scouts brings word that a Stormcloak army has been seen marching in from the east,” he said at last, gesturing with one hand to the woman at Kynja’s side. “They are expected to be on our doorstep come tomorrow night.”

“The army is about five thousand strong,” the scout cut in. Sanjir tried to swallow but his throat was suddenly dry. “They have a cavalry force of maybe eight hundred men, and three hundred men manning ten trebuchets. The rest are mostly heavy infantry. Our strongholds in the White River Valley have already fallen.”

A heavy silence followed her words, settling over the Companions like a thick layer of snow. It was Vilkas who eventually spoke.

“And how does this concern us?” he asked. “The Companions have no place in politics.”

Jarl Balgruuf’s eyes shifted over to Kodlak, his brows furrowed with worry. Kodlak said nothing for several moments, his watery gaze fixed on the wooden table in front of him. When at last he looked up, his features were heavy with resignation.

“This is not playing politics,” he said hoarsely. “This is defending our home and our people. I would do much the same if it was your Empire attacking,” he paused, and then added, “my Lord.”

But it’s not the Empire attacking, thought Sanjir. It’s the Stormcloaks.

“‘Your’ Empire?” repeated Aela, arching an incredulous brow as she glanced between Kodlak and the Jarl.

Balgruuf’s expression was hard, his brows drawn and his upper lip slightly curled. “Ulfric has made his intentions clear,” he said bitterly. “He wages war on his own people. On our people. Whiterun Hold cannot withstand the forces of eastern Skyrim alone. As far as Ulfric is concerned, my neutrality is akin to siding with the Empire. But if the Empire is the only thing that can put that tyrant to rest, I shall happily prove his assumptions correct.”

That was that, then.

The Civil War had reached Whiterun at last.

“For now, however, we are on our own,” Balgruuf continued grimly. “And that is why I am calling on your aid, Companions.”

Beside him, Proventus suddenly scoffed. “The Legion had offered to station soldiers here,” he said. “Months ago. Several times, in fact. And each time, you refused. Now it’s too late and we’re grossly outnumbered.”

“Must I remind you, Proventus, that that was on your advice?” Balgruuf bit back. “Something about wanting to avoid provoking Jarl Ulfric, if I recall correctly? In any case, it seems as if he needs no provocation. And now we must deal with the situation we have left ourselves.”

“How may we serve you, my Lord?” asked Aela.

“As Companions, the people of Whiterun trust and look up to you,” he said. “We must begin making preparations immediately. I need you to round up our citizens and call them to battle; every able-bodied man and woman should have a sword in their hands and a helmet on their heads by morning. Those who cannot fight must be escorted out of the city to safety. Send them southwest to the foothills of the Brittleshins—the caves there should provide shelter for a day or two.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said Aela with a bow.

“In the meantime, we must ready the city for battle. Captain Tsunvald—you will be in charge of organizing the militia. Every man must know his post. We need infantrymen, water brigades, trebuchet teams… focus on the outer defences. If the Stormcloaks make it to our crumbling old walls, it will already be too late. Kynja, the same goes for our cavalry. I want to keep the fighting to the plains if we can help it.”

Both of them gave their assent in unison, crossing their chests with their forearms and bowing low.

“Companions,” said Balgruuf, turning to them once again, “I trust that you can organize yourselves?”

“Of course, my Lord,” said Vilkas.

“Excellent. Send all those willing to fight to report to the guard barracks. I want everyone else out of the city by nightfall.” He waved a hand at them, turning back to his battle plans. “You are dismissed.”

Sanjir found himself looking to Vilkas and Aela to make the first move, and he caught their gaze as they glanced between each other and then at Kodlak. When it became clear the old man was not going to be joining them, Vilkas turned to the others and motioned for them to follow. They climbed down the steps into Dragonsreach’s throne room in silence.

As soon as they were out of earshot of the war room, Leorn jogged ahead to Vilkas and grasped him by the arm. Vilkas stopped at the top of the stairs and twisted round to face him. “What?”

“What do we do about the Gray-Manes?” Leorn asked.

Vilkas stared back at him.

“What about the Gray-Manes?”

“Vignar will kick up a fuss,” said Leorn. His deep voice—normally so soft and so infrequently used—was tight through his gritted teeth. “And Eorlund—”

“—can do what he likes,” Vilkas finished. “You heard Kodlak. This isn’t political. We’re defending our home. If the Gray-Manes want to stand back and watch Whiterun fall, that’s their prerogative. Just focus on your own battles, Shield-Brother.”

“But it is political,” Leorn insisted. “Avoiding the fight—that’s political. They’re siding with the enemy. They can’t just—”

“Enough, Leorn,” Aela cut in. The muscles in Leorn’s neck shifted as he ground his jaw. “If they choose not to fight, so be it. Their cowardice is no concern of ours. Right now, we have bigger problems.”

Sanjir frowned out of pity for his friend. Leorn was rarely one to speak up and Sanjir could see why—Aela and Vilkas were misunderstanding him. He would know full well that they had ‘bigger problems’. His first concern was and always had been the safety of the people of Whiterun, Sanjir knew that. But the Companions’ decision to fight was just as political as the Gray-Manes’ support for their invaders. It was a matter of principle.

Leorn stood down, hanging back as Vilkas and Aela continued on their way. Sanjir fell into step alongside his friend and gave the firm meat of his shoulder a sympathetic pat.

“They won’t help us,” said Leorn quietly. “It’s not about the fighting. They won’t help us.”

“No, they won’t,” Sanjir sighed. Helping to escort citizens to safety would amount to an acknowledgement that their chosen side was threatening civilian lives, and the Gray-Manes were too proud and stubborn for that. Vignar in particular would stick to his convictions even if it meant abandoning every pretence of the Companions’ alleged apoliticism. “But maybe this will finally give us a reason to kick old Vignar out of Jorrvaskr,” he added, earning a quiet snort from Leorn. “Assuming the old man doesn’t pop his clogs in all the excitement first.”

His grim humour was doing little to raise his own spirits. As they climbed down the steps to the lower Cloud District, affording them a clear view over the sprawl of the city below, the reality of their situation was starting to sink in. Sanjir could see it already; flashes of orange against a blackened sky, the plains swarming with infantrymen like the crests of waves on a troubled sea. Stormcloaks crawling through the streets of Whiterun like maggots in a corpse.

Sanjir was no soldier. A skilled warrior, maybe, but his skirmishes with bandits and vampires had offered little in the way of preparing someone for the art of war. But he had been just five years old when the city of Rihad fell a second time, and to this day he could remember it vividly; the Stormcloaks were no Aldmeri Dominion, but what they lacked in technical prowess Sanjir had no doubt they would make up for in savagery and manpower. The Army of the East outnumbered Whiterun’s guard force ten to one.

Sanjir was no soldier, but he was no idiot either. He knew what to expect.

Skyrim’s last great bastion of peace was about to fall.

 

---

 

Falkreath Sanctuary, Skyrim, 26th Sun’s Dusk

“Mathyas? Anyone home?”

Reluctantly Mathyas shifted his gaze from the book in his hands, his eyes following the source of the knocking sound to his door. Gabriella was silent on the other side and for a few moments Mathyas was still, trying to summon the energy to deal with whatever she had in store for him. Eventually he sat up with a sigh and put his book face-down on his bed.

“Yes,” he called back, running a hand through his hair. “Come in.”

The door opened with a creak and Gabriella slumped against the doorway, eyeing him up and down with her arms folded across her chest.

“Do you ever leave this room?” she asked with a quirk of one brow, her tone somewhere in between teasing and accusatory.

He shrugged. “I’ve just been tired,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. He’d only been back for a day.

Gabriella raised her other eyebrow at that, but she didn’t push it. “Well, in any case, you’ve been summoned by Nazir.”

Mathyas hummed. “What for?”

“Cooking duty,” she smirked. “He needs a couple of sous-chefs, as we say in High Rock.”

“Cooking?” Mathyas repeated. “I’d probably be better off on pot-washing duty. I’ve never cooked outside the field bef—”

“Nonsense,” Gabriella cut him off, waving a hand dismissively. “If you can gut someone with a sword you can chop a few carrots. Come on.”

Mathyas frowned at that.

If I can gut someone with a sword.

He turned down his oil lamp and followed Gabriella out of the room in silence, shutting his door softly behind him. The Brotherhood’s living quarters were situated on a raised landing that overlooked the dining area below, and immediately upon exiting Mathyas was hit with the smell of something spicy and a kind of slow-cooking meat. Goat, maybe? It smelled… good. Really good.

“So you managed to coax the hermit out of his cave,” Nazir drawled from his position by the stove as Mathyas and Gabriella approached. He threw a brief glance at them over his shoulder before turning back to the large pot he was stirring. “You know how to chop a carrot, Redoran?”

“We have carrots in Morrowind,” Mathyas bit back.

Nazir chuckled. “Excellent.” He slid a lid onto the pot at a slight angle and turned to the countertop beside him, picking up a wooden chopping board laden with carrots and a sharp knife and then handing it to Mathyas. To Gabriella he gave a large bowl of what looked like unmixed dough ingredients. “Gabriella, you’re kneading.”

Mathyas awkwardly took a seat at the end of the long wooden table and stared blankly down at his workstation, trying to figure out how to approach this. He jumped slightly when he felt a hand slide over his shoulder.

“We want them peeling and chopping into batons,” said Nazir from his side, smirking when Mathyas looked up to meet his gaze. “Is that alright, Mathyas?”

Mathyas nodded, looking away with a swallow. “Fine by me.”

Nazir gave his shoulder a light pat and then slid out of the edge of his periphery. Gabriella, meanwhile, had placed her bowl down on the table opposite Mathyas, and returned a few moments later with a bottle of wine and two goblets.

“Wine, Mathyas?”

Mathyas stared at the bottle uneasily, but it was only a few seconds that he hesitated.

“Alright,” he said eventually, nodding. “Thank you.”

Gabriella poured them both a goblet and then got to work mixing the dough ingredients, standing behind the table and leaning her weight forward on one arm.

“Dunmer make good kneaders,” she told him as she worked. She held up a sticky, floury hand and grinned at him. “Warm hands.”

Mathyas didn’t know enough about bread-making to understand why that would make a difference, but just nodded, deciding to take her word for it. He drank from his wine and looked back down to his carrots, doing his best to recall the few times he’d seen the kitchen staff of the Dutheri residence peeling vegetables in an attempt to glean their technique. How was he supposed to hold the carrot? Did he peel away from himself or towards?

He found himself missing Raydrin, who’d taken a liking to cooking at a young age and had charmed the kitchen staff into teaching him a thing or two. Often he would help out when they were happy to let him and when he thought he could get away with it. But Mathyas, by contrast, was embarrassingly ignorant, and he was feeling more aware of that ignorance now than ever before. 

There was nothing for it except to try. Mathyas picked up the first carrot and held it in his left hand the same way he’d hold the spine of a book, and then with his right hand took the knife and tried to find purchase under the carrot’s outer layer of flesh. It required more pressure than he anticipated, but with some adjustments his improvised technique enabled him to begin peeling back the carrot’s skin into long, orange ribbons. He was starting to find a rhythm when his blade suddenly caught on a tougher patch of skin and gave way under the force of his hand, jerking away from the carrot and straight into the pad of his thumb.

“Vehk,” he hissed, yanking back his hand and shaking it loosely in some misguided attempt to ease the pain. He could feel Gabriella’s eyes boring into him as he held his thumb up to his mouth and tried to soothe the cut that way, the unpleasant, metallic taste of blood flooding his tongue. He stared back at her bitterly.

“Oh dear,” she muttered eventually, leaving her post. The dough was still in its early stages and so it stuck to her fingers in large clumps; she poured water over them from a jug and rinsed her hands in the wash basin before drying them off on a piece of cloth. “Let’s take a look.”

She appeared behind Mathyas and leaned over his shoulder, reaching for his forearm. Reluctantly he gave it to her, stiffening as she took the back of his hand in one palm and pressed her thumbs into either side of the cut. The thin line reddened and then beads of blood started to gather, rolling down his thumb before splashing onto her own grey skin. It didn’t seem to bother her at all. Why would it?

“It’ll need dressing before you handle any more of our dinner,” she said quietly, her slender fingers grazing down the back of his wrist before drawing away. “But then maybe Babette would actually be interested in eating it,” she added with a laugh.

It took Mathyas a few seconds to understand what she meant, but his realization was accompanied by an uncomfortable twisting in his gut. He’d seen Babette chatting with Veezara on his way in, the two of them sitting at the opposite end of the long dining table to him and Gabriella, and he looked up now to find her staring at him from across the room, her big eyes wide but inscrutably dark. Mathyas was the first to turn away, his skin crawling.

Gabriella returned a few minutes later with a thin strip of bandage, but when she tried to dress the cut for him, Mathyas swatted her hands away and did it himself. Nazir was noticeably silent throughout this whole ordeal, going pointedly about his own tasks. 

“Hold the carrot like this,” said Gabriella once she was back in her bread-working station, reaching across the table to grab one and demonstrate. “In your non-dominant hand, pointing away from you. Then hold the blade at an angle to the carrot—like this—and push downwards, so that if it slips at any point—” she accompanied the instruction with a mime, “—no fleshy bits are in the way.” She smirked at him. “See?”

Mathyas took the carrot from her with a muttered thank you and got back to work. It took him a minute or two to get the hang of the correct technique, but eventually they lapsed into a steady rhythm—the thwok of his knife repeatedly hitting the chopping board, the table creaking beneath Gabriella’s hands as she worked the dough, the crackling of the fire and Nazir’s pots on the stove bubbling away behind them. Mathyas drank from his wine and chopped his carrots and tried not to think too hard about anything.

Their rhythm was broken only a short while later, pierced by a sudden and high-pitched screech from somewhere above. Mathyas’ head snapped up, his gaze immediately colliding with Gabriella’s wide, scarlet eyes. Silence fell, seconds passed, and then the scream came again, longer this time and garbled. There were words in there somewhere, but the sound was too muffled by the Sanctuary’s thick stone walls for them to be made out. The only thing clear to them was that the voice belonged to Cicero.

“Shit,” Gabriella swore, wiping her hands down her apron, and immediately the three of them sprung into action. Mathyas’ chair groaned uncomfortably as it was scraped back over the stone and the lid of one of Nazir’s pots hit the ground with a metallic clang in his rush to move, but they paid it no mind, breaking out into a run as they scrambled up the staircase with Babette and Veezara. It was clearer on this floor that the sound was coming from the Night Mother’s chamber, and they hurried through the Sanctuary’s main cavern in a race to reach it, nearly tripping over each other in their haste. When they burst through the doors of the chamber, they were met with the sight of Cicero, flat on his back, straddled at his hips by Vivienne, with his skinny wrists pinned above his head and a dagger pressed to the pale column of his throat.

Mathyas swallowed, allowing his gaze to slide upwards for a split second from the scene before them to the open coffin behind it. He’d made a pointed effort of avoiding this room until now and the Night Mother’s visage had, so far, remained a mystery to him. But here it was, at last; the dry, shriveled remains of a corpse, barely more than a skeleton under the tendrils of wrinkled brown skin that still clung to it, with sticky, salty flesh sparkling under the torchlight and two black, gaping eyesockets gazing blankly across the rabble of what remained of the Brotherhood.

Mathyas could only stare for a moment or two before Cicero’s whining forced his gaze, leading him forwards with the others to quickly grab the two redheads and pry them apart. They were both so slight and slender, but it came as no surprise that Vivienne had managed to secure the upper hand; Cicero had come to them all those weeks ago in a state of severe malnutrition and there was still very little meat on his bones. Nazir and Mathyas grasped Vivienne’s arms and dragged her off of him whilst Gabriella and Veezara did the same with Cicero, pulling him to his feet and struggling around his incessant writhing and kicking.

“Treachery!” he wailed, tossing his head back and forth as he fought to escape the grip of Gabriella and Veezara. “Defiler! Debaser and defiler!” His jester’s hat flew off and landed a few feet away with a clipped jingle that—in any other circumstances—might have been comical, but without it he looked so much older and frailer that Mathyas could feel nothing for him but pity. Greasy clumps of his thin red hair hung loosely over his eyes and globs of spittle collected at the corners of his mouth as he ranted and raved. 

“What in Sithis’ name is going on here?!” came a voice from the open doorway, and they turned to find Astrid standing there, her hands clenched into fists at her sides and the whites of her eyes visible all around her pupils as she stared at them in fury. 

“She dishonours the Night Mother!” Cicero cried, still struggling in his restraints. “She violates the Tenets! Ugly, Breton wench!”

“Be quiet, fool,” Astrid snarled, and Cicero whimpered and recoiled away from her, his ranting dissolving into unintelligible mutterings. Astrid’s gaze flicked between the two of them, from the thin slice on Cicero’s throat and the trickle of blood steadily leaking from it to a matching cut Mathyas could just about see on Vivienne’s freckled cheek.

“You dare to draw blood from another Sanctuary member?” Astrid asked. “I should kill you both where you stand for dishonouring our Family like this.” 

“If I wanted to hurt him he’d be dead already,” Vivienne spat from where her arms were held back by Mathyas and Nazir. Unlike her counterpart she was making no attempt to struggle against them. 

“Then I’m going to need some explanations,” said Astrid. “And fast.”

“She—violates,” Cicero grunted, losing his footing and slipping downwards before Gabriella and Veezara hoisted him back up, “the sanctity—of the Night Mother’s—coffin!”

Astrid turned to Vivienne. “Is this true?” 

“Only because I was told to,” Vivienne responded flatly. 

“Who by?”

“The Night Mother,” she said. “She spoke to me.”

“Lies!” Cicero screeched, the ferocity of his writhing increasing tenfold. His voice went straight through Mathyas, like nails raking down a slate. “Trickery! Deceit!”

“It’s no lie,” Vivienne said coolly. She shifted in Mathyas and Nazir’s grip. Then she cleared her throat. “Darkness rises when silence dies.”

Cicero stilled suddenly, going silent and falling limp in Veezara and Gabriella’s arms. He stared at her, his brown irises like pinpricks in the yellowed moons of his eyes.  

“She… she said that?”

Vivienne offered no response and didn’t move. Mathyas couldn’t even see her expression from where he was standing behind her.

“Well?” demanded Astrid when the silence persisted. “What does it mean?”

“Those... are the words,” Cicero eventually muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. His voice grew feverish and rushed, picking up speed with each word. “The Binding Words. Written in the Keeping Tomes. Written so that Cicero would know… yes, yes, so that Mother could talk to sweet Cicero. So that Mother could return! So it’s true! She is returned! Our Lady is back! Ha!” 

He dissolved into laughter and was cackling happily to himself when Astrid suddenly marched across the room and seized him by the neck, pulling him up and out of Gabriella and Veezara’s grip. 

“By Sithis, talk some sense, fool,” she hissed. “Is Vivienne the Listener or not?”

Cicero gasped and spluttered, scrabbling feebly against Astrid’s forearm.

“Well?” Astrid pressed. 

“The Listener… is… returned,” he wheezed, his cracked lips curling into a grin despite his circumstances. “All… hail… the Listener.” 

Astrid let him go and he dropped to the floor in a crumpled heap, gasping hoarsely and clutching at his throat. She turned then to face Vivienne, her expression hard. 

“So the Night Mother has finally chosen her Champion,” she drawled. 

Vivienne shrugged her way out of Mathyas and Nazir’s grip, pulling her arms free. They let her. 

“She told me to travel to the ruins of Volunruud and seek out Amaund Motierre,” she said. “On the sixteenth of Evening Star.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” said Astrid. “I am the leader of this Sanctuary. You hear? Not the Night Mother, not the Listener, me. And nobody’s speaking to anybody unless I tell them to.”

Mathyas glanced uneasily over to the Night Mother, who was looking just as corpse-like as before. Had she been watching this whole ordeal? Could Vivienne hear her, even now?

Was there a Daedric Prince lurking somewhere behind that rotten countenance?

Beside him, Nazir suddenly cleared his throat. “Astrid,” he started, speaking lowly, “if the Night Mother really has selected a Listener, perhaps it would be wise to take advantage of—”

“I just need time to think things over, Nazir,” Astrid cut him off with a sigh. She rubbed at her temples. “Assign everybody their next contracts and get them out of here by tomorrow morning. I want the Sanctuary empty for a few days.” 

Silence followed her words, and when several moments had passed with little movement or noise beyond Cicero’s incoherent mumbling, Astrid bristled and threw her hands up. “You heard me!” she said. “Out! Get out, all of you!” 

They started to shift. Mathyas threw a sideways glance over at Nazir, who returned the look with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Someone stay here with Cicero,” Astrid added as they filed out of the room. “I want that clown under constant supervision until he’s calmed down.” 

Mathyas was thankful when Veezara volunteered to stay behind, and slowly the others began making their way back into the Sanctuary’s main chamber. Vivienne had already stalked off somewhere by the time Mathyas noticed that she wasn’t with them—for which he was more than grateful—but those that remained trudged back into the dining area and living quarters together, silent as they walked. 

“Ugh,” muttered Nazir, investigating his pots. “The lentils are overdone.”

“At least the dough has had some time to rise,” said Gabriella with a scoff as she, Mathyas and Babette sat down at the table. Mathyas rubbed his eyes and stared blankly at his pile of chopped carrots, trying to gather his thoughts into some semblance of order. 

“We’ll get the carrots in the stew and the flatbreads in the oven and then I’ll assign you your contracts before dinner,” said Nazir. “Come on.” 

They reluctantly got to work, finishing off their tasks from before and getting things back in motion. When everything was cooking away and there was nothing left to do but wait, Nazir went off to fetch his paperwork and then took a seat at the opposite end of the dining table, letting them approach him one by one. Mathyas went last. He felt sort of ill.

“Do you like vampires, Mathyas?” asked Nazir as Mathyas took his seat in the chair opposite him. Mathyas considered the question for a moment and then shook his head.

“Not particularly,” he said. Then he wrinkled his nose. “No offence to Babette.”

Nazir just chuckled. “I thought you might say that,” he said. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know your next target is a vampire by the name of Hern. He resides in a mill not far from here, on the southwest shore of Lake Ilinalta. You should be back within a fortnight.”

Mathyas nodded. “All right.”

“He resides in the mill with his female companion, Hert. The contract is for Hern, but you’ll likely have to contend with his partner, too. So be careful. And if you have to kill Hert as well, it’s not a problem.” 

Nazir slid the paperwork towards him, though his gaze never left Mathyas’ face. “I reserved this contract for you specially, Mathyas,” he said. “So I hope you manage to… well, enjoy it, I suppose.” 

Mathyas scoffed softly. The chances of him ‘enjoying’ it were non-existent, but he was grateful at least that he wouldn’t have to kill an innocent. 

“Thanks, Nazir,” he said, reaching for the paperwork. Nazir smiled.

“Any time. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, could you please fetch Vivienne for me? I’ve got to assign our new Listener her next contract.”

Reluctantly Mathyas got to his feet, leaving the details of his contract on his bed before setting off in search of Vivienne. He was uncomfortably aware of each beat of his heart against his ribs, panic rising in his throat as his mind ran through the various ways this had the potential to fuck him over. He’d barely spoken a word to Vivienne since his arrival in the Sanctuary, and it seemed that both parties had been content to keep it that way, but now… 

He found her in the alchemy lab, sitting at the edge of Lis’ pit, her feet dangling over the side. He was about to announce himself when she beat him to it. 

“What do you want, Mathyas?”

He swallowed. She had her back to him. How did she know?

“Nazir wants you to see him,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “About your next contract.” 

She was still for several moments, but eventually she got to her feet, turning around to face him. The cut on her cheek from Cicero had already vanished, her freckled skin just as smooth and even as it always had been. For several seconds her eyes just raked over him, unashamedly taking him in before landing on his face. Then her lip curled. 

She brushed past him without a word, moving so silently Mathyas couldn’t even tell that she was there once she had moved beyond the bounds of his periphery. He remained where he was for a while after she left, staring ahead, trying to steady his heartbeat. Eventually he stepped forwards and lowered himself into the spot Vivienne had been occupying just before. 

Lis was lurking at the far corner of her pit, deathly still. Mathyas had never liked spiders. Not as a child, not as an adult. But something kept him there, staring at her, waiting for her to move. It was too shadowy for him to see much of her, but the inky black globes of her eyes glistened faintly in the torchlight. 

His gaze was drawn when, in the centre of the pit, closer to the light, he saw movement. A small white shape was lying there on the earth, shifting slowly. Thick ropes of cobweb were wrapped tightly around it, concealing what lay beneath. The lump twitched and pulsed for a short while before falling still. 

Mathyas jumped when he heard the clicking of Lis’ leg segments shifting against each other, indicating that she was on the move. He watched her scuttle towards the object and take it between her two front legs, spinning it around a few times. Then a dark, thick liquid splattered onto the object, and an acidic-smelling vapour drifted up to Mathyas’ nose as the fluid started eating through the cobweb and into the creature’s flesh. The two large, fleshy sacks of the spider’s jaw parted and began to chew on the dissolving creature, tearing it apart and slurping it up. His stomach turned as the threads of cobweb fell away, revealing brown fur and the remains of a small mammal, possibly a rabbit or a hare. 

Mathyas stayed there and watched until there was nothing left of it but the bones. 

Notes:

I went back and reread a few of the opening chapters the other day and it was amusing to see how vocal mathyas used to be. In the sanctuary he’s just like *stares blankly* *says nothing* *stares blankly* *says nothing* *stares b

anyway, thanks for reading, and big thanks to diana and haley for beta-reading this chapter! i hope you enjoyed it :)

Chapter 23: The Battle for Whiterun

Whiterun, Skyrim, 26th Sun’s Dusk

He found Leorn in the Temple of Kynareth, though the Nord would never refer to her as such.

Sanjir, too, knew her by a different name: Tava, the Bird God, Lady of the Air. He’d grown up in the Forebear stronghold of Rihad just miles away from the Cyrodiilic border, under a Forebear mother and a Colovian father, and so the distinction between Tava and Kynareth had seemed to him like one of little substance. But it was different for Leorn; the peaceful and mild Kynareth was worlds away from the Warrior-Wife Kyne, turbulent and volatile as the storms she commanded. It was her warlike nature that had brought Leorn to her shrine, on this day, at this hour, kneeling hunched before her altar with his large hands clasped to his brow and an inaudible prayer in the Nordic tongue on his lips.

Sanjir lingered on the tiled mosaic in the centre of the room, keeping his distance as he waited for his friend to finish. The light filtering down from the windows high up above was liquid gold, painting the wood and stone of the temple with soft shades of orange, pink, and yellow. It wouldn’t be long now before it melted away into darkness. Night was approaching, and with it, the Stormcloak army. Vaguely Sanjir wondered if the temple would emerge from the siege intact.

Leorn eventually got to his feet, straightening slowly until he was his normally-hulking self. His expression was stoic as ever as he turned to face him, almost blank.

“Are we heading out?” he asked softly. Sanjir nodded.

“Within the half hour,” he replied.

Leorn gave nothing in the way of a response, but his gaze slid downwards, and he turned away slightly to glance back down at Kynareth’s shrine.

“Nords used to believe that death is the only thing in life which is predetermined,” he muttered after several moments, more to himself than to Sanjir. He laid a hand on the wood of the altar, tapping it with his thumb. “It was what made us so fearless in battle.”

Sanjir said nothing, but wondered quietly whether this belief was one Leorn still held. His family belonged to a small, traditionalist sect of Nords, whose religion had originated sometime between the abandonment of the Atmoran totem gods and the adoption of the Imperial Cult. They clung to the old Nordic pantheon, venerating Kyne as their chief deity, and vehemently rejected any attempts to assimilate their gods with the Eight Divines. Talos, too, they saw as a heathenistic Imperial pretender, the conquering Emperor from the south. It was not a common view among Nords in the Fourth Era, and was found only in the most rural, isolated of communities, but they’d slipped through the cracks of the Civil War, forgotten and disenfranchised, represented by neither side. It would be mere generations before they died out altogether.

“But since the adoption of Akatosh…” Leorn went on, before faltering with a sigh. “Nowadays they say that everything in life is predetermined except death. That Nords are judged not by the manner by which they live, but by which they die.” He shook his head. “I suppose that’s just as incentivising.”

Sanjir was staring at him. “These are some big thoughts to be having in the lead-up to a battle,” he said. Leorn frowned, and Sanjir grimaced. “Sorry. That was patronizing. I’m nervous.”

Leorn’s hand fell away from the altar and he took a step forward. “We should get moving,” he said, and hesitantly Sanjir nodded. They left the temple together and emerged onto the streets of Whiterun, now devoid of all life and uneasily quiet. The militia was already gathering in the plains, and those who could not fight had been evacuated the day before. There was some movement in the far distance, along the crumbling walls that could just be seen from the vantage point of the Wind District, but otherwise the city was deathly still. Like it was holding its breath.

 

---

 

The Companions were sent eastwards to the edge of the plains, to a crumbling ruin in the foothills of the Shearpoint mountains on the northern side of the White River Valley. The valley acted as a funnel for anyone wanting to enter Whiterun, forcing the various armies of eastern Skyrim to approach the city as one. This—and the White River itself—put Whiterun at a tactical advantage, but whether its advantageous geography could make up for its lack of manpower was yet to be seen.

The sun was nearly set by the time they took their positions, a thin river of gold between the flat horizon of the distant west and the darkening skies above. For now, their southwest-facing fort was enjoying the last rays of sunlight, but that crisp, dry cold was already beginning to sink its bitter fingers into Sanjir’s flesh and lungs. At least the night would be clear, he thought, as he glanced to the faint outlines of Masser and Secunda.

They weren’t there for long before they saw movement at the far end of the valley; a pinprick figure appeared on the northern riverbank, and as they grew closer they grew into the shape of a person on horseback. They seemed to be alone. Athis, the Companions’ assigned lookout, held a spyglass up to one crimson eye and fixed it on the figure, but just moments later Aela came and placed a hand on his arm.

“Relax,” she said, “she’s one of ours.”

Athis stared at her sceptically. “‘She’ is a whole league away. There’s no way you can be so sure.”

“They don’t call me the Huntress for nothing,” said Aela grimly. “It’s Kynja’s scout. She’ll bring news.”

By the time the scout arrived, all traces of gold had given way to dark, greyish blues, and the figure was only just visible as she veered off the thin, rocky path between the riverbank and the cliffside and brought her horse in a gallop up to their fort.

“What news?” Aela called as the Companions climbed down from the ruins to greet her. The scout pulled on her reins and slowed to a stop, horse pacing back and forth with impatience.

“Our men at Valtheim Tower managed to take down two of the trebuchets,” she panted. “And with them, a few hundred troops. But our own losses were heavy. Less than ten remain.”

The silence that followed was sobering; Whiterun’s soil had seen its first blood. 

“What of the survivors?” asked Aela.

“They retreated into the hills,” said the scout. “You, too, must not linger. The Stormcloaks are unlikely to fall for the same trick twice.”

“We can hike up to Talos’ shrine,” said Vilkas. “It is not visible from the road. And the vantage point there is good.”

The scout nodded. “They will be here within the hour. You've time if you move with haste.”

“But what of our equipment?” asked Njada. “We’ll have no ballistae.”

“We have our oil and our bows,” said Aela. “Those will have to make do.”

“You also have these,” said the scout, and then she twisted in her saddle to reach into the saddlebags behind her. The Companions watched in silence as she spent several moments working the various clasps and buckles, until at last she reached into the pack and dug out what looked like a large wad of material. With a grunt she cast it to the ground. Sanjir heard the distinct clinking of chainmail.

“What are they?” asked Vilkas suspiciously, voicing everyone’s thoughts. It was too dark to see. Sanjir had a feeling he could guess.

“Stormcloak light armour,” she replied. “Two sets. You can get up close with these and blend in with the crowd. And if you’re careful, get away without it being obvious that you’re the enemy.”

“Absolutely not,” Vilkas growled. “No Companion of mine will don a dead man’s armour and go sneaking around behind enemy lines under the guise of their own. The dishonour—”

“This is war, Companion,” the scout cut him off, tugging on the reins of her horse and bracing herself to take off. “Do what you want. But don’t expect the Stormcloaks to show you the courtesy of honour.”

Vilkas cursed under his breath.

“Fight well,” said the scout. “And be careful.”

She kicked her heels into the flanks of her horse and was gone.

When the thundering of hooves had faded away, Aela stepped forwards and crouched, picking at the bloody pile of cloth, leather and chainmail with a look of distaste.

“I personally have no issue with this,” she said. “What about the rest of you?”

Vilkas scoffed and paced away.

“I’d volunteer if I could,” said Sanjir. “But a Redguard Stormcloak might look a little suspicious.”

Aela nodded. “You’re right. Njada? Leorn?”

Both Nords were silent, and in the darkness their silhouetted faces were almost impossible to read.

“I can try,” Leorn muttered eventually, clearing his throat.

Aela sighed. “Very well. You can help me carry them. Let’s move out.”

In a muted silence the Companions prepared to leave, gathering their equipment—oil, hemp tows, kindlepitch, and clay firepots—and setting off for the Shrine of Talos. The monument was a mere half a league westwards, nestled in a jagged outcrop where the White River Valley opened up and merged into the plains, but with all of their extra gear the trek took them the better part of a half-hour. The aurorae were out in full bloom by the time they arrived, fiery reds, oranges and yellows glowing stark against the night sky like coals in a darkened smithy.

They dropped their gear to the rocky earth with muffled grunts, warmed by their exertions despite the harsh chill in the air. Talos’ hulking statue loomed over them from his podium of stone, just a silhouette against the cliff face. His armoured foot—alone the size of Sanjir’s torso—was pressing down into the neck of a great serpentine beast, the point of his mighty greatsword poised above its head. Sanjir wondered what he would have to say about all this; whether he’d be rooting for his loyal defenders, or for the remains of his once ‘great’ Empire.

Not that the Companions were truly fighting on the side of the Empire. Or at least, Sanjir thought, that was what they were still trying to tell themselves.

Aela and Leorn started stripping out of the outer layers of their armour, replacing it with the dull blue of the Stormcloak uniform. They certainly looked the part; Aela with her flaming hair and streaks of warpaint, Leorn with his massive frame and his scraggly blonde locks and beard.

“They’re carrying pitch projectiles for the trebuchets,” said Aela when she was fully dressed, breaking the silence. “Leorn and I can sneak down and try to set them alight.”

“Is there a way you could douse the trebuchets themselves in oil?” asked Athis. “It would make our job up here much easier.”

“I doubt it,” Aela dismissed him. “Not without making ourselves obvious, at least. And getting outed as imposters in the middle of an army is a sure-fire way to get ourselves killed.”

She went on, going over the rest of their tactics in more detail.

Focus on the trebuchets at the front of the line. That way the wreckage will block the road.

No heroics. Get out of here the moment it looks like someone’s heading this way.

The river would act as a natural barrier of sorts, wide and deep enough to put off any Stormcloaks from attempting to cross it. But after hearing what had happened at Valtheim Tower, it wouldn’t be worth taking the risk.

When they’d done all that they could, they were to head back to the city and join the real fight.

Leorn was staring down at the hilt of his axe as he listened, pondering quietly the last person to have donned this uniform. They had been shorter than him, their chainmail and leathers too small for his frame, but Aela had managed to drape the blue cloth over his own armour convincingly enough. He wondered what their name had been, and what had made them enlist. Maybe he would have hated them. He might have sympathised. The only certainty now was that their cold, naked body would be thrown onto a mass grave with the dawn. If Alduin really had predetermined that their life would end in such a way, it was a sad and pathetic way to go.

It didn’t scare Leorn, the thought of going down there. If he was going to die on this night, there was nothing he could do, no decision he could make that would change that fact. But he shared Vilkas’ sentiment that such secrecy and deception had no place in the battlefield. He hadn’t enlisted with the Companions all those years ago to go sneaking around in the shadows.

But if it meant giving the people of Whiterun the chance to return to their homes and resume their lives in safety, perhaps Leorn could put aside such abstract notions as ‘honour.’

The minutes passed by slowly and in silence, the tension mounting as they waited. Sanjir watched with his stomach in his throat as Leorn and Aela made their way down the hillside to take their positions, keeping his eyes trained on their shrinking figures until they vanished into the darkness and could be seen no more. It hadn’t been the time or place for a heartfelt goodbye, but it occurred to Sanjir only after they were gone that there was a more than negligible chance he would never see them again.

He had no time to linger on the thought. The five remaining Companions got to work preparing their weapons, soaking the hemp in oil and stuffing it inside the firepots, tying it in tows to the tips of their arrows. Swift flight would put out any flames, so they loosened their bowstrings to reduce the force of the ejection.

When the Stormcloaks finally arrived, their presence was heralded by the glinting of their torchlight. A deep, orange glow seeped into the valley, bathing the hillsides in a warmth to combat the cool blues of the night sky. It began as just a pinprick of light, a candle flame in the dark, but steadily it pooled outwards until there, in the distance, the first blackened silhouettes of infantry rounded the corner and began filing slowly into what was the final stretch of the White River Valley. The basin was flooded within minutes, soldiers crawling like ants in a shapeless, black mass, delineated only by the countless flickering lights of their torches. The lack of formation was Nordic tradition, and was what had made them so fearsome in ages past; it gave them the advantage of flexibility and unpredictability.

The Companions watched on in silence, muted by grief and regret. It was clear to Sanjir just from looking at it that Whiterun wouldn’t stand a chance. But he didn’t give voice to his thoughts; it didn’t need to be said.

“I hate this,” Vilkas eventually muttered, breaking the silence as the Stormcloaks marched below. “This lurking in the shadows.”

The task of bringing down the trebuchets had been assigned to the Companions by Balgruuf himself. You are not common footsoldiers, he’d told them. I want you to have a role worthy of your standing. But it seemed that his decision was not a popular one.

“We’ll be joining the fight for real soon enough, Shield-Brother,” said Njada.

“How did it come to this?” Vilkas went on, ignoring her. “Thousands will die tonight. For what?”

No attempt was made to answer him; there was no answer to give. 

 

Meanwhile, at the base of the valley, a short distance eastward along the river where anyone familiar with the area would know of a safe place to cross, Leorn and Aela were sitting crouched in the basin of a shallow waterfall, shielded from the roadside by a jagged formation of rocks. The army hummed just a few feet away with the heavy thudding of footsteps and the droning of mindless chatter, but Leorn and Aela themselves were drowned out by the rushing water behind them.

“The first trebuchet will be passing us in a few minutes, I’d say,” Aela murmured as she swivelled from around the side of the rock back into the safety of the shadows. “But I think we’ll have to wait and join their ranks from the back. Trying to join from the side will be too suspicious.”

“We could say I was relieving myself,” Leorn suggested quietly. “And that you followed to keep watch.”

Aela hummed. “That could work,” she said. “But we should split up again as soon as we can. We don’t want to incriminate the other if one of us gets caught.”

Slowly Leorn exhaled.

“I think our best bet is to wait until the others start their attack on the first trebuchet and then take advantage of the fallout to light the pitch,” she went on. “Try not to lose me in the crowd. But also wait a while after I’ve planted the kindlepitch before lighting the flames. We want to do all that we can to avoid rousing suspicion.”

She gave him the signal just a few minutes later, two hard taps on his thigh. With a deep breath Leorn got to his feet, thrusting himself upwards into the harsh light of the torches. This was it. He resisted the urge to wince at the dull ache in his knees, trying not to think too hard about what he was doing. He was a soldier and he’d gone to the riverside to relieve himself. There was nothing suspicious about that. No reason to hide.

Aela followed, and as they left the safety of their hiding place to fall in line with the other soldiers, he made a show of adjusting the belt around his hips, trying to complete the narrative. It was only seconds later that he felt a hand suddenly grab him by the shoulder and pull him back.

“Þú þarna! Hvað varstu að gera bak við steinana?”

Leorn blinked in surprise as he was twisted around, coming face to face with a shorter Nord male. His ears took a moment or two to adjust to the sudden Nordic, and to then process the question. Soldiers jostled him as they shouldered past, paying no mind to the confrontation.

“I was just relieving myself,” he eventually muttered back, finding brief comfort in the shape of Nordic phonemes on his tongue. “Sir.”

The hand shoved him back into line, evidently satisfied with the answer. Leorn stumbled for a moment or two before falling into rhythm with the people around him. He looked around, trying to catch his bearings.

There was a flash of red hair a few feet ahead of him, dipping in and out of his vision between the throng of heads and shoulders. Aela appeared to have emerged from the incident unscathed. The troops were loosely flanked on either side by cavalry, and in the centre of the crowd was a line of oxen pulling carts, lowing and groaning as they were whipped by their masters. The carts were laden with great spherical lumps, glistening under the torchlight with a black, viscous liquid. But by far the most obvious—and the most terrifying—point of note was the great trebuchet up ahead, and—when Leorn cast a quick look over his shoulder—in a long line behind him. It stood at a height of at least fifty feet, two giant wooden A-frames facing each other, with ladders propped up on either side and a long beam suspended in its resting position from in-between. The trebuchet, too, was on wheels, being pulled along by beasts of burden. Leorn swallowed around the sudden dryness in his mouth.

Whiterun was going to go down in flames.

There was nothing they could do for now except trudge along with the others, biding their time until they reached the end of the valley and their fellow Companions had the chance to launch their attack. Leorn found himself falling into the monotony of it all, putting one foot in front of the other and then again and then again. How long had the Stormcloaks been marching like this? There was one thing to be said for the tactical advantages of attacking at night, but they must have been exhausted.

He saw Aela gradually moving further into the centre, weaving in and out of the soldiers and taking her time about it so as to not be too obvious. Eventually she ended up by the carts of pitch. Leorn tried not to stare at her, resorting instead to the occasional furtive glance cast in her direction, but after several such glances he looked up to find that she was gone. Had she been successful? No-one seemed to have noticed anything, but whether she’d actually managed to plant any of the kindlepitch was yet to be seen.

After twenty or so minutes of walking, they began to approach the end of the valley. The rocky cliffsides and foothills to their left and right petered out and opened up, and Leorn knew that, had it been daytime, they would have been able to see the plains of Whiterun Hold stretching out far ahead of them. The pinprick-lights of the city could just be seen twinkling in the far distance. Seeing it, waiting for them, felt like waking up from a dream. This was real.

Leorn glanced upwards, to the darkened hillside where he knew the Companions were lying in wait. His jaw felt tight, his breath coming in short, hard bursts from his nostrils. Slowly he flexed and curled his fingers, squeezing his gloved fingertips against his leathered palm. There were eight trebuchets remaining, but if the Companions could bring down even one of them it could turn the tide in Whiterun’s favour. His stomach clenched around an uncomfortable mixture of dread and anticipation.

A bright orange spark flared in the distance, whistling like a boiling kettle as it soared towards them and then exploding with a crack and a burst of earthenware when it hit the wood of the trebuchet. The wood caught alight with a sudden whoosh of hot air, close to the top of one of the A-frames. Seconds later it happened again, nearer to the bottom of the trebuchet; crack, whoosh, fire. The firepots were followed by a flaming arrow, and then another. Whistle-thwok. Whistle-thwok. Within seconds the trebuchet was beset by a smattering of small but steadily burning fires.

“Ambush!”

A dull clanging rang out as someone started hitting an alarm.

“Ambush!”

The oxen began to panic, lowing and moaning and shifting uneasily in their tracks. Officers were yelling out a cacophony of various orders; to archers, to the cavalry, to the trebuchet-manning teams, but the response was haphazard at best. The few archers they had would have no chance finding a target in the darkness. Already the fires were spreading, eating through the dry wood, joined by more projectiles—crack, whoosh, whistle-thwok. The horizontal beam of one of the A-frames came loose from the trebuchet and hit the earth below with a dull thud.

Leorn realized with a sudden jolt of panic that he was still a great distance away from the carts of pitch. It would be difficult to get nearer to them without making it obvious that he was disobeying orders. He was too tall for this, too tall to be going against the grain of the crowd. But if that pitch wasn’t lit now, it would be burning down the homes of Whiterun before the day was over.

He started pushing his way towards the carts, ignoring the cries of protest he left in his wake and trying not to be overly aggressive as he shoved people aside. Up ahead he saw archers clambering up onto the long wooden base of the trebuchet, clearing their lines of fire above the heads of the crowd. Leorn blinked when he saw Aela among them. Of course. She was an archer. Doing otherwise would be to visibly disobey orders, and she couldn’t afford to be so suspicious. Not right now.

It was only when he got to the carts that he realized he had no real plan. How was he supposed to light the pitch? He needed to do so quickly, but all he had on him was his flint and steel; attempting to light the pitch that way would make it immediately obvious that he was doing so on purpose. And the distressed cries of the oxen were going straight through him, making his stomach clench in sympathy.

He didn’t have to grapple with the question for long. A flaming arrow suddenly lodged itself into one of the projectiles and the pitch caught immediately alight, billowing out a gust of hot air followed by a plume of dense, black smoke. Leorn looked up in the direction the arrow had come from to see Aela dangling from the trebuchet with one hand, her bow clasped tightly in the other. Already a few of the other archers were trying to reach for her and help her down, not in the least bit suspicious that her slip and ‘misfire’ had been deliberate. But Aela just met Leorn’s gaze through the crowd, smirked, and then gracefully swung herself back onto one of the trebuchet’s standing platforms.

The fire was spreading quickly through the pitch; it wouldn’t be long before the cart itself caught alight. And if Aela had managed to plant the kindlepitch after all, it would be even less time before it suddenly exploded. Leorn needed to get out of there—but he couldn’t. The cries of the oxen prevented him from doing so. He couldn’t leave them to such a gruesome fate.

“Get that pitch put out!” officers were yelling. “Don’t just stand there, get some fucking water!”

The orders were not directed at anyone in particular, but Leorn could imagine that, as someone standing right next to the carts, he was a likely candidate. There was no time to hang about. Despite all of the eyes on him, Leorn drew his dagger from his hip and strode purposefully through the crowds towards the front of the cart, where the oxen were attached.

He was expecting rope, but was faced with wood. No matter. Leorn drew his battleaxe from his back and swung it down into the wood, which splintered and gave way with a crack around his blade. Another swing and one of the two oxen broke loose, springing away from the cart and thundering through the crowd, knocking and trampling soldiers in its wake. Leorn didn’t watch. He smashed through the wood holding the other ox in place and then grabbed it by one of its horns, using it as a lever to haul himself up onto its back. With a lurch of his stomach he was riding through the crowd, one hand wrapped around the ox’s horn and the other still clasping his axe. He heard a boom and felt a gust of heat against his back as the kindlepitch behind him finally exploded.

When just seconds later his ox was about to reach the next cart in the line, Leorn held his axe out to one side and used the haft to knock one of the torches from the hands of its bearer and onto the pitch. His ox reached the cart after that and he did the same again. He was about to do it to the fourth and final cart when his mount suddenly lurched and groaned, veering to one side before collapsing. Leorn cried out as a blunt pain enveloped the entirety of his left leg, a bruise he could feel to the bone.

The ox was dead, an arrow lodged into its skull. Fruitlessly Leorn tried to shove it off of his trapped leg, but the thing weighed a tonne. He looked up, hanging his head back, and stared in horror at the face that appeared then in the centre of his vision, a snarling expression of pure rage and loathing. The Stormcloak raised his axe high over Leorn’s head, and Leorn braced himself for what he realized was his end.

The blade never came down. A dark, hulking mass suddenly barrelled into the soldier with a growl, and Leorn twisted his neck against the earth to see a sight that was just as sickening to him as the first time he’d seen it. But he needed to put his disgust aside. The troops around him had dissolved into screams and terrified curses and it was only a matter of time before they overcame their fear and dealt with the source head on.

He squirmed and writhed, trying to wriggle out from under the body of the ox. But gods, it was no use. He was only struggling for a few moments more before Aela’s canine visage filled his gaze, the russet-coloured fur of her snout dark and matted with wet blood. She huffed and then two clawed hands—paws?—had grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him almost effortlessly out from under the body of the ox. She swung him over her shoulder like he weighed nothing—gods, her human form was probably half the size that he was—and broke out into a three-legged gallop up the hillside.

They were pursued to begin with, by a few foolhardy Stormcloaks trying to keep pace, their swords and axes raised high. If Leorn craned his neck from where he was being jostled and thumped against Aela’s back, he could just about see their surprised expressions as they stared back at him from the dark. One by one they gave up, realizing that Aela was going to outrun them, but their vengeful shouting and arrows followed long after they did. Leorn held his head up and watched the fires burn for as long as he could stand.

An arrow sprouted in the small of Aela’s back, a few inches above her tail and slightly to her left. The high-pitched yelp that escaped her was gut-wrenching, and her rhythm faltered for just a second, but still she carried on running.

“Aela,” Leorn croaked. He wanted so badly to help, but they were still in range of the enemy. And there was nothing he could do from where he was dangling over her shoulder without making things worse.

When they rounded the crest of the hill—one of the foothills of the Throat of the World—leaving the orange glow of the army behind, Aela slowed down, panting and whining. She’d been running for minutes. The low humming of the army behind them was long gone, replaced instead by an immense silence. The only light was the moonlight; Masser was out in full, Leorn realized. It was no wonder Aela had given in to the urge to shift.

She wrapped her great hands around his middle and dumped him a little carelessly on the grass, before staggering forwards a few paces and falling face-down herself. Her whines gave way to whimpers, soft and breathy. Leorn’s heart ached.

He came to crouch beside her, laying a hand on the thick fur of her back.

“It’s alright,” he whispered, raking his fingers through the fur. Gods, she was massive. The fur around the arrow was matted with blood. She smelled overwhelmingly of dog. “Aela, I’m going to have to pull the arrow out. You heal faster in this form.”

She just whined in response, but she’d understood him, at least. Leorn didn’t often see her or the others in their beast forms, and he was always surprised by the degree of control they were able to maintain. He wouldn’t know; he’d turned down the offer of their ‘gift’ years ago.

He didn’t warn her. He simply took the shaft of the arrow in one hand and pressed down around the puncture site with his other, yanking it clean from her flesh in one swift motion. Aela howled and arched against the earth. “That’s it,” he muttered, “it’s gone.”

Still she continued whining. They’d explained to him once that the beast form was difficult to maintain without sustenance. Leorn unwrapped the blue Stormcloak cloth from his shoulders and placed the bundle on her back, pressing down.

“Try and hold onto this form for as long as you can,” he said quietly. “I know it’s hard. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say it, but he was worried; there didn’t seem to be much blood externally, but he knew enough about the body to have realized that there were some important organs around where the arrow had hit. And the rapid regeneration of her flesh in this form made no guarantee that things would heal up correctly.

He stayed by her side until she could bear it no longer, and then turned away when she transformed, trying to suppress the churning of his stomach as he listened to her bones crack and shift and the guttural sounds that left her as her vocal cords shrank. When he was certain she was finished, he turned back round to face her, giving the small wound in her lower back a quick inspection before wrapping the blue cloth around her naked body.

“Thank you,” Leorn murmured as he held her against him, trying to warm her up. Aela was shivering violently in his arms, her teeth chattering, her skin pale and sweaty under the moonlight. “You saved my life.”

“Y– you’ll just have to—return—the f—favour, next time,” she stuttered, offering a weak laugh.

Leorn didn’t respond. He pulled her close to him, grazing his lips over the cool, clammy skin of her forehead. “You’ll be alright, Shield-Sister,” he said. He didn’t know whether it was true, but it was all he could think to say. “I’m going to take care of you.”

 

---

 

The Companions were clambering down the hillside of Talos’ shrine when they heard the Horn of Whiterun; it was a majestic sound, yet mournful and melancholy, fit for purpose as the harbinger of a bloody conflict. They’d managed to down three of the trebuchets, bringing the total to five; just half of what the Stormcloaks had arrived with. Sanjir could only hope it would be enough.

“We’re on the wrong side of the river,” Vilkas hissed as they hurried down into the plains.

“I think it’s the Stormcloaks who are on the wrong side,” said Ria. Vilkas just scoffed.

“Let us head down to Honningbrew Bridge,” he said. “Right now, it is our greatest weakness.”

They reached the basin of the plains and started making their way southwards, but it quickly became apparent that they wouldn’t be getting as far as Honningbrew. The mile or so of farmland between the city walls and the edge of the river was packed tight with Whiterun’s forces, and though the archers had managed to delay the Stormcloaks’ advances somewhat, the enemy had breached the river at last. The Companions stayed put, falling in line with the ranks and drawing their weapons. The battle for Whiterun had begun.

It was dark there in the throng of soldiers. Sanjir was only just able to make out the yellow of Whiterun adorning the men and women standing beside him. But the Stormcloaks blazed as they charged forwards, surging over the gangplanks they’d laid across the river, almost glowing under the fierce orange light of their torches. Sanjir could see each of their banners, illuminated in the distance; Eastmarch, Winterhold, the Pale, the Rift.

Piles of corpses lined the shallow, bloody river, their bodies stuffed with arrows like the spines of a hedgehog. The Stormcloaks just trampled over the fallen as if they'd already rotted into the soil. They were organized into wedges, V-shapes with spearmen at the front of each point and lines of archers at the back. Hooves thundered as Whiterun’s cavalry rushed forward to meet them, but the spearmen halted mid-charge and threw their weapons forth, yanking horses to the ground like someone had tied a rope around their legs and pulled. The smell of blood was thick in the air.

Infantrymen surged forth from between the spearmen and crashed through the front lines of Whiterun’s militia like waves breaking on the sand. Arrows rained down from overhead, whining as they soared, cutting short screams and cries as they found their mark. Sanjir was fighting before he knew it, relying almost entirely on his reflexes as he swung his scimitars back and forth, parrying swing after swing and slashing indiscriminately through torsos and necks and arms. Blue and yellow looked the same under the moonlight, and so the only distinction between friend and foe were the helmets donned by Whiterun’s militia in contrast to the exposed faces of the enemy.

It was overwhelming. So much was happening everywhere Sanjir looked, everywhere he turned, and screams and battle cries and the harsh clanging of metal assaulted his ears without pause. His blood ran hot with adrenaline. It was less a cognitive awareness of the fact he couldn’t afford even a moment of hesitation and more that his body simply wouldn’t allow him one.

Most of the Stormcloaks were equipped with battleaxes, which made them slow and predictable compared to Sanjir’s scimitars. He got up close and ducked low, hacking at their kneecaps and taking the time to slash through their necks when he could afford it.

Those who fought with swords carried round shields of softwood, painted blue with the bear of Eastmarch. The shields were small, leaving their lower bodies exposed. Sanjir swung one scimitar at the legs of a Stormcloak—only for her to spring away from him—and launched the other in an attack from above, only for the blade to land right in the face of the bear. When he tried to pull it back, he found that he couldn’t; his scimitar was lodged in the wood. The Stormcloak growled and swung her sword at him in a sideways cut, but Sanjir parried the attack with his free blade, taking advantage of her momentary distraction to barrel forwards and knock her to the ground. He pushed his foot into her shield and yanked his scimitar free before slicing her throat.

“Duck!”

He spun round just in time to see one of Whiterun’s cavalry galloping towards him, and jumped out of the way as they charged past, their sword held out to one side. The blade sliced through Stormcloak after Stormcloak; a horrific crack sounded out as one hoof stomped through the skull of someone crawling on their front, their back decorated with arrows. But before Sanjir could even gag, the horse suddenly whinnied in pain and lurched violently to one side, landing with a thump on their rider. A long spear was buried in the meat of the horse’s shoulder.

Sanjir turned in the direction the spear had come from to see a Stormcloak soldier running towards them, presumably to collect their weapon. He realized then how exposed he was; where before he’d been surrounded on all sides, drowning in an ocean of soldiers, he now found himself in the open, surrounded by piles of blue and yellow dead. He couldn’t take a single step without his foot sinking into something warm and fleshy.

He picked his way through the bodies to meet with the Stormcloak, dealing with them swiftly before they could grab their spear. The horse and its rider were already dead, but Sanjir turned when he heard a whimpering behind him. A Whiterun soldier was trapped under the body of the horse, squirming in their attempts to wriggle free.

“Shit,” Sanjir swore, casting a quick look around them to make sure there were no immediate threats. Then he sheathed his scimitars and dropped to the ground beside the soldier, pressing his back up against the still-warm body of the horse and leaning his weight on it.

It didn’t move an inch. Fuck, where was Leorn when you needed him? Sanjir tried to find purchase with his heels, but the ground around them had been churned into blood and loose soil, and he just kept slipping. The soldier beside him whined and sobbed.

“I’m going to have to try and pull you out,” he said. There was no response, but Sanjir didn’t wait; he got to his feet, grabbed the soldier by their armpits, and pulled. If they’d been injured by the fall, it was too late either way.

The scream that left them when they finally came free was high-pitched and raw. Sanjir staggered back under their weight, landing on his rump with the soldier on top of him, but he was surprised by how easy it had been to pull them free; their body was small and light.

He sat up and wriggled out from under them, patting quickly down their body in search of broken bones. They were tiny.

“Gods, how old are you?” he said, satisfied that nothing was obviously broken. If they were injured, the damage was going to be deep and internal.

“I’m sixteen,” was the bitter reply; it was the voice of a young boy, nasal and high. The voice of a fourteen-year-old at most. Sanjir’s heart sank. Shit.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said the boy, but the end of his last word was clipped by a sudden cough. Through the shadowy slits of the boy’s helmet, Sanjir could just about see a dark liquid on his lips and chin. Shit. Shit shit shit.

“We’re going to find you a healer,” said Sanjir, hoisting him up into a sitting position. “Get onto my back.”

He crouched in front of him and felt skinny arms loop around his neck a few seconds later. The boy could still move; Sanjir had to hold in his sigh of relief. He hooked his arms around the boy’s legs and got to his feet with a grunt, before twisting around and scanning their vicinity. The battle was still waging in the near distance—further south, Sanjir noted, closer to Honningbrew Bridge and to the entrance of the city—but their more immediate surroundings were still, quiet, and dark. The air felt heavy with death.

Carefully Sanjir started to move, picking out a path through the bodies of soldiers and horses. Some were still alive, groaning and stirring as Sanjir passed. Vaguely he thought that he ought to do something, his stomach churning at the thought of just leaving them here, but he couldn’t translate will into action; he just walked by, putting one foot repeatedly in front of the other, his body singularly focused on getting this child to safety. Maybe if he could save just one person, it would be enough.

The battle hummed up ahead, glowing orange against the black night sky. To Sanjir’s right was Whiterun’s looming silhouette, the great, lonely hill with Dragonsreach at its peak, so small from where Sanjir was standing. It looked blue in the moonlight.

“What’s your name?” he asked over his shoulder. There was no response, and the boy started slipping. Sanjir cursed and hoisted him back up with a grunt. “You’ll be alright,” he muttered, more to himself than to the boy. “You’ll be alright.”

As they grew closer to the fighting—and as the bodies around Sanjir’s feet grew fresher—he realized that he could see the silhouette of somebody crouching up ahead, kneeling on the ground. Sanjir squinted in an attempt to make them out, but moments later a soft golden glow appeared in their hands, confirming his suspicions; a healer. At last.

He picked up his pace, shifting into a jog, trying not to lose balance with all the extra weight on his back. “Hey!” he called. “Hey! We need help!”

The healer looked up, the spell dissipating from his hands. Sanjir’s heart sank when he saw the blue cloth draped around his shoulders—but he carried on. Battlefield healers weren’t meant to discriminate. And right now, this Stormcloak was the boy’s only chance.

By the time they arrived, the healer had returned to his work, his head turned down to the body at his knees and his golden hands pressed to a bloody wound in her abdomen.

“I can’t help you,” he said without looking up, his voice almost bitter. “Look around. I have enough of my own to deal with.”

“I know,” said Sanjir, getting to his knees. “But he’s just a child. He wasn’t supposed to be here.” His voice cracked. “Please.”

The healer looked up at that, his expression hard. But it softened slowly as he took Sanjir in, and the small body still clinging to his back. After a few long, long seconds, he finally nodded.

“Alright,” he sighed. “Lay him down. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Sanjir’s shoulders sagged with relief, and carefully he peeled the boy off his back, lowering him to the one of the few clear patches of grass. Then he pulled his helmet off, taking deep, clean breaths of air. The healer carried on with his work a few feet away. It was several minutes later before he was done.

“Alright,” he said as he came to join them, satisfied that his last patient was able to hold herself upright, “what happened?”

“He was crushed under a fallen horse,” said Sanjir. “I think it’s all internal. He coughed up some blood.”

The healer nodded grimly, moving to take off the boy’s helmet. Sanjir’s stomach dropped at the sight of his uncovered face; his skin was tan, if a little colourless, and his long hair was dark, revealing his Cyrodiilic heritage. But that face was tragically familiar; not just in its own right, but in the heaviness of his brow, the breadth of his nose, the prominence of his cheekbones and the strength of his jaw. They were strong, Nordic features. The features of his father. The features of Balgruuf.

Frothar.

“Everything okay?” asked the healer a little suspiciously, clearly having seen Sanjir’s surprise.

Swallowing thickly, Sanjir nodded. “I– it’s fine.”

“I can’t make any promises,” said the healer, pressing his hands to Frothar’s chest and stomach. It wasn’t the golden light of a healing spell, but rather something more subtle, a cool blue. “Just diagnosing the damage will take long enough on its own.”

Sanjir could only nod. Frothar wasn’t Balgruuf’s only heir, but he was still his son; loved, cherished, one of the few joys in the life of a good and noble man. Balgruuf had spoken often about how much Frothar reminded him of his late wife.

He couldn’t die, here, in a bloody field, at the age of fourteen. Crushed by a horse. Gods. He was a good child. Sanjir felt sick.

“Hvað ertu að gera?!” came a sudden voice; Sanjir looked up to see the Stormcloak woman that the healer had been treating beforehand, shuffling over to them. “Þeir eru ekki okkar.”

“Ég veit,” was the healer’s response. “En hann er bara barn.”

“Af hverju ætti það að skipta máli?” said the woman. She sounded angry. “Sjáðu hann. Hann lítur jafnvel út fyrir að vera Imperial.”

They bickered for a few moments and Sanjir blinked as he listened to the exchange, trying to work out what was going on. Eventually the healer sighed and waved his spell away.

“That’s all I can do,” he said. “I’ve healed him enough to buy you some time. But he still needs treatment.” His blue eyes were apologetic and sad when he met Sanjir’s gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“Get out of here,” snarled the Stormcloak woman in Cyrodilic, her accent thick. “Before I make you.”

Sanjir glared at her. They were tough words for someone who’d been dying just a few minutes ago. But he said nothing, once again hoisting Frothar’s body up onto his back.

“Thank you,” he muttered, casting one last bitter glance at the healer, who looked away. Then Sanjir got to his feet, set off through the sea of bodies, and was gone.

He turned west, heading in the direction of the city. He needed to get Frothar into Dragonsreach before the siege began; Farengar would be able to heal him there. As he walked, Sanjir wondered idly where the other Companions were, and in particular whether Aela and Leorn were alright. A small voice at the back of his head said that perhaps he was being something of a coward, avoiding the main battle the way that he was. But even if it weren’t for Frothar, Sanjir couldn’t have imagined himself seeking out another fight. He’d spilled enough blood already today. Maybe that did make him a coward.

Whatever.

They reached the city walls, taking refuge in the shadows where they wouldn’t be seen from the chaos waging below. Sanjir circled around the city, hopping carefully over each of the streams that trickled down from the peak of Dragonsreach and bled into the White River.

The drawbridge was raised when they reached the main gates.

“Help!” he cried, desperately trying to catch someone’s attention. “I need help!”

A guard appeared at the top of one of the two watchtowers.

“Does it look like we can lower the bridge for just anyone?” she spat. “The Stormcloaks will be on our doorstep in minutes. It’s too risky.”

“It’s Frothar,” said Sanjir, tilting his head to one side and hoisting the boy higher up onto his shoulders so that his face would be visible. “The Jarl’s son. He’s badly injured. I need to get him up to Dragonsreach.”

The guard’s eyes widened slightly under the torchlight.

“Please,” Sanjir begged.

She hesitated for a second or two before conceding with a grim nod. “Fine,” she said. “Be quick. There’s no time to lose.”

She disappeared into the watchtower and a few moments later the drawbridge began to shift, creaking loudly as it was lowered to the ground. Sanjir felt like his heart was beating in his skull; he could feel it pounding, blood rushing against his eardrums.

He thanked the guard and crossed the bridge quickly, hurrying up the rest of the hill and sliding through the crack where they’d opened the gates for him. Whiterun’s streets were eerily deserted, lit up under blazing torchlight. Sanjir could still hear the battle waging just beyond the city walls; it was getting closer. The Stormcloaks were making headway. It wouldn’t be long now before the siege began.

Sanjir was somewhere in the Wind District when he heard the horns, and when the first projectile went soaring over his head. It landed a short distance away, over the roofs of several houses and beyond the reach of Sanjir’s eyeline. But the fiery explosion that followed would have been visible for miles. He twisted round, looking down over the sprawl of the city to where he could see the eastern walls in the distance. Siege ladders were being propped up against them, but the guards on defence were tipping copper tubs of boiling ale and water over the sides, dousing the besiegers as they clambered up. Sanjir couldn’t see the result, but he could see the steam rising, and hear the shrieks and screams of agony. A quick glance to the west confirmed that the attackers trying to gain entry through the main gates were having more luck. Sanjir wondered if the guard he’d spoken to was still alive.

Time was slipping. He continued on his way, breaking out into a loose jog and trying desperately to keep his gaze fixed on the looming shape of Dragonsreach up ahead. Projectiles rained down from above, throwing up great explosions of wood and stone. Within minutes the air was choked with a thick smoke, dense with the smell of burning wood. Sanjir’s ears throbbed with each boom, and his brain felt like it was rattling around his skull.

His heart clenched when he passed Jorrvaskr; the ancient roof had caved, and the whole building was ablaze. The Gildergreen, too, was alight. He ducked suddenly when another projectile soared overhead, landing with a crash through the Gray-Manes’ roof. Sanjir didn’t have it in him to feel smug; the fires would be spreading to the Temple of Kynareth soon enough. And the Gray-Manes weren’t all bad. He and Thorald had been friends, once.

He turned when he reached the steps of the Cloud District and took a moment to catch his breath, surveying the city below. A sudden explosion flared up in the east, and when the smoke cleared, Sanjir could see that a large section of the wall had been blown away, now little more than a pile of rubble. It was swarming with Stormcloaks just seconds later. They looked like bees, he thought. And with the droning of the battle, they sounded like them, too.

He started making his way up the steps, trying to ignore the ache in his legs and in his back. The climb up to Dragonsreach had never felt so long. His lungs were burning when he made it to the bridge, but still he pressed onwards, putting his own discomfort aside. For better or for worse, he could rest when the battle was done.

“Farengar!”

His cry echoed around Dragonsreach’s great hall, devoid of all life.

“Farengar!”

He hurried up the stairs to the throne room, desperately searching his surroundings for any sign of the wizard. Farengar’s robed figure emerged from the lab just a few moments later, slowing to a stop when he laid eyes on Sanjir.

“Companion?” he said. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you—”

He trailed off upon seeing the body clinging to Sanjir’s back. Sanjir got to his knees, lowering him carefully to the floor.

“It’s Frothar,” he croaked. His voice was raw from the smoke. “He’s badly injured. He needs your help.”

Farengar was still, his eyes wide. “Frothar?” he repeated when he eventually mustered the ability to speak. “Wh—”

“I don’t know!” Sanjir cried. “I don’t know. But he’s dying, Farengar. Don’t just stand there, help me.”

In any other circumstances the wizard might have protested to being talked down to like that—and by a warrior, no less—but the man of wisdom seemed wise enough to keep his mouth shut on this occasion. He exhaled a curse under his breath and hurried forwards, sinking to his knees where Sanjir had laid Frothar’s body in the centre of the room. Quickly he summoned a spell to his hands, the same dim, blue spell the Stormcloak healer had used earlier, and lowered it to Frothar’s abdomen. For a few moments all was silent.

“Well?” prompted Sanjir, swallowing thickly. He desperately wanted some water.

“Shut up and let me concentrate,” Farengar spat.

Sanjir sighed in frustration and turned away, resting his elbows on his drawn-up knees and hanging his head in his hands. Even if Frothar did make it out of this, the battle was lost. Hundreds of others would have died. And for what?

“Stupid, stupid boy,” Farengar muttered, getting Sanjir to look up. He had hoisted Frothar onto his lap and was holding a healing spell over his chest. He shook his head as he worked, repeating himself; stupid, stupid, stupid boy.

“He was begging his father to let him stay here for the battle,” he explained after a while, speaking quietly. “Balgruuf said no, of course. But I never imagined that he would actually…”

He trailed off with a sigh, shaking his head again. “Stupid, stupid boy.”

“Will he be alright?” asked Sanjir hesitantly.

Farengar lifted his head, his expression grim. “I’ll be honest, Companion,” he said. “It doesn’t look good.”

Sanjir closed his eyes, rubbing his temple and the bridge of his nose. His skin was caked under a layer of dried blood and dirt.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

The hall fell back into silence, save for the gentle hum of Farengar’s healing spell and the distant sounds of the battle waging outside. It was a long while before anything changed.

“Yes, that’s it, Frothar,” Farengar urged, “come on, boy. Stay with me. Stay with me. Nearly there.”

Sanjir stared with wide eyes at what was happening; Frothar had jerked awake, his spine taut, his eyes open but gazing blankly into nothing. Farengar was holding him up with one arm and squeezing the healing spell against Frothar’s chest with the other, but Frothar was just twitching and convulsing in his lap, his olive skin still a pallid grey.

With a sudden jolt, he coughed. But it was a wet cough; almost more akin to a gurgle. Bright red blood bubbled from his lips, splattering over his chin and onto Farengar’s face. Then he released a long, rattling breath and fell still.

All was silent.

The golden glow of Farengar’s healing spell faded and died. Farengar said nothing and didn’t move; he just stared at the boy in his arms, breathing deeply in and out. Frothar’s bloody jaw was gaping, his eyes glazed and his neck hanging limp.

Sanjir didn’t need to ask.

The silence was broken by a sudden crack, and both Sanjir and Farengar turned and looked down to see the great doors of Whiterun swinging open.

“Frothar!” bellowed Balgruuf. His footsteps were heavy as he thudded up the stairs towards them, followed closely by Irileth. Sanjir swallowed; his throat was tight. “Frothar!”

The Jarl rounded the top of the stairs and slowed to a stop, yanking his helmet up over his head. Gradually he took in the scene before him, the bedraggled Companion and his Court Wizard kneeling, the limp body of his son lying draped over Farengar’s lap in a chainmail suit that was far too big for him. Balgruuf’s eyes were wide, his dirty blonde hair a dishevelled mess.

He took the final few paces towards them and sank to his knees, the metal plates of his armour clanking obnoxiously as he did so. Slowly he reached out for his son, wrapping his large, gauntleted hands around Frothar’s waist and pulling him from Farengar’s lap into his own. The way Frothar’s head lolled had the lump in Sanjir’s throat threatening to burst; he could feel the corners of his lips pinching downwards and the pressure rising behind his eyes. He shouldn’t be here. This moment wasn’t his to witness. But he couldn’t look away.

Balgruuf cradled Frothar’s head in the crook of his neck and started to wail. Irileth dropped to her knees behind him as he rocked his son’s body back and forth, wrapping her hands around his shoulders and holding him against her, letting him cry into her neck. Each sob sounded painful and raw, like they were being ripped from his throat by some unseen force. His lips moved like he was trying to articulate words, but the sounds just came out toothless and gummy. What good were words in a moment like this?

They couldn’t move or say anything. They just sat there, paralysed under the crushing weight of Balgruuf’s grief, the battle outside long forgotten. Sanjir covered his eyes with one hand, unable to watch any longer and letting the tears finally fall. Frothar would be just one of hundreds. Thousands, even. Leorn and Aela were probably among them.

All for Ulfric Stormcloak to be able to stick a pin in his map of Whiterun.

The doors swung open again and slowly Sanjir raised his head, blinking away the tears and trying to make sense of what he was seeing. A large group of soldiers had stormed the castle, clad in blue. At their head was some kind of officer, a short, stocky man wearing the pelt of a bear, and beside him were a small group of civilians, people Sanjir recognized.

The Gray-Manes.

Balgruuf continued weeping as the Stormcloak party advanced, but Irileth raised her head, her expression hard as they approached the throne room.

“It’s over, Balgruuf,” grunted the officer. “The city is ours.”

“Have some decency, Galmar,” Irileth snarled. “A man should be able to grieve for his child in peace.”

The officer—Galmar—was silent for a moment or two, but then he turned to his men, clearing his throat. “Flytja út!” he called. His voice was rough and gritty. “Leitaðu í kastalanum og safnaðu öllum eftirlifendum. Allur matur eða drykkur sem þú finnur er þinn. Njóttu herfangsins, vinir mínir.”

A few of the Stormcloaks jeered and whooped, but it sounded hollow over the echo of Balgruuf’s sobbing. They began to file out, their armour clanking loudly as they set off in different directions of Dragonsreach’s interior. Two of them moved to stand behind Sanjir and Farengar, hoisting them to their feet and pinning their arms to the smalls of their backs. Sanjir spat at the floor, keeping his eyes trained on Vignar, who stared back at him in mild surprise. He’d never wanted to hurt someone as badly as he did right now.

“Vignar,” Irileth spat, still cradling Balgruuf’s head in one hand. “Your family was noticeably absent from the walls. Now I know why. Damn traitors.”

“This isn’t personal, Irileth,” he replied. “You think this is about Whiterun? No. We fight for something greater than land, or money, or power. This is about Skyrim’s freedom. If your Jarl had any sense of honour at all, he’d see that.”

Irileth just scoffed, denying him the dignity of a response.

“I’ll be taking over Dragonsreach to restore order,” Vignar went on. “Balgruuf and his court will be exiled from the city in the morn. We’ll see to it that the boy gets a proper burial.

“For now,” he went on, “Galmar and I have a burning city to deal with. Take the Companion down to the others. The Court Wizard stays here.”

He turned to Galmar and the pair of them began making their way down the throne room, talking lowly to each other as they went. The soldier at Sanjir’s back shoved him forwards, forcing him into a walk. Olfina and Avulstein stared uneasily at Sanjir as he passed, but he just glared at them for as long as he could bear, holding their gazes until they were forced to look away.

Balgruuf’s cries followed him all the way down to the end of the hall.

 

---

 

The fires burned through the night. Those that remained of Whiterun’s army were given a choice; to continue serving the city under Vignar, or to leave with Balgruuf for the west. Most chose to stay behind. They worked side-by-side with the Stormcloaks to put out the fires and dig the graves.

The Companions, too, were given an official pardon. Sanjir was led to join the others at what remained of Jorrvaskr, finding Leorn and Aela in one piece, but Njada sobbing over the bloody corpse of Athis, his skull caved in on one side. Sanjir could only stare at her, tears streaming silently down his cheeks. Leorn was silent. The Companions got to work with repairs and didn’t run into each other at all.

Sanjir found Leorn again at dawn, sitting in the Temple of Kynareth, or what was left of it, at least. The roof had completely burned away, letting in bright shafts of sunlight and the sound of morning birdsong. Kynareth’s shrine—miraculously—was still intact. Leorn was kneeling before it, staring, his hands on his knees. Sanjir came to sit beside him. For a few long minutes they just sat there in silence.

Leorn eventually cleared his throat. “I’m going to leave for Solitude tomorrow,” he said.

Sanjir exhaled slowly. He thought about it for a few moments, weighing the words on his tongue, and then nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

“I mean to enlist,” Leorn clarified.

“I know,” said Sanjir.

“But you hate the Empire.”

“So do you,” he retorted. Leorn was silent, and Sanjir sighed. “I can’t stay here under Vignar,” he admitted at last. “And I can’t keep gallivanting round the countryside fighting trolls and bears when people are dying by the thousands. I hate the Thalmor far more than I’ve ever hated the Empire, and if the Stormcloaks win—which it looks like they might—then—”

“I know,” Leorn cut him off. He sighed. “I know.”

They stayed there until they were too tired to keep their eyes open anymore, and then retreated into the makeshift huts that had been set up for food and rest.

The following day, they set off for Solitude. The smoking ruins of Whiterun they left behind them. 

Notes:

this chapter took an INSANE amount of research, honestly i nearly died writing it. and i’ve been trying for so long to get more concise with my writing, but i think this chapter confirmed for me that it’s time to give up with that endeavour. i’m just going to jolkien rolkien rolkien tolkien my way through this whole fic.

massive thank-you to my lovely beta readers diana and haley! and thanks for reading <3

Chapter 24: Five Hours of Sunlight

Notes:

sorry for the slow update!! december was extremely busy. but i hope everyone had a good holiday season and that 2022 is getting off to a decent start :)

(and sorry if the slow updates mean the plot is a getting a little confusing or disjointed, i'm hoping to be able to start updating faster once i'm back in the swing of things but we shall see!)

Winterhold, Skyrim, 30th Sun’s Dusk

It had been just three weeks since what came to be known as ‘the Saarthal incident’ had transpired, but the passage of time was somewhat lost on Cassathra these days. She felt like she’d been floating ever since their return; she drifted from one class to the next, ate silently in hall, spent hours and hours in the Arcanaeum staring blankly at her readings, and the rest of her time curled up in bed, listening to the winds howling outside and the violent rattling of her window in its pane.

And the days were short. Just five hours of sunlight and an early-afternoon dusk. It was nothing that Cassathra wasn’t used to, having spent the rest of her life in Blacklight, but she found herself missing those wintry evenings spent cooped up in the family library with Raydrin, sitting by the fire in a companionable silence and reading together with warm mugs of spiced shein. The darkness in Winterhold was claustrophobic, permeating everything, and the constant blizzards dampened what little sunlight they still had. It made her feel perpetually tired, like a drowsy haze had latched onto her every waking moment.

Cassathra sighed and sank back in her chair, letting her gaze wander up to one of the small, high windows that lined the walls of the Arcanaeum. It was an unusually clear day; the sky behind the glass was a bright, sunny white.

