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Chapter Text

Cyrodiil – The Imperial City

27th Evening Star, 4E 172   (28 years, 7 months, 25 days before Helgen)

The Hall of the Dragonborn, a half forgotten apsidal space in the Imperial Palace, housed the official statues of the dragonborn emperors.  The Mede emperors almost never visited.  They did not care to be reminded that they could make no claim to divine right nor did they enjoy being so literally overshadowed by the glories of their predecessors.

So, on a dreary winter morning, not long before the turning of the year, the elderly caretaker was somewhat surprised to find a visitor standing on the second of the three steps that separated the elevated apse section from the rest of the hall.  At the sound of the caretaker’s steps the visitor, dressed in a yellow, red, and white hooded coat, the hood pulled well forward over his head turned and, smiling slightly, pressed a finger to his lips to indicate silence.  Then he vanished.

A Psijic!  What had a Psijic wanted with the hall?  The caretaker looked around him to take stock of the hall and its contents.

The hall was split into three isles by the ten-foot tall statues, on three-foot plinths, of the Dragonborn going back as far as the founding of the First Empire.  The statues, while said to be accurate portrayals of their subject at the height of their power, also symbolically displayed each Dragonborn’s deeds and attributes – some of these symbols were considerably easier to understand than others.  No one knew who carved them, or where the statues came from, but experts at the university had suggested their style was so uniform that they may have been carved by a single hand; a single hand that has been at work for more than four thousand years.

There were one hundred and twelve¹ of them and the caretaker knew them all by heart.  He walked down the rows carefully inspecting each statue and found nothing amiss until he got to the apse.

The apse held three statues separated from the others and placed upon golden plinths.  Each of these statues - Saint Alessia, Reman Cyrodill and Tiber Septim – held their place of honor for being the progenitor of a dragonborn bloodline and the founder of one of the three empires.

There was something off about them today.  It took him a moment to figure it out.  They had all been moved slightly to make room for a fourth plinth.  

Quickly he climbed the three steps and knelt to examine the new plinth.  As yet it had no name or marking on it.  Not even a date of birth.

Emperor Titus Mede II stood silently in front of the new plinth for several minutes.  The Moth Priests were right, he thought, turning to address the caretaker.  “The Dominion cannot know,” he said aloud, his voice echoing slightly in the stillness of the hall.  “If they were to discover the possibility of a new dragonborn… I cannot imagine what they would do.  This must be kept a secret from everyone, even the Blades.”  He held a hand out to the caretaker.  “Your key please.”

Wordlessly the caretaker placed the heavy brass key in the emperor’s outstretched hand. 

“It is time you retired,” the emperor told him.  “You will be compensated and, should the war end, your family will be remembered.  The position you now vacate, however, will not be filled, as such sentimentality, in these times of war, is unseemly.  I hope you understand.”

The caretaker bowed, turned slowly and then shuffled from the hall, pausing only briefly to look around him one last time.

The emperor locked the heavy oak door behind them and then stood for a moment in the hall outside.  Yes, that hideous tapestry from the rooms said to have once been home to the daedric prince Sanguine², would do very well for covering the door.

Cyrodiil – The Imperial City

6^th of Second Seed, 4E 175  (26 years, 3 months, 16 days before Helgen)

The key was heavy in the emperor’s pocket as he walked the long corridor to the Hall of the Dragonborn.  After nearly a year of occupation by Aldmeri soldiers little of the White-Gold Tower remained undamaged.  He came around the final corner and stopped dead in his tracks.  The utterly hideous tapestry of “Sanguine’s Earthly Pleasures³” still hung on the wall completely unmarked.  Of all the things to have survived the last year…  Hope filled the emperor’s throat as he stepped up to it, pushed the tapestry aside, and inserted the key in the door.

The air in the room behind the door was stale and dust covered the rows of statues.  It was easy to see that no one had entered it since he’d locked it himself over a year ago.  He stayed only long enough to be certain the new golden plinth remained in its position beside the others before, once again, locking the door behind him.

Cyrodiil – The Imperial City

16^th of Hearthfire, 4E 175   (25 years, 11 months, 6 days before Helgen)

The Hall of the Dragonborn – He came here now, from time to time, to remind himself that the gods had not truly forsaken the Empire, no matter how dire the current situation appeared.  And the current situation was bleak.  The peace negotiations with the Aldmeri Dominion were not going well and, just that morning, the Moth Priests had informed him that every Elder Scroll in the imperial collection had disappeared.  No one could agree on what it meant but everyone agreed it was an ill omen.

His footsteps echoed hollowly as his made his pilgrimage down the long line of statues and up the three shallow steps to stand before the four golden plinths and the statues of the founders of the three Empires.  As always he reached out, reverently, to touch the fourth, empty, plinth.

This time, his hand stopped midway as his eyes caught sight of a new addition: a plaque.  Breath catching in his throat the Emperor leaned over to read it.

“Sikendra,” the plaque read.  “Born 16^th of Hearthfire, 4E 175.”

His knees gave out and he found himself clutching the plinth, tears of relief mixing with tears anguish.  It would be yearsbefore the savior of the Empire would be old enough to take the throne.  Years in which anything might happen… 

Still, it changed everything.  His contest with the Dominion was now a delaying game and that, he thought headily, he might have the resources to accomplish.