But she was stuck in here, trying to revise for her winter exams that were now just two weeks away. She was miserably behind. What little motivation she did have had been poured into Savos’ research assignment, and so she’d barely made any progress with their new content, let alone with revising the old. Every single tutorial essay she’d been assigned since Saarthal had been handed in either late or not at all.

And the research project—that was its own lost cause. The only even vaguely relevant text they’d been able to find was a racist Imperial report written by a Mages Guild scholar sometime in the closing decades of the Second Era. He argued that the Night of Tears was motivated by elven ‘jealousy’ of the Atmoran settlers, which seemed to Cassathra a ludicrous and unfounded thesis. But he then went on to (contradictorily) suggest that the Snow Elves’ attack was focused less on driving the Atmorans out and more on a particular goal within the city of Saarthal itself.

It could have been the artifact… perhaps the Falmer were aware of its presence beneath the earth and wanted to ensure it stayed out of human hands. Which had worrying implications if true. But the scholar’s thesis was too vague to say for sure. And in any case, the fact that the original denizens of Saarthal were all but wiped out didn’t do the theory any favours. Cassathra and her classmates tried to follow it up but quickly found themselves running into a dead-end.

Cassathra nudged Brelyna’s ankle under their desk, getting her friend to look up from her tome. Brelyna blinked and lowered her reading glasses but said nothing.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Cassathra whispered, inclining her head in the direction of one of the windows.

Brelyna sighed, folding her arms across the table and letting her shoulders sag. “Our exams are two weeks away, Cass.”

“I know,” said Cassathra. “But I feel like I haven’t taken in a single word all morning. And it’s Sundas, it won’t hurt to take a break for a couple of hours.”

Brelyna popped her lower lip out, tilting her head to one side in a sympathetic sort of grimace. “I don’t know…”

“Come on,” Cassathra persisted, “it’s actually sunny for once.”

“It’s easy for you to take breaks whenever you feel like it,” said Brelyna, turning pointedly back to her work. “You’ll probably pass without even trying.”

Cassathra opened her mouth to protest and then shut it again with a frown. Brelyna’s words were untrue and unfair, but they were clearly coming from a place of bitterness. She didn’t know where to go from there.

“Bree,” she said eventually, speaking quietly but forcefully. Brelyna looked up again with a barely-restrained sigh. “You know that isn’t true. And besides, fresh air is good for the mind. It’ll help.”

Brelyna just whined.

“It doesn’t have to be a walk,” Cassathra went on. “I could teach you some basic sword drills like we kept saying we’d do… you might discover a hidden talent!”

Brelyna scoffed, but before she could respond they were interrupted by a sudden clearing of the throat. They looked up to see the unimpressed visage of Urag peering down at them.

“I don’t know what you girls are bickering about,” he muttered, “but if you’re going to have a domestic, could you take it outside my library? Some of us are trying to work.”

“Sorry Urag,” mumbled Brelyna in Cyrodilic. She removed her eyeglasses and let her tome fall shut with a heavy thud. “We were just leaving.”

Urag hmphed and stalked away. Cassathra stared dumbly for a few moments as Brelyna packed up her things, trying to work out what was going on and the appropriate course of action. When it continued to elude her, she shook herself out of her daze and started to do the same. They left the Arcanaeum in silence.

“Everything alright?” asked Cassathra when the great oak doors were shut behind them, switching back to Dunmeris. Had she offended Brelyna somehow? She had to jog a few paces to keep up with Brelyna’s long stride.

“Who am I kidding,” Brelyna muttered, seemingly to herself. “Trying to convince myself that I give a rat’s arse about these exams. Not like everything since Saarthal has felt utterly pointless anyway.”

“Brelyna.”

Cassathra pulled her back by the shoulder and Brelyna spun round to face her. It was only when they’d come to a halt that Cassathra realized she hadn’t thought this far ahead; that she had no idea what to say to something like that. They just stared at each other for a few moments in the stairwell until a couple of older students jostled past, snapping Cassathra out of her paralysis.

“We’ll go and get some fresh air, alright?” she said, giving Brelyna’s shoulder a quick squeeze before drawing her hand away. Brelyna nodded. “Let's head back to the Hall of Attainment and then meet on the roof.”

Brelyna seemed to agree out of convenience more than anything else, but for Cassathra—in her tired, slightly confused state—that was good enough. They headed back to their accommodation in a strained sort of silence and then split off to their separate rooms to get ready. Cassathra was the first to arrive on the roof. She blinked for a few seconds against the brilliant white sunlight, letting her eyes adjust after so long spent cooped up indoors. Then she took her first few paces into the snow, loose and powdery around her fur boots. It came up to her knees.

Brelyna arrived a minute or two later, by which time Cassathra was nearly done melting away a clear patch of snow with a flame spell. They completed the task together, stopping only when their little ring of stone was bone-dry. Then they took a few moments to catch their breath.

“It always amazes me how beautiful it is up here,” said Brelyna quietly, gazing out over the view.

They were facing west, where the glacial coastline of northern Skyrim stretched on for miles and miles ahead of them, but they could have been looking in any direction and it would have been just as beautiful. The city of Winterhold lay to the south, a darkened sprawl of snow-capped rooftops littered with the plumes of a few hundred woodsmoke chimneys. The city itself was cloaked perpetually under the shadows of the Anthor Mountains, but the snowy peaks up above seemed to glitter and sparkle under the sun.

In stark contrast to the rocky, dynamic skyline of the south, the northern view was swallowed by the Sea of Ghosts, a vast expanse of black broken up only by the many blue-green icebergs that littered the darkened waters. On a clear day in Blacklight, the shores of Solstheim could just about be seen in the north, and Vvardenfell to the east. But there was nothing here in Winterhold; just the blackened sea, the pale sky, and the hazy grey line of the horizon.

They were standing on the edge of the earth.

“Did the view from your Telvanni towers not look much the same?” asked Cassathra.

Brelyna snorted. “Not really. Port Telvannis is beautiful in its own way, I suppose, but we don’t exactly have snowy mountains and icebergs.”

“Do you miss it?”

Brelyna turned to her, one eyebrow raised from under the fluffy ring of her hood. “Do you miss Blacklight?”

Cassathra was silent. Did she? She missed certain aspects of it, for sure; her old room, her family, the sense of security… the warmer weather.

But she’d run away for a reason. Any longing she felt now was borne from the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia.

“Come on,” she said instead, “let’s get started. I’ll turn into an ice-wraith if we just keep standing here.”

Brelyna’s quiet laughter escaped her lips in a warm puff of air, and then she nodded, turning away from the parapet and into the centre of the roof. Cassathra followed, unsheathing her sword as she went. Brelyna watched her with trepidation.

“We can start with the very basics,” she said, holding her sword out horizontally in front of her. It was a Nordic steel broadsword, gifted to her by Balgruuf after the slaying of the dragon at the watchtower. Cassathra felt guilty that she was yet to have used it for anything.

“This is a broadsword,” she said, “or a one-hander. Redoran’s swordsmen are trained for war, not for petty duels of honour, so it’s tradition to fight with a one-handed sword and a shield. A good defence is just as important as your attack.”

Brelyna was just staring at her blankly, but then she nodded, as if to say, continue. Cassathra inhaled deeply and went on.

“This is the pommel,” she said, starting at the far right of her sword and moving along it; “then grip, which is pretty self-explanatory, and then cross guard. These make up the hilt, collectively. Then you have the body of the blade, starting with the rain guard,” she pointed; “the fuller, which is this groove you can see running down the centre here; then the edges of the blade. And lastly, of course, the point.”

“What does the fuller do?” asked Brelyna after a moment’s consideration. She had pulled her hood down and was staring at the sword quizzically, her head tilted to one side. Her hair was in a loose plait today, draped over one shoulder.

“It lightens and stiffens the blade whilst allowing it to retain its strength,” said Cassathra automatically. “This weapon is actually modelled after Imperial design, so it also has this little unsharpened dip here, called a ricasso. You can grip it with a finger to increase tip control. But we don’t really have that in Morrowind.”

“Who’d have thought there’d be so much theory behind hitting someone with a pointy stick,” said Brelyna dryly. Cassathra responded with a bemused grin.

“Such a Telvanni thing to say,” she tutted. “Anyway, most swords you’ll find outside of Hammerfell are double-edged. So you can cut with either side of the blade.”

She gave it two swings to demonstrate, a criss-cross in front of her. “This is the most versatile type of sword, which is why it’s the most common. You can cut and slash,” she gave another demonstration, “or you can thrust,” she lunged out to one side. Brelyna’s mildly bored expression had morphed into one of surprise; her eyes were wide.

“Some Redoran swords flare out into two points at the tip,” Cassathra went on, “which makes it harder to get past weak points in armour. But they deal a lot more damage on the way out. Kind of like a bee sting.”

Brelyna just raised one eyebrow in a sceptical sort of grimace.

“Anyway, not that that’s relevant. The important thing to know before I hand it to you is that the centre of balance is skewed towards the hilt end, so—”

“You want me to hold it?!” Brelyna cut her off, sounding alarmed.

“You don’t have to do anything with it,” Cassathra huffed. “It’s just so you can get a feel for its weight. Come on.”

She held it out by the hilt, inclining her head to encourage her. For several moments Brelyna just glanced uneasily between the sword and Cassathra’s face, but when it became clear that Cassathra wasn’t going to surrender, she whined and reluctantly stretched one hand out. The actual passing of the sword was awkward; Cassathra wanted to make sure Brelyna was properly grasping it before she let go, so her hand lingered on the hilt for maybe a second or two longer than was necessary. The sword dipped a little once it was out of Cassathra’s grip, clearly heavier than Brelyna was expecting it to be.

“Now what?” said Brelyna, looking pitiful in her thick furs, with her grey cheeks rosy from the cold and the sword clasped awkwardly in one hand. Cassathra had to hold back her laugh; it looked so unnatural.

“Just move around a bit,” she said. “Give it a swing or two. Get used to how it feels.”

“What if I accidentally slice one of us in half?”

Cassathra laughed. “You aren’t going to slice one of us in half,” she said. “Look, I’ll even stand back. Just… relax, okay? Try and loosen up. The sword should feel like an extension of your arm.”

Brelyna scoffed. But eventually she moved; hesitantly, slowly. She just held her arm out in different positions—up in front of her, out to one side, across her middle. When at last she mustered the courage to try a couple of swings, she swung it once, and then twice, and then the sword fell to the stone floor with a loud clatter. Brelyna cursed, scrunching up her face.

“Hey, it’s okay,” said Cassathra, crouching momentarily to pick it up. She placed her free hand on Brelyna’s arm, easing it down from where she’d been self-consciously pinching the bridge of her nose. “Everyone does it. It just shows that you were feeling more relaxed, right?”

Brelyna sighed, shaking her head.

“Just maybe try not to loosen up quite so much,” Cassathra added with a smile. “Come on. Try it like this; you want to spread your feet a little bit and bend at the knees. This makes you strong and grounded, so you don’t have to worry about losing your balance. But grounded doesn’t mean immobile; you want to keep your stance wide but stay light on your feet, allowing your whole body to move to follow your blade…”

She went on, sheathing the sword and coming to stand behind Brelyna in order to adjust her stance. She nudged Brelyna’s feet apart and pressed gently down on her hips so that she bent at the knees. With her noble posture, Brelyna’s back and stomach were already where they needed to be. Cassathra then redrew her sword and placed it back into Brelyna’s hand.

“Your elbow should be slightly bent so that you’re not putting your tendons under any strain, but otherwise you want your arm to be nearly fully extended. The movement should come from your shoulder.” Carefully Cassathra slid her hand along Brelyna’s arm, unlocking her elbow and easing it into the correct position. “Don’t be afraid to take up space, okay? The weapon is under your full control; it’s not doing anything you don’t tell it to.”

“If only magicka were the same,” said Brelyna. She sounded a little breathless. Cassathra snorted.

“That’s what’s so nice about a sword,” she said. “But I guess its uses are a little more limited. Anyway, try it like that. And you can hold onto it as tightly as you like, just while you’re still getting used to it.”

She stepped back, giving Brelyna her space and circling around to face her. Brelyna swung the sword with more success this time. She still looked a little awkward and stiff, especially from the waist down, but that was normal. Cassathra grinned.

“How old were you when you first started having lessons?” asked Brelyna absently as she continued to swing the sword from side to side. Her gaze was glued to the tip of the blade, like she was hypnotized by its rhythmic movements. The sunlight glanced prettily off the metal. 

“I started learning with a wooden training sword when I was eight,” said Cassathra. “Then I moved onto a real blade when I was twelve.”

Brelyna scoffed again. “A wooden sword might have been nice,” she said. “You know, I much preferred it when we were ten and you were asking me to teach you Candlelight.”

Cassathra laughed. “Not that you were a very good teacher.”

“I was ten.”

“You can stop swinging it, now.”

Brelyna stopped with a sigh, letting her sword arm come to rest awkwardly by her side.

“What now?” she asked, staring at Cassathra expectantly.

“Now I start teaching you the beginner’s form,” said Cassathra. “Muhrhag sey.”

Brelyna wrinkled her nose. “What a patronising name.”

Cassathra hummed. “I suppose it is,” she said. “It focuses on rhythm and mobility. We’ll start with the eight angles of attack and then get those feet moving.”

For all her complaining, Brelyna was a quick learner once she relaxed into it. They went over the basic principles of footwork together—the most common manoeuvres and when to use them—and then Cassathra taught her how to cut from different angles. When they’d covered enough theory for one day, Cassathra conjured a bound sword and they started slowly and systematically putting it into practice. She took the ‘defensive’, after much assurance that Brelyna was at no risk of hurting her; she blocked each of Brelyna’s rehearsed attacks with ease, allowing her friend to get to grips with cuts. They would save thrusts and parries for another day.

They’d been at it for the better part of an hour when they heard muffled conversation from behind the tower door. Their swords clashed for the last time and then Brelyna stopped, lowering her blade and turning over her shoulder to see who it was. After several moments of fiddling with the lock mechanism, the door finally opened, and then out from the shadows stepped…

Onmund and J’zargo.

J’zargo’s chatter ground to a halt and for several seconds the four of them just stared at each other. Then J’zargo burst out laughing.

“What in Azurah’s name are you doing?” he asked.

Brelyna straightened out of her fighting stance, all traces of the warrior vanishing to make way for the prim and proper Telvanni noble she was.

“Cassathra was just teaching me some basic swordsmanship,” she said in Cyrodilic. Her tone was almost vindictive, but Cassathra could detect a faint warble. Was she embarrassed? Cassathra dispelled her bound sword and came to stand at Brelyna’s side.

“We were just bored and wanted a break from revision,” she explained. And then, to change the subject before J’zargo could find some way of making fun of them; “anyway, what are you doing up on the roof?”

“Looking for the two of you,” said Onmund. “We’ve been searching all over. Tolfdir wants to see us.”

“Tolfdir?”

“It’s about Saarthal,” he said, grimacing slightly. “He said they’ve found something which might be relevant to our research.”

Cassathra and Brelyna exchanged a glance. That was good news, wasn’t it? Why did it make Cassathra feel such dread?

“We shouldn’t keep him waiting, then,” Brelyna muttered, handing the sword back to Cassathra. Cassathra took it from her and sheathed it with reluctance. The four of them left the rooftop together and descended back into the stony warmth of the Hall of Attainment.

Tolfdir’s office lay in the eastern wing of the college, along with all the other staff rooms. They headed there once Cassathra and Brelyna had removed all their furs. J’zargo rapped musically on the oak door.

There were some shuffling noises from within, before Tolfdir’s smiley face appeared a few moments later.

“Ah, there you are!” he said, opening the door wider and stepping to one side. “Come in, come in. I’ll just put on some tea.”

They filed in one at a time, filling the small, cluttered space to its capacity. Tolfdir had arranged a bench and three chairs around the little table in the centre of the room, like he did for all of their tutorials. They took their usual seats; Cassathra and Brelyna on the bench, Onmund and J’zargo on the chairs. When Tolfdir had finished preparing the tea, he brought it on a tray and laid it on the table. There were five cups and a plate of pastries.

“We’ll just give it a few minutes to brew,” he said, taking his own seat. Then he folded his hands in his lap and glanced between each of them with a gentle smile. “Now, how are we all? I trust that your exam preparation is going well?”

They were silent, exchanging their own glances. It was going horribly for all of them and they knew it; but how were they supposed to tell him that?

“Not bad,” said Cassathra eventually, clearing her throat. “Er… I’ve just been a little tired.”

The others hummed and mumbled their agreement. Tolfdir nodded.

“That is quite normal around this time of year,” he said. “The long nights certainly don’t help. Anyway, I hope not to keep you for long—it is a Sundas, after all. Brelyna, Cassathra; I trust the boys have explained to you my reason for bringing you here?”

Cassathra was silent for a moment before answering. “Something to do with Saarthal?”

Tolfdir nodded. “Correct,” he said. “With the artifact now in college, the new sections of the ruins have been safe to explore. Mostly we are still busy cleaning up the damage and setting up structural reinforcements. However, we were able to undergo a little archaeological investigation even in these preliminary stages, and we have found something that I believe may be useful to your research project.

“Cassathra,” he said, turning to her; “do you recall in the chamber with the amulet, you detected some runes in the wall which you correctly identified as Old Nordic?”

She nodded.

“The wall was destroyed along with the amulet,” Tolfdir went on, beginning to pour out the tea, “but we have been able to piece together the rubble and identify the writing.”

When the tea was poured, he reached behind him onto his desk and pulled forth a sheaf of papers.

“A transcript of the original text is here,” he said, laying a sheet of parchment in front of them. “And a phonetic aldmerization of the text is here. Onmund, my boy, would you like to take a look?”

After a moment’s hesitation Onmund shrugged, and Tolfdir leaned across the table to hand the paper to him. The others picked up their cups of tea whilst Onmund read. It was chai. Tolfdir had explained to them once that he’d developed a taste for the Dunmeri beverage through his friendship with Savos.

“Er, I don’t really understand Old Nordic, Tolfdir.”

“Try reading it out loud,” said Tolfdir, blowing the steam away from his cup before taking a sip. Onmund sighed and then slowly began to read.

“Vertu bundinn hér, Jyrik, morðingi, svikari…” Onmund blinked in surprise and then looked up. “Oh.” 

“That’s it,” Tolfdir encouraged him with a nod, “go on.”

“…fordæmdur af glæpum þínum gegn ríki og þengill… Megi nafn þitt og verk þín gleymast að eilífu… og taufr sem þú berð innsiglaður af skjaldborg okkar.”

Onmund lowered the parchment slowly. “Ysmir’s beard,” he breathed. Cassathra had never heard him speak in his native tongue—or anything like it—before, and she was pleasantly surprised by how lyrical and soft it sounded in his voice. 

“Care to tell us what it means, or are you going to keep us in suspense?” asked J’zargo.

“A Cyrodilic translation is here,” said Tolfdir, handing them the third and final sheet of parchment. J’zargo, Brelyna and Cassathra each leaned forward to read it; Brelyna, being in the middle, held it up for them.

Be bound here, Jyrik, murderer, betrayer; condemned by your crimes against realm and lord. May your name and your deeds be forgotten forever, and the charm which you bear be sealed by our ward.

“It rhymes,” said J’zargo dryly. “How nice.”

“A happy coincidence,” said Tolfdir with a wry smile. “Or more accurately, I took some liberties with the translation. ‘Traitor’ would perhaps have been more direct, and the Old Nordic word ‘þengill’ can be better translated as ‘king’. And the exact meaning of ‘skjaldborg’ is a little elusive, but it translates approximately to a shield or a protective wall of some kind.”

The apprentices were each silent, staring at Tolfdir blankly. Cassathra was the first to speak.

“Do we think Jyrik is the draugr that J’zargo and I fought?” she asked, putting her teacup down and reaching for a pastry. She cupped her free hand under her chin to collect the flaky crumbs. Onmund and J’zargo both followed her cue, but Brelyna abstained.

“It seems likely,” said Tolfdir.

“Well, who is he?” asked Onmund.

“I do not know,” Tolfdir sighed. “It is not a name I’m familiar with. And you haven’t come across it at all in your research?”

They shook their heads.

“Well,” said Tolfdir, “if they were so intent on striking his name from history, they seem to have done a thorough job.”

“What about the charm?” asked Brelyna. “Do we think that could be the artifact?”

“Perhaps,” said Tolfdir. “However, the Old Nordic word ‘taufr’ can also be translated as ‘talisman.’ And when we searched his corpse, we found an amulet, enchanted with a simple but powerful magicka fortification. It was similar in style and appearance to the amulet that you found, Cassathra.”

Cassathra swallowed when he met her gaze.

“I believe this amulet is more likely to be the ‘charm’ of which the text speaks,” Tolfdir went on. “An object the size of the artifact is not easily carried on one’s person.”

“So we’re just back at square one?” asked Onmund. “We still don’t know any more about the artifact?”

“Not exactly,” said Tolfdir. “I have sent off the amulet and a copy of the text to a friend of mine at the University of Markarth. She specializes in ancient languages, and should be able to use the spelling and grammar conventions to date the text to a more precise time period. I also hope that one of the archaeology scholars there is able to identify the amulet.”

“How long will it take to hear back from them?” asked J’zargo.

“A few weeks, at least,” said Tolfdir. “Which is why I propose you put this project to one side for the time being and focus on your exams. When we receive a response, you can narrow your research down to a smaller time frame. But all of this can wait until the winter holidays.”

Tolfdir sighed then, leaning forward in his chair. “My dears,” he said, “I am so sorry that Savos has burdened you with this task. I tried to change his mind; for after all that you went through, it did not seem fair. But he is adamant that you be the ones to do it. Our Archmage, he… he is not thinking clearly these days.

“So I intend to help and support you as much as I can. I feel responsible for what happened and I can see that you are struggling. Perhaps we can organize some evening revision classes to help you catch up for your exams.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Tolfdir,” Cassathra mumbled. He just smiled at her sadly.

“Whoever’s fault it was,” he said, “I am your tutor, and that means I am responsible for your wellbeing. Saarthal was a difficult experience for all of us. If any of you would like to talk, about anything at all, no matter how big or small, my door is always open. Please do not feel as if you have to suffer in silence.”

The apprentices said nothing; Cassathra, at least, was at a loss for words. ‘Thank you’ felt like too much and yet not enough.

“Anyway, that is all I wanted to share with you,” said Tolfdir at last. “Please, go and enjoy the rest of your Sundas. We can arrange times for the revision classes in our tutorial tomorrow.”

The apprentices got to their feet and left.

 

---

 

Hjaalmarch, Skyrim, 4th Evening Star

There was a hare in the distance, picking its way carefully through the snow. It would pause every few seconds and lift its head, its ears and nose twitching as it sniffed the air. Then it would continue; hopping and shuffling and snuffling over the frozen earth. It was ash-brown and plump. Large enough for a meal for two.

Raydrin shifted his weight slightly from where he was crouched behind a cluster of snowberries. He notched an arrow and drew the string back slowly to his cheek, the sinews creaking under the tension. The hare hovered just an inch or so above the blurred tip of his arrowhead. It was still for several moments, save for the rapid pulsing of its white breast, but then it lurched into a hop before Raydrin could release. He followed it until it disappeared behind a tree trunk and lowered his weapon with a quiet sigh.

The silence was broken just a second or two later, pierced by a sudden squeal. Raydrin froze and stared with dread at the space the hare had occupied not moments before. The rushing of his blood felt uncomfortably loud, swallowing up each beat of silence that ticked by. Then a grey, hairy mass bounded into the clearing. Raydrin released the breath he was holding.

It was just a dog.

The hare was limp and clamped tightly in the dog’s jaws. It twitched for a few seconds as the dog shook its head back and forth, but then the dog buried its muzzle into the snow and pawed at the creature until it fell still with a soft crack. The snow was left a bloody pink.

Raydrin had been watching all of this with a dazed sense of curiosity, but he seized up when the dog suddenly twisted in his direction and sprang over to him. Clumsily he tried to get to his feet, but he was set upon before he could find his balance, and just staggered back onto his rump with a muffled grunt.

“Makhel,” he muttered, half-heartedly trying to shove the beast off him. It had dropped the hare somewhere in the snow and was panting heavily over Raydrin’s face, its maw still matted with blood and its breath hot and unpleasant. But it wasn’t trying to hurt him; Raydrin may not have been familiar with dogs, but he could recognize an overenthusiastic hello when he saw one.

“Meeko!” came a sudden voice. It was followed by a sharp whistle. “Meeko! Heel!”

The dog raised its head and was still for a second or two, before barking once and excitedly leaping off of Raydrin, picking up its hare on the way. Raydrin turned his head against the snow and watched as the dog trotted up to its owner, a tall Nord man with dark, greying hair and a short beard. Meeko tried to jump up at him, but was scolded gently and came to stand obediently at his side. The Nord smiled at Raydrin as he approached.

“I apologize for the feral rascal here,” he said, holding out one gloved hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Raydrin took it, allowing himself to be hoisted to his feet. “That dog’s too friendly for his own good.”

Meeko had fallen silent, his mouth otherwise occupied, but his tail was sweeping excitedly back and forth over the snow. He was a sweet thing, really; large, amber eyes, big hairy paws. Raydrin could understand the human preoccupation with the creatures.

“It’s alright,” he said, exhaling a small puff of amusement. The Nord eyed the bow in his hand.

“Steal your dinner, did he?”

Raydrin shrugged. “He won it fair and square. I can find something else.”

“You’ll struggle to catch anything before nightfall,” said the Nord. “An’ you don’t want to be caught in these woods after twilight. ‘Specially not by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself,” said Raydrin as he slid his bow back into its sheath. Then he paused. “What happens after twilight?”

“The fey-folk come out,” said the Nord. “Spriggans, nixies. You’ll be lured straight into the marshes if you aren’t careful.”

He broke out into a rough-sounding cough and held a hand up to his mouth as he worked through it. Raydrin was silent, waiting awkwardly for him to finish. He’d heard tales of the woodland spriggans before, but he had no idea what a ‘nixie’ was. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask.

“Where’s your friend?” asked the Nord a little hoarsely when Raydrin had failed to say anything.

“She’s not far,” said Raydrin, trying to keep his answer vague. “We’re just passing through.” They weren’t even done for the day; with night falling as early as it was, they were having to walk for hours in the dark each day just to make it to Solitude in time. The plan was that Raydrin would hunt with what remained of the light and then they would continue on their way.

The Nord tilted his head to one side, examining Raydrin curiously for several moments. “You don’t find many Dark Elves this far west,” he said after a while. “Not least so far from the cities.”

Raydrin chuckled a little nervously. What was he supposed to say to that?

“Come on,” said the Nord, “we should go and find your friend. It’s getting dark already. Dangerous time to be alone.”

Raydrin would have turned him down if it weren’t for the dog, but with Meeko trotting along at his feet, it was oddly easy to fall into step with the hulking Nord.

“My name is Wilhelm,” he said as they walked. “But you can call me Will.” Raydrin was glad that the name was offered and that Will hadn’t waited to be asked. “What should I call you?”

“Raydrin,” he said. Meeko was a few paces ahead, leading them on a winding path through the trees. They were heading vaguely in the direction he’d left Jórunn. Could Meeko smell her?

“What kind of dog is he?” he asked.

“He’s a Whiterun Wolfhound.”

Raydrin was silent for the few moments it took for him to realize that Will’s answer meant nothing to him. Then he snorted. “I don’t know why I asked,” he said. “I don’t know anything about dogs.”

Will raised a thick, dark eyebrow at him. “No dogs back in Morrowind?”

“Not really,” said Raydrin. “I suppose we have nix-hounds for everything that dogs are used for.”

Will hmphed. “Not quite as cute, I’d wager.”

“No, you’re probably right.” Raydrin tilted his head to one side and studied Meeko for a few seconds; the jaunty rhythm of his steps, the flopping of ears, the steady wagging of his tail. “We do have cats though,” he added as an afterthought. “Mostly down south, where all the farmland is.”

“Real cats?” said Will. “With fur, and paws?”

“Real cats,” Raydrin confirmed. Will tutted.

“Of course the Dark Elves are cat people.”

It took longer to find Jórunn again than Raydrin thought it would; and by the time he returned to the clearing he’d left her in, the woods were shrouded in a dim, icy blue. He barely had time to call out a warning before Meeko had launched himself at Jórunn in the same fashion he’d done with Raydrin, eliciting a surprised yelp as she was knocked to the ground.

Raydrin was by her side almost immediately, grabbing Meeko by the loose scruff of his neck and trying to pull him off of her. With Will’s help they were able to get him to stand down, but Jórunn—now sitting upright—crawled backwards, kicking her heels out into the snow.

“What the fuck was that?!” she cried.

“Just a dog,” said Raydrin.

“Well, thanks for the fucking warning,” she said, breathless.

“I’m with his owner,” Raydrin added quickly, electing to ignore her sarcasm. “We ran into each other when I was hunting. His name’s Will.”

Jórunn was silent, still breathing hard, her expression uneasy.

“The owner, I mean,” Raydrin clarified. “The dog is Meeko. Will, this is Jórunn. My, um, companion.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Will. “I apologize for Meeko. He's a friendly creature really, but it's not often he gets to meet someone new.”

Raydrin, meanwhile, had crouched by Jórunn’s side. He clasped her forearms and waited for her to take his own so that he could pull her to her feet. She huffed when standing, brushing the snow off her legs.

“Nice to meet you too,” she muttered. Will caught Raydrin’s gaze and raised one eyebrow, waving a hand in front of his eyes in a silent question. Raydrin shook his head.

“No luck with the hunting, unfortunately,” he said to Jórunn. “I think we should head back to the road and keep going. We can make do with our rations tonight.”

“Oh, I’ll be having none of that,” said Will before Jórunn could respond. “The woods are a death trap in the dark. Not least for those unfamiliar with it, like yourselves.”

Raydrin supposed Will’s concern was justified; he and Jórunn would be more than capable of dealing with any threats, but outwardly they appeared to be rather vulnerable. And they weren’t exactly in a position to be correcting Will’s assumption.

“I insist you stay with me tonight,” Will went on. “My house isn’t far. It isn’t much, but it’ll beat your tent, I'd wager.”

Raydrin turned to Jórunn, trying to gauge her expression. She sighed. “We need to make sure we get to Solitude in time, Raydrin,” she murmured.

“Solitude?” asked Will. “What are you heading to Solitude for?”

“Er,” Raydrin faltered, “…we’re going to a wedding. It’s on the ninth.”

“You’ll be going to no weddings if you’ve frozen to death in the woods,” said Will. “Come on. I’ve plenty of meat and a hot fire. You can make up your time once you've had a good night’s sleep.”

Raydrin had to admit to himself that it was tempting. And with Meeko staring up at him the way that he was, with those big, brown eyes, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to say no.

“What do you think, Jórunn?” he asked, nudging her with his elbow so she could take his arm. When she took it and didn’t squeeze, he knew that her next words were meant genuinely.

“I’m happy if you are,” she said.

“Then yes,” said Raydrin, turning to Will with a bow of his head. “We accept. Thank you.”

“No thanks needed,” the Nord smiled. The lines by his eyes looked like crow’s feet in the snow. “It’ll be nice to have the company. Won’t it, Meeko?”

Meeko remained silent, the hare still clamped tightly in his jaw, but at the mention of his name his tail started to wag.

“Come on then,” said Will. “If we set off now we should make it back before we lose the light.”

He tilted his head in the direction he was heading and then turned to trudge through the snow, Meeko falling into step at his heel. Over his shoulder he was carrying a large stick strung up with game, namely rabbits, hares and a couple of large birds. At Raydrin’s instruction, Jórunn took out her cane—her other hand still wrapped around his arm—and they started to follow, her first few steps tentative and uncertain as she found her footing in the snow. Ahead of them, the game swung rhythmically from side to side in time with Wilhelm’s stride.

The walk was short, as promised. They were silent for the majority of it, save for Raydrin’s occasional murmured instruction and Wilhelm’s hacking cough. It was hoarse and chesty; Raydrin wondered whether it was the consequence of tobacco indulgence or whether the Nord was just sick, but it sounded painful either way.

Wilhelm’s home was a humble log cabin, built from a dark wood and nestled in the heart of a small, raised clearing. A plume of fragrant woodsmoke was flowing steadily from the chimney, the top of which was only just visible from within a foot-deep layer of snow. Meeko broke out into a run as they approached, bounding up the hill to the doorstep and waiting excitedly for them to follow. Wilhelm opened the door to let him in and then stepped to one side for Raydrin and Jórunn.

“In you go,” he said, smiling. “I’m just going to collect some wood for the fire. Make yourselves at home in the meantime.”

Awkwardly they stepped past him into the dark heat of his home, Raydrin murmuring to Jórunn to duck as they crossed under the doorway. The interior was small and cluttered, just one long room. A hearth was situated immediately to their left, the fire dim and low, and in its vicinity was a makeshift kitchen of sorts, a ramshackle collection of tables and worktops and shelves. The ceiling was strung up with dried herbs and game, the walls lined with tools of varying size and application. At the far end of the room was an area reserved for sleeping, a bed in the corner and a small copper tub tucked into the space between the foot of the bed and the wall.

“I feel like we’re about to get murdered,” said Jórunn as she was guided into one of the two chairs by the table. Raydrin laughed. Meeko had sunk into a large cushion near the hearth and was chewing on a bone, eyeing them both curiously.

“I would’ve said the same if it weren’t for the dog,” said Raydrin. They could hear coughing from the other side of the wall. “I think Will’s probably just lonely.”

Jórunn hummed. “Maybe.”

“He was saying something about faeries when I ran into him,” he added. “Do you know what a nixie is?”

“No idea.”

Wilhelm returned a minute or two later with a large basket of firewood, which he laid beside the hearth and used to stock the fire. Then he maneuvered through the room, lighting candles and oil lamps on his way. Raydrin and Jórunn waited for him to finish before removing their boots and furs; it had taken a while for them to feel warm enough to do so, and there wasn’t enough space in the cabin for more than one of them to be moving around at any given moment.

“So how come the two of you are travelling together?” asked Will as Raydrin propped their packs and weapons up against the wall. Raydrin caught his suspicious glance when he asked for Jórunn to hand him her sword.

“Um…”

Raydrin returned to his own chair in silence, trying to use the short time to come up with an answer. Jórunn, helpful as ever, was silent, her expression blank. It was times like this when he wished they could at least make eye contact.

“I’m a mercenary,” he eventually lied. It seemed more believable than the noble-and-servant guise they were planning to use at the party, and not quite as awkward as the young-couple-from-Windhelm tale that Delphine had come up with. “I’m based in Windhelm. Jórunn’s paying me to escort her across the province.”

The corner of Jórunn’s lips twitched at that.

“For the wedding?” Will asked flatly. Raydrin nodded.

“For the wedding.”

“It’s my older sister,” added Jórunn, to Raydrin’s surprise. “She moved to Solitude a few years ago. She’s a scholar at the Bards College.”

“No other family coming with you?”

Jórunn shook her head. “None. Our parents are dead.”

Will nodded slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said after a while. “My own wife and kids died many winters ago. It’s hard, living alone.”

Jórunn exhaled. “It is.”

“I’m going to make a start with supper now,” said Will, straightening from where he’d been leaning against a worktop. “I don’ have much in the way of entertainment, but feel free to make yourselves comfortable. You can sit on the bed if it suits you.”

“Do you want any help?” asked Raydrin.

Will smiled. “It’s just a stew, lad. Nothing complicated. You can relax.”

Ironically, cooking was one of the few ways Raydrin felt he still could relax, but he didn’t push it. As Wilhelm busied himself plucking one of the birds, Raydrin turned to Jórunn and gently nudged her forearm where she’d laid it on the table.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Fancy reading for a bit?”

She smiled. “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

They moved to take their seats on the bed—partially because it was more comfortable, but mostly because it was further away from Wilhelm—and Raydrin rummaged through his pack to dig out the latest of their books. Finding themselves bored of epic royal tragedies, they’d bought a novel in Riverwood about a Cyrod family living in genteel poverty, following the struggles of one daughter in particular as she navigated the petty politics of Nibenese high society. They hadn’t read much of it, but the first few chapters had been amusing, at least. As Wilhelm cooked, Raydrin started to read.

It was a pleasant hour or so that they spent like that, letting the warmth seep steadily into their flesh and bones. Jórunn gradually melted against him, her breathing slow and calming under the rhythm of his voice. She’d told him once that she liked the way he read; his tone was even, she said, lacking all of the melodrama of narrating bards. Meeko hopped up onto the bed to join them—with Wilhelm’s permission—and draped his front paws and head over Jórunn’s lap. When Wilhelm started to ask questions about the various characters, Raydrin realized that their host was following along and began reading a little louder.

They were given spiced mead to drink while they waited, which Wilhelm proudly told them was homemade. He gave Raydrin an odd glance when he handed them their mugs, a knowing sort of smile as his dark eyes flicked between Raydrin and the oblivious Jórunn, who was peeling her head away from Raydrin’s shoulder in order to sit up and accept the drink. Raydrin knew exactly what he was insinuating and just turned away, pretending he hadn’t noticed.

“This Decanius character needs a stern talking to, in my mind,” said Will when they eventually took their seats at the table. “I cannae stand folk like that. Always looking down on the rest of us.”

“I agree,” said Jórunn, completely deadpan. “Nobles are just like that, in my experience. Born thinking they’re the gods’ gift to the world.”

In any other circumstances Raydrin might have responded with a har har, but in the absence of an opportunity to respond either verbally or through eye contact, he just gave her shin a light knock under the table. I got your joke, it said. Jórunn bit her lip to hide her smirk.

The food was good, warming and substantive, and the book gave them something to talk about other than themselves. When they were finished eating, Raydrin volunteered to do the washing up whilst Wilhelm went about setting up a bedroll on the floor. They were to take the bed, he insisted. It wasn't what they usually did, but Raydrin supposed it was no different from sharing a tent.

With fresh logs on the fire to warm them through the night, they retired to their respective berths. Wilhelm was quick to fall asleep, after a brief bout of coughing. His snoring was loud and persistent. Raydrin was just about to drift off himself when a sudden weight on his stomach knocked him violently back into consciousness.

“Vehk,” he grunted, grimacing as the weight shuffled around on his chest for a few moments before plopping with a soft whine into the narrow space between him and Jórunn.

“Why do dogs have to smell so bad,” Jórunn groaned, rolling over on the mattress. Meeko gave her cheek a big lick and she swatted at him half-heartedly with a quiet ‘ugh.’

“We can kick him out, if you want.”

“No,” she sighed, shaking her head against the pillow. “He’s okay.”

Meeko settled quickly, or at least he was quick to fall still; his farting, on the other hand, promised to keep Raydrin up for a long while to come.

“Raydrin?” asked Jórunn, after a few minutes had passed in silence. He hummed. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” he said, rolling onto his side to face her again. “Everything okay?”

Jórunn was quiet for a few seconds, her features murky in the low light. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” she admitted, and automatically Raydrin laid his forearm across the dog in between them to lightly touch her elbow. She responded by grasping his. Meeko snorted and shuffled around.

“Do you think Delphine’s right?” she asked eventually. Raydrin took a shuddering breath.

“About what?”

“About the Thalmor…” she said. “Being… responsible.”

He thought it over for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. I guess it could go either way.”

He heard her sigh. “Yeah.”

“Why?” he asked, squeezing her elbow. “What are you thinking?”

“I just…” she trailed off, and then took a long while to start up again. “It’s just that, if the Thalmor are responsible for all this… I don’t know. The Greybeards said that I’m somehow connected to the dragons coming back. And if the Thalmor are the only reason that it’s happening, then that means…”

He could see her face scrunch up. “It means I wasn’t always like this,” she finished at last. “That I used to be normal.”

Raydrin was at a loss for words. His instinct was to say, ‘you are normal,’ but that would be a lie and they both knew it.

“Sorry,” Jórunn said when he still hadn’t spoken.

“It’s okay—”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s not like you’re going to know the answers any more than I do.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “Jórunn, it’s okay. I mean… this is clearly bothering you. You’re allowed to talk about it even if we don’t have the answers.”

She sighed. “What’s the point, though, Raydrin?”

He just swallowed. “Do you feel like something changed?” he asked instead, unable to answer her question. “Like a particular moment where you started feeling different?”

Jórunn was silent for several seconds. “Not really,” she said at last. “Even after the watchtower, I just felt sort of the same. It wasn’t until Kynesgrove that…”

She trailed off.

“That what?”

“I felt that dragon, Raydrin,” she whispered. “I still feel it. Them. I don’t know. Even now, it’s like…” She sighed again. Her voice was wet when she next spoke. “I guess I’ll just have to get used to it,” she said bitterly. “I think it’s because I killed it. At the watchtower, it was someone else, it wasn’t me. But I killed Sahloknir.”

“Sahloknir?”

“That was its name,” she said quietly.

Raydrin was silent.

“Look,” he whispered after a long while, “we’ll know about the Thalmor soon either way. But it shouldn’t make a difference, alright? The Greybeards said that you… that you’re like this for a reason. And that’ll still be true whether you were born with it or not. It isn’t worth dwelling over.”

“Yeah,” she said tightly.

He thought inwardly that perhaps it could be both; that maybe Jórunn was born with a dragon’s soul and that the Thalmor were responsible for bringing the dragons back. Akatosh was the God of Time, after all, so it wasn’t like he had to follow the same rules as everyone else. But Raydrin kept his thoughts to himself; Jórunn sounded like she already had enough to work through.

“And…” he said instead, “…if you think it’ll help, I can deal the finishing blow next time.”

Jórunn released a sad laugh. “Thanks, Raydrin.”

He exhaled, and—despite his better instincts—lifted his hand slowly from where it had been resting against her elbow, letting it mould instead to the shape of her cheek. She tensed for just a moment before relaxing into the touch, her skin warm but wind-chapped under his fingers.

“You’re still human, Jórunn,” he murmured. “And you’re still you. That’s not going to change.”

Jórunn’s eyes fluttered closed, a soft breath shuddering from her lips. She laid her hand over his and lowered it from her face, taking it between both of her own and squeezing, holding it close to the exposed hollow of her clavicles.

“Thank you.”

She fell asleep like that, cradling his hand, her expression troubled even in rest. Raydrin just lay there, listening to the alternating snores of Wilhelm and Meeko, and stared at Jórunn until the last of the candlelight finally flickered and died. 

Notes:

first—'muhrhag sey' (the redoran sword form for beginners that cassathra mentioned) is dunmeris for 'path of the newborn.' credit to tumblr user ghartokphadome for their great headcanons on this topic!

second—a 'nixie' is a water spirit from germanic/scandinavian folklore. tamriel has water spirits called nereids (they appear in ESO and some lore texts) so i thought 'nixie' could be the nordic name for them :)

thanks for reading, and thank you to my lovely beta readers diana and haley for all of their help with this chapter <3

Chapter 25: Dangerous Liaisons

Falkreath Hold, Skyrim, 2nd Evening Star

Mathyas couldn’t remember Grelod’s death.

He hadn’t been himself at the time. Like a dream, he’d felt like a mere passenger in the vessel of his body, observing his actions but not driving them. And—like a dream—the few images he was able to stitch together were ill-formed and half-imagined, flashes of colour against a murky, monochrome background. The night he met Astrid was much the same.

Alain’s death, by contrast, had been a non-issue. Alain and the other bandits were just the latest in a long line of battlefield kills, the few humans to be counted among innumerable Aldmeri Dominion soldiers. Mathyas could remember his time spent in Raldbthar as well as any other experience, which was to say, somewhat vaguely, but he could probably recall the details if asked.

Would he remember Hern? It was hard to tell.

He stared down at the bodies of his latest victims, still wrapped up in each other where they lay in their bed. It had been easy to kill them; just two quick stabs with a silver dagger, given to Mathyas by the Brotherhood specially for the contract. They were beautiful, he thought, and remarkably human-looking. Archetypal Nords with fair, creamy skin, unblemished by age, their features strong and striking. Hern’s hair was ink-black and shiny, a stark contrast to his snowy complexion. Hert’s was a golden, honey-brown, though under the moonlight it looked like tarnished silver.

They must have fed recently, if the fullness of their cheeks and the rich pink of their lips were anything to go by. Oddly, Mathyas found that a comfort. Their hearts had beat like those of any other living being, but the blood on Mathyas’ blade when he’d pulled it from their chests was black and sticky, almost tar-like.

This was true death, he thought. Still and silent. There would be no Coldharbour waiting for their souls; just the Void, absence in its purest form. In all capacities except physical, ‘Hern’ and ‘Hert’ now ceased to exist, and it wouldn’t be long before their flesh, too, rotted away. Did vampires rot? Mathyas had read that they just crumbled into dust.

Non-existence seemed to Mathyas far better than an eternity in Coldharbour, he thought, as he cleaned his dagger, sheathed it, and slipped out through the door.

Maybe he was doing them a favour.

 

---

 

He found himself standing in the entrance hall of his home. The ceiling above him was high, vaulted, each dome decorated with geometric mosaics of teal and terracotta. He glided over the stone tiles beneath his feet, tracing a path he had walked a million times. Pillars thick as the stalks of emperor parasols passed him by in ordered rows. It was dim, like it always was; earthen walls bathed in the dull orange of torchlight. He climbed one of the two grand staircases placed symmetrically on the far sides of the chamber and let his hand drag along the solid handrail as he went. 

He was on the upper balcony. If he crossed the corridor and passed through the great doors straight ahead of him, flanked on either side by the scarab of Redoran, he would end up in the assembly hall, the largest and most opulent chamber of the residence. Instead he turned left, in the direction of the private apartments. The corridors were dark and low. He passed familiar tapestries, one by one. Abstract renderings of various ancestors and Temple saints; Veloth. Seryn. Almalexia. Nerevar. Some were more recent than others. He passed by his mother and another of his late father, the rendered countenance more familiar to Mathyas than any memory of his actual face. He passed his own visage in a tapestry he shared with Anya and Raydrin. Anya at his side—as his equal—and Raydrin sitting in between them. Anya’s woven hand was draped over Raydrin’s woven shoulder. Mathyas continued onwards.

He was in his bedchamber. There was a door by the fireplace that was not normally there. Mathyas opened it, finding himself in a small, grey room, lit by a single window. The walls and floor were plain ashlar stone. In the centre of the room were Raydrin and Anya, kneeling over wooden tubs of soapy water and scrubbing clothes against washboards.

“Would you like to help us?” said Raydrin.

Mathyas joined them on the floor and got to work at his own wash tub.  

“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” he said to Anya. She looked up at him from her work and smiled.

“Why do you think Cicero dresses like a jester?” she asked.

“He could be insane,” said Raydrin.

“He’s pretty obviously insane,” said Mathyas.

“Maybe he was a jester before he joined the Brotherhood,” said Raydrin.

“Or maybe he’s not insane,” said Anya. “And the jester act is just a front.”

“What would he gain from that?” Mathyas asked. Anya shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

Mathyas looked back down to his wash tub. His hands were still. It took great effort and concentration to raise them and to drag the soap bar over the yellowish stains. He blinked and attempted to hone his focus into the muscles of his hand, into the repetitive act of squeezing the cloth back and forth over the metal ridges of the washboard. But the cloth was slippery and kept falling from his grasp. Why was this so difficult? His skin was starting to crawl.

A cough bubbled up without warning, scraping the back of his throat. The motion of it wracked his shoulders, had him jerking forward and over the tub. Blood spilled out over his lower lip and his chin, bright red droplets splashing into the soapy water below. The droplets broke up and dispersed into a cloudy pink, bleeding into the fabric. Involuntarily he coughed again into his hand. When he pulled back, there were several bloodied teeth lying there in the centre of his palm.

Why was this happening? Tentatively Mathyas pressed a finger to his gums, trying to locate the gaps, but in doing so he just dislodged more teeth. He felt them come loose, the sensation uncomfortable but not painful. His teeth fell out one by one and he cradled them all in the palm of his hand.

He wanted to tell Anya and Raydrin what was happening, but he was unable to. The sounds that left his mouth were gummy and unarticulated. Panicked, Mathyas looked down to the bloodied clothes at his knees. He’d ruined them! He started scrubbing furiously at the red stains, but they did not fade. In fact, scrubbing made them worse; the red spread outwards, seeping into every fibre, darkening and thickening the water until it was soup-like. He had to fix this. What would Anya and Raydrin say?

“You should ask the kitchen staff if they have any vinegar,” said Anya, getting Mathyas to look up. He stared at her. She stared back at him, her expression blank.

Mathyas got to his feet.

The door led him out onto the corridor. He was aware of his teeth still in his hand and squeezed his palm around them, feeling them dig into his flesh. His feet, heavy, dragged against the floor with each step. He turned left at the end of the corridor to find Nazir standing there. 

“Where are you going?” asked Nazir.

“I’m going to the kitchens to ask for some vinegar,” said Mathyas.

“Astrid is looking for you,” said Nazir. “You should head back to the Sanctuary.”

“But—”

He stepped forward and placed his hand on Mathyas’ jaw, dragging his thumb over his lower lip. The heat of his palm was all Mathyas could feel.

“I think you’ve slept long enough.”

 

---

 

Falkreath Sanctuary, Skyrim, 8th Evening Star

“Mathyas. Mathyas!”

Mathyas jolted awake, his spine snapping taut. There was an ache in what felt like every vertebra, in particular at the base of his neck. The left side of his face was numb all over.

“Are you alright, brother?”

As the vision cleared in his left eye, the faces of Festus and Gabriella gradually came into focus above him. Where was he? What time was it? Gabriella’s words suggested concern, but her expression was that of mild amusement. Festus just looked unimpressed.

Mathyas came to himself slowly, finding his feet on a stone floor, his back against a wooden chair, his arms laid across a table. He was in the dining room; the walls around him were their usual perpetual orange, lit only by the constantly burning fires. A cup of chamomile tea sat on the table in front of him, and when he pressed the back of his fingers to it, the clay was cold to the touch.

“Sorry,” he managed, his voice rough. “I must have fallen asleep.”

Festus scoffed and walked away, evidently bored of the encounter. “The state of that,” he muttered, raising his voice with each step to ensure that his words were heard. “Who ever heard of a narcoleptic assassin?”

Mathyas sighed and buried his face in his hands, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The memory of his dream lingered all over him; he wanted to scrub the feeling of it away.

“What time is it?” he asked, lowering his hands from his face and reluctantly meeting Gabriella’s gaze. She was still staring down at him.

“Just past dawn,” she said. “Have you been here all night?”

“Something like that,” he muttered. He scraped his chair back and got to his feet, laying a hand on the table to steady himself when all the blood drained from his head. Gods, his neck hurt. When the fuzz around the edge of his vision eventually faded, he began unsteadily making his way over to the wooden ramp that led to the living quarters.

“How did your vampire contract go?” Gabriella called after him, but Mathyas ignored her. He slid into his room, slammed the door behind him, and dropped like a stone onto his bed.

It could have been minutes or hours that passed like that; Mathyas had no idea. Unable to fall back asleep, he just lay there in the dark, not really awake either. What was wrong with him? Was this his life now? Lying awake for nights on end only to pass out at the kitchen table?  

His dark silence was disturbed some indeterminate time later by a quiet knock at his door. It took Mathyas’ brain a second or two to catch up with his ears, and then he just shifted slightly against his mattress, saying nothing.

“Mathyas?” came a voice.

It was Astrid.

“Are you decent?” she went on when he still hadn’t responded.

He was silent for a moment before replying.

“Yes.”

The door opened and orange light spilled inwards, bright and uncomfortable against Mathyas’ eyes. He winced as he sat up, blinking for the few seconds it took for them to adjust. Astrid was just a silhouette in the doorway.

“Still in bed?” she said, tutting softly. “It’s nearly midday, Mathyas.”

He said nothing, but watched uneasily as she dug around in her pocket and pulled out her flint and steel. She lit the oil lamp on his dresser, shut the door, and then—to his surprise—came to sit beside him on the bed. Mathyas shuffled away from her.

“How was your last contract?” she asked.

“It was fine.”

“No cuts or scrapes or anything?”

Mathyas shook his head.

“Good,” said Astrid. Then she reached out to press her hand to his face, following him when he flinched away. “These bags are getting heavier,” she murmured, brushing her thumb under his eye. Mathyas had to clench his hands into fists to resist the urge to slap her away. Her touch made his skin crawl. “Still having trouble sleeping?”

Grudgingly he nodded. Astrid withdrew her hand.

“I’ll speak to Babette,” she said. “See if she can make something to help.”

“No,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I—”

“No?” said Astrid, raising a brow.

“Potions make it worse,” he said. “I’ve tried before. I– I’ll just get dependent. I need good, proper sleep—”

“We can’t have you falling asleep on the job, Mathyas,” she cut him off. “Or making a mistake. Festus told me where he found you this morning.”

Mathyas was silent.

“I’ll speak to Babette,” Astrid repeated. “In the meantime, I want to talk to you.”

He released a shaky breath. “Fine.”

“Before we start, I want to make it clear that absolutely none of this conversation leaves this room. Understood?”

Heart beating slightly faster, Mathyas nodded. Where was she going with this?

“I’ve been thinking about the situation with Vivienne,” Astrid began. She sighed. “This Sanctuary has been mine for a long, long time, Mathyas. I kept it going when all the others failed. Without me, the Brotherhood would have died out years ago.”

She shuffled backwards on his bed so that her back was against the wall, and then crossed one leg over the other, investigating the fingernails on one hand. “We’re good at what we do,” she said. “And we’re some of the few people actually capable of it. There will always be those who seek to hurt and to kill; it’s a violent world we live in. But the Brotherhood keeps things… tidy. Better that grudges are settled behind closed doors than on the streets, don’t you agree?”

Mathyas just glared at her skeptically. She knew full well what his answer would be, and it wasn’t like anything he could say would make a difference anyway. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to speak, Astrid carried on with a barely perceptible roll of her eyes.

“The people of Tamriel need the Brotherhood,” she said. “And they will always, always need the Brotherhood. But time and time again, it has nearly destroyed itself over religious zealotry. We’re still fragile, Mathyas; what the Brotherhood needs now more than ever is stability. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

Mathyas turned his head to her reluctantly, letting his eyes meet hers for just a moment before he looked away. “Yes.”

“Vivienne is no leader,” said Astrid. “She’s an excellent assassin, and she cares deeply about the Brotherhood. But she’s selfish. She prioritises the Old Ways above all, above any considerations of practicality. I’m not sure, if it came down to it, that she’d have it in her to make the tough decisions. And with the Brotherhood still as weak as it is, the last thing it needs right now is someone trying to bring back the shackles of a bloodthirsty religion that we’ve spent so long trying to rid ourselves of.”

Mathyas’ head was reeling. Did it matter whether the Brotherhood killed for money or out of a perverted sense of religious devotion? The outcome was the same either way. And yet, his instincts were saying yes. Yes, yes. Killing for money held no pretensions of morality. A business was easier to deal with than a cult; easier to rationalize. What rational person saw killing as an inherent good, and killing in the name of a silent god, at that?

But would a cult not also be easier to take down? Astrid was right about everything. Cicero’s presence alone had raised enough tensions in the Sanctuary. Trying to reintroduce the religious structures of the old Brotherhood would lead to nothing but more infighting. Would that work in Mathyas’ favour? Enable him to slip away while the Brotherhood tore itself apart?

He was too tired for this.

“You’re a practical man, Mathyas,” said Astrid. Despite being right next to him, she felt miles away. “I’m sure you agree with me on this.”

He didn’t. He didn’t agree with her on principle. But he nodded anyway; it wasn’t like he had a choice. She’d come into his room—without asking—to have a secret conversation with him, and she was clearly about to enlist him for something that he wasn’t in a position to refuse.

“You’re also new,” she went on. “I know you don’t want to be here.”

His fingers curled around the edge of his mattress. This was the first time she’d ever acknowledged that.

“And,” she said, “I know you don’t care about Sithis or the Night Mother any more than I do.”

Mathyas met her gaze.

“Where are you going with this?”

Astrid smirked. “I need you to go to Volunruud for me,” she said. “On the sixteenth of Evening Star. You’ll need to set off tomorrow to make it there in time. Speak to Amaund Motierre, see what he wants. Then report back to me. If I think the contract is worth pursuing, it’s yours.”

Mathyas started to look away, but Astrid grasped him by the chin before he could, twisting his neck round to face her. The abandoned shack flashed before his eyes.

You took something that didn’t belong to you, she’d said as she pinched his cheeks, thumb pressing painfully against his bone.

That little Aretino boy was looking for the Dark Brotherhood.

“You’re the only one I can trust with this, Mathyas,” said Astrid in the present, her grey-blue eyes boring into his own. His breathing was hard. “And under absolutely no circumstances do you mention this to anyone. Especially Vivienne. Do you hear?”

Unable to speak, Mathyas could only nod.

“Good.”

She let go of his face. His skin burned where each of her fingers had been digging into his flesh.

“If anyone asks, you can tell them that this is the contract I’ve assigned you.” Astrid got to her feet and produced a slip of paper from her pocket, which she tossed onto the mattress beside him. Mathyas made no effort to read it.

“Veezara is heading into town this afternoon to buy some firewood and food supplies,” she said. “I want you to go with him. He’ll come and get you when he’s ready.”

She left without waiting for a response, leaving Mathyas on his own, sitting in the dim light of his oil lamp.

He lay down, curled in on himself, and closed his eyes. There was nothing else he could do.

 

---

 

Solitude, Skyrim, 8th Evening Star

Solitude was the furthest north Sanjir had been in his life and colder than he thought was possible. He’d taken the aridity of Whiterun Hold for granted, letting himself grow comfortable over the years that he’d lived there. It hadn’t taken long once they descended from the Tundra Plateau into the Hjaal basin for the atmosphere to dampen and for the hard, dry ground of the steppe to give way to mud and snow. Sanjir had broken their somewhat tense silence to complain.

“I suppose these temperatures are just water off a duck’s back for you,” he said bitterly.

“Whoever first claimed that Nords don’t feel the cold was a liar,” Leorn replied, his tone calm and even. “We just have better things to do than complain about it.”

Sanjir resisted the urge to make a comment about dragging Leorn through the Alik’r and seeing how well he fared then. But Leorn was never one to complain and Sanjir knew it. He’d seen him recover from near-fatal injuries like they were common colds, despite the winces and grimaces Sanjir was able to catch when Leorn thought no-one was looking. So he said nothing, and their silence resumed.

It was dark and lightly snowing when the carriage driver finally announced that they’d made it to Solitude; they’d hiked up to Dragon Bridge on foot, spending a night there with the Haafingar Companions in the mead hall of Sadon Reyth, before travelling the rest of the way by cart. Sanjir awoke from his half-sleep to the sound of knocking on wood and lifted his head from where it had been resting against Leorn’s shoulder.

“We’re here,” grunted the carriage driver.

Sleepily the passengers clambered out.

The climb from the stables up to the inner city was slippery and steep, taking them on a meandering route through the sprawl of Solitude’s residential outskirts. The blustery winds were quick to die down once they made it to the protection of the walled city centre, but it was still too cold and snowy for them to want to do any exploring. They slipped into the first inn they could find—the Winking Skeever, a large, cushy-looking stone building gilded with timber-framing in a fusion of Nordic and Cyrodiilic styles—and set about booking a room.

Sanjir sighed and leaned back against the bar whilst Leorn did the talking, taking a moment to survey their surroundings. It was a nice inn, if a bit empty; modestly decorated and warm. Chilblains bit fiercely into the flesh of Sanjir’s cheeks. What day was it, Morndas? He’d lost track after Whiterun.

He blinked in surprise when his gaze slid over a familiar-looking couple tucked into a little side-room, only just large enough to fit their table. A human woman was sitting angled towards him, her skin pale, her face framed by a long mane of thick, wavy dark hair. Across from her was a Dark Elf man, with short, messy black curls and a beard that was fuller than the last time Sanjir had seen him. Raydrin had his jaw propped up in the palm of one hand and was drawing circles into the wood of their table with his other, talking about something that Sanjir couldn’t hear. Jórunn looked serious and a little tired as she listened.

Sanjir stared at them for several seconds in a stunned silence, studying their faces in an attempt to confirm that it was really them. He’d known they were heading up north, but they had very pointedly refrained from telling anyone what it was they would be doing up here. And with everything that had transpired since, it hadn’t even crossed Sanjir’s mind that he might run into them.

“Sanjir?” said Leorn from over his shoulder, drawing his attention. Had he been saying something? Sanjir wasn’t listening.

“It’s Jórunn and Raydrin,” he replied, meeting Leorn’s gaze and nudging his head in the direction of the people in question. “Look.”

Leorn did. It was then that Raydrin seemed to feel their stares, his head twitching a few degrees towards them before he gave into his suspicion wholesale and looked over his shoulder. His dark eyes widened a degree or two and his sentence died on his lips. Then he carefully raised one hand in a startled sort of hello.

What is it? Sanjir could see Jórunn asking.

It’s Sanjir and Leorn, Raydrin replied.

His wave turned into a beckon and awkwardly Sanjir smiled.

“I can get the drinks,” said Leorn. “You go.”

“Are you sure?” asked Sanjir, out of politeness more than anything else.

“Yes,” said Leorn. “Go.”

Sanjir thanked him and left, crossing the floor of the tavern to Jórunn and Raydrin’s table. They had their travel packs propped up on the benches beside them and quickly moved them out of the way, shuffling along towards the window to make space for him and Leorn. Little drifts of snow were piled against each of the window panes.

“Hey,” said Raydrin, in that soft, raspy voice of his. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Likewise,” said Sanjir as he sank down onto the bench beside Jórunn, giving her arm a gentle nudge and feeling her nudge him back. “Which sounds stupid now that I say it. Since, well. You were the ones who were actually supposed to be here.” He sighed and smiled as best as he was able with his dwindling energy. “Hey, Jórunn.”

She smiled too, her gaze fixed somewhere past the side of Raydrin’s head. “Hi.”

“So what are you doing here?” asked Raydrin. “Haafingar seems a long way from Jorrvaskr's jurisdiction.”

Sanjir’s heart sank.

“No, it… it’s kind of a long story.” He forced another quick smile. “I’ll, um, wait until Leorn gets back.”

Raydrin made a small ah shape with his lips and nodded, his eyes lingering somewhat suspiciously on Sanjir’s face for a few moments before sliding back to Jórunn. Sanjir asked them how their journey had been and they made mildly awkward small talk until Leorn showed up a minute or two later with two pints of ale.

“Leorn,” Raydrin grinned as he took his seat beside him. “It’s good to see you.”

Leorn gave his usual closed-mouth smile.

“What’s this long story then?” Jórunn asked, in that familiar dry tone that sometimes made it sound as if she were being sarcastic even when she wasn’t. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

Leorn met Sanjir’s gaze across the table and Sanjir swallowed.

“It’s not even long,” he sighed. “Just—well. It's not good news. The Stormcloaks attacked Whiterun and won. Balgruuf has been exiled and one of Whiterun’s old noble clans has taken over the city.”

Jórunn and Raydrin were both wide-eyed and silent, their lips parted slightly in surprise. Eventually Raydrin’s frozen posture melted and he sank back against the wall with a muttered ‘vehk’. Jórunn found Sanjir’s shoulder from where she was sitting on his left and gave it a quick squeeze.

“So Leorn and I are here to enlist with the Legion,” he finished lamely. “That’s it, really.”

“You’re enlisting?” said Jórunn, sounding just the slightest bit surprised.

“I know, I know,” Sanjir sighed. He sank his cheek glumly into one palm. “I just couldn’t stay there in Whiterun after everything happened. Especially not with Vignar in charge. The city was razed to the ground. Ulfric has shown what he’s capable of and we decided that we couldn’t just stay there and wait for him to do it again somewhere else, you know?”

For the second time, he was met with silence—Raydrin was still staring at him. “When did this happen?” he asked eventually, clearing his throat. “I mean, how long after we, uh…”

Sanjir sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Gods, it feels so long ago now. Uh, a couple of days after you left, I think? Maybe three?”

“Fuck,” said Raydrin. He turned his gaze to the table and gave a shake of his head so slight Sanjir couldn’t be sure it wasn’t involuntary.

“What about the other Companions?” asked Jórunn. “I mean, was everyone, um. Okay?”

Sanjir caught the way Raydrin’s head lifted at that, the tip of his left ear twitching just slightly. His expression had darkened from one of generic sadness into something more specific. Before Sanjir could muster the strength to reply, Leorn had cleared his throat, entering himself quietly into the conversation.

“Athis was killed,” he murmured, rough and low. “Farkas, Skjor, and Torvar were away on contract. Everyone else survived.”

Something like relief washed over Raydrin’s face. Sanjir tried not to look at his grey skin and deep red eyes and remember the way Athis had looked in Njada’s arms, unrecognizable from where his skull had concaved in various places.

“I’m so sorry, guys,” said Jórunn. The words sounded a little hollow and unpractised, but Sanjir had come to know Jórunn well enough now over the course of their few meetings to know that she was a sincere person, even if sometimes uncomfortable talking about topics of particular emotional weight.

“Yes,” said Raydrin. “It must have been horrible. I’m sorry we weren’t there.”

Sanjir scoffed a humourless laugh. “Don’t be silly. The two of you have enough on your plate as it is. I’m sorry for coming over here and ruining your evening with such bad news.”

“There was nothing to ruin,” Raydrin snorted. “We’re here to meet someone and it isn’t for pleasure.”

Sanjir opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again as the full implications of Raydrin's words sank in. “Yes,” he eventually managed, blinking, “yes, yes, of course. Sorry. Er, we can leave, if you’d like?”

Raydrin waved a hand at him at the same time Jórunn squeezed his shoulder again, saying, “There’s no need for that. It… it’s good to know you’re both okay. And I’m glad we heard the news from you and not someone else.”

“Gods, this is so shit,” said Raydrin with a renewed sort of dejection. “Just thinking about it, this means we’ve lost our main source of income, Jórunn.”

Jórunn sighed. “Mm.”

“I mean, that’s not necessarily true,” said Sanjir. “Balgruuf and his court were also heading for Solitude. We weren’t travelling with them so I don’t know if they’re here already, but you could always try visiting the Blue Palace to see if he’s there.”

Leorn coughed. “Uh, I would perhaps wait a little while.”

It took Sanjir a moment to figure out what Leorn was referring to, and then he winced. “Shit, yes, of course,” he said. Jórunn and Raydrin both looked blank. “Er, Balgruuf lost his eldest son, in the battle,” he explained. “I imagine he won’t be in the mood for entertaining guests any time soon.”

Slowly Raydrin nodded. Jórunn leaned back in her seat with a despondent puff of air.

“It’s probably for the best,” said Raydrin after a short while. “We’re meant to be keeping a low profile while we’re here.”

“Ah, yes,” said Sanjir. “I’m guessing your little rendezvous tonight is secret too?”

“Unfortunately,” Raydrin replied. “And, uh, we’d appreciate it if you kept quiet about seeing us here. Tomorrow, when you enlist, I mean.”

Sanjir nodded. “Of course.”

“I still can’t believe you’re enlisting,” said Jórunn. She leaned to one side and rubbed her head affectionately against Sanjir’s shoulder, sighing when he wrapped one arm around her middle and squeezed her against him. “I’m going to miss you next time we pass through Whiterun.”

“I’m going to miss you too,” he said. “But honestly, I’d just avoid the city altogether. It won’t be what you remember. I doubt there’s much left for you there.”

Raydrin nodded grimly.

Their conversation was stilted and a little slow from there, each participant grasping loosely at whatever suitable topics presented themselves only for them to dry out a few sentences later. Sanjir would have been happy to talk about the battle some more—if only because gods, he needed to get it off his chest, to talk about it with someone who wasn’t there—but they politely abstained from asking, likely out of the sensitive assumption that Sanjir wouldn’t want to talk about it at all. And likewise, he desperately wanted to ask them what they were actually doing here, but it was clear that that topic was out-of-bounds for now. The people of Whiterun knew about the Dragonborn and her companion, and that wasn’t the case here.

So they talked about Solitude. About the weather, about innocuous anecdotes from their shared histories and all that had come before. Leorn was even more reticent than usual, and Jórunn and Raydrin radiated a feeling of exhaustion that Sanjir could now relate to. It occurred to him that this was likely their default state; their visits to Whiterun had always been respites, a time to relax and blow off steam. They had the atmosphere of Jorrvaskr and its company and its mead. But here, Sanjir had caught them in the middle of something; they were here for business, Raydrin had said. It was hard not to notice the way Raydrin would continually look over his shoulder to scan the room for signs of their liaison.

They were only halfway through their second round when it finally happened. One of Raydrin’s looks lingered for a little longer than the others, and Sanjir—trailing off part way through a story—automatically turned to follow his gaze to find that it landed on a small, wily-looking Wood Elf sitting alone on the other side of the tavern. The Wood Elf’s eyes narrowed at Sanjir, who quickly looked away, but in his periphery he could see that Raydrin—still looking at the other elf—raised one hand to beckon him over. Sanjir risked a glanced and saw that the Wood Elf had got to his feet.

“Sorry,” said Raydrin, filling the silence, “Jórunn, I think this might be our guy.”

The muscles in Jórunn’s jaw clenched, and Sanjir could see a swallow bob in her throat. “Okay,” she said hoarsely.

It felt like forever before the Wood Elf finally made it to their table. He had warm brown skin with faint undertones of green, and a thick head of gravity-defying, dark brown hair to match. His face was slender but his jaw and chin broad, his cheekbones high and prominent, his nose flat and wide. He fixed his amber eyes on Sanjir and then on each of the others in turn, his gaze furtive and suspicious. Raydrin cleared his throat.

“Uh, Elethir?”

“You were told to come alone,” said the Wood Elf with a slight sneer.

“We did,” said Raydrin. “These are just some friends we bumped into. They aren’t with us.”

“We can go—” Sanjir started, but the elf—Elethir—cut him off.

“How much do they know?”

“They don’t know anything,” said Raydrin, sounding agitated. “Seriously. And even if they did, we can trust them.”

“Let’s go, Leorn,” said Sanjir before Elethir could respond, already slinging his pack over one shoulder. Leorn nodded and started to get to his feet but then Elethir spoke again.

“No need,” he said, his voice harsh but low. “Keep the table. Linas and Antonia and I need to go somewhere private.”

Sanjir caught Raydrin’s gaze across the table, unable to mask his confusion, but Raydrin just stared back at him with a pleading sort of look in his eyes. Sorry, he mouthed.

“Okay,” said Sanjir, with a swallow and a nod. “We’ll, um. Let you get out.”

They got to their feet to clear the way for Jórunn and Raydrin, and Sanjir touched her shoulder, startling her slightly. “Come on,” he murmured. The pair of them followed, sliding awkwardly along the benches.

“This is probably it,” Jórunn said glumly once she was on her feet.

“Yes, I got the feeling that was the case,” Sanjir replied. He put his hands on her shoulders and let her pull him into a quick embrace. “Stay safe, alright?”

“We’ll be fine,” she said, pulling away. She found his cheek and patted it twice, her smile sad and her blank brown eyes hovering somewhere by his chin. “You too.”

Leorn had his neck craned and was murmuring something inaudibly into Raydrin’s ear, something too quiet for Sanjir to make out. Raydrin’s eyes widened slightly and he pulled away to look up at Leorn, then he nodded, saying ‘Thank you.’

He hugged Leorn and Sanjir in turn, bid farewell to them both, and then let Jórunn take his arm, leading her up the stairs behind Elethir. Too stunned to speak for several moments, Sanjir and Leorn just watched them go.

“Fuck,” Sanjir eventually muttered. He twisted his head to glance up at his friend, who returned the look a moment later with a shrug of his wide shoulders.

“They’ll be alright,” said Leorn softly. “Come on. We should eat. I’m starving.”

 

---

 

Jórunn and Raydrin were silent as Malborn led them through the winding hallways of the Winking Skeever towards wherever it was that he wanted to speak to them.

“This will be your room,” he said eventually, and beside her, Raydrin slowed to a stop. The latch of a door clicked somewhere over her shoulder. “If everything goes well, you’ll be able to come back here tomorrow night. But, well… we’ll see.”

Evidently Raydrin was at just as much of a loss for words as Jórunn, because neither of them responded. The room was so quiet that Jórunn could hear it when Raydrin eventually swallowed.

“Um, can I show Jórunn around?”

“Later,” said Malborn. “For now, I think it’s best if we just talk. Take a seat.”

“Fine,” said Raydrin. He nudged her with his elbow. “Bed or chair?”

Did it matter? Jórunn shrugged. “Bed.”

She was led a few paces further into the room and eased down onto the edge of what was probably the softest mattress she had ever felt in her life. Instinctively Jórunn bounced a couple of times, amazed by the give. After weeks of sleeping on the ground, she wasn’t sure whether her back would hate or thank her for this. The mattress dipped beside her as Raydrin took his seat.  

“I guess I should introduce myself properly,” said their guide. “My name is Malborn, which you probably already know. However, I think we should refer to each other by our aliases from now on to get used to hearing and responding to them. For the next twenty-four hours, you are Antonia Vitelli and Linas. I’ve got dossiers on you, which you should learn before tomorrow night. Alright?”

Again, silence. “Yes,” said Jórunn eventually. “Fine.”

“Who were you with downstairs?” asked Malborn.

Jórunn cleared her throat. “Friends,” she said. “From Whiterun.”

“Whiterun?” Malborn exclaimed. “Do they know?”

“That I’m Dragonborn?” said Jórunn. “Yes. But they don’t know what we’re doing here or anything about the Thalmor.”

“Then why would they be here? If they’re from Whiterun like you said—”

“They’re here to enlist,” she cut him off. “Whiterun was attacked by Stormcloaks a few days ago. So they left.”

For once, it seemed to be Malborn who was stunned into silence. “Sorry if you hadn’t heard,” she added quietly.

"You mean the Stormcloaks won?" he asked eventually.

Jórunn nodded.

“Fools,” Malborn muttered, his voice a low hiss. “Only Nords would be dumb enough to think they’d stand a chance against the Thalmor on their own. The Stormcloaks are going to get us all killed.”

Jórunn didn't reply.

"Yes, well," said Raydrin.

“Sorry," Malborn sighed. "And, er, you must forgive me for my suspicion earlier. Years of being an informant for Delphine will do that to you. You can never be too careful.”

“It’s fine,” said Jórunn tightly. “Let’s just get on with it.”

“Of course,” said Malborn. “We’ve got a busy day ahead. Lots to get through. Er, where to begin… I don’t know how much Delphine was able to tell you before you left, but you’ll be attending the party as Antonia and Linas. Antonia, you’re the daughter of a minor Nibenese lord with an estate in northern Cheydinhal. Because of your, ah…” he trailed off, and Jórunn had to bite back an annoyed sigh, “illness, you were sent to live with your aunt and uncle in Riften who are currently working as administrators for the East Empire Company. This party is your debut into high society. Linas, you are Antonia’s manservant and guide.”

Raydrin inhaled deeply at her side. A feeling of tightness was starting to take root in Jórunn’s chest; on the journey up, they’d been able to put off any thought of their destination, letting it remain abstract and distant. But now the reality of what they were about to do was looming inescapably before them.

“I’ve arranged all of the logistics,” Malborn went on. “The party starts at seven and a carriage will be waiting for you at the stables at six. I’m afraid I won’t be with you tomorrow; I’ll be expected to help with the preparations all day. So you’ll be on your own after tonight.”

“What does your job at the Embassy actually involve?” asked Raydrin.

“I’m part of the kitchen staff,” said Malborn. “Have been for years. I keep my position low so I can do my work for Delphine without drawing attention to myself.” He coughed. “At events like these, I tend to be out front serving guests. That’s where I’ll be tomorrow—I can help you get out of the party.

“But for tonight, at least, we're on details. The layout of the building, the party itinerary, the guard schedules and security weaknesses, et cetera. If they’ve got anything useful at all, it’ll be in Elenwen’s solar. So you need to know all your routes in and your routes out.”

“Elenwen?” said Jórunn.

“Y’ffre save us,” Malborn moaned. “Elenwen is Skyrim’s First Emissary. Only the Thalmor’s most influential figure in the province.”

“Sorry for not being an expert on minor foreign politicians,” Jórunn bit back.

“This is stuff you need to know,” Malborn insisted, exasperated. “But it’s fine. You’ve got time. I’ve compiled a list of everyone important and some basic ground details to know. Committing it to memory should be one of your tasks for tomorrow.”

“Anything else?” Raydrin muttered.

“Naturally,” said Malborn. “Pay a visit to the seamstresses at Radiant Raiment to get your clothes fitted. They’re expecting you first thing. Then I’ve prepared a guidebook about Imperial etiquette and the sorts of things you’d be expected to know. I’m hoping you can use your blindness as an excuse not to dance, but just in case, there are some dances you should at least know the names of. It’ll take a while to learn everything, I’m sure.”

“I can help out with that sort of thing," said Raydrin. "We’ve already been covering a lot of etiquette on our way up.”

“No offense,” Malborn replied, in a tone that said quite the opposite, “but I’m not sure a Dunmer is going to be the best source of knowledge on this front.”

“My father was on Morrowind’s Grand Council,” said Raydrin. To his credit, he sounded a lot less defensive than Jórunn would have been in his position. “I’ve liaised with enough Imperial and Thalmor diplomats to know how these things work.”

That seemed to shut Malborn up, if only temporarily. “Well then," he said at last. "Don’t let me step on your toes.”

“Anyway...” said Jórunn.

“Indeed. So we’ll need to work out what you want to take in with you. I can smuggle in a few things. Nothing too large, but enough to keep you protected in case things go wrong. Everything else you’ll have to leave at a drop-off point in case it’s not safe for you to come back here. We can go over the back-up plan in more detail later.”

“We should just make a start,” said Raydrin. “Not much point sitting around and talking about it.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Malborn agreed. “There are some floor plans in that desk over there. Start laying them out, and I’ll grab us something to drink.”

Notes:

thanks for reading!! not much to say about this chapter, but i hope you enjoyed it. i'm sooo excited for the next one >:)

big thank you to my beta readers haley and diana for all of their help, advice and support <3

Chapter 26: Diplomatic Immunity (Part I)

Notes:

This was meant to be just one chapter, but, as always, everything took way longer than I anticipated it taking. :( So I thought I would post on time and give you two fairly long chapters instead of making you wait another two weeks for one unreadable monster of a chapter.

As a result, this is kind of filler-y, but hopefully it's the good kind of filler? In any case, enjoy! :^)

Solitude, Skyrim, 9th Evening Star

Jórunn awoke to the soft, sinking reminder that she was in a bed far too fancy for someone like her, and that the dull ache in the small of her back—creeping with growing precision up the knobs of her spine—meant tonight was the night they were probably going to die.

“You’re awake,” came a voice from her left, rough with sleep. Jórunn turned her head a fraction or two towards its source, the ridge of her cheekbone brushing against a silken pillowcase.  

“Were you watching me sleep?” she mumbled.

“No,” said Raydrin. She heard the rustling of sheets as he shifted around, then a sigh. “I just heard you waking up.”

Jórunn hummed. She withdrew one arm from under the protective warmth of the goose-feather duvet and let her hand trail over the embroidered accents along the edge of the sheet. This was the first time since leaving Cyrodiil that she’d slept under something other than a pile of animal furs or her sleeping roll. It was strange to think that, despite the similarities, Solitude was also the furthest away she'd ever been.

“Does your back hurt?” she asked after a short while.

Raydrin grunted. “Like a bitch.”

“I’d have thought you’d be used to soft mattresses, Serjo.”

“A few months ago, yes," he conceded. "I've since adjusted.”

Jórunn said nothing in return. They were silent for a few moments before a warm hand lightly grazed the skin of her shoulder. “Come on,” Raydrin murmured. “We should get up. The sun is starting to rise. We’ll be expected at the seamstresses’ soon.”

Jórunn nodded, holding back her sigh as the mattress dipped beside her and Raydrin’s quiet footsteps padded across the floorboards towards the adjoined washroom. When the door had fallen shut behind him, Jórunn rubbed the sleep from her eyes, threw the duvet aside, and took a moment to brace herself before getting to her feet. The pair of them went about their separate routines and set off into the snow for the seamstresses’.

The fitting had been booked under Linas’ name, under the presumption that the proprietors—two allegedly snooty Altmer sisters by the names of Taarie and Endarie—would be nosy enough to ask questions. ‘Linas’ had ordered the clothes in advance on his mistress’s behalf, made to rough measurements but to be tailored on the day of the event. Malborn, to Raydrin’s gratitude, had footed the bill. Whether the money was made legitimately or otherwise, he didn’t care.

Taarie and Endarie were about as haughty as anticipated, but the difference between their treatment towards Jórunn and Raydrin was almost laughable. It was something Raydrin had always been aware of—and attempted to fight back against, albeit inadequately, whenever he could—but he had never experienced it from this side before. Where Jórunn was fawned and fussed over, referred to as ‘madam’ and ‘milady’ and offered the specific kind of artificial reverence that Raydrin used to despise, he was largely ignored, spoken over and down towards as if he weren’t there. He wasn’t sure who had it worse. Jórunn looked about as uncomfortable under their needles and their hands and their barbed compliments as he ought to have felt.

“You do have such a lovely figure, milady,” said one of them—Taarie, Raydrin remembered—as she worked on bringing in the fabric around Jórunn’s waist. “So tall for a Cyrod… and it’s not often that humans of your, ah, stature, are graced with such delicate frames.”

Raydrin had to bite his tongue at that. Jórunn had put on a healthy amount of fat and muscle since they started travelling together, but she was still slender, and that was down to little more than a childhood of neglect and malnutrition. To hear these shallow women pass that off as some natural kind of beauty, to be desired and sought after, made him mad in a way he couldn’t articulate.

“Thank you,” said Jórunn, her voice tight. Raydrin couldn’t see her face, but her stiff posture was enough to tell him that she was deeply out of her comfort zone.

“And such a shame,” continued Taarie, “to have bone structure like yours and be completely unable to see it… you must have been called beautiful many times, yes?”

“A few,” said Jórunn. “It… means very little to me.”

“Of course."

Taarie's sister Endarie was nowhere to be seen—off making the final adjustments to Raydrin’s smart but simple serving apparel, he supposed. “Well," Taarie went on, "with a face like yours, it shan’t be long before some dashing aristocrat sweeps you up. Especially in one of our dresses. Ah, perhaps tonight will be your lucky night!”

Jórunn bristled visibily at that. Taarie wasn’t wrong; the dress was beautiful, and its wearer even more so. It was simple but elegant, a deep, wine purple, with a low, off-the-shoulder neckline and long sleeves that split apart at the elbow to reveal olive-green undersleeves before cascading down and disappearing into Jórunn’s skirts. The bodice was divided down the front, held together tightly by four simple golden clasps. The split came to a stop behind an ornate, metal plate-girdle that sat at the narrowest part of Jórunn’s waist.

She looked startlingly beautiful in it, with the deep, rich colours of the dress contrasting prettily against the cool, pale tones of her skin. But it was still somehow wrong. Raydrin had no idea whether she’d been one to wear dresses before coming to Skyrim, but the circumstances of this particular dress made it feel cruel to admire her wearing it, as if it didn’t represent everything about Jórunn’s life that she had been forced into against her will.

“Oh, don’t encourage her, Taarie,” announced Endarie, marching back into the room with a large box in her arms. “You don’t want to end up marrying some brute of a Nord who calls himself noble. You’d be better off waiting until you return to Cheydinhal. At least Nibeneans have the decency to pretend to be sophisticated.”

“Endarie!” exclaimed Taarie in mortification. Endarie just scoffed and dumped the box on the countertop, beginning to rifle through a sheaf of documents. “Please, milady, you’ll have to forgive my sister. She often forgets herself.”

Jórunn said nothing on the matter.

When at last the ordeal was over—when they’d both been prodded and poked to the sisters’ satisfaction—they were sent on their way with two boxes of clothing and one final remark about how Jórunn ought to pluck her eyebrows.

“Are you alright?” asked Raydrin as they trudged through the snow back to their inn. Solitude was thrumming with all the energy of a city waking up; temple bells tolled quietly in the distance, snow crunched underfoot, and snippets of morning conversation in a variety of languages drifted by on the breeze. If it weren’t for the bitter chill in the air, Jórunn could almost have believed she was somewhere in the Imperial City.

She sighed and gave Raydrin's arm a squeeze. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry they were so patronising to you,” he said. “I, um… I know today is going to be rough. But it’ll be over soon.”

Jórunn couldn’t help the bark of a laugh that escaped her at that. “Ha,” she said. “Yes. One way or another.”

Raydrin didn’t reply. The resulting silence was grim.

They grabbed a quick breakfast on their way through the bar of the Winking Skeever—Raydrin confirmed that Sanjir and Leorn were nowhere to be seen, to Jórunn’s disappointment—and then headed upstairs to their room. The bed had been made in their absence and the fire was lit. Raydrin whistled.

“You don’t get service like that elsewhere in Skyrim,” he said, leading her through the still-unfamiliar room to the table. They took their seats and went over their cover stories as they ate.

The whole morning was spent like that, poring over documents and dossiers and playing games to test each other’s memories like they were preparing for an exam. Jórunn got the feeling Raydrin was doing his best to extract some fun from the exercise, but he may as well have been drawing blood from a stone. The stakes were too high, the names and places they were expected to remember too numerous to forget why exactly it was they were doing this. Jarls, thanes, generals, ambassadors… the guest list was long and intimidating. As Raydrin put it, they had eight hours to train Jórunn in what she was pretending to have done her whole life. Eight hours to transform Antonia Vitelli into a living, breathing person.

After lunch—and after Raydrin had gone on a quick excursion to dump all of their belongings at Malborn’s designated drop-off, giving Jórunn a break for an hour in which she paced up and down their room and did her best not to throw up—they went over etiquette. Which cutlery to use, when to use it, how to use it. Silly little rules Jórunn had never heard of, like ‘don’t hold one’s food higher than one’s mouth’. It was tricky, Malborn had explained, trying to work out exactly what was expected of guests at these sorts of multicultural events; whether the presiding etiquette would be Altmeri or Nordic or Cyrodiilic or some mixture of the three. But Jórunn would be expected to know the common basics, and enough of them to pass herself off as someone who’d grown up in Imperial high society.

“How much do you know about wines?” asked Raydrin.

“What, like ‘never ask for moscato with your main’?”

“More like…” Raydrin paused, and there was some rustling of paper as he read. “‘West Weald goes with salmon.’ Apparently.”

Jórunn snorted. “I know enough. At these sorts of things you can just ask for the chef’s recommendation if you’re unsure.”

“Good enough for me,” he said. “Just make sure it isn’t Malborn you’re asking.”

They’d developed a ‘wine code’ with Malborn so that they could communicate during the party without arousing suspicion. If he recommended the Diren Valley aminyon, it meant that all was going well, to continue as planned. The Kvatch cannonau meant that Malborn was suspicious and that they should stand by until further notice. Collequiva meant, you’ve been caught—cease all operations immediately.

Raydrin sighed deeply. What came next was a mutter, an afterthought: “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Jórunn folded her arms across the table and used them as a cushion for her chin. “Yeah,” she said glumly. “Delphine’s a liar. This is so much worse than fighting a dragon.”

His responding laugh was weak. “Alright. Next is posture and elocution.”

“Elocution?”

“Like accent, articulation—”

“I know what elocution is,” Jórunn cut him off. “We can skip it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve spent enough time in the Imperial City to be able to mimic a basin accent,” she said with a huff. It was half-true; the reality was more specific, that enough of her clients were from the noble classes for her to have picked up on their diction and parlance, that she used to sit in the break-rooms with the other brothel workers and mock them for it. But that didn’t need to be said. “‘Never ask for moscato with your main,’” she demonstrated. “‘West Weald pairs delightfully with the salmon.’ See?”

Raydrin whistled. “You sound just like my old Cyrodilic tutor. Why’s it called a basin accent?”

“Basin as in Nibenay Basin,” she said. “The aristocracy are either from there or they learn how to sound as if they’re from there. Antonia is definitely from there.”

“Well, I suppose all that’s left then is posture,” he said. “Come on, up.”

It was a ridiculous exercise; Raydrin had her march up and down the room, telling her to arch her spine, pull her shoulder blades together, hold her stomach in, trying not to laugh all the while. He taught her how to curtsy properly and when, how to dance the stetta. It was one of the few times Jórunn felt really, truly conscious of his background; Raydrin made it so easy to forget sometimes, but this used to be his whole life. She could see now why he’d been so eager to escape it. It didn’t suit him at all.

At last, the time came to start getting ready. Malborn had left a variety of lotions and potions for them to use, along with strict instructions for Raydrin to shave. A small box of makeup had been left out for Jórunn; rouge, kohl, paint for the lips.

“Do you need help applying it?” asked Raydrin.

“I can do my own makeup, Raydrin,” she said, holding her hand out for the box. It was placed into her palm a few seconds later. “This isn’t the first fancy party I’ve been to.”

“It isn’t?”

The ‘but I thought you were poor’ was left hanging in the air. Jórunn didn’t want to tell him the exact nature of her role at those parties, so she lied. “The Imperial City is just cosmopolitan,” she said. “It isn’t like Morrowind. It’s not taboo for different social classes to mix.”

“Alright,” said Raydrin. “Well, er—just call if you need anything.”

“I will.”

She was left to her own devices in the bedroom while Raydrin slipped off to the washroom to make use of the mirror. When the door was shut behind him, he slumped against it, sighing deeply and taking a moment to collect himself. The day had almost been fun, but now, with just one or two hours left before they would have to begin making their way down to the stables, it was difficult for Raydrin to pretend he wasn’t absolutely terrified.

He slunk over to the mirror, laying the shaving equipment out beside the wash basin on the counter. The sun having long since set, his reflection was lit harshly by candlelight, a flickering orange that made the distinct planes of his face appear ghoulish. Raydrin didn’t want to shave. Shaving was something he did before. The beard enabled him to draw a line between then and now, between his half-hearted and apathetic efforts to conform and his new-found freedom to simply exist.

But a beard like his was not considered proper in the Niben, and thus it had to go. At least, if anything went wrong, it would be one less feature the Thalmor could use to identify him.

He removed his shirt and splashed his face, then lathered Malborn’s provided shaving soap over his cheeks and jaw. The motions were familiar and came back to him as if he’d never stopped. When the beard was gone and he’d treated his bare skin with alum, he combed his hair with a sort of scented oil, teasing it into something resembling order.

He looked… different. Raydrin stared at himself curiously, pushing and pulling at the skin around his eyes and his cheeks, checking his jaw for any missed patches. It took him a while to realize what it was; he looked healthier than the last time he’d seen his naked face. The bags around his eyes had gone, his cheeks were fuller. And with his hair combed back and tamed the way that it was, something else occurred to him then.

He looked like Mathyas.

It wasn’t a startling realisation; they’d often been mistaken for brothers, Cassathra being seen as more the ‘odd one out’ of the three and for good reason. His face was perhaps a little broader than Mathyas’, his features not quite so smooth or palatable, his cheekbones a little rounder and more prominent. But they had the same eyes, the same lips. Their proportions were similar, each of their features sitting in the same sort of position in their faces.

Raydrin wondered to himself for the first time since yesterday whether Mathyas was still alive.

“Raydrin?” came Jórunn’s voice from the other side of the door, accompanied by a knock. “I think I’m done. Could you look to see if it’s alright?”

“Yeah,” he called back absently, having to pull his gaze away from his reflection. “Just a second.”

He tugged his undershirt back over his head and moved to open the door, finding Jórunn on the other side wearing her shift. She’d styled her hair, the bulk of it still loose but with several elaborate braids running from her hairline round to the back. And she’d done her makeup. Regarding the latter, Raydrin was at a slight loss for words.

“Hello?” she said, looking expectant. “Is it smudged or something?”

He wasn’t sure how to say this. “No, er… it’s very neat.”

Jórunn clearly picked up on the unsaid ‘but’ that followed, because her face fell a little. “It’s too much, isn’t it?” she asked. Then she scoffed to herself. “I look like a prostitute.”

Raydrin frowned—what an odd thing to say. But she wasn’t… well, wrong. “It’s just a little heavier than I think they’ll be expecting,” he said gently. “But you do look nice, Jórunn.”

“Whatever,” she muttered, taking a few moments to find her chair again and then sinking down onto it despondently. The makeup was laid out on the table in front of her, each product lined up in what he expected was a very particular order. “Just get me a towel. I’ll start again.”

Raydrin did as asked without a word, wanting to avoid saying anything that might patronise her. She would ask for help if she needed it. And when she eventually did, he obliged, sitting on the chair opposite and taking her chin gently into his hand. He tried to remember all that he’d learned from doing this with Anya many years ago, and then Cassathra, back when she was in her early teens.

It felt different with Jórunn, of course, but proximity between them was something that had long since lost its usual connotations. Raydrin knew full well that he wanted more, that he’d give her more if she asked for it, but when they already slept beside each other every night and when Jórunn spent most of her time holding onto his bicep, physical contact—especially like this, functional, necessary—was something he had learned to just… well.

It didn’t mean anything.

When her makeup was done—just a very light dusting of rouge on her cheeks and a thin lining of kohl around the eyes—they dressed in a tense silence, lacing bodices and buttoning sleeves.

“Are you ready?” he finally asked, stopping to face her in the doorway. They both smelled far more pleasant than either of them had in a long while. Jórunn responded with just the slightest shake of her head, her golden earrings swinging by the cut of her jaw. 

“I’m not sure I can do this,” she murmured. Her eyes were shining under a wet film. Raydrin took her shoulders in his hands, his fingers sinking into the thick furs.  

“You don’t have to,” he said. “There’s still time. If you want to… back out. It’s not too late.”

She shook her head with more vigour, her expression sinking. “Raydrin—”

“I’m serious,” he cut her off. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“You know that’s not true,” she whispered. Her hand found his cheek, her fingers dry and cool against his now-smooth skin. Raydrin swallowed. “It’s not up to us. Not anymore.”

The breath that escaped him was shaky and unsure, fluttering like the beat of his heart against his ribs. “Okay,” he said after a long while. Jórunn smiled sadly. “I guess this is one of those things where we just lie and tell ourselves it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” said Jórunn. “But if we aren’t… I just—”

She patted his cheek and then drew her hand away. “Thank you,” she sighed. “For being with me these past few months. I’m not sure we accomplished much, but we tried.”

Raydrin laughed despite himself. “That we did,” he said. “Thanks for having me along.”

They embraced quickly and then left the safety and comfort of their room, making their way downstairs and into the snowy outdoors. If they were lucky, and if everything went well, they’d be returning to that room before sun-up.

But Raydrin knew better.

 

---

 

The Thalmor Embassy stood by itself against the backdrop of the Kilkreath Mountains, a vast range that spanned the whole of the province’s north-western border. Isolated and proud, yet nestled within a thicket of pine, it sat high enough to afford its inhabitants a sprawling view over Haafingar but low enough that it enjoyed the shelter of the tree line. The position was fitting for a centre of colonial administration; it loomed over Skyrim’s capital and carved a place for itself there in those mountains like a usurping monarch laying claim to their throne.

The skies were black when their carriage pulled up to the embassy’s gates, but the building itself seemed to glow under the warm light of its windows. It was tall, wide, square and stately, with steep, sloping roofs and an abundance of spires that gave it away as Altmeri despite the dark Nordic stone that had been used in its making.

Raydrin dropped from the door of their carriage and landed with a crunch in the snow below. His breath came out in visible puffs. He turned back to the coach and held out his arms, saying, “Your hands, milady.”

Jórunn emerged from the shadows, her face pale, cheeks rosy, and expression hesitant. She extended her gloved hands—looking every part the Cyrodiilic noblewoman—and was guided carefully down the steps of the carriage.

“Thank you,” she said quietly once she was beside him, her hand curling around his arm. Their coach was quickly led away by an usher to make way for the next one in the convoy, and as their horses trotted off behind them, they headed through the lychgate that led into the main courtyard of the complex.

“Welcome to the Thalmor Embassy,” said one of the two guards on duty. Raydrin and Jórunn both said nothing in return.

When they were out of earshot of the guards but still far enough away from the queue gathering up ahead, Jórunn leaned in close and murmured, “Just so you know, the way you say ‘milady’ sounds really sarcastic.”

Her breath was hot against his chilled skin.

“I’m actively trying not to be,” Raydrin muttered back.

“Then try harder.”

They fell in line with the back of the queue, Jórunn’s grip around his arm almost tight enough to bruise. Low chatter and the occasional lilt of music drifted by on the bitter wind. Raydrin and Jórunn kept to themselves, unwilling—or unable—to attempt to mingle with those around them. By the time they reached the front of the queue, Raydrin’s cheeks were burning and his fingers and toes felt like lead.

“Sir,” the guard nodded, “madam. May I please see your invitations?” His golden face looked almost skeletal in the light of the braziers.

“The invitation is mine,” said Jórunn, slipping into a ‘basin’ accent halfway. Her voice was tight as Raydrin reached into the pocket of his cloak and drew out the roll of paper. “I’m blind. Linas here is my guide.”

The Altmer snatched the invitation from Raydrin’s outstretched hand and stared at it for several dense seconds. When eventually he looked up, his gaze was narrowed, raking over them swiftly one after the other. Something like suspicion lingered in his expression, but Raydrin could easily have been imagining it. The muscles in the Altmer’s face looked like they’d been sculpted into indifference, carefully veiling whatever was going on underneath.

“Welcome to the Thalmor Embassy, baronessa,” he said at last, his tone clipped despite the outward politeness of his words. “At the door, you will be searched by my colleague—please do not be alarmed. It’s a routine security check to ensure the safety of all our guests.”

Raydrin’s heart didn’t cease its relentless pace, but they traversed the final hurdle without issue. The guard at the door made them lift their arms so she could pat down their sides, and another came along to relieve them of their furs, cloaks and gloves. Then they were welcomed into the golden warmth of the building’s interior.

At last, they had made it inside the Thalmor Embassy.

The reception hall was gargantuan—at least as large as the throne room of Dragonsreach, if not slightly larger. Three storeys high, with thick columns of marble and ceilings of vaulted fresco, it was designed to inspire, to impress, to intimidate. The walls were hewn from a pale grey stone—made warm by the light of braziers—and carved into complicated bas-reliefs of arches and floral vignettes. Polished marble tiles glittered beneath the soles of expensive shoes. Large pots of a pretty pink tree splashed colour into the broad swathes of ivory and gold. In the far wall, a colossal hearth crackled and spat, casting long, dark shadows between the throng of guests.

There were numerous guards present, posted at even intervals around the edge of the hall. They flanked doorways and staircases and looked down from balconies. Clad from head to toe in those green-black robes, they stood out like eels in a pond of white koi fish. Their imagined stares made Raydrin’s skin prickle.

He led Jórunn deeper into the hall and stopped inconspicuously by the shelter of a plant.

“Alright,” he exhaled, “first hurdle jumped.”

The room was loud enough for their conversation to be drowned out, inaudible to anyone not standing in their immediate vicinity. The guests were overwhelmingly Nords, which seemed incongruent with the delicateness of the décor, but beneath the obnoxious buzz of Nordic conversation crooned a quiet, gentle song. It lulled and swayed, seeping comfortably into the cracks between conversations. The band—equipped with drums, flutes, lutes and lyres—had been given centre-stage, placed on a large dais against the back wall. The musicians themselves were varied and diverse; Raydrin wondered absently if they were from the Bards College.

Jórunn snorted. “Not much of a hurdle,” she said. “What happens now?”

“It looks like it’s just finger food and mingling until more guests have arrived.”

Jórunn nodded. “How many are there?”

“Can’t you use Aura Whisper?”

“With all these people?” she said sceptically. “I may as well Shout whatever the Dovahzul is for create-instant-headache.”

Raydrin huffed a soft laugh. “Fair enough. In that case, ah... I’d say it currently looks about half full.”

“I suppose I’ll have to do most of the mingling,” Jórunn grumbled.

“Unfortunately,” said Raydrin. “But you’re a good conversationalist, Jórunn. Try not to overthink it. And if you get stuck, you can always just ask questions and let whoever you’re talking to ramble on about themselves.”

Jórunn squeezed his arm. “Just like talking to you, then.”

Raydrin blinked. “Wow. That was mean.”

“It was. Sorry.” She frowned and shook her head as if to dispel some negative thought. “I’m just nervous.”

“Shit, I think I see Malborn.” Jórunn’s grip on his arm tightened. “He’s heading over to us.”

The Bosmer was far better at behaving naturally than they were, Raydrin realised. With a tray of drinks in one hand, balanced with all the precision and skill of someone who’d been doing this for years, he slipped easily between each cluster of guests, attending to them dutifully before moving on to the next in a way that seemed to Raydrin not unlike a bee drifting between the flowers of a horn lily. His route towards them was indirect but deliberate—or at least it appeared that way to Raydrin. He and Jórunn barely spoke in the time it took for him to reach them.

“Sir, madam,” Malborn said, his expression impressively blank, “may I interest either of you in some wine?”

Jórunn cleared her throat, but her voice still cracked when she spoke. “What do you have available?”

“If you’re partial to a dry white, the Diren Valley aminyon is quite lovely.”

Raydrin released the breath he’d unwittingly been holding. It was ridiculous, really; they’d barely been here five minutes and he was already relieved that nothing had gone wrong.

“On second thought, I’m not sure I’m particularly thirsty,” said Jórunn. She nudged Raydrin’s side with her elbow. “Linas?”

He swallowed. “I’m content, milady.”

“Then no, thank you.”

Malborn bowed his head. “Of course. Please, enjoy your evening.”

He was gone without a second look.

“Fuck,” muttered Jórunn. “I feel like I’m about to throw up.”

“Blame it on a delicate constitution,” said Raydrin. “Come on. We should start mingling. Just don’t say ‘fuck’ and you’ll be fine.”

She keened a low whining sound under her breath, making Raydrin’s heart twist in sympathy. He pressed the side of his shoulder against hers and murmured, “I’ll be with you the whole time. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jórunn’s lips were pressed into a thin line, and for several seconds she was silent. But then she drew in a deep, ragged breath and gave a single nod. They set off into the crowd.

It didn’t take long for more guests to start dripping in, slowly but steadily filling the hall and hiking up the volume as they did. Clearly looking a bit lost, Raydrin and Jórunn were soon sequestered by a well-dressed elderly couple who introduced themselves as the Jarl of Hjaalmarch and her husband. It seemed they were feeling similarly out of place; the Jarl was an absent sort of woman, her conversation stilted and mercurial, and her husband—though slightly more present—was stiff and reserved, his gaze continually wandering off to scrutinise the surrounding company in a judgemental sort of fashion.

Jórunn came off polite and intelligent, albeit shy; she reminded Raydrin of the Jórunn they’d first met in Helgen, deftly manipulating the conversation to avoid any discussion of herself. Caught in a near constant rotation of conversation partners—the Court Wizard of Hjaalmarch, the austere daughter of the Jarl, a brash thane from Solitude, and a dull Thalmor jurisreeve from Markarth who bored them with procedural anecdotes—Jórunn asked questions and nodded whilst keeping her own answers short and to the point. It was only during talk of the war that she struggled; she shut her mouth and let the men and women around her rattle off their opinions.

This went on for about half an hour. The bards reached the end of their song and did not start up again, and then, at the side of the dais, one of the Thalmor guards hit a large gong, which rang out discordantly over the thrum of idle chatter. Slowly the conversation dissipated, thinning out into an eventual silence. The guests turned to face the dais, where an Altmer speaker had taken position before the musicians.

For several long seconds, she simply swept her gaze over the crowd. Her golden eyes were sharp and calculating. When she was sure she had everyone’s rapt attention, she cleared her throat.

Raydrin didn’t need to have seen her before to know she was Elenwen.

“Honoured guests,” she said. Her voice was as sharp as her eyes—low, slow and smooth—and she lingered on her vowels but stressed her consonants with a precision that could only be acquired from years of elocution training. “It is with great pleasure that I welcome you all to our embassy. For many of you, I know, the journey has been long and arduous—we are most grateful that you have made the effort to be here. I hope that, on this bitter winter’s eve, you find relief in the warmth of our fire, the taste of good wine, and the company of friends.”

She was a beautiful woman, in the way that Altmer often were—by design. The angle of her eyes, the sharpness of her browbone, the cut of her cheeks and the point of her jaw, they all hinted towards generations of selective breeding. She was clad in a stiff, form-fitting black dress, with long sleeves and a high collar, and her waist was cinched by a solid gold corset that matched the golden rings around her neck and her arms.

“Saturalia is a time for sharing and generosity,” she went on, “and it is for this reason that we have done our utmost to provide you with a taste of the splendour of our beloved Alinor. To begin with, I invite you to join us in a traditional Altmeri banquet, complete with entertainment provided by some of the most talented artists your great land has to offer. If you please, I would ask that you begin making your way over to the dining area to take your seats. Your dinner awaits.”

She ended the welcome with a bow and climbed down gracefully from the dais, amid low murmurings of approval as the guests began to follow her instructions. Raydrin glanced over at Jórunn—taking in her pallid complexion and the stiff muscles of her face—and nudged her side, allowing her to take his arm once again. They made their way over to the tables in silence.

Unlike the long banquet tables that would be present at traditional Nordic celebrations, the Altmer arranged themselves into a slightly more sporadic formation, with numerous smaller tables around which ornate, organically-shaped wooden chairs had been positioned facing the dais. The table closest to the front was slightly larger, its seats occupied by Elenwen, a couple of other Thalmor officials, and a group of Nords Raydrin thought might be Jarl Elisif and her court. Raydrin and Jórunn chose a table close to the back. They were joined by a merchant from the East Empire Company and a few legates from the Imperial Legion.  

The dinner was a tedious affair; a ceaseless drone of political debate, invasive questions directed at Jórunn which she was forced to answer amicably, and the occasional attempt at flirtation from Legate Taurinus Duilis, who Raydrin had decided he really didn’t like. He sat back in his seat and ground his jaw, pretending to watch the performances while he went over their plan in his head. Musicians, dancers, acrobats, poets… in any other circumstances Raydrin would have been rapt, but tonight it felt like he was being mocked. The food was the nicest he’d eaten since leaving home and yet it tasted like chalk on his tongue.

He wanted badly to support Jórunn, to back her up in the debates, to tell Taurinus to fuck off because he was making her uncomfortable—couldn’t he see that?—and to reassure her that she was doing just fine at handling herself, that she didn’t need to be so nervous. But as her servant, it wasn’t his place. Her hand sought his under the table, brushing against his thigh, and his heart broke. Raydrin hated that she was being put through this. Hated it. Hated, hated, hated it.  

When the dessert plates had been scraped clean and the wine was flowing, the final act—a harp soloist—finished her piece and was followed onto the dais by a broad, portly Altmer with reddish hair and reddish cheeks to match. He stood at the young soloist’s side as the audience sounded their drunken applause and clapped a hand proudly to her shoulder, encouraging her to bow. Elenwen was quick to join them, smiling thinly, and gradually the applause began to die down. Silence fell.

“What a performance,” she drawled in that deep, honeyed voice. “I, on behalf of all of my guests and associates here at the Thalmor Embassy, would like to express my deepest gratitude to Master Viarmo and his colleagues at the Bards College for their tireless work in putting together such a marvellous programme.”

Another round of applause, another bow. Viarmo and the harpist then swiftly ducked away. Elenwen had the dais to herself—the shift in atmosphere was immediate.

For just one woman, the space she commanded was immense. Raydrin could easily imagine her on a battlefield instead of a stage, calling out orders to lines of troops, a breastplate in place of her golden corset, glinting red under the setting sun. He wondered if she’d been at Red Ring. The thought made something curdle in his stomach.

“While I have your attention,” she began, “—and while we digest our dinners—I would like to share some news of the Thalmor’s successes this past year, both here in Skyrim and from elsewhere in the Empire and Dominion.” She paused for several moments, letting her audience settle in for the speech. Raydrin thought it odd to listen to such mundanities in a voice like hers; it felt out of place, somehow.

“However, before I continue, I would first like to apologise on behalf of Emperor Titus Mede for his absence. Due to rising political tensions and the growing frequency of dragon attacks here in Skyrim, it was deemed unsafe for the illustrious emperor to travel, and thus, it was with great regret that his trip had to be postponed. He asked me to express his deepest apologies and to pass on his regards, and he wishes you all, ‘a very happy Saturalia and a bountiful start to the new year’.

“Now, the third century of the Fourth Era has continued to get off to a miraculous start, in particular with regards to magical and scientific advancements…”

Raydrin tuned out, uninterested and unable to concentrate for long enough to follow along. He focused instead on the feeling of Jórunn’s sweaty palm in his own, tucked away beneath the table. Clammy as it was, he found the experience grounding; it was a reminder that they were in this together, in the absence of any opportunity to speak to her as he normally would.

With the banquet over, it wouldn’t be long now before the time came to put things in motion. After the speech came the dances, and it would be during this dancing that Raydrin would ‘accidentally’ spill wine on Jórunn’s skirts, enabling Malborn to inconspicuously lead them away to the kitchens. From there on out, they’d be on their own. Maybe a quick prayer thrown up to the Reclamations wouldn’t hurt. But divine intervention or no, there were just two ways this night could end; either they made it out of there—with or without Delphine’s evidence—or they spent the rest of their lives in some Thalmor torture dungeon.

The thought of the latter was enough to bring the taste of bile to his mouth.

Elenwen was rattling through a list of minor accomplishments—she talked so smugly about the setting up of orphanages and schools, about efforts to tackle the illegal slave trade into Morrowind as if a few acts of charity justified all the persecution and the surveillance and the military suppression—and then came the presenting of medals; mostly to legion officers, though there were a few scholars in there too.

Then came talk of the war.

“It brings me… great sadness, to have to end this speech on a low note,” Elenwen said carefully. “But as I am sure many of you are aware, these celebrations come in the wake of a great loss—the loss of our beautiful Whiterun.”

Jórunn’s grip tightened around Raydrin’s palm.

“The Stormcloaks have played their hand,” Elenwen continued with a new edge to her tone. “They have shown what they are capable of, when they strike from the dark, as cowards do.”

Her gaze hardened.

“But I can assure you that, in the midst of this chaos… as the men and women of Skyrim turn on their kin… the Thalmor are doing everything in their power to ensure that such devastation never again occurs on Imperial soil.”

A resounding hear hear bubbled up from the crowd.

“Already have our troops been deployed to provide vital support where it is needed the most,” she continued. “We are in the process of initiating counter aggressive manoeuvres to put ourselves in the best possible position to strike back. Ulfric Stormcloak will not be allowed to take the Empire for fools.” At that, she was met with decidedly enthusiastic applause. Elenwen let it simmer for several moments, a pinched sort of expression playing on her lips.

“These are dark times, my friends,” she went on, once the silence had resumed. “Dark times, that the race of Men is reduced to infighting and savagery in the pursuit of fleeting power. Make no mistake; the Stormcloaks desire just one thing, and one thing only. They seek to usurp the fragile peace that the people of Tamriel have spent so long trying to build. In the aftermath of such a devastating war, they wish to undo all that we have worked for. To perpetuate an endless cycle of violence.

“But,” she said, “I can assure you, loyal citizens of Skyrim, that the Thalmor will not let that happen.”

She paused, gazing out over her audience. A dazed sort of silence had settled over the crowd. “Never again will Imperial blood be spilled by these agents of chaos,” she said, her voice echoing harshly over the quiet crackling of the fire. “Never again shall Ulfric Stormcloak be given the upper hand. For as long as we live and breathe, I promise you, the Thalmor will fight to restore order, and we shall fight to restore your land to its former greatness. It is through cooperation that we thrive, and for as long as the Empire and the Dominion work together, we shall fight to bring justice to the people of Tamriel, and to spread our great civilisation to all corners of Nirn, so that all may share in our peace and prosperity.”

A serving girl passed the front of the dais, carrying a tray upon which was balanced a single goblet of wine. Elenwen bent down to take it from her and then held it up high.

“So I invite you all to join me,” she said, “in a toast, to conclude my speech. A toast to the Empire—”

The guests raised their goblets, murmuring a collective but out-of-sync ‘hear hear’.

“—to the Dominion—”

Again, but with slightly less enthusiasm; “hear hear.”

“—and to the great country of Skyrim, and all it has the potential to become.”

“Hear hear!”

The crowd broke out into applause, and Jórunn withdrew her hand from his so that she could clap. Raydrin joined in with reluctance, not wanting to draw any more attention to themselves than necessary. Outwardly Jórunn looked simply indifferent—at worst, bored—but Raydrin recognized the way her upper lip had just the faintest curl to it, like she was fighting against the urge to scowl.

“Now please,” Elenwen finished, “let us forget this talk of war, and let the dancing commence. And I personally wish you all a truly wonderful Saturalia.”

At last, the speech was over. The applause died down, Elenwen took her leave, and the bards resumed their sweet music. One by one, the guests started to peel themselves away from their seats and make their way back to the wide empty space in the centre of the hall.

When they were the only ones left on their table, Raydrin exhaled slowly. “That was intense,” he said off-handedly to Jórunn.

But her reply fell on deaf ears; it was at that moment that Raydrin found himself locking eyes with Jarl Balgruuf from across the room.

The exchange was a confused one. Raydrin, of course, recognized him instantly, but Balgruuf looked puzzled for a few moments, as if trying to confirm what it was that he was seeing. By the time they’d sustained eye contact for several moments—making it clear that Raydrin did, in fact, know him—Balgruuf relaxed a little in his chair and held up one hand in a bemused sort of wave.

Fuck. Fuck. Balgruuf hadn’t been on Malborn’s guest list! They hadn’t counted on anyone being there to recognize them—and if Balgruuf said something to someone, unaware that they were here uninvited, that was it. Game over.

Raydrin held Balgruuf’s gaze with as serious an expression as he could muster, and—unable to think of anything else in the little time that he had—returned the wave but brushed a finger over his lips on the way down, trying to subtly convey as much as he was able. Balgruuf frowned a little at that, but seemed to understand. He nodded and looked away.

“Linas!” Raydrin felt a hard kick against his shin.

“Ow,” he whined, turning to Jórunn. “What was that for?”

“Five times I had to say your name,” she said, her voice clenched through her teeth. “Is everything alright?”

Remembering himself, Raydrin swallowed awkwardly. “I’m fine,” he said, relieved that the other guests at their table had already left. And then, lowering his voice, he added, “um, Balgruuf and his court are here.”

Jórunn was silent. “Shit,” she said eventually. “Fuck. What? Have they seen us?”

“They have,” Raydrin confirmed. “I tried to convey a sense of discretion across the room, but I think we still need to try and talk to them.”

“Agreed,” said Jórunn, scrunching up her napkin and dumping it on the table as she pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “Come on.”

Raydrin followed, giving her his arm. Balgruuf and his company had already left their table, but a quick search and Raydrin saw them again on the edge of the dancefloor, keeping to themselves while they surveyed the festivities. As subtly as they could, Raydrin and Jórunn headed over to join them.

Balgruuf saw them approach over the hard line of Irileth’s shoulder, making the housecarl turn to follow his gaze. She didn’t look surprised. Balgruuf nodded at them and held up his goblet.

“I will admit,” he said lowly once they were comfortably in earshot, “you are two of the last people I was expecting to see here.”

“We could say the same thing,” Raydrin exhaled. Then he bowed his head. “I’d just like to say I’m sorry about what happened. We ran into two of the Companions yesterday and they told us everything. I… I’m sorry for your loss.”

He felt the inadequacy of those words as soon as they left him. How many times had they been said to him, and how often had he resented them? But Raydrin understood in that moment how little else there was to say.

Balgruuf sighed and stared down at his goblet, swilling the wine around. “Thank you,” he said after a short while. “Truthfully, I am here only because Elisif insisted that I make an appearance. She is a gracious host, but…”

He trailed off and then smiled at them sadly, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Alas,” he said. “Now, I would be very curious to hear what the pair of you are doing here.”

Jórunn coughed and Raydrin chuckled nervously.

“Well, Antonia here is making her debut into high society,” he said, making Jórunn wrinkle her nose. “And I’m here as her manservant.”

“Linas,” Jórunn added.

Balgruuf and Irileth both raised their brows. “And I suppose neither Antonia nor Linas have any more… nefarious motives behind their being here?” he said. Jórunn nodded.

“That would be correct, milord,” she said. Balgruuf smiled a little.

“Well,” he chuckled, “it is a pleasure to meet you both.” Then he lowered his voice. “I have made the decision to trust that whatever is going on here is going for good reason,” he said. “Your secret is safe with us.”

Raydrin and Jórunn both exhaled sighs of relief. “And,” Balgruuf continued, “if you need any— help, with whatever it is that you’re doing… my court is at your disposal. You need only ask.”

“My Jarl—” started Irileth, but Balgruuf held up one hand.

“I am not a Jarl anymore, Irileth,” he sighed. Then he repeated himself. “You need only ask.”

Jórunn sighed. “Thank you, Balgruuf.”

“Antonia!”

Her hand clamped down hard around Raydrin’s arm, and he turned over his shoulder to see Taurinus striding confidently towards them. It took everything in him not to glare daggers at the man.

“Baronessa,” said Taurinus once he was in their vicinity, his voice a little breathless. Perhaps he was unaware who it was that they were talking to. “I believe it’s time for that dance we talked about.”

Jórunn bristled at Raydrin’s side. “I told you Taurinus, I can’t—”

“But the next dance is the stetta,” he said, cutting her off. “You told me you can dance that one. Come on,” he smirked, “I’ll guide you.”

Raydrin glanced at Jórunn, at the look of clear distaste on her face. Everything about her posture was saying no, but that seemed to be lost on the legate, who was just watching her expectantly.

“Alright,” she said grimly after a few moments, lowering her hand from Raydrin’s arm. Taurinus’ smirk grew into a pleased grin. “Um—please be careful. You’ll need to give me instructions and warn me when—”

“Of course, of course,” said Taurinus, misunderstanding her outstretched hand and linking their arms together. Jórunn was yanked towards him, a startled sort of noise escaping from her throat. “I’ll take good care of you, milady. Come now—they’ve nearly finished their current song.”

Jórunn was swept off into the crowds before Raydrin could say anything, but he realised as he watched her go, rage simmering in his chest, that there wasn’t actually anything he could have said. Taurinus was an ass, but it would have been improper for Jórunn to have turned him down. What a moronic expectation.

He turned dumbly back to face Irileth and Balgruuf, at a loss for words.

“Poor girl,” Irileth tutted. “Every second I spend in Taurinus’ company, I marvel at how he ever made it to legate.”

“Well, she is doing a fine job of blending in,” said Balgruuf. Before the conversation could progress any further, they were approached by a small, waifish young woman with tawny hair and a golden circlet—Jarl Elisif, Raydrin realised—who, after a brief and mildly awkward introduction, led Balgruuf away, wanting his support in a debate that she was having with some other politician.

He obediently followed, turning down Irileth’s offer to accompany him. Just she and Raydrin remained.

Raydrin swallowed. He wished suddenly that he had a drink in his hand, just so that he had something to sip from to pass the time. He and Irileth had probably exchanged a total of four sentences between them in all the time he’d known Balgruuf.

“Os nori’ag ku’ay os shogohad ohl devehr,” she said eventually, tilting her head to look at him with a quizzical sort of smile on her face. Raydrin blinked, startled by the sudden Dunmeris. I realised where I recognized you from, she’d said.

“Hm?”

What did she mean by that? This party was by no means the first time they’d seen each other.

“You fought in the Great War, did you not?” Irileth clarified. “I believe I was in your cousin’s battalion.”

Raydrin just stared at her for several seconds, dumbfounded. You knew Mathyas? he wanted to ask, as if that meant anything. But Mathyas would have been little more than her superior officer.

“You’re Redoran?” he said instead, slipping automatically back into his native tongue.

Irileth gave a slight shrug. “I used to be,” she said. “I was actually training with the Morag Tong when the war broke out. But then House Redoran joined the fight and I decided my skills were better needed elsewhere.”

All Raydrin had to say in response was, “Oh.” His conversation had never been the most sparkling, but after months spent on the road with just one other person, it had apparently been reduced to… well, that.

“It was where I met Balgruuf,” Irileth continued, graciously filling his silence. She turned over her shoulder, and Raydrin followed her gaze to where she had glanced at Balgruuf on the other side of the hall. Her expression was fond. “And where he met his wife, actually. I’ve been serving him ever since.”

“I’m surprised he met his wife in the war,” said Raydrin after a moment’s thought.

“She was the second-born of minor Imperial nobility,” Irileth explained. “Colovian. In those parts I believe it’s tradition for any children not set to inherit the title to train as legion officers.”

“So she served under General Jonna, then?”

Irileth’s lips curled into a smile. “Precisely. She was a good woman. Died a few years ago, giving birth to their second child.” She took a drink from her goblet and then sighed. “Terrible shame, a great woman like that, dying in childbirth for a brat like Dagny.”

She shot him a conspiratorial sort of look. “Don’t tell Balgruuf I said that, of course.”

Raydrin chuckled softly. “Of course.” Casting another glance at Balgruuf across the room, he swallowed, then cleared his throat. “How, um… how has he been?”

Irileth was silent for a moment. “Hasn’t left his room, most days. Personally, I think it was terribly cruel of Elisif to make him come tonight. He hates the Thalmor as much as you or I, and he wouldn’t have been here at all if it hadn’t been for… well.

“But perhaps it does him good to get out and see people,” she added, her face pinched into a frown. “Truthfully, I do not know. He hasn’t exactly been talkative these last two weeks.”

“I know what he’s going through,” said Raydrin. “All… all I can say is that I’m sorry.”

Irileth snorted. “Indeed. Time will heal all, I am sure.” She inclined her head then in the direction of the dance floor. “It looks like the stetta is nearly over,” she said. “I suppose you should go and rescue poor… what was it, Antonia?”

“Antonia, yes.”

“I hope everything goes… well,” she said slowly. “And for Azura’s sake, be careful, Raydrin. These attacks are getting worse. I don’t know what it is you’re doing, but Thalmor or no Thalmor, that girl is here for a reason. Don’t be stupid and let something happen to her.”

The music slowed to a stop and the dancers broke out into laughter and applause. Raydrin swallowed under the intensity of Irileth’s stare. “I won’t,” he said feebly.

Irileth nodded. “Off you go then,” she said. “And Balgruuf’s offer still stands. If you… need us. You just have to ask.”

“Juohn, Irileth,” he said, bowing his head. Irileth smiled and bowed back.

He turned into the crowd and set off in search of Jórunn.

 

As soon as the dance came to an end, Jórunn unclasped her hand from Taurinus’ and removed his other hand from the small of her back.

“Well,” she said, forcing a smile, “thank you. I should really be returning back to my guide now.”

“You’re sure you don’t want just one more?” said Taurinus, trying to snake his arm around her waist again. Jórunn swatted him away, wriggling in her attempt to get out of his embrace.

“No, thank you,” she said through gritted teeth. “Please, I really cannot dance anything more complicated than the—”

“—the stetta, yes, yes, I know.” Taurinus sighed. He was close enough for Jórunn to feel it; his breath smelled like red wine. “Could we not then continue our conversation from earlier?”

“No, Taurinus,” she said firmly, managing to finally escape from his grasp. “I would like to be led back to my guide.”

A half-sound escaped from his lips, but before he could even finish his word, Jórunn cut him off again; “I really must insist,” she said. “Please—lead me back.”

Taurinus huffed. “Well, I can’t actually see him anywhere right now, Antonia.”

“Fine.” Jórunn held out her hand. “Take me to the bar then. Just get me off this dancefloor.”

Taurinus led her away in a tense silence, his guidance clumsy as he steered her through the crowds. But it seemed he’d got the message, at least; he dumped her unceremoniously by the bar and then stalked off with some final comment about how moving to Skyrim had ruined her good Cyrodiilic manners. Jórunn was left by herself.

She steeled herself against the bar top, maintaining contact with both hands and trying to steady her breathing. Where the fuck was Raydrin? They needed to get moving soon—any longer in this fucking hall and Jórunn felt like she was going to lose her mind. Her bodice was suffocating, her skirts heavy and inhibiting. The music and chatter behind her were incessantly loud, threatening to bring on a headache any second.

“Er, excuse me,” she said when she heard the sound of one of the bar staff moving past.

“Yes, madam?” It wasn’t Malborn.

“I’m blind,” she explained, “and I’ve lost my guide. He’s a Dark Elf, with black hair, about this tall,” she held her hand a couple of inches above her own head. “Can you see him anywhere?”

The barmaid was silent for a few seconds. “Er, not right now, madam,” she said eventually. “But you’re welcome to wait here until he finds you. Can I get you anything in the meantime?”

Jórunn shook her head with a sigh. “No, thank you.”

“Of course, milady.”

Waiting it was.

She turned around to make herself more visible, rubbing her temples and praying silently to each Divine for Raydrin’s swift return. A small voice at the back of her head was wondering whether perhaps something had happened to him, that he’d somehow been caught already and was being carried off to a dungeon that very second. But Jórunn shook her head to rid herself of such thoughts. She started counting down the seconds just to stop her mind from wandering off.

…nineteen, twenty. One-and-twenty, two-and-twenty…

“Jórunn?”

She froze, her thoughts grinding to a halt. Jórunn hadn’t heard that voice in months. Had she? It couldn’t—

Fuck. She spun back round to face the bar, too panicked to do much else. This couldn’t be happening.

“Jórunn? That is you, isn’t it?” The voice drew nearer. “I knew I wasn’t imagining things.”

A presence appeared on her left, brushing against her arm. Jórunn turned her head away, trying to hide her face. She felt like she was about to cry.

“What are you—” Heloise trailed off. “Jórunn? Is something wrong?”

“I’m not Jórunn,” she said feebly, embarrassed by the obvious strain in her voice. “You—you must have me mistaken for someone else.”

“Don’t be silly, I’d recognize you anywhere,” Heloise chided. Her voice was so soft, lyrical. Why did she have to sound so fucking gentle, even now? “It’s me, Heloise.”

Jórunn’s breathing was hard. She had absolutely no idea where to go from here. No way of handling this situation that didn’t immediately arouse suspicion. And now her name had just been called out right next to the fucking bar where there was surely going to be no shortage of people around to have heard it.

“I’m looking for my guide,” she said eventually. “He… he’s a Dark Elf. Black hair, just a little taller than me.” She swallowed thickly, trying to dissolve the lump in her throat. “Can you see him?”

Heloise hesitated a moment before replying. “Er, yes, of course,” she said, “let me just take a look.”

The seconds ticked by. Jórunn was sweating with the effort it took not to be sick.

“Ah—I think I see him,” said Heloise at last. “He’s heading towards us.” She put a hand on Jórunn’s shoulder then, startling her. Her voice was lowered when she next spoke, her face close enough for Jórunn to feel her breath. “Jórunn, are you safe? I mean, this man, is he—”

“I’m fine,” Jórunn cut her off. “He’s my friend. But Heloise, please—I am begging you to go along with me on this. If you’ve ever trusted me before, please, trust me now.”

Heloise was silent.

“Alright,” she said at last, suspicious and uncertain.

“Antonia, there you are,” came Raydrin’s voice, his formal tone doing little to mask the breathless relief that reflected Jórunn’s own. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” He appeared at her side and Jórunn immediately scrambled for his arm, clutching onto it like a lifeline. Raydrin coughed. “Er—who is this?”

“Linas, this is Heloise, an old friend from Cyrodiil,” she said, squeezing Raydrin’s arm twice to let him know that something was fucking happening—

“She, um…”

Her mind went blank.

“We used to attend the salon of Madame de Chatillon together,” Heloise filled in for her. It was a bad lie, an inconsistent lie—it made no sense at all with the rest of Jórunn’s story. But it would have to do.

“Yes,” said Jórunn, “yes, um—in the Imperial City.”

She hoped that would be enough to convey to Raydrin the gravity of the situation.

“Ah… of course,” said Raydrin. “And may I inquire as to what you do, Heloise…?”

“Motierre,” Heloise finished for him. Jórunn realised she had never heard Heloise’s last name before; it wasn’t routine for clients to throw them around, especially for those in positions as eminent as Heloise. “My husband is on the Elder Council. We’re passing through on our way to High Rock—to spend Saturalia with my family, you see.”

“How nice,” said Raydrin.

“And you are?” she asked, her suspicion clear in her voice.

“Linas is my manservant and personal guide,” said Jórunn, pressing herself closer to him. “He’s been in my service since I moved to—”

“Heloise, there you are,” a male voice suddenly cut her off. His words were an odd imitation of Raydrin’s from just a few moments earlier; except in place of relief, he sounded vaguely irritated.

“Amaund!” Heloise sounded surprised, and a little alarmed. “I was just telling—”

“I finally managed to escape that blasted Snow-Shod fellow,” Amaund interrupted. “By the Eight, I thought he’d never stop talking. As if I give a damn about the profit margins of some backwoods meadery. And then ‘Vittoria’ this, ‘Vittoria’ that—the poor fool thinks he’s in love. First Seed is going to be a slap to the face, I can promise you that.”

Amaund paused, then, his tirade landing on an awkward silence. He cleared his throat. “Who is this?” he asked. “Darling, won’t you introduce us?”

“Amaund,” said Heloise, sounding tired, “this is, ah…”

“Antonia,” Jórunn filled in.

“Yes—sorry. Antonia. Forgive me, my memory isn’t what it used to be.” Heloise coughed. “Antonia used to attend Madame de Chatillon’s salon with me.”

Amaund groaned. “Oh dear. So your head’s been filled with that nonsense too, has it?”

“Amaund—”

“All this talk of republics and meritocracy,” he went on. “Utter trite, I say. As far as I’m concerned, we’re already in a meritocracy; how else could the patriciate have come about? We’re called noble for a reason.”

“Yes, yes, as you’re so fond of saying,” said Heloise. “In any case, darling, it’s not polite to talk of politics around new acquaintances, is it?”

“It’s my job, dear. This whole party is politics.”

“That doesn’t—”

“What are your thoughts on the matter, pray tell?”

Jórunn froze, unsure of who was being addressed.

“I don’t believe it’s my place to say, milord,” said Raydrin after a moment’s hesitation.

“Oh, come now, don’t be shy,” Amaund chided. “You have my full permission to speak candidly.”

“Don’t be so cruel, Amaund. It’s not fair to put him on the spot like that.”

Jórunn had heard enough about Amaund to be unsurprised by his demeanour, though the reality of it was somehow worse than second-hand accounts. His and Heloise’s marriage was a loveless one, entered into by the arrangement of their families and on no other basis. Heloise found him snide, proud, condescending. This Jórunn had learned over the course of several conversations in her old bedchamber, always while wrapped up in Heloise’s sweaty embrace. She was the sort of client Jórunn doubted was ever really in it for the sex; mostly she just seemed like she’d wanted somebody to talk to.

Amaund didn’t stick around for long. Having satisfied himself that his wife’s company was too dull for his tastes, he made a brisk exit, citing some important business with a Thalmor official. Jórunn, Heloise, and Raydrin were on their own. For a long while, they were silent.

“Um,” said Raydrin eventually. “What’s going on?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” said Heloise.

“You two know each other?”

“We do,” Heloise replied. Jórunn felt sick. “Jórunn—” she started, and the panic must have been evident on Jórunn’s face because she quickly corrected herself; “Antonia, please. What’s going on? Let me help you.”

“I can’t tell you,” said Jórunn with a shake of her head. “Please, I—not here. It’s too complicated, and— and it's dangerous—"

“Dangerous? Antonia, I’m a powerful woman. If this man is—”

“Linas is with me,” said Jórunn. “I promise you, I’m okay. Just go, Heloise. We’ll all be better off if you just— if you just pretend you never saw me.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Jórunn winced. No-one said anything for several moments.

“Heloise,” she eventually managed, her voice trembling, “I appreciate you’re trying to help. But the longer we stand here talking, the more you’re putting me at risk. Do it for me, alright? I’ll be fine. I just need you to go.”

Heloise was hesitant. “You’re… you’re definitely here of your own will?” she said. “No-one’s making you be here?”

“I’m here of my own will,” said Jórunn.

“Then why the fake name?”

“Heloise,” Jórunn begged.

“Fine,” she said at last. “Fine. I—”

She trailed off, her voice a little choked. Jórunn hated this. Besides Raydrin, Heloise was one of the few people in Jórunn’s life who’d ever truly cared for her, and now Jórunn was just throwing it back in her face.

“If you need me, just ask, alright?” she finished lamely.

“I will.”

“And if you do anything to hurt her—”

Jórunn pulled Raydrin closer to her. “You can trust him, Heloise.”

“Fine,” Heloise said bitterly. “Linas, Antonia. It… it was a pleasure meeting you.”

Nothing more was said. Jórunn was pretty sure she heard receding footsteps, but it was too loud in that hall to tell. She inhaled, about to ask Raydrin whether she’d gone, but then—

“Antonia?” Raydrin said lowly. It wasn’t accusative, but the concern in his voice was clear. The what the fuck? went unsaid.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she snapped. “Let’s just find Malborn and get out of here. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

“Alright,” he said after a little pause. Jórunn released the breath she was holding. Whatever she’d done to earn Raydrin’s unconditional trust, she had no idea. “Right—yes. Let’s go.”

They set off in search of Malborn, Jórunn mindlessly following Raydrin’s lead as she tried to settle her stomach and calm her reeling thoughts. Everything was too much; the droning chatter, the high-pitched laughter, the music, the dancing, the heat, the feeling of powder on her cheeks, the sweat on the back of her neck, the sound of Heloise’s voice in her ears and the lingering scent of her perfume, the overwhelming realization that they were just minutes away from attempting to infiltrate the fucking Thalmor Embassy—

“I see him,” said Raydrin at last. “We just made eye contact. He’s heading over to us.”

Jórunn scrunched up her face, wiping an errant strand of hair away from her forehead.

“Raydrin—”

“Sir, madam,” came Malborn’s voice all too soon. “What can I get for you?”

“What wine would you recommend?” asked Raydrin flatly, not bothering to phrase the question any more intelligently than that. No-one would be listening anyway.

“We’re serving a particularly good vintage of Surilie collequiva,” said Malborn. “If milord is in the mood for a red.”

Jórunn and Raydrin froze. Her hand clenched, almost crushing around his arm.

Collequiva.

That—

“Collequiva would be perfect,” Raydrin uttered after the longest few seconds of Jórunn’s life. His voice was strained, high-pitched.

“Right away, sir,” said Malborn, and then he was gone. Raydrin and Jórunn were both silent.

Collequiva. Code red.

They’d been caught. 

Notes:

jorunn and raydrin attempting to mingle // raydrin and balgruuf seeing each other across the room

just as a heads up, the next chapter is quite likely to take a little longer than normal. :(( i have exams in early feb and will not be doing much writing until they're over, so it might be three or four weeks until we get part II. sorry to leave things on a cliff hanger! but please bear with me and i promise that i will be writing back at my normal speed once my exams are done. i love this fic and have no plans on stopping it any time soon—it's just that real life sometimes has to come first.

BIG BIG thank you to my beta readers this week for proofreading this chapter with just 24 hours notice, honestly it is 100% down to them that i'm posting this on time! i am so so grateful for all the time they put into helping me. couldn't do it without you guys <3

Chapter 27: Diplomatic Immunity (Part II)

It was Balgruuf who came up with their plan in the end, and that had brought them here; cramped into a tiny food pantry with a furious Malborn pacing up and down what little space they had. The air was musty, dense with the smell of earth and dried herbs.

“I can’t believe you,” Malborn muttered again, rounding on them. “Of all the reckless, stupid—”

He faltered with a sharp intake of breath, his nostrils flaring. “If they’re not here in three minutes, that’s it. We’re ending this.”

“They’ll be here,” said Jórunn shortly.

“You should have consulted me first,” Malborn went on. “Gods, I— do you have any idea how much danger you’re putting yourselves in? Putting us all in? I told you—collequiva! That was supposed to mean ‘stop with the fucking heist’!”

“That was before we knew we had allies,” said Raydrin. “Besides—”

“That doesn’t change the fact that the Thalmor know who you are,” Malborn cut him off.

“Do we know that for sure?” asked Jórunn.

“At the very least they know you’re here uninvited,” said Malborn. “I could see them. Some– something was making them cagey. They were monitoring the two of you like hawks. And the moment they get suspicious you’re spending too long in the latrines, they’ll be down here looking for us and then that’s it.” He made a strained sort of sound and wrung an invisible cloth at his chest, his fingers taut with frustration. “Two minutes,” he said through gritted teeth. “That’s it.”

“They’ll be here,” Jórunn repeated.

Farengar was the first to arrive, grumbling something about them having interrupted a very engaging conversation with the Court Wizard of Haafingar. They were explaining the outline of Balgruuf’s plan to him when Heloise joined them a minute or two later, knocking tentatively on the door before being yanked in by Malborn. The Bosmer threw two quick looks in either direction and then pulled the door shut behind her.

“Sorry I’m late. I got slightly lost on the way from the latrines.” Heloise glanced between each of them nervously. “Divines, this is all very secretive, isn’t it? Is someone finally going to tell me what’s going on?”

“We don’t have time for discussion,” Malborn snapped. “Everyone undress and we’ll explain while you get ready.”

Heloise looked panicked at that, but before she could open her mouth to protest, Jórunn held out her hands and said, “Heloise,” in a tone that sounded something like desperation. Heloise stepped into place and took Jórunn’s hands with a degree of automaticity that made the breath catch in Raydrin’s throat. Jórunn adjusted her position slightly to orientate herself with the other woman.

“I– I wish I could explain this all to you,” she said. “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I tried. But what we’re about to ask you to do is dangerous, and I want to say now that you can still back out if you want to. You don’t have to do this.”

“No,” said Heloise, shaking her head. She was a small woman, maybe ten or so years Jórunn’s senior, with fair skin, a plain, round face, and light brown hair tied back into an elaborate updo. “Jórunn, I want to help. Listen,” she squeezed her hands—why was Raydrin staring at their hands?—“Amaund and I aren’t heading into High Rock. I don’t know exactly what he’s doing here but he won’t tell me and I know it’s no good. If you’re doing anything at all to put a thorn in the Thalmor’s side, I’d like to help.”

Jórunn didn’t respond. Her lips were pressed, her brows tucked into a frown. Heloise smiled sadly and said, “Tell me what I need to do.”

So they told her.

They kept things to a minimum; the bare basics of what Heloise needed to know, and no more than she would believe. The four of them started to strip down to their underclothes—Raydrin, Jórunn, Farengar, and Heloise—meanwhile Malborn disappeared to grab Raydrin and Jórunn’s disguises. By the time he returned, Farengar and Heloise were making the final adjustments to their new ill-fitting garb and Raydrin and Jórunn were both shivering in the cold, Raydrin’s hands clamped under his arms and his gaze fixed resolutely to the ceiling.

“There you go,” Malborn muttered, handing them the two sets of heavy Thalmor robes that would make up their disguises. He was helping Jórunn orientate herself with the unfamiliar clothing when he turned to Farengar and asked, “are you sure this is going to work?”

“Quite sure,” was Farengar’s indignant reply. “Thank you very much.”

Malborn cursed under his breath and shook his head. “Look, you can fiddle around with that later,” he said, swatting Raydrin’s hands away from where he was attempting to figure out the clasps of the Thalmor shoulder mantle. “What’s important now is that Linas and Antonia get back to the party. You ready, wizard?”

Farengar sniffed. “I’m going to murder Balgruuf for this,” he said. “Come to the Thalmor party, Farengar. It’ll be fun, Farengar. Yes, yes, I suppose I’m ready. Raydrin, you first.”

Raydrin blinked. This was probably the first time the wizard had ever referred to him by name. “Er,” he swallowed, “what should I—”

Farengar grabbed his arm before he could finish and forcefully wrapped Raydrin’s hand around the exposed skin of Farengar’s wrist. Using his free hand, he then held a purplish sort of spell up to his face and closed his eyes in concentration, his hand trembling around the unleashed magicka. Raydrin watched in mild horror as Farengar’s pinkish human skin began to darken and desaturate, his features growing murky and abstract before refocusing into something different, something eerily familiar and horribly uncanny. It was only a few seconds before the ‘transformation’ was complete. It was not at all like looking into a mirror, not really; if Raydrin hadn’t known exactly what had just taken place, he wasn’t sure he’d have recognized himself.

“Well,” said Farengar, investigating the back of one grey hand and then his palm. “That seems to have worked remarkably well.”

“I don’t really look like that, do I?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Farengar’s voice sounded different, too; a little rougher, maybe, though the Nordic accent was still unmistakably his own. He and Heloise would just have to avoid talking to anyone outside of Balgruuf’s court. “It’s not a perfect illusion, but it should be fine as long as no-one looks too closely. Right—ah, ladies, are you ready?”

Heloise nodded, her hair a little dishevelled from where she’d pulled her own dress up over her head and replaced it with Jórunn’s. Jórunn’s skirts were too long for her, pooling around her ankles. “Ready,” she said.

“Ready,” said Jórunn. “Actually—wait. Heloise.”

She held her hands out again, allowing Heloise to take them, and then trailed them up Heloise’s arms, finding her face, taking the smaller woman’s cheeks in her palms. With her thumbs pressed against the corners of Heloise’s lips, Jórunn dipped her head and brought her in for a kiss.

Raydrin looked away. He could feel Farengar trying to meet his eyes, presumably seeking to share in his surprise, but Raydrin refused, his stomach twisting enough without the added discomfort of having to gaze upon his own visage.

This wasn’t really surprising. It was not shock that Raydrin was feeling; he was adult enough to recognize the sharp bite of jealousy when he felt it. But he was beginning to understand that there was a lot he still didn’t know about Jórunn—a lot that she hadn’t told him—and although he wasn’t exactly in a position to criticise, it was this realisation that stung more than any amount of jealousy ever could.

The kiss was short, a second or two at most. “Thank you,” murmured Jórunn as she drew away. Her voice was soft, meant for Heloise’s ears and no-one else’s. Heloise looked dazed.

“Farengar?” urged Malborn, interrupting the moment. Farengar nodded and coughed, then stepped into place, getting Heloise to turn and look up at him.  

“Yes,” said Heloise, shaking her head as if to reacquaint herself with the reality of the situation. “Er—sorry. I’m ready now.”

“Excellent,” drawled Farengar in Raydrin’s voice. “Make sure you maintain contact with each other until I’m done.”

Heloise nodded and closed her eyes. Raydrin couldn’t take his gaze off Jórunn’s face, as if staring at her for long enough would reveal to him her secrets—how the poor girl from the Imperial City waterfront had ended up in an intimate affair with the wife of an Elder Councillor. But he couldn’t even parse her expression. She bore the same steeled neutrality she’d maintained so carefully in the earlier days of their relationship.

Farengar cast the same spell on Heloise as he had on himself, and Raydrin watched as she morphed slowly into Jórunn, even growing a few inches in height. The result was just as uncanny as Farengar’s transformation had been; Jórunn was lucky she didn’t have to see it. But with the height difference, the illusion magic seemed rough around the edges. If Heloise moved too quickly, the outline of ‘Jórunn’ would seem to flicker and catch the light. And seeing her gaze shift around and focus on things… it was wrong, like meeting someone familiar in a bad dream.  

“Has it worked?” asked Heloise, her voice slightly lower in pitch. The real Jórunn startled at that.

“Perfectly,” said Farengar. “Just try to avoid focusing your gaze if you can. Tracking movement will give you away.”

Heloise nodded, doing her best to follow his instructions. She fixed her eyes onto the wall somewhere behind Raydrin in a way that was almost convincing, but then Farengar came to stand beside her and she looked down automatically to take his arm. “Sorry,” she chuckled, “I’ll get better at that.”

“Great,” said Malborn flatly. “Now get back up there. And avoid talking to anyone outside of Balgruuf’s court.”

“How long until the spells wear off?” asked Jórunn.

“A few hours, at least,” said Farengar. “We should have until the end of the party.”

Jórunn nodded, releasing a shaky breath. Farengar and Heloise—or rather, Linas and Antonia—shuffled past them towards the door.

“Good luck,” Heloise croaked.

“Yes,” said Farengar in agreement. “And do pass my regards onto Delphine.”

Heloise paused in the doorway and cast one final look at them over her shoulder, her gaze lingering on Raydrin with an expression he couldn’t scrutinise. His stomach turned; the real Jórunn would never—could never—look at him like that. He averted his eyes uncomfortably, then the door was shut behind them and they were gone.

Malborn sank back against it and groaned lowly, dragging a hand down his face. “Fucking hell,” he said. “This is the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life.”

“You’re not the one who has to break into Elenwen’s solar,” Jórunn snipped. “Come on. Help me get into these robes.”

They finished dressing in an awkward silence, though with ‘Linas’ and ‘Antonia’ now back at the party, they were no longer quite so pressed for time. The enchantments in the robes were slow to take effect; it was only after Raydrin had completed the disguise with boots, gloves and a hood that he raised his head to find Malborn staring at him a little curiously.

“Guessing the enchantment has worked?” he said.

Malborn hummed, tilting his head to one side. “Indeed,” he said. “Now we know what you would have looked like as a Chimer.”

Raydrin grimaced.

“How do I look as a Chimer?” asked Jórunn, pulling the hood up and turning around to face them. Raydrin’s immediate reaction was to physically recoil; Jórunn’s skin was golden, and what he could see of her hair under the hood was golden too. Her basic bone structure was the same, but her eyes were slightly larger, her browbone more prominent.

He swore under his breath. “It’s a little freaky, to be honest.”

“Alright,” said Malborn. “I have to get back to the bar before people notice I’m gone. You two remember where you’re going from here?”

“I think so,” said Raydrin. “Through the servants’ chambers and then the last staircase on the right?”

Large estates like this always had a hidden network of servants’ passages to allow for discreet movement between the various parts of the building. Raydrin’s old residence in Blacklight had been the same.

Malborn nodded. “Right. Your weapons and satchel are in the sack.” He gestured to the bag their disguises had been brought in. “Good luck. And don’t do anything stupid. Every guard will be on extra high alert.”

Raydrin nodded his understanding. “Thanks, Malborn.”

Malborn forced a smile that just twisted into a grimace. Then he took his leave.

Raydrin and Jórunn were on their own.

“Are you alright?” he asked once the silence had settled.

Jórunn closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. It was slow, controlled, and when she breathed out again, her breath was shaky.

“I’ll have to be,” she said at last, her voice tight. “Look, Raydrin, normally I appreciate you checking in on me, I really do. But right now I think we just have to try and get through this alive, and talking about our feelings isn’t going to make this situation any less dangerous or stressful.”

Raydrin quashed down the feeling of guilt that rose up at that. She was irritated. The situation was stressful. He wasn’t going to take it personally.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sor—”

“Don’t.” Jórunn shook her head and held out her gloved hand, asking silently for his arm. “Please. Let’s just get out of here.”

Raydrin hesitated, staring at her; her golden face, her outstretched hand. There was a lot he wanted to say, a lot he wanted to ask. But instead he just swallowed thickly and obeyed, handing Jórunn first her weapon and then his arm once the scabbard was strapped round her waist. They left the pantry in silence.

The corridor they emerged into was dark and low, lit only by intermittent torchlight. It was empty, too, though a dull racket could be heard in the near distance where the kitchen staff were busy cleaning up the remnants of the banquet.

“This way,” he muttered, leading her leftward towards the noise. He could feel her hesitation in the drag of her arm, in the extra tug of resistance around his bicep. She took a moment or two longer to find her place beside him, and then they were walking, one foot in front of the other, falling into the rhythm of each other’s stride.

Raydrin exhaled slowly—this was happening. They were doing this.

No going back now.

The servants’ quarters were bursting at the seams with activity, an overwhelming cacophony of yelled instructions, clinking silverware, and idle chatter. It was hot, too; the stone walls had soaked up the warmth of what Raydrin imagined had been hours and hours of cooking in preparation for such a large feast. He and Jórunn were stared at nervously as they passed through, commanding a noticeable dip in volume wherever they went. Raydrin accidentally met the eyes of a kitchen girl polishing silverware at a table and grimaced inwardly at the look of alarm on her face, the way she ducked her head.

He found himself thinking back to those happy hours he’d spent as a younger man helping out in the kitchens of his own residence; they’d never let him help on the busier days, when the Dutheri clan was entertaining guests and when Raydrin, too, probably ought to have been elsewhere, but over time he’d become competent enough to make meaningful contributions to the preparation of meals, to carry some of the load.

Back then he’d considered many of the household staff his friends, but it occurred to him now the likely naivety of that notion. How one-sided were those friendships, really? It wasn’t like they had the power to be anything but cordial to him.

He shook his head, trying to force himself back into the present. Now wasn’t the time. He couldn’t afford the distraction of a wandering mind. 

They reached the end of the corridor that made up the heart of the servants’ quarters and slowed down to a saunter. It was quieter here—the kitchens behind them were a distant buzz. Just as Malborn’s floorplans had anticipated, there was a staircase down to the right that would lead them into the long, underground passage that gave the servants access to Elenwen’s solar. The bottom of the staircase was shrouded in darkness.

“Steps going down,” said Raydrin quietly, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder to ensure they were outside of anyone’s earshot. He lowered himself onto the first step and waited for Jórunn to follow, watching under the torchlight as she swept one foot over the dusty stone floor until she located the edge. Stairs were always difficult without the use of her cane.

“I've got it,” she eventually breathed, dropping beside him. Raydrin nodded and they continued downwards, letting the darkness swallow them up.

 

Elenwen’s solar was a solitary building situated at the very back of the complex, detached from the main body of the embassy. Malborn had explained that trying to break in from one of its exterior entrances wasn’t an option; guards patrolled the walls of the complex constantly and the building was exposed from all sides. The servants’ passage—whilst still guarded at either end—would enable them to sneak in undetected, even if that meant slitting a few throats along the way.

They’re Thalmor, Malborn had said. They don’t matter.

Raydrin had taken little persuading; Jórunn thought back to what she knew of his time in the war and wondered whether that had anything to do with his nonchalance. In any case, she was glad she wouldn’t be doing any of the throat-slitting herself.

“What can you feel with Aura Whisper?” Raydrin murmured as they trudged down the passage.

Jórunn inhaled and released a quiet Laas Yah on the exhale, hoping that the first two words of the Shout would be enough. Slowly the scattered presences of various organisms began to take shape around her; the household staff far behind them had melted into a homogenous mass, but ahead of them she could feel the faint outlines of two vaguely humanoid shapes standing side by side.

“I think there are two guards up ahead,” she replied.

Raydrin breathed out quickly. “Alright,” he said. “Go ethereal at the first sign of trouble, yeah?”

Jórunn gave his arm a squeeze. Her heartbeat was so intense she could feel a blood vessel pulsing against the skin of her throat. “I will.”

The shapes quickly grew larger and more defined. Raydrin led her through a couple of twists in the passage before slowing down at her side, and Jórunn swallowed, dropping her hand from his elbow to nearer his wrist. Her Aura Whisper flickered and faded away.

A foreign voice pierced the silence; it was a man’s voice, raised at the end with the inflection of a question. Jórunn could only assume the language was Aldmeris. The acoustics down here were weird, devoid of any echo, so the question sounded oddly muted and flat.

Raydrin came to a complete stop, but did so gradually so as to give Jórunn plenty of notice.

The question came again. Raydrin’s reply was short, curt, presumably to limit the chances of them picking up on his clumsy Aldmeris. It sounded convincing enough to Jórunn’s untrained ears, but she had no idea what a native speaker might have heard.

Their silence was answer enough. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like years. A hand grabbed Jórunn’s shoulder out of nowhere and instinctively she released a panicked Feim, evaporating from the guard’s touch before they could close their grip. Disembodied and incorporeal, Jórunn just stood there and listened to the flurry of noise around her, the startled exclamations and the grunts of effort and the dull, heavy sounds of leather smacking against leather.

A spell was cast. Raydrin grunted. Someone landed with a slap on the stone floor. Then there was a wet, gurgling sound, short and brief, and silence fell, broken only by the steady panting of someone who—to Jórunn’s relief—sounded a lot like Raydrin.

She wanted to ask if he was alright, but she couldn’t speak until her Shout wore off. There were some shuffling noises, the creaking of leather, the ruffling of fabric. Something metal clinked.

“Alright,” Raydrin panted. “I think I’ve got the key. Jórunn? I’m assuming you’re still there.”

She rematerialized just a second or two later, her skin tingling and her stomach rolling. Her nose wrinkled around the scent of fresh blood.

“There you are,” said Raydrin. Jórunn heard a key being turned in a lock and then the shuffling sound of leather being dragged over stone. Was he moving the bodies?

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice slightly strained with effort before he appeared to drop something, a heavy thud following his words. “Er—wait a second.”

He manhandled her, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her forwards a few stumbled paces. Normally Jórunn would have protested to that, but if there was ever a time to forego the usual courtesies, it was now. Raydrin disappeared for a few seconds and then the door was closing behind her. He grunted again.

“I need to move these bodies somewhere out of sight,” he said. “Can you make sure there’s no-one around?”

Jórunn nodded. “Laas Yah Nir.” She gave it a few seconds for the Shout to take effect, and then swallowed. “There’s… some other people in the basement, I think. Not close, but…”

She trailed off. Raydrin was silent for a while before replying. “That’ll be the dungeons,” he said at last. Jórunn remembered him and Malborn talking about the dungeons when they were going over the floorplans—her stomach turned at the thought of being so close.

“They shouldn’t be a problem for us,” Raydrin went on, speaking softly. “Come on.”

It took several minutes to find somewhere they could hide the bodies—it was a storage cupboard of some sort, off to the side of the basement. Jórunn then took Raydrin’s arm again and they continued onwards.

The solar was still and silent as death. After hours spent in the chaotic heat of the embassy reception hall, the solitude was strangely claustrophobic; Jórunn felt the absence of a crowd around them like a bitter wind.

They climbed up from the basement, finding themselves in an open-plan reception area of some sort. Jórunn could tell from the way their footsteps echoed off the stone floor that the ceiling was high. The air was chilly but fragrant, clean-smelling. Raydrin led her through the centre of the chamber towards where he knew Elenwen’s office to be.

“It’s locked,” he said. It was a redundant observation—they’d known from the start that this would be the case. According to Malborn, Elenwen’s office was one of the few rooms in the embassy complex that had just one set of keys, and that set of keys was carried on Elenwen’s person at all times. Something about a single-cylinder deadbolt lock meant that it could be opened from the inside, however. “Quick Aura Whisper to make sure we’re still alone?”

Jórunn nodded: “Laas Yah Nir.”

The Shout produced only the same result as before—the distant throb of several presences in the dungeons far below.

They were safe. For now.  

“We’re okay, I think,” she murmured.

Raydrin exhaled. “Alright, er—if you stand here.” He manoeuvred her around a few paces, putting his hands on her waist ever so briefly to twist her into facing the right direction. There were several layers of leather between them and the contact lasted a second or two at most, but still the intimacy of it had Jórunn glad that Raydrin was behind her. The heat in her cheeks was strong enough that he surely would have been able to see it.

“You’re standing right in front of the door,” he murmured from over her shoulder. She could feel the presence of his aura, hot and sharp and fierce, hovering just behind her. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Jórunn nodded, swallowing. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and whispered, “Feim.”

A familiar feeling of weightlessness swept through her. Carefully Jórunn drifted forwards, willing her ethereal legs to carry her as her material ones would. She stopped after three paces in what was hopefully the opening of Elenwen’s office, standing there restlessly while she waited for the seconds to pass by and for her physical body to return. The feeling of Raydrin’s aura just a few feet away was grounding. It dimmed and flickered away just moments before she rematerialized.

Jórunn gagged as soon as she was able, the consequences of her frequent Shouting beginning to catch up to her. The fancy Altmeri banquet that she’d consumed all those hours ago had never fully settled, and she could feel it now sitting in the pit of her stomach like lead.

“Raydrin?” she croaked once her nausea had quelled somewhat, pushing her Thalmor hood back from her face.

“I’m here,” came his immediate reply, muffled through the metal of the door. “Everything alright?”

“I’m fine,” said Jórunn.

“Head back towards me,” he said. “You should be able to open the door from the inside.”

Breathing heavily, Jórunn turned around to face the way she came, holding her hands out in front of her and taking slow, cautious steps. She hated having to rely on her hands this way, feeling vulnerable and disoriented without her cane. Thankfully the floor was clear of obstacles and she was able to locate the door with relative ease. She felt carefully around where the lock mechanism ought to be, sweeping her gloved palm in broad strokes over the metal. An iron ring door knob sat at about the height of her hip.

She curled her fingers around it and twisted it anticlockwise, away from the doorframe. The deadbolt retracted away from the mortice with a decisive click. Jórunn tugged the ring towards her and found with relief that the door came with it, jolting over the flagstones.

They were in. 

She said nothing, unable to find the words. Raydrin seemed to be feeling similarly; he nudged her silently to one side and closed the door behind him, then brushed past her, his presence signalled by little more than a breeze on her cheeks and the sound of his footsteps.

“There’s some bookshelves,” he said quietly. “Keep watch with Aura Whisper, okay? I’ll… make a start.”

“Okay,” Jórunn replied, obeying his instructions. Her voice came out small and mouse-like. She pressed herself against the wall and closed her eyes, trying to focus on the sound of Raydrin’s breathing and occasional mutterings from across the room. Anything to prevent her from thinking too hard about where they were and what they were doing. Her throat felt dry and cracked, her stomach tumultuous, her skin slick with sweat under the uncomfortable trappings of her Thalmor robes. The great distance between them and the nearest entity proved to be of little comfort.

It was a long while before anything changed, or at least it felt like it. Raydrin—who until now had been cursing and sighing more than anything else—suddenly hissed out a quiet but triumphant exclamation that sounded something like “Daeni!”

“Daeni?” asked Jórunn.

“Aldmeris for Blades,” he explained with an edge of excitement and nervousness. There came the fluttering of pages as he leafed through the dossier’s contents. “It might contain something about Delphine.”

Jórunn huffed. “What does that have to do with dragons?”

“Nothing,” said Raydrin. “I just… thought it could come in useful.”

“Just throw it in the satchel and keep looking,” said Jórunn. “What’s ‘dragon’ in Aldmeris?”

“Aka,” said Raydrin. “It’s the same in Dunmeris. But there was nothing under A.”

Jórunn bit her tongue, saying nothing and rubbing instead at the growing pressure point between her temples. She’d been getting these urges often, the urge to say something cruel or snide. Though she’d always been rather plain about her feelings, the urge to snip at Raydrin frightened her; it was new and unfamiliar, not to mention wholly unrepresentative of her actual feelings. And recently it was becoming increasingly difficult to fight back against, especially in moments like this, moments of heightened stress.  

Jórunn kept her mouth shut and allowed the feeling to fade, leaving nothing but the churning of guilt in its wake. At least she could say for sure that the guilt was her own.

“Muhrtisk,” Raydrin muttered a short while later. “They have a dossier on the College of Winterhold.”

“Keep it,” said Jórunn. “Anything else?”

“Not yet,” he said. Then: “Wait… shit.”

Jórunn swallowed; her heart was in her mouth. “What is it?”

Raydrin was silent. He muttered a Dunmeri curse under his breath, leafing quickly through another book.

“Raydrin?” Jórunn urged, trying and failing to sound calm.

It was another few seconds before he finally replied.   

“They have dossiers on us, Jórunn.”

Her stomach plummeted.

“Valendraka,” Raydrin went on, “Dragonborn. They…” He cursed again; first in Dunmeris, then in Cyrodilic. “Fuck. They know who we are. They knew who we were. When we arrived, I mean. I—”

“That must be how Malborn—"

Jórunn trailed off, unable to complete the sentence. She thought of Heloise and Farengar and felt the sudden urge to throw up as she realized the full extent of how much danger she had placed them in.

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Who’s there?!”

Their exchange was interrupted by a sudden banging on the door, sharp and aggressive. Every muscle in Jórunn’s body seized up.

She’d forgotten to refresh her Aura Whisper.

“Hello?! I know you’re in there! Open this door at once!”

Action eluded her. Raydrin said nothing. Jórunn’s heart felt as if someone were squeezing it in their fist.

“I said open the damn door!”

The relentless knocking gave way to a dull thud, like someone was throwing their weight against the door. Then they did it again. Jórunn was breathing shallowly, struggling to get enough air into her lungs.

Raydrin, what do we do, what do we do, what do we—

The door burst open. A shard of something cold and ice-like cut through Jórunn’s cheek and she gasped in pain, staggering back from the source.

“Jórunn!” Raydrin cried as someone growled, heavy footsteps pounding towards her one, two, three times—

“Duck!”

She did, feeling the breeze of something sweeping overhead. Her attacker hissed something in Aldmeris and instinctively she kicked one leg out towards him in some vain attempt to knock him back, but his stance was solid enough that she did little more than throw herself off balance.

She landed on the stone floor with a dull grunt, pain flaring in her tailbone. Before she could register her new situation or think what to do next, her attacker cried out, a garbled sort of “Argh!”

“Go ethereal, you fool,” hissed Raydrin from the same direction, his voice strained.

Jórunn scrambled to her feet and drew in that preparatory breath, but when one of the men in front of her snarled suddenly and there came the clashing of metal, the word Feim died on her lips.

If she went ethereal now, Raydrin would be on his own.

There was no way she was taking that risk again.

She hissed a Laas instead, feeling the two presences take shape in the space before her. They were locked in a swordfight, fast and aggressive, overwhelming the small office space with the sound of steel on steel.

“Feim,” she whispered, quietly enough to be drowned out by the fight. She stepped forwards on intangible legs and came to a stop just behind the Thalmor guard; it would only be a matter of seconds before she could rematerialize and—

The fight suddenly changed. They fell silent, and a split second later there came the clattering of a sword against stone.

The guard snarled and cast what sounded like a shock spell. Raydrin released a sharp, choked sort of grunt and then his aura staggered backwards, landing flat on the floor. The guard—now unarmed—dropped to his knees over Raydrin’s prone body. Jórunn felt his hands wrap around Raydrin’s throat.

Without a second thought she ducked behind him and hooked her ethereal arm around his neck, just in time to catch him by surprise when she then solidified. The vague, fuzzy feeling of his aura turned into the very real, solid feeling of a man pressed up against her. She tightened her arm, closing the inside of her elbow around his windpipe, and leaned her weight back so that she fell onto her rear. The guard came tumbling with her.

His hands scrabbled for purchase against Jórunn’s forearms, his breath hoarse and wheezing, but he seemed too panicked to do anything except flounder and squirm. Jórunn hooked her ankles around his knees, pinning his legs to the floor. Then a sudden pain—hot and crackling—flared where he was grasping at her arm. Jórunn cried out, the shock spell jolting through her limb and sending a tingling numbness down that side of her body. But the spasm had her arm suddenly contracting against her will, every muscle seizing up in unison. There was a sickening crack and the guard fell still. His body sagged against her.  

Panting and nauseous, Jórunn fell back, the stone floor cool against her scalp. The urge to cry rose up in her throat, but she was breathing too quickly and too shallowly for the lump to get any higher than her chest. The guard was a dead weight on top of her. With a choked sob she tried to roll him off, twisting her hips and wriggling. It was no use. She was too tired, too overwhelmed.

“Raydrin?” she eventually croaked.

The short while it took for him to reply felt like an era.

“I’m here,” he said hoarsely.

It took several seconds for him to make his way over to her, his footsteps slow and heavy. Leather creaked as he knelt down beside her. Then his hand was on her cheek, wiping away the blood from the cut under her eye. Jórunn gasped as his thumb grazed over the cut itself.

“Raydrin,” she said again, her voice watery and thin.

“Are there any others?” he asked quietly.

Jórunn closed her eyes, feeling tears gathering in her lashes. Raydrin’s hand was gone. “Laas Yah Nir,” she mumbled reluctantly. Her gut protested with a half-hearted roll. The words tasted like acid on her tongue.

Raydrin got back to his feet; she could feel and hear him moving around the room. “I’m so sorry, Raydrin,” she muttered. “I’m so sorry. I should… I should have…”

“It’s fine,” he said, sounding distracted. “I doubt it would have made a difference anyway. And we’re safe now.” He paused. “Right?”

Weakly Jórunn nodded from where she was still lying on the floor. “Right,” she confirmed. They were as safe as they could get. This may have been a momentary reprise, but they were still in the snake pit.

Raydrin’s aura was hovering somewhere in the centre of the room, bent over slightly as if he were peering down at something. Jórunn fell silent. It felt like a long while that they spent like that, Raydrin busy with whatever it was he was doing and Jórunn doing her best to collect her thoughts. Her panic slowly receded, leaving that familiar drained feeling in its wake.

“We need to go to the dungeons,” Raydrin said at last, breaking the silence.

Jórunn found it in her to sit up and shrug the warm corpse off her lap.

“You’ve found something?” she asked, wiping at her eyes.

“Not a dossier,” he said. “There’s a letter on Elenwen’s desk about a prisoner here. The Thalmor think they know something about the dragons coming back. It… it’s dated from today.”

Jórunn was too stunned, too exhausted to speak. A hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Come on,” Raydrin murmured.

She took his hand and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

“So…” she started, pausing for a moment to take a breath and find her voice. “So the Thalmor aren’t responsible?”

“It doesn’t seem like it, no,” Raydrin confirmed. Jórunn exhaled, unsure of how to feel. Some small part of her was vindicated, but it was overwhelmed by the slowly dawning realization that they’d risked so much for such a useless venture.

Raydrin brushed down her arms. He straightened her shoulder mantle, his hands flitting over her body as he made a number of small adjustments to her disguise. He finished by pulling her hood back up over her head. “There you go,” he said gently. “You were looking a little human there.”

Jórunn swallowed. “Are you alright, Raydrin?”

It took him several moments to answer.

“I’m uninjured,” he said. “… We should go before anyone comes looking for their friend.”

Jórunn nodded and found his arm. “Okay.”

She wanted desperately to be out of there—out of that office, outside the embassy walls. She felt as if she were treading water and just barely staying afloat.

But they were in too deep. There was no way out now except to push forwards.

 

---

 

The solar was oppressively silent as Raydrin and Jórunn trudged down towards the dungeons. Raydrin’s fist was curled around the letter, the inked parchment scrunched tightly in his gloved palm.

I have placed the prisoner in the cell closest to your office stairs, for your convenience.

It had been a sickening letter to read, once Raydrin was able to break through the dense Aldmeris. Full of creative and insidious euphemisms for ‘torture’. With each descending step, it occurred to him with growing clarity that they were going to discover something quite horrible down here. And lurking at the back of his mind was the knowledge that they were still far from out of the water themselves; if they were caught, their own fates would probably be the same. That fact was not lost on him.  

His memories of Malborn’s floorplans were murky now, clouded over by the lingering adrenaline and panic still in his system. But Raydrin found that his feet carried him almost automatically in the right direction. The dungeons had been designated by Malborn as a last resort, to be used only in the event that every other escape route was excluded. Raydrin supposed, in light of the revelation that their identities had been known from the moment they’d handed in their invitations, this was now more or less the case.

They reached a metal door at the base of a dark stairwell.

“There’s someone on the other side,” said Jórunn quietly, giving his arm a squeeze.

“Just one person?”

Her face cloaked in shadow, Jórunn nodded.

“Alright,” Raydrin whispered. He swallowed before continuing. “Um… here’s what we’ll do. You knock. I’ll stand to one side, out of sight. When the door opens, you use Feim, and then I’ll jump them from the shadows before they can react. Okay?”

Jórunn was silent for a few seconds as she thought it over. At last she nodded and murmured, “Okay.”

Raydrin manoeuvred her into position. With a deep breath, Jórunn raised her hand, curled it into a fist, and then—after a moment’s hesitation—rapped her knuckles three times against the metal door.

Raydrin held his breath, grip tight around the hilt of his dagger. For several dense seconds nothing happened. Then there came the creaking of leather, just about audible through the metal of the door, followed by the scraping of a chair over stone as someone got to their feet.

“Man n’anta?"

Raydrin froze, translating it quickly in his head—his Aldmeris wasn’t good enough to do so automatically.

“Er, it’s me,” he called back lamely, Dunmeri accent obvious. “I’ve… lost my key.”

It was a blatant lie. But it didn’t really matter. A key turned in the lock and then the door swung open, flooding Jórunn’s face with orange light. Immediately she hissed a Feim, evaporating into thin air, and in the prison guard’s momentary surprise, Raydrin stepped forwards from the shadows, grasped her by the jaw, and sliced his blade through the meat of her throat. Her body fell to the floor with a loud smack, her choked gurgling dying out just a few moments later.

Jórunn was quick to rematerialize. Raydrin pulled her forwards a few paces, eager to shut the door behind them and cover their trail, but Jórunn weakly batted his hand away.

“Hold on,” she croaked. “I feel sick.”

She looked it: the illusion magic woven through her disguise still masked her human skin under a golden sheen, but the sweat and pallor were strong enough to come through.   

“Here,” said Raydrin, nudging her arm so as to offer his body as something to lean on. But she shrugged away from him.

“Stop grabbing me,” she said.

Raydrin stared at her.

He retracted his arm. Alright, he thought to himself, circling around her and locking the door behind them. He pocketed the ring of keys. The word ‘sorry’ caught in his throat.

As Jórunn collected herself, breathing deeply and slowly for a few moments, Raydrin glanced down to the body at their feet. Her eyes were blank, her throat stained red. A bright, viscous crimson seeped into the floorboards around her head.

She looked like Anya had, after Raydrin found her on the battlefield and snapped the arrow from her neck. He looked away.

“We should get moving,” he said, taking in their surroundings for the first time. They were on a wooden landing of some sort, a balcony overlooking a much larger chamber. The bailiff’s desk was located by the top of another set of steps, leading down from the landing into the dungeons proper. Everything was wooden slats; the floors, the wall, the ceiling. The space was dark and murky, lit only by odd pockets of candlelight.

Jórunn didn’t reply. In her silence Raydrin moved over to stand by the wooden railing, peering out over the room below. Another balcony girdled the wall on the opposite side. Beneath it sat a row of what Raydrin could only guess to be prison cells, continuing down in a corridor to the left. He imagined the inmates were all people the Thalmor wanted information from. Why else would they be here, at the embassy? The dungeon was too small for much else. And the Thalmor had more than enough prisons elsewhere to cope with the droves of political prisoners and violators of the White Gold Concordat.

Raydrin sniffed. It stank down here; like shit and rot, and now the metallic reek of fresh blood, too.

“Raydrin?” came Jórunn’s voice over his shoulder.

He twisted to face her, his hands lingering on the railing.

“Are you ready?”

She nodded, holding out her arm. Raydrin took it in silence and they began making their way down the stairs, the wood creaking softly beneath each step.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured as they clambered down. Raydrin didn’t reply.

The bottom of the stairs lined up with the furthest cell on the right; if the letter was correct, this was their lead. It was too dark to see much of the cell’s interior, but Raydrin felt like he could just about make out the shape of a person pressed up against the far wall. Swallowing, he glanced quickly to their left and right, ensuring the coast was clear, and then pulled Jórunn across the corridor and up to the metal bars.

“Hey,” he hissed, wrapping his hands around the bars. The shape against the far wall shifted slightly, limbs shuffling over the dusty floor. “Are you the prisoner who has information about the dragon crisis?”

It was a long while before there came any reply.

“I’ve already told you everything,” rasped a voice, hoarse with what Raydrin could only guess was a combination of dehydration, disuse, and… screaming. The prisoner shifted again. “Rulindil… Rulindil said we were done.” He coughed wetly. “For today.”

It occurred to Raydrin then that he and Jórunn were both clad in Thalmor robes, enchanted to make them appear as Altmer. The prisoner obviously thought they were here for another session.

Cursing himself for his stupidity, Raydrin pushed his hood back and removed his gloves, hoping that it would be enough to lessen the effects of the enchantment. His hands, at least, were their usual grey.

“We’re not Thalmor,” he said. “Look, I… we’re here to help you. We can break you out of here. We just need you to tell us what you know.”

The prisoner was silent.

After several moments had passed with no changes, Raydrin cursed and fished out the ring of keys from his robes. Impatiently he started working through them, though his hands were trembling and the growing anxiety rendered it a slow and difficult task. At last he found the key that slotted into place and with a sudden urgency Raydrin twisted the key in his fist and yanked the door open.

He stepped forwards, the prisoner becoming clearer in the murky light. He heard Jórunn following carefully behind him.

“Look,” he said, crouching to the prisoner’s eye level and holding up his hands. “Dark elf, see?”

The prisoner blinked at him from the shadows. He was a human, fair-skinned and fair-haired under the layers of grime that caked his flesh, and naked save for a scrap of a loin cloth. His frame was thin, bony from malnourishment, the pale skin stretched taut over ribs and joints. Lacerations and bruises decorated every inch of him; there were burn wounds down his sides, scabbed over blisters shaped suspiciously like a clothing iron, and his forearms were encrusted with dried blood. Heavy iron shackles were clamped around his wrists and his ankles.

Raydrin tried not to visibly gag; the smell radiating off this man was repulsive. To think that just a few hundred yards away, the elite of Skyrim were indulging in an evening of revelry and decadence, ignorant of the horrors below… it was sickening.

Still the prisoner didn’t speak.

“My name is Raydrin,” he said. “This is Jórunn.”

He gestured to his companion, who had since removed her own hood. “She’s the… well, we’re with the Blades. We’re trying to figure out how to end the dragon crisis. We came here thinking the Thalmor might be the ones responsible, but apparently they’re just as clueless as we are. Except for… well, you.”

The prisoner glanced between them sceptically, his gaze almost feverish.

“What’s your name?” Raydrin tried. He wanted to seem calm, gentle, but he was keenly aware that they were running out of time.

The prisoner swallowed, the apple of his thin throat bobbing visibly. It was a dry swallow—Raydrin could hear it. “How…” he started; “—I don’t…”

He shook his head, looking away. “I know this is some kind of trick,” he said bitterly. “Please, I… I don’t have anything more I can tell you.”

“What do we have to do to convince you we’re telling the truth?” asked Jórunn. “Look, we’re running out of time. Either you come with us now or you spend the rest of your life down here.”

“Why don’t you just tell us what you’ve already told the Thalmor?” said Raydrin. “You don’t have to give us anything new.”

The prisoner sighed; he shuffled forwards as best as he was able without the use of his hands, stretching his legs out in front of him. The shackles scraped unpleasantly over the floor.

“I don’t have anything new to give,” he told them, finally looking up again and meeting Raydrin’s gaze. “The Thalmor are looking for some old man named Esbern. They think he might be hiding in the Riften Ratway. I’m…” he swallowed, wetting his throat; “I’m with the Thieves Guild there. So they thought I might know something. But I don’t. I’ve seen the old man… a couple of times. But I don’t know his name or what he’s doing down there.”

He coughed again. “That’s all.”

“This… Esbern,” said Jórunn. “The Thalmor think he has something to do with the dragons coming back?”

“I guess,” said the prisoner.

“Did you say he was in hiding?” asked Raydrin.

The prisoner nodded.

“Maybe he’s an old Blade,” said Raydrin, nudging Jórunn’s side. Then he turned back to the prisoner. “If we broke you out of here, would you be able to take us to him?”

The prisoner glanced between them again. “I don’t even know if it is him,” he said.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Raydrin. “He’s the only lead we’ve got.”

“In theory… yes,” said the prisoner. He sighed. “But in practice… I don’t know. I’m not sure I can walk. The Thalmor, they…”

He trailed off.

Raydrin swallowed. A multitude of different ways that sentence could have ended ran quickly through his head.

“Do you think you can limp?” he asked.

The prisoner shot him a glance. “I can try.”

“That’ll have to do. Come on.”

Raydrin shuffled forwards, withdrawing the ring of keys from his pocket and repeating the same process of trial-and-error with the prisoner’s irons. He’d finally found the right key and was helping the prisoner get to his feet when Jórunn suddenly grabbed him by the arm and said, eyes wide; “Raydrin. Someone’s coming.”

He froze where he was slinging the prisoner’s arm around his shoulder, eyes snapping to Jórunn’s face.

“Where from?” he hissed.

“That way,” she pointed over her shoulder to the left of the cell door. Raydrin remembered the dungeon having two entrances from Elenwen’s solar; that must have been the other one.

“B’vehk,” he swore, lowering the prisoner carefully back to the ground. He shut the cell door and grabbed Jórunn by the arm, pulling her into the shadows with him. They pressed themselves up against the wall just in time to hear the distant sound of a door opening and then slamming shut.

Heavy footsteps accompanied by muffled voices began descending a flight of stairs.

“How many?” Raydrin whispered, close to Jórunn’s ear.

“Seven,” Jórunn replied. She hung her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “Eight. Fuck.”

The voices gradually faded into earshot. They were mostly speaking in Aldmeris; it was too far away and too quick for Raydrin to pick up on more than the odd word. And then:

“Now,” said Elenwen in sharp Cyrodilic, “there are two ways this can go. Either you answer our questions now, or you answer them later. I would strongly recommend the first option—it will be a far more pleasant experience for the three of you, I am sure.”

For the three of you… who could she be talking to? Heloise and Farengar, most likely, and then… Malborn.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck.

“Heloise Motierre,” Elenwen tutted. Someone released a sharp gasp. “By the gods, you’ve got some explaining to do.”

There was a pause, and then a muffled sound of distress. Raydrin felt Jórunn flinch at his side. He wondered if she was still using Aura Whisper—if she could feel what was going on.

“Your husband is very important to us, Heloise,” Elenwen continued. “For that reason, we are going to give you the benefit of the doubt. However, you still ended up in that disguise somehow; you must understand the need for our suspicion. We would like very much for you to tell us how and why you ended up working for the Dragonborn, and then we would like for you to tell us the identity of your accomplice here.”

Was she talking about Farengar? Perhaps his disguise still hadn’t worn off.

It took Heloise several long moments to reply.  

“Dragonborn?” she eventually managed, her voice watery and disbelieving. “I—”

“The blind girl,” Elenwen cut her off.

Raydrin glanced down towards Jórunn; her eyes were still closed, her expression pained. She hadn’t wanted Heloise to know.

“Her name is Jórunn, though she will likely have introduced herself to you as Antonia Vitelli. I’ll ask again, Heloise; how is it that you ended up wearing her visage?”

Heloise was silent. Against the pounding of his heartbeat, Raydrin found himself thinking, lie. Please, please lie.

“I—”

Heloise faltered.

“I… was made to do it,” she said at last. Raydrin couldn’t help the relieved breath that escaped him. She had some sense, after all; his and Jórunn’s reputations were already black, at least as far as the Thalmor were concerned, but there was no reason for Heloise to go ruining her own. “I was… I was pulled aside by—Jórunn. The… Dragonborn, I suppose. She seemed distressed. A- and she was blind, and young, so I believed her. But they took me to some—a cupboard, or something. I don’t know. And they threatened me. They…”

She paused. Raydrin heard someone take a shuddering breath. “They threatened to kill me if I didn’t help them. Then they cast that spell on me and sent me back up to the party. I—I just thought… if all I had to do was stand around…”

“Very well,” said Elenwen. “Now, what of your accomplice here?”

“I—I don’t know,” said Heloise after a long moment’s thought. “He… he was already disguised when I met him.”

“Did he seem to be working with your assailants? Or was he apprehended, like you?”

“I—I don’t… I’m not sure—"

“Enough,” Elenwen cut her off. “Let us ask him ourselves.”

There came a loud smack followed by a gasping sound. “Well, cur?” came the voice of a man. “What have you to say for yourself?”

It was jarring when the reply came back in Raydrin’s voice; even if the accent was a little strange.

“What…” Farengar panted, “what exactly are you asking of me?”

He was slapped again.

“Don’t be insolent,” snarled the man.

“Raydrin Dutheri,” Elenwen crooned. “The Dragonborn’s guide… the disgraced Redoran.”

Raydrin froze. He hadn’t had a chance to do more than skim his and Jórunn’s dossiers, but it seemed the Thalmor knew even more than he’d realized. How…?

“But that’s not you, is it?”

Elenwen’s tone darkened. “Why don’t you tell us who you really are?”

Farengar was silent. Raydrin held his breath. He could imagine the wizard’s thought process, weighing the potential consequences of his answer. The truth would risk implicating Balgruuf; if the Thalmor knew as much about Raydrin and Jórunn as they seemed to, they would be aware of Balgruuf’s support and patronage. And despite Farengar’s attitude, Raydrin knew he was loyal to his jarl.

And he’d worked with Delphine, too. He may have seemed like the typical lofty wizard, interested only in his research, removed from the tribulations of the material world, but he’d proven himself several times to have the capacity for selflessness.  

Another smack. “Answer me,” said Elenwen. “You can’t hide behind that illusion magic forever. Tell us now and you’ll be saving yourself a world of pain.”

Raydrin was distracted from Farengar’s answer when he felt Jórunn’s gloved fingers brush against his own. He looked down, and then back up to her face.

“We need to do something,” she whispered.

She was right, he knew, but short of an open fight, what could they do?

His stomach sank. What else could they do? They were still trapped themselves—it wasn’t like they could hide out in this cell forever. An open fight was rapidly looking like their only option.

Raydrin swallowed, closing his eyes. “You’re right.”

“I have a plan,” she said. “But I need you to trust me.”

“Always.”

Jórunn nodded. “Wait with the prisoner,” she whispered. “I’ll be back.”

She wanted him to wait?

“Jórunn, wh—” he started, trying to take hold of her wrist as she moved away from him, but she dissolved from his touch before he could stop her. Raydrin watched helplessly as her faint, shimmering outline disappeared through the bars of their cell, retracing their steps from before. He couldn’t help but follow, pressing himself up against the bars, waiting with dread for her plan to materialize.

Jórunn reappeared a few feet away, in the centre of the corridor. Raydrin couldn’t see far past her without making himself obvious, but he could guess she was standing more or less directly in the interrogators’ eyeline.

“You want to know where I am?” she suddenly announced. Raydrin’s stomach lurched, his grip tightening around the iron bars. What the fuck was she doing? “I’m right here.”

Whatever questions the interrogators were busying themselves with died on their lips. A dense silence filled the chamber.

“Hello, Dragonborn,” said Elenwen at last. “You’ve come a long way since Helgen. I was so hoping we would get the opportunity to chat.”

“I don’t want to chat,” said Jórunn.

“Funnily enough, neither do I,” said Elenwen. Then, in Aldmeris: “Grab her.”

Two guards approached, their plate armour clattering and their footsteps heavy. Raydrin watched in horror as they came into his line of sight, gauntlets closing around Jórunn’s arms, but Jórunn allowed them only a moment or two of triumph before a muttered Feim had her evaporating out of their grip.

The guards flinched away from the space she’d just occupied, their hands on the hilts of their swords and their gazes flicking furtively around the room in some vain attempt to locate her. Even Raydrin struggled to keep track of her after the first few paces, despite being well-practised with recognizing the appearance of her ethereal form.

“Whatever game you’re playing at, Dragonborn,” said Elenwen, cool and collected, “know that we have two of your friends at our mercy. It would be a terrible shame if something were to happen to them.”

It was a few seconds later before Jórunn rematerialized. Raydrin couldn’t see her anymore, but he could hear her voice.

“I can do this all night,” she said, ignoring Elenwen’s threat. “Try all you like, but you’re not laying a finger on me unless I want you to.”

“Why are you here, Dragonborn?” Elenwen snarled.

“You’ll figure it out soon enough,” said Jórunn. “I’ve got what I came here for. Right now, what I want is to walk out of here with Malborn and Raydrin, and I want you to let us.”

“And why would we do that?”

“Because I am Dragonborn,” Jórunn hissed. “I’ve brought dragons to their knees and I can bring this place to the ground just as easily.”

Raydrin’s breath caught in his throat. It was an exaggeration—Jórunn had defeated just one dragon so far, and he doubted her Thu’um was as powerful yet as she claimed it to be. But she said it with such conviction that he almost believed her.

And did the Thalmor know any better? Was it a risk they could afford to take?

The dungeon was silent. 

“It won't be easy,” said Elenwen at last. “This won't be the end. We can make your life a living hell.”

“I know,” said Jórunn. “But I’ve given you my terms. You’re not in a position to refuse, Elenwen. Otherwise everything ends, right here, right now.”

Elenwen said nothing. Raydrin’s heart felt like it was about to burst past his ribs, past the bars of this cell.

“Very well,” Elenwen conceded at last. She called out orders in Aldmeris.

Untie the prisoners. The Motierre woman stays here.

Raydrin sagged against the bars, grip loosening. He closed his eyes. The rough metal was cool against his forehead, his lungs finally expanding fully, flooded with relief.

Someone tapped on the metal a few long moments later. He opened his eyes, coming face to face with Jórunn, her expression set with determination. Behind her were Malborn and Farengar, the latter still Raydrin’s mirror image. They stared at him over Jórunn’s shoulder. Their eyes were wide and fearful.

“Come on,” said Jórunn. “Get the prisoner. We’re leaving.”

“Etienne was not on your list of terms, Dragonborn,” called Elenwen from a short distance away.

“He is now,” Jórunn replied, yanking open the cell door with a loud clang. Raydrin helped the prisoner—Etienne—get to his feet and wrapped an arm around his burned, scabby waist. Etienne draped his own arm over Raydrin’s shoulders. They staggered out together, Etienne breathing heavily at his side, holding in his grunts of pain.

They were led by two Thalmor guards down the corridor, past empty cells and torches, past the mournful, sunken faces of other inmates staring at them curiously from behind their bars. Raydrin risked a glance over his shoulder to find Elenwen following several paces behind, accompanied by a third guard and the other interrogator. She met his gaze and curled her lip. Raydrin looked away.

Relief and uneasiness churned his stomach. It felt too easy, too simple.

But Raydrin wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The guards led them through a metal door at the far end of the corridor and then up a flight of stairs which opened into the outdoors. The night air was bitingly cold, flakes of snow drifting down from the black sky and landing in wet clumps on Raydrin’s cheeks and in his hair. But he was grateful for the clean air, to be out of that dank, oppressive dungeon.

“I—I’ve no shoes,” Etienne gasped as they filed out into the snow, the guards coming to a stop as they waited for everyone to gather. Raydrin glanced between them uselessly, hoping in vain that they’d offer some sort of solution, but they just stared back at him blankly from behind the slits of their helmets.

“Get on my back,” he said, crouching and letting Etienne clamber onto him, thin arms looping around his neck. He hooked his arms under Etienne’s thighs and got back to his feet with a grunt, though Etienne was light as anything, shivering like a leaf against his back. Finding him something to wear was going to have to be a priority.

“Malborn,” said Raydrin. “Could you lead Jórunn? You’ll have to give her your arm.”

The Bosmer nodded and did silently as asked. Jórunn’s fingers curled around his sleeve.

They carried onwards. The back entrance to the prison was still contained within the complex, but the guards led them through some stables and past what looked like the barracks, and then finally through the embassy’s rear-gate.

“This won’t be the last time we see each other, Dragonborn,” said Elenwen, folding her arms across her chest.

“I’m sure it won’t be,” Jórunn bitterly replied. The pine forest stretched out ahead of them, dense and dark. “Come on,” she said, nudging Malborn’s side with her elbow. “We’re done here.”

The five of them trudged into the snow, backs prickling under the Thalmor’s stares. Raydrin took the lead. Once they’d crossed the road and descended into the tree-line, he broke out into a run.

The others followed suit, snow crunching underfoot. They didn’t stop to discuss what had happened or where they were heading—it was clear to all of them that the important thing now was putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the embassy. Farengar cast a spell to light their way, a hovering orb of pale white light that followed them as they ran. It was otherwise pitch-black, the trees too tall and too dense to let in more than the occasional shaft of moonlight, thin strips of silver cutting across the snowy forest floor.

Raydrin’s breathing was heavy, his knees and ankles aching from the impact of running downhill. His satchel thumped annoyingly against his thigh, Etienne’s breath hot against the back of his neck as he was jostled up and down.

“—‘m—I’m gonna be sick,” Etienne moaned, but Raydrin was running with enough momentum that it was difficult for him to slow down before Etienne choked up a pathetic amount of bile onto the leather of Raydrin’s shoulder mantle.

The smell was repulsive, acidic and laced with blood. But Raydrin swallowed down his gag. It didn’t matter. These robes would be getting ditched anyway the first chance he got.

They hadn’t been running for long when Jórunn gasped out a Laas Yah Nir between breaths and then swore.

“We’re being followed,” she said, voice taut with panic and exertion.

“How many?” asked Raydrin. He’d been expecting this. 

She panted for a few paces before answering. “At least a dozen.”

Raydrin fought to conjure up some kind of plan, something better and more intelligent than just, run. But his mind came up blank. He said nothing, having nothing to offer, focusing instead on the rapidly-moving snow beneath his feet, avoiding rocks and gnarled tree roots, watching the way the icy crust glittered under the silver light of Farengar’s spell.

What else could they do? They were grossly outnumbered. Malborn was no fighter, and Etienne could barely stand. Some animal instinct pushed him forwards, numbed his thoughts, blocked out every consideration that wasn’t the urge to flee. If he just ran quickly enough…

He was still running when he heard the first calls of Aldmeris in the distance. A quick glance over his shoulder and he saw the orange glow of torchlight, seeping out between the trees, glinting like embers in the blackness.  

“B’vehk.”

Farengar turned and thrust a shock spell over his shoulder, powerful and bright enough to momentarily illuminate the forest like it was day. The spell crackled away, followed by a muffled scream in the distance.

Jórunn suddenly cried out. Raydrin stumbled to a halt, turning over his shoulder to find her flat on her front with a motionless Malborn beside her. A golden arrow was lodged firmly between Malborn’s shoulder blades.

Raydrin’s mind was white, empty, overwhelmed and vacant at the same time. Farengar was behind Jórunn immediately. He pulled her to her feet, gave her his arm, had her stumbling back into a run. His spell had finally worn off, revealing pale Nordic skin and those scrappy brown sideburns.

Swallowing down the knot in his throat, Raydrin followed, leaving Malborn behind them. He could still hear shouting in the distance.

They could only have been running for another minute or so, their pursuers staved off by Farengar’s magic, when the trees around them suddenly petered out and they burst from the thicket into an open clearing. Ahead lay the peaks and river-valleys of the Kilkreath foothills, illuminated by the twin moons and aurora borealis up above. Beyond that was the stretch of Haafingar. The snow here was thick and powdery, unimpeded by trees, and they stumbled through it until the ground ahead of them suddenly gave way to a sheer cliff edge.

Raydrin and Farengar stared at each other uselessly, rendered immobile by panic. They turned back the way they came to see the Thalmor emerge from the shadows, armour and weapons glinting silver under the moonlight. They stepped forth from between the trees like spiders crawling out from cracks of stone.

The interrogator from earlier took to the front. Rulindil.

“It’s over, Dragonborn,” he called, voice sharp and cold. The hollow wind whistled between each word, filling the gaps of his silence. “You’ve nowhere to go. Surrender, and you may live.”

“No,” Jórunn spat.

Rulindil laughed.

“Like a petulant child,” he said. “Very well. I see no reason to continue negotiations. Guards.”

One of the soldiers at the front stepped forward and readied a frost spell in their palm. Raydrin barely had time to register what was going on before the ice spike was released from their hand and shooting towards them. He called out Jórunn’s name, unable to reach for her without dropping Etienne, but Farengar had shoved her to one side and out of the ice spike’s path before it could touch her. A split second later an arrow had lodged itself into the side of his neck, and Raydrin could only watch as Farengar stumbled backwards, clutching at his throat, before his foot caught on the edge and he was gone.

It happened so fast.

“Yol… Toor SHUL!”

Raydrin felt it in his bones. There was a great burst of heat and light, burning against his frozen cheeks, and then the smell of smoke. Raydrin’s vision slowly returned to him, revealing blurred pockets of orange against the blue. And then, when the ringing in his ears had cleared…

Screaming.

Immolation was a horrible way to die. Those clad in armour seemed to have fared better than those in leathers, the smell of burnt flesh assailing Raydrin’s nostrils. But they were given no chance to flee before it came again.

“Yol… Toor SHUL!”

The snow was melted off the trees. Their tips were blackened and bare. Smoke drifted in great plumes towards the stars, illuminated by the flames below. Twigs glinted orange against the dark night sky.

The screaming was endless. Raydrin watched in horror, unable to tear his gaze away, at the figures encased entirely in flame. He could imagine the agony of it, that blistering heat eating quickly through flesh, the boiling of blood, the inescapable torture of being trapped in a suit of metal. People-shaped fires attempted to flee into the safety of the trees, but those with remaining faculties were dropping themselves into the snow.

“Fus… Ro DAH!”

 

It took a long time for Raydrin’s ears to stop ringing. They were met with the crackling of flames and the low whistle of a mountain wind. The screaming had stopped. Clumps of snow had gathered in his lashes, blurring his vision. His cheeks were freezing; tear tracks had turned to ice. Etienne was shivering violently against his back.

And Jórunn was on her knees, sobbing—screaming—into the snow. Raydrin had never, in all the time they’d spent together, heard her cry like that.

He shrugged Etienne higher onto his shoulders and stared.

Notes:

hello again! sorry it’s been a while, i hope i haven’t lost too many of you. it definitely wasn’t my intention to leave things on such a cliffhanger, but sometimes life happens. future updates will still probably be a little irregular, but hopefully more frequent now that i’m back in the swing of things.

massive thank you to my beta readers haley and diana for all of their help <3 and I also want to say thank you to anyone who’s ever left a comment, even those who’ve stopped reading for whatever reason and won’t see this. looking back over old comments during my unplanned hiatus was a huge part of my motivation to get back into writing. they seriously mean the world to me and I can’t thank you all enough x

Chapter 28: The Silence Has Been Broken

Haafingar, Skyrim, 10th Evening Star

The sun was just peeking over the tips of the pines when they made it to Malborn’s safe house.

It was already late in the morning. The ‘safe house’ was really just an abandoned shack a few miles west of the embassy, tucked away on the mountainside within a hollow of pine. Raydrin had come here only the day before to drop off his and Jórunn’s belongings. It felt like a lifetime ago now. Returning after the fact… he thought he’d feel relieved, but he just felt numbed. He’d been nothing but numb from the moment they stepped out of those dungeons.

Raydrin lowered Etienne carefully to the ground, propping him up against a dilapidated wall. He was dressed in scraps of clothing they’d managed to recover from the corpses of Thalmor soldiers. Jórunn, too, slumped down to the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest and holding them there. She hadn’t spoken a word since the cliffside. Raydrin didn’t know what to say to her. Her eyes had a wide, stunned sort of look to them.

“I’m going to look for firewood,” he quietly announced, glancing between his two companions. Etienne turned to look up at him, but neither he nor Jórunn spoke. “You’ll be alright while I’m gone?”

Again, there came no reply. Raydrin didn’t wait for one; he just left.

Finding wood dry enough to burn proved to be a challenge, and after skulking around the woods for a good half hour, Raydrin returned empty-handed, cold and irritated. No fire meant no hot food. Was he even hungry? He ought to have been—the last thing he’d eaten was that delicate Altmeri banquet over twelve hours ago—but his stomach churned at the thought of eating any of their rations.

He slumped down onto the remains of a chair and rubbed at his temples. Jórunn was lying a few feet away, curled onto her side; she looked like she was sleeping. Raydrin doubted it. A shaft of bright wintry sun cut across her, tinging her normally dark hair a sort of reddish-brown. He realized then that his hands were trembling. What was he supposed to do now? He desperately needed sleep but he felt wide awake, jumping at the slightest noise, at the shadow of a bird in the corner of his eye.

He looked over at Etienne, who’d barely moved since Raydrin left him. He just needed something to occupy his hands and his thoughts. Something to make him feel useful.

He dug his pack out from where he’d hidden it the day before and brought it over to Etienne, beginning to rummage through its contents. Etienne watched him with a hesitant sort of curiosity.

“Do you want some food?” he asked, locating their travel rations and unwrapping the cheesecloth to show Etienne their selection; hardtack, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and some kind of smoked fish that Raydrin had bought in Solitude markets. And the remaining chunks of High Hrothgar mint cake.

Etienne glanced between him and the food for a few moments, looking unsure of himself, before eventually deciding on a small piece of hardtack. Raydrin put the rations to one side.

“I’m not a mage,” he said as Etienne started nibbling at one corner, “but I do have some basic training in field medicine. I… could take a look at your wounds, if you’d like.”

Etienne stared at him with wide brown eyes, jaw slowly working the hardtack. He looked even worse in the daylight than he had in his cell; his skin, where it wasn’t bruised and discoloured, was so pale it was almost translucent, and his face was haggard and sunken. The skin of his lips was white, dead. Dirty blonde hair hung limp around his temples.

“We have salves and healing potions,” Raydrin went on. “And I can clean and dress any open wounds. It’ll make you feel a lot better.”

Etienne seemed to concede. “Okay,” he said. Slowly he began to strip out of his burned Thalmor robes, meanwhile Raydrin dug out their field kit. It took an hour or two to attend to everything. Etienne had been burned, whipped, and poked all over. He was missing several fingernails and toenails. He told Raydrin that the Thalmor would put him on the rack and stretch him until his joints separated, and then some more until cartilage and ligaments snapped and Etienne would pass out from the pain. He’d wake up hours later having been healed, ready to go again.

Gruesome as it was, it was oddly calming to listen to Etienne explain how each of his wounds were acquired. It was so far removed from anything Raydrin had experienced that he couldn’t imagine it, but visceral enough to keep his mind from thinking about much else. “That sounds horrible,” he would say, lamely. Maybe Etienne got some catharsis from sharing it. Raydrin had never been tortured, so he wouldn’t know.

When Etienne had been stitched up and bandaged within an inch of mummification, Raydrin gave him his spare change of clothes to wear and tossed a bedroll at him. They’d need to buy more equipment if he’d be travelling with them to Riften, but they could worry about that later.

“Try and get some sleep,” he said. Etienne didn’t need to be told twice.

Raydrin turned his attention back to Jórunn, who still hadn’t moved. She had her back to him. Feeling his exhaustion start to kick in, Raydrin gathered the other bedroll, curled himself around her, and draped it over them. Jórunn said nothing, but she wrapped her hand around his forearm where he’d laid it across her waist and held him tightly enough for it to hurt. Sleep was quick to claim him.

 

---

 

Hjaalmarch, Skyrim, 12th Evening Star

They resupplied in the town of Dragon Bridge, keeping as low a profile as they could afford. Jórunn and Etienne waited a short distance from the town whilst Raydrin headed in to buy their equipment; they stood out more as a trio than as individuals. He returned a few hours later with an extra tent, a third bedroll, more rations, spare clothes, a set of daggers, and a pack so Etienne could carry it all. Staying in inns was out of the question until they were back in Stormcloak territory, so they pressed onwards until well past nightfall, crossing the border into Hjaalmarch.

They made camp a good mile or so from the road, somewhere along the Hjaal river before it bled into the Karth. The water was less than ideal for bathing—too far downstream and nearly ice-cold—but they heated some over the fire and used it to scrub themselves down. It was the first opportunity they’d had to clean themselves since the embassy. For Etienne, Jórunn imagined, it had been even longer.

She was dozing in her and Raydrin’s tent, listening to the sound of the nearby waterfall rushing past and waiting for their dinner to cook. Raydrin and Etienne were sitting outside by the fire.

“Now that we’re more… settled,” Etienne started, voice slightly muffled through the canvas of Jórunn’s tent. “I guess I have some questions.”

Raydrin was silent for several seconds before answering. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Jórunn is the Dragonborn,” said Etienne. “What exactly does that mean?”

The fire crackled and spat, filling the silence as Raydrin thought it over.

“It’s an old Nord myth,” he said eventually. “Well… I suppose ‘myth’ is the wrong word. She’s a mortal with the soul of a dragon. Sort of like the Septim emperors, but it’s not hereditary.” He paused and then sighed, busying himself with the preparation of their dinner for a few seconds. “It gives her the ability to use the Thu’um,” he went on, “which was all that stuff you saw back at the embassy.”

“The same thing Ulfric used to kill Torygg?”

Raydrin was silent, which meant he’d probably nodded.

“The Greybeards think she has something to do with the dragons coming back,” he said. “But to be honest, we have no idea what we’re doing. Investigating the Thalmor was just a shot in the dark.”

Jórunn curled in on herself, pressing her face into her little travel pillow. A shot in the dark, and a useless one at that. It had killed Malborn and Farengar and put Heloise in grave danger. She would smother Delphine with this pillow if only it was big enough.

Etienne asked about the Greybeards, and about the Blades. It was the most Jórunn had heard him speak since they’d rescued him. Raydrin answered all his questions patiently.

“And Jórunn’s… blind,” Etienne said at last, hesitant and slow.

Raydrin didn’t speak for several seconds, as if he wasn’t sure how to respond straight away. “So you’ve noticed.”

“How does that work?”

Jórunn rolled her eyes.

“What do you mean, ‘how does it work’?”

“I mean, how come she’s the Dragonborn?”

“Do I look like Akatosh to you?” said Raydrin. “I don’t know. The gods work in mysterious ways. Maybe it was random. But she’s handled this a lot better than anyone else I know could have handled it. She just needs extra help with certain things.”

Etienne was silent for a dense moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I… I didn’t mean to offend.”

Raydrin sighed. “Don’t lose sleep over it,” he said. “But just so you’re aware, she’s probably been listening to this whole conversation anyway. Jórunn?” he called. “I think we’re ready to eat.”

Reluctantly Jórunn shoved aside her bedroll, rubbing at her eyes and emerging from the tent. The heat from the campfire was intense on her cheeks.

“I’m over here,” said Raydrin. She followed the sound of his voice to sit cross-legged somewhere beside him.

“No harm done,” she said across the flames to where Etienne was sitting. “I asked myself the same thing, at the beginning.”

Etienne huffed softly from his nose. “Okay.”

Raydrin handed out their bowls and they ate in silence.

 

Jórunn awoke the following morning to find that Raydrin had already left the tent, which was unusual. Normally whoever woke up first would wait for the other to follow and they’d chat for a short while before going about their routines. They’d both been more reticent the past couple of days, admittedly… but still. She was used to the heat of his body beside hers, to the soft, steady sound of his breathing. 

She emerged from the tent to the sound of birdsong and the smell of woodsmoke. The air was crisp and cold, biting at her cheeks.

“Morning,” said Etienne.

“Morning,” Jórunn slurred back, fumbling around the opening of the tent until she located her boots. “Is there somewhere I can sit?”

“Ah—of course. Here.” Etienne appeared at her side a few moments later and then carefully but clumsily led her to a low rock she could sit down on. She brushed aside the snow and took a seat. “Porridge?” he said.

Jórunn nodded, scrubbing her wet hands over her thighs to wick away the snow. “Yes, please.”

She waited for the nudge to indicate that she ought to hold her hands out, but it never came.

“If you’re holding it out for me, I can’t see it,” she said, pointedly extending one palm.

“Sorry,” Etienne muttered, nudging the bowl against her outstretched hand a moment later. Once she’d taken hold of it securely and located the spoon, she began to eat.

“Where’s Raydrin?” she asked, doing her best to sound indifferent.

“He’s down by the river,” said Etienne. “Said he was going to make a start translating some dossiers, or something. Wanted the peace and quiet.”

Jórunn hummed, chewing thoughtfully on her porridge. It was thick and clumpy—clearly it had been sitting around for a while.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Better each day,” said Etienne. “But still pretty terrible.”

Jórunn exhaled. “What time is it?”

“Er—ten? I’m not sure. The sun hasn’t fully risen yet.”

“Could you lead me to the river? Once I’ve finished my porridge, I mean.”

“… Yeah. Yes, of course.”

Jórunn ate in silence, though she didn’t have the appetite to finish her entire bowl. When she’d eaten as much as she could stomach, Etienne gave her his arm and walked her the short distance down to the riverbank.

“Morning,” said Raydrin as they approached, his voice nearly drowned out by the rushing of water. Jórunn tugged her arm away from Etienne’s grasp and made the last few paces on her own, grass and snow giving way to pebbles beneath the soles of her boots. Her knees bumped against Raydrin’s outstretched arm and she used it to locate his shoulder, lowering herself down beside him a moment later.

“Careful,” he said, “mind the lamp.” Behind them she heard Etienne’s receding footsteps.

“How’s it going?” she asked once they were alone, sweeping one hand over the loose stones at her side.

Raydrin exhaled. Their arms were touching and she could feel the way his shoulders sagged. He was radiating warmth.

“The good news is that the Thalmor don’t seem to have any location on Delphine,” he said quietly. “She’s been outmanoeuvring them for years and they sound like they’re terrified of her. And I looked through the other Blades dossiers and found a file on this Esbern guy. He was an archivist and an expert in dragonlore, which is why the Thalmor are looking for him. Assuming he’s still alive.”

Jórunn nodded. “That sounds promising,” she said. “Maybe Delphine knows more about him.”

“I also found out that Ulfric is basically a Thalmor plant,” Raydrin went on. “The Markarth Incident, the Stormcloak rebellion… the Thalmor sowed the seeds back when he was a prisoner during the war. A destabilized Skyrim is in their interest, strategically, and they got him to hand it to them on a silver platter.”

Jórunn sighed. “Anything else?”

“Not yet,” said Raydrin. “I’ve just made a start on the College of Winterhold’s dossier.”

She cleared her throat, trying not to sound overly disparaging. “Why?”

“I guess I’m just curious,” he admitted. “I haven’t heard from Cassathra since the beginning of Hearthfire. This is the closest I’ll get to an update, even if it doesn’t tell me much.”

“There must be some reason the Thalmor have bothered to keep a dossier on the College,” said Jórunn. “Have… have you looked at ours, yet?”

Raydrin sighed. “To be honest… I’m scared about what I’ll find. I think I’m subconsciously saving us ‘til last.”

Jórunn nudged his ribs with her elbow. “It doesn’t sound that subconscious to me,” she said. Raydrin laughed.

“Maybe not.”

“Is it okay if I stay here?” she asked. “I’ll, um… I’ll try not to disturb you.”

Raydrin hesitated a moment, considering it. Then he conceded. “Feel free.”

They sat like that for a while, until the constant rushing of water started to make Jórunn feel sleepy. Carefully she adjusted her position, lowering herself onto her side and laying her head against Raydrin’s lap. He understood, wordlessly stretching his legs out to accommodate her. She could feel the firm muscles of his thigh shift beneath her cheek.

“I’m not in the way, am I?” she asked softly, aware that this was perhaps crossing some unspoken boundary.

“You’re fine,” Raydrin murmured, sounding a little distracted.

Jórunn exhaled. She closed her eyes and allowed her fingers to curl against his thigh. The rustling of water, the turning of pages, and Raydrin’s occasional mutterings made for a peaceful soundscape. 

Something had changed between them. She could tell. The weight of everything unsaid was tangible; he hadn’t asked about or even mentioned Heloise, but a conversation felt inevitable, imminent. Farengar and Malborn, the people who’d died so that they could escape, hadn’t been brought up once. Jórunn was struggling to wrap her head around their deaths; she was aware on some abstract level that they were gone, but her mind seemed reluctant or unable to accept the permanence of it. It wasn’t like she knew either of them well or that they had ever been a large part of her life. Maybe Raydrin was feeling the same.

And she still hadn’t found it in her to apologize for the way she’d spoken to him that night. She wanted to; she owed him that much. But every time the opportunity presented itself, the words caught in her throat.

Raydrin hadn’t complained. He hadn’t been resentful or bitter. Jórunn didn’t know why he was willing to put up with her, or what she’d done to deserve ending up with someone like him, but she couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else.

She felt a slight pressure against her upper arm, the grazing of a hand. Initially it seemed like an accidental brush, but then Raydrin’s hand settled more comfortably, deliberately, squeezing her arm just under her shoulder. Jórunn shuddered. It made sense, from their position—it wasn’t like his free hand had many other places it could naturally settle. She sighed and forced herself to relax. The touch was pleasant, comforting. She could allow herself this.

They stayed like that for what felt like a while. Jórunn found herself half-drifting off, lulled by the sound of the river flowing past despite the relative discomfort of laying on a pebble beach in the cold. She was hovering on the edge of sleep when she felt Raydrin suddenly tense beneath her.

A short, sharp intake of breath gave him away. Jórunn was suddenly wide awake, though she lay motionless for several seconds, waiting with bated breath for him to say or do something. He didn’t relax.

“Raydrin?” she said, squeezing the leg that she was using as her pillow just above the knee. He didn’t respond, not immediately or even several long moments later. Unease pricked at Jórunn’s spine and along the flesh of her arms.

“Raydrin, what is it?” she said again, lifting her head from his lap and drawing herself up. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Speak to me.”

“Give me a moment,” he muttered, a tense note of stress underpinning each word. Jórunn set her jaw, trying not to squeeze his shoulder too hard. She ought to have removed her hand, really, but she couldn’t bring herself to move at all. Her heart fluttered uncomfortably in her chest.

“Raydrin, you’re scaring me,” she said after giving him his moment and then some. Her patience was wearing thin. “Please, tell me.”

Still he did not reply. The river churned away in the background. Jórunn thought she might dislocate his shoulder.

“Ray—”

“I—” he cut her off, and she closed her mouth, waiting for him to continue. But it took several long moments before he was able to speak again.

“The Thalmor,” he started, uselessly. He paused with each word, like just saying them out loud took great effort. “They… they have a plant. At the college. A—a mole.”

Jórunn’s heart skipped a beat. Had something happened to Cassathra? Why had this unsettled him so badly?

“And the letters,” he went on. He sounded choked up. “The—the letters I’ve been writing to Cassathra. They…”

He trailed off.

Jórunn’s stomach sank.

The letters.

“Raydrin,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice level but failing to hide the tremble, “what are you saying?”

“I was telling her everything,” he confessed. He sounded as if he were speaking more to himself than to Jórunn. “Everything. Our—our plans, our whereabouts. Delphine…”

He cut himself off with a choked sort of noise. Jórunn removed her hand from his shoulder, lowering both hands slowly into her lap.

“Fuck,” said Raydrin. His voice was strained and thin. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

He dissolved into unintelligible mutterings, his words muffled like he was speaking into his hands.

Jórunn drew away from him. She sank her fingers into the pebbles either side of her, clenching wet handfuls in her palms. She—

She was furious.

White-hot, trembling fury. It seemed so obvious in hindsight—obvious that writing letters detailing their plans and their movements and sending them off into the void was a stupid, unjustifiable risk to take. How could that not have occurred to him?

Their botched attempt at infiltrating the embassy. Farengar and Malborn, dead. They were Thalmor public enemy number one now. All because Raydrin wanted to write some letters to his fucking sister.

“And Cassathra, she—” he went on. Jórunn couldn’t speak. “Gods. I’m so sorry. Jórunn. I’m so—it hadn’t—I didn’t—”

“You didn’t think,” she finished for him. Jórunn couldn’t remember the last time she felt this viscerally angry; angry enough to turn her stomach, to make her skin feel hot and tight all over. Wordlessly she got to her feet. She needed to get out of there before she said or did something unforgivable.

“Jórunn—” Raydrin croaked, but she ignored him, turning and stumbling back in the direction of their camp, foot catching on the grassy shelf that marked the edge of the riverbank. He didn’t follow.

“Is everything alright?” asked Etienne as she approached the camp. “Whoa, careful,” he appeared at her side, hands wrapping around her arms, “you nearly tripped over a guy rope there.”

Jórunn lurched away from his grasp. “Stop fucking touching me!”

Etienne backed off, falling silent.

“Gods, I—” Jórunn scrunched up her face, pinching the bridge of her nose. How was that sentence supposed to end? What words could possibly begin to encapsulate how fucking angry Jórunn had felt ever since Jarl Balgruuf sent her off into the wilderness with a total stranger and the weight of the world on her shoulders?

She found the opening to her tent with some difficulty and dropped like a stone onto her bedroll, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She wanted to scream, gods, she wanted to Shout.

But she just lay there in silence and wept. Anger like this was more than any frail mortal body could be expected to take.

 

---

 

Hjaalmarch, Skyrim, 14th Evening Star

The following two days were spent in near silence.

That was fine by Raydrin. He had enough of his own shit to work through.

Darkness was creeping into the woods along the southern border of Drajkmyr Marsh, bringing with it the promise of another long winter night. A feeling of dormancy hung thick in the air; the woods were still, silent, and the earth’s icy crust was an unblemished blanket, as perfect now as when the snowflakes had first fallen. It looked blue under the shadows, the tree canopy too thick to be penetrated by any moonlight. In the distance, there was only black. The crunching of snow beneath their feet felt loud and intrusive.

They hadn’t strayed far from the road—Wilhelm’s cabin wasn’t as remote as it felt. Raydrin wasn’t entirely sure they’d be able to find it in the dark, but still he pressed onwards, his hands curled into fists in his gloves, compelled by the promise of a warm bed and some friendly company to alleviate the tension. Jórunn’s grip on his arm was at once both a comfort and a curse, a constant reminder of how terribly he’d ruined everything. Her reluctance was palpable, her touch bittersweet. Etienne followed a few paces behind them.

“So who is this guy, again?”

Raydrin was silent for several seconds, trying to ease some slack back into his jaw. Jórunn, of course, gave no indication that she was planning on answering.

“We stayed with him on our way up to Solitude,” Raydrin eventually explained. “About ten days ago.”

Gods, it had only been ten days. It felt like months.

“But you don’t know him?”

“Not really,” said Raydrin. “It was just a chance encounter.”

There was more he could have said, but he left it there. Etienne had no further questions. They trudged onwards.

By the time they made it to the cabin, Raydrin had lit one of their torches to illuminate their way. Torches were an essential piece of gear at this time of year, the days too short to cover any reasonable ground by sunlight alone. The cabin looked the way it had before, a low, black shape perched on the crest of a little knoll. The slanted roof was buried under several feet of snow.

But it was dark—there was no light seeping out from the window. No woodsmoke rising steadily from the stack. Raydrin’s stomach clenched around a sudden feeling of unease. Fires didn’t die out at this time of year, not for anything. Not in places like this.

They slowed to a stop.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” muttered Etienne, clearly trying to sound off-hand about the observation.

Raydrin hummed. Wilhelm said he’d be here. He’d specifically invited them back.

“Wait here,” he said, tugging his arm away from Jórunn’s hand. Cautiously he began making his way up the path to the front door, taking care with each step not to lose his footing in the thick snow. That was another bad sign—this path clearly hadn’t been trodden since the last snowfall.

He rapped his knuckles against the door, the sound muffled by the leather of his gloves.

“Wilhelm?” he called softly, starting to feel slightly sick. “Will, it’s Raydrin. We, um… we’re back from Solitude.”

There was no response. The silence this deep in the woods was oppressive and heavy. Raydrin waited several seconds and then knocked again, and then waited several seconds more. When still there came no reply, he pushed on the door and found it unlocked. It gave way beneath his hand, allowing him to slip inside.

The cabin’s interior was eerie, lit only by the flickering light of Raydrin’s torch. Dark shapes shifted in and out of focus, murky and indistinct for the several long seconds it took for his eyes to adjust. He could make out the silhouette of the kitchen table, the bunches of herbs and plucked birds hanging from the ceiling, the hearth against the wall to his left. He peered into the darkness, but the far end of the room was beyond the reach of his torchlight. It was as cold in here as it had been outside, not a trace of residual warmth. The hearth was dead and ashy.

Setting his jaw, Raydrin lifted his torch higher and picked his way down the cabin, manoeuvring through the narrow space until he reached the part of the room that was used for sleeping. What he found there under the light of his torch was not surprising, but still he took in a short, sharp gasp of air.

Buried up to his neck beneath a pile of furs lay Wilhelm, his eyes closed and his leathered face as peaceful as if he were sleeping. Perhaps he had been—Raydrin hoped so. His skin was a chalky, bluish white, almost waxy-looking under the torchlight. Raydrin’s heart sank a little in his chest. He stared at the body for a long while, a tight feeling in his throat, his mind devoid of any articulated thoughts.

Eventually he stepped forward, removing one glove and touching the back of his fingers against Wilhelm’s icy cheekbone. He’d probably been dead for a couple of days. Decomposition would be slow out here in the cold. There was no bad smell, no distinctive rot. Just a frozen, empty sack of flesh, suspended in time.

Raydrin thought of Farengar and Malborn out in the wilderness of Haafingar. He wondered if they were still there, buried beneath several feet of snow, or whether the Thalmor had gone looking for them. The thought made him pull his hand back like he’d been burned, the reality of what had happened suddenly hitting him with full force.

At the same time there came a barking noise from outside, snapping Raydrin out of the stillness and the silence.

“Meeko!” Jórunn distantly exclaimed, the most excited he’d heard her sound in a while. Meeko continued barking, loud and fierce and so incongruently alive in a forest that felt so heavy with death. Raydrin glanced down to Wilhelm’s body again, putting his glove back on as best as he could with a torch in one hand. A slip of paper on the bedside table caught his eye. He picked it up and squinted at it. The handwriting was big and shaky, like a child with severe tremors had written it.

Dear Yo Jorun and Raydrin

If your reading this, that means you came back, so I’m sorry to leave you with such a nasty suprise. After all my years living in these woods, it looks like the rockjoint will finally be the end of me. My body has been deka decaying for a wile now. But I’ve had a long life. Meeting you both was a real treat. My only worry is Meeko. I know he’ll be abel to take care of himself, but I dont like to think of him all alone. Its a lot to ask, but coud could you find him a good home? Your welcome to all of my savings, though its not much. You can find it in the pouch in the bottom draw of the wardrobe.

PS. I know your the Dragonborn. Be careful out there. Your not as suttel as you seem to think.

Will

Raydrin released a shaky breath. His hand curled involuntarily around the parchment. He looked back down to the body, to the serene expression on its face, tucked up in bed. They would give him a proper burial, he resolved. Will deserved that much.

Tucking the letter into his pocket, Raydrin turned, found the savings, and headed back outside, carefully picking his way down the little hillside to where the faint silhouettes of Jórunn and Etienne could just be made out in the darkness. Jórunn was crouching, scratching Meeko behind the ears, his big paws propped up on her knees. Etienne was watching them both; as Raydrin approached, bringing them into the pool of his torchlight, he could see Etienne’s expression was a little confused. Etienne looked up in greeting.

Jórunn did too, having heard Raydrin’s footsteps.

“Any sign of him?” she asked, more relaxed than she had been in days. Not that that was saying much. Raydrin swallowed.

“He, um.”

Jórunn’s expression was expectant. Meeko was panting and whining under her attention, his bushy tail thumping into the snow.

“Will’s dead, Jórunn,” said Raydrin at last. He hadn’t felt like crying before, but he was suddenly finding it difficult to get the words out. “I… I found him in his bed. It looks like he died in his sleep. I…”

He swallowed the lump in his throat, glancing away for a moment. He couldn’t handle Jórunn’s expression, the way her eyes widened, her lips parted.

“He left us a letter,” he went on. The tremble in his voice was obvious.

“What does it say?” asked Jórunn.

“It, um…” Raydrin scrambled to find it for a few seconds, pulling it out of his pocket with some difficulty given he only had the use of one hand. Trembling, he unwrapped the parchment, doing his best to smooth out the wrinkles. Then slowly he began to read.

“…PS. I know you’re the Dragonborn,” he finished. “Be careful out there. You’re not as subtle as you seem to think. Will.”

He faltered a little on Will’s name. Jórunn seemed to be staring into the snow, her lips pressed into a thin line. Meeko had taken to lying on his belly with his chin resting on his front paws, whining and gazing up at Jórunn with those big brown eyes. Etienne was silent.

“You poor thing,” Jórunn muttered at last, still petting Meeko absently. “Out here all by yourself… you must have been so lonely.”

Meeko whined as if in confirmation. Raydrin said nothing, unable to speak for fear of hitting another breaking point. He’d been feeling like that since the embassy, like he was constantly on the precipice of losing himself completely.

“His body’s still in the cabin?” asked Jórunn eventually.

Raydrin nodded, and then caught himself, choking out a ‘Yes.’

“We should bury him,” Jórunn went on. “Before we make camp.”

“I agree,” said Raydrin. “It’s just… we don’t have a spade. And this ground will be frozen solid.”

“Then we take him to the marshes.”

“It’s too far, Jórunn,” Raydrin choked. “The marshland is miles in the wrong direction. And the body will already be stiff as a rock, we can’t carry him. We’ll freeze to death ourselves if we don’t light a fire soon.”

“We can’t just leave him,” Jórunn insisted, sounding for the first time like she was on the verge of tears herself. “He was so nice to us, Raydrin.” She sniffed and started wiping furiously at her eyes. “Gods,” she said, high-pitched and watery, “I feel like I’m cursed.”

Raydrin stared at her uselessly, at a total loss for what to do or say. His impulse was to try and comfort her but he couldn’t even bring himself to move.

Meeko hopped up onto his paws and nudged Jórunn’s face with his damp black nose, whining lowly at the back of his throat. Jórunn gave a sad laugh when he started trying to lick the tears off her cheeks, gently batting him away and wrapping her arms around his hairy neck.

“Oh, you’re a sweet thing,” she whispered. “You’re coming with us. Yes, yes you are.”

Raydrin simply watched them for a long while, giving Jórunn her moment to grieve and waiting for his own tears to abate. When Etienne started visibly shivering—the poor man still had barely any meat on him—Raydrin stepped forwards and laid a hand on Jórunn’s shoulder.

“Come on,” he murmured.

Jórunn nodded and got to her feet.

They left Wilhelm’s cabin behind them, turning and heading back in the direction of the road. Meeko was reluctant at first, planting himself into the snow and barking when they tried to leave the clearing. But with a few calls of his name and the bribe of some beef jerky, they got him to heel. He fell into step beside them, trotting along by Jórunn’s feet.

They made camp a mile or so to the south-east, still wanting to keep their distance from the road. Etienne and Jórunn started putting up the tents, stomping down the snow into flat, compact squares, whilst Raydrin set off in search of firewood. Meeko eagerly came with him, his presence a simple comfort in the darkness; Raydrin had given up with the torch, wanting to preserve some of his night vision now that he was on his own, and having Meeko with him made him more confident that he’d be able to find his way back.

He looked for dead trees with exposed limbs and under fallen logs for whatever dry material he could find. When he had enough for a few hours of fuel, he headed back and began shaving away the damp bark with his dagger. Within half an hour they had the beginnings of a small fire.

Dinner was a quick affair; Raydrin was too tired to cook anything, to wait for the fire to get hot, and they had no fresh meat. They picked at their rations in a solemn silence, topped up the fire, and then retired to bed as soon as they were able. Meeko slept in Etienne’s tent for the extra warmth.

Jórunn had been the first to get in, and she was already wrapped up in her bedroll when Raydrin came clambering through the opening of their tent a few minutes later. He took care not to bother her as he manoeuvred his way into his own bedroll, tucking his legs in first and then wriggling the rest of the way down. At first he thought that she was already asleep, the shape of her body lying still in the darkness, but then she shuffled towards him and pressed herself close. They’d been doing this every night since the beginning of Sun’s Dusk, sharing body heat in an effort to preserve warmth.

Raydrin hated this. He wanted badly to ask if she was alright, and in any other circumstances he would have, but he still wasn’t sure where they stood. He fought back the urge to sigh only to find himself releasing it a few seconds later, and then closed his eyes, shuffling around in search of a comfortable position. There was a stone or a tree root beneath the base of their tent and he could feel it pressing into his back even through the layers of insulation.

He was still wide awake when, several minutes later, Jórunn shifted beside him.

“Raydrin?” she said, softly.

Raydrin opened his eyes to the blackness, heart starting to hammer inexplicably against his ribs. He swallowed, and then cleared his throat.

“Yeah?”

His voice was already raspy from the beginnings of sleep. Jórunn didn’t reply straight away, but she somehow pressed herself closer, tucking her hands into the space between their heads. Instinctively Raydrin found himself rolling onto his side to face her. Her face was murky in the darkness, barely visible save for the faint shape of her nose.

“Are you alright to talk?”

Raydrin nodded, exhaling. “Of course.”

“Then…” Jórunn faltered. “Then—I’d like to apologize.”

He was expecting her to elaborate, but she stopped there. Nervously—and stupidly—he asked, “What for?”

Jórunn thumped him lightly on the shoulder, the impact dulled by his bedroll. “Don’t be dense,” she whispered. “Raydrin, I… I’m sorry for how I reacted the other day. And for how I treated you back at the embassy. None of it was fair to you and—”

“Fair?" he cut her off. "Of course it was fair, Jórunn, I’m sorry. It’s my fault we’re in this mess, that—” he faltered, feeling that familiar knot rise in his throat whenever he thought about how easily this could all have been avoided if he’d just had some common sense. “It— it’s my fault things went so wrong back there. You have every right to be angry.”

He inhaled sharply when a cool hand suddenly came to rest on his cheek.

“Do you hear yourself?” Jórunn whispered. He stared at her, his reply catching in his throat. “Raydrin, there was no way you could have known. You didn’t do anything wrong. We were just unlucky. That’s all.”

He only realized he was crying when Jórunn pressed one of his tears away with her thumb.

“Oh Raydrin,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry for ever making you feel this way. I don’t… you’re so good to me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. The saltiness of his tears burned, but he couldn’t look at her anymore.

“And I’ve been so rotten to you,” she went on, her voice strained and high-pitched. “I just feel so—I just feel everything so strongly. All the time. I don’t know what’s causing it, but it’s getting worse. I feel like I’m losing myself. And that’s not an excuse, I just—I don’t know how to make it stop—”

He’d shoved his bedroll down and wrapped his arms around her before she could sob, squeezing her against him like he’d die if he let go. Jórunn shuddered in his arms, trembling silently.

“I’m so so sorry,” she said again, shaking her head, her breath warm as it fanned over his neck. “I’m so sorry. You deserved comfort and I’m so sorry that I couldn’t give that to you.”

Raydrin just squeezed her tighter, unable to reply. ‘It’s alright’ would have been a lie in every sense of the word. But he wanted to absolve her, if only to make her stop crying, because Raydrin had quickly learned that Jórunn crying was one of his least favourite things in all of Nirn and that he’d do anything in his power to make it stop.

He held her like that for a long while. Her hands were clenched into fists at his back, clutching at the fabric of his shirt, but gradually her grip relaxed. Her tears abated and she turned her head with a sigh, tucking her face into his neck.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said thickly, her voice a little nasal. “Did you, um… did you manage to find anything about Cassathra?”

Raydrin relaxed his hold on her slightly.

“In the dossier, I mean,” Jórunn clarified.

“It’s complicated,” he murmured. “She’s alright, I think. But she was part of this excavation that went wrong and they found something that the Thalmor thinks could potentially be useful. Or dangerous. I don’t know, I didn’t really understand all of the magical theory.”

Jórunn sniffed. “But she’s alright?”

“Sort of,” he said. “She caught the attention of the Thalmor mole. Being the runaway daughter of a Redoran councillor and the sister of the guy who’s currently accompanying the Dragonborn, they’ve singled her out as a potential ‘asset’. Whatever that means.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jórunn. Her nose grazed the hollow of his clavicles. “You must be so worried about her.”

“I am,” he admitted. “But she can handle herself. If I learned anything after leaving Morrowind, it was that.” 

Jórunn nodded, the hair on the crown of her head brushing under his chin. It was a little greasy. This was the longest they’d ever been so close and it was bittersweet. What they had was weird, Raydrin knew, but they’d been walking the line for so long that changing course now was out of the question. It was too late, there was too much at stake. This was enough. It had to be.

“There’s…” he cleared his throat. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, as well.”

Jórunn tensed in his arms. That wasn’t a good sign, but—in too deep to go back now—Raydrin swallowed and pressed forward.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” he said. “But I guess I just wanted to ask about everything that happened back at the party. With, um… with Heloise, I mean.”

Jórunn shifted backwards, removing her arms from around him and drawing away. Raydrin immediately felt sick, immediately realized that he’d fucked up, but the words were out there now and there was no taking them back.

“You still haven’t worked it out?” Jórunn murmured, sniffling again.

Raydrin swallowed. “I think we’ve established that I’m not the brightest.”

Jórunn laughed sadly, a short, soft sort of sound.

“Look, just forget I said anything,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m sure you have your reasons and I’m not going to hold it against you.”

It wasn’t like he could talk. He’d spent the first few months of their companionship just one bad decision, one moment of weakness away from relapsing, and though skooma had been everything to him for the last good chunk of his life, Jórunn—his best friend, his most precious companion—had no idea.

“I do want to tell you, Raydrin,” she said. She placed her hand on his neck briefly, thumb scraping over the stubble along the underside of his jaw. But then she drew it away and the distance between them felt suddenly cavernous. “I just… I can’t. Not here, I mean.”

Raydrin thought of Etienne sleeping just a few feet away and understood.

“I will,” Jórunn went on, like she was trying to reassure him. “Just not tonight.”

“That’s alright,” Raydrin murmured. He longed to be holding her again, longed for so many things, and his heart ached with the effort it took not to reach out and just squeeze her waist. But Jórunn had apologized—had forgiven him—and he trusted her enough to know that she meant it when she said she would tell him the truth. That was all he could ask for. He resolved then to tell her about the skooma when the time came. Something about the idea suddenly didn’t seem so bad anymore.

“Thank you,” he said lamely.

Jórunn laughed. “I don’t know why you’re thanking me,” she said. Tiredness was beginning to slur her words together. “I owe you everything.”

She didn’t owe him anything. But Raydrin said nothing more and neither did she. He closed his eyes and pulled the bedroll back up to his neck, letting himself succumb at last to the sleepy allure of the woods.

 

---

 

The Pale, Skyrim, 16th Evening Star

The gaping maw of Volunruud opened up before him, crumbling and ancient and ink-black beneath the moonlight. Mathyas set his jaw and held his torch up higher, peering with reluctance into the darkness below. The ruin was a mound of stone that gave way in the centre to a circular, sheer-edged pit. A staircase of stone tablets jutted out from the inside wall, curving around the pit’s interior and providing access to its base. Presumably the entrance to the ruin was located somewhere at the bottom. Mathyas didn’t want to find out, but there was nothing else for it.

He began his descent into the darkness, taking care to avoid slipping on the narrow tablets. Someone had walked these steps before, and recently—snow had been churned into slush beneath their feet, and slush had turned to ice, leaving sharp ridges and valleys in the shape of their soles and a perilous challenge for anyone following behind them.

The footprints continued in a short line from the base of the steps to a rusted iron door embedded in the pit’s wall. Mathyas approached it, looking it quickly up and down, taking a ring door knocker in one hand and finding that it turned with ease. The door grated unpleasantly over the stone as he pulled it open. The smell was immediate, snow and pine overpowered quickly by must and damp earth. Mathyas glanced upwards over his shoulder, taking one last look at the moons and the stars. Then he pulled the door behind him and committed to the subterrane.

He wasn’t an easily frightened man, but there was something unnerving about the total absence of light down here, the way he was completely and utterly dependent on his torch. Mathyas took a moment to brace himself, giving his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the murky light. He was standing at the top of a steeply descending staircase, leading quickly and directly down into the earth. Beyond the short ring of light at his feet was only blackness, impenetrable and deep.

Mathyas steeled himself and began climbing downwards. After just a few paces the steps levelled out into a small landing. Mathyas was so focused on staring ahead, on trying in vain to parse whatever he could from the darkness, that he wasn’t paying attention to the placement of his feet and felt with a sudden lurch of his stomach the crunching of something beneath the sole of his boot.

He looked down with horror to find that he’d stepped on what looked like a femur, brown with age and brittle enough that it had crumbled easily to dust beneath his weight. Instinctively he stepped backwards, recoiling from the bone, and his torchlight brought into view the rest of the skeleton—a skull here, a pile of ribs there, a snake-like line of vertebrae in some pale imitation of a spine.

He swallowed thickly. There was something so wrong about seeing exposed bone in this way; in Morrowind they cremated their dead. What was this person doing here, lying uninterred in the opening of what was supposed to be a crypt? He stepped over the skeleton with care and continued onwards. He hadn’t done anything with any of his victims. He thought of Alain and his men in the ruins of Raldbthar and the long, slow rot that awaited them.

The steps levelled out not long later, bringing Mathyas into some kind of larger chamber, though with the limited light of his torch he couldn’t say for sure exactly how large it was. He stopped after a few paces, turning and trying to get his bearings. Where was he supposed to go from here? The way forwards eluded him; he was surrounded on all sides by darkness. He could hear a dripping somewhere in the distance, the only sound save for his ragged breathing.

A hand clamped over his mouth and a blade was brought to his throat.

Mathyas gasped in the taste of leather, veering backwards from where he was being pulled by his neck, but his assailant had pressed themselves up against his back and was supporting his weight.

“So Astrid sent her dog to do her dirty work for her.”

She spoke close to his ear, her voice low and her breath hot against his chilled skin. Most unsettling of all was the realization that he couldn’t see her; there was no hand along the bottom edge of his periphery, no arms in the corners of his vision. If it weren’t for the very solid feeling of her body against his, he wouldn’t have known she was there.

The invisible hand at his mouth finally disappeared, though the knife stayed in place. Mathyas hung his head back, gulping down air.

“Vivienne.”

The knife then followed, grazing uncomfortably over his skin. The presence at his back stepped away. Foolishly and instinctively Mathyas tried to locate her, looking furtively around his surroundings in some vain attempt to do so. But it was only a few seconds before the small redhead rematerialized before him, flickering into visibility like some shimmery veil had been pulled away. She was hovering just on the edge of his torchlight and frowning at him, as always.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said with a defeated sigh.

Her expression didn’t change. “Depends who you ask,” she said flatly. “You weren’t supposed to be here, either.”

Mathyas stared at her, jaw clenched. He was at a loss as to where to go from there. Vivienne clearly had no intention of actually hurting him or she would have done so already. So what did she want?

She was frustratingly reticent, holding his gaze in silence, challenging him to be the first to speak.

“What happens now?” he asked with reluctance.

“Amaund is that way." She pointed across her chest to Mathyas’ left. He blinked at her, surprised by her abruptness, by how little she felt the need to say. Amaund is that way. What did that mean? How the fuck was that an appropriate response to his question?

She stared at him for a few seconds longer. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to react, she turned without a word and headed in the direction of Amaund, slipping beyond the light of his torch and into the shadows. Mathyas watched her go, staring at her back as it disappeared into the darkness, desperately trying to come up with an even vaguely appropriate course of action.

Vivienne clearly had no interest in what he did either way. For the briefest of moments, Mathyas considered turning around and heading back the way he came, finding some nearby inn, beginning the long trek back to Morrowind and finally leaving this whole thing behind him without regard for the consequences.

But he followed.

The cavern tapered off into a narrow tunnel, and Mathyas jogged a few paces until Vivienne reappeared under the light of his torch. She didn’t comment on his decision.

“How can you see without a torch?” he asked.

“Night eye spell,” Vivienne replied.

“And how are you so sure we’ll find Amaund down here?”

“Life detection spell,” she said.

Mathyas fell silent. Maybe magic had slightly more uses than the Redoran gave it credit for.

The tunnel wasn’t long. It quickly pitched downwards, leading to another steep staircase, and as they neared the bottom the sound of muffled voices drifted out to meet them. An iron door sat to their right. Without hesitating, or even knocking, Vivienne turned the door knocker and pulled it open with a jolt. Orange light flooded out from within.

“Ah!” came a voice as they filed into the room, though Mathyas’ eyes hadn’t yet adjusted enough to locate its source. “At last. I was beginning to think you wouldn't show.”

Mathyas blinked a few times, watching murky shapes come into focus. They were in a low, dome-shaped chamber of some sort, lit by candlelight. Directly ahead of them stood a man—plain in stature, but rich in attire—hovering by a fold-up curule chair as if he'd just gotten to his feet. Beside him, on another chair, sat a man in the armour of the Imperial Legion. The legionnaire glanced between him and Vivienne a little warily.

“You’re… you’re from the Dark Brotherhood,” said the first man—Amaund, presumably. “Correct?”

“We’re with the Brotherhood,” Vivienne confirmed.

“Excellent,” he exhaled. His shoulders relaxed. “I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone else. Though I shall admit, I… I wasn’t expecting there to be two of you.” 

Amaund glanced between them. When neither of them spoke, he nervously continued. 

“Well, ah… I suppose I’ll cut right to the chase. I would like to arrange a—”

He faltered suddenly, eyes landing on Mathyas and narrowing in a scrutinising sort of way. Mathyas shifted under his gaze.

“Have we met?” asked Amaund.

Mathyas blinked. Cleared his throat. “I don’t believe so.”

Amaund’s eyes suddenly widened. “You,” he said. “You were at the party. You were the whoreson who threatened my wife. I– Rexus!”

The legionnaire got to his feet, sword drawn, and with three long, heavy strides he was in Mathyas’ vicinity and launching a great overhead cut from his upper right. It was a predictable move and one Mathyas parried with ease, cutting quickly from the left and forcing Rexus back with a deliberately slow thrust. Behind Rexus, Amaund suddenly let out a choked sort of noise, and the bodyguard turned over his shoulder to find his employer’s windpipe locked inside Vivienne’s elbow.

“There seems to have been a misunderstanding,” Vivienne said coolly. “We’re dangerous people, Amaund. You’d be wise to tell your thug to keep his hands off my colleague.”

“Yes,” Amaund gasped, spluttering and clutching uselessly at Vivienne’s forearm. “Yes, I– I’m sorry. Rexus—” he choked, “stand– stand down.”

Rexus sheathed his sword and stepped back, and Mathyas did the same. Vivienne let Amaund go. He doubled forwards, coughing and grasping at his neck.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Mathyas as Rexus hurried to lend Amaund his support. “I’ve not been to any parties and I certainly haven’t been threatening anyone’s wife.”

“No,” said Amaund, looking up at him from under his brow, still catching his breath. “I must have—mistaken you for someone else. My apologies.”

Vivienne returned to Mathyas’ side and they waited in silence for Amaund to recollect himself. Mathyas crossed his arms over his chest, feeling vaguely insulted. What a human thing to do—to see two Dunmer in the space of a week and assume they must be the same person.

Eventually Amaund was able to lower himself unsteadily back into his seat, though Rexus remained standing, hovering close by his employer’s side. Amaund glanced between them a little hesitantly.

“We appear to have gotten off on the wrong foot,” he said, his voice a little hoarse, "and for that I apologise." He spoke with less confidence now, less self-assuredness. “Allow me to start again. I… I would like to arrange a contract. Several, actually. I daresay the most important work your organisation has had in, well, centuries.”

Something about that turned Mathyas’ gut. The nobleman’s dress, the Legion bodyguard, the ultra-secret location… this contract was clearly going to be in a different league to the petty grudges he’d settled so far. Maybe even closer to the sphere of the Morag Tong. Perhaps that was a good thing.

“I want you to kill several people,” Amaund went on, “and I want you to do so in specific ways. You’ll find the targets, as well as their manners of elimination, quite varied. Hopefully enjoyable for people of your, ah,” he looked them up and down, “…disposition.”

Mathyas clenched his jaw.

“Rexus, if you please.”

The bodyguard stepped forward, drawing forth a roll of parchment from his satchel. Awkwardly he glanced between Mathyas and Vivienne, clearly unsure as to who he should give it to, but then Vivienne held out one arm and he placed it nervously in her outstretched hand. She unrolled the parchment and began to read. Mathyas looked back up to Amaund with a swallow.

“You should know that these killings are but a means to an end,” said Amaund. “For they pave the way to the most important target; the real reason I'm speaking with a pair of cutthroats in the bowels of this detestable crypt.”

He spoke like a human noble, with all the poetic language, the dramatic flourishes, the rehearsed cadence of an actor performing from a stage.

“What I ask is no small thing, of course,” he went on. “But you represent the Dark Brotherhood. It ought to be within your purview, at least if history is to be believed. And I’m sure your organisation will find the opportunity most rewarding. It promises wealth and renown of the highest degree. 

“For… for it is the assassination of the emperor that I seek.”

Something icy cold wrapped around Mathyas’ chest.

“The assassination of Titus Mede the Second.”

This…

This was ludicrous. He was dreaming. He had to be.

“You must understand,” Amaund excitedly filled their silence, “so much has led to this day. So much planning and manoeuvring. It's as if the very stars have finally aligned. But I digress, I digress… Ah, Rexus, the amulet.”

Again Rexus stepped forward, drawing an amulet from the satchel and holding it out to Mathyas. The gold glittered in the candlelight. Mathyas’ throat was dry. He recognized it immediately, of course. It was an amulet of the Elder Council, that distinctive diamond pendant with a coloured jewel encrusted in the centre. So Amaund was an Elder Councillor, then? Gods. Gods.

“This amulet should act as proof of the seriousness of my intent,” Amaund explained, and as Mathyas took it and wrapped his hand around the chain, it felt like lead, dragging him down into the earth. “And of course, it should cover any expenses incurred in the pursuit of this endeavour.”

“We’ll need more than that,” said Vivienne, calmly rolling the parchment up and tucking it away within the confines of her cloak. She seemed remarkably unphased. “What you’re asking for isn’t cheap.”

“Of course, of course,” said Amaund. “My friend, when Titus Mede lies dead, a fortune in gold awaits you. My contact details are included in the letter so we can negotiate the finer points of this contract later. For now, I simply want you to take this offer to your, ah… superior. I’m sure they’ll find the terms most propitious.”

“Why?” asked Mathyas, tucking the amulet into the pocket of his cloak like it wasn’t worth more than all of his previous contracts combined. He felt three pairs of eyes land on him. He swallowed. “Why assassinate the emperor?”

Amaund squinted at him. “In the forty-first year of the Third Era, Emperor Pelagius Septim was murdered in the Temple of the One in the Imperial City,” he said. “Cut down by a Dark Brotherhood assassin. His killing ushered in, shall we say, a… necessary change, in Imperial policy. There are those now who wish for a similar change.” He frowned. “That’s all I’m at liberty to say.”

So there were others involved in this plot. Amaund wasn’t alone, or at least he was unlikely to be. Mathyas felt sick.

“Is that everything?” asked Vivienne.

“You have the letter, the amulet…” Amaund spoke quickly, his voice charged with a nervous energy. “Yes, yes, I believe that’s everything. Please deliver those items to your superior. And… thank you. For meeting with me.”

Vivienne nodded and turned on her heel, leaving without a second word or even a glance in Mathyas’ direction. He cast one final look at Amaund and Rexus and then followed with reluctance, the weight of the amulet heavy against his chest. Vivienne was already marching back up the steps. He heard the door falling shut behind him.

“What did the letter say?” he asked, falling into step just behind her. She just reached into her cloak and held it out over her shoulder.

Mathyas took it from her grasp, doing his best to unfurl and read it, but between trying to keep pace without tripping over any more human remains and the fact he only had the use of one hand, it quickly proved to be a fruitless endeavour. He’d just have to wait, though his curiosity was turning rapidly into dread.

They emerged into the outdoors, shutting the ruins of Volunruud behind them. For once the frigid temperature was refreshing rather than bitter, a pleasant change to the dense, musty atmosphere of Volunruud’s interior. Vivienne began making her way up the steps and Mathyas followed. They were descending down the side of the mound when he finally found it in him to speak.

“You’re still not going to say anything?” he said, watching the firelight flicker across the back of her auburn head. “Vivienne, we need to talk. I don’t understand where we’re going from here.”

She ground to a halt and turned around to face him. She was several feet further down the mountain than he was, and with their existing height difference she only came up to around his navel.

“I’m heading back to the Sanctuary,” she said. “So unless you have other plans…”

“You want to travel together?” said Mathyas incredulously.

Vivienne stared up at him with that impenetrable gaze. “Not really,” she said. “But I don’t care enough to bother doing otherwise.”

She turned and continued down the path, tracking deep trails in the snow behind her. Mathyas cursed under his breath and followed. They walked in silence, trudging down the mountain until Vivienne found somewhere that she was evidently happy to stop for the night. They put up their tents and Mathyas lit the fire. Vivienne went to hunt. They cooked and picked the meat off a lean winter hare. All this with about four sentences exchanged between them. Mathyas had often longed for company during those slow weeks on the road, but he decided now that the solitude wasn’t that bad, actually.

He finally got a chance to read Amaund’s letter while they waited for their meat to cook. It wasn’t long. Amaund wanted three additional people dead: the cousin of the emperor, to be killed on the day of her wedding in First Seed; the son of the commanding officer of the Penitus Oculatus’ Skyrim branch; and some famous chef by the name of the Gourmet, who was meant to have cooked for the emperor’s cancelled visit to Skyrim and would likely be asked to cook for him again.

There was a link in there, somewhere. Some kind of strategy. Perhaps it would become clearer with time, but it eluded Mathyas for now, and his failed attempts at parsing out some kind of common denominator left him feeling frustrated and uneasy. 

Vittoria Vici, the emperor’s cousin, was his only living relative with any claim to the throne. Titus Mede had no heirs of his own. Their deaths in conjunction would create a power vacuum, plunging the already crumbling Empire into chaos. Mathyas didn’t care for the Empire, would have happily seen it gone, but he’d fought in one Great War and had no real desire to do it again. That was the only realistic outcome here.

“Would you do it?” he asked, picking absently at his stick of stringy meat. He wasn’t all that hungry. “If the contract was yours, I mean.”

Vivienne didn’t look up from the task of eating her own food. “Why not?” she said between mouthfuls. “It’s just a contract.”

Mathyas scoffed. Of course Vivienne would say that. He didn’t know why he bothered asking. “What are we supposed to tell Astrid?”

She looked up then, gaze piercing from across the fire, her dark eyes burning in the glow. “Why do you care?” she asked. “You’re not the one who broke her orders. Astrid’s my problem.”

Mathyas stared back at her.

“Fine, whatever,” he said at last. He washed the grease off his hands with some snow. “I’m going to bed.”

Vivienne just shrugged.

 

---

 

Mathyas awoke to the feeling of a weight on his hips and the ice-cold press of a dagger against his throat. 

His autonomic nervous system was instantly alight, eyes flying open in an attempt to seek out the danger. It was seconds later before his rational mind followed, processing and fumbling as it sought to understand what he could see before him—or rather, above.

It was Vivienne. Of course it was; who else would it have been?

He’d been holding her gaze for longer than he’d been aware, her wine-dark eyes like blots of dried ink in the low light. A desperate why sat just behind his lips, but fear kept it there, locked within the coiled tightness of his jaw. His throat burned from the effort of trying to temper his breathing; it was rapid and heavy, like the pulse of his blood under her blade.

“Are you awake?”

A stupid question. He blinked at her furiously, incredulously, his eyes dry from being wrenched open for so long. Still his breathing fluttered and fought against the limited space afforded by her knife. It took everything he had just to nod.

“Good.” Her voice was low, flat, impossibly smooth. “Keep quiet and listen and we’ll get through this painlessly.”

The words slid as easily from her lips as if she were reading from a book. It was fast, too fast for Mathyas to follow, a ceaseless lecture without pause. “When we get back to the Sanctuary, you’re going to wait for a day after my arrival before following so that we aren’t suspected of travelling together,” she said. “You are going to make no mention to Astrid or to anyone else that you saw me here. You are going to tell Astrid about the emperor contract as if you were the only person to receive it, and then you are going to keep your mouth shut when I confront her. You disobey me, and I won’t hesitate to kill you, and I will succeed. Am I understood?”

The precise content of her instructions lost to the void of Mathyas’ half-conscious mind, her final words lingered, rolling over and over: I won’t hesitate to kill you. I will succeed. I will kill you. I will kill you.

Desperate to ease some of the growing pressure in his joints, Mathyas shifted just slightly underneath her, taking care not to jostle the knife. When he finally found his voice, the words that left him were not thoughtful or wise; they simply gave substance to one of the several loose questions currently swimming around his head.

“You’d break one of the Tenets?”

Vivienne pushed the dagger in harder. The pain sharpened, shrank, concentrated.

“You aren’t a real Dark Brother, Mathyas,” she said, bringing her face close to his. “No Tenet would be broken.”

He swallowed thickly, feeling the edge of the knife graze over the bob of his throat. Mathyas realized now that his survival hinged on very little; Vivienne would have no qualms killing him if it came to it, and with no Tenets standing in her way, that begged the question what, then, was preventing her from doing so?

His remaining thoughts shrivelled and waned, leaving his mind frighteningly blank. Mathyas had no idea. Maybe the most obvious answer was the simplest; that there wasn’t one.

“Look at you,” said Vivienne, her tone coming dangerously close to a snarl but falling just short of one. “You’re a coward. You’ve been paralyzed from the moment you stepped foot in that place and everyone can see it.”

The dagger finally broke skin, needing just the slightest bit of extra pressure. It was a sharp, precise pain, burning the way that ice burned. Hot blood started to trickle down his neck and Mathyas could only stare at her, eyes wide.

“Why not just walk away, Mathyas? What’s stopping you? You don’t want to be here but you don’t have the guts to do anything about it?”

In his silence she laughed, a cruel scoff of a laugh. It was the most Mathyas had seen her emote in all the time he’d known her.

“That’s what I thought,” she went on. “Killing out of sheer fear. I can’t think of anything more pathetic.”

“And why do you kill, Vivienne?” The question had escaped him before he could stop it. “For money?” He shifted his hips beneath her. “Because it’s the only thing you’re any good at?”

“I kill because Sithis demands it,” she spat without hesitation. A fleck of spittle landed on Mathyas’ cheekbone. “Because it’s an honour to serve the Dread Father and to die in his name.”

He stared at her blankly, any retaliation he had at the ready dying on his lips. The full weight of her words sat heavy on his chest, damning in their implications.

This woman was brainwashed.

Utterly, thoroughly, incorrigibly brainwashed.

There was nothing Mathyas could say, no words, no logic, no higher reasoning he could appeal to that would pierce through the years of religious indoctrination. Vivienne had been part of this cult since she was a child. Mathyas couldn’t even begin to understand the underlying structures of her worldview, a web of rationalizations and contrivance held together only by a mistaken belief in one thing.

I kill because Sithis demands it.

To Vivienne, that was a complete answer. It required no elaboration. To Vivienne, Sithis was sufficient reason.

That terrified Mathyas more than anything.

She sat back on his upper thighs, staring down at him with something like contempt. She seemed to have said all she wanted to say. Never in his life had Mathyas met someone so unpredictable, someone whose next move was so impossible to guess. Vivienne stuck one thumb in her mouth and then took Mathyas’ throat in her hand, squeezing her palm around his windpipe. Panic flared only briefly in his chest before he realized what she was doing; she pressed the wet digit against the edge of his wound and dragged the pad of her thumb along it, sealing it shut like he was made of clay, wiping his blood as she went. The glow of her spell illuminated her face harshly from below, making her look skeletal in the dim light. Gods, it burned. The pressure of her thumb pushing into his throat, choking him, was enough to offset any sort of pleasant sensation from the healing.

The light from her spell eventually faded and the accompanying hum tapered into nothing, plunging them once again into darkness and silence. Vivienne released her grip on his throat, allowing him to gulp down a full breath. Each inhale felt like daggers in his lungs, like too much and yet not enough. Mathyas watched in a dazed horror as Vivienne then lifted her hand to her mouth and licked her thumb clean of his blood.

She sidled backwards along his legs and gracefully manoeuvred herself out through the entrance of his tent. Moonlight flashed briefly across Mathyas’ eyes, then the flap had fallen shut behind her and she was gone. Not a footstep more could be heard. It was as if she was never there.

Mathyas hung his head back. Closed his eyes. Tried without success to steady his irregular breathing. A hand drifted instinctively up to his neck, finding his skin slick with blood but otherwise healed. There was no trace of her, nothing to show for the encounter except a few otherwise explicable bloodstains along the collar of his shirt.

His pulse fluttered uncomfortably against the skin of his throat. Alternating flashes of the experience jumped up in his mind, as surreal now as they had been in the moment.

Am I dreaming?

What did it matter? The line between sleep and wakefulness was growing ever more blurred. Mathyas felt like he’d been dreaming from the moment he woke up on that cart to Windhelm.

And now someone wanted the emperor dead. What Vivienne wanted, he had no idea.

And what he wanted… he didn’t know anymore.

In that moment, he just wanted to be asleep. Would have killed to fall back asleep.

But he didn’t. 

— END OF ACT II —

Notes:

thanks for sticking with me until the end of act 2! and big thank you to diana for beta reading this chapter. comments and kudos mean the world to me, please if you're reading consider taking a moment to let me know what you think :)) big love !

Chapter 29: ACT III. Ancient Kings and Briny Seas

Winterhold, Skyrim, 15th Evening Star

Cassathra awoke to the high-pitched rattle of a pin landing in the metal tray of her candle clock.

She opened her eyes and blinked at the dark ceiling up above her, loosening herself slowly from the clutches of her dream. The details were lost to her already, though she could feel the residue of anxiety, of frustration at her body’s refusal to cooperate with her instructions. A lingering sense of danger prickled along the short hairs at the nape of her neck.

Her reality was no better. Cassathra remembered with a wave of nausea that today was the day of her first exam, and the realization was enough to snap her fully into consciousness.

Groaning quietly she pressed her hands to her face, rubbing at the grains of sleep in her lashes and trying without success to release some of the pressure of a sleepless night. The hours before she fell asleep came back to her now; she’d spent them tossing and turning, heart racing in her chest, stomach refusing to settle. Eventually she’d simply got out of bed, dragged herself back to her desk, and relit her candle only to overwhelm herself once again with the reminder of how much material she still hadn’t covered.

There was nothing for it. Cassathra threw her duvet to one side and let the blast of cold air rouse her to action. Like a Dwemer automaton or some kind of thrall, she went mindlessly about her routine, splashing her face with cold water, tugging on her robes layer by layer, forcing herself to eat a stale roll of bread—she’d snagged it from the kitchens the night before—with a sad little smear of snowberry jam. The College belfry rang out the two-quarter chime, marking the hour as half past seven. Oddly the chime faltered at the end of the second quarter, losing its rhythm for a moment. Thinking little of it, Cassathra shut her door behind her and began the long trek towards the Arcanaeum.

It was still pitch-black outside, not a trace of daylight to be found. The College courtyard, illuminated in blue by the column of magicka before Shalidor’s statue, thrummed with a nervous energy as first-years gathered in a huddle outside the doors to the Hall of the Elements. Cassathra slotted into the crowd, craning her neck to peer through the throng in search of any of her classmates. Eventually her eyes landed on J’zargo, leaning coolly against the wall by the doors, arms folded across his chest. He stood alone.

She trudged through the snow towards him. J’zargo nodded when he saw her approach.

“Good morning, Cassathra,” he said, tail flicking in greeting. His silvery face was obscured beneath the shadow of his hood, but his eyes were clear and large, pupils blown and glazed blue by the light of magicka.

“Morning,” she muttered back, tucking her hands into her armpits for warmth. She wasn’t wearing her gloves, but she hadn’t anticipated having to wait outside in the cold. Flakes of snow drifted slowly down from the black skies above. A yawn forced her jaw open.

“Gods, I feel sick,” she murmured absently around the closing end of her yawn. “I don’t think I’ve ever been less prepared for anything in my life.”

“This is most good to hear,” said the Khajiit. “Perhaps J’zargo can now finally assert his dominance.”

Cassathra scoffed. “You’re such an ass.”

He was joking and Cassathra knew it; his bravado had waned since Saarthal, his work having been affected as much as the others’. But the façade of an academic rivalry seemed to help keep him motivated, and so Cassathra had continued to humour him, until now, anyway.

They stood in silence save for the odd remark, both too tired and nervous for any substantial conversation. Cassathra carefully avoided any discussion of the exam material—it was a written exam, ‘The Taxonomy of Spellcasting’—because she knew it would only serve to highlight all the gaps in her knowledge. After the three-quarter chime they were joined by Onmund, though to Cassathra’s surprise, he approached not from across the courtyard, but from one of the tower doors beside the Hall of the Elements.

“Hey, guys,” he said, forcing a half-smile, half-grimace. Cassathra’s jaw fell open when she put two and two together.

“Onmund, have you been bell-ringing?!” she exclaimed. “They couldn’t have given you a shift off?”

Onmund had taken up bell-ringing as a hobby shortly after the start of term, using it for stress relief and as a way of maintaining the strength he’d developed from working on his family’s lumber mill. He and a group of other students shared the load, distributing sporadic shifts throughout the week.

“I couldn’t find anyone to cover for me,” he said. “Threw up on the treble bell. Fine now.”

Cassathra blinked at him. “Was that the—ah… that little slip-up we heard?”

Onmund nodded grimly. Cassathra made an ‘O’ shape with her lips and said nothing more.

Another few minutes passed, then a wave of silence befell the students when the jolting of a padlock rang out from inside the Hall. One of the great oak doors was pushed open to reveal Enthir, one of the research assistant, standing in the doorway.

He grinned at them all, looking less sympathetic and more like he was amused by the aura of stress radiating from the two dozen eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. “Morning, all,” he said. “Looking fresh-faced and excited, I see.”

Several low grumblings rose up from the crowd.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re ready for you upstairs. Time to stretch those big brains.”

He opened the door fully and stepped to one side, gesturing into the Hall with both arms. When several moments had passed with little to no movement, Enthir scoffed. “Well, don’t come all at once.”

Reluctantly the students began to file in.

“Have you heard anything from Brelyna?” muttered Cassathra to Onmund as they waited for an opportunity to fall in step.

“Nothing,” he replied.

Cassathra glanced uneasily over her shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of her friend emerging from the Hall of Attainment. But there was no sign of her. The crowd was beginning to thin. When J’zargo nudged her with his elbow, Cassathra swallowed down her worry and followed.

She’d started to resent being in the Hall of the Elements ever since the Saarthal Artifact had made it its home. Every glance at it had her heartbeat picking up, her hands trembling, her instincts overwhelmed with the sudden conviction that she was in danger. Even now she could recall the smell of Jyrik’s burning flesh in her nostrils, the feeling of it under her nails.

The artifact was suspended in the centre of the great hall, obstinate and proud as if it had been there forever. It pulsed and hummed, unsettlingly animate, but the cool, watery glow it emitted was cold and lifeless, or at least spoke of no life in the mortal sense of the word. Being this close to it, Cassathra’s hairs always stood on end, her skin prickling the way it did in the hours before an ash storm. Perhaps it was her nerves, or perhaps it was the artifact; either way, she was glad to be rid of it.

The door to the stairwell slammed shut behind them and banished that irritating hum to the Hall of the Elements. Cassathra trudged up the stairs in line with her fellow students until at last they emerged onto the landing that led into the Arcanaeum.

Her heart dropped into her stomach when, through the open doorway, she caught sight of the many desks that had been arranged into ordered rows. Ordinarily they were grouped into clusters to allow for companionable studying. Where was Brelyna? Cassathra knew she ought to mention it to one of the invigilators, but as she filed through the door past Enthir and Nirya, the words caught in her throat. She sank into one of the few remaining empty tables and stared blankly down at the pile of parchment before her. It stared blankly back at her.

“Please write your full name and tutor—clearly—at the top of your scripts,” said Nirya. She was standing in the centre of the room and facing the students, a few feet in front of Urag’s desk. Enthir was sitting on the desktop behind her and kicking his legs back and forth.

Cassathra took the quill that had been laid out for her and dipped it into her inkwell, but her hand was trembling and she blotted the ink. Trying not to let it bother her, she took a deep breath and then slowly and carefully followed Nirya’s instructions: Cassathra Dutheri. Tolfdir Witch-Eye.

It was only afterwards that she realized she’d written her actual name. Breath starting to come short, she scribbled it out, writing Darethi underneath. Gods, where was her brain? Where was Brelyna?

“Master Ancano will now hand out the question papers,” Nirya went on. “Please do not look until we have given you the instruction to begin.”

Cassathra’s gaze snapped upwards, her every muscle seizing in fear. Ancano?! She hadn’t seen him on her way in! But there he was, a sheaf of papers in his arms, making his way between the rows of desks and placing a sheet face-down on each one. Cassathra averted her gaze in a panic, fixing it instead onto the messy scrawl of her name. She couldn’t let this throw her off. Never mind that Ancano’s mere presence was now enough to make her throat feel like it was closing up. She couldn’t let this throw her off.

“Ahem.”

She blinked, lifting her gaze. Ancano loomed over her, one thin eyebrow raised. How had he made it over to her so quickly? Was her sense of time really that poor?

She realized she’d been leaning over her desk and quickly leaned backwards, clearing the space for Ancano to lay down her question paper. He shot her a derisive sort of look before continuing on his way. Cassathra swallowed and watched him go.

When he reached the end of her row, he laid down the last paper and stepped to one side. His hands were folded almost soldier-like at the small of his back. Nirya cleared her throat.

“Very good,” she said. “We are now ready to begin. The exam will last for three hours. When the—”

She was cut off by the sound of the door bursting open. Each student twisted in their seats to see who had come in; Cassathra’s heart clenched at the sight of Brelyna in the doorway, looking startled and wide-eyed like a rabbit waiting for its flight instincts to kick in.

Nirya said nothing. Brelyna’s eyes darted back and forth, eventually landing on the last remaining desk on the back row to her left. With an unintelligible mumble she started making her way towards it.

“Not so quickly, Miss Maryon,” said Ancano. “You can’t really expect to show up so late and get off so easily, hm?”

Brelyna froze part-way through lowering herself into the chair, staring up at Ancano in fear.

“I—” she swallowed, “um—”

“Oh, come off it, Ancano,” Enthir cut her off. “This is their first exam. It hasn’t even started yet.”

“Precisely my point,” said Ancano. “Is allowing such tardiness really a precedent we want to set?”

“The girl looks embarrassed enough as it is,” Enthir protested, gesturing to Brelyna with a casual wave of one hand. Brelyna had taken her seat and was staring down at her desk, eyes wide and lips pressed into a tight line. “I say that’s lesson enough.”

Ancano scoffed. “Hardly. I—”

“This is disturbing the other students,” interrupted Nirya, shooting her fellow Altmer an exasperated look. “We can discuss this later. Enthir, please find Miss Maryon an exam paper. I’m sure a few minutes docked off her time will serve as sufficient punishment.”

Enthir nodded and slid off Urag’s desktop, beginning to rummage instead through various stacks of papers.

“I’ll be having words with your tutor about this, Miss Maryon,” said Ancano.

“As I was saying,” Nirya ignored him. “The exam will last for three hours. Each red line on the sandglass marks one hour; we will call out warnings at these intervals.”

She lifted the great sandglass off the desk and held it up. Then she turned it upside down; the sand began to fall.

“You may now turn over your papers.”

The Arcanaeum was filled with the sound of rustling papers as the students got to work.

Cassathra twisted in her seat, craning over her shoulder to try and catch Brelyna’s gaze. But her friend didn’t look up, transfixed as she was by the surface of her desk. Cassathra just stared at her until eventually Enthir came over to Brelyna’s side, crouching beside her and handing her the paper. He murmured some quiet instructions and pointed to where she was supposed to write her name. Brelyna nodded but said nothing, and Enthir then patted her on the back and slid away. Cassathra turned back to her own desk. The exam paper stared up at her mockingly.

THE COLLEGE OF WINTERHOLD
APPRENTICESHIP IN MAGICK
Autumn Term, 4E 201/202
‘THE TAXONOMY OF SPELLCASTING’
Morndas, 15th Evening Star

Candidates should answer three questions.

1.“It is easy to confuse Illusion and Alteration. Both schools of magic attempt to create what is not there. The difference is in the rules of nature. Illusion is not bound by them, whilst Alteration is. This may seem to indicate that Alteration is the weaker of the two, but this is not true. Alteration creates a reality that is recognized by everyone. Illusion's reality is only in the mind of the caster and the target.” (Unknown) Discuss.

2. Answer EITHER (a) OR (b):

(a) To what extent is ‘Mysticism’ an outdated and redundant School of Magic?

OR

(b) What is Mysticism?

3. 'Restoration, Destruction, Alteration and Thaumaturgy are separated not on the basis of any intrinsic magical differences, but rather on the basis of a perceived difference in purpose.’ Do you agree? Is separation on this basis justifiable?

4. In what ways has the taxonomy of spellcasting changed over time? Are these changes for the better?

END OF QUESTIONS

It took Cassathra several attempts to make sense of it all. The topics tangled together, her mind refusing to single out a particular question. She stared at the paper, breathing deeply, trying to ignore the sound of nibs scratching on parchment and the way she could see her peers scribbling furiously away in her peripheral vision. Her mind felt as blank as a new-born babe’s. Her memory had been like a sieve ever since Saarthal. Maybe she could blag her way through a couple of questions, but there was not one relevant academic she could name, let alone recall the arguments of.

Just write. Just write something. Anything.

Come on, Cass.

She put the question paper to one side and brought forth her stack of parchment. Beneath her name, she wrote QUESTION 1, and under that, the word PLAN, which she underlined.

Then she topped up her ink and got to work.

 

---

 

The following day, Cassathra awoke with a sore throat and a headache. This she had picked up from Brelyna, whose delicate constitution was currently being ravaged by some lurgy. It was the reason she had shown up late to the first exam, and now Cassathra had that same threat looming over her, her sore throat promising nothing if not to get worse.

And worse it got. Their second exam was a practical assessment, an enchantment demonstration with Sergius who had been their group’s specialist tutor for the term. As the practical examinations were conducted one-on-one, the timings were more variable, and Cassathra found herself standing in the corridor outside Sergius’ office along with Onmund and two students from the other group that’d been studying enchantment, desperately fighting to hold back her sniffles and ignoring the glares she could feel being directed at her by the others. Being called in for her slot almost came as a relief.

The third and final exam—on the Middas morning—was the general spellcasting assessment, which thankfully was to be conducted by each group’s head tutors. Cassathra was welcomed into Tolfdir’s office, given a cup of warm milk with honey, and asked to demonstrate a random selection of apprentice-level spells from across each of the schools of magic. It was the nicest ‘exam’ Cassathra had ever sat, and probably the only one of the three to have gone at all well. She thanked Azura every day for placing her in Tolfdir’s tutorial group and not someone else’s.

“Well, Miss Darethi, you’ll be pleased to know you have passed the general assessment,” said Tolfdir with a smile in that soft, woolly voice of his. Cassathra, at this point, was too tired to fully register her relief, but she smiled back at him over the rim of her teacup and took another sip. “I have to say, I am most impressed with the progress you have made this term. Especially with everything else that has been going on. Faralda did tell me when she assigned you to my class that you were something of a prodigy, but true as that may be, it has been your hard work and resilience in the face of adversity that has impressed me the most. You should be truly proud.”

Cassathra finished the last of her drink and leaned forward awkwardly to place it on the little table in front of her.

“Thank you, Master Tolfdir.”

“Oh, bless you, that cold does sound unpleasant.”

She chuckled hoarsely. “Sorry,” she said, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve. She was suddenly aware of how thick and nasal her voice sounded.

“My dear, why are you sorry? I hope only that you and Brelyna start to feel better soon. My understanding is that she leaves for Port Telvannis tomorrow.”

Cassathra smiled thinly. She didn’t need the reminder; she was dreading her friend’s departure already.

“And you?” Tolfdir went on, filling her silence. “Have you made plans for the holidays?”

“Not really,” she said, sinking back into her chair. Brelyna had politely invited Cassathra to celebrate the New Life Festival with her and her family, but Cassathra had politely replied that she couldn’t think of anything worse. Tolfdir’s smile softened slightly in what looked like sympathy. “I can’t exactly go home. I… I suppose I’ll just try and get myself together before the start of next term.”

“I understand,” said Tolfdir. “If it’s any comfort to you, you’ll be far from the only student in this position. Most live too far from their families to travel, and others, too, are estranged. And Saturalia in the College is always a rather splendid occasion.”

Tolfdir didn’t know the exact details of Cassathra’s family background—the only staff to be in that position, at least to Cassathra’s knowledge, were Faralda and, somehow, Ancano—but he knew enough.

“I’ve never celebrated Saturalia before,” she admitted. “It’s not something we observe in Morrowind.”

“Of course,” said Tolfdir. “In that case, I hope your first experience with it is a pleasant one. Though I know how alienating it can feel to study so far from home, and in my case the jump was merely from Skyrim to High Rock. All of our Dunmer staff members are available to talk if you ever desire support in that regard.”

Cassathra nodded, wondering absently when it would be polite to take her leave. She’d been dreaming of her post-exam nap for weeks now. “Thank you, Tolfdir.”

“Any time, my child,” he said, smiling. “Now, I shan’t keep you. But there is one last thing before I let you go.”

Cassathra straightened in her chair. “Yes?”

“I wanted to wait until after your exams to inform you, but three days ago I received a response from our friend at the University of Markarth,” he said. “Regarding, ah, the mystery of Jyrik.”

Something curled in Cassathra’s stomach. She sniffed, nodded, and clamped her hands in between her knees as if that would trap some of her nervous energy. “Okay.”

“I propose we meet with the others to discuss the findings,” Tolfdir went on. “Onmund and J’zargo have agreed to meet here first thing tomorrow, shortly after nine. Is that alright with you?”

Cassathra was getting up early anyway to walk Brelyna down to the docks. She’d been hoping to return to bed straight afterwards, but that wasn’t exactly a decent excuse. So she nodded. “Sure.”

“Wonderful. I shall see you then.”

She pulled herself to her feet, beginning the awkward move towards the door.

“I hope you enjoy the rest of your day,” said Tolfdir as she neared the doorway. “And Cassathra—well done. You have been a pleasure to teach this term.”

“Thank you, Tolfdir.”

He smiled at her, nodded, and then donned his reading glasses as he turned his attention to the great tome on his desk.

When the door had fallen shut behind her, Cassathra just sneezed.

 

---

 

Vertu bundinn hér, Jyrik, morðingi, svikari
Fordæmdur af glæpum þínum gegn ríki og þengill.
Megi nafn þitt og verk þín gleymast að eilífu
og taufr sem þú berð innsiglaður af skjaldborg okkar.

 

---

 

The ancient linguistics scholars at the University of Markarth dated the spelling and grammar conventions of Jyrik’s seal to approximately the second and third centuries of the First Era. Jyrik’s amulet, on the other hand, was apparently ‘like nothing the archaeology scholars had ever seen’, and little could be said about it other than that it was, in their words, ‘old as balls’ and ‘Nordic, probably’.

It didn’t tell them much. But there was at least one thing they now knew for certain: Jyrik had been sealed down with the artifact sometime between 1E 100 and 300. And if they could find out what happened to him, there was a good chance it would point them towards the artifact.

So they returned to the archives. Jyrik’s seal had condemned him for crimes ‘against realm and king’, so it was here that they revived their research; with the kings of Skyrim and their royal courts.

It was a difficult task. Technically the ‘King of Skyrim’ didn’t even exist until 1E 143, when the then-Jarl of Windhelm, Harald, ascended to the throne. Skyrim before that had been a disparate collection of independent city states, which meant there were at least nine different candidates for the particular ‘þengill’ spoken of in Jyrik’s seal. 

Cassathra, Onmund and J’zargo spent several days poring over what little information they could find, but there were more gaps than there was substance, and any one of them could have been filled by ‘the mystery of Jyrik’. The three of them pressed onwards.

Dull as it was, there was something nice about cooping themselves up in their little corner of the Arcanaeum—emptier now that the term had come to an end—and sipping from warm mead as they worked. It wasn’t like they had anything better to do, and Cassathra desperately needed the distraction. This was to be her first New Life Festival away from home, away from Raydrin and Mathyas and her Alma and Ata. She already missed Brelyna more than anything. So it was this or lying miserably in her bed, and she’d have chosen this any day.

It was their fourth day of working before they progressed to the reign of King Harald; the Nords had finally adopted more rigorous bookkeeping. They were sifting through old records, looking for holes or irregularities that could point them to Jyrik, when Onmund dropped his tome to his desk, smacked a finger down on the parchment, and exclaimed, “I think I’ve found something!”

Cassathra and J’zargo both looked up from their work, staring at Onmund for several moments in silence. His excited expression didn’t wane, but when they still had failed to say anything, he nudged his head forward and widened his eyes even further as if to say, so?

“Well, what is it?” said Cassathra.

He beckoned them over. “Come look!”

They got up from their chairs and headed round the table to peer over Onmund’s shoulder.

“Okay,” he said, speaking quickly and feverishly like he could barely contain himself, “so the Riftling Edition of Harald’s Chronicles lists four Archmages who served in Harald’s court. The first, Halfdan, was his Archmage when he was still Jarl of Windhelm. Halfdan was succeeded by Geirmund, after Geirmund came Rognvald, and then lastly there was Snofrid, who was Archmage when Harald died.”

He was pointing at the tome as he spoke, flipping rapidly between several dog-eared pages. Cassathra was already familiar with some of those names, though her own research had been focused on Harald’s thanes and stewards, and the Archmages had been mentioned only in passing. She and J’zargo exchanged a look behind Onmund’s head. Cassathra wondered briefly if Urag would have anything to say about the dog-earing.

“According to the Chronicle,” continued Onmund, tapping the relevant text, “Geirmund succeeded Halfdan in ’48, and then Rognvald succeeded Geirmund after his death in ‘79. However.”

He leaned forward to grab another book and pull it towards him. “The Eastmarcher Chronicle says that Geirmund’s reign as Archmage only lasted one year. Fun little side-note, he was apparently killed in some skirmish near Ivarstead, which is why the lake there is called Lake Geir.

“But anyway, so there I was, thinking to myself; this just doesn’t make any sense. There are thirty-one years between 148 and 179. So I went through Windhelm’s birth records, starting with the earliest one they ever made in Harald’s first year as king. And that listed someone called Geirmund as having been born in ’43.

“And I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “it might not be the same Geirmund. But if it is, that would have made Geirmund just five years old when he took office as Archmage. Which, y’know, is obviously not going to have been the case.”

Onmund chuckled to himself like the thought of a five-year-old Archmage was the funniest thing in the world.

“But I wanted to be sure, so I checked the Haafing Chronicle as well. And that said something interesting.”

He pulled yet another book towards him.

“According to the Haafing Chronicle, Halfdan remained Archmage until ’78. This would line up with the claim that Geirmund’s reign lasted just one year, since his death was in ’79. But.”

He returned to one of the previous tomes. “According to Windhelm’s birth and death records, Halfdan actually died in ’48. Which lines up with the Riftling Chronicle, because that placed ’48 as being the year of Geirmund’s succession.”

At last Onmund leaned back in his chair, inhaling deeply and spreading his hands. Cassathra’s head was swimming with all of the names and numbers being thrown at her.

“So there you have it,” said Onmund, nodding to himself.

Cassathra cleared her throat. “Have what?”

“There was an Archmage in between Halfdan and Geirmund,” came J’zargo’s cool reply. Cassathra twisted her neck to look up at him. “Harald wanted him, ah, stricken from the records, so he was. But not without a few mistakes.”

“Exactly,” said Onmund. “And if I had to make a bet… I’d wager anything that the missing Archmage is Jyrik.”

“B’vehk,” Cassathra exhaled. The full gravity of Onmund’s discovery suddenly hit her with full-force; he had found something. At last, after weeks of dead-ends, they had found something. She clapped him on the back. “Onmund, that’s brilliant.”

He beamed, exhilarated and breathless, though his gaze was still fixed on the tomes before him.

“Most impressive, my friend,” added J’zargo, straightening up. “We have found Jyrik, at last.”

His cadence tapered upwards, suggesting that he hadn’t finished speaking, so Cassathra and Onmund both turned to him expectantly. J’zargo just stared at them for several seconds before shrugging.

“Now what?”

 

---

 

Morndas, 22nd Evening Star

“Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. The three of you have truly outdone yourselves. Oh, what brilliant work.”

Tolfdir was peering down at the old records through the lenses of his half-moon glasses, his mismatched eyes wide and bright with excitement. Cassathra, Onmund and J’zargo, who had rushed to his office straight from the Arcanaeum to present their findings, were standing awkwardly before his desk. Urag scrutinized the books from over Tolfdir’s shoulder.   

“What do you say, Urag?” Tolfdir leaned back to glance up at his colleague. “Impressive, is it not?”

Urag hmphed. “I could have done without the dog-eared pages,” he said. “But I’ll admit you did well to spot such a subtle inconsistency. As far as I know, you’d be the first.”

Cassathra glanced up at Onmund from the corner of her eye and smiled to herself at the expression of pride on his face. He was practically bursting with it.

“So you think this could be Jyrik?” he said.

“I believe it’s highly likely,” said Tolfdir. “The timings would line up, and they were clearly trying to cover up something between Halfdan and Geirmund. And if Jyrik was Archmage, that would explain the magicka enchantment on his amulet. Oh, how exciting. What a mystery we have on our hands…”

“That’s just the thing, though,” said Cassathra. “We’re not really sure where to go from here. There’s nothing more we can learn from the archives.”

Tolfdir looked up at her then, his excited expression falling just the slightest bit. He removed his eye-glasses, folded them up, and placed them to one side.

“You are correct, of course,” he said thoughtfully, lifting one wizened hand to his jaw and idly stroking his white beard. “I suppose now would be the time to start looking for primary sources ourselves…”

He fell silent for several moments.

“Perhaps Geirmund’s Hall, his tomb below the waters of Lake Geir, would yield more clues,” Tolfdir finished at last. “But of course, dungeon-delving is no task for first-year apprentices. It would be b—”

“We have already survived one ancient barrow,” J’zargo cut him off. “J’zargo doubts this… hall, will be more dangerous than Saarthal.”

Tolfdir’s expression darkened. “Saarthal was a grave mistake, J’zargo. I have no intentions of making it again. No, if we send anyone to Geirmund’s Hall, it will be a highly-qualified team of researchers. Perhaps sometime in the summer. For now, I believe you have done all that can be expected of you. I shall inform Savos as s—”

Urag suddenly cleared his throat, getting Tolfdir to pause and look up at him. He raised one bushy eyebrow in expectation.

“There is…” Urag trailed off, pausing for a moment. “There is another book. Might contain something relevant.”

Tolfdir said nothing and neither did the apprentices, so Urag sighed and continued.

“It’s called Lost Legends,” he said. “It’s an anthology of lesser-known folk tales, compiled a few generations ago by an archivist here at the College. These big historical cover-ups, they never quite work; they always fail to account for word of mouth. The author, Talsgar, travelled all over Skyrim, speaking to skalds and bards, collecting oral folk-tales. It’s not always easy separating the fact from the fiction, but if what happened with this Jyrik fellow was as major as the facts would suggest, then it’s possible—likely, even—that it could have ended up in that book.”

Tolfdir had his brows drawn in thought. Urag shrugged. “Might save you from delving into any dungeons.”

“Well, that’s great!” said Cassathra. “We can head to the Arcanaeum right now!”

“Unfortunately,” said Urag, “it’s currently on loan to the Bards College.”

Cassathra’s shoulders fell. “When’s it due back?”

“It was actually supposed to have been returned a couple of weeks ago,” said Urag. “I’ve written to them, but it’ll be another week or so before we hear any response. Damned lazy minstrels.”

“My dears,” cut in Tolfdir before any of them could reply, “I admire your enthusiasm, I truly do. It’s clear to me that you’ve become invested in this project, so perhaps when this… Lost Legends is returned to us, you may continue, if you still wish. But for now, you have earned yourselves a rest. I will speak to Savos and inform him of your progress. In the meantime, please try and enjoy your time off.”

His words sounded final, and Cassathra, Onmund and J’zargo exchanged several reluctant glances. 

“Go on, now,” Tolfdir urged. “Go and do whatever it is you young people do for fun.”

Cassathra sighed.

“Thanks, Master Tolfdir,” she mumbled.

“Thanks, Tolfdir.”                

“Thank you, Master Tolfdir.”

The three of them bowed, turned, and left.

 

---

 

“I think we should go to Solitude,” said Cassathra that evening over dinner. Onmund closed his mouth around a forkful of horker stew and stared at her for a few moments as he chewed.

“To get the book, you mean?”

Cassathra nodded. “It’s not like we have anything better to do. And it’s the holidays, we can do what we want. It only takes a few days to get there by boat.”

Both Onmund and J’zargo looked unsure.

“Come on, guys,” she nudged their legs beneath the table. “It’ll be fun. We can make a trip out of it. I’ve never been to Solitude before. And I imagine their New Life celebrations will beat whatever’s planned here in Winterhold.”

“J’zargo is convinced,” said the Khajiit with a shrug. “Any excuse to get out of this backwater scrapheap for a few days.”

“Are you sure we’ll make it back in time for the start of term?” asked Onmund.

“Positive!” Cassathra nodded eagerly. “We get there, stay in town for a day or two, grab the book, and then come straight back. We’ll have a week to spare.”

“When would we leave?”

Cassathra shrugged. “Sometime in the next few days, I guess. We’d need to check the shipping schedule and see when there’s next going to be a voyage to Solitude.”

Onmund just hummed, fixing his eyes back down to his bowl of stew and absently stirring the chunks of meat around.

“I don’t know, guys,” he admitted. “It sounds expensive. And w—”

“So we get the College to pay for it,” Cassathra cut him off. “It’s for research purposes.”

“Come on, my friend,” said J’zargo. “J’zargo desires a wingman to help him woo all the pretty music students.”

Onmund scoffed. “How tempting.”

“Please come, Onmund,” Cassathra pleaded, reaching across the table to clasp his hands in her own. “It won’t be the same without you. Please, please, please—”

“Alright, alright, I’m coming,” he said at last in what sounded like mock-exasperation. “Gods, the pair of you have way too much influence over my decision-making.”

“J’zargo’s charms are hard to resist for even the staunchest of men.”

“Perfect,” Cassathra grinned. “I’ll head down to the docks first thing in the morning.”

 

---

 

The next ship departing from Winterhold to Solitude was a small East Empire Company trading vessel by the name of The Nurnhilde. It was to set sail on Fredas morning, the day after Saturalia.

Saturalia itself had been a small—and slightly underwhelming—affair, but it was pleasant. The College celebrated the occasion with a grand feast, accompanied with traditional song and dance, and Cassathra was surprised and embarrassed to have received gifts from both Onmund and J’zargo. From Onmund she received a book of Nord poetry translated into Dunmeris, which he’d found collecting dust at the back of Winterhold’s singular tiny bookstore. Apparently he’d heard her talking about how much she enjoyed the little excerpts of literature that Raydrin included in each of his letters and wanted to get her something to remind her of home. She’d drunkenly cried a little bit in her room that night, doing her best to read the poems even though the Daedric letters were blurring together.

From J’zargo she received a pair of golden Elsweyri hoop earrings with dainty little moon-and-star pendants hanging from each hoop, the hoops themselves embedded with tiny gems of garnet, amber and hematite. “In honour of the Lady we both worship,” he’d told her with a nod of his head and a slow blink of his eyes. When she asked him how and from where he’d acquired them, he just shrugged and said, ‘Khajiit has connections.’ Cassathra didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she figured he must have ordered them from somewhere a long while ago. That was a touching thought; they’d only known each other eleven weeks.

It was dark when they boarded The Nurnhilde, the thick cloak of night still shrouding the skies of Skyrim’s northern coast. If nine in the morning could be called ‘night’. The docks, illuminated by the meagre glow of torchlight, were swallowed by the looming silhouettes of Winterhold’s great ice cliffs just behind them. J’zargo, Onmund and Cassathra were huddled together on the deck, waiting for the sailors to finish their final checks and watching the black, icy waters crash against the hull below.

“Why did I drink so much last night,” Onmund moaned. “I already feel sick and we haven’t even started moving yet.”

Cassathra hummed. “I don’t feel too bad, actually. This cold air is doing wonders for my headache.”

Onmund just glared at her from beneath the fluffy ring of his hood and grumbled something in Nordic. They fell back into a sleepy silence.

About half an hour later, when The Nurnhilde was laden with cargo and everything was deemed safe for travel, the mooring lines were unravelled, the sails were hoisted, and the boat pushed away from the jetty into the inky waters of the Sea of Ghosts. The three of them waited until the twinkling lights of the College were swallowed by the black night sky and then headed below deck into the warm depths of the ship’s underbelly. 

Notes:

i finally managed to write a chapter under 7k 🥳🥳🥳 when i started this fic my aim was to write chapters between 5-7k, but that hasn't happened in.... 7 chapters now? maybe? either way i'm happy

sorry about how nerdy this chapter is, the ex A-Level history student in me really jumped out. i hope you enjoyed reading!

a big old thank you to my beta readers haley and diana for going over this chapter for me--and a special thank you to guest betas ray (check out his TES:IV oblivion novelization here!) and sunder for their help as well. this chapter was definitely a team effort but it was massively helpful getting the fresh perspectives, so thank you all <3

Chapter 30: Journey's End

Falkreath Hold, Skyrim, 24th Evening Star

Travelling with Vivienne had been odd.

They didn’t talk about what happened in Mathyas’ tent that night. They didn’t talk about Motierre’s contract, either. They barely talked about anything at all, save for the bare essentials of navigation and the distribution of jobs, and even then the few words that were exchanged between them were curt, economical.

Mathyas grew used to the presence of another person as the days went by, though her threat lingered in his thoughts, always. His insomnia had never been worse. He would lie awake at night with his palm clenched around the hilt of his dagger, jumping at the slightest noise outside his tent, at every snap of a twig, even though he knew full well that Vivienne moved in complete silence. He still had no idea how she did that; he’d become adept at moving quietly himself, but with Vivienne, there was nothing. No sound at all. Was it magic, perhaps? He wouldn’t know.

As per their ‘agreement’, Vivienne returned to the Sanctuary on her own whilst Mathyas waited for an extra day in the woods of Falkreath. Mostly he spent the time dozing away in his tent, embracing the solitude and trying to catch up on lost sleep. His brief moments of lucidity were spent attempting to disentangle his muddied thoughts; he was plagued by two questions but could work out the answer to neither.

The first: what was the common thread between each of Amaund’s intended victims?

The second, and more pressing: what did Vivienne want?

The reason behind their arriving separately was clear enough. Astrid had given Vivienne strict orders not to go to Volunruud and Vivienne wanted to maintain the illusion that she hadn’t. But there was something else Vivienne had said, when she woke him that evening with her dagger to his throat: you are going to keep your mouth shut when I confront her.

What was her plan? Mathyas had attempted to parse out the answer with a few non-leading questions, but each time Vivienne responded with her usual brevity. What did she mean by ‘confrontation’? And how was Mathyas supposed to play into all of this?

He had a few vague theories, but none that he felt confident enough to rely on. As darkness closed in on the evening before his return, Mathyas accepted that he would just have to wait and see how things played out. Like everything else these days, it was out of his hands.

He took his time in packing away his tent, in stomping out the ashes of last night’s fire. By the time he faced up to the Black Door, it was already late in the morning. Shafts of bright winter sun filtered down through the pines, dappling the forest floor with rough strokes of light.

“What… is the music… of life?”

Mathyas stared at the door with resentment.

“Silence, my brother.”

He’d always had little patience for meaningless epigrams like that, for poetic turns-of-phrase masking a total lack of substance. He had even less patience for this one in particular—‘Silence is the music of life’?! What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Even from the perspective of a death cult, it made no sense.

The door clanged shut behind him and he trudged down the steps into the Sanctuary’s depths, already mourning the smell of fresh air. Astrid’s office was empty; he continued onwards, something like relief flipping his stomach. The voices of Babette and Gabriella drifted out from the main cavern to meet him.

“Mathyas!” exclaimed Gabriella as he approached, beckoning him over. Mathyas had been hoping to slip past without being dragged into the conversation, but evidently he wouldn’t be so lucky. He stopped, throwing a final longing glance in the direction of the living quarters, before diverting course to head in their direction. They had draped themselves along the steps by the rock pool, gazes lingering aimlessly in the depths of the waterfall.

“How was the contract?” Gabriella asked, turning to him and smirking in that way she always did—one eyebrow raised, teeth bared in a lopsided grin. “Something about a prisoner in Cidhna Mine, if I recall correctly?”

Mathyas blinked at her. He vaguely remembered something like that being written into the fake contract Astrid had given him, but the details were completely lost to him now.

He shrugged, clearing his throat. “It was fine.”

“That’s it?” Gabriella nudged her head forwards, smile growing wider. “You aren’t going to indulge us with any of the gory details?”

Babette was smiling too, staring up at him with those large, unnervingly dark eyes. Mathyas swallowed and returned his gaze back to Gabriella’s.

“It wasn’t that gory,” he said. “Nothing that would interest either of you, anyway.”

“Oh, how proper of you,” Gabriella drawled. “You’re allowed to have a bit of fun with it, you know.”

Before Mathyas could open his mouth to reply, Babette had cleared her throat and inserted herself into the conversation.

“Mathyas—now that you’re back, I have something for you.”

He just stared at her blankly.

“The sleeping draught?” she pressed. “Astrid told me you’d been having problems lately. She asked me to make it for you specially.”

“Oh.” Something curled in the pit of his stomach. He was hoping Astrid had forgotten. “Yes—that.”

Babette hopped up onto her feet and brushed down her dark skirts. “Come along then,” she said cheerily. “Let’s head to the lab.”

She nudged past him on her way down the stairs, steps bouncy and light. Mathyas glanced apologetically at Gabriella.

“I’ll see you around,” he said.

Gabriella’s lips twitched in amusement. “Be seeing you.”

He followed Babette with reluctance, failed by words, but grateful that the child seemed content with her mindless humming. In the alchemy lab Mathyas took refuge by the central worktop and tapped a finger against its edge whilst Babette went rummaging through shelves of potions.

“Ah!” she exclaimed after a short while, pulling out a little phial. “There you are.”

She came to join him and handed him the phial; it was a pale cerulean in colour, and around the neck of the bottle was a paper tag. Before Mathyas had the chance to read it, Babette began to speak.

“About one teaspoon’s worth is enough to send you to sleep,” she said, smiling up at him; she was only as tall as his elbows. “Two teaspoons and you’re knocking yourself out. Three, and you’ll grow very sick indeed.”

Mathyas looked uneasily down at the bottle in his hands. Those same instructions had been written onto the paper tag in big, unsteady handwriting, starting with a ‘Dear Mathyas' and ending with a ‘Love, Babette!’ and a smiley face. It would almost have been endearing if the bottle’s contents didn’t have the power to kill him.

He lifted his gaze back to hers.

“Thanks, Babette.”

“Any time.”

“Is it, ah…” he trailed off, blinking hard and shaking his head as he summoned the courage to complete his thought. “Is it… addictive?”

“Not in the strict sense,” said Babette. It was uncanny, the way she spoke; such adult words in such a sweet, childlike tone. “You’re not going to experience cravings or anything of the sort.”

Mathyas thought of Raydrin in the week before Helgen and suppressed a shudder.

“But you can get… dependent, I suppose, if you rely on it too much.”

“What qualifies as ‘too much’?”

She smiled at him pityingly. “I’d save it for those nights where you’re really struggling,” she said. “Perhaps when it’s been at least a few hours and you’re still wide awake.”

Mathyas scoffed softly. That was most nights, these days.

“All right,” he said, tucking the phial into his pocket. “Well… thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Babette’s smile spread into a toothy grin, revealing her sharp incisors. “Consider it a Saturalia gift. I’ll let you unpack, now. Just let me know when you’re nearing the end of the bottle and I can make you another.”

Mathyas thanked her a final time and took his leave, going mechanically about his usual routine. He hung up his tent and bedroll by the forge to air out, whetted his blades, waxed his bowstring, cleaned and resealed his leathers. He took his clothes out to the nearby stream for washing and then finally cleaned himself up, shaving his face and scrubbing away the grime from long days on the road. He was just finishing getting dressed and was about to follow the smell of cooking down to the dining hall below when there came a knock at his door, and Mathyas paused, lifting his gaze from where he was sitting on the edge of his bed and shoving a foot into his boot.

“Yes?”

The door opened to reveal Astrid. She crossed his threshold, shut the door behind her and then sagged back against it.

“Gabriella told me you were back,” she said, smiling at him conspiratorially. “Let’s hear it, then. I’ve been dying to know. What made Motierre special enough for the Night Mother to break her silence?”

Mathyas stared up at her, swallowing a knot of dread.

He’d considered coming up with some lie—Astrid didn’t strike him as the sort of person to care for the political or societal ramifications of her actions, and revealing to her the target of Motierre’s contract would likely set in motion a chain of events that Mathyas would be powerless to stop.

But Vivienne already knew. It was likely that she was planning to confront Astrid about it at some point or another. You are going to tell Astrid about the emperor contract, she’d said. You disobey me, and I won’t hesitate to kill you.

“Well?” Astrid pressed. “You did go to Volunruud, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Mathyas confirmed, sighing and rubbing his temples. “Sit.” He gestured to the chair beside his chest of drawers. “I’ll… get the details.”

He reached into the drawer of his bedside table and dug out Amaund’s letter and amulet. They were the only things in there, save for a spare dagger, a book he’d bought in Markarth about the history of the Bend’r-mahk War that he was slowly making his way through, and, now, Babette’s sleeping draught. He turned and handed them to Astrid—the letter first, then the amulet—and she squinted at them suspiciously before returning her gaze to his, one pale eyebrow arched in curiosity. Mathyas lowered himself back onto the side of his bed.   

“The amulet is for expenses,” he explained. Astrid laid it carefully on the dresser and then began to unfurl the letter. “The letter goes into detail about the additional targets he wants dead. But the main target is, well…”

Astrid looked up from where she’d begun reading. “Yes?”

Mathyas stared at her. He had to swallow just to release the muscles of his throat.

“The emperor,” he said with resignation.

Astrid’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“He… he wants us to kill Titus Mede.”

For a few long seconds both were silent. The words settled uncomfortably in between them.

“You’re joking,” said Astrid.

Mathyas shook his head. “I wish I was.”

“You wish you were?! I—Mathyas, do you understand what this could mean for us? For the Brotherhood?”

He glared at her incredulously. Astrid rolled her eyes.

“Of course you wouldn’t, never mind. Sithis, I—”

She trailed off, shaking her head. Then she turned her attention back to the letter, eyes darting back and forth as she read it over. Mathyas let her, sinking his chin glumly into one palm. It was a few minutes before she was done.

“So you really weren’t joking,” she said at last, putting the letter to one side. “The emperor. By the gods. No-one’s dared assassinate an emperor of Tamriel for two hundred years.”

Mathyas scoffed. “Because it famously went so well for us last time.”

Astrid flapped a hand at him. “That was different. The Dragonborn emperors are a thing of the past. Mede is just a man. Empires of Men come and go.”

“And you really want to play a part in bringing this one to its knees?! Astrid, it—”

“I wouldn’t have expected this from you, Mathyas,” she cut him off, narrowing her eyes. “Since when do natives of Morrowind care for the empire?”

“I don’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “But right now your flimsy empire is the only thing standing between Morrowind and the Aldmeri Dominion. Mede has no heirs. We kill that man, we hand Tamriel to the Thalmor on a silver platter.”

“That’s no concern of ours,” said Astrid. “We’re assassins, Mathyas, not politicians. They play their games, and we take their coin, and responsibility for the consequences sits with them.”

“Voclur,” Mathyas spat. “If Amaund wanted Mede dead that badly he could stab the man himself. To act like the assassin has no part to play, it—well, it’s fucking ludicrous. The level of cognitive dissonance required to even begin justifying this to yourself is fucking beyond m—"

He was suddenly and decisively cut off by the resounding smack of Astrid’s palm colliding with his face. 

For a long second there was only burning. The heat in his cheek, his shock and his rage, the mercurial grey of Astrid’s eyes as they stared at him in fury. Then Mathyas was raising a hand to retaliate and Astrid had him pinned to the wall by his neck before he could blink, her grip tight around his throat and her other hand locked bruisingly around his wrist.

“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me, boy,” she hissed, squeezing his neck, knocking the crown of his head back against the wall. “Not in my Sanctuary. Not when I’ve fed you and clothed you and welcomed you into my family. You’d be dead without me, and don’t think for one second I’d hesitate to rectify that if you gave me reason to believe I made a mistake.”

Mathyas’ heartbeat lurched. His bedside table was within reach. For a brief moment he considered making a grab for his dagger and finally putting an end to this whole ordeal, but with just a twitch of his free wrist, Astrid had shifted above him and trapped his hand to the mattress with the hard bone of her shin.

“You lift one finger against me and I can have every member of this Sanctuary up here in seconds,” she said. “So what is it, Mathyas? Did I make a mistake?”

He stared at her desperately, imploringly. His thoughts were clouded over by his restricted air supply, but his heart wanted to scream at the thought of submitting to her now.

Yes, it wanted to say. Yes. You made a mistake. Do it. Just put an end to this.

“Did I?!” Astrid snarled.

Mathyas closed his eyes.

Then he shook his head.

Agonisingly slowly, Astrid loosened her grip. Her hand peeled away from his throat finger by finger and she slid backwards onto her feet.

“You’ll go to Riften,” she said, cool and calm, as if nothing had happened. “Speak to Delvin Mallory—he operates from the Ratway. Get the amulet appraised, and if it’s genuine, sell it. Then report back to me.”

Mathyas pressed his face into his hands, unable to look at her. But a brush of cool skin against his wrist made him flinch, and he glanced up to find Astrid nudging his hands away. She searched his face for a few seconds, grey eyes sliding over the bridge of his nose.

“I’m sorry we had to fight,” she murmured, cupping his cheek in one palm—it was the same cheek she’d slapped, and he could feel its sting even now, trapped by the heat of her hand. He looked away, refusing to meet her gaze. His nails dug crescents into the meat of his palms. “I knew when I offered you a place in our family that you’d make a good addition. It’s just that, well… it’s important now and then for me to make sure that’s still the case.”

Mathyas was silent.

“You understand?”

She wanted an answer—he could tell. He could feel the expectancy latent in her words.

“Yes.”

“Look at me.”

Mathyas closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. Then he dragged his gaze with reluctance back to her own.

“I understand,” he said mechanically.

Astrid’s expression was unreadable. But she pulled her hand away at last, swiping her thumb across his lip as she went.

“Good,” she said. “And Mathyas—not a word of this to anyone until we know more about what we’re dealing with.”

He nodded. It wasn’t like it mattered anyway; Vivienne would likely be breaking the news to everyone before nightfall.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” Astrid finished, moving towards his door. She paused and fixed her gaze at him over her shoulder. “And I’m expecting you to be there.”

The door clicked into place behind her and she was gone.

 

---

 

“Are you alright, brother?”

Mathyas blinked himself out of his daze, nudging his head upwards a fraction to find Veezara staring at him from where he was laying down a bowl of buttered kale. The Argonian’s expression was difficult for Mathyas to read, but his tone was genuine, concerned.

Mathyas shook his head, pressing his hands into his eyes. “’m fine,” he muttered. “Just tired.”

Veezara’s gaze lingered on him for a moment or two longer, but eventually he drew it away, moving to the worktops to collect another dish. “The road can be tiresome,” he said off-handedly, returning to the table with what looked like potato mash. Mathyas leaned to one side when Nazir appeared behind him to lay a plate down over his shoulder. “A hot meal and a few days of rest should do you good.”

“I can’t,” Mathyas sighed, sinking back into his chair once Nazir had moved on. “Astrid, ah… she’s already assigned me my next contract.”

Nazir—who by now had made it round to the other side of the table—looked up and caught his gaze. “She has?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

Mathyas faltered.

“It… it’s in Riften,” he said. “Some ex-member of the Thieves Guild.”

Nazir pursed his lips. “Interesting,” he said. “I wasn’t aware of that one.”

“Our mistress has certainly been keeping you busy,” said Veezara before Mathyas could worry about coming up with a response. “You’ve so rarely been in the Sanctuary since your arrival.”

What was he supposed to say to that? Mathyas could only shrug. “I don’t mind being on the road so much,” he said, trying to veer the conversation towards safer ground. Neither Nazir nor Veezara replied.

The others gradually began to file in. Gabriella and Babette came first, still chatting avidly about something in some dialect of Bretic. Babette didn’t actually eat, but she participated in mealtimes for the social element. Then came Cicero, who to Mathyas’ disdain took a seat on Mathyas’ left and started immediately trying to engage him in a nonsensical conversation about Dwemer riddles. Mathyas poured himself a goblet of wine and nodded along, hoping to convey his disinterest, but Cicero powered on obliviously.

After Cicero came Vivienne. She sat at the head of the table on Mathyas’ right, leaving one seat between them, and spared no acknowledgement to anyone as she began loading up her plate from each of the various dishes—kale, mash, buttery mushrooms, a fillet of white fish in a parsley sauce. Mathyas screwed his gaze obstinately to the table and fought against the urge to look at her, even though the thought of doing so churned his stomach. Then, finally, came Astrid, who took her usual seat at the head of the table opposite. Amidst quiet chatter, the Brotherhood began to eat.

Mathyas could only pick at his food, his appetite dampened by the apprehension of what was likely to come. Attempts at conversation were made by Veezara, sitting opposite, and Nazir from Veezara’s left, but Mathyas’ thoughts were slow and thick as syrup, his replies correspondingly stilted. Eventually they gave up trying to engage him and continued their conversation—some discussion about increased Thalmor movements in the west—between themselves. Mathyas was left to his bubble of solitude.

“Thanks Nazir and Veezara for cooking,” said Astrid as the meal was drawing to its close. She pushed her chair back from the table with a loud scraping sound and downed what was left of her wine. “Delicious, as always.”

Nazir dipped his head. “Our pleasure.”

“You’ll forgive me for rushing away,” she said. “But I have important business that needs tending to. Correspondences that won’t write themselves, you understand. Please, enjoy the rest of your dinners.”  

She deposited her dirty dishes on the worktop and was making her way to the ramp that led out of the dining hall when the quiet chatter was interrupted by the sudden clearing of a throat.

“You’ll forgive me for holding you back,” said Vivienne, commanding an instant and stunned silence. “But there’s important business I believe needs discussing.”

Mathyas’ stomach rolled. Gods. Fuck. This was happening.

Astrid paused, with all the grace and control of a prowling cat who’d just seen movement in the corner of its eye. Slowly she turned—gaze first, then head, before finally the rest of her body—and fixed her steely eyes on Vivienne with a look of incredulity.

“You can find me in my office if there’s anything you’d like to discuss,” she said.

“No,” Vivienne punctuated the word with the sudden thwok of her knife-point being driven into the table. “Here. Now. Where everyone can listen.”

“You forget your place, Vivienne,” said Nazir, a distinct warning tone in his voice. But Astrid held out one hand to assuage him, her other coming to rest on the back of her chair.

“Thank you, Nazir,” she said, gaze not once leaving Vivienne’s face. “But let it never be said that I don’t listen to my family.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Go on then, Vivienne. Share whatever it is you want to share.”

Vivienne didn’t skip a beat.

“You sent Mathyas to Volunruud to meet with Amaund Motierre on the sixteenth of Evening Star,” she spat. Five pairs of eyes suddenly landed on Mathyas and he fixed his own gaze to a sad leaf of parsley clinging to one of his mushrooms, fist tight around the handle of his knife. “That was supposed to be my contract. And you did it behind our backs.”

The table fell silent. Mathyas’ skin started crawling beneath their stares.

“You dishonoured the Night Mother and disobeyed a Brotherhood superior,” Vivienne went on. “Tenets One and Three.”

Beside him, Cicero suddenly burst out into a high-pitched cackle.

“Oh, how the ape-queen does dance into clever Reynard’s snare,” he sang. “You should take Cicero’s cap, mistress, for you’d make a better fool—”  

“For gods’ sakes, be quiet,” Astrid snapped, silencing him like a kicked dog. Still her attention remained glued to Vivienne. “And on what basis, Vivienne, are you making such an accusation?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Vivienne scoffed. Mathyas braced himself for the final blow, for her damning exposé. “The Night Mother told me. Obviously.”

He lifted his head at that, staring at her for a moment in surprise before steeling his expression into one of neutrality.

What?

“There’s no point in lying, Astrid,” Vivienne continued. “I know he went. And I know who Amaund asked him to kill.”

She didn’t look at him.

“Tell them, Mathyas,” she said. He swallowed around the sudden dryness in his throat. When seconds later he’d still failed to say anything, Vivienne twisted her face into a snarl. “Tell. Them.”

Mathyas glanced to Astrid, who caught his gaze over the table. After a long moment of staring at each other, she simply closed her eyes and nodded. Just once.

Mathyas sighed.

“The emperor,” he muttered, staring at his plate.

“Louder,” said Vivienne.

“The emperor,” Mathyas spat, looking up to find four faces—Babette, Gabriella, Veezara and Nazir—gaping at him blankly. He glanced between them for a second before bitterly casting his gaze away. “Amaund’s target is Titus Mede.”

The silence resumed. And it continued until Nazir eventually cleared his throat.

“Astrid,” he said, voice as cool and collected as always; “is this true?”

Astrid sighed, rubbing her temples with one hand. “It’s true,” she confessed. “I did send Mathyas to Volunruud. And Amaund’s contract is for the emperor. Look... I was going to tell you all eventually. You know I hate keeping secrets. I just had to be sure this whole, ah—” she waved a hand, “—Night Mother business—was legitimate. I needed someone impartial.”

On the edge of his periphery, Mathyas could see Nazir’s honey-brown eyes land on him. It took everything he had not to meet them.

“Right,” said Nazir.

“Are we going to accept the contract?” asked Veezara.

“Amaund gave us an amulet for expenses,” said Astrid, pulling out her chair and sagging into it. “He claims it’s his token of office as an Elder Councillor. I’m sending Mathyas to Delvin Mallory to get it appraised. If it’s genuine, then yes—we’ll accept the contract.”

“Dear gods,” said Nazir.

“Perhaps Vivienne should be the one to go to Riften,” said Gabriella. “Since it is her contract, after all.”

“I don’t care about going to Riften,” said Vivienne. “I have better things to do with my time than appraising jewellery.”

“Good, because you’re not going,” Astrid snarled. “The Night Mother may have tipped Vivienne off as to Amaund’s offer, but that does not make this ‘her’ contract. Are we to give every contract to the Listener now? Is that how the Brotherhood did things in our days of yore?”

She waved a hand in the air. “Of course it wasn’t,” she went on. “Listener or no, contracts will continue to be assigned to the best person for the job—the way we’ve always done it. The emperor contract will be the most complicated job we’ve taken on in centuries. It’ll be months before we’re even close to ready for the final stage. I expect each and every one of you will have a part to play at some point, and I’d hope you trust me enough by now to leave the logistics to me.”

She stared between each of them in turn. “Any objections?”

The resounding silence was answer enough.

“Good,” said Astrid with finality, getting to her feet. “Mathyas will go to Riften. The rest of you have your own contracts to worry about. Now unless anyone has anything else they’d like to air out, I would appreciate being allowed to return to my work.”

She didn’t wait for an answer this time—she simply turned on her heel and left. Once her footsteps had faded out of earshot, Vivienne got up and followed, presumably stalking off to brood in some pit somewhere. That left just Mathyas and the others.

He could feel them staring at him, waiting for him to speak.

Gods, he’d had enough of this.

“What?” he snapped, meeting their gazes in defiance. None of them had anything to offer. Mathyas scoffed and got to his feet, leaving his food untouched. “Fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

They let him go.

 

---

 

It was raining and it was dark when Mathyas emerged from the Black Door, but he didn’t have it in him to care. The heat of the sanctuary had become oppressive and cloying. He needed a good shock to his system, something to wake him from the dreamlike stupor he always found himself in down there. And the bitter chill of the rain, seeping ever deeper into his flesh, was the very thing.

He found a log to perch on and sat there long enough for his eyes to adjust to the dark. The forest came to life in the rain. Fat droplets plucked at pine needles like a bard plucking at her lute. The damp undergrowth rustled and frogs croaked away. Some nocturnal bird was chirping in the distance, but it was none that Mathyas recognised. He no longer recognised fauna, or flora, in this strange, alien land.

His mind was blank. It was an unfamiliar feeling. His default response to stress had always been to overthink, to lose himself in the attempt to rationalise his way out of any given problem. But there was something comforting about sitting in the deep, empty recesses of his mind and accepting the solitude he found there. Nothing mattered. Below ground, a cult of assassins was plotting the death of an emperor. But empires could rise and fall, wars could wage, and birds would still sing. Frogs would still croak. Perhaps it just… didn’t matter.

“There’s no need to be so dramatic about it,” came a scoff from behind him. “You’ll catch your death sitting out here.”

Mathyas said nothing and didn’t turn. In his silence, Nazir pressed forward, draping a bear pelt over Mathyas’ shoulders and taking a seat on the log beside him. They were silent for a long while.  

“Are you all right, Mathyas?” asked Nazir eventually, in a voice so low and soft Mathyas almost didn’t hear it.

Some muscle twitched in Mathyas’ cheek, but he couldn’t reply. Wouldn’t dare speak for fear of what he’d say if he let the floodgates open. He just kept his gaze fixed on the darkness straight ahead and released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, letting it flutter—trembling—past his lips.

Nazir didn’t push it. He rustled through the confines of his cloak for a few moments—searching for something, presumably—but Mathyas wasn’t watching, so it wasn’t until Nazir cleared his throat and said, “Could you?” that Mathyas realized what it was he’d been looking for.

In one of Nazir’s hands was a pipe, the bowl filled with some dark herb, and in the other was his flint and steel. Mathyas took the flint and steel without word and watched as Nazir held the pipe up to his lips, leaning in close and cradling his other hand around the bowl to shield it from the rain. Taking care not to burn his palm, Mathyas struck out a few sparks, two, three times before the first tendrils of leaf ignited and started to shrivel and smoke, glowing a deep orange in stark contrast to the dull blacks and blues of their surroundings. The pungent smell of tobacco drifted up to his nose. Nazir drew away from him and sucked in a long, satisfied drag.

He held the pipe out to Mathyas once he was done. Mathyas shook his head.

“I don’t smoke,” he said.

“Neither do I,” said Nazir. “Bad for your stamina. But it’s a harmless indulgence, every once in a while.”

Mathyas didn’t reply.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

He was talking about the smoking, but there was another question there—do you mind if I stay? It was an opening, an opportunity for Mathyas to turn him away.

He didn’t want to do that. But he didn’t want to talk, either.

So he just shook his head, and Nazir puffed on his pipe. And they sat there in silence until the last of the tobacco leaf had been smoked away.

 

---

 

Riverwood, Skyrim, 26th Evening Star

Raydrin, Jórunn, Etienne and Meeko returned to Riverwood to find a blackened pile of rubble where the Sleeping Giant Inn used to be.

They stood there on the cobbles of Riverwood’s main street, staring at the ruin. A blacksmith hammered away in the distance—the uneven rhythm of it had Raydrin grinding his teeth.

“What do you mean ‘it’s not there’?” asked Jórunn.

“What else is that supposed to mean?” said Raydrin under his breath.

“I’m asking why,” Jórunn muttered back, though there was a nervous undercurrent to her snark. “I don’t suppose it’s been whisked off by old wizards to Artaeum.”

“It’s been burned to the ground,” Raydrin murmured, feeling Jórunn’s hand tighten around his arm. “It’s… there’s just nothing there.”

Meeko had trotted away from them, through the charred remnants of wall into what once had been the central hall. A pile of stone marked where the fire pit had been. Stumpy spears of wood spaced at regular intervals were all that remained of the support pillars. Meeko snuffled along through the rubble, shaggy grey fur melting into the backdrop of ash, tail wagging excitedly as he sniffed his way around the unfamiliar terrain.

Jórunn had fallen silent; Etienne, too, said nothing.

The hammering stopped.

“You folks looking for an inn?”

The call came from down the road. Raydrin looked to his right, holding up a hand to shield his gaze from the afternoon sun. His vision cleared to reveal a great hulk of a man—tall, broad-shouldered, thickly-muscled, and covered in smears of ash and grease—peering at them from over the railings of his porch. The smith lifted one hand in casual greeting.

Raydrin and Etienne glanced at each other. Jórunn’s hand was tight around his arm. Carefully they made their way over the cobbles, followed by the smith’s gaze all the way.

“What happened to this one?” Raydrin asked once they were close enough for him to speak without raising his voice, nudging his head in the direction of the Sleeping Giant.

The smith’s eyes flickered upwards to the ruin behind them, a grim expression set deep into the lines of his face.

“Thalmor,” he grunted, spitting and then wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. It wasn’t like Raydrin couldn’t have guessed, but hearing it said out loud had a fist-sized rock of guilt sinking deep into the pit of his stomach. “If it’s an inn you want, you’re better heading back the way you came.”

“Why?” asked Raydrin. “I mean… why did the Thalmor, ah—”

“Looking for the innkeeper, they said,” the smith cut him off. “Divines know why. I knew the woman for years. Never heard anything so ridiculous.”

Raydrin had to forcibly unclench his jaw. “Do you know what happened to her?”

The smith stared at the three of them quizzically for a few moments. His eyes raked over Raydrin first, then Jórunn, his gaze lingering on her hand around Raydrin’s arm.

“Say…” the smith paused. “I don’t suppose you’ve passed through here before, have you?”

“Why do you ask?” asked Jórunn with suspicion, tugging her arm free.

“The two of you—” he pointed to her and Raydrin, “—seem familiar to me, is all.”

Raydrin stared at him blankly. The smith shrugged and started to turn back to his work.

“If it’s answers you’re after, speak to Gerdur,” he called over his shoulder. “She’ll be able to help you.”

“Gerdur?!” said Jórunn. “How do you—”

But the smith just returned to his hammering without a second look.  

Raydrin lightly touched Jórunn’s shoulder. She bristled, then relaxed.

“It sounds like he knows something,” he said quietly, close to Jórunn’s ear. “We should check out the lumber mill first.”

She nodded grimly and took his arm.

“Meeko!” called Etienne, whistling. “Meeko! Here, boy!”

The wolfhound bounded back towards them, falling obediently into step at their feet. They set off past the smithy towards the riverbank.

 

---

 

“In, in—quickly now. There you go. Talos knows how many rats there are in Thalmor pockets these days.”

Gerdur ushered them swiftly through the threshold of her home, casting one final glance over her shoulder before yanking the door shut behind them. The afternoon sun was banished to the outdoors and they found themselves standing in the dim light of a hearth, its warmth cutting through the winter chill.

“There—oh, let me look at you.”

Raydrin was turned by a pair of hands to come face to face with Gerdur, her blue eyes wide as they checked him over. He stared blankly back at her, trying—and failing—to recall even the faintest detail of their previous stay here in the days after Helgen.

“Mara’s mercy, you’re alright,” she said, patting his cheek and then turning to Jórunn, who was pulled into a hug. The muscles in her face seized up in surprise and alarm, but Gerdur withdrew from the hug before Jórunn even had the chance to adjust. “After the Thalmor came looking for Delphine, we all thought… well.”

She glanced between them.

“I suppose you will be wanting answers.”

Raydrin nodded briskly. “Yes,” he said. His voice came out raspier than he’d expected and he cleared his throat. “Ah—please.” 

Gerdur turned to Etienne and Meeko, putting her hands on her hips and scrutinising them up and down.

“And who are these two?”

Etienne shot a nervous glance at Raydrin, who just shrugged back at him over Gerdur’s shoulder.

“We can explain later, maybe,” he said. “The smith seemed to be implying that you know something about…”

Everything?

“—ah, Delphine.”

“Yes, that would have been Alvor,” confirmed Gerdur with a nod. “Fyrirgefðu, my apologies. I realize this will all be new to you. Alvor is a friend, he can be trusted. Come—this way.”

She grabbed a long-handled broom from where it was propped up beside the hearth and then led them down the length of her home.

“Ó, hvar er þessi hlutur,” she muttered to herself, peering up at the ceiling with the broomstick in hand. Raydrin watched in perplexity as she prodded at various points in the ceiling with the tip of the broomstick, until finally a square of panelling shifted, revealing the crack of a lit attic space. “Aha! There you are.”

Gerdur banged on the ceiling a few times with the broom. “Delphine!” she called. “Delphine, it’s me. Lower the ladder. You have visitors.”

Raydrin’s relief was overwhelmed by his surprise. Jórunn’s hand clamped down around his arm.

“What’s going on?” she hissed into his ear.

Raydrin stared up at the hatch with bated breath. “Gerdur just opened a hidden attic hatch,” he told her quietly.

They heard the creaking of footsteps and the dull thud of the ceiling panel being pushed to one side. Then Delphine’s face appeared over the opening.

Her eyes widened when she saw Jórunn and Raydrin.

“Dear gods,” she said, staring down at them. Her left arm was in a sling. “You’re… you’re back. I thought—”

“Lower the ladder for us and then you can have a proper reunion,” Gerdur cut her off.

Delphine was slow to obey. “Yes, of course,” she muttered, having to drag her gaze away from Jórunn and Raydrin. She disappeared out of view for a few seconds and then the scraping of wood could be heard from above. Gerdur stretched her hands out over her head to accept the ladder as it was lowered towards them.

She brought the base of the ladder to rest on the floor, kicked it a couple of times to make sure it was stable, and then tucked her skirts into her girdle to free up her legs. Raydrin watched in a stunned silence as she started clambering up it.

“Well?” she said, pausing halfway to peer at him through the space between two rungs. “Are you coming?”

Raydrin nodded, having to jolt himself into action. He guided Jórunn towards the base of the ladder and placed her hands on the rung at the height of her shoulder, from which point she could make her own way up. He and Etienne followed behind her. Meeko paced around the ladder’s base, whining in frustration at his inability to come with them.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Delphine was saying as Raydrin climbed over the top of the ladder. She released Jórunn from a hug and then turned to Raydrin, staring at him for a moment in deliberation before surging forward and clasping her good arm tightly around his middle. It lasted only a moment, just long enough for Raydrin to get over his surprise and awkwardly reciprocate before Delphine was pulling away again.

“When the Thalmor showed up at my door, I assumed the worst,” she went on. For the first time since they’d met, she sounded choked up, her austere military professionalism finally cracking. “I… I thought I’d sent you to your deaths. Jórunn, Ra—”

She trailed off, limply shaking her head and glancing between them with wide, wet eyes. “I owe you both an apology,” she finished, clearing her throat in an attempt to regain some of her composure. “My paranoia nearly got us all killed. I should never have put you in harm’s way like that. I… I’m sorry.”

Raydrin swallowed, all of his anger and frustration at Delphine melting away in an instant. It wasn’t her fault things at the embassy had gone so wrong—and it wasn’t her fault that her cover of twenty years had been blown, or that her inn had been burned down, or that her arm was in a sling. It was his. But Raydrin just stared at her, the truth sitting on his tongue like some foul medicine he could neither spit out nor bring himself to swallow.

“Come on,” said Delphine in their silence, forcing a smile and touching her good hand to Jórunn’s shoulder. “Tell me everything. Did you at least find something useful? And, ah—” she looked a little suspiciously at Etienne, “—who is this?”

Etienne glanced at Raydrin. Raydrin cleared his throat.

“Etienne, this is Delphine,” he said. “Our, um… mentor, that we were telling you about. Delphine, this is Etienne. He was a prisoner in the embassy. The Thalmor thinks he knows something about the dragon crisis.”

Delphine raised one eyebrow.

“We can trust him,” said Raydrin.

“The Thalmor thinks he knows something about the dragon crisis,” Delphine repeated, ignoring his last statement. “Implying… implying that they’re not behind it?”

Raydrin hesitated a moment. Then he shook his head.

Delphine’s face fell. She’d been holding her breath, but she released it then as a soft, disappointed ‘Oh.’

“I—I would have sworn…”

She trailed off, shaking away an expression of regret. “Oh, blast it. Very well. Let’s hear what you do know, then.”

“There’s a lot to tell,” said Raydrin. “It might be best if we sit down.”

“Agreed,” said Delphine, turning over her shoulder. “It’s not ideal, but it’s probably best if we stay up here. The haystacks will have to do.”

Raydrin nodded.

“You all must be hungry after such a long journey,” said Gerdur. “I’ll bring you something to eat.”

 

---

 

“I’m… well, rather I was a member of the Skyrim Thieves Guild,” said Etienne lowly, his blue eyes fixed on the mug of mulled wine cupped between his palms. They were a great deal brighter than they had been two weeks ago; the Breton was still lean as a winter hare, but his complexion had lost its pallor, and his bruises had faded to a dull yellow. “Our headquarters is based in Riften, as you probably know—in, ah, the waterworks beneath the city. We call it the Ratway.”

It had been early afternoon when the three of them arrived in Riverwood, but the sunlight trickling in through the strip of window along the base of the gable was starting to diminish. Gerdur had left them to their discussion, but they could hear her knocking about downstairs, as well as the muffled exchanges between her and her family now that her son and husband had returned from the mill. Raydrin hoped that Meeko was getting along with their own dog, Stump.

“A couple of months ago, I was doing a job,” Etienne went on. “Not far from here, actually. It was that meadery, up near Whiterun. I was just meant to be stealing a few correspondences and documents, that sort of thing. But the Thalmor, they, ah… they were waiting for me. Someone must have tipped them off, because they clearly knew I was going to be there.”

Etienne cleared his throat, then took a gulp from his wine.

“I was apprehended and taken up to the embassy,” he said. “They started… torturing me. Asking after different folks from the Ratway. You find all sorts of crazies down there. Eventually I gathered they were looking for some bloke named Esbern.”

Raydrin saw Delphine tense up.

“Seemed to think I’d know him—never told me why, though. He could have been anyone down there, to be honest, and it’s not like I’d know. The Guild tends to keep its distance from other, er… residents. But the Thalmor wouldn’t take that for an answer.”

He pressed his fingers into his eyes with a sigh. “I lost track of time in that place,” he said. “Felt like years before the two of you came and found me. Raydrin thinks Esbern is an old Blade, like you,” he peeked at Delphine from between his fingers, “and that he’s some kind of… dragon expert. Which I suppose is why the Thalmor are, um. Looking for him.”

Delphine was silent, her brows knitted together and her jaw wound tight.

“That’s it, really.”

“It’s true,” Delphine eventually confirmed with a sigh. “Esbern was an old colleague of mine back in Storm Talon Temple. I’d assumed he was dead, but,” she shrugged, “that crazy old man always did have a way of surprising me.”

She looked up suddenly and fixed her gaze on Raydrin.

“How did you get that information?”

Swallowing, Raydrin turned to where he’d propped his travel pack up against the haystack and then dug out the Blades dossier from its top compartment.

“It’s all in here,” he said, leaning forwards to hand it to her. “Daeni—er, Aldmeris for Blades. You’re in there, too.”

Delphine leafed aimlessly through its pages, her stare hard as steel.

“I didn’t write down my translations, but if you want me to, I can.”

“Did it say how the Thalmor were able to find me?” she asked, looking up.

Raydrin swallowed again. Jórunn, sitting immediately to his right, shuffled her foot along the floor until it was pressed up against the side of his, a subtle attempt at providing some comfort.

“Er, no,” he said. It wasn’t a lie; the Thalmor evidently hadn’t had time to update it between the arrival of Raydrin’s last letter to Cassathra and the dossier being stolen. “Whoever last updated it still seemed to be under the impression that the Thalmor had no location on you.”

“Strange,” said Delphine, putting the dossier to one side. “Honestly, my best guess when they showed up out of nowhere was that they’d tortured it out of you.”

Raydrin felt the blood drain from his face. Delphine just shrugged. “In any case,” she went on, as if what she’d just said wasn’t horrifying, “there’s no use worrying about that now. What’s done is done. The important thing now is that we get out of here as soon as possible; it’s not safe for me anymore, or for Gerdur and her family.”

She turned to Etienne, sitting on her left. “Etienne—do you have any idea which one of those ‘crazies’ might be Esbern?”

He nodded. “There’s at least a couple I can think of who fit the bill,” he said. “But I can’t make any promises.”

“That’s good enough for me,” said Delphine. “Gods know we’ll take any lead we can get our hands on. And if anyone knows how to put an end to this crisis, it’ll be him.” She gave a firm nod. “That’s settled, then. We’ll leave for Riften first thing in the morning.”

“Will you be alright to travel, with your arm?” asked Raydrin.

“It’s a dislocation, not a break,” she replied. “I’ll be fine.”

 

---

 

“Alvor was like a father to my brother and I when we were growing up,” said Gerdur as she, Jórunn and Raydrin braved the cold winter evening on their walk down to the smithy. She didn’t have the space to take in all four of them, so it had been agreed with Alvor that Raydrin and Jórunn would spend the night with him. “It was easier back then, of course, before this blasted war. But these days, it…” she trailed off, sighing. “Between the attack on Whiterun and what the Thalmor did to poor Delphine, it feels as if we are being driven to meet in the middle.”

Raydrin and Jórunn were silent, both too exhausted to come up with an appropriate response to something so sobering.

“His little Dorthe is good friends with our Frodnar, too,” Gerdur went on. “Just like Hadvar and Ralof used to be. Oh, how I resented them, always shirking their chores to go off on some adventure.” She laughed humourlessly. “Some things have not changed. We could all stand to learn something from our children, I believe. ”

Jórunn cleared her throat. “How, ah… how is Ralof, by the way?”

“Ralof..." Gerdur sighed and shook her head. "That boy will be the death of me. It was weeks ago that I last heard from him. He wasn’t at Whiterun, thank Talos, but he tells me little of what he is doing.”

“How have things been, since Whiterun?” Raydrin cut in, picking up that thread before it could be dropped.

Gerdur didn't respond straight away. “I wish I could say that the news made me happy,” she admitted after a long while. “I truly believe in Ulfric’s cause, but…”

She trailed off, slowing to a halt as they approached the steps to Alvor’s porch. Then she turned to face them with a sad smile.  

“I hate that it had to be that way,” she finished. “At least my wood is finally being used to build homes again.”

Jórunn smiled.

“Thank you for everything, Gerdur,” she said. She unlooped her arm from Raydrin’s elbow to hold her hands out, inviting Gerdur into a hug. Then she laughed sadly over the other woman’s shoulder. “This is the second time you’ve helped us out in a tight spot.”

“It has been a pleasure,” said Gerdur, squeezing her around the middle. “You were welcome back when you were just a friend of Ralof’s, and you are more than welcome now that…”

She pulled away with a knowing smile. “Well. You know. It is funny how these things turn out.”

“It is,” Jórunn agreed.

Gerdur stared at Jórunn for a moment in silence, her gaze wandering between each of her features. Then she lifted one hand up and pressed it carefully to Jórunn’s cheek. Jórunn jumped slightly at the contact. “You walk in Talos’ footsteps, young Dragonborn,” Gerdur murmured. “May he guide you to safer ground.”

Jórunn just exhaled raggedly, her breath curling away from her lips in white tendrils of condensation.  

“And you,” Gerdur went on, turning to Raydrin and wagging a finger at him. “It is good to see you looking better than you did all those months ago. Take care of each other. Skyrim is relying on you both.”

Raydrin nodded. “We will,” he said. “Thank you, Gerdur.”

She smiled. “Pass my regards onto Sigrid and Alvor,” she said. “Tell Alvor the new sawmill blade is working perfectly. And I hope you both get a good night’s sleep.”

She turned and began making her way back up the hill towards her home. Raydrin watched her go. Then he gave Jórunn his arm and they clambered up the steps to Alvor’s door.

 

---

 

“I feel bad for not telling Delphine about the letters,” Raydrin admitted once they were wrapped up in their bedrolls on the floor of Alvor’s basement.

Jórunn snorted. “I wouldn’t have. If it were me.”

He turned his head against his pillow to look at her. “You don’t think I should?”

“No?” said Jórunn, like it was obvious. “What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. And I’m liking this new version of Delphine who can admit that she fucked us over.”

Raydrin hummed. “I suppose she did fuck us over.”

“There's nothing to suppose,” said Jórunn. “I don’t want her retracting her apology because she thinks she can just shift the blame over to you.”

She’d be right to do so, Raydrin thought. But he didn’t say it. “Wow,” he said instead, turning his gaze back towards the dark ceiling. “I never guessed you'd be so self-serving.”

“Raydrin,” said Jórunn, finding his arm and squeezing it. “I know you still think you were at fault for what happened back there—”

“Someone has to be,” he cut her off.

“—but,” she continued, sharpening her ‘T’ to show her irritation, “you know there’s no way you could have acted any differently. It’s not like it was foreseeable that the Thalmor would have a plant at the college.”

Raydrin sighed. “We’ve talked about this enough already,” he said. “I know, Jórunn. You are right. I just—” he pressed his hands to his face, pushing down on his eyes as if he could squeeze the exhaustion out of them, “—no amount of talking logically about what could or couldn’t have happened differently is going to make me feel less guilty about it or like any less of a fool.”

Jórunn was silent.

“Yes,” she said after a long while. “Yes, I get that.”

“It’s all right now, anyway,” he went on. “Delphine’s alive. It could have been worse.”

Jórunn didn’t reply. It was grim humour, maybe too grim.

“Are you going to sleep?” she asked softly.

“Mm,” Raydrin sighed, his eyes drifting shut. “I’m exhausted.” It was a few moments later before it occurred to him to turn to her and ask, “Why, is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jórunn whispered. “You’re tired. It can wait.”

Raydrin rolled fully onto his side. “No, it’s all right—what is it?”

“It’s just…” she sighed. “Well, this is the first time in weeks that we’ve been alone. And… it’ll probably be the last time for a long while.”

If those words had come from anyone else, they'd have sounded suggestive, flirtatious. But even coming from Jórunn, for whom that categorically wasn’t going to be the case, it was enough to make Raydrin’s stomach flip.

“So…” she went on when he still hadn’t responded, “I– I thought I could, er… tell you about Heloise. If you still wanted to know.”

Raydrin swallowed. Gods, yes, obviously he wanted to know—but her offer made him feel intrusive, and the thought of accepting it even more so.

“Only if you want to tell me,” he replied. “Otherwise… otherwise I’m happy to just drop it.”

Jórunn laughed softly. “You’re allowed to say yes,” she chided. “Look, it’s not something that I’m ever going to want to tell you. But… I should. We’ve been travelling together for months, now. You’re—”

She paused, taking a deep breath.

“You’re my best friend.”

The admission made Raydrin’s heart tighten painfully.

“So I want you to know,” she finished. “I don’t want to tell you. But I want you to know.”

Raydrin could only nod. “Okay.”

“Okay,” said Jórunn. She exhaled slowly. “So, um. Raydrin. I guess, um—I haven’t exactly been truthful to you about… my past.”

He said nothing.

“On that first day on the road, on our way to Ivarstead,” she went on. “I told you I’d grown up in an orphanage. That… well, it was a lie. I—”

She broke off. And she didn’t start up again for a long while. Raydrin started to wonder if she was crying, and was about to give in to his every instinct telling him to lay a hand on her shoulder and comfort her, but before he could move, she filled the silence with a shuddering breath.

“I grew up in a brothel,” she said quickly. “My mother was a prostitute, my— my father a client. She died giving birth to me. I was a few weeks premature. She’d wanted to keep me, but not enough to give up drinking, apparently, which is what they think caused the, um—” Jórunn waved a hand over her eyes with an awkward laugh. “But, ah... yes. That’s what I did, too. Not many other career opportunities going for blind women in the Imperial City.”

She said it with a chuckle, like it was funny. Raydrin said nothing, did nothing. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth, his limbs like he was pushing against thick syrup. What was he supposed to say to that? What could he possibly say?

“Heloise was, um,” Jórunn’s face twitched briefly into a frown, “she was just a client of mine. Started seeing me around Sun’s Dawn this year. I told her I wasn’t satisfied with my life there, and she liked me, I think, so she helped me get out. I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own.

“So… that’s it, really.”

Her calm façade finally cracked, her expression crumpling.

“I don’t know why I took so long to tell you,” she said. “It sounds so mundane, now I’m saying it. I guess I just…”

Her voice broke, her eyes squeezing shut. A single tear appeared in her lashes, sparkling under the low candlelight, but she quickly pressed it away.

“I just didn’t want you to think I was dirty,” she finished, choking on the final syllable.

“Oh, Jórunn—”

“I’m sorry—”

“—you’re not dirty, I’d never think that,” Raydrin murmured. His hand had been hovering over her waist, ready to pull her into a hug, but he drew it back to his side. The thought of touching her now, in any capacity, felt… violating. “Not about you, or anyone else in that profession.”

“Profession,” she repeated with a bitter laugh, wiping at her eyes again. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I made such a big deal out of it. Of course you wouldn’t judge me.” She wrangled her voice back into something resembling control. “I feel like such an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot—”

“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner.”

“Jórunn, it’s okay,” he said firmly. “It’s okay.”

She closed her eyes, deflated.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I… I get why you didn’t do it sooner.”

Jórunn sniffled.

“I also have something I should have told you a long time ago,” Raydrin began. “Not to make this about myself, I mean, just to... well. I guess just to reassure you that I get it.”

He took a deep breath.

“I used to be—”

“Wait,” Jórunn cut him off. He immediately fell silent, snatching up the opportunity to leave that sentence unfinished. Jórunn inhaled and cleared her throat. “I think I know what you’re about to tell me.”

Raydrin blinked. “You do?”

She nodded against her pillow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Cassathra told me before we split up. About the, um…”

She couldn’t say it, but Raydrin didn’t need it spelling out for him.

“The skooma,” he finished for her.

Jórunn’s reply was nearly inaudible. “Yeah."

“Well,” he said, rolling onto his back. “I guess now we both feel like fools.”

“Oh Raydrin, I’m sorry,” said Jórunn. “I never meant to—gods, I’m sorry. I meant to tell you. I felt awful knowing that about you without your consent. I just, there was never a good time—”

“You don’t have to keep saying sorry,” Raydrin cut her off. It came out meaner than he’d meant it to, so he quickly amended himself. “It’s not your fault Cassathra has a big mouth.”

It took Jórunn a short while to figure out how to reply. “I should have brought it up sooner,” she said.

“And I should have told you sooner,” said Raydrin. “But I think we can be forgiven for having other things on our minds.”

Exhaustion had hit him like a stone wall. His body was beginning to succumb to it, his words slurring together. The conversation was an important one, but Raydrin found suddenly that he’d had enough of it, his feeling of guilt at being so short with Jórunn overwhelmed by his desire to sleep.

“Yeah,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”

“It’s okay.” Raydrin bit back a yawn. “I do get it. But it’s all out in the open now, anyway.”

Jórunn was silent for a long while.

“Are you…” she faltered, swallowing drily. “I mean… you– you’re better now, though, right?”

Raydrin blinked upwards into the darkness. The question gave rise to an inexplicable feeling of bitterness. 

“Yes," he said softly. "Yes. I’ve been clean since we met.”

“Good. That’s… that’s good.”

He didn’t reply.

“I meant to say this a long time ago,” Jórunn went on, her voice a gentle murmur, “but, um… if you ever want to talk about it. I’d like to listen.” 

Raydrin smiled thinly to himself. “Thanks, Jórunn. Another time, maybe.”

“Yes. Another time." She cleared her throat. "Night, Raydrin.”

He held himself above the sticky waters of sleep just long enough to reply.

“Night.”

Notes:

sorry about the longer wait time, something about this chapter really stumped me. :// i'm thinking mathyas may soon earn this fic the 'whump' tag.

as always, big thank you to my wonderful betas for their help and feedback with this chapter! let me know if you enjoyed reading <3

Chapter 31: Hitting the Books

Notes:

there's no good reason this chapter is as long as it is. i'm sorry 🫣

Solitude, Skyrim, 31st Evening Star

On the last day of the two hundred and first year of the Fourth Era, Cassathra finally laid eyes on Solitude.

Land appeared on the horizon at around noon, a mere two hours before the sun was due to set. It began as just a thin, hazy strip of grey, but expanded slowly into a rugged coastline, until the cliffs started closing in around them and The Nurnhilde pulled away from open waters into the estuary of the River Karth. Ahead lay the Great Arch; it cut a dramatic silhouette, jutting out above the landscape like a snapped bone. From this distance, all that could be seen of the city perched above it was the pin-prick twinkle of the dome of the Blue Palace, sparkling like a sapphire from its position atop the outer plinth.

As The Nurnhilde approached, the archway seemed to grow infinitely more enormous—for once they sailed under its shadow, they did not emerge again for at least a minute. Cassathra, Onmund and J’zargo stood there on the deck—close to the helm, where they were least likely to get in the way of busy sailors—and craned their necks back, gazing in wonder at the ceiling of the arch so impossibly high above them. The Nurnhilde wound its way through the labyrinthine docks until it found its assigned berth, then the three of them were free to go. At last, after five days at sea, they had their feet on solid ground.

The climb up to the city centre was steep and wobbly, though Cassathra fared better than her friends at finding her land legs. Much of her childhood had been spent on boats; she'd often accompanied her parents on the long voyages to their various diplomatic and political appointments, and as a girl she had learned to sail from Raydrin and Mathyas, who would drag her on day trips up and down the western channel of the Inner Sea, during those halcyon summers in the family villa.

The apprentices made their way through the residential outskirts, through the sprawl of farming villages and mills that had been absorbed into the city over the years, and then through the great gates at the top of the arch which allowed access into the city walls. With just an hour of daylight remaining, the residents of Solitude were hard at work getting the city ready for that evening’s festivities; strings of bunting and coloured lanterns were being draped across the streets, each adorned with the Eye of Magnus to herald the winter solstice and the return of the sun. Stages were being erected, snow swept away, braziers stacked with fuel, and citizens gathered in their droves outside temples to leave offerings of prayer and donations of charity.

“Happy Old Life, you guys,” said Cassathra, linking arms with Onmund and J’zargo and pulling them into her sides. Excitement was brewing in her belly like a crackling storm. “There are definitely worse places to spend the longest night of the year.”

“Winterhold being at the top of the list,” said J’zargo, making her laugh. Cassathra felt his tail flick against her back, though she wasn’t its intended target; “Happy you came now, Onmund?”

“Yes, yes,” Onmund grumbled. “I’ll be happier once we’ve found an inn.”

It was easier said than done; the first three places they tried were all fully booked, and by the time they got lucky with the fourth, the sun had long since set. They dumped their things in their room and set off for the Bards College in the dark, illuminated from above by the jewel-toned glow of glass lanterns. That had brought them here; waiting on a bench outside the Dean of History’s office and watching flakes of snow drift past the window.

“Apologies for the wait,” came a voice from down the hall, accompanied by the slap of shoes against stone. The three of them looked up to find a short, slight little man making his way towards them, a wool felt beret atop his head and an orange padded doublet about his chest. “I had some difficulty extracting myself from rehearsals. What can I do for you?”

The three of them got to their feet in unison. J’zargo—who had been assigned spokesperson—cleared his throat.

“Good afternoon, Professor Gemane,” he said, extending a furred hand down towards the man. Cassathra smiled to herself inwardly; J’zargo certainly knew how to flatter. The professor—Giraud, his name was—took the offered hand and shook it, looking bemused but a little pleased at the formal greeting. “My name is J’zargo,” he went on. “J’zargo and his companions are apprentices of magic from the College of Winterhold. We are currently involved in a research project of historical interest, and believe that your college is in possession of a book we would find most useful.”

Giraud nodded. He seemed polite enough, but had a somewhat bored manner about him—no, not bored. Tired.

“Well, I’m sure that can be arranged,” he said. “It’s good to see students taking advantage of our interlibrary loan system. What is the name of this book? We can head to the library now and see if it’s available.”

“Ah,” said J’zargo. “Well, actually, it is not a book that we wish to loan; it is a book that has been loaned by us to you, and—now that the loan’s expiry date has passed—we wish for it to be returned.”

Giraud raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Well, ah… that certainly is irregular. We’re usually very particular about ensuring your books are returned in a timely manner—we don’t wish to invoke the wrath of your librarian, as I’m sure you’ll understand.”

He smiled at them thinly. “What is the book’s name, again? We shall see about remedying this error.”

“Lost Legends,” said J’zargo. “By Talsgar the Archivist.”

Giraud nodded. “The library is this way,” he gestured down the hall. “Let’s see where this Lost Legends has run off to, eh?”

 

---

 

Cassathra quickly gathered that Solitude had a very particular style of architecture, and quickly she was coming to love it. The stone in this part of Skyrim was a dark, greenish-black, almost jade-like in colour, and it was contrasted against pale sandstone in a way that reminded Cassathra of a chessboard. The stonework itself was more elaborate than elsewhere in the province—usually Nords tended towards simplicity, saving the more intricate designs for their woodwork—but despite the clear Imperial influence, it was still undeniably Nordic. Knotted accents were everywhere; around archways, along the ceiling trim, on the edges of the squarish support pillars that seemed almost Dwemeri in inspiration. Each and every unit was its own work of art.

The library was warmed by a crackling fire and the golden-brown of polished oak furniture, likely imported from elsewhere. Cassathra was gazing at a tapestry rendition of some Nordic folktale when Giraud, who had been checking through the library inventory, released a disgruntled sort of sigh.

Cassathra dragged her gaze away from where a snake was biting the breast of some milk-skinned maiden. “Is something wrong?”

“We may have a slight problem,” said Giraud, knocking the arm of his reading glasses out of place as he rubbed at his temples. “The loan was ordered by one of my postgraduates, a boy called Orthorn. He was an ex-Winterhold fellow, actually—did his apprenticeship in conjuration before deciding to come here. The only problem is, well… Orthorn disappeared a couple of months ago. And we haven’t heard from him since.”

The apprentices glanced at each other. Then back at Giraud.

“Disappeared, as in…” Cassathra shook her head, realizing she wasn’t sure how she was intending for that sentence to end. “Disappeared, how?”

“Was it under suspicious circumstances, you mean?” said Giraud. “According to a friend of his, he was planning to return but never did. Take from that what you will.”

“Presumably this friend knows where he went?” offered Onmund.

Giraud shook his head. “Not precisely,” he said. “Orthorn was something of a troubled young man. Arrogant, insecure, easily misled… his friend will probably be able to answer more of your questions than I. Look, I am terribly sorry about this—I am aware that this was the book’s only copy. I shall write a letter of apology and provide some remuneration for you to take back to Urag.”

“Are we sure that Orthorn took the book with him?” asked J’zargo.

“It hasn’t been returned to the library, so we can only assume so.”

“What about his room?” suggested Cassathra. “Maybe he left it in there.”

Giraud glanced between them. “Orthorn is still technically enrolled as a student here,” he said. “Normally it would be a breach of policy to go into a student’s room without their permission…”

“…but?” cut in J’zargo hopefully.

“But,” said Giraud, “that book is the property of the College of Winterhold. I suppose, given the circumstances… we could perhaps make an exception.”

His face quickly scrunched into a frown. “But only to look for the book,” he emphasised. “And I will be there to supervise the search.”

The apprentices all nodded.

Giraud sighed, closing his inventory. “Come along, then. The student dormitories are this way.”

 

They were led across a courtyard into a separate wing of the college, away from the libraries and lecture rooms and faculty offices. Orthorn’s room was a small, cluttered thing, high up in the college with a little arched window that—had it been light outside—would likely have offered an impressive view over the Sea of Ghosts. The air was stale; Orthorn's bed was unmade and a pot of deathbell flowers on his desk had shrivelled and died. Lost Legends was nowhere to be found.

“It appears that the book is not here,” said Giraud. “I’m sorry I was unable to help you. If Orthorn ever returns, we will, of course, forward the book to you as soon as possible. Until then, please pass my deepest apologies onto Urag.”

Cassathra bit back a sigh, turning her gaze to the flurry of snow whipping against the window panes. She was disappointed—the book had really just been an excuse to get out of Winterhold for a few days, but she was upset about the thought of returning to Urag empty-handed. And regardless of whether or not Lost Legends told them anything about Jyrik or about Saarthal, it was still a unique historical record that had potentially been lost forever.

“Professor Gemane,” she started, tapping restlessly on the edge of Orthorn’s desk. “Would you happen to know of any poems or songs about an Archmage called Jyrik? From the early First Era?”

Giraud raised an eyebrow. “Poems and songs? What makes you ask?”

“Oh, well, um—Jyrik is the subject of our research project. We believe King Harald had him stricken from historical records, so we were hoping maybe his name had survived in Skyrim’s oral folklore.” She cleared her throat. “Which is why we were looking for Lost Legends.”

Giraud was silent for a few moments. “It’s not a name I’m familiar with,” he admitted at last. “But I am not a skald, and oral folklore is not my area of expertise. If you’d like, I can ask around the faculty, see if any of our Nordic professors know anything of this—Jyrik.” He coughed. “And then I can write to you if I find anything.”

“Hey, Giraud,” came a sudden voice from the open doorway, startling the professor into turning over his shoulder. There, leaning against the doorframe, was a young woman. At first Cassathra assumed she was human—she had the colouring of a Nord, her complexion fair, her sclera white, and her short, straight hair the colour of dark wood—but there was something merish about her. Her ears were sharper than any Breton’s, her cheekbones too arched, her brow-bone too prominent. And she was much, much too tall. Gods, she was tall.

“Ronwen!” Giraud exclaimed, chuckling nervously. “We were just, ah…”

The girl—Ronwen—arched one eyebrow. “Yes?”

Giraud cleared his throat. “These are students from Winterhold,” he said, gesturing to them. “They’re here to collect a book we believe to have been in Orthorn’s possession. We were just looking for it, but, ah—no sign of it in here.”

Ronwen pursed her lips.

“What’s that?” she asked, nudging her head in Cassathra’s direction. Cassathra startled, then followed Ronwen’s gaze to where it had landed on a leather-bound journal on Orthorn’s desk. Giraud did the same.

“Unfortunately not the title we are looking for,” he said pointedly. And then, to push the conversation swiftly forward: “Apprentices, this is Ronwen, one of my burgeoning young scholars here at the Coterie. She was a classmate of Orthorn’s. I’m sure she’ll be able to help you if you have further questions about his disappearance.”

“Sure,” said Ronwen with a nonchalant shrug, but when Giraud moved to extricate the torch they’d placed in Orthorn’s light fixture, she suddenly shot a wide-eyed look at Cassathra and then at the book. Cassathra pointed to it in question, to which Ronwen quickly nodded.

“Right, then,” said Giraud, torch in hand. Ronwen relaxed back into a casual stance, arms folded across her chest. “I suppose we’re done here. Let’s leave Orthorn’s old things in peace.”

He joined her in the doorway, illuminating their faces in flickering torchlight. Then he turned to the others and held out one arm, beckoning for them to follow. “Come along, then.”

Ronwen’s eyes darted once again to the book.

“Er, you first,” said Cassathra to Onmund and J’zargo. As she followed them out of the room, she grabbed the journal and tucked it into the fold of her robe, crossing her arms over her chest to hide its bulky outline.

Giraud locked the door behind them.

“There,” he said, placing the torch back in its original fixture. His cheeks were pink; he was clearly flustered about having been caught breaking college policy. “Now, I really must return to my rehearsals. I trust the three of you can find your own way out?”

“I can show them,” said Ronwen.

“Thank you, Ronwen. I, ah—well, I suppose I’ll see you this evening at the festival.”

Giraud turned to them and bowed his head. “I apologize again about the book,” he said. “But I wish you the best of luck with your project. Happy Old Life to you all—and farewell!”

He scurried away without another word. They stood there and watched until his footsteps had faded out of earshot.

“Typical,” muttered Ronwen once he was gone. “The college refused to go through Orthorn’s room after he disappeared, but now there’s some precious book at stake…”

She shook her head, then looked up to meet their gazes. “Giraud said you had questions. Is that true, or was he just saving face?”

Ronwen said it with a smile, softening the accusatory tone of her words. Cassathra glanced at her companions, who glanced back at her. Onmund shrugged.

“Well, er—I suppose we do,” she said, reaching into her robes and pulling out the journal. “What did you want with this, for starters?”

“I’m hoping it’s a diary,” Ronwen explained, extending one hand to accept the book. As it passed between them, a slip of paper came loose from within its pages, fluttering down to the floor. They stared at it for a few seconds in silence. Then Ronwen bent down to snatch it up and quickly skimmed it over.

“Hm,” she said, brows drawing into a frown. She looked back up once she was done, glancing between them. “Come on,” she said, inclining her head. “My room is this way. We should talk in there.”

She led them down the corridor, then through an open doorway into a room of a similar size and layout to Orthorn’s. Hers, however, overlooked the city—Cassathra could hear voices of merriment drifting up from the streets below.

Ronwen shut the door behind them before circling round to her desk, laying the book and note down on its surface. She leaned back against it, her long, slender fingers curling around its edge. Did she play an instrument, Cassathra wondered? She could imagine her with something stringed—a harp, or a lute.

“What did the letter say?” asked J’zargo.

Ronwen handed it to him.

“I suppose I should provide some context,” she began. “Orthorn and I met a few months ago, back in Hearthfire. We were starting our history research fellowships together. We weren’t exactly close, but we spent enough time together for me to notice when he started… deteriorating.”

“Deteriorating?” asked Onmund.

Ronwen shrugged. “Disappearing for days at a time. Skipping classes. Falling behind on his work. That sort of thing.”

J’zargo passed the note onto Onmund, meanwhile Ronwen continued. “Some old college friends of his had moved to the city—friends from Winterhold, I mean. That’s when this whole thing started. We’d been on the way to becoming friends, but as soon as they showed up, that all stopped. He drew away from me, started isolating himself.”

The note was finally passed to Cassathra. She took it and unfolded it.  

Orthorn

We’re ready to move into the next phase of research. The Caller has set up in a fort by the name of Fellglow Keep—it lies approximately fifty miles east north-east of Whiterun, within the border of the Pale and at the base of Mount Shearpoint. Meet us there as soon as you are able.

“Does this mean anything to you?” Cassathra asked, holding up the note.

Ronwen shook her head. “Nothing,” she admitted. “Orthorn did tell me he was leaving. He was all excited and hysterical about it, spouting nonsense I didn’t understand. But he told me he’d be back. And that was nearly three months ago, now.”

“Based on the contents of the note, it would seem that Orthorn left voluntarily,” said J’zargo. Ronwen squinted at him.

“Maybe so,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean something bad can’t have happened to him. Listen, I—” she trailed off, her braced posture deflating. “I’m worried about him. Orthorn wasn’t happy. He had a troubled childhood; his parents died in the war and he grew up in some orphanage in Cyrodiil. He’d had problems with skooma on and off for years. Someone like that… he’s vulnerable. Those ‘friends’ of his, I… I don’t know. I don’t know who ‘the Caller’ is and I don’t know what their research involves, but… I think he was being taken advantage of.”

Cassathra, Onmund and J’zargo were all silent. Ronwen sighed and looked away.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she muttered. “He’s not your problem.”

“No, we—” Cassathra began, but quickly ground to a halt when she realized she didn’t know what to say. Onmund and J’zargo both blinked at her in surprise. Ronwen looked up.

“This Fellglow Keep isn’t exactly en-route, Cass,” said Onmund softly, stepping in when it was clear she wasn’t going to continue. “To me, it sounds like he’s gotten involved with some kind of… cult. I’m not sure there’s much we’d be able to do.”

Cassathra’s shoulders sagged with disappointment.

Ronwen sighed.

“He’s right,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s just—you’re the first people to have shown any interest in what happened to Orthorn since he disappeared. The Coterie certainly doesn’t give a shit.”

She smiled at them thinly. “I hope the book he stole wasn’t too important.”

Cassathra smiled back—in truth, it was priceless, one-of-a-kind. And it was their last hope of finding anything more about Jyrik or the Saarthal Artifact. But she didn’t tell Ronwen that.

“It’s just a book,” she said. “I hope… I hope Orthorn shows up again.”

“So do I,” Ronwen agreed. She cleared her throat and straightened to her full height, stepping away from her desk. Her nail tapped idly on the surface of Orthorn’s journal. “Well, thanks anyway,” she said with a sudden buoyancy. Then she paused for a moment and raised one eyebrow. “You didn’t really come all the way from Winterhold just for that book, did you?”

“Sort of,” said Cassathra. “It was also just an excuse to spend New Life in Solitude.”

Ronwen laughed, clear and vibrant. “I certainly can’t blame you for that,” she said. “So what are your plans?”

“Nothing in particular. We’ll probably just go on a tavern crawl.”

“A tavern crawl?” repeated Ronwen. “You didn't come all this way just to go on a tavern crawl. You should come here. You won’t find a better party than at the Bards College—best music and entertainment in all of Tamriel.”

She said it with a dramatic and slightly sarcastic flair, spreading her hands. Cassathra grinned in spite of herself.

“It, er… it’s not just for college members, then?”

“Well,” Ronwen shrugged, “I mean, it is, technically. But the three of you are clearly students. I doubt anyone would notice you sneaking in.”

“J’zargo will blend right in,” said the Khajiit. “Back in Elsweyr, he had quite the reputation for his skill on the esraj.”

“Oh, really?” Ronwen raised an amused brow. “Well, I’ll look forward to hearing it.”

Cassathra rolled her eyes, nudging J’zargo with her elbow. “Come on, you braggart,” she said, pushing him towards the door. “Er, thanks for your time, Ronwen,” she said over her shoulder. “Maybe we’ll see you later?”

Ronwen nodded, following them out. “Yes, hopefully. See you then.”

She closed the door behind them, leaving them standing out in the corridor on their own. Onmund and J’zargo exchanged a glance and then fixed their gazes on Cassathra, Onmund’s eyebrows raised.

Cassathra stared back at them. “What?” she said.

Onmund shrugged, feigning innocence. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Just you and Ronwen making eyes at each other the whole time.”

Cassathra’s cheeks grew hot. “She was not.”

“Ah!” exclaimed J’zargo. “So you admit that you were.”

“No, I—” she glanced nervously at Ronwen’s heavy oaken door, wondering to herself how soundproof it was. “Ugh, you’re both so asinine,” she threw her hands up. They fell into step behind her as she began making her way down the corridor.

“She invited you to her party, did she not?” pointed out J’zargo.

“It’s not ‘her’ party,” Cassathra scowled. “And that invitation was for all of us.”

“Something tells me she wouldn’t have extended it if it were just me and J’zargo,” said Onmund.

“Whatever,” Cassathra muttered, though alongside her irritation and embarrassment was an undeniable flush, a fluttering behind her navel. They gathered their cloaks and furs from the college lodge and then stalked back to their inn through the snow. The cold did little to alleviate the heat in her cheeks.

 

---

 

“Still no sign of J’zargo?” Cassathra asked as she returned from the tavern bathhouse, fluffing up her damp curls with one hand and holding a towel around her chest with the other. Onmund grunted from where he was peering at his reflection in a spotted old mirror and dragging a blade over his soft, square jaw.

“He always takes this long,” he said once his mouth was free for him to move, splashing the razor around in a bowl of water. “But he does have about fifty times as much body hair, to be fair.”

Cassathra smiled in amusement but said nothing, merely humming. There was something funny about seeing Onmund shave; she supposed he had to do it at some point, but she’d seen him go extended periods of time without it, and it wasn’t like there was ever much for him to get rid of.

But the boy was only nineteen—he still had a few years for his Nordic blood to kick in.

“I was thinking,” she began, throwing her towel over the privacy screen and rummaging around her travel pack for a change of clothes. “Would it really be so bad if we went after Orthorn?”

Onmund was silent. Cassathra huffed, her heel catching on the inside of a pair of woollen leggings.

“Onmund?” she called. “It’s not like we wouldn’t get anything out of it—he does have the book.”

Onmund cleared his throat from the other side of the divider.

“I’m beginning to think you might actually be insane,” he said. “Are you really suggesting we go on some trek across the province in the middle of winter and miss the first three weeks of term just to try and extract some guy we don’t even know from a cult in the hopes that maybe he has a book which might tell us something about Jyrik which might tell us something about the Saarthal Artifact?”

Cassathra poked her head out from the side of the screen. “Okay… well, when you say it like that, it sounds crazy.”

Onmund scoffed and rolled his eyes, turning back to his mirror.

“But are you really saying we shouldn’t even try?” Cassathra went on. She ducked back behind the privacy of the divider and pulled on an undershirt. “He’s an ex-student, I’m sure the college would understand us missing a few weeks of term to try and help him…”

“The only person at the college who gives two damns about student welfare is Tolfdir,” said Onmund. Then he paused for a moment before continuing, an edge of suspicion creeping into his tone: “Wait, is this because of Ronwen?”

Cassathra—now decent—crumpled the divider to one side and glared at him. “What’s Ronwen got to do with it?”

“She gives you some puppy eyes, tells a sob story,” Onmund shrugged. “Now you suddenly want to play the valiant knight.”

“Oh my gods,” said Cassathra. “You really think I—?! Ugh!”

She grabbed a pillow from the bed and threw it at him, making him laugh as he batted it away.

“I’m just saying,” he said, grinning and patting his face with a cloth. “You know what we need? Brelyna. She’s the only one who can talk any sense into you.”

Cassathra frowned, shoving her arm a little aggressively through the sleeve of her tunic.

“Yeah, well, Brelyna’s not here,” she muttered. “I wish you’d drop the Ronwen thing. You imagined it all, anyway.”

Onmund snorted. “Did not. I may not be a woman, and I may not even be that way inclined, but I can still recognize rippling sexual t—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Cassathra whined. “We were talking about her missing friend, for Vehk’s sake.”

Onmund just chuckled, turning back to his reflection to fluff up his dark hair. “Whatever you say, Cass.”

 

---

 

Groomed, perfumed and dressed up, the three of them ate a spectacular dinner with their fellow guests at the inn—mutton and juniper casserole, roasted winter vegetables, jazbay grapes served with cheeses and spiced ham and then a mead-soaked fruit pudding to finish—before embarking on a shortened tavern crawl to prime themselves for the party. They arrived at the Bards College fashionably late, just a couple of hours before the end of the year, and so—as Ronwen had predicted—were able to slip into the crowds unnoticed.

The party was quite literally overflowing, its raucous festivities having spilled out into the streets and college courtyard. They heard it before they saw it; the chatter had built up to a dull roar, almost overpowering the sound of music drifting up the steps of the amphitheatre. The snowstorm from a few hours ago had mellowed into the leisurely drifting of snowflakes, glinting yellow under the torchlight. Cassathra was warmed by the buzz of mulled wine in her blood.

“J’zargo doesn’t know about the two of you, but he is heading inside,” announced J’zargo, his hands tucked into his armpits for warmth. “What kind of savages party in a snowstorm, ziss’vo.”

“Yes, I think I might join you on that,” muttered Cassathra. She craned her neck, trying to peer over the throng of heads, but in a crowd populated mostly by Nords her little stature was getting her nowhere. “Er—can either of you see Ronwen anywhere?”

Onmund turned to grin down at her. “Someone’s keen.”

“Stop it,” she grumbled. “I’m asking because she invited us and I thought she could help us mingle.”

Onmund cast a quick glance over the crowd, through the snowflakes and clouds of pipe-smoke.

“It doesn’t look like she’s anywhere out here,” he said at last.

“Excellent,” said J’zargo. “So we head inside.”

“Fine,” Cassathra mumbled. “Let’s go, then.”

They pushed through the crowds and carved a pathway to the college entrance. Within those thick, stone walls lay the party’s beating heart; their ears were immediately met with the quick, heavy pounding of palms against taut drum skins, the low droning of a hurdy-gurdy, the rhythmic chanting of a chorus of female vocalists and the clapping of a hundred pairs of hands. The heavy drum beat almost reminded Cassathra of home—the Redoran took great pride in their war drumming—but the plucking of a lute and the high melody of a fife secured a distinctly Nordic feel to that vibrant, energetic music.

Cassathra shook the snow from her hair, the dramatic shift in temperature making her cheeks sting.  

“What do we do now?” asked Onmund, his voice raised almost to a shout despite the fact he was standing immediately to her left.

She squinted, scanning her eyes over the great reception hall. The centre had been cleared for dancing, but around the edges lay long tables piled high with food and drink. Ronwen was nowhere to be seen.

“It sounds like they’re part way through a song,” Cassathra said loudly in Onmund’s ear, cupping a hand around her mouth. “Let’s sit down and drink for a bit and then we can join in with the dancing later.”

He nodded and they headed towards the banquet tables, squeezing onto the benches and helping themselves sheepishly to goblets of mulled wine. It didn’t take long for them to begin mingling—rather, in such close quarters with other partygoers, the mingling came to them.

“Wha’s your name?” slurred a big Nord, with ruddy cheeks and wavy blonde hair spilling about his shoulders. When he laid an elbow on the table and tried to prop his jaw in one palm, it slipped.

Cassathra’s lips twitched in her effort not to laugh. “Cassathra.”

“How is it that I have never seen you here before?” he said, dropping his voice into a low rumble—Cassathra presumed it was meant to be seductive. “Surely I would remember a face as lovely as yours.”

J’zargo snorted from across the table, choking on a glug of wine, and then knocked a fist into his chest in an attempt to pass it off as a cough. The Nord took no notice. Cassathra covered her mouth with one hand, trying to hide her amused smile.

“I don’t go here,” she said. The Nord frowned and leaned in closer, clearly straining to listen over the music and chatter. “I don’t go here,” she said again, louder. “I’m from Winterhold.”

He pulled away, eyes wide. “A mage?!” he exclaimed. Cassathra nodded. “Wait,” he said, “I also know a few magic tricks.” He reached across the table, scrabbling against the arm of another burly Nord who was otherwise exchanged in conversation. “Asgeld, do you have my playing cards?”

Asgeld paused, dragging his gaze away from his conversation partner, and then glanced between Cassathra and his friend with an amused smile. “Sorry to subject you to Bjorn’s antics,” he said apologetically to Cassathra, drawing a pack of cards from his pocket and holding them out to his friend—Bjorn.

“Alright,” said Bjorn obliviously, fanning out the deck, “pick a card.”

Cassathra obeyed. “Am I supposed to look?”

Bjorn nodded eagerly. She turned the card over: it was the jack of clubs.

“Now place it back in the deck.”

“Anywhere?”

He nodded. Cassathra slid it back in with some difficulty, for the deck was clasped very tightly in his palm. Bjorn twisted in his seat, did a little shuffling where Cassathra couldn’t see, and then turned back round to face her with a card held up triumphantly in one hand.

“Is this your card?!”

It was the four of hearts. “Yes!” said Cassathra, laughing. “Yes, that’s it.”

Bjorn started smugly shuffling the deck. “See if those fancy wizards over in Winterhold can teach you that,” he said with pride.

“Impressive,” cut in J’zargo. “Very nice. On the topic of magic, may J’zargo present a few tricks of his own?”

Bjorn puffed out his chest, sliding the deck across the table. “Be my guest,” he said. J’zargo put the cards pointedly to one side and made a show of rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, wriggling his fingers dramatically.

“Now, let us see here…” he muttered to himself, extending one claw and using it to scratch out a circle into the wood of the table. Within that circle he drew another, and then lines coming out from the centre like the spokes of a wheel. In each wedge he drew a letter from the Daedric alphabet. Cassathra had to wrench the smile off her face—it was utter nonsense, purely for show, but J’zargo was succeeding in attracting the attention of a few curious spectators.

“What are the summoning words, again?” he asked, stroking his chin. “Aha! As we say in Elsweyr: isozeva!”

He snapped his fingers over the circle, lighting a simple flame spell above the tip of his thumb, and then carefully brought his hand round so that it hovered over the flame instead of under it. Cassathra watched in amazement as the fire gradually took the shape of a dancing woman, flames licking up at J’zargo’s palm like a pair of winding arms. The group that had gathered around them broke out into a collective gasp, staring in disbelief at what they presumably believed to be a display of conjuration magic. Bjorn, in particular, looked like he’d just been slapped in the face.

J’zargo clicked his fingers again and the dancing lady evaporated, leaving just a blackened scorch mark on the wood. Cassathra had to give it to him—for all his bragging, he really did have a gift for destruction.

“Just a little something J’zargo learned from those fancy wizards over in Winterhold,” he said.

The crowd erupted into laughter and applause.

“It sounds like they’re about to start a new song,” said Onmund close to Cassathra’s ear, piercing through the clamour. “Fancy a dance?”

Cassathra glanced over her shoulder to where people were taking positions on the dancefloor. Then she downed what was left of her mulled wine and turned back to Onmund with a determined grin. “Absolutely.”

He took her by the hand and they managed to extricate themselves from the table, hurrying over to the dancefloor with just moments to spare.

“Now time for one of my favourites!” announced an Altmer from the stage, old enough to be a professor by the looks of him. “Please put your hands together for our soloists: on the flute, we have the wonderful Lilika,” he gestured to a pretty Nord girl, who smiled nervously and bowed her head; “and on the fiddle, our brilliant Ataf,” he gestured to a Redguard boy, who did the same. “We present to you—the Ballad of Lady Grunhere!”

“Onmund,” Cassathra hissed, suddenly struck with alarm, “I don’t know the moves to any Nordic dances.”

“It’s easy,” he said, smiling down at her reassuringly, “I’ll lead you.”

She copied their fellow dancers, placing her right hand on Onmund’s shoulder and taking his own hand with her left. Azura, they looked ridiculous—with over a foot between them, she barely came up to his collarbones.  

The continuous drone of a hurdy-gurdy started up.

“Ready?” said Onmund.

“I think so,” said Cassathra. “How do we know when it—”

She shrieked as Onmund suddenly swung her into the air, lifting her as effortlessly from the ground as if she were little more than a sack of oats. A fast, stomping rhythm had started from the stage, drumbeats alternating with claps from the spectators around the edge of the dancefloor, and Ataf the Fiddler was straight in there with a vivacious melody, his fingers quick and his bow skipping excitedly over the strings.

Cassathra was spun in circles, thrown into the arms of strangers, yanked by her elbow this way and that and made to skip and hop and clap and stomp. Lilika the Flautist took over from Ataf with a change in key and an excited round of applause, bouncing seamlessly off his melody and mirroring it perfectly with her own. They alternated with each other, hiking up the energy each time they switched, smiling and laughing and letting their bodies move with the music.

Cassathra had never danced like this before. She’d sat back and watched countless performances—dancers, drummers, actors, poets—but the arts were for a Redoran noble to observe and to appreciate, not to engage in. She was laughing by the end of it, sweaty and exhausted but giddy with adrenaline. The song came to a stop as abruptly as it had started. The soloists lowered their instruments and bowed to thunderous applause and whoops of delight.

She and Onmund took a moment to catch their breath, remaining on the dancefloor as the excitement wound down and the next performers began taking their place on the stage.

“Good?” asked Onmund, glancing down at her.

“Good,” replied Cassathra with a breathless nod.

They joined the spectators, wanting to take a short break before dancing again. The next lot of dancers were taking their positions when Onmund was tapped on the shoulder by a dainty hand and glanced down to find—amazingly—the flautist from earlier.

“Hello,” she said, smiling up at him. “Sorry if I’m interrupting anything—I, er, I don’t have a partner for the next dance, so… I was wondering if you’d like to dance with me?”

Onmund’s cheeks reddened, his eyes widening.

“Uh…”

He paused for a long moment, almost long enough to border on awkward. But just as her smile looked as if it was about to falter, he chuckled. “Sure. It, er—it’s Lilika, right?”

Lilika’s smile spread in relief. “Yes, that’s right,” she said, nodding. She was even prettier up close than she had been onstage; her hair was an earthy, golden blonde, her eyes a forest green. She was short for a Nord, just an inch or two taller than Cassathra. “What should I call you?”

“Onmund,” he said, swallowing visibly. Lilika, sadly, was no more his type than Bjorn had been Cassathra’s, but Onmund was sweet and considerate enough for Cassathra to be reassured that Lilika was in safe hands. “Your flute playing earlier was great, by the way.”

Lilika blushed and snorted. “You’re sweet,” she said. Then she turned to Cassathra: “You don’t mind, do you?”

Cassathra laughed. “Not at all,” she said. “You can keep him all night, if you like.”

Onmund shot her a pout over his shoulder as he was led away, but Cassathra had little sympathy; he deserved it after all his ribbing earlier. And maybe she was a little jealous, watching him place his hand on Lilika’s small waist and be stared at with those big, green eyes. Just a little.

“There I was thinking you hadn’t come,” came a voice shortly after the song began, making her jump. Cassathra looked over her shoulder—and then up—to find Ronwen smiling at her lopsidedly.

“Ronwen,” she said. She opened and closed her mouth for a few moments, uselessly scrambling for some kind of reply, but her mind was blank as fresh parchment. “I—uh. Yes. We haven’t been here long. Sorry, we tried looking for you when we got here, but…”

She trailed off. Gods, she was going to kill Onmund and J’zargo—Cassathra had been fine before, but now, after all their teasing, she felt like she could barely string two words together. Maybe the wine was finally catching up to her.

Ronwen just nodded sagely, as if Cassathra had said anything even remotely of value. “Yeah, I’d gone out with some friends,” she said. Cassathra was losing herself in the implications of that—where were those friends now? Had Ronwen left them just to speak with her?—but then Ronwen came to stand at Cassathra’s side and inclined her head towards where Onmund and Lilika were dancing. “Someone stole your partner?”

Cassathra snorted quietly. “I suppose so. She’s welcome to him.”

Ronwen smirked, her gaze lingering on the dancers. Her eyes were dark, Cassathra noticed, nearly black. “So the two of you aren’t…”

“Together?” asked Cassathra. Ronwen looked down at her, nodding. Cassathra laughed and shook her head. “No, me and Onmund are just friends,” she said. “Neither of us are, um… that way inclined.”

Ronwen made an ‘O’ shape with her lips. “Onmund,” she hummed. “I never got your name, by the way.”

“Oh,” said Cassathra dumbly. “It’s Cassathra.”

“Pretty name. Is it Dunmeri?”

Cassathra just nodded, too flustered to speak.

“You from Morrowind?” Ronwen went on, graciously offering her another opportunity.

“Yes, I am.”

“I thought so,” said Ronwen. “I could tell, a little bit. From your accent.”

“My accent?”

Ronwen hummed. “Yeah, you sort of… flatten your vowels. Don’t worry,” she added, “it’s not massively obvious.”

Maybe she’d mistaken Cassathra’s expression for insulted, or self-conscious, but really she was just dumbstruck by the fact Ronwen had been paying such close attention to the way she spoke.

“What about you?” she asked. Ronwen looked amused.

“Where am I from?”

“No, ah—” Cassathra mentally cursed herself, “your name. I can’t figure out its origins.”

Ronwen chuckled. “It’s Altmeri,” she said. “The Breton name Bronwyn comes from the same root, which is what confuses people—I guess because of the ears,” she gestured vaguely to the side of her head. “But my father’s a Nord, which is probably what you wanted to know. Right?”

Cassathra laughed in spite of herself. “Er… a little bit, yes,” she admitted. Ronwen didn’t reply straight away, interrupting the natural flow of the conversation she’d established earlier, so Cassathra took it upon herself to continue. “Do you get that a lot?”

Ronwen shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“What’s the story there?”  

She smirked. “Why don’t we grab some wine and find somewhere to sit and I can tell you?”

The song tapered to a finish with the reedy vibrato of a fife, the jingling of a tambourine, and the thrum of strings. As the crowd broke out into applause, Cassathra stared up into those dark eyes and found herself swallowing.

“Okay.”

 

They cooped themselves up in an alcove of the adjoining antechamber, joining a few other stragglers who’d come to escape the raucousness of the great hall. The music was muted by the thick stone walls, replaced by the gentle murmur of conversation and quiet laughter.  

Cassathra learned that Ronwen’s maternal grandparents had fled Alinor early in the Fourth Era, back when it was still Summerset and shortly after the Thalmor had seized power. She learned that they’d settled in Markarth, that they were professors of history at the university there, and that Ronwen had taken up history because she wanted to follow in her grandparents’ footsteps. She learned that Ronwen’s parents were both glassblowers and that they’d met when her father had been apprenticed to her mother. She learned that Ronwen had grown up in the aftermath of the Markarth Incident, and that her first kiss had been with a young Thalmor justiciar who she later heard calling her ‘mongrel’ to his friends.

And for Ronwen’s part, well, she wanted to know everything, and she asked each of her questions with an earnest curiosity that her gaze gave away even when her voice clung to its steady cadence and mellow tone. Cassathra told her what she could—steering clear of memories involving Mathyas or Raydrin and sanitizing the tale of their tumultuous journey into Skyrim—but the wine had loosened her tongue, and she found herself slipping all too easily into the allure of fleeting connection. She learned that Ronwen had a bump in the bridge of her nose, a mole above her right clavicle, a slightly crooked incisor. She learned that wine made her pupils blow up and stained her lips a deep red.  

“New Life in just ten minutes!” announced an excited young Cyrod, swinging past the doorway. “We’re gathering outside!”

He propelled himself away, leaving a buzz of anticipation in his wake. Cassathra and Ronwen turned to each other—Cassathra’s unfinished sentence already forgotten—and smiled. Ronwen got to her feet.

“Shall we?”

Cassathra took the proffered hand and nodded.

The streets of Solitude were rapidly filling up, and the college courtyard was so packed that it was difficult to move. They pushed their way through the crowd to get a better look, heading towards the amphitheatre where, as Ronwen had explained, the fireworks would be lit. Then they began their long wait. Despite the bitter winter chill, they were warmed on all sides by the bodies pressed up against them.

“Can you see Onmund or J’zargo anywhere?” asked Cassathra, blowing nervously on her hands to keep them warm.

Ronwen quickly scanned the crowd. “Not from here,” she said. “Do you want to look for them afterwards?”

Cassathra shook her head. “No, it’s alright. I was just wondering.”

Ronwen smiled and nodded. They fell into a silence, the ease from their conversation earlier having somehow evaporated. It wasn’t awkward—at least, Cassathra didn’t think it was awkward—but the cold had sobered her up slightly, and she was aware, now, that it perhaps hadn’t been the wisest decision to abandon her friends without telling either of them where she was going.

“Are you all right?” asked Ronwen after a short while, dipping her head to say it close to Cassathra’s ear. The fan of warm breath made her cold ear twitch. 

“Yes,” Cassathra assured her, nodding.

“Any resolutions for the new year?”

“Uh…”

She trailed off, searching for an answer. Did she have any? There were the obvious ones; to pass her first year of studies, to become a better mage. But as she thought about it now, Cassathra realized that neither of those answers felt particularly fulfilling. There should be more. Surely. Surely?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden hush descending over the crowd, and they looked up to find that the Altmer speaker from earlier had appeared on one of the balconies. He pounded a fist against his chest and then cleared his throat.

“My beloved students,” he called, holding up a pocket watch with one hand. “My dear friends and colleagues. In about twenty seconds, we will be celebrating the birth of a new year!”

The crowd broke out into whoops and cheers.

“I’m delighted to be here with you on this bitter winter evening,” he said, “and I want to thank you all for such a splendid beginning to the academic year. May 202 bring you good tidings—and now, as we approach the final seconds of—oh, fuck, we’re late. Er—eight! seven!”

The crowd clumsily joined in, falling into his rhythm: “—six! Five!”

Cassathra looked up and smiled as she caught Ronwen’s gaze. “Four! Three!”

Ronwen raised one eyebrow, asking a silent question. “Two!”

Cassathra nodded.

“One!”

Ronwen took her cheek in one hand, brushed away a snowflake with her thumb, and leaned down to kiss her.

“Happy New Life!”

The fireworks were lit, whistling, bursting, and then crackling away in showers of coloured sparks, and around them the crowd exploded into shouts and shrieks of jubilation. But Cassathra could have been standing in the frozen wastes of Atmora, surrounded by nothing but ice and howling winds, and would have been just as warmed by the gentle pressure of Ronwen’s hand on her waist and the steady movement of her lips against her own.

It was a short kiss—Ronwen trailed her lips to the corner of Cassathra’s mouth and then pulled away just seconds later, but her hand lingered on Cassathra’s cheek, sliding down to her jaw and then her neck. They stayed like that for a moment, forehead to forehead. Then Ronwen laughed.

“Happy New Life,” she murmured, playfully giving her another quick peck. “You look a little dazed.”

Cassathra blinked, forcing her gaze up to meet Ronwen’s. She opened her mouth to reply but found that she had no voice, awkwardly clearing her throat. “Sorry, I…”

Whatever words she may have had at the ready were immeasurably less important than the way Ronwen was looking at her. A slender thumb was trailed across her lower lip.

“Do you want to go to my room?” 

Cassathra let out a ragged breath and nodded.  

“Okay.”

 

She was taken there in silence, Ronwen’s hand trailing behind her and clasped in Cassathra’s own as they headed up a winding spiral staircase towards the student dormitories. Guilt twisted Cassathra’s stomach as they passed the door to Orthorn’s room, but it quickly evaporated once they were safely inside Ronwen’s. She’d entertained the fantasy of Ronwen crowding her against the door and kissing her senseless, but it didn’t materialize—instead Cassathra just stood there in the dark for a few moments as Ronwen set about lighting candles and oil lamps, bringing the room slowly into a dim but warm orange glow.

Ronwen turned to her once she was finished, smiling again. How was she so calm? Cassathra could barely speak for all her nerves. Ronwen approached her carefully, sliding a hand round the back of her neck. She shuddered at the cold press of her fingers, eyes drifting shut.

“Are you okay?” asked Ronwen quietly.

Cassathra nodded. “Yes,” she rasped. “I’m just…”

She trailed off.

“Nervous?” asked Ronwen.

She nodded again.

“That’s all right,” Ronwen reassured her, pressing her thumb to the corner of Cassathra’s lips.

They finally kissed again, away from the crowds and the noise and the crack of fireworks, though they could still be heard, distantly, on the other side of Ronwen’s walls. Cassathra gasped a little as Ronwen pulled her against her, her hands clutching insistently at the fabric around the small of her back.

This was unchartered territory. The kiss outside, Cassathra could handle; she’d been kissed once before, by the son of a minor Indoril lord she’d met in Ebonheart, but the kiss had confirmed for Cassathra that was she was decidedly not into men and so had ended as quickly as it started. This—the grabbing, the hair pulling, oh gods, the tongue—was new and slightly odd, and though it meant Cassathra didn’t have to worry about finding something intelligent to say, it was quickly approaching too much.

“Do you—” she pulled away for a moment, heat and trepidation alike pooling in her belly as Ronwen took the opportunity to start mouthing at her jaw, “—do you, um… play an instrument?” 

Ronwen huffed in amusement. “No,” she said, trailing her lips up Cassathra’s neck, grazing her teeth against her earlobe. “I don’t sing either,” she said, bringing their mouths together again, kissing her firmly but slowly, wetly, gods—

“Why do you ask?” she finished, pulling away and straightening to her full height.

“I, um…”

Cassathra trailed off, fiddling with the line of embroidered flowers along the collar of Ronwen’s tunic. “I don’t know,” she eventually managed, avoiding Ronwen’s gaze even as those slender hands trailed up and down her back. “I just, um—well, you’re at the Bards College, so I was kind of assuming—”

Ronwen cut her off with a laugh, lifting a hand to tuck a loose curl behind Cassathra’s ear. “I’m not technically at the Bard’s College,” she said, making Cassathra blink and finally meet her gaze in confusion. “I’m with the Coterie of Organized Scholars.”

Cassathra was silent for a long moment. “The what?”

“It’s a separate institution,” Ronwen explained. “We’re loosely affiliated with the Bards College and they do all of their academic research through us. But we’re a lot smaller, so people usually just refer to us collectively as the Bards College because it’s bigger and more famous.”

“Oh.” Cassathra frowned, now fingering idly along the sharp line of Ronwen’s jaw.

“Cassathra,” Ronwen dropped her voice to a murmur and laid her hand atop of hers, “are you sure you’re all right?”

Cassathra looked up, lips parting. Gods, this was mortifying—how was she already going so wrong?

“I… yes, I’m fine,” she stammered. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” said Ronwen, voice soft and low. “I just want to be sure you’re comfortable.”

“I am,” Cassathra whispered. She considered telling Ronwen the truth for a moment—that she’d never done this before—but embarrassment kept the admission locked inside. Earlier, when Ronwen had asked her how old she was, she’d lied and said she was twenty (she was only two weeks off, technically) because nineteen had suddenly sounded so juvenile.

Ronwen was still and silent for a few moments, her dark eyes flicking back and forth as they searched Cassathra’s face. She looked as if she were deliberating something.

“Do you smoke?” she said at last.

Cassathra blinked in surprise. “As in… pipeweed?”

Ronwen smiled in amusement. “No. Chokeweed.”

“Oh.” Cassathra frowned. “No, I—I’ve never done that.”

“Would you like to try?”

Something flipped in Cassathra’s gut.

“You don’t have to say yes,” Ronwen went on when Cassathra still hadn’t replied. “I just thought it might help you relax.”

“No, uh—” Cassathra faltered, “I want to.”

Ronwen smiled. “Okay,” she said. Then she pulled away, taking a step back. “Okay. Sure. I’ll get it ready. You can sit on the bed, if you want.”

Awkwardly Cassathra did as asked, watching as Ronwen rummaged around in her chest of drawers for a few moments. It gave her the opportunity to collect herself and her thoughts, to try and steady her pounding heart. She wanted this. She’d been ready for a long time. Ronwen liked her—for the first time ever, another woman wanted Cassathra as more than just a friend. And she trusted Ronwen wholeheartedly. Nerves were natural.

Cassathra found herself studying the elegant slope of Ronwen’s neck and the woody shine of her hair and imagined running her fingers through that tidy hair, pressing her lips to that flawless neck and ruining both.

She wanted this.

Ronwen turned back round to face her, leaning against the chest of drawers and holding a half-rolled cigarillo up to her lips. She dragged the tip of her tongue along the edge of the reed, watching Cassathra all the while, and then sealed it up into a tight little cylinder. Cassathra swallowed.

“I like to add green tea to mine,” she said off-handedly as she came to join her on the bed. “Since this is your first time, I’ve added a little more.”

She sat close, her thigh a line of pure heat along Cassathra’s own. When she placed the joint between her lips and readied a flint and steel, Cassathra leaned forward and lowered her hand. “Let me,” she said, lighting a tiny flame spell with one finger. Ronwen raised an eyebrow at her, but her lips curled into a smirk around the joint, and she leaned forwards into the flame spell until it was lit. Cassathra let the spell dissipate.

“Neat trick,” said Ronwen, sinking back against the wall and releasing a long sigh of smoke. “Could you open the window a crack?”

Cassathra—who was closer—nodded and scrambled to do so, shuffling down to the end of the bed and propping the window open to the first hole of the stay. The draft it brought in was bitterly cold, so she returned quickly to Ronwen’s side, eager to soak up the warmth of another body.

“So,” said Ronwen, exhaling again and then laying a hand on Cassathra’s upper thigh; with her other hand, she held out the joint. “You still want to try?”

Cassathra nodded, stomach fluttering. Carefully she took the joint from Ronwen’s fingers, examining it for a few moments, watching the tendrils of smoke curl away from the end. Then she held it up to her lips and breathed in deeply.

A wave of relief surged over her at the fact she’d managed to avoid coughing, but she didn’t get to bask in it for long before Ronwen started laughing.

“Did I do it wrong?” she asked. It came out far more pathetically than she’d anticipated.

“Sort of,” said Ronwen. “I don’t think you actually inhaled anything. You just sucked it all into your mouth and then blew it straight out.”

Cassathra pouted, embarrassment and disappointment flooding her cheeks. “Come on,” Ronwen squeezed her thigh, “try again. Do it in two parts—suck it into your mouth first, then inhale from your nose.”  

Reluctantly Cassathra obeyed, unable to meet Ronwen’s gaze. She did as instructed, inhaling consciously with the joint between her lips, and she could tell she’d done it right this time because she felt it, an odd, dry sensation in her windpipe and then in her lungs, and then—

Then she was coughing.

Ronwen took the joint from her with a gentle laugh. “There you go. Don’t worry about the coughing, that’s normal.”

Cassathra wheezed, embarrassed. “Thanks,” she rasped, eyes widening as more smoke escaped her lips and nose. She hadn’t expected there to be so much.

“Everything good?”

“I feel like a dragon,” she murmured, realizing with disappointment that the smoke now seemed to have stopped.

Ronwen laughed again. “Maybe you’re the Dragonborn.”

Cassathra snorted but said nothing. She’d left out Helgen and Jórunn from their conversations before, and she didn’t much feel like getting into it now.

“There is something else we can try,” said Ronwen, taking another drag.

“What is it?” asked Cassathra, but instead of replying, Ronwen slid her hand round the back of her neck and pressed their lips together. Cassathra gasped sharply in surprise, and in doing so inhaled the smoke from Ronwen’s exhale. A soft moan escaped her, her eyelids fluttering shut as whatever that was transformed into a kiss.

Just as she was relaxing into it, Ronwen withdrew, nipping playfully at her bottom lip before pulling away. Cassathra exhaled raggedly. Ronwen laughed.

“Let’s finish this first,” she said, tapping some of the ash away into a little clay bowl and then handing the joint—now half-gone—to Cassathra. She nodded dumbly and took it.

They smoked the rest of it in near silence. Cassathra turned to her once the joint was gone.

“How long does it normally take to get, uh…”

“High?” asked Ronwen.

She nodded.

“Come here,” Ronwen murmured with a smile, taking Cassathra’s chin in one hand and bringing their faces close together. Her eyes flicked back and forth between each of Cassathra’s own, then she laughed and patted her cheek. “That’ll do.”

She found herself grinning. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” said Ronwen, kissing her cheek, and then the corner of her smile, and then her lips— “…that you’re relaxed.”

Cassathra thought about it, trying to locate and articulate whatever it was she was feeling. Was this it? Had she gotten stoned without realizing? She felt light and heavy at the same time, a buzz in her head more intense—and more pleasant—than any wine. Her limbs felt like melted butter. Yes, she thought as the hand on her inner thigh slid up to her hip, then her ass, tugging gently until she was somehow sitting in Ronwen’s lap, yes, this must be it. How long had they been kissing? She’d lost herself in the heady slide of Ronwen’s lips against her own, in the intoxicating swipe of her tongue. It felt strange before, but Cassathra was beginning to see the appeal.

“Gods, you’re so fucking gorgeous,” Ronwen murmured, voice breathy and low, dangerously hot as she dragged a trail of open-mouthed kisses up Cassathra’s neck. Cassathra opened her mouth to reply but just gasped inaudibly, overwhelmed with sensation as Ronwen’s hands walked up her sides and then to her chest, fondling her through thick layers of tunic and undershirt and squeezing her breasts together.

She wasn’t sure if it felt good, or at least if it felt any different to being grabbed anywhere else on her body, but the excitement at being touched in such a way—at doing what she was doing at all—was thrilling all on its own. She felt dangerous, rebellious, interesting. She’d run away from home, she’d fought dragons and lived, she’d survived Saarthal, and now she was stoned and being touched up and squeezed by a pretty girl from Solitude. If only the Cassathra from a year ago could see her like this—she wanted everyone to know. Her old classmates from Ebonheart, her peers from Winterhold, Onmund, J’zargo, Brelyna…

An odd pang of guilt jolted through her at the thought of Brelyna, so reflexively Cassathra pushed it to one side. At some point Ronwen’s hand had trailed down her stomach to just below her navel—she hadn’t noticed, wasn’t feeling fully present—and then Ronwen was nibbling on her earlobe, her breath hot and heavy.

That same hand slid lower, making Cassathra still. Her fingers curled around Ronwen’s slim shoulders.

“Ah—”

She rocked into it instinctively, her grip tightening, muscles tensing. Cassathra had never been touched down there by anyone except herself, but even the simple pressure of Ronwen’s hand, muted by layers of fabric, was bordering on overwhelming. Her body wanted more, but her nerves from before suddenly returned tenfold, and she found that something like embarrassment was curdling in her gut; embarrassment at being seen in this way, and nerves at the prospect of having to do to Ronwen—beautiful, talented, experienced Ronwen—what Ronwen was currently doing to her. They barely knew each other, not really. They were never going to see each other again after tomorrow. And Cassathra had dragged her friends all the way to Solitude to get some book that wasn’t even here, and now she had left them without telling anybody to… to what? Smoke weed and get fucked?

Shame swept over her, crumpling her face. She felt childish and immature, acting on the same impulsive streak that had dragged Raydrin and Mathyas away from Blacklight. What would the others think? What would Brelyna think, returning from a miserable New Life with her family in Port Telvannis only to be welcomed back to Winterhold with tales of the jolly old time her friends had all had without her and of Cassathra falling into bed with the first pretty face she saw?

“Cassathra?”

The hand between her legs faltered, then came to rest in a respectable position on Cassathra’s waist. She said nothing, frozen, trembling in Ronwen’s lap, her mind racing in an attempt to work out what she wanted to do, let alone what she ought to say.

Slowly she pulled back and forced herself to meet Ronwen’s gaze.

“I…”

Ronwen just stared at her, waiting patiently for her to finish.

“I… I think I should go,” she admitted at last.

Ronwen’s face fell just slightly, but she seemed resigned—like Cassathra was confirming what she already knew.

“Yeah,” she said. “Might be for the best.”

“Oh Ronwen, I… I’m sorry.”

Ronwen shifted beneath her, gently pushing her off her lap. How many times had she checked in, giving Cassathra the opportunity to change her mind, and how many times had Cassathra foolishly insisted on continuing in some ridiculous display of stubbornness and bravado?

“I’m so sorry.”

“These things happen,” said Ronwen, rubbing at her temples and then running a hand through her hair. After sighing deeply, she finally met Cassathra’s gaze again. “Can you get back to your inn alright? Or do you want me to walk you?”

“I’ll be okay,” said Cassathra quickly, hating herself more with each word Ronwen said in that subdued tone. She scrambled to her feet, suddenly desperate to put some distance between them, but her limbs felt like lead, like they were a split-second too slow in obeying her instructions. She straightened her rumpled clothes with some difficulty. “Thank you. Er… I’m really sorry.”

Ronwen forced a smile. “It’s fine. Promise. Just get home safe, all right?”

She sounded tired—Cassathra could tell she wanted her to leave. And she wanted to get out of there, back into the safety of familiar territory, so she left. Her eyes were watering as Ronwen shut the door behind her.

What a miserable start to the new year.

 

---

 

She found J’zargo on his own in the antechamber, cross-legged on the floor with his back to the wall and some odd, long-necked string instrument propped up against his shoulder. He glanced at her as she approached, ears twitching.

“Hello, Cassathra.”

“Hey,” she said. The festivities in the hall behind them were still going strong, but the atmosphere in here was noticeably more mellow than it had been before. She gestured to the instrument. “Is that the, uh…”

“The esraj?” offered J’zargo, lifting his bow and playing a quick little ditty. “Indeed.”

She sank down beside him, hanging her head back against the wall. “Could you play me something?”

“No, ah…” he started fiddling with a tuning knob, “J’zargo is out of practice.”

Cassathra frowned; it wasn’t like him to turn down an opportunity to show off. But before she could say anything, he sniffed her suddenly and then pulled away with a wrinkled nose.

“Is that chokeweed?”

“No,” said Cassathra.

“A word of advice; never lie to a Khajiit when it comes to matters of the nose.” He sniffed her again, and then angled her face towards him, peering into her eyes. “Ha. You appear to be stoned, my friend.”

“Am not,” Cassathra pouted, half-heartedly shoving him away. But J’zargo just laughed, then pushed some hair away from her neck.

“And oh, what is this?” he teased. “Been having some fun with the pretty half-elf, hm?”

“Stop it,” said Cassathra, self-consciously pulling her hair back over her neck. It was a relief that it was now long enough to do so.

“J’zargo would say he told you so, but that would be cruel. So how was it? Did she teach you how to sing? How to dance the horizontal jig? Did she practice her—”

“Stop it,” Cassathra snapped. “I mean it.”

J’zargo fell silent. She sighed, averting her gaze.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He was still for a long moment, but then shrugged, sinking back into his position against the wall. “Very well.”

“Do you, um,” Cassathra paused and fiddled with the lacing on her boots, “…do you know where Onmund is?”

“J’zargo believes our friend has found an alternative berth for the night,” he said, idly bowing out some quiet, half-baked melody. Cassathra frowned.

“Lilika?”

J’zargo snorted.

“No, of course not. Ah…” he stopped his bowing and waved a hand, “some Redguard with a fiddle.”

“Oh.”

In any other circumstances Cassathra might have laughed, but now it was just making her bitter.

“J’zargo?” she said quietly.

“Yes?”  

“Can… can we go?”

J’zargo looked at her properly, the esraj forgotten against his shoulder. Then something softened in his silvery-blue eyes. He cleared his throat and put the esraj to one side, getting to his feet.

“Of course,” he said, extending one hand. Cassathra took it and let him pull her up.  

“Should we return the, um…” she gestured vaguely to the abandoned instrument, but J’zargo just stared at it for a moment and waved her off.

“J’zargo is sure it will find its way back to the dusty attic someone found it in.”

She decided to take his word for it.

They were silent on their snowy walk back through the streets of Solitude, but the city was as alive as if it were the middle of the day. Slowly the fog in Cassathra’s mind began to clear, bringing into sharp focus the full extent of her exhaustion.

The temple bell struck one—the second hour of the year 202.

“Are you okay?” it occurred to her to ask as they turned a corner onto the street of their inn. J’zargo hummed.

“Of course,” he said. “What makes you ask?”

“I don’t know,” said Cassathra. “I’m just realizing that you seemed kind of down when I found you earlier. It’s not like you to be on your own.”

“J’zargo appreciates your concern,” he said. “But he is fine.”

His tone was clipped. Cassathra let it drop.

They were quick in getting ready for bed. Cassathra splashed her face with cold water and then stared at her reflection reluctantly, surveying the damage. She tugged aside the curtain of her white, curly hair—now long enough to touch her shoulders—to reveal a purple bruise on her neck, marring the otherwise grey skin. Her memory of the bruise’s origin came back to her in a quick, visceral flash, and she let the hair fall back into place with a sigh, feeling vaguely disgusted with herself.

“I bet you’re happy Onmund’s not here,” she said from her bedroll as J’zargo returned from the latrines. He placed his chamberstick on the bedside table and then slid under the covers of the bed he and Onmund were meant to be sharing. “Now you get the whole bed to yourself.”

“Yes,” he said flatly, blowing out the candle and plunging them into darkness. “How delightful for J’zargo.”

Cassathra frowned, propping herself up onto her elbows.

“J’zargo,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper now that they were in the dark, “are you sure you’re alright?”

He laughed bitterly. “Yes. Why wouldn’t he be?”

“You have the subtlety of a sulking child,” she scoffed, wriggling out of her bedroll and then circling round to join him on the bed. “Come on,” she poked his shoulder, “talk to me.”

“There is nothing to talk about.”

“Liar,” she murmured.

J’zargo sighed. “It is stupid,” he admitted into the darkness. “Trifling. Not for you to worry about.”

“What if I want to worry about it?” she asked. “Come on. You’re my friend. I want to help.”

“J’zargo does not need your help.”

“Tough.”

He muttered something in Ta’agra, and though it sounded vaguely like a curse, Cassathra was not deterred. She muffled a yawn into the back of her hand and slid closer to him. He could take as long as he needed. She would wait.

“J’zargo is a brilliant mage,” he eventually began, speaking slowly, and Cassathra had to bite back her laughter because only J’zargo could begin the process of opening up to somebody with a sentence like that. “He is also witty and charismatic and he knows that people here find him impressive.”

Cassathra cleared her throat. “I can see why this was bringing you down,” she said. He thumped her through the duvet.

“You wanted J’zargo to talk, he is talking,” he hissed. “If you are going to make fun of him, feel free to return to your bedroll.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she laughed, holding up her hands. “Please, um. Continue.”

“Gzalzi,” he muttered. “As J’zargo was saying… yes. He has many qualities. But, ah… back in Elsweyr…”

He trailed off, sighing deeply.

“Back in his homeland… J’zargo was attractive, too.”

Cassathra released the breath she was holding. It all fell into place.

“Oh, J’zargo,” she said. “I—well, I know I’m not really the best person to ask, I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur of men, but I’m sure you’re very attractive—”

“You do not have to lie,” he cut her off with a hissing laugh. “J’zargo knows you men and mer think of us as animals, or at least, that we look like them. In Elsweyr, we do not discriminate. You say our ohmes look like you, and perhaps that is true. But they are still Khajiit. If J’zargo can see the beauty in an ohmes, and thus in a Bosmer or a Breton, then why can not a Bosmer or a Breton see the beauty in J’zargo?”

Cassathra was silent. Of all the things to have been bothering someone like J’zargo, insecurity was the absolute last thing she would have guessed. And her surprise had left her without a good response.

“It is fine,” J’zargo went on, filling her silence. “J’zargo knows he is worthy even if you jetwijijri do not see it. But it is frustrating to be in a land where J’zargo’s only prospective romantic partners are those who see him as a fetish.”

Oh.

“J’zargo, I… I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

It was all Cassathra could think to say. This wasn’t the sort of thing she could fix with some friendly advice—and it wasn’t her place to attempt to do so.

“You do not need to try and soothe me with platitudes,” said J’zargo. “But… J’zargo thanks you for listening.”

Cassathra inched towards him, tentatively laying a hand on the bare fur of his arm. When he didn’t flinch, she wrapped an arm around him, pulling him into a hug. He didn’t exactly reciprocate, but he didn’t try to get away, either. Cassathra squeezed his middle.

“Thank you for trusting me with that,” she murmured.

Hesitantly J’zargo laid a hand on the back of her head.

“J’zargo is sorry things did not go well with Ronwen.”

She ducked her face into his neck, unable to speak for fear that she’d cry. Neither of them said anything more. And Cassathra fell asleep like that, in the arms of her friend.

Notes:

normally i like to keep my character descriptions relatively sparing (especially when it comes to NPCs, i know most fans will already have a strong idea of how they like to picture them), but today i am going to make an exception. my onmund looks like sean astin in rudy (1993) except with sam gamgee's build if sam gamgee was over six feet tall, and it's important to me that you all know that :^)

big thank you to my beta readers for their help! and special thanks to haley for letting me borrow lilika <3

Chapter 32: A Cornered Rat

Pale Imperial Camp, Skyrim, 1st Morning Star 4E 202

Sanjir was welcomed into the new year by one of the worst hangovers he’d ever had in his life.

The goat-skin canvas of his tent, pulled taut up above him, was glowing warmly under the sun. That meant it was late; the latest he’d woken in a while. He closed his eyes against the harsh intrusion and groaned quietly, pressing the thumb and forefinger of one hand around the bridge of his nose and scrabbling beneath his cot for his waterskin with his other. His tongue felt leathery and he was uncomfortably aware of the taste of his own mouth. The rush of cool snow melt—if a little stale from sitting in his waterskin—was sweeter than any wine.

He dozed like that for what felt like a while, him and the nine other auxilia soldiers who shared his tent. The world beyond the canvas walls remained blissfully distant until, some indeterminate time later, the opening flap was tugged aside and a bitter draft pierced through the warmth, serving as a harsh reminder that they were camping just a few miles from Tamriel’s northernmost coast in the dead of winter.

“Is there an optio in here?”

The voice was muffled and fuzzy. Sanjir flexed his jaw to work some of the wool from his ears.

“I’m looking for the optio of the Third Centuria. Is he in here?”

Reluctantly Sanjir pushed himself up into a sitting position, holding up one hand in a half-hearted wave.

“Over here,” he muttered.

He was approached by a young legionnaire, who looked remarkably put together given the revelry of the previous evening. Her blonde hair was plaited tightly against her scalp, her eyes bright despite the austerity of her expression. She wasn’t an auxiliary, like him; her winter uniform was that of a standard legionary. Sanjir swung his legs over the side of his cot and blinked up at her in confusion—what was she doing in the auxilia half of camp?

“Good morning, optio,” she said, Nibenese accent clear and proud. “The auxiliary tribune has ordered me to tell you that your presence is required in the legion command tent.”

“The tribune?” Sanjir stared up at her in disbelief. “Why?”

“I wasn’t given a reason,” said the legionnaire. “I was told only that high command wants to see you.”

Sanjir set his jaw, glancing around the tent to his still-dozing cohabitants. “Now?” he asked flatly.

The legionnaire raised a sceptical brow. “Er, with all due respect, optio,” she said; “are you new here?”

He rolled his eyes and flapped her away. “Fine, fine, understood,” he muttered. “Let me get dressed.”

The legionnaire nodded. “I’ll wait outside.”

Sanjir snorted and shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll be all right without an escort.”

“You know how to find the legate’s tent?”

He paused from where he was in the middle of dragging his armour out from under his cot. Then he hazarded a glance in her direction.

“Point taken,” he conceded with a sigh. “I’ll… I’ll be quick.”

She nodded and left, leaving Sanjir to his own devices. He dressed as quickly as he could, but with the stabbing pain that lanced through his skull each time he made a sudden move, it took him a while. Skyrim’s auxiliary uniform was heavy and cumbersome, made up of several thick layers of wool beneath chainmail and cloak. Sanjir was grateful at least that the auxilia didn’t share the legion’s irrational fear of trousers.  

The encampment—which was home to the several thousand men who made up the Second Auxiliary Regiment of Haafingar and the first five cohorts of the Thirteenth Legion—lay sprawled across the remote ice fields of the northern Pale. As Sanjir and the legionnaire trudged across the snow, through endless rows of tents and past lowing, musty oxen, the camp roused itself in a slow, lethargic sort of way, the frozen air undercut by the dull hum of idle chatter and the wispy plumes of a few hundred campfires. Eventually they reached a larger and more ostentatious looking structure nestled in the heart of the First Cohort’s block. It was guarded at its entrance by two spearmen and the opening flaps had been rolled to the side. The interior was dark and shadowy, a stark contrast to the blinding white snow around its base.

“Do I just—?” Sanjir gestured aimlessly at the opening.

The legionnaire nodded. “Yes. Oh, but—um, remember to salute.”

Sanjir exhaled in a short, hard burst and watched it condense before him in a puff of white air. He missed the relaxed character of the Companions and their more flexible, democratic approach to authority; he’d been in the legion for weeks now, but still the act of saluting felt beyond ridiculous.

“Okay,” he nodded. “Thanks.”

The legionnaire bowed stiffly and took her leave. Sanjir braced himself and entered the tent.

Before his eyes could adjust to the lower light, he held his forearm up across his chest, letting his right fist thump lazily against the space beneath his left collarbone.  

“At ease, optio,” came a voice from the darkness, the voice of a man Sanjir did not recognize. “If you can call that a salute,” he added as a mutter.

Slowly Sanjir’s vision cleared to reveal a stern looking Nibenean with dark mutton chops and the red, off-the-shoulder cloak of a legate sitting at the head of a great war table. Presumably this was Tituleius, the Thirteenth Legion’s commanding officer. A short distance to his left sat Tribune Hella, the head of Sanjir’s auxiliary regiment. She met his gaze from across the tent and nodded. Tituleius gestured to one of the empty chairs. “Please, take a seat.”

Stiffly Sanjir obeyed, sinking into the taut leather of a fold-up curule chair.

“Your name is Sanjir, correct?” said Tituleius, barely glancing up from his sheaf of papers.

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t have a surname, optio?”

Sanjir considered it for a moment. There were several possible answers to that question: al-Rihad, the name relating to his hometown; Guell, the surname of his Colovian father. Maybe at-Aisha, in honour of his mother. None felt organic.

“We don’t tend to use surnames in Hammerfell,” he said instead.

Tituleius shook his head a little derisively and sighed. “I suppose that’s common enough among our auxiliary troops,” he said, looking up from his papers at last. “Very well. ‘Optio Sanjir’ it is. I trust you enjoyed our Old Life celebrations?”

Sanjir shrugged. “Well enough.”

“Good. You’ll be needing the morale. I suppose you’ll be wondering why I’ve brought you here, so I don’t intend to keep you. I’ve got an assignment better suited to the skills of our auxilia forces than to my troops and I’ve been told by your tribune here that you’re the one for the job.”

Tituleius extended a gloved hand across the table, holding out to Sanjir a scroll. The seal—a deep, bloody red, dull and waxy under the torchlight—bore the emblem of the Tenth Legion, a serpentine dragon entrapped in a jagged diamond and beneath that, a stark and lonely ‘X’. The Tenth Legion was historically based in Haafingar, which meant the orders were coming from Solitude. Swallowing, Sanjir took the scroll and lowered it awkwardly to his lap.

“You fought with the Companions before joining our ranks, correct?”

Sanjir nodded. It was the reason he’d been promoted directly to the rank of optio. “Yes. Ah, yes—that’s right.”

“You’re no soldier yet, but I’ll bet you’re a damn good fighter,” Tituleius went on. “You’ve experience working independently on an ad-hoc basis. And Hella here tells me you were recommended by an old colleague for your history taking on contracts requiring a more, ah, shall we say… artful approach.”

Sanjir fought against the urge to scowl. That would have been Leorn, the bastard.  

“To cut to the chase, optio—we’ve decided to make you an agent. Not many Redguards in the legion these days, so you’ll rouse the least suspicion.”

The legate’s tone was blasé, indifferent, but as the full implications of his words managed to pierce finally through the haze of Sanjir’s hangover, he felt the weight on them settling on his shoulders like a heavy snowfall, an icy chill sinking deep past the layers of insulation and into his flesh.

He wound his jaw tight and sat very still and let Tituleius continue.

“Your first assignment is to intercept a Stormcloak courier. They’ve a fairly reliable chain along the roads between Windhelm and Dawnstar. Identify a link, replace their orders with our own, then report back to us. Nice and simple.”

Sanjir glanced at Hella, who just stared back at him impassively. Simple? What fucking part of that was simple?

“Well?” Tituleius leant forward in his seat, leathers creaking. “You seem uncertain, optio.”

“This is an honour,” said Tribune Hella. “A great deal rides on your success. We would not have chosen you if we did not think you capable.”

Sanjir didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure how to begin protesting or even questioning the orders. If this were Kodlak, or one of the Circle, he could have started a dialogue. But he wasn’t in the Companions anymore. 

“Is that it?” he asked, straining to keep his voice level. “I mean—that’s all the guidance I get?”

“The briefing goes into more detail regarding the specific objectives of your mission, in addition to all the relevant intelligence we’ve acquired so far,” Tituleius nodded to the scroll in his lap. “I expect you to familiarise yourself with it intimately before your deployment tomorrow daybreak.”

Anger bubbled up in Sanjir’s throat, hot and sticky, but he held it there, jaw clamped shut around the urge to argue.

He’d signed up for this. He’d signed up for unquestioning deference to his superiors. He thought of Whiterun burning and tried to rekindle the rage that he’d felt, that compulsion to do something, but Whiterun was feeling terribly remote all of a sudden. What would his mother say? Her son, risking life and limb for the Imperial Legion; and worse, fighting not on the battlefield but from the shadows? Sanjir had been too swept up to write to her, to inform her of his decision to enlist, but the thought of doing so now made his stomach churn around what felt like embarrassment.

“Any questions?”

He counted down from five.

“No, sir.”

“Good,” said Tituleius, attention already drifting back to his prior engagements. “You have the rest of the day to make the necessary preparations. Dismissed.”

Sanjir scrunched the scroll in his palm and got wordlessly to his feet.

He didn’t bother to salute.

 

---

 

Riften, Skyrim, 6th Morning Star

Riften smelled of three things: fish, birch sap, and smoke.

The arrival of the Dragonborn’s party was a day too late, for it was not a bustling trade hub which welcomed them; instead they found themselves standing in the ashes of a city half-collapsing into its own canals and still reeling from the aftershocks of an attack. The air was tangy with blood and ripe with chaos, the dusty cobbled streets haunted by wails of grief and the frantic hollering of search parties.

Larger than the keep, they were told.

Eyes black as obsidian. Scales of solid gold.

The dragon had not been killed, despite the city guards’ best efforts. It had satisfied its boredom and bloodlust and then fled, leaving in its wake a tragedy of inconceivable proportion.

“Let’s not linger,” said Delphine grimly as they stood there dumbfounded in the wreckage of a marketplace. “The sooner we find Esbern the sooner we can stop this from happening again.”

They set off in search of an intact inn, Etienne and Delphine taking the lead with Meeko at their heels. Jórunn and Raydrin fell a few paces behind.

“You couldn’t have known,” said Raydrin, quietly enough that only Jórunn could hear.

“Yeah,” she replied, though his words did little to alleviate the crushing sense of responsibility. Her gut was twisting like it had twisted after the Thalmor embassy; after Malborn, after Farengar. She could have cut down each victim with her own sword and felt no guiltier for it. Yet even under the weight of such overwhelming remorse, some voice deep inside her—some voice that did not feel quite like her own—was saying: you could do this, too. If you wanted.

Just a few Words.

Lost in the contradictory mess of her thoughts, Jórunn said nothing at all.

Etienne led them to a district of the city which had emerged from the attack unscathed and they checked into the first inn willing to take them. Most were overflowing with those whose homes had been destroyed; the innkeeper seemed relieved that they, at least, were prepared to pay.

“Etienne,” said Delphine once they were safely inside their room; “what are the chances the Ratway made it out of this intact?”

Etienne mulled it over for a moment. A baby was wailing somewhere below them, its piercing cries dulled by wood. “I’d say reasonably high,” came his answer. “The Ratway is older than most of the buildings in this city—it survived the Great Fire of ’29, so…”

“Good,” Delphine cut him off. “We’ll take an hour or so to rest up and then head to this… Ragged Tavern of yours.”

“Ragged Flagon,” said Etienne.

“Ragged whatever,” said Delphine. “Let’s be frank here, it’s a den of thieves.”

Etienne didn’t reply, and in the terse silence which followed, Delphine cleared her throat. “Well,” she started, moving brusquely on; “I’ll go and find us something to eat.”

Jórunn heard the door latching into place behind her and could only sigh, allowing herself to flop finally onto a proper bed. The mattress was scratchy and uneven, just a pile of loose straw stuffed under a sheet. Jórunn lay her cheek on the pillow and closed her eyes, only for something wet and unpleasant-smelling to slide across her nose a few moments later. She pushed Meeko’s muzzle away from her face with a vaguely disgusted grunt, then scratched affectionately behind his ears once he submitted to her puppeteering.

“She’s just stressed,” she heard Raydrin say to Etienne from across the room. “I imagine she’s worried about Esbern.”

“She’s not the only one with old friends to worry about,” Etienne replied, though his tone wasn’t bitter; at least not in a way that felt like the bitterness was directed at Raydrin. He wasn’t a resentful person, which Jórunn had learned over the weeks they’d been travelling together. Despite his less than savoury profession, he seemed a decent and honourable man at his core; eager to repay what he considered to be his debt, gentle in nature and conflict-averse. He and Raydrin were alike in that way.

Jórunn would be sad to see him go.

 

---

 

They descended into the city’s underbelly, the labyrinthine network of tunnels which had once served as the drainage system of a much grander metropolis. Parts of the Ratway were still in use, but with Etienne as their guide they managed to steer clear of any active sewers. The thief seemed nervous, Raydrin noticed, his gangly form traipsing through the darkness a few feet ahead of them, gaunt face illuminated from one side by the flickering light of his torch—more so than he had been for a week or two. He was excessively checking over his shoulder, startled easily at unexpected noises, and would occasionally take them the wrong way, stuttering incoherently over his apologies whenever he did. Down there, in those tight, dank tunnels, with Etienne’s restless mutterings and the bloated silences of Delphine and Jórunn, the claustrophobia was quick to press in.

At last they came to a stop before a short tunnel, sloping downwards. At the tunnel’s base there lay a door. Etienne inhaled sharply.

“This is it,” he said.

“Are you all right?” asked Raydrin. Etienne glanced at him over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Been a while, but… it’ll feel good to be back.”

Raydrin didn’t reply for a long moment, finding himself unable to imagine what it would feel like in the other man’s shoes. It wasn’t as if he’d ever been through anything even close to Etienne’s experiences in the dungeons of the Thalmor Embassy, but he tried to picture himself returning to Blacklight, and, well… he couldn’t imagine it feeling good.

“They’ll be glad to have you,” he said.

Etienne huffed humourlessly. “Let’s hope so.”

He trudged down the slope and knocked three times, careful and slow.

After a few seconds, the door was opened a crack; it was too dark for Raydrin to see who sat on the other side.

“Password?”

“Baron,” said Etienne under his breath.

“That was months ago,” said the voice. “Get lost, kid.”

He moved to shut the door, but Etienne jammed his foot in the frame before he could.

“Dirge, it’s me,” he said. “It’s Etienne.”

The door was pulled open. A great hulk of a man, his features heavy and his eyes drawn into a squint, stared down at them.

“You’ve a lot of nerve coming back here,” he grunted. “The hell you doing, tryin’ to get in this way?”

Etienne gestured behind him. “I’ve got non-guild members with me.”

“Forget it,” said Dirge. “The cheek of you, showin’ face after four months, bunch’a strangers in tow.”

“I’ve a good explanation,” said Etienne. “Please, Dirge, just let me talk to someone—Brynjolf, Mercer, anyone. I promise I—” he sighed, trailing off. “Just give me a chance to explain myself.”

Dirge frowned.

“Please, Dirge?”

“Ugh. Don’t look so sad and pathetic,” said Dirge, though he stepped to one side. “Fine. I’m taking you straight to Bryn.” Then he looked up and glared at the rest of them. “Only you.”

“Now, hang on a minute—” started Delphine, but Etienne cut her off.

“They’re trustworthy, Dirge. Broke me out of prison.” He chuckled nervously and held up one hand, palm facing outward. “Swear on a thief’s honour.”

Dirge deliberated it for a long moment, that intense stare alternating between them. It drifted down to the sword at Raydrin’s hip and then back up to his face.

“Hand over your weapons,” he said.

“Aw, come on, Dirge—”

“Hand over your weapons or fuck off.”

“It’s alright, Etienne,” said Raydrin, loosening his scabbard and holding it out for Dirge to take. Delphine and Jórunn did the same. One by one they stepped through the doorway, allowing Dirge to shake them down.

“Hands off the coin purse,” said Delphine as his large hands patted over her hips.

“Heh,” said Dirge, making a show of loosening the purse and slowly withdrawing a single Septim. “A little doorman’s fee seems fair, doesn’t it?”

Delphine sneered at him, but said nothing. Dirge pocketed the coin, tied up her purse and moved on.

They had emerged into a dome-shaped chamber, a cavernous cistern illuminated from above by a single shaft of sunlight. The chamber was dominated by a great reservoir of rainwater, hugged along its outer edge by a stone walkway. A wooden platform was suspended over the reservoir, and beyond that, on the far side of the chamber, the cistern had been converted into what looked like some ramshackle imitation of a tavern. Like any tavern on a Tirdas afternoon, it was quiet.

Once satisfied that they were unarmed, Dirge led them along the walkway towards the tavern, a tucked away pocket of orange in the otherwise dark, algae-coloured cistern. The bar fell quiet as they approached. When Etienne stepped forward into the torchlight, the several suspicious gazes morphed almost imperceptibly into expressions of surprise. For a few long moments, all were silent.

“Well I’ll be damned,” said a voice from the bar, blunt and solid. It belonged to an equally blunt, solid-looking man, bald as a thumb, his skin a sallow sort of tan to match the dull brown of his leathers. “Etienne Rarnis. Returned from the fucking grave.”

Etienne had his back to Raydrin, but the tension about him was palpable.

“Hey, Delvin,” he said, chuckling nervously. “It’s been a while.”

“And where in Shor’s name do you think you’ve been the last four months?” snapped a woman, willowy and lean with ice-blonde hair and a sour face. Raydrin stepped forwards, ready to come to Etienne’s defence, but Etienne stopped him with an arm across the chest. “You’ve a lot of nerve, showing your face here after that botched job in Whiterun.”

“Yeah, I get it,” said Etienne with a sigh. “Looks bad. It’s a long story.”

The guild was silent. Etienne turned to the man who’d spoken before—Delvin.

“Is Brynjolf around?” he asked.

“Should be lurking around here somewhere,” said Delvin. Then he nudged his head forwards. “What’s the deal with these friends of yours?”

“These friends of mine broke me out of a Thalmor torture dungeon,” Etienne bluntly replied. “They’re here because they need our help.”

Eyes widened.

The confrontational atmosphere suddenly dissipated, deflating into something else. A few awkward glances were exchanged.

Then Delvin cleared his throat.

“Well then, Vekel,” he said, softening his tone a little. “Sounds like our boy here could do with a drink.”

The barman nodded in solemn agreement and began lining up the tankards.

They were sat at a table of their own and offered drinks of cheap ale, Etienne’s guildmates gradually crowding around them as Etienne recounted his story. It was a tale Raydrin had heard before, several times now, but where it had once been difficult to get out, Etienne now told it with a certain degree of detachment, his voice measured and his eyes sort of vacant. Raydrin noticed Delphine had her good hand latched over her coin purse for the entire duration of the conversation, her gaze darting surreptitiously around the table. Jórunn sat back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest, bored and oblivious to the occasional curious look thrown in her direction.

“I think this old man of yours could be here,” said a raven-haired Nord by the name of Sapphire, tapping the rather abstract-looking map of the Ratway that the Guild—eager to help—had collaboratively thrown together. “He does have a tendency to move around, and I’ll admit it was a while ago that I was last passing through the Warrens, but… it’s your best bet.”

Delphine leaned forwards over the table, dipping the pen into the inkwell and scribbling an X by Sapphire’s finger.

“Excellent,” she said once she was done, sinking back into her chair. She stared at the map for a few moments, eyes raking over the mess of interlinking passages, and then nodded. “Yes. Excellent. This is invaluable, truly.”

Delvin clapped a hand to her good shoulder, making her grunt.

“It’s the least we can do for breakin’ one of our lads out,” he said. “Sick bastards. Enemy of our enemy an’ all that. And after the fuckin’ hellfire we saw yesterday, well… if there’s anythin’ at all we can do to help the young Dragonborn ‘ere, just you name it.”

He emphasised his last four words by jamming the pad of his finger against the table. Delphine shifted a little awkwardly and cleared her throat.

“Yes, well,” she said. “Let’s not waste any more time. Raydrin, you couldn’t roll that up for me, could you?”

“Sure,” he said, reaching for the map. He blew over the ‘X’ to make sure the ink was dry and then rolled the parchment up into a tube.

Delphine scraped her chair back and got to her feet, inclining her head towards Raydrin to indicate that he and Jórunn ought to do the same. “Come on. Time to move out.”

He gave Jórunn’s shoulder two taps and allowed her to take his arm, pulling her up and out of her seat. Delphine nodded in turn at each of the gathered thieves.

“Thank you again for all your help,” she said stiffly.

Delvin bowed his head, placing a hand over his heart.

“Thieves’ honour,” he said with a crooked grin.

Raydrin felt a hand grasp around his spare forearm and looked down to find Etienne gazing up at him.

“Do you need me to come with you?” he asked quietly.

Raydrin glanced over at Delphine. “We’ll be alright just the three of us, I think,” he said. “You should stay here. Catch up some.”

Relief flooded Etienne’s features. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ll, ah… you’ll say goodbye before you go?”

“Of course.” Raydrin made a face like it went without saying. “You know where we’re staying. Come have a few drinks with us tonight in the inn.”

Etienne smiled. He took Raydrin’s hand and gripped it firmly, nodding. “I’ll see you there.”

Raydrin clapped him round the shoulder and smiled back. “See you there.”

 

---

 

They left the Ragged Flagon behind them, venturing once more into the Ratway’s depths. Raydrin took the lead, Jórunn’s hands draped over his shoulders since the tunnels were too narrow to walk two-abreast. Delphine took the rear. The darkness pressed against them, musty and foul-smelling, audible in the echo of every distant, invisible drip.

The map proved reliable and Raydrin found comfort in the predictability of their journey. Though the improvised scale left something to be desired, where the map went right, the tunnels followed. Where the map opened up into a larger chamber of some sort, an atrium most likely built to join up several disconnected passageways, the tunnels did too. There, on the paper, underlined in Sapphire’s spiky handwriting: WARRENS.

It was lighter in here. And smoky. Scattered fires littered each of the chamber’s various walkways and ledges. The air was rancid and sickly, like illness and raw sewage and the unmistakable stink of skooma. Raydrin shuddered a little. Blank, haggard faces peered at them from the firelight, toothless and yellow-eyed. This was the face of skooma addiction in Morrowind; the too-far gone, the hopeless, the debased and ignominious dredges of society. Sadness sat heavy in the pit of Raydrin’s gut. It was all right for him. These people had been abandoned—no, discarded—like literal waste. The Ratway was the only place left for them to turn.

“Up here, I think,” muttered Delphine, sliding past them towards a stone flight of stairs. Raydrin murmured to Jórunn that it was alright for her to take his arm and they followed.

“Inkpot. Stone. Bucket. Book. Knife.”

A harried, frail-looking woman, leaning her face against a rusted iron grate, tracked them through the bars as they walked past. Her eyes were wild.

“Inkpot. Stone. Bucket. Book. Knife.”

The words were breathy and low, whispered quickly and clandestinely like a child telling secrets in a schoolyard. Raydrin dragged his eyes away from her rabbit like-gaze and tried to ignore the prickling of his back as he continued onwards, that ritualistic chant following him with increasing desperation like a plea she couldn’t articulate.

They passed another anteroom. These had probably been storage cells, once. Something was breathing, grunting in the darkness, low and heavy like a wild animal. Raydrin held his torch up, unthinkingly trying to satisfy his curiosity, but the flash of pale skin and a half-frightened moan had him quickly retracting the light.

“Gods,” he muttered once they had passed out of earshot.

Jórunn squeezed his arm. “You all right?”

“Yes,” was his lame reply.

They climbed another flight of steps and slowed to a stop in front of a heavily armoured door. It was blatantly out of place; where everything else in the Warrens seemed to have washed up here by accident, this door looked deliberate and purposeful. Four separate locks had been crudely installed along its side.

“Give me the map,” said Delphine. Raydrin obeyed, tugging his arm free from Jórunn’s grip and holding up his torch so Delphine could see it more clearly. She investigated it for a few moments, eyes lingering on the X, and then handed it back to him with a look of grim determination. Raydrin stepped away. Delphine held up her good arm and rapped her knuckles against the door, three sharp knocks.

There came some muffled noises from the other side.

“Go away,” someone snapped.

Delphine tensed up.

She pressed herself against the door, splaying the fingers of her good hand over the metal. A ragged breath escaped her lips.

“Esbern?” she called, her voice gentle but strained in a way Raydrin had never heard before. “Esbern, it’s me. It’s Delphine. We… we’ve come to get you out of here.”

The voice on the other side was silent for a long moment.

“I don’t know any Delphines,” it said at last, unconvincingly. It was one of those heavy, round sorts of voices, though breathy with age and disuse.

Delphine laughed to herself sadly. “Oh, you silly old thing,” she murmured. “Do you remember the thirtieth of Frostfall, Esbern?”

Those shuffling sounds came again. Then footsteps, getting louder, and then a slot in the door was pushed to one side, revealing a heavy-set, bushy white brow and a sunken pair of eyes, lined with age and milky.

Delphine stepped back. The eyes darted back and forth between Raydrin and Jórunn before landing on the much shorter Breton standing before them.

“Delphine,” said Esbern, all suspicion in his voice melting away into warmth and relief. “Oh, I— it’s you. You look so…”

“Old?” said Delphine with a wry smile. “Yes, well, I’m not getting any younger standing out here. Why don’t you let us in, old friend?”

Esbern’s gaze drifted back up to Raydrin and Jórunn, brows furrowing suspiciously. “Who are these people?”

Delphine lay a hand on Jórunn’s shoulder, making her flinch slightly at the unexpected contact. “This girl is the Dragonborn, Esbern.”

Jórunn pressed her lips together.

“I’ve seen it. She’s real.”

Esbern’s eyes widened through the slot. He stared at Jórunn in disbelief for a long while, then cleared his throat and stepped back from the door.

“You’d better come in,” he muttered, pushing the slot shut and beginning to fiddle around with each of the locks. It took him a minute or so to get through them all. “Sorry,” he was muttering, nervous energy tangible even through the door, “this’ll just take a moment… ah, this one always sticks… there we go. Just—one—more… aha!”

The door was finally open. Esbern stood there in all his glory, his tall frame—clearly, at one point in time, strong and battle-hardened—now frail and hunched. His skin was white as snow; it hadn’t seen sunlight in a long, long while.

“Come, come!” he said, standing to one side. “Hurry now!”

They shuffled past him, allowing him to close—and painstakingly lock—the door behind them. It gave Raydrin a few moments to absorb their surroundings. Gone was the squalor and filth of the Warrens; in this tiny room, Esbern had done what he could to carve out a home for himself. It was furnished with a bed, a kitchen table, a pantry and a cooking stove, a writing desk and a bookshelf overflowing with titles. There must have been some kind of ventilation, for it was not smoky; instead the room smelled of parchment, ink, and dried herbs.

“There we go,” he announced once he was done. He turned round to face them, eyes fixed on Delphine and Delphine alone. “Oh, my girl; let me look at you.”

He took her face in his gnarled hands, peering down at her in amazement.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, his voice crackling.

“And I you,” said Delphine, eyes wet with unshed tears. “Oh Esbern, how have you lived down here all these years?”

“I did what I had to,” he said. “I had to—” he paused, swallowing thickly and shaking his head. “My work, it—I had to—”

He gestured feebly to his bookshelf and writing desk. “The archives,” he said. “I thought I was the only one left. I had to—write down. What I could remember. So that it… so that it wouldn’t be lost.”

Each word sounded like a struggle; this was probably the most he’d spoken in years.

Delphine laughed sadly. “I thought you’d given up.”

“I have now,” Esbern confirmed. “It’s hopeless, all of it. What good are records when there’ll be no-one around to read them?”

“It’s not hopeless,” Delphine shook her head. “It’s not. This girl—oh, Esbern, you have to see it. We have something to fight for again.”

“Don’t you understand?” he said hoarsely. “The world is ending, Delphine. Alduin… the World-Eater… it’s here. Our time on this plane is running out.”

Raydrin glanced at Jórunn, watching the colour steadily drain from her face.

“World-Eater… Esbern, what are you talking about?”

He closed his eyes, unable to look at her.

“The dragon from Helgen,” said Jórunn, cutting in before he could formulate a reply. Both Delphine and Esbern looked up in surprise. “Alduin. He—it…” Jórunn shook her head. “Alduin was the dragon from Helgen. Bringing back the others.”

“Yes!” cried Esbern, striding towards her in two long paces. “Yes! Exactly! Akatosh’s firstborn! The dragon from the dawn of time! Returned, to consume what is his! To bring closed the circle!”

“Esbern, you’re making no sense,” said Delphine gently, coming up behind him to lay a hand on his back. “You’re saying this… Alduin is the cause of all this?”

“Oh, it’s too late,” Esbern moaned. “Too complicated. He’s not the cause, he— he’s the end. The moment we’ve been hurtling towards from our ancestors’ first breaths.”

“But the Dragonborn is returned,” said Delphine, desperation creeping into her tone. “That has to be for a reason, it can’t—”

“Yes,” Esbern cut her off, seizing Jórunn by the shoulders with wild eyes. Jórunn’s lips parted in an inaudible, fearful gasp and Raydrin instinctively moved towards her, ready to pull Esbern off. “Yes. The Dragonborn is returned. There may be hope for us yet.”

He let Jórunn go, turning to Delphine with a snap of his head. Raydrin wondered for the first time whether all those years down here had affected Esbern more than it initially seemed. “There’s no time to lose. Are we safe? How did you find me?”

“We’re not in any immediate danger,” said Delphine. “But we should get out of here as soon as we can. The Thalmor are closing in on you, Esbern. We’ll be safer on the road.”

Esbern turned then to Raydrin, staring at him like he was just noticing him for the first time. “Who is he?”

“Oh, uh…” Raydrin chuckled nervously. “I’m just a spare pair of hands.”

“The Dragonborn—Jórunn—is blind, Esbern,” said Delphine. “Raydrin here is her guide and companion.”

“Sky Haven Temple,” said Esbern to himself, already several steps ahead. “We have to find it.”

“Sky Haven Temple?” repeated Delphine. “Esbern, it's been lost for centuries. What are you saying?”

“I've found it, Delphine," Esbern muttered. “Archival scraps… how fortunate that it should survive. Yes, it exists. The Reach. Atop the Karthspire. Yes. Sky Haven Temple. That is where we must go.”

“Why there?” asked Delphine. “What’s so special about it?”

He turned to her. “Alduin’s Wall. It is in the wall that we shall find our answers.”

Delphine stared at him. “You mean this... wall, will tell us how to defeat the dragons?”

“Pah,” Esbern flapped a dismissive hand. “The dragons are the least of our worries. No. Alduin’s Wall will tell us how to save the Mundus from being swallowed whole.”

He pointed at Jórunn with a knobbed, trembling finger, eyes still fixed on Delphine’s face. “It will tell her how to defeat the World-Eater.”

From the look of Jórunn’s expression, she didn’t need to see Esbern to know that he was talking about her. Raydrin gently slid a hand over her shoulder, coming to stand at her side. She shuddered.

“Esbern,” said Delphine, speaking slowly and clearly like she was addressing a child. “Esbern, I need you to be honest with me here. You’re absolutely sure this place exists?”

“I see it plain as day,” he said. “The fortress in the clouds… oh, Delphine.” He pressed his face into his hands. “I know, I– I– I must sound mad. But please…”

Delphine approached him carefully, taking one of his wrists in her good hand and lowering it from his face.

“Please… you must believe me.”

“I do,” she said gently. “I do. If you think this… if you think Alduin's Wall will help us fix this. Then that is where we shall go. All right?”

“Yes,” said Esbern, managing a few trembling nods of his head. Slowly he met her gaze. “Yes. Yes, I—”

He glanced over Delphine’s shoulder to Raydrin and then to Jórunn. “Oh, I… I’m sorry. I shall—I shall start to pack. Yes. At once. No time to lose. I have to gather a few things—”

“Maybe we should stay here for the night, Esbern,” said Delphine. “Just one more night.”

She met Raydrin’s gaze as Esbern dissolved into mutterings. “You two go on up back to the inn,” she said softly, inclining her head. “We’ll meet you by the stables at dawn.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t want to overwhelm him,” said Delphine, gazing up at Esbern with a look of fondness and pity. The image reminded Raydrin of that novel he and Jórunn had read together up in High Hrothgar; the dutiful daughter tending to her addled, elderly father. “And it’s dangerous, taking him up into the city. He’ll be safer down here.”

Raydrin nodded. “Alright,” he said, nudging Jórunn’s arm with his elbow. “We’ll, ah… we'll see you at dawn, then.”

“Stay safe,” said Delphine, moving to undo each of the locks in Esbern’s fortified door. “We may be in Stormcloak territory, but… the Thalmor know he’s in Riften. So keep your eyes peeled. If they're here, they won't be obvious.”

“Yes,” said Raydrin, hovering in the open doorway, “I will. Thanks, Delphine.”

Jórunn said nothing.

Delphine smiled at them thinly and shut the door.

 

---

 

For the first time in weeks, it was just Raydrin and Jórunn.

When the Warrens were behind them, Jórunn faltered and slowed down, her hands slipping from his shoulders.

“Jórunn?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I need a moment, to, um…”

He turned to face her; it was just the two of them, their circle of torchlight, and the impenetrable darkness beyond. Jórunn was covering her forehead with one hand.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, though she shook her head. “That was just—”

She choked out a self-deprecating laugh and pulled a face like she thought she was being ridiculous.

“It was a lot.”

“Oh Jórunn,” Raydrin murmured, holding his torch out a careful distance away and then encircling her with his free arm, “hey, come here.”

Jórunn wrapped her arms around him with ease and let her head find its place against his shoulder.

“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted quietly.

He shook his head. “Me neither.”

He hadn’t given much thought to Esbern’s doomsaying since they’d left. It would have been easy to dismiss the old man’s ravings as the delusions of a mind addled by years of solitude and isolation, but Esbern seemed lucid enough. And he was the dragonlore expert, the Archivist. Was that not the reason they’d sought him out? The reason the Thalmor were so desperate to find him in the first place?

If there was any truth at all to his premonitions, they were dealing with the end of the world, in the most literal sense of the phrase. Tamriel had gone through its fair share of crises, but this felt like more than just the scheming of a megalomaniac Daedric Prince or a power-hungry empire; Esbern seemed to be speaking about the end of time itself. What did that even mean? How was a mortal, confined to the trappings of a temporal reality, supposed to even begin conceptualising something like that?

And to be in the centre of it all, like Jórunn was… Akatosh was cruel to burden a human with such things.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Raydrin said after a long while. “We just keep taking each day as it comes and cross bridges when we get to them. Yes?”

Jórunn nodded and sighed. “Yes.”

“You have a whole team of people here to help you,” he said. “Whatever this is, you’re not going to face it alone.”

She pulled back then, finding his neck and placing her hand there.

“Yes,” she said again, unfocused eyes lingering somewhere around his nose. Then she sniffled, nodded, and drew away. “Yes. Sorry. I’m fine. Ah… thanks, Raydrin.”

“Come on,” he said, turning back around so she could take hold of his shoulders. “We’ll feel better once we’re back in the inn. Bit of civilization to get us out of our heads.”

He heard a half-laugh from behind him and decided that was good enough. They pressed onwards.

It was true what people said, about return journeys always feeling shorter. Raydrin was still mostly reliant on their map, but the Ratway tunnels no longer felt quite so abyssal. They plodded along in silence, each content to keep to their own thoughts. Raydrin did his best not to think about anything at all. Left turn here, down the passageway; right turn there, up the stairs.

They were nearing the way out and passing through a larger and more open chamber when Jórunn’s hands were suddenly yanked backwards from Raydrin’s shoulders with an alarmed cry.

“Jórunn?!” he yelled, spinning around just in time to see a gloved hand clamp over her mouth and the panicked look in her eyes before she was dragged backwards into the shadows. “Jórunn!”

He drew his sword and charged after her only for two hands to grab his arms from behind. The jolt of a shock spell shot down his forearms, locking up his elbows and firing his every nerve. Raydrin cried out, sword and torch both clattering to the ground. The torch landed in a puddle and went out with an abrupt hiss. Raydrin’s spasming wrists were pressed uncomfortably to the small of his back. He slumped down against his assailant, letting his legs turn to jelly, forcing them to hold up his entire body weight.

“Jórunn!” he called again, squirming, writhing, desperately scraping his heels against the wet floor in search of purchase. Without his torch, it was pitch-black down there; though he tried in vain to search for shapes, colours, anything in the darkness, he found himself, in every meaningful sense, blind. “Jórunn!”

“Fuck,” swore a voice from somewhere ahead of him, cursing in Aldmeris. “Where did she go? She just fucking vanished!”

“Cast life detection,” spat his captor, their voice nasal and raspy like a Khajiit’s. It was strained with effort. “She can’t—hide—forever.”

Raydrin managed to get himself upright enough to drive his elbow back into their gut, winding them and freeing himself from their iron-like grip. Still he was helplessly unaware of his surroundings, his sword lost to the darkness. He swung out a fist, hoping blindly that it would collide with something useful, but his own head was knocked before it could land.

“Vehk,” he hissed, staggering to one side, pain flaring in his skull. His shoulder struck the wall and he cradled his bruised temple in one hand, dizzy and disoriented for the mere seconds he had before an elbow was hooked around his neck and his head was wrenched downwards.

“Get his feet!”

An invisible pair of hands took hold of his ankles. He tried to cry out Jórunn’s name only to find a cloth gag in his mouth. He was hoisted into the air, thrashing and kicking. As he kicked upwards and struck what felt like someone’s jaw, it hit him—he and Jórunn were wanted alive.

He had not a moment to dwell on the thought before a sudden FUS from the darkness had him and his attackers flying through the chamber and slamming against the tunnel walls. Pain blossomed in every joint, in every slab of muscle that had absorbed the impact. Raydrin groaned feebly and tried to prop himself up on an elbow, but his body fought obstinately against his attempts to move.

Orange seeped into the darkness. Raydrin blinked, lifting his head though it felt like a lead weight to tug the gag from his mouth and peer blearily at the emerging shapes and silhouettes. Something was wrong; he was watching a fight. Who… was that Jórunn?

No—a tall figure, clad in black, torch in one hand and sword in the other—they grabbed the Khajiit by the jaw and sliced their throat from behind, throwing their still-gurgling body to the ground in time to spin round and parry an overhead slash from one of the other agents. Raydrin watched in a dizzy confusion, desperately searching for a glimpse of Jórunn in the torchlight, but in the mere flashes of visibility he was afforded there was no sign of her.

The agent thrust forward a flame spell. Their opponent dodged with ease to one side and swung a cut at them, though it was parried and deflected. Back and forth they went, blades clashing noisily, but it was clear who had the upper hand; with a neat feint, the figure in black created for themselves a split-second opportunity to dive in with a disarm and the Thalmor agent’s sword went clattering to the ground. Their gut was run through a moment later.

The chamber fell silent. In the moment of stillness, Raydrin’s eyes were finally able to adjust. The bodies of the Thalmor agents, three of them in total, lay dead—or dying—on the floor. Their killer, face obscured by a mask and hood, stood in the midst of the carnage and took a moment to survey their surroundings, sword still drawn, dripping with blood, chest rising and falling with exertion. Behind them, Jórunn flickered into existence and folded over onto her knees, bringing a hand up to her mouth and heaving.

“Jórunn,” Raydrin croaked.

The figure spun round to face him. Their eyes flashed red beneath their hood. For a long moment they were motionless, making Raydrin’s skin prickle in fear and trepidation.

“Who are you?” he asked.

They sheathed their sword. Then, with a sudden sense of urgency, they pushed back their hood and tugged down their mask—

And everything collapsed into a single point.

“Mathyas?!”

Notes:

happy new year! i hope everyone had a lovely evening and isn't feeling too rough. i promise the posting date is a pure coincidence -- tragic to think that the last chapter was about (lore-friendly) NYE itself and i posted it several months ago 🙃 final year of law school is really eating into my elder scrolls fic writing time.

anyway, the good news is i'm nearly finished with the next chapter so there hopefully won't be as long of a wait :^)

big thank you to my betas diana and haley for their help! <3 and thank you all for reading

Chapter 33: A Chance Encounter

Notes:

i hope you like dialogue

He looked like a rat in a cage. Fearful, alert; still but ready to run at a moment’s notice. His red eyes were wide and disbelieving, darting over Raydrin’s form as if it hurt to gaze upon him directly.

“Raydrin,” he said. The name was rusty on his tongue. “I—”

He faltered, mouth open but silent.

Raydrin was reeling. Every time a word came close to his lips it was swallowed by some new emotion, his contradictory feelings—each overwhelming in their own right—collapsing over one another in their urge to be expressed. Relief, amazement, shock, anger, Vehk, he was fucking angry.

He scrambled to his feet, wincing as the pain cut momentarily through his dumbfounded stupor.

“Wait a second,” he hissed through gritted teeth, slipping thoughtlessly back into Dunmeris. He circled around the ghost of his cousin, avoiding that haunted gaze as he limped over the scattered corpses to where Jórunn was on her knees behind him. Mathyas said nothing.

“Jórunn,” said Raydrin, touching her shoulder. She startled and raised her head, moving to grasp his forearm.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, allowing him to pull her to her feet. He checked her over for injuries, pushing her hair back from her face and brushing the grime from the Ratway off of her shoulders and upper arms. She seemed unhurt. Raydrin took her arms in his hands.

“Are you alright?”

Jórunn nodded. “I’m fine,” she said. “Is that—”

“I need a moment, Jórunn. Just— can you give me one moment?”

She hesitated for a second. But then she pressed her lips together, nodding again.

Raydrin allowed himself finally to hazard a glance back in Mathyas’ direction, his heart clenching all over again to find that his cousin was still there, solid, tangible, alive. Mathyas had turned, watching the pair of them in confusion. Raydrin let his hands fall away from Jórunn's arms and confronted the visage of his cousin in full.

“I—I heard…” Mathyas started, pausing to swallow and wet his lips. “I heard—you. Your voice. I came—”

He glanced again at Jórunn, brows furrowing. “What are you doing down here?”

Raydrin stared at him. “What are we doing here? Mathyas, I thought you were fucking dead!”

Mathyas flinched.

“I thought…” Raydrin trailed off, stepping forward. His anger was melting away. “I thought you were dead.”

He closed the distance between them and brought his cousin into a hug. Mathyas shuddered slightly, his body stiff and unyielding, but something gave way and Raydrin felt an arm—the arm not currently occupied with holding the torch—creep up around his back. A ragged breath fanned past his ear. Mathyas’ grip was tight and almost desperate.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“What happened to you?” Raydrin asked quietly, pulling away to meet Mathyas’ gaze. Up close like this, he could see all the ways Mathyas had changed over the last few months; his face was leaner, gaunter, the heavy bags under his eyes making him look ghoulish in the torchlight. His hair was different; where once it had been long enough to push back away from his face, short, blunt locks now hung in dark curtains around his temples. Had he cut it himself?

Mathyas shook his head.

“I—I can’t,” he said hoarsely, gloved hand wrapped like a vice around Raydrin’s shoulder. His gaze darted to somewhere behind him, then back to Raydrin’s face. “Not… not here. It’s a long story. Too complicated.”

Relief and grief caught like a knot in Raydrin’s throat, and he pulled Mathyas into another hug before he could choke on it. There was too much he wanted to say, so he said nothing; he merely held onto his cousin and basked in the fact that he could.

“You look well, Raydrin,” Mathyas rasped as they drew away from each other. “Better, I mean. Healthy.”

An uneasy smile tugged at Raydrin’s lips. We know, Cassathra had said, the day they’d returned to Whiterun with the Dragonstone to find Mathyas vanished and a trail of corpses in his wake. She and Mathyas both knew exactly what had gotten Raydrin sick, and now Mathyas was alive to bear that knowledge still.

He shrugged his shoulder, getting Mathyas to release him. That was the least of his concerns.

“Did Cassathra find you?” he asked. “I know she was planning to look for you, in Whiterun, but I—”

“She didn’t,” Mathyas cut him off. “I… she didn’t.”

Raydrin sighed.

“Does this mean you’re not in touch with her?” Mathyas went on.

Raydrin shook his head. “I write to her,” he admitted, cringing inwardly—he hadn’t sent anything since the Thalmor Embassy. “She made it to the College, I know that. But she can’t write back, I… I move around too much.”

Mathyas glanced again to Jórunn. “What’s going on, Raydrin?” he said, lowering his voice despite the fact Jórunn wouldn’t understand their Dunmeris. “I—I mean, Jórunn, I thought we were supposed to be leaving her in Whiterun—now months later the two of you are still travelling together? In the Riften sewers? And she knows magic?”

“It’s not magic,” said Raydrin. “It’s…”

He sighed, trailing off. He didn’t like talking about her this way.

He stepped to one side, turning to face her and stretching a hand out to touch her shoulder. Her head twitched in his direction.

“Jórunn?” he said, trailing his hand down to her arm and tugging gently. Carefully Jórunn followed the tug, taking two tentative steps towards them. “Jórunn, you remember Mathyas?”

An uncertain look crossed her features, her lips pressing together as she tried to gauge the situation.

“Yes, I do,” she said after a moment’s pause.

“Well, this is going to sound ridiculous, but—”

“It’s alright,” she cut him off. “I recognized his voice. And you said his name a few times. I just… I didn’t want to interrupt.” A thin smile flickered across her lips. “Are you well, Mathyas?”

Mathyas stared at Jórunn uneasily.

“Yes,” he replied at last, switching to Cyrodilic. “Yes, I—I’m fine. A little surprised to be running into the two of you down here, but…”

Jórunn hummed. “Yes, well. Likewise.” She nudged Raydrin’s arm with her elbow. “What’s happening? I mean—” she turned back to Mathyas, “—what are you doing down here?”

“We were just trying to figure that out,” said Raydrin. “It’s a long story for us too, Mathyas. We need to talk. Somewhere else.”

Mathyas nodded. Then he glanced down to the corpses at their feet, moving his torch to cast some light over their vacant faces.

He switched back into Dunmeris. “What about, ah…”

Raydrin followed his gaze. “Leave them.”

“No, I mean—they were trying to capture you. Are you… are you safe?”

Raydrin caught a flash of metal under the torchlight, roughly where his sword had fallen. He went to retrieve it. 

“Not in the slightest,” he said as he slid it into its sheath. “But we’ll be safer in a busy inn than down in these tunnels.”

He spun around and met Mathyas’ gaze. “We have to go.”

Mathyas’ eyes widened, giving away just the slightest hint of his surprise. But he nodded again, firmly this time.

“My business down here is done,” he said. “Let’s go.”

 

---

 

The journey back up to the surface was possibly the most tense fifteen minutes of Raydrin’s life. Mathyas took the lead with his torch, though Jórunn kept watch from the rear with Aura Whisper. Raydrin fixed his gaze on Mathyas’ back, half-expecting the illusion of his cousin to dissolve any second, but he didn’t; Mathyas was real, familiar in the slant of his shoulder, in his upright and purposeful gait, though the excessively vigilant glances he kept throwing around were new.

Mathyas was alive. All of Raydrin’s grief from the last four months, repressed and pushed aside in the name of his and Jórunn’s quest, was rising to the surface, tight and insistent in his throat. Mathyas was alive. Mathyas was alive and Mathyas was still in Skyrim. Why? What force in nature could have prevented him from returning to Blacklight? What business could he possibly have in the Riften sewers and what had put that disturbed look in his eye?

They returned to Raydrin and Jórunn’s inn and took out a quiet booth in the corner, hunching themselves over three pints of Black-Briar mead. Dusk had fallen since their descent into the Ratway, and the city streets beyond the warped glass of their little window were dark and lit by pools of orange lamplight. Meeko—relieved to have been released from their room—joined them under the table and plopped himself down by Raydrin and Jórunn’s feet, gnawing quietly on a bone.

Mathyas cupped his tankard in both hands and fixed his gaze on the amber liquid held inside, reluctant—or unable—to meet Raydrin’s eyes for longer than a second. Jórunn was stiff and quiet on Raydrin’s right. When he could bear the silence no longer, Raydrin cleared his throat, leaning forward to touch his fingers to the exposed skin of Mathyas’ wrist. There was a scar there Raydrin hadn’t seen before; a bracelet of mottled white skin, tucked away beneath his sleeve.

“Mathyas?” he said gently.

Mathyas pulled his hand away, raking it through his hair to little success and sinking back against their booth with a long sigh. But he looked Raydrin in the eyes at last.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, I… I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.” He forced an uncomfortable-looking smile. “How have you been?”

The mundanity of the question made Raydrin laugh in spite of everything. Maybe the relief was making him delirious.

“We’ve been alright,” he said in Cyrodilic. “Mathyas, I—what have you been doing all this time? We get back from Bleak Falls Barrow and you’d just disappeared without a trace, I mean—what happened?”

Mathyas sucked in a shuddering breath.

“It wasn’t deliberate,” he replied, his gaze drifting to the window. “I never meant to leave you. I just…” He sighed, giving the slightest shake of his head. “My circumstances got away from me.”

Raydrin gave him a moment to continue, but he did not take it.

“That’s it?” he said. Mathyas looked at him then, expression sad.

“I can’t tell you, Raydrin,” he confessed in Dunmeris. “I want to. I owe you that much. I—I just… I can’t.”

Worry was beginning to churn Raydrin’s gut, undercutting any feelings of relief. What had Mathyas gotten himself into?

“I can leave, if that would make things easier,” offered Jórunn.

Mathyas held out an assuaging hand, still habitually relying on visual communication. “No—please. Raydrin and I can talk later. I want to hear about the two of you. If you’re happy to tell me.”

“How long are you in Riften for?” asked Raydrin. There was more to that question—what Mathyas was doing there in the first place and whether he would be able to join them—but he didn’t want to push his luck with how much Mathyas was willing to share.

“Not long,” said Mathyas. “I, ah… I was planning on setting off tomorrow.”

“So are we,” said Raydrin, failing to temper his growing smile. “Which way are you heading? If you’re going west, maybe you could—well, you could come with us.”

Mathyas said nothing for a long moment, holding Raydrin’s gaze and his heart in his hands as he deliberated his answer. But at long last he cleared his throat. “I am heading west,” he said carefully. “To… Falkreath.”

“That takes us together as far as Helgen! What do you say?”

“Well,” Mathyas paused. "I... I suppose it would be silly not to.”

Raydrin blinked. Then he laughed, some nervous response to his confusion. "Alright, Mathyas. No need to sound so fucking thrilled."

Mathyas winced, dragging a hand down his face. "Sorry," he muttered again, "sorry, you're right. Of course I'd like to travel with you. I don't know what's wrong with me," he laughed at himself, "I feel like I left my brain down in the Ratway."

He waved a hand as if to dispel the conversation. "Anyway, come on. The two of you are still travelling together—you’re getting attacked in the Riften sewers, and you have a dog now. Tell me everything.”

As if on cue, Mathyas jumped and looked down into his lap, and though Raydrin's gaze was blocked by the edge of the table, he could tell from the soft whining sound and the way Mathyas moved one hand to absently scratch something at his hip that Meeko was giving him his best puppy eyes. The tail thumping against Raydrin’s leg confirmed his theory.

Deciding not to push it, Raydrin sighed and sank his chin into one palm. “Where to begin,” he muttered, glancing over at Jórunn as she drank from her mead. “Jórunn?”

She lowered her tankard to the table and raised an eyebrow, her head twitching just slightly towards him. “You want me to tell it?”

“It’s your story.”

She sank back into her seat, huffing. “Is it safe here?”

Raydrin threw a quick glance around their vicinity. “We should be fine. As long as we keep our voices down.”

“Alright,” Jórunn began, bracing herself. “Well… I suppose I’ll pick up from when you disappeared. It sort of started the day after Raydrin and Cassathra returned from Bleak Falls Barrow; we showed them that note you left in our room and we managed to work out that you were connected to those Alik’r warriors staying outside the city…”

 

---

 

Mathyas was mostly quiet as Jórunn and Raydrin recounted their tale, though he was an attentive listener, nodding along and interrupting with the occasional question when something was unclear. His reaction to the revelation that Jórunn was Dragonborn was only slight; a faint raising of the eyebrows and a subtle widening of his eyes, but Raydrin knew from decades of sitting through council meetings that such muted reactions were rarely indicative of Mathyas’ true feelings. The quick glance he shot to Raydrin from the corner of his eye spoke volumes more.

They went on; from their stay at High Hrothgar to their journey northward into the depths of Ustengrav, to their travels with Delphine and their fight with Sahloknir at Kynesgrove. They told him about the party at the Thalmor Embassy and their botched attempt at infiltration, though Jórunn was careful to leave out certain details; namely Heloise’s involvement, and Raydrin’s letters. From the Thalmor Embassy, and Etienne, that led them here—to the Riften Ratway and their search for Esbern.

“B’vehk,” Mathyas muttered once they were finished, sinking back against his seat. He stared at them for a long while and shook his head. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

Jórunn huffed a faint laugh. “Not much you can say,” she said. “I’ve been lost for words since Hearthfire.”

“I hadn’t realized how bad things were getting,” said Mathyas softly. “Not until I got here, to Riften, I mean. Gods. I—I’d heard whispers, but I hadn’t—since Helgen—”

He trailed off, closing his mouth lamely. “I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry.”

Jórunn sighed. “I am too.”

“Is that—? Raydrin! Raydrin, hey!”

Raydrin looked up, finding Etienne standing in the doorway of the inn along with four of his guildmates. Three of them he recognized—Delvin, Rune, and Vex—but the fourth, a tall, bulky man with reddish hair, he hadn’t seen before. Etienne was waving at them, grinning and looking livelier than Raydrin had ever seen him. Awkwardly Raydrin beckoned him over.

His guildmates splintered off to find a table of their own whilst Etienne came to their little corner. His smile faltered slightly as he approached, eyes landing with confusion on Mathyas.

“Hey, you were in the Flagon earlier,” he said. Before he could expand on that line of thought, Meeko shuffled out from under the table and jumped up at him in a gentle hello, just high enough for Etienne to catch his front paws and sway with him for a moment before getting him to stand down with some murmured words of affection. He straightened to his full height and smiled at them sheepishly. “You know, it’s odd, Delvin was saying at the time how much you looked like—”

The penny dropped at the same time as his jaw, his eyes widening as they alternated between Mathyas and Raydrin. “Shit,” he said, turning to Raydrin. “Is that—?”

Raydrin nodded; they had been travelling together long enough for Etienne to have learned of his missing cousin. “That's him," he confirmed. "Not dead after all.”

“Gods,” said Etienne. “And you just ran into each other down in the—? Gods.”

He stared at them for a few moments in amazement. “Wow. That is uncanny. The hands of fate have clearly taken a liking to you, eh?”

“Mathyas, this is Etienne,” said Raydrin. “The one we, um—well, you know.”

Mathyas blinked and turned to the man in question. “Yes, of course,” he said, extending a hand. “Good to meet you.”

Etienne took it and gave it a firm shake. “You’ll have to forgive me for interrupting. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come over. I… sorry. Shit. I should go—”

“Wait,” said Jórunn, downing the remainder of her tankard. She slid along to the end of her bench and got awkwardly out from beneath the table. “I’ll come with you.”

“Jórunn, you don’t have to—”

“It’s fine,” she cut Raydrin off, smiling thinly as Etienne gave her his arm. “We should give you two some privacy.”

The four of them fell silent.

“You’re certain?” asked Raydrin.

Jórunn nodded. “I’m certain. I can cope without your company for an hour or two.”

Etienne laughed a little nervously. “As long as you don’t mind my guildmates asking annoying questions.”

“As long as they don’t rob me,” Jórunn retorted. She gestured with her free hand in Raydrin and Mathyas’ vague direction, pointing first at Raydrin and then to Mathyas. “You two have fun,” she said. “I won’t be far.”

“Before we go,” Etienne cut in, “I was meaning to ask… were you—ah,” he nudged his head forwards and lowered his voice, “—successful?”

It took Raydrin—stupidly—a moment to figure out what he was referring to, but then he nodded. “Yes. We found him.”

Etienne’s expression broke out into one of relief. “Good,” he said. “Alright. That’s good.”

They let the pair of them go, though Raydrin felt guilty at the thought that he had made Jórunn feel awkward or unwelcome. He watched Etienne lead her with practised care through the main body of the tavern, depositing her at his guildmates’ table where she was met with a hearty cheer and four raised tankards. She took her seat and answered someone’s question with a laugh. Etienne disappeared off towards the bar, presumably in search of drinks.

Satisfied that she was in good hands, Raydrin sighed and dragged his hands down his face. He removed them to find Mathyas watching him carefully, expression oddly inscrutable.

Mathyas exhaled.

“I’ll admit,” he said. “That wasn’t what I was expecting.”

Raydrin let out a humourless laugh. “I guess I was so busy living it that I hadn’t realized how fucking crazy it was going to sound explaining it to someone else.”

“Well, I mean, I’d heard of the Dragonborn. You overhear things in taverns.”

It was odd, hearing it said in Dunmeris like that: Aka’muhr. It was a word Raydrin associated with history books and the Septim emperors—not with Jórunn.

“But sometimes they were a Nord, other times a Dunmer, then a… I don’t know. I realized no-one had a clue what they were talking about, so I stopped listening. It’s surreal to think that this whole time, it was—” Mathyas gestured vaguely to Raydrin with one hand. “Well, not you, but.”

Raydrin snorted.

Mathyas sighed, glancing over his shoulder to where Jórunn was sitting. “I suppose this explains Helgen,” he muttered. “Makes you wonder just how many of these coincidences are orchestrated.”

They hadn’t told him about Esbern’s premonition; it wasn’t something Raydrin and Jórunn had agreed to beforehand, but it just happened that way. The dragon crisis was worrying enough. People didn’t need to know about the end of the world. He’d only heard about it himself a few hours ago.

Raydrin sighed, leaning forward on his elbows.

“What are you still doing in Skyrim, Mathyas?”

Mathyas scoffed and looked away. “Is this the part where you interrogate me?”

“You’ve got to understand why I’m curious,” said Raydrin. He reached forward and grasped Mathyas’ forearm where it was resting on the table. “Mathyas, come on. You’re worrying me.”

Mathyas pulled his arm away, but he didn’t reply for a long while. He just stared at Raydrin, grinding his jaw.

Then he downed his drink and got to his feet.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, reaching for his cloak and gloves. “I need some fresh air.”

Meeko seemed to have sensed the imminent walk, for he bounded out from under the table, tail wagging furiously back and forth. Raydrin stared in a stunned silence as Mathyas pulled his gloves on one at a time, Meeko running excited circles around his legs.

“Is everything alright?”

“I can’t do this in here,” said Mathyas, letting his hands drop to his sides and meeting Raydrin’s gaze with a look of quiet desperation. “I can’t. Not in here.”

“Oh.” Raydrin blinked. “Uh—yes. Yes, of course.”

He moved to action, gathering up his own things. They stopped by Jórunn and Etienne’s table on their way to the door. The conversation petered out as they approached, but the reception was friendly; tankards were raised, heads were nodded.

“Friends!” said Etienne. “You’re heading out already?”

“We’re just taking Meeko for a walk,” said Raydrin. He glanced around the table, nodding in polite greeting. “Hello, all. Er, Jórunn, you’ll be alright while we’re gone?”

“I'll be fine,” Jórunn replied. She was sitting beside the redhead, a rugged-looking man maybe a decade or so her senior. His arm was draped casually along the bench behind her. “How long will you be?” 

“We might be a while,” said Raydrin, though he shifted uneasily, trying to ignore the slightly charged gaze of the redhead as it drifted over him. “Shall I leave you with the room key?”

Jórunn nodded. “May as well.”

She extended one hand so he could pass it to her. 

“Right,” he said, glancing between the group. “Well, enjoy your evenings.”

Jórunn smiled. “Enjoy your stroll.”

They bid the group farewell and took their leave.

The evening was crisp and clear, too early for the aurorae to come out but late enough for the skies to have blackened. Masser and Secunda swelled up above them, pale and luminous behind wisps of stray cloud.

Mathyas was quick to get moving, forcing Raydrin to jog over the cobblestones to catch up with that stupidly long stride. His gaze was fixed on Meeko trotting a few feet ahead of them, his posture stiff and his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his cloak. He exhaled slowly, and Raydrin watched as his breath condensed before him in the cold night air. Other than a few stragglers lingering outside the entrance to the tavern, the street was deserted.

They were silent for a long while before Raydrin found it in him to speak.

“Mathyas,” he said quietly, glancing at his cousin from the corner of his eye. “Are you safe?”

Mathyas hissed out a bitter laugh. Dread sank like a stone into the pit of Raydrin’s stomach.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he said. “Please, Mathyas, let me help you.”

Mathyas said nothing, remaining obstinately silent. Even his footsteps were quiet; almost unnaturally so.

“What were you doing in the Ragged Flagon?” Raydrin pressed. Maybe specific questions were more likely to get answers. “I mean—why are you going to Falkreath? Why can’t you come with us?”

“I was selling something,” Mathyas replied, gaze still fixed on the ground a few feet ahead. “I… I needed a fence.”

Raydrin fell quiet, taking a moment to absorb that information. So Mathyas had gotten himself involved with criminals somehow. His next words were chosen carefully.

“Is there someone making you do this?”

Mathyas raised his head at last, finally bringing himself to look Raydrin in the eye. His silence was answer enough.

Oh, gods.

“Okay, okay,” said Raydrin, taking Mathyas by the shoulder, “let’s find somewhere to sit, we’re not getting anywhere like this. I think I have something that could help.”

Mathyas submitted, miserably allowing himself to be steered about. Raydrin had no idea where he was going, but they walked in silence for a few minutes until they reached one of the destroyed districts of the city. The houses had been all but levelled, wood and stone and ash lying about in great heaps of rubble. Raydrin found a burnt shard of wood and threw it across the clearing, watching Meeko scarper after it excitedly. Then he clambered up onto a pile of rubble and beckoned for Mathyas to follow.

They took their seats at the peak, facing out over the sprawl of the city. Riften was a flat old thing, nothing like the dramatic bluffs of Blacklight. But the silhouette of the Velothi Mountains loomed up ahead, jagged and insistent along the horizon. Mathyas sighed deeply.

“It’s strange, to think that you could walk in that direction for just a few days and be in Morrowind,” he said, gazing wistfully out at the mountains. There was a road from Riften, heading east through a mountain pass—if followed, it would deposit them straight into the Redoran stronghold of Silgrad Tower.

“What’s stopping you?” asked Raydrin, distracted by the task at hand.

Mathyas laughed sadly and shook his head, but he faltered upon noticing what Raydrin was busying himself with.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s chokeweed,” said Raydrin, holding his hand very still as he nudged the stubborn herb into a straight line along the centre of the kresh leaf. “I bought it back in Solitude, when we were there for the party. It was meant to be for Jórunn and I, but… well, we never got the opportunity. And you seem like you need it more.”

He glanced at Mathyas, breaking his concentration for a moment. “What do you say?”

Mathyas shifted uneasily, staring at the half-finished cigarillo in deliberation. Meeko returned and dropped his stick at Mathyas’ feet; absently he threw it again. “Is it strong?”

“No,” said Raydrin. “It should just relax you a little. We can share it. And I’m lacing it with roobrush, you know—” he took a moment to lick along the edge of the kreshweed and seal it into a tight little tube, “—like we used to.”

Mathyas laughed under his breath. “I remember,” he said quietly. Then he sighed. “Fuck it. Couldn’t hurt.”

Raydrin smiled, placing the cigarillo between his lips in order to free up his hands for his flint and steel. He lit it in a single strike and then removed it from his mouth, holding it out for Mathyas to take. After a moment’s hesitation, he did.

“Vehk,” Mathyas exhaled, holding it to one side for a few moments, watching the tendrils of smoke curl and sway in the moonlight. “I haven’t done this since…”

“Mm.”

Raydrin looked away, casting himself back to that fateful, halcyon summer; the summer he and Anya had returned to Blacklight, their university days behind them and their days as soldiers yet to come. Weeks they’d wasted on that rotting old sailboat, exploring every crest and cove of the West Gash coastline, lounging on black beaches and smoking out caves while Mathyas read his books and Anya tried her damnedest to master the lute.

Mathyas took a long drag, looking far too cool about it for someone who hadn’t smoked in three decades, then blew it out from the corner of his mouth to avoid getting smoke in Raydrin’s face.

“I dread to think what she’d say if she could see me now,” he said, coughing just once. He held the cigarillo out for Raydrin, who took it with a muttered juohn.

“Yes, well,” he said, intimately familiar with that line of thought. “We’ll never have to find out.”

Anya was not their ancestor. She had died at twenty-four; she was not, and never would be, anyone’s ancestor.

“So what is it?” asked Raydrin. “Is it that you can’t tell me? Or you don’t want to?”

He passed the cigarillo back to Mathyas, who sucked in another drag like his life depended on it.

“Don’t want to,” he rasped through a cloud of smoke. “I’m so ashamed, Raydrin. You’d despise me if I told you.”

“Ah, come on,” Raydrin laughed. “You’ve always been dramatic. It can’t be that bad.”

Mathyas shot him a look. It was a tired look—exhausted, even. It said: you want to bet?

Raydrin sighed. “If I promise not to hate you, will you tell me?”

Mathyas scoffed. “We’re not children. You can’t promise something like that.”

“I could never hate you, Mathyas,” said Raydrin. “Look, just—start at the beginning. Talk me through it. Cassathra and I went to Bleak Falls Barrow to look for the Dragonstone and you stayed behind in Whiterun with Jórunn. Then what?”

Mathyas shuddered a little, tucking his free arm against his middle for warmth. He took a drag from the cigarillo with his other, then held it close to his face, his gaze fixed somewhere on the horizon—on the mountains between him and home.

“You found that note in my room,” he said. “About Saadia, and Kematu. Yes?”

Raydrin nodded.

“Yes.”

“Alright,” said Mathyas, tapping away some ash. “Let’s start there.”

 

---

 

So Mathyas told him. And Raydrin listened.

He was glad for his faint high; it made it easier to stomach, somehow. There were no frills, no garnishes, no pleas for sympathy or understanding. Mathyas told the facts as they were, voice plain, expression cold.

He walked Raydrin through it, along each link in the chain of causation. Raydrin was so horrified to hear of all the injustices committed against him that by the time the words Dark Brotherhood came up, he was too blinded by his outrage and his grief to appreciate what they truly meant. But as Mathyas went on, and the months went by, a feeling of dread started to trickle down Raydrin’s spine; a feeling of—not revulsion, but moral squeamishness, perhaps—settling deep in the pit of his gut.

The cigarillo having long since been smoked away, they sat there in silence once Mathyas had finished, letting his confession just hang for a moment, suspended in the air. Meeko—bored of waiting for one of them to throw his stick—had curled up in between them and propped his great, shaggy muzzle onto Mathyas’ thigh, gazing up at him as Mathyas absently scratched the back of his neck.

“I thought I knew myself,” he muttered at long last, staring out at some distant vanishing point. He wasn’t normally one to fill awkward silences, but the chokeweed had loosened his tongue. And Raydrin understood; Mathyas had borne this alone for too long. “My whole life,” he went on, hands noticeably inanimate for someone who used to gesticulate as much as Mathyas did, “I—I perceived myself as someone good—someone who’d choose to do the right thing even if it came at a personal cost. And yet, I find myself killing, over and over, because—why? Because I’m afraid? And now, it’s like—I have to reconcile that with my image of myself.”

He straightened, taking a moment to breathe. “I’m the sort of person who will hurt others to get out of a bad situation,” he said bitterly. “Like my life is worth more than anyone else’s.”

Raydrin cleared his throat; it was dry from smoke and lack of use. “But you don’t actually think that, do you?”

Mathyas shot him a look. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t actually believe that your life is worth more than anyone else’s?”

He shook his head, turning away. “No. Of course not.”

Raydrin shrugged. “Then I think you’re overthinking things slightly.”

Mathyas scoffed. “How does it matter what I believe?”

“What I mean is,” said Raydrin, “you’re not a bad person just because you have a survival instinct. Wanting to make it to the next day is like—” he waved a hand, “—it’s our most base desire. You’d have to be an incredibly strong person to overcome that.”

Mathyas fell silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head.

“That’s different, Raydrin,” he murmured. “It’s not like I have a knife to my throat. I spend day after day just walking and thinking and then I still always kill them when I get there.” He looked disgusted with himself. “There’s no excuse for that, it’s fucking pathetic.”

“Mathyas—”

“Stop,” Mathyas cut him off. “It’s cowardly. There’s something wrong with me.”

“Mathyas, come on. Cut yourself some slack.” Raydrin twisted against the rubble, turning to face him more fully. “You’d been through something horrible. You did what you had to do to keep yourself alive, then you were in too deep to get out. There’s nothing wrong with you, you just… you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

Mathyas muttered something inaudibly.

“What?”

“I didn’t need to kill Grelod,” he repeated himself, louder this time. “The old mistress at the orphanage. I didn’t need to kill her.” 

Raydrin took a moment to think through his next words. 

“She abused children,” he said lamely. 

“So? Does that mean she deserved to have her throat cut in her sleep? Did I have the right to make that decision?” 

Raydrin said nothing; he had no answer to give. 

“And yet I still don’t feel guilty about what I did to her,” Mathyas went on. “Not to her, not to those bandits,” he shrugged, “not to those vampires. Not to those Thalmor agents I just slaughtered in the Ratway. That scares me.” 

He laughed, choking out something halfway to a sob. 

“That fucking scares me.”

Raydrin could only watch him, paralysed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Mathyas like this; his cousin dealt with things on his own, like the stalwart Redoran he was. He’d cried for Anya, but that was decades ago. Raydrin didn’t know what to do. 

Mathyas was silent, trembling faintly. 

Raydrin reached across Meeko’s dozing body to lay a hand on his shoulder. 

“Hey,” he murmured, taking hold of him more firmly, “hey.”

He nudged Meeko out of the way with his knee, getting the sleepy dog to shuffle away a little dejectedly. Then he shifted across the rubble to Mathyas’ side and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him against his body. 

It was awkward and stiff and uncomfortable but it would do. It had to. Mathyas shuddered quietly against him, face turned down, arms trapped against his sides. Raydrin squeezed him tight and thought about when Mathyas had held him just like this, on the rocky coastline of the Sea of Ghosts instead of a slag heap, a black, vast ocean laid out before them instead of the sprawl of Riften and the Velothi Mountains. Raydrin had screamed and sobbed and wailed against him, inconsolable in his grief, but Mathyas simply wept. Were it not for the great wracking of his shoulders, Raydrin would not have known he was crying at all. 

The aurorae erupted into full bloom up above them, azure blues and emerald greens. Raydrin’s high finally faded in its entirety, leaving him with that familiarly heavy, lead-weight feeling. His fingertips were like ice in his gloves. Mathyas stilled. 

“What are you going to do now?” Raydrin asked. 

Slowly he peeled himself away, avoiding Raydrin’s gaze like he was trying to cling to some scraps of dignity. He brought his knees up before him and draped his forearms across them, turning his face slightly so Raydrin wouldn’t see his dewy eyelashes and reddened cheeks. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted. His voice was thick, giving him away. “Just return to the Sanctuary, I suppose. Like always.”

“Why?” asked Raydrin. “Mathyas, look, you— you said yourself that Vivienne was there when you picked up the Titus Mede contract. If she could have learned about it through the Night Mother then she would have, surely. She’s not omniscient. You… you could run away.”

“It’s not about me anymore,” said Mathyas. “If Mede dies with no heirs, it…” 

He sighed, picking up a small chunk of rubble and throwing it down the side of the heap. “A fragmented empire is exactly what the Dominion wants,” he said. “The Stormcloak rebellion is bad enough. Mede’s death would trigger a war that might otherwise not happen for another ten, twenty years. I can’t just walk away from that.”

He reached into the inside of his cloak and withdrew a slip of paper, handing it out for Raydrin to take. “Look. It’s Delvin’s appraisal. The amulet was genuine, which means Amaund is a real Elder Councillor. And he means real business.”

Raydrin distractedly skimmed it over, something pressing uncomfortably into the back of his mind. “Amaund?”

“The man who put out the contract,” said Mathyas, sniffling.

Raydrin was silent for a long moment, wracking his brain to figure out where he’d heard that name before. The realisation hit him like a punch to the gut.

“Oh, shit.”

Mathyas looked up, blinking dazedly. “What? What is it?”

“Amaund?” he repeated. “Motierre?”

His puffy eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

“He was at the Thalmor party,” Raydrin moaned. “Oh, shit.”

He handed the appraisal back to Mathyas and ran a hand through his hair.

“What are you saying?” Mathyas took it from him. “That he’s with the Thalmor?”

“Elenwen—when we were in the dungeons, breaking out Etienne. She was questioning his wife and she said something about him being important to them. Oh, gods, and Heloise— she and Amaund were allegedly travelling through Skyrim on their way up to High Rock, but Heloise told us that was a lie…”

Raydrin turned to Mathyas, watching the colour drain from his face. Slowly Mathyas drew away from him, hanging his temple in one hand and closing his eyes.

“Shit,” he said quietly.

Shit, indeed.

Raydrin fell silent, allowing Mathyas a moment to process that revelation. Mathyas pressed his fingers into his eyes and then dragged his hands down his face, holding them before his lips like a prayer.

“Shit,” he muttered again. “So the Thalmor want Mede dead and the Brotherhood’s playing right into their hands.”

“You could tell Astrid,” Raydrin suggested. “Maybe then she’d—”

Mathyas cut him off with a harsh laugh. “She won’t care. She’s already said as much.” He sighed, lowering his hands back to his lap. “Amaund performed the Black Sacrament,” he said, then he switched briefly into Cyrodilic: “and so began a contract bound in blood. Mede’s death was sealed the moment Amaund performed that ritual. The Brotherhood doesn’t turn down contracts, they won’t stop until he’s dead, not unless…”

He trailed off. Raydrin swallowed.

“Not unless someone stops them.”

Mathyas took a shuddering breath, nodding.

“Mathyas, come on. You can’t seriously be considering attempting this on your own.”

“No-one else is going to,” he bitterly replied. “I’m on the inside. I’m in a unique position to act.”

“It’s not your responsibility to stave off a continental war,” said Raydrin. “Mathyas, please. Listen to yourself.” 

“What else am I supposed to do?” Mathyas spat. “Look at me. I’m never going back to Blacklight.”

Raydrin took hold of his shoulder. “No. You look around.” He gestured with his other hand to the scene of destruction before them. “The world is ending. The Thalmor can’t start a war if there’s no world left to start one in. You want my advice? Take that amulet money and run. Buy a villa on some sunny Gold Coast island and spend your last few months actually enjoying yourself.” 

Mathyas stared at him. “The end of the world?” he said quietly. “You really think it’s that bad?”

“Yes,” said Raydrin. “It’s that bad.”

Mathyas was silent for a moment. “You don’t think you and Jórunn can stop it?”

Raydrin laughed and shook his head. “Look at us,” he muttered. “We aren’t exactly Martin and the Hero.”

Mathyas opened his mouth to reply, but no words came. He pressed his lips together, something like grim acceptance settling over his features.

“Look, it’s…” Raydrin faltered, sighing. “Esbern, that old Blade we found today— he seems to think it’s possible, but… I don’t know. I wouldn’t place any bets, let's put it that way.”

Mathyas exhaled slowly. 

“All right,” he said, turning away. “I suppose that does change things.”

Raydrin sucked in a deep breath, as if he could inhale courage into his lungs. 

“Come with us, Mathyas.”

Mathyas looked up, meeting his gaze in surprise. 

“We can help each other,” Raydrin went on. “Jórunn and I—we’re almost constantly on the move. It would be impossible for the Brotherhood to find you.”

He started to shake his head, but Raydrin grasped him by the shoulder, twisting Mathyas’ body to face him more fully. “Listen, I’m serious. What’s stopping you? Please, Mathyas, we could do with someone like you. You’re smart, capable, you’re a brilliant swordsman—please. I want to know that you’re safe. These last few months, the not knowing—it’s been killing me. Please,” he said again. “I… I miss you.”

Still Mathyas did not reply; he even looked away, unable to hold Raydrin’s gaze. For a long while they sat like that, Mathyas trembling under Raydrin’s hand.

“I want to,” he murmured at last. “I just…”

Raydrin's heart sank.

Mathyas swallowed.

“I’ll think about it,” he finished, forcing a smile. “On our way to Helgen. I’ll think about it.”

It wasn’t what Raydrin wanted to hear, but he withdrew his hand after a moment, reluctant to push it any further. They sat together in silence for a little while longer before Mathyas picked himself up off the rubble and extended his arm. 

“Come on,” he said softly. “I’m tired. Let’s head back.”

Raydrin looked at the offered hand, and then upwards to meet his cousin’s gaze. Mathyas smiled. 

He accepted and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

 

---

 

They trudged back to the inn in silence, slow, heavy-footed, and numb. Riften’s true character was showing its face in the dark; despite the chaos and the destruction of the dragon attack, skooma dealers and prostitutes had resumed business as usual, lurking in back alleys and along darkened canal towpaths. Raydrin supposed they were unlikely to be able to afford time off—not in a place like this, impoverished as it was. Sharp peals of laughter and the barking of disturbed mongrels occasionally pierced through the silence.

“You should write to Cass,” he said after a long while, clearing his throat when his voice came out raspy. Mathyas didn’t say anything, didn’t even appear to react. Raydrin went on. “You don’t have to tell her the details,” he said. “Just let her know you’re alive. Her birthday’s coming up. Just— say hello.”

Eventually Mathyas nodded, though it was yet another few moments before he actually spoke.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “You’re right.”

Satisfied with Mathyas’ response and having said everything that he wanted to say, Raydrin said nothing more, allowing them to fall once more into silence. He was oddly content; maybe the world was ending, and maybe his cousin was no longer the man he wanted to be, but the shock and adrenaline had worn off and Raydrin could enjoy, now, the reality that Mathyas was—however briefly, and however tragic the circumstances—back in his life.

But Mathyas went on, clearing his throat.

“I, um… I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last few months,” he began. “Not much else to do on the road, you know.”

He sighed.

“I had so much I wanted to say to you. I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance. Now you’re here, I… I don’t even know where to start.”

Raydrin said nothing, unease curling in his stomach.

“About your... illness, before Helgen—”

There it was. Raydrin cut in before Mathyas could continue.

“I know you know,” he said, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Cassathra told me. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Raydrin,” said Mathyas, and though Raydrin refused to look at him, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on Meeko a few feet ahead, he could see Mathyas in his periphery trying to catch his gaze. “You look better now. Are you— I mean, are you still—”

“I’m clean,” said Raydrin. He hesitated a moment before elaborating. “Have been ever since.”

Mathyas released his breath.

“Good,” he said. “That's good.”

Raydrin hoped that would be the end of it, but evidently Mathyas had other plans. Gods, he just wanted a canal to open up and swallow him whole. This was a conversation he’d never wanted to have, ever, and the fact it was happening now—and here, of all places—was making it feel a lot like a bad dream.

“It was so horrible, that week,” Mathyas went on. “Not knowing what was happening to you or why. B’vehk, I thought you were going to die on me.”

Raydrin laughed uncomfortably. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?! Raydrin, what? I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Please don’t patronise me, Mathyas. I said we don’t have to talk about it.”

A hand tugged on his shoulder and he stuttered to a halt, finding himself inescapably within Mathyas’ field of vision.

“No, listen to me,” said Mathyas. “Raydrin, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry. I should have noticed.”

Raydrin stared at him, jaw slack. Mathyas was off again before his brain could even begin to process that.

“Traipsing around Skyrim by myself, I—I’ve done a lot of reflection. The signs were all there. You were unhappy.” His face took on an expression of such regret and sorrow it made Raydrin’s heart ache. “I should have noticed. I… I should have helped.”

Raydrin averted his gaze, unable to look at him anymore. Somehow this was harder to stomach than even Mathyas’ confessions; there was only so much he could appreciate from second-hand accounts, but this was him they were talking about, and he felt a shame so deep, so internal and visceral and yet so irretrievably visible it made him feel naked and exposed, as if Mathyas had cut him open from navel to collar and was peering at his insides. Mathyas was one of the few people whose opinion he had ever truly cared about, and to hear him apologise for Raydrin’s own failings made him want to shrink and recoil like an earthworm caught in the sun.

Mathyas hugged him, right there on that deserted street, pinning his arms to his sides. Raydrin closed his eyes and shuddered.

“I’m sorry,” said Mathyas.

“Don’t,” Raydrin hissed. “I don’t want this to be another source of guilt for you.”

Mathyas pulled away and gave him a look that said he’d completely missed the point. “This isn’t about me.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m clean, Mathyas. It’s behind me. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I…” he trailed off. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Mathyas stood back, staring at Raydrin, looking unconvinced and a little hurt. Meeko trotted back towards them and started whining, apparently frustrated with their inactivity. But then, finally, Mathyas steeled his expression into something neutral and nodded.

“Alright,” he said, defeated.

They fell back into step and said nothing more on the matter.

The barroom had mostly cleared by the time they returned to the inn, empty save for a few drunken stragglers. The silence was stark in the absence of the bard, alleviated only by smatterings of quiet conversation and the clinking of metal as the bar staff rounded up leftover tankards.

They headed over to Etienne and Jórunn’s table to find just Delvin and Vex still in the booth, laughing about something as they approached. Vex looked up, sensing movement, and Delvin followed. Raydrin could only offer them an awkward smile.

“’ello again,” said Delvin, raising his empty tankard with a nod. He turned to Mathyas and did the same. “’ello again to you too.”

Mathyas said nothing, shifting uncomfortably at Raydrin’s side.

Raydrin nudged his head vaguely towards the empty seats. “Where are, ah—”

“Well,” said Delvin, lacing his thick fingers together and extending his arms forwards in a stretch, “Etienne and Rune ran off a while back. I presume they wanted to, uh…” his mouth spread into a lecherous smile, “heh. Have a proper reunion, I s’pose.”

Vex scoffed and rolled her eyes in disgust. Raydrin blinked in surprise.

“Brynjolf and the lass, well… hm.” Delvin furrowed his brow. “They were supposed to be fetching us a final round, but I s’pose it was a while ago that last orders were called.” He stroked his chin in thought. “Who knows?”

Something possessive and ugly curdled in Raydrin’s gut. He tried not to let it show on his face, but it took several moments for him to remember how to speak. He opened his mouth to do so only for Delvin to cut back in before he could.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, Vex,” he said, turning to his companion with a grin. “How about it?”

“In your wildest dreams, old man,” Vex replied, in the sort of exasperated tone which suggested this was a recurring conversation between them.

Jealousy and worry in equal parts were clouding Raydrin's mind; finding something appropriate to say felt like digging around in deep sludge.

“Will she, um—” he faltered, swallowing his words. “Will Jórunn be alright?”

Delvin’s gaze returned to him, like he was just remembering Raydrin was there. The grin on his face faded into something more sympathetic.

“She’ll be fine,” he said seriously. “Bryn may be a manwhore and a thief, but he’s no rake.” Delvin flared out the fingers of one hand in a sweeping gesture. “Not the type to take advantage, like.”

Raydrin glanced over at Vex, who just shrugged and nodded as if to confirm the truth of Delvin’s claim. He exhaled, trying to calm his racing heart and cool the anger bubbling in his blood. Jórunn was a grown woman and she could do whatever she liked. It wasn’t like they were together. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t done the exact same thing, several times, whenever they passed through Whiterun—before the battle, at least.

Jórunn would be safe. That was all that mattered.

Mathyas slid a hand over his shoulder. “My inn’s not far from here,” he murmured in Dunmeris. “You can stay with me.”

Raydrin met his gaze and nodded, forcing a smile.

“Alright,” he said, turning once again to Delvin and Vex. “Well, thanks. With everything, I mean.”

“Pleasure's all ours,” said Delvin, smiling wide enough to reveal a golden canine. “Best o’ luck to ya both.”

They took their leave, returning once more to the cold streets of Riften. Meeko was dragging his paws along, clearly exhausted. He looked how Raydrin felt. His imagination was conspiring against him, flashing rapidly through a series of half-formed images; slender fingers tangled through red hair, the dextrous hands of a thief trailing down a pale back. He felt perverted and vile but his mind refused to let him think of anything else.

“So you and Jórunn aren’t…?”

Raydrin didn’t look at him. “Aren’t what?”

Mathyas was silent for a moment before answering. “Together.”

Something clenched in Raydrin's jaw, like a blacksmith had come along and hammered a pin through the hinge. 

“I—I just assumed, earlier,” Mathyas went on. “When we were talking. You seemed— close.”

“We are,” Raydrin confirmed. “Just not like that.”

“Oh,” was all Mathyas said in reply. They left it there.

Mathyas’ room was smaller than theirs had been, a narrow thing with a single cot pressed into the corner. They fought stubbornly for a while about who was to sleep on the floor, until Raydrin pointed out that Mathyas was the single worst sleeper he had ever met and he agreed with reluctance to take the bed. Meeko snuggled up beside Raydrin on his bedroll. 

Good night, they kept saying, over and over, this time I mean it.

But still they talked, softly, lapsing into old rhythms and in-jokes and silly, decades-long debates. And the hours crept by like that, familiar and easy, until at last their exhaustion overcame them.

Notes:

thanks for reading! and thanks to haley and diana for beta reading this chapter. please do leave a comment if you have a few minutes to spare, long or short, it’s always a pleasure hearing readers’ thoughts :^)

just as a forewarning, i’m heading now into my final two terms of law school and i have exams in June which count for almost 100% of my degree grade. this doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be any new chapters before then, but i figured it would be better to warn you in advance in case that's how things turn out. i'm far too obsessed with this fic to give up on it now-- but it might be a little while before i next have time to work on it :( either way, thanks in advance for your understanding and patience! <3

Chapter 34: The Road From Riften

Notes:

a summary of the last few chapters, since it's been a while:

- after discovering esbern's dossier in the thalmor embassy, jórunn and raydrin travelled southward to seek out the old blade
- mathyas, having been tasked with appraising the amulet of amaund motierre, was sent to riften in search of astrid's contact in the thieves guild. in the sewers beneath the city, he rescued raydrin and jórunn from a thalmor attack
- sanjir, a new recruit of the imperial legion, was assigned his first mission as an agent; to intercept a stormcloak courier and replace the orders with the legion's own
- cassathra and co journeyed to solitude in search of lost legends, but the book and its owner, an ex-winterhold student by the name of orthorn, were nowhere to be found

enjoy!

Dawn was yet to touch the window of their little inn room, but the presence of Brynjolf lying in the furs behind her was enough to stay the chill.

“Awake so early, lass?”

Jórunn had been awake for longer still, evicted from sleep by the insistent press of restlessness. Brynjolf’s snoring had been a comfort, his heavy arm about her waist a surprisingly welcome presence, but the foray into familiar territory had not offered the distraction she was seeking.

In her silence he shifted towards her, touching blunt fingertips to the dimples in the small of her back. A shiver jolted up her spine.

“I have to go soon,” she said, stiffening. Brynjolf’s hand stilled, spreading warmly over her flesh. Then the bed ropes creaked and groaned and his mouth was on her neck, his chest to her back, thick, dextrous fingers tangling in the mess of her hair and his breath hot against her skin.

Reflexively she tilted her head, trying to relax into the sensations before they progressed, but to her surprise Brynjolf abandoned his attentions mere moments later and let his chin come to slot over the bony shelf of her clavicle.

“I can go fetch Etienne,” he rasped, beard scratching pleasantly against her skin. Relieved, Jórunn found the arm around her middle and took his wrist in her hand—a feeble attempt at reciprocation.

“Thank you,” she said.

Brynjolf squeezed her waist, silent.

 

It was a fickle morning, dappled shafts of sunshine pushing through wet, misty rain showers. Jórunn took refuge beneath the stiff leather of her hood—from prying eyes as much as from the rain—as she and Etienne carved a path through the rubble towards the city stables. A tired and bittersweet silence accompanied them, for it was soon to be farewell; and though Jórunn longed for their final exchange to be more than this, the pressure of picking the right thing to say prevented her from saying anything at all.

She heard Raydrin’s voice first of all, practiced ears plucking at it from amongst the clamour like a loose thread. But his familiar soft rasp was shaping sounds unknown to her, the throaty, hushing consonants and curled rhotics of Dunmeris. Something like bitterness flared in her stomach, and instinctively she quelled the feeling with a flex of one hand. The resentful ghosts squirming in her gut had had too much of their way lately, and frankly she was getting bored of it.

“Morning,” said Etienne to Jórunn’s relief, locating what sounded to her like a suitable enough opening in the conversation. Before anyone could reply, a great, lumbering mass barrelled into her, damp paws pressing cold spots into her thighs and wet nose nudging insistently at her face.

“Meeko!” she exclaimed, pushing him away from her. “Meeko, how I missed you. What a long twelve hours it has been.”

“Morning,” said Raydrin once the dog’s excitement had settled. “Good evening?”

Blood pooled hotly in her cheeks, and Jórunn readied herself with an indignant reply before realising with embarrassment that Etienne had been the target of Raydrin’s inquiry. The pair of them chatted quietly for some minutes—Mathyas and Jórunn both seemingly content to just listen—until at last they were joined by Delphine and Esbern.

“Raydrin?” said Delphine, suspicious as ever. “Who is this?”

“Delphine, this is, ah… Mathyas, my cousin. I believe I’ve mentioned him before.”

A polite euphemism, presumably for Mathyas’ sake—there wasn’t a soul present (barring Esbern) who wasn’t aware in some shape or form of Raydrin’s mysteriously vanishing cousin. Mathyas was yet to have been shoved into the deeper recesses of Raydrin’s psyche and thus still frequently made appearances in his stories and anecdotes.

“Once or twice,” said Delphine carefully after a moment’s thought. “This seems an unexpected reunion.”  

“Putting it lightly,” said Raydrin with a soft huff. “We ran into each other yesterday—it’s a long story. Mathyas is heading to Falkreath so I said he could travel with us 'til Helgen. He’s a good man to have in a fight, if we run into any trouble.”

Delphine was silent, pointedly, for a long while. 

“Well, if Raydrin trusts you, I suppose it can’t hurt to have an extra pair of hands,” she said at last with a sigh. “Your cousin tells me you commanded one of House Redoran’s companies in the war.”

“I did, yes,” replied Mathyas, slipping into the easy, relaxed sort of cadence Jórunn remembered from their time in Whiterun; nothing at all like the rabbity man she met yesterday. “A fellow veteran, then?”

“Of sorts,” said Delphine shrewdly. “Come—there’ll be plenty of time for talking on the road. Let’s move out.”

So the time came to say goodbye. Goodbyes were second-nature to Jórunn these days, one of the few constants in her life besides Raydrin. Etienne hugged her deeply, warmly, and Jórunn tucked away the familiar sting, ever duller than the last.

“I’ll never be able to repay you for what you did for me that day,” he said, moving on to Raydrin. “I owe the pair of you my life.”

“You’ve repaid us several times over, Etienne,” said Raydrin, loudly clapping the leather on Etienne’s back. “Look after yourself, all right?”

“You too. And—”

He faltered, voice drying up on his tongue.

“And best of luck to you both. Jórunn—you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. Whatever’s out there, I have every faith you can stop it.”

Pressure rose in her throat; she smothered it with a swallow, smiling thinly to mask her scepticism.

“Thanks, Etienne.”

He bid farewell to Meeko and made a hasty exit before the crack in his voice could finally give way. Then their little party of five found themselves once more on the road.  

The new dynamic was quick to assert itself; Delphine and Esbern took the fore, setting a slower pace than Jórunn was used to so as to allow Esbern the chance to ease back into physical activity. Jórunn gathered that he was being led much in the same way she was, years of living underground having rendered his eyes too sensitive to be exposed to daylight for more than a few minutes at a time. Unable to understand the two Dunmer chattering beside her, Jórunn found herself idly trying to grasp at snippets from the conversation ahead, hoping to glean what she could about their new companion. Esbern seemed to have recovered since their meeting yesterday, his mania and confusion peeling back to reveal the serious and softly spoken man lying beneath. As he and Delphine reminisced about names and places unknown to Jórunn—presumably now lost to Thalmor suppression—he would falter often, withdrawing from the conversation only to reply, when prompted, that he was admiring the sound of birdsong, or the feeling of the breeze on his skin.

“I had forgotten how sweet the air could taste,” he said, pausing to cough. “Each breath feels like ice—but gods, Delphine, if I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

“Take it easy, Esbern,” said Delphine, with more patience and tenderness than Jórunn knew she was capable of. “We can rest as often as you need.”

Raydrin and Mathyas, meanwhile, had been conversing almost non-stop since leaving the city. Jórunn was grateful for Meeko’s presence at her side, despite how frequently he seemed to bump into her thigh, (weren’t dogs supposed to trot on ahead?) and she wondered perhaps if the dog was aware, in some way, of her disability. But she appreciated the solidarity either way. When her ankle suddenly buckled beneath her, the dirt road below her feet not meeting her as expected, Raydrin snapped out of his conversation and lurched to steady her.

“B’vehk, Jórunn,” he said, fingers squeezing into the flesh of her hip. His grasp on her released once he was confident she had her footing. “Sorry, I… I’m not used to leading you and talking with someone else at the same time.”

“Evidently,” she snipped.

“Sorry,” he said again, sounding embarrassed, and briefly she felt a sharp twinge of guilt. “Are you hurt?”

“I can handle a little stumble,” she said, reaching behind her for the side of her pack; “but I might walk with my cane for now.”

He didn’t protest or reply, and neither he nor Mathyas made any attempt to pick up their conversation. Feeling increasingly awkward—even though she was not at fault!—Jórunn cleared her throat and asked; “So what were you two talking about?”

It was Raydrin who replied.

“Good question,” he said. “Ah… a bit of everything, I suppose. Mostly I’ve been filling Mathyas in on all the gaps we left in our story yesterday.”

“Such as?” she pressed.

“He wanted to know more about the Greybeards, and the journey to High Hrothgar. I’ve been regaling him with tales of Wulfgar’s antics.”

Jórunn fought against the twitching at the corners of her lips, wrangling her urge to frown into something hopefully resembling a smile. Could Mathyas not speak for himself? He’d said hardly a word to her all morning. She had felt back in Last Seed as though the pair of them were developing a kinship, but the last few months seemed to have extinguished any trace of it.

“Has he regaled you with tales of his own antics, Mathyas?”

“Not as far as I can tell, no,” said Mathyas, sounding amused. “You’ll have to enlighten me.”

Raydrin chuckled nervously.

“Where to start,” said Jórunn. “Well, there was the time he served wine from a sacred Kynerite urn—reserved normally for the holy glacial water used by the Greybeards in their ritual purification.”

“He did not,” said Mathyas.

“It was just sitting there in the kitchens,” Raydrin moaned.

“Because it was being cleaned!”

“How was I to know?!”

“And I take it he’s explained to you that the junior monks are sworn to vows of silence?” Jórunn went on, ignoring him.

“He has, yes.”

“So on another occasion,” she said, “Einarth was using the monastery baths—and Raydrin, so keen to help, was making the rounds for a load of laundry when he came upon this seemingly discarded towel. And poor Einarth, being unable to call for assistance, had to, ah… well. It was not the old monk’s most dignified moment, let’s put it that way.”

“Raydrin, you menace,” said Mathyas. “Terrorizing Skyrim’s elderly like that. They should put you away.”

“Thanks, Jórunn, for sharing,” Raydrin said bitterly.

“Oh, that’s the least of it,” she continued. “I haven’t even mentioned the time he traumatised the Companions’ poor, old, unsuspecting handmaiden by getting caught with Aela in a—”

“Aaand that’s enough of that!” he said suddenly. “My dignity has taken enough of a battering for one day!”

Mathyas snickered. And Jórunn smiled to herself, satisfied.

 

They made camp amidst frost-crusted ferns on the shores of an icy creek, gurgling softly as it flowed towards Lake Honrich. When the cookware had been scrubbed clean and the silence of night laid claim to those sparse, wintry woods, Mathyas volunteered to take first watch; taking position by the fire, he was joined shortly after by Delphine, and the pair of them chatted quietly against crackling flames whilst the rest of their party bedded down for the evening.

“How are you faring?” asked Raydrin as he slipped through the opening of their tent, allowing a sharp and bitter draft to pierce momentarily through the warmth.

“Achey,” said Jórunn as she unwrapped the linen from around the arch of her foot. “Think I can feel a few bruises forming from our little encounter yesterday.”

“Same. My whole left side feels like someone flung me into a wall.”

“Sorry,” Jórunn cringed.

“It’s fine,” said Raydrin with a soft laugh, taking her other foot in hand and beginning to loosen the footwrap. Jórunn jumped at the sudden contact, his flesh warm against her own chilled skin. “Your footwrap’s all damp. Are your boots still waterproof?”

“I think there’s some water coming in around my left heel,” she admitted. “Nothing serious, though.”

“I’ll have a look tomorrow morning. Should still have some beeswax around somewhere.”

Tossing aside the discarded cloth, Raydrin cradled her foot in both hands and ran his thumbs along the tendons from her toes to her ankle. Fingers squeezed gently into the tender flesh of her soles.

“Actually, though,” he went on, “I was more referring to everything that happened with Esbern. After running into Mathyas, I… I feel we never got a chance to talk about it.”  

He let her foot go; she shivered.

“Are you all right, Jórunn?”

“I’m fine,” she said, drawing her knees close to her chest and patting around in search of her dry socks. “Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it.”

“Hm,” said Raydrin.

“How is Mathyas?” she asked as she shuffled down into her bedroll. “Were you able to wheedle any answers out of him?”

“Like drawing blood from a stone,” said Raydrin with a scoff, and from the sounds of it, he, too, was nesting down for the night. “But eventually, yes. He’s been better.”

Jórunn hummed.

“I’m working on it,” said Raydrin. “We have at least a week before we reach Helgen. I’m hoping I can persuade him to stay with us. But if not… I’ll tell you more once we’ve parted ways.”

“I’m just glad he’s all right,” said Jórunn quietly. “You must be so relieved.”

“Relieved doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Raydrin murmured. “But I’m glad, too. In spite of everything.”

Jórunn wondered if he was going to shuffle closer, if they were going to fend off the cold—as they did most nights—together. But Raydrin lay still. She pulled her bedroll in tighter.

“I know you’ll need some time to process everything,” Raydrin said at last, pausing to blow out his lantern. “But I’m here to listen whenever you’re ready.”

Jórunn tucked her nose into the fur lining of her bedroll. “Thanks, Raydrin.”

He said nothing more. Jórunn thought of Brynjolf’s arm draped across her waist, and let the phantom weight of it lull her into a cold, restless sleep.   

 

---

 

Raydrin awoke to harsh sunlight warming the canvas of his tent, and to the sound of muffled voices emanating from beyond.

“…originally an Akaviri fortress,” Esbern was saying, as Raydrin emerged blearily from his nest and started feeling around for his boots, “constructed in the late First Era during the Tsaesci conquest of Skyrim. Of course, this predated the formation of the Blades as they are known today; after the war, Sky Haven Temple originally served as an outpost for the Dragonguard, the personal bodyguards of Emperor Reman the First…”

Frost crackled beneath Raydrin’s feet as he trudged across camp to join them. The fire had been rekindled, but its infant flames were yet to be putting out much heat. He sank onto a damp log beside Jórunn and tucked his arms around his middle for warmth. Jórunn nudged her knee against his own.

“So how did a place like that come to be forgotten?” she asked when Esbern had finished. “How do you lose an entire temple?”

“The fortress and its treasures are protected by a Blood Seal,” said Esbern. “Once activated, it can be unlocked only by the blood of a Dragonborn. After the death of Martin Septim and the end of the Dragonborn bloodline, I can imagine only that the temple was sealed and abandoned, to be reopened upon the Dragonborn's return. But then, of course, the Thalmor came to power and the strength of the Blades diminished, and what remained of our archives was largely destroyed during the war. The Temple and its significance were forgotten.”

“Were there many Mer among the ranks of the Blades?” asked Raydrin around the back end of a yawn. “Two hundred years isn’t so long, for an elf.”

“Aha!—an astute question. Indeed, the Blades did draw its agents from all four corners of the Empire—but our elven contingents were based largely in the south, far removed from Sky Haven Temple. Especially, as you will know, once Morrowind seceded from the Empire. And at the time, of course, our southern counterparts were preoccupied with rather more pressing matters. Knowledge of Sky Haven Temple went with our human forefathers to their graves.”

Raydrin hummed.

“You must forgive me, my boy,” Esbern went on; “between you and the other young elf, I’m afraid I’m struggling to tell you apart.”

Raydrin laughed. “I’m Raydrin,” he said. “Mathyas, my cousin, is the one without the dashing beard.”

Esbern squinted at him, hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. “Hm,” he said, unconvinced. “Well, I shall do my best to remember.”

“Where is he, by the way?” asked Raydrin. “And Delphine?”

“Delphine and Meeko have gone hunting,” said Jórunn, sinking her chin into her palms. “Mathyas said he was heading downstream to run through some sword drills.”

Esbern poked at the fire with a gnarled stick.

“I’ll go and see how he’s doing,” Raydrin announced, getting to his feet. “Call me when you’re making a start with breakfast.”

His companions replied with muted hums of acknowledgement. Raydrin stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, stopped briefly by his tent to collect his weapon, and made his way across cold, brittle earth toward the stream.

He found Mathyas, as expected, moving silently through his drills, mechanical and precise.

“Dayn,” said Mathyas without looking over his shoulder.

“Dayn,” Raydrin replied. “How did you know it was me?”  

“I doubt any of the others would be coming to check on me,” said Mathyas, shifting elegantly from an overhand cut to a pass to a follow-up thrust. Raydrin studied him for a few moments, piecing together what he could from the outline of sinewy limbs that would show occasionally through his shapeless clothing. Mathyas had always been lean, but there was a gauntness to him now, clear in the cut of his browbone and the hollows of his eye-sockets.

“Did you sleep well?” Raydrin asked.

“I managed a few hours uninterrupted,” said Mathyas, cycling through the abhahr bulor; still he had not looked at Raydrin. “Which I suppose is better than usual.”

“Do you do this every morning?”

“All the walking makes me stiff,” said Mathyas. “This keeps me limber.”

Raydrin held back his laughter; it was such a Mathyas thing to say. He, too, knew full well the side-effects of prolonged travelling, but chose to spend his mornings wringing out every last drop of sleep, instead.

He cleared his throat. “Do you want a sparring partner?”

At last Mathyas stopped, lowering his weapon and turning to Raydrin with a hard blink. Raydrin had noticed a few of those yesterday; he wondered if Mathyas was even aware he was doing them. He’d developed several little nervous tics since their parting, knuckling the bridge of his nose with his index fingers, or scrubbing both hands anxiously back and forth through his hair. Mathyas sized him up for a second, gaze lingering by the sword at Raydrin’s hip.

“All right,” he said with a nod. Raydrin drew his weapon and gave it a couple of loose swings, dropping to his preferred starting guard. Then he breathed in deeply and lunged.

They used to do this often, but those days had ended many years ago; around the beginning of Raydrin’s descent into the throes of skooma. He couldn’t remember the last time they had sparred, but the motions came back to him easily enough. Mathyas, on the other hand, fought with a new sort of furtiveness, making up for in speed what he may have lost in strength and power. He’d always been an excellent swordsman, but had the propensity to fight methodically and cautiously, occasionally to the detriment of his upper hand. No such caution was present here; Mathyas was fighting dirty, almost viciously, up close and offensive but light on his feet, and never lingering for even a heartbeat. Was it on purpose, or was this, too, something he had picked up without realizing?

It was more of a challenge than Raydrin had anticipated for so early in the day, and he soon found his breath coming in hard puffs. When he decided he’d had enough, he waited for Mathyas to pull a feint and then pretended to fall for it, allowing his cousin to twist his blade and send it flying.  

“Whew,” he said, whistling as he regained his breath. “That Nazir of yours has put some dirty tricks up your sleeve.”

Mathyas stared at him, frowning. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Let me win.”

“I didn’t let you win,” said Raydrin.

“I’m not stupid, Raydrin. And neither are you. You would never have fallen for that.”

Feeling like always as though Mathyas could see right through him, Raydrin ducked his gaze and went to retrieve his blade in silence. Behind him, Mathyas sheathed his weapon.

“Maybe I was having a bad morning,” Raydrin muttered as they made their way back to camp.

Mathyas sighed.

“Lying doesn’t become you, Raydrin.”

 

---

 

The dragon lay dead, and Mathyas’ ears were still ringing.

Time seemed to have slowed; the very air about his person was viscous and dense, charged with the same static buzzing that now clung to his eardrums. Sunlight swathed his vision. Smoke sat pungent in his nostrils. Mathyas watched, dazedly, as dragon flesh melted away, as scales and sinew peeled back from bone, and as his blood-drenched cousin sank to his knees beside Jórunn—the Dragonborn—and gathered her, trembling, into the security of his embrace.

On the other side of the clearing, Delphine was fussing over Esbern, whose flame atronach evaporated in a shower of golden sparks. Where had Meeko gone? Mathyas flexed his jaw and the ringing spiked before receding, revealing to him the birdsong that had since returned to this scene of destruction. Something hot and wet was dribbling down his neck. Blood?

“On your feet, soldier.”

He jumped, squinting against the sun to find the outline of Delphine extending one hand. Gratefully he took it, allowing her to pull him to his feet.

“Well fought,” she said. “It isn’t easy, keeping your cool.”

Mathyas didn’t respond; his gaze remained fixed on Jórunn and Raydrin, who sat close enough to the perimeter of his earshot for him to hear the harsh, ragged stutter of Jórunn’s sobbing.

“She’s crying,” he said, dumbly. His soft, tender-hearted cousin had just slain a dragon. “She— why is she—”

“It hurts, I gather,” said Delphine. Mathyas finally glanced down at her, finding that she, too, was staring grimly at their companions. “Poor girl,” she added with a sigh.

He followed her gaze, bearing witness to the scene once more. In this vast empty clearing, by the looming structure of the dragon’s mighty ribcage, the Dragonborn looked so small. She had towered, before, buttressed by her Thu’um, but wept now as a human. How did it feel? To bare one’s soul against such a violent intrusion?

“How many has she—”

He faltered, unsure of how to finish.

“How many souls is that?”

“I believe that was her third,” said Delphine. “But this is only the beginning. There could be dozens, hundreds more before this is over.”

Mathyas watched as Jórunn clung to Raydrin, staring blankly into the nothing past his shoulder.

His own problems seemed suddenly to pale, in comparison.

 

She was quiet for the next day or two—Raydrin told him that was normal.

“She did this last time,” he explained in Dunmeris, incongruously upbeat to avoid drawing her suspicion. “After Kynesgrove. To be frank, I still don’t think she’s the way she was before, and I’m not sure she ever will be. But I’m hoping it’ll get easier. Especially now Delphine’s agreed to let the rest of us deal the finishing blows.”

“What difference would that make?”

“It’s hard to say—mind this incline,” said Raydrin. “Jórunn’s not exactly forthcoming. But from what I gather, the dragon she killed herself was more… resentful. She doesn’t seem to have the same issue when someone else kills it.”

“Vehk, Raydrin,” Mathyas muttered, rubbing his temple. “So this is it now? You just… roam the wilds until the dragons come to you? Hoping each encounter won’t be your last?”

“You sound like Delphine,” Raydrin scoffed softly to himself. “But yes, essentially. It's better me than her. And we’ve made it this far.”

“You’ve fought three dragons. That’s not exactly a compelling—”

“If you have any suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them,” he snapped. “You could always come with us. Help me out.”

Mathyas grit his jaw, finding himself backed into a corner.

“Mind yourself here,” said Raydrin in Cyrodilic, “these puddles have frozen over.”

Jórunn nodded, unspeaking. They pressed on in silence.

 

As they ventured further westward, and as the temperate forests of the Rift started giving way to rocky, barren mountain passes, Mathyas was taking his watch on the evening of the sixth day when there came a noise from the direction of Raydrin’s tent. He glanced up from the flames, ears twitching, and readied himself to stand in case the situation called for it. Then the tent flaps shifted and out from the darkness emerged Jórunn, loosely tying the laces of her boots and blowing some hair from her face with a disgruntled sigh. She got to her feet and took several steps towards him, before pausing and whispering, “Mathyas?”

He stood from his perch. “Yes?” he whispered back, softly, so as to avoid waking any of their companions.

Jórunn scrunched her lips to one side.

“Can you guide me to the fire?”

Reflexively Mathyas bowed his head. “Of course,” he said, realising only afterwards that she wouldn’t have seen it. He moved to offer his arm and led her carefully, as asked, to a spot by the fire. Jórunn tucked her cloak beneath her and lowered herself to the ground.

“I was just about to have some tea,” said Mathyas once they were settled. “Would you like to join me?”

“Yes, please,” she nodded, rubbing her hands together and blowing into her palms.

Mathyas hooked the kettle over the stove and set about spooning tea leaves into his pot. Jórunn didn’t speak, so neither did he; he went through the motions silently and snuck glances at her through the flames, hoping that he might catch some slip in her composure. In the firelight, she looked statuesque, as if her pale skin, high cheekbones, and blank, unfocused stare had been carved from marble. But like a statue, her thoughts were unknowable; the woman remained a mystery to him.

“Having trouble sleeping?” he asked once the tea was brewing.  

Jórunn nodded slowly. “Mm-hm.”

Mathyas poked at the fire, debating whether he ought to probe any further. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“There isn’t really anything to discuss,” Jórunn muttered, glumly folding her elbows across her knees. “I mean… there’s nothing in particular keeping me up. I just can’t sleep.”

“I can understand that,” said Mathyas. He’d expected no different; Jórunn’s not exactly forthcoming, Raydrin had said. It tallied with his own impression of her, formed all those months ago in Whiterun. Mathyas supposed they were alike in that way.

When the tea had finished brewing, he poured it out and circled round the fire to present to Jórunn her cup.

“Ooh,” she said after taking her first sip, shuddering. “Ooh, gods, that’s… unusual.”

“Sorry,” Mathyas chuckled. “It’s Dunmeri smoked tea. I bought it back in Riften, but it’s—well, it’s not to everyone’s taste.”

“It’s not bad,” she said, hazarding another small, experimental sip. “It was just… unexpected.”

“Don’t feel like you have to finish it,” Mathyas muttered. They drank together in silence for some moments; eventually Jórunn cleared her throat.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

“Smoked tea?”

“Morrowind.”

Mathyas sighed, casting his gaze to the murky darkness beyond their circle of firelight.

“Terribly,” he admitted. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of home.”

It was only after saying it that he realized he may have revealed too much; that he may have opened the door to unwanted questions. He glanced back at Jórunn, hoping to anticipate her next move, but she was just frowning at the flames in silence.

“It’s strange,” she said at last, gracefully steering the conversation away from him; “Raydrin never seemed to. I always wondered how much of that was him lying for my own sake.”

“He won’t have been lying,” said Mathyas, and Jórunn’s frown unravelled. “Forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, but… Raydrin had been unwell for a long while before coming to Skyrim. I don’t think he was built for that life.”

She circled her thumb along the rim of her cup.

“But it suits him—this, travelling with you. You’re staring death in the face each day, and yet… he seems more like himself than he has in a long, long time.”

Jórunn didn’t reply. Mathyas wanted to say more, he likes you very much, you know, because he had strong suspicions that the feeling was mutual, that both parties were merely too scared to upset what seemed to him like a very delicate equilibrium… but he feared he may already have said too much. And besides, the pair of them were adults; he was sure they had their reasons.

“Thanks, Mathyas,” said Jórunn at last. “I’m glad he’s with me.”

He smiled, in spite of the fact she couldn’t see, and they finished their tea in a comfortable silence. Mathyas wondered as he drank whether he might muster the courage to stay with them after all, if this was his one chance to work towards something good for a change.

But he tucked the thought away for later; something about it made his gut churn.

He still had until Helgen.

 

---

 

The Pale, Skyrim, 9th Morning Star 4E 202

Frost clung in swirls to the window of Sanjir’s inn room, and he watched, restlessly, as the rising sun set it aglow. Behind him, Eifid lay sleeping, though it would not be long now before daylight touched his face; Sanjir’s time was growing short.

He slipped from beneath the furs, taking care to ensure his weight remained distributed evenly across the mattress. Eifid stirred but did not wake. Sanjir dressed, slowly. Then he searched through Eifid’s pack, found the scroll sealed with the bear-paw crest, and replaced it with the forgery.

“Leaving so early?” asked Eifid, as Sanjir—perched upon the edge of the mattress—laced up his boots.

He turned to him over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, lifting Eifid’s hand from the furs and pressing a kiss against his pale knuckles. “I have only 'til Tirdas to reach Windhelm.”

Eifid slid his hand along Sanjir’s jaw, twining fingers into his hair. “Very well,” he said. “I will not keep you.”

Sanjir turned to kiss his palm.

“Off with you,” said Eifid, tugging playfully on his earlobe, “you do not want to lose the light.”

Sanjir sighed and forced a smile, hoping his unease would pass as reluctance. “Rest well, Eifid.”

“Travel safe, Hasaf.”

He stood and slung his pack over his shoulder; Eifid slumped back against the bed.

The relief as he shut the door behind him tasted bitter.

Notes:

if you're reading this, thank you for your patience, and welcome back! this chapter has been 11 months in the running and a lot has happened in that time, but i hope it won't be 11 months before the next one :)

not to shamelessly plug some of my newer works, but if you haven't already, please check out:

1. the waiting door, a short, novella-style fic exploring the lives of mathyas, raydrin, and anya in their youth
2. man amongst gods: a chronicle of the last dragonborn, an excerpt from a memoir written by raydrin as he looks back on his time with jórunn

hope you enjoyed the chapter!! please leave a comment if you have the time <3

Chapter 35: The Calling (Part I)

The Sea of Ghosts, 4th Morning Star 4E 202

Against the swelling of the sea, the Seglhrafn contracted and groaned, its ribs of oak bending as if to expand around a deep breath. Clench-bolts trembled, hammocks brayed, and magelight danced about the dark hollow of their cabin, for fire was too great a risk with all the rocking of the boat. 

“I want to go home,” Onmund moaned, slouching forward to retch once more into his bucket. 

“It’ll pass,” said Cassathra soothingly, rubbing circles into his back. She was faring better, though only a little; the smell of bile drifting up from Onmund’s bucket was threatening to tip her own nausea from manageable into overpowering. “It’ll pass.”

Their nausea abated, but the storm did not pass; some long hours later they found themselves pulling into the harbour of Dawnstar—or Danstrar, as it was known by the haggard-looking patrons of their inn—where the lashings of rain had frozen into spates of sharp, razor-like snow. Inside, the stench of whale oil clung thick to the walls, to the beards and leathers of old whalers. Dark, slippery gazes followed them from the door all the way to the bar; Cassathra and J’zargo bowed their heads and kept very quiet, whilst Onmund, speaking in Nordic, asked the barkeep for a room.

That night, Cassathra dreamed strange dreams. She dreamt that Mathyas had taken Kagrenac’s Tools to syphon power from the Heart of Lorkhan, ascending to Godhood as the Tribunal had done before him. His skin turned blue and gold. 

“You have to help me, Cass,” he said desperately, when she visited him at his home in the Rootspire of Blacklight. Brelyna was there, too. “Something terrible is happening to me.” 

“What is it?” she asked, as he prostrated himself before her. But then she saw it; the bristly hairs sprouting from his elbows and the backs of his knees, the sores on his face and the elongation of his fingers. Horrified she watched as he transformed into a hideous monster. Two pairs of legs extended from his back; his waist contorted inwards before segmenting into two tagmata; black, beady eyes emerged from the flesh of his forehead, then his jaw split open to allow for the protrusion of two great fangs. 

“You know how to fix this,” said Ancano from over her shoulder. “Come on, child. We only covered this last week.”

“I— I don’t remember,” Cassathra stammered, choking on her tears as spider-Mathyas began scuttling up the walls of the Rootspire. “I don’t know how.”

Ancano tutted. “Well, if you cannot save your cousin, we shall simply have to expel you. I will send word to your parents straight away. They shall arrive to take you back to Blacklight in the morning.”

“No!” cried Cassathra. “No, please— don’t make me go back.” 

But dream-Ancano just laughed.

Onmund and J’zargo, from the looks on their faces when they came down for breakfast, hadn’t slept much better. 

“I overheard some of the locals talking about it last night,” said Onmund quietly, peering into his tankard of oily broth before glancing nervously about the bar. “It sounded like these… nightmares are something of an epidemic here.”

“J’zargo does not like it one bit. It reeks of Varmiina’s meddling.” The Khajiit sniffed, then retracted his lips in a look of disgust. “And pickled herring.”

“I’m sure it’s just a coincidence,” mumbled Cassathra. “Either way, it won’t be our problem for long. The storm should die down in a day or two and then we can get out of here.” 

“About that,” said Onmund, and it was as if he had sloshed icy water down Cassathra’s back. 

“What?”

He cringed visibly. “Well… the barman was saying that the Seglhrafn suffered multiple hull leaks in the storm. It’ll be stuck here for at least a week or two while they work on the repairs.”

Cassathra stared at him. 

“So we catch the next one,” she said after a protracted silence. “Boats heading to Winterhold must pass through here all the time.”

Onmund shook his head. “The next isn’t due for another two weeks.”

“Why—” started J’zargo, hissing under his breath, “did you not think to mention this at the start of breakfast, dear Onmund?” 

“I was going to,” Onmund protested miserably. “But then you started talking about your weird butcher shop dream and there was never a good time to bring it up!”

“What?! What sort of moment were you waiting for? We are going to be stuck here in this miserable piss-hole for two weeks and you thought it could wait until—”

Cassathra shut her eyes, letting them bicker between themselves for a minute. At last she pushed forth her unfinished bowl of porridge and stood from the table abruptly. 

“We’ll figure something out,” she said, stunning them into silence. “I’m going back to bed.”

 

---

 

Pale Imperial Camp, Skyrim, 15th Morning Star 4E 202

“Excellent work, optio,” said Legate Tituleius, casting a precursory glance over the Stormcloak military orders. “Yes— very good. Very good indeed.” 

Sanjir watched as the legate moved to the back of the tent to converse with his fellow officers; Tribune Hella and the battlemage palatines. They talked in low murmurs, softly enough that he could only make out the odd word. 

His gaze began to wander. There was a certain luxuriousness to the legate’s tent, a sense of indulgence that he had not seen elsewhere in their camp—nor at the Nightgate Inn, or anywhere in between. Curtains of red wool covered the dark, oily canvas. Wisplike coils of incense overpowered the musky smell. Bear pelts lay draped over the backs of wooden chairs, and from the tent’s inner frame hung a bronze icon of Stendarr, whose stern, bearded visage glinted dully in the torchlight. It was almost convincing, the impression of splendour and permanence, this raft of home comforts carried for miles through the snow. But the flapping of the canvas and the whistle of a bitter wind afforded no doubt at all, that beneath all the extravagance this was a tent like any other.

Finally Sanjir’s tired eyes came to rest once more upon high command, where they stood clustered around their war map. Mutton-chopped Tituleius, so insufferably Nibenean both in manner and in looks; Tribune Hella, with her strong, heavy-set face, each of her features so striking in isolation and yet so utterly mundane in their relation to the whole; then Tribune Imrich, the round-faced Colovian, whose ruddy cheeks and cheerful Bruman accent belied the capricious warlord underneath. 

Beside Hella stood her praefect, the second-in-command of her auxiliary regiment. The man was young for such a senior officer, or at least he appeared to be. Classically Nordic in looks, his colouring was fair and his features rugged, but his cheeks were shaven and his thick blonde hair was cropped close to his skull, imitating the Imperial fashion. Perhaps sensing Sanjir’s eyes on him, he looked up suddenly and caught his gaze from across the tent, frown of concentration unravelling in mild surprise. Sanjir blanched and stiffened in his seat. There was something in his gaze that reminded him of Eifid; sweet, gentle Eifid, the Stormcloak courier who had allowed Sanjir into his bed, whose reasons for enlisting were no different from Sanjir’s own and whose willingness to trust might have condemned him to—

“Optio?”

Sanjir jumped, snapping out of his thoughts. 

“Sir?” 

“I said you’re dismissed,” said Tituleius. “Go. Eat some food, clean yourself up, get some rest. You’ve earned it.” 

Sanjir swallowed. “What… what about the assignment?”

His gaze flickered back to the war table, where the young praefect and his fellow officers had resumed their discussion. 

“I mean—what happens next?” 

Tituleius raised a brow. 

“You’ll receive further instruction in due course,” he said. “For now, we have no further use for you.”

“I— yes, sir,” said Sanjir. 

He stood, saluted, and left.

 

The walk back to his own lodgings was numbing. Row upon row of identical tents passed him by. If he dared to look beyond them, at the nonexistent horizon where the white, featureless sky bled into the white, featureless earth, he would start to feel dizzy. So he stared down at his feet, at the brownish snow churned up by footfall and hoofprints, and stumbled without aim until he miraculously found his way. 

After cleaning himself up, he sought Leorn out for dinner. They ate together by firelight, for darkness had long since fallen upon the camp. The winds had died down and the clouds had parted, allowing Kyne’s Lights to glitter blue-green up above them.

“Sanjir,” said Leorn carefully when he was finished, lowering his empty bowl to the snow at his feet. “Are you all right?” 

“Hm?” 

Sanjir looked up from the flames of their campfire, at his friend’s impassive face and that intense, all-knowing gaze. 

“Oh. Yes, I’m fine,” he said, stirring his stew around his bowl. “Just tired.”

Leorn cocked his head. “You seem distracted.”

Sanjir considered this for a moment, then shrugged. Leorn knew better than to ask, appreciating the clandestine nature of Sanjir’s assignment. For this Sanjir was grateful, as he did not wish to dwell; he could thank only the gods that high command had not thought to enquire after his methods. 

“Did anything interesting happen while I was gone?” he asked instead, fishing in his stew for a chunk of potato.

Leorn did not answer straight away, clearly debating with himself how he ought to respond. 

“There is something I have been meaning to share with you,” he said at last, rising slowly to his feet. “Wait here.”

Sanjir looked up in surprise, his gaze following Leorn’s enormous back as it disappeared into the darkness of his tent. He wasn’t expecting that; he hadn’t expected much at all. Leorn wasn’t a gossip, didn’t pay attention to that sort of thing. At most, Sanjir was expecting an update on the Legion’s latest movements, maybe even a remark or two on some new orders from Haafingar, if Leorn was feeling particularly loquacious. 

This didn’t feel like any of those things. 

When Leorn emerged a few moments later—ducking his blonde, shaggy head to clear the opening of the tent—there was an unfamiliar furtiveness to his gaze. He scanned their vicinity, to the other tents and campfires in their row, as if ensuring that they were out of the earshot of their fellow soldiers. Then he returned to his seat and handed Sanjir a roll of paper. 

“We were issued these a day or two after you left,” he said. Sanjir put his bowl to one side and took the paper suspiciously, unsettled by the vaguest hint of anxiety knitted into Leorn’s furrowed brows. 

He unrolled the papers, finding several sheets layered atop of each other. 

 

HAVE YOU SEEN THESE PERSONS?
WANTED ALIVE

By Order of the Imperial Legion
for Crimes against Skyrim and her People

Adult Human Female between twenty and thirty years of age; of Nordic and Imperial Heritage; five Feet and nine Inches (Cyr.) in height; slim build; dark hair; Fugitive is blind and may be seen using aids such as a wooden cane or the guidance of her Companion

Adult Dunmer Male between thirty and one hundred years of age; five Feet and ten Inches (Cyr.) in height; athletic build; dark hair

WARNING!
Fugitives are armed and extremely dangerous. Engage with caution!

A hefty bounty shall be rewarded to any Citizen who can provide the Imperial Legion with information as to their whereabouts.

First Emissary Elenwen

 

The poster was stamped with the official seal of the Empire. Sanjir stared at it in utter disbelief, at the printed illustrations of faces uncannily familiar to him. There was something off about them, where the illustrator had assumed or oversimplified certain features—and Raydrin was clean-shaven, which struck Sanjir as odd—but they were recognisable enough. 

“I don’t understand,” Sanjir muttered. “How did this happen?” 

Leorn sighed. “As the story goes,” he started, and he spoke slowly and carefully as he recalled each item; “they… forged invitations to an Embassy ball; coerced a noblewoman; impersonated two Thalmor officers; broke into the Emissary's private solar; murdered over a dozen guards; freed a prisoner, and… stole highly classified military documents.”

Sanjir lifted Raydrin and Jórunn’s poster to leaf through the two others beneath; the first, a blunt-faced woman of middling age, and the second, a much younger man with a skittish-looking gaze that came through even in woodblock print. 

“That doesn’t sound like them at all,” he said. “But then…”

He met Leorn’s eyes; the other man shrugged. 

“But then,” Leorn concurred, “maybe it was.” 

They’d both been there in Solitude, the night of Raydrin and Jórunn’s rendezvous with the Wood Elf in the Winking Skeever. Perhaps they really had done all of those things. 

And if they had… Sanjir was more impressed than anything else. 

“Morwha’s teat,” he swore. “I just…” he looked around suddenly, then lowered his voice to a whisper, “what I don’t understand is why they haven’t said anything about Jórunn being Dragonborn.” 

Leorn hummed. 

“Surely they know,” Sanjir hissed. “Surely!”

“We cannot yet say,” said Leorn. “Either way… I am keeping that particular piece of information to myself for now.”

“Of course,” Sanjir muttered. “Yes, of course.”

He looked back down at the poster, then shook his head with a sigh.

“It’s funny,” he said, “to be honest, I’m just relieved that they’re alive.” 

Leorn hummed again. “If you’re done, I should put those away,” he said, extending a hand to ask for the posters back. “We are not supposed to have our own copies.” 

Sanjir rolled them back into a tube with some reluctance and handed them across. Just moments after Leorn returned from his tent, the snowy crunch of encroaching footsteps had Sanjir turning over his shoulder to find Centurio Fjora, the head of Leorn’s century, emerging from the dark. 

“Greetings, optiones,” she said, Nordic accent jumping harshly from the g to the rolled r. “A pleasant evening, is it not?”

They muttered their agreement. 

“Leorn,” said Fjora, “a quick word?”

“Já, centurio,” he said, getting to his feet with a polite bow of his head. 

Sanjir watched for a few moments as they moved out of earshot, but his attention soon drifted back to his unfinished dinner. As he picked boredly at the last cold dregs of stew, snippets of lilting Nordic floated by to grace his ears. 

“Við höfum fengið fyrirmæli frá yfirstjórninni um að við eigum að fara á Virkið Dunstad. Ég þarf á hjálp þinni að halda til að virkja hermennina.”

“Hvenær?”

“Það fyrsta á morgun. Við þurfum að vera tilbúin til brottfarar fyrir hádegi.”

“Ég skil.”

“Dreifðu boðskapnum í kvöld; fáðu liðþjálfana til að hjálpa þér. Karlarnir þurfa að hvíla sig vel og vera tilbúnir að pakka saman hið fyrsta.”

“Já, centurio.”

“Þakka þér, Leorn. Það verður allt.”

Leorn returned to his seat in silence. 

“Optio Sanjir,” said Fjora, clearing her throat. 

“Yes, ma’am?”

“When you have finished your dinner, I would return to your own barracks with haste. Your centurion will be wishing to speak with you at the earliest opportunity.” 

Sanjir nodded, swallowing. “Yes, ma’am.” 

“Very good,” said Fjora. She hesitated a moment, then bowed. “That will be all. Good evening to you both.”

“What was that about?” asked Sanjir once she had gone. 

“We, ah…” Leorn hesitated a moment, meeting Sanjir’s gaze fleetingly from under his brow. “High command has issued the orders to move on Fort Dunstad.”

Sanjir’s stomach sank. “Oh.”

“The optiones are to start mobilising the troops,” Leorn went on. “Tonight. So that we are ready to break camp first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Oh,” said Sanjir again, the usual reactions failing him. 

“Are you finished?” said Leorn, nodding towards Sanjir’s empty bowl. Mechanically Sanjir handed it to him. “I was given these by the quartermaster,” Leorn continued, fishing around in his knapsack for a moment. “Honey biscuits. Don’t tell the others.” 

He held one out to Sanjir, who took it with a muted thanks. 

“Any time,” said Leorn, with a smile and a pat on the shoulder. 

Sanjir nibbled at his biscuit, and they ate together in silence. 

The aurorae up above them swam indifferently along.

 

---

 

After two more sleepless nights, Cassathra, Onmund and J’zargo decided to take matters into their own hands. If sea travel was out of the question, then they would make their way to Winterhold on foot; for even traversing the frozen wastes of northern Skyrim seemed to them more appealing than spending another minute in Dawnstar. 

They spent what remained of their stipend on a tent, snowshoes, and enough provisions to last them between inns. The stretch of land between Dawnstar and Winterhold was dominated by the treacherous Anthor mountain range, rendering the journey directly eastward out of the question, and so instead they headed south, along the road which, if followed to its end, would have led them to Whiterun.

On the twelfth of Morning Star, when they found themselves in the inn which sat at the junction of the roads between Dawnstar, Whiterun and Windhelm, Cassathra gave voice to the thought which had been eating at her since they set off. 

“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. Since we’ve already come this far south, it wouldn’t be that much of a detour to—”

“No,” said Onmund, cutting her off. He paused to swallow his mouthful of food and then set his spoon down on the table. “No. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Cassathra huffed, folding her arms across her chest. “All right, then. What was I going to say?” 

“You were going to suggest that we head down to Fellglow Keep and look for Orthorn.” 

“I—” Cassathra frowned. “All right, fine, that is what I was going to say. But what’s the problem? Why are you so against the idea?”

“We’ve already missed the start of term,” said Onmund with a sigh. “You know what they’re like. Going to Fellglow would take us at least another week and I don’t think they’d take too kindly to our excuse.” 

“But they won’t know,” said Cassathra. “They won’t know we went to Fellglow. And if we find the book, we can tell them we picked it up from Solitude like we’d planned. Come on—if we’ve already missed the start of term, what harm is a few more days? We’re hardly going to get into any more trouble than we already are.” 

Onmund shook his head, muttering something in Nordic. J’zargo picked at his stew. 

“J’zargo?” said Cassathra hopefully. Out of all her friends, J’zargo was the most up for adventure, the one most willing to indulge in an opportunity for heroism and bravado. But he withered under her gaze.

“J’zargo is with Onmund on this one,” he admitted. “He has sacrificed too much for this education to so casually throw away a week of study.” 

Cassathra pursed her lips; as if J’zargo was the only one of them to have made sacrifices. “Right.”

“We’re already behind, Cass,” said Onmund. “After Saarthal, I can’t—” He sighed. “We can’t afford another setback. Not all of us pick things up as quickly as you.” 

Cassathra frowned. That’s not fair, she wanted to say, but Onmund had continued before she could protest.

“And that’s beside the point; it—it sounds dangerous. ‘The Caller’, this… research they spoke of, setting up camp in an abandoned fort in the middle of nowhere… doesn’t any of that strike you as odd? Worrying?”

“Of course it does,” she said. “That’s my point—if Orthorn is down there, shouldn’t we at least try and help him?” 

Onmund sat back. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe this is callous of me, but… we don’t know the man. I don’t see why we should be putting our necks on the line.” 

“And may J’zargo remind you that Orthorn went down there willingly? Who are we to assume that he needs saving?” 

“What about the book?” said Cassathra, though she knew she was losing ground. “If Orthorn’s so happy where he is, I’m sure we can just ask him to give the book back and continue on our way. It’s our last lead. Without it, all our work, our research, just—goes to waste.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” said Onmund. “Personally, I’d have been happy for the Saarthal artefact to stay dead and buried.”

“If the artefact had stayed buried, then the dead of Saarthal would still be rolling in their graves.”

A flash of hurt and surprise crossed Onmund’s face. Cassathra’s righteousness was snuffed out like a candle in a snowstorm. 

“Sorry—” she started, “I– I didn’t mean—”

“No, it—” 

Onmund faltered. Then he sighed. 

“I’m sorry too. I understand why you want to go. I just… I just have this feeling that it’ll be more trouble than it's worth.”

Cassathra nodded, throat clenching around an unwanted lump. How could she explain? Without that book, everything they had been through, all of it would have been for nothing. Somehow, this—Jyrik, their research, the mystery… it made those awful memories easier to carry. 

“Tolfdir said they’d be sending an expedition team to Geirmund’s Hall in the summer,” Onmund went on, filling her silence. “So book or no book… our research won't go to waste.”

“Yes,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Yes, you're right. Sorry. It was silly of me to suggest it.” 

Onmund pulled a face like he wanted to disagree, tilting his head and scrunching his lips in a look of sympathy. But he seemingly decided against it, turning instead back to his food.

“Hm,” said J'zargo, lacing his fingers together. Whatever thought had prompted such a noise was not disclosed. 

 

Is there something wrong with me? Cassathra asked herself as she stared up at the ceiling of their inn room later that night, trying in vain to drown out the drone of Onmund’s snoring. Her flight from Blacklight, her insistence that she and Raydrin go to Bleak Falls Barrow, even her unfettered curiosity in the ruins of Saarthal—each misadventure had led to the ruin of people she loved. You turn twenty in five days, she cursed herself, cringing physically when she thought back on that evening’s debate. When are you going to grow up?

After what felt like hours of restlessness, she was just on the precipice of sleep when a sudden weight on her mattress had her bolting upright. 

“B’vehk! ” she squeaked, clamping a hand over her mouth. From the darkness of their inn room, a pair of round, silvery cat’s eyes peered back at her. 

“Calm down,” muttered J’zargo, “by Azurah. So dramatic.”

“Vehk, J’zargo, you scared me half to death!”

He rolled his eyes. “Someone is a little jumpy. Anyway. J’zargo is here because he wanted to tell you that he has changed his mind. And he was simply too excited by this revelation to leave it until the morning.”

“Changed your mind about what?” she asked stupidly, though she already knew the answer. 

“Gzalzi,” he swore, exasperated. “J’zargo is embarrassed to have considered you a rival. About Fellglow, you wafiit. J’zargo thinks we should go.”

“What? Why?”

“You said it yourself,” he replied. “We have put too much work into this research to let it go to waste. Especially not with the answers so tantalisingly close. The research is ours, no? We have suffered and bled for it; we should reap its rewards, also.” 

Cassathra blinked at him, overwhelmed in her sleepiness by his sudden enthusiasm.

“Just think of the glory; to unlock the mysteries of Saarthal, as mere apprentices, no less! We would be foolish to put this in the hands of the College; the very thought was enough to keep J'zargo from his sleep. He does not believe that they will investigate Geirmund's Hall; no, he does not believe they will investigate it at all. If we want this done properly, we must do it ourselves. J'zargo must have answers!”

“But you heard Onmund,” Cassathra whispered, careful to avoid waking any of their fellow inn guests. “It could be dangerous, J'zargo. We don't know what we're getting ourselves into.”

“Dangerous, perhaps,” he said, smiling at her wickedly; then he summoned a flame spell to his hand and added, “But so are we.”

She kicked him from under her furs.

“Put that out,” she hissed, glancing nervously to where one of the other guests was stirring in his cot. This deep in Stormcloak territory, a Khajiit and a Dunmer getting caught with magic in the middle of the night was a recipe for disaster. “What if someone sees us?”

J'zargo acquiesced with a shrug. “Onmund will take some persuading,” he said. “But J'zargo is sure he will come round.”

Cassathra said nothing, entirely uncertain of whose side she wanted to be on. But she could not deny the excitement that J'zargo had stirred. 

“We shall discuss this more over breakfast,” he said finally, getting to his feet. He stood by her bed for a moment, then cleared his throat and patted her shin under the furs. “Get some sleep, my friend. Come morning, we quest!” 

He left to return to his bunk and Cassathra flopped back against her mattress. It was another long while before she got any sleep.

 

Onmund was persuaded in the end, but Cassathra let J'zargo do all of the talking, reluctant to make Onmund feel as if he was being ganged up on. Begrudgingly the Nord accepted their proposition on the condition that they abandon the endeavour at the first sign of danger. Cassathra was all too happy to agree, but J'zargo had just waved a hand, dismissing him with a muttered, “Of course, of course.” This convinced neither Onmund nor Cassathra, but the trio had finally reached some sort of consensus, and that was enough for them to let it slide. 

Fellglow Keep was not easily found, but they located it at last around lunchtime on the sixteenth of Morning Star, the day before Cassathra's twentieth birthday. It—or what was left of it, at least—had been built into the mountainside, three concentric tiers of battlements nestled organically within the rock. A crumbling wall surrounded the fort, but all that remained intact was the gatehouse at the fore, standing lonely and redundant in an otherwise barren waste. 

Cassathra and J’zargo approached the fort with some trepidation; Onmund, meanwhile, was staying a short distance away to set up camp and make a start with dinner. The only sign of life was a plume of woodsmoke rising from a smokestack, but the fort seemed otherwise—at least at first glance—to be deserted. It wasn't until they drew closer that the outline of a lone figure materialised on the lowest battlement. 

“State your business,” said the figure once they came within earshot. To Cassathra's surprise, she appeared to be a Dunmer, blue-skinned, dark-haired and clad in thick, fur-lined hooded robes.

“Juohn,” she called, squinting upwards into the sun. “We, um… we're here for a book of ours. We have reason to believe it's here and we were, um— we were wondering if we could ask for it back?”

It sounded so ridiculously mundane, like she was knocking on the door of a fellow student's bedroom and not a ruined fort leagues from anything in the wilderness of the Shearpoint mountains. 

The guard didn’t reply for a long while, staring down at them from her battlements as if in disbelief. 

“What's the name of the book?” she asked at last.

Cassathra released her breath. “Lost Legends.”

“Wait here,” called the guard, before withdrawing from the battlements and disappearing into the keep without another word. 

Cassathra and J'zargo glanced at each other.

“That was easy,” said J'zargo, slumping down onto a large rock. 

“You sound disappointed.”

“J'zargo? Of course not.”

Cassathra took a seat beside him, pressing herself against him for warmth. A murder of crows circled the top of the keep, squawking garishly. 

“I suppose we should ask after Orthorn when she comes back,” muttered Cassathra.

“Are you sure that is wise?”

“She didn't attack us on sight,” she said. “I'm sure there's no harm in just asking.” 

J'zargo hummed, but did not reply. 

A short while later, the guard returned, emerging this time from the great doors at the front of the keep. J'zargo and Cassathra both stood from their perch, staring at her expectantly. She gestured inside. 

“Come with me,” she said flatly.

Exchanging a glance, they obeyed. 

The inside of the keep was in just as much a state of disrepair as its exterior. They emerged into what must once have been a grand hall, the heart of some forgotten village now lost to the ages. The walls stood in tatters, having long since succumbed to time and gravity, and lay now in great piles of rubble around the edges of the room. Emerald curtains of algae clung limply to wet stone; moss stuffed the crevices between jagged, lumpy flagstones. Devoid of all daylight, the room was lit only by torches and stumpy candles, making Cassathra squint as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. In the centre of the hall were two long banquet tables, scattered with scraps of food in a feeble imitation of a feast. The meal was attended by maybe a dozen diners. They peered at the new arrivals silently in a way that made Cassathra's skin prickle.

“Welcome to Fellglow,” said their guide in a bored sort of manner. “My name is Dralsea. You may sit.” 

Cassathra and J'zargo looked at each other again, but in the absence of any obvious alternative courses of action, simply followed the instruction. Cassathra's stomach lurched in mild alarm when J'zargo chose to sit across from her, but she supposed their separation conveyed an air of confidence and ease. Forcing herself to relax, she tried to mirror her companion's surety. 

“So,” said one of the banqueters closest to them, a handsome young Nord with fine, boyish features; “Dralsea here tells me that the pair of you are after a book.” 

Cassathra, who they had designated spokesperson, nodded. 

“That's right,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. “Ah, Lost Legends. By Talsgar the Archivist.” 

The Nord hummed, tapping his finger against a pewter goblet. 

“Ku'ilm adur ohuhm ammuu? ”

Cassathra blinked at him in surprise. “You speak Dunmeris?” she asked, slipping automatically into her mother tongue. 

The Nord shrugged. “I grew up in Raven Rock,” he explained. “You're from Blacklight, I take it? From the accent?” 

Cassathra stared at him, too stunned to reply straight away. 

“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, I am.” 

He smiled at her disarmingly. “Always a pleasure to meet a fellow countryman,” he said. “Now, I believe I asked for your names.”

“Sorry,” she said with a self-conscious chuckle. “I'm Cassathra. This is J'zargo.”

“Indeed. And J'zargo would appreciate it if this conversation could resume in a language we all understand, yes?” 

The Nord nodded. “Of course,” he said in Cyrodilic. “Apologies, my friend. My name is Asgan. Why don't you tell us a little about what you want with Lost Legends? This is an awfully long way to come for some dusty old tome.” 

“Well…” said Cassathra, shifting in her seat uncomfortably. “We're doing a research project. We've hit something of a dead end, but we think the answers might be in that book.” 

“A research project? How curious. On what topic?”

Cassathra caught J'zargo's gaze across the table.

“It… it's difficult to say,” she said carefully. “We hardly understand what it is we're researching, yet.” 

Asgan quirked a brow, but moved on without further comment. “Are you students?” he asked instead. 

“Yes. From Winterhold.” 

“Who’s your tutor?” asked another, a mousy-looking human girl sitting on Asgan's right. Cassathra turned to her quickly enough to make her neck twinge. 

“Er… Tolfdir?”

“Aw,” said the girl. “You're lucky. Tolfdir was such a sweetheart.” 

“A few bees short of a hive, though,” said a Dunmer, snickering. “Remember that time he lost his alembic?” 

Cassathra frowned at that, but quickly steeled her expression back into one of neutrality. 

“We had Colette,” said the girl, ignoring him. “Miserable cow.” 

“You were all at Winterhold too?” said Cassathra, doing her best to sound as if this was new information. It was only now as she peered down the length of the banquet table that she noticed how startlingly young everyone was. 

“For a time,” said Asgan. “But we outgrew it. Time passes so slowly up there. A few years in those frozen cloisters and you find yourself forgetting that the ‘laws of magic’ are supposed to be prescriptive, not immutable laws of nature. But thankfully we escaped. Made it out just before succumbing to the cushy temptation of an office in the Hall of Countenance and a lifetime supply of those college sweetrolls.” 

“So what are you doing here?” said Cassathra, genuinely curious about the answer and put at ease by Asgan's quiet charm. Something glittered in his gaze.

“I suppose you could call us a research collective,” he said. “We're working on a few projects of our own.” 

She nodded slowly, wanting to probe further but too nervous to take that risk. In her silence Asgan leaned forward, gaze roaming across the table in search of two unused goblets, before he reached for a jug and began pouring out some dark wine. 

“You can have Lost Legends,” he said, shrugging. “But you've come a long way. Why not have a bite to eat?” 

“We are flattered,” said J'zargo to Cassathra's relief, “but we do not wish to intrude.” 

“Not at all!” said Asgan. “We so rarely have the pleasure of entertaining guests. Please— stay a while.” He smiled at them both, pushing the goblets towards them. “I insist.”  

Cassathra and J’zargo glanced at each other once more. They didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger; if Asgan and his fellow ‘researchers’ wanted to do them harm, she supposed they would have done so already. And perhaps endearing themselves to the group would enable them to probe about Orthorn more freely. 

Seemingly arriving at the same conclusion, J’zargo shrugged. “Very well,” he said. “J’zargo supposes there is no harm in staying for a drink.”

“Excellent,” said Asgan, smiling and holding his own drink up for them to toast; “you can fill us in on all the college gossip.” 

The food was curious but plain, limited to what ingredients could be hunted or foraged so deep in the mountains. The wine, however, was delicious; sweet and rich, almost syrupy on her tongue. It appealed to the sweet tooth Cassathra shared with J'zargo, for she had never developed a taste for the bitter comberry wine favoured by her own people.

They picked at their food and chatted away, mostly about the College, but also about themselves. They answered questions about their lives and what had drawn them to magic in the first place. Cassathra found herself sharing everything, disarmed by the knowledge that she would never see these people again. She told them about Blacklight, about her parents and House Redoran, about Raydrin, and Mathyas; even about Jórunn. 

“You know the Dragonborn?” they asked, staring at her with wide eyes. 

“Well…” said Cassathra, picking at a tendril of meat still clinging to her rabbit thigh, “not really. I knew her, briefly. But I haven't seen her in months. I don't…”

She trailed off, finding herself suddenly rather sad. “It’s been a while since my brother’s last letter. I don’t even know if they’re still alive.”

“You never told J'zargo this,” said the Khajiit, drawing her gaze. She stared at him, rabbit thigh falling limp from her hand.

“I… I—”

“One question I do have,” said Asgan, cutting her off, “is how you found out about us. How you knew to come here.”

Cassathra blinked at him dazedly. “It's sort of a long story,” she admitted. “First we went to the Bard's College up in Solitude—looking for Lost Legends, you see. But they told us they didn't have it any more, because some student called Orthorn had run off with it. Orthorn's friend Ronwen caught us snooping around his old room with their professor, Ge— Gemaine? Giraud? I can't remember.”

She flapped a hand, scrunching her face.

“Anyway. So Ronwen stole this old journal from his room, and inside we found a note, telling Orthorn to come here. Said something about the ‘Caller’ and some research. And she told us that Orthorn was vulnerable because his parents were dead and he was a skooma addict and didn’t have any friends so she thought that maybe this was some kind of cult. Originally we were just going to let the book go, because, well, it's sort of a long shot anyway, and it wasn't like we knew Orthorn and we thought it might be too dangerous to come here—not to mention leagues out of the way—but then our ship got caught in a storm and we had to moor up in Dawnstar. So we were heading down here anyway, and then we thought, well, we might as well try? So that's how we found you. We were actually going to ask you whether Orthorn is here.” 

Asgan just smiled at her. “Were you, now?”

“Mm-hm,” she said, nodding eagerly. “We think—”

“Cassathra.”

Someone grasped her by the wrist. She looked down in surprise, then up to where J'zargo was reaching for her across the table, eyes wide and grave. “I— I think—”

He didn't finish. Realisation dropped like a stone in her gut; realisation at everything she had just told them, the words flowing as freely from her lips as if she were confiding in a close friend. She turned back to Asgan in fear, dread clinging clammy and cool to her gooseflesh. 

“What—” she started,  “...what did you do to me?”

“Tell us about your research,” said Asgan. 

The words bubbled up in her throat. 

“We found something in Saarthal,” she said, gaze whipping to J’zargo in alarm. “An artefact. It was keeping the dead there alive. We—we don’t know what it is. So we took it back to the college. And there was a— Jyrik. A guardian. We think he was an archmage, back in the First Era. Harald’s reign. But he was— he was strick—”

She trailed off.

“He was what?” snapped Asgan, eyes and nostrils flaring. 

“Stricken from the records,” Cassathra mumbled, but the words were beginning to slur. “Harald had him—erased.”

Her eyelids drooped. With what strength she had left, she slid her gaze to where J’zargo had slumped forward over the table, goblet of wine clattering with a tinny rattle from his hand. “J’zargo,” she whimpered, trying to lift one hand, to reach out to him. But her arm hung like a rope from her shoulder. “J’zargo,” she said again, as her head hit the table. 

“You two get the cat,” said a voice. Inky dark spots bled across her vision. 

“Dralsea, can you get her feet?”

Notes:

sorry it's been a while! ch37 is ready to go and ch36 is about 50% complete, so i'm hoping it won't be as long of a wait before the next update. thank you for sticking with me, if you're reading this. your comments mean the world <3