Cyrodiil – The Imperial City

9^th of Sun’s Dusk, 4E 188   (12 years, 11 months, 13 days before Helgen)

“And lastly,” the imperial spymaster announced, grimacing at her reports.  “There is some unusual activity I have been tracking in High Rock.  Over the last few months every single member of merchant house d’Arthe has gone missing.”

The Emperor looked at her tiredly.  “You suspect Thalmor?” he asked.

“I do.”

“It seems a little odd, doesn’t it?” he asked.  “Thalmor targets are usually political.”

“My sources indicate that the twelve-year-old daughter of the main branch of the d’Arthe household, Sikendra, was something of a prodigy with Restoration magic.  She, it seems, was the first to go missing…” the spymaster checked her notes.  “Sometime in First Seed.”

“Thank you, Spymaster,” the emperor replied woodenly as his mind filled with white noise.  “Please keep me informed of anything new you learn about this matter.” 

He sat there, frozen, for several minutes after the spymaster had left.  His last trip to the Hall of the Dragonborn had been less than a week ago and the plaque had not changed since the first time he’d seen it.

Missing is not the same as dead, he told himself sternly.  Surely the divines would not send us a new dragonborn simply to have her die before her thirteenth birthday?

He inhaled deeply and stood up.  He was just going to have to trust in the divine plan, as he had for the last thirteen years.

Cyrodiil – The Imperial City

3^rd of Mid Year, 4E 192  (9 years, 2 months, 14 days before Helgen)

The Emperor was a little surprised when his spymaster appeared, unannounced, in his private office.

“I have an update on the Thalmor assassination attempt at the College of Whispers’ campus in Kvatch two months ago.”

“Oh?” he asked, not bothering to put down the report he was taking notes on.

“A young woman matching the description of the missing student was admitted to the Synod campus in Cheydinhal a week ago.”

“So, not kidnaped, as was feared,” he said, lowering his report slightly to frowned over the top of it at her, clearly confused as to why this information required his attention.  “I assume you have informed the appropriate people that she has been located.  Was there something else?”

The spymaster met his eyes directly.  “She is a good match for the description of the missing d’Arthe heiress.”

The quill the Emperor was holding snapped, causing him to wince and look for something to blot the ink now staining his fingers.

The spymaster lifted an eyebrow.  “Would your Imperial Majesty mind explaining to me why this particular young woman is of such interest to both you and, it would seem, the Dominion?”

“I do not know why the Dominion would be interested in her family,” the Emperor replied, distractedly destroying a very fine handkerchief.  “My interest in her…” he sighed, dropped the ink covered cloth on his desk and rose to his feet.  “It will be easier to show you.”

The spymaster was quiet for a long moment as she staired at the empty golden plinth and the single line of writing on its plaque.  “I shall assign someone to keep an eye on her,” she said finally.

“No,” the Emperor countered.  “We must not interfere.”

“But…” the spymaster gestured at the plinth.

“If the Dominion knew they would have sent more than a single assassin to deal with her,” he said heavily.  “Any action we take to protect her could reveal not only what she truly is but that we are aware of her existence.  We could end up further endangering her before her fate reveals itself.”

“She’s already eighteen,” the spymaster argued.  “What could the gods possibly be waiting for?”

“I do not know, but I feel certain we will find out,” the emperor replied.

Chapter Text

Cyrodiil – The Imperial City

22nd of Last Seed, 4E 201 (5 days after Helgen, 2 days after Dragon Rising)

“I fear, Imperial Majesty, that General Tullius’s report corroborates several other reports I have received, over the past few months, from agents in the Jerall Mountains,”¹ the imperil spymaster informed the emperor and the assembled members of the Privy Council, along with a few dignitaries that had been summoned specifically for their input on the subject at hand.  “Dragons have returned to Skyrim.”  He² waited for the inevitable reaction.  None came.

“It seems we live in interesting times,” the emperor sighed heavily, breaking the resounding silence of a room of people too stunned to speak. 

The Imperil University’s Dean of History cleared his throat.  “If memory serves,” he began carefully.  “The dragons of ancient times were largely confined to the current borders of Skyrim.”

“You are suggesting we treat dragons as a ‘local matter’?” the head of the East Empire Trading Company, and second cousin to the Emperor, demanded in disbelief.  “What about my ships?  Trade with the north?”

“Skyrim is still part of the Empire,” Titus Mede II cut in before anyone could respond to his cousin’s questions.  “It will continue to be treated as such.”  He returned his attention to his spymaster.  “You were saying?”

A knock on the door was followed swiftly by the entry of the legion commander’s personal secretary carrying an official imperial message case under one arm.  The secretary bowed quickly to the emperor, handed the case to the legion commander, and then bowed himself back out of the room.

The legion commander broke the blue seal – indicating the province of Skyrim – on the case and removed a single page report from within.

“Legion Commander?” the emperor inquired after giving the commander what he felt was adequate time to read the single page missive.

“Apologies, my Emperor,” the commander intoned, returning the paper to its case.  “It is another communication from General Tullius.  I am not certain how it relates to sightings of dragons but,” he grimaced slightly, “Tullius reports that the Greybeards have summoned a new dragonborn.”

“What?” the head of the East Empire Company all but shrieked.

“Perhaps the return of the dragons, and the dragonborn, are linked in some way?” the dean of history offered, cutting off the head of the East Empire Co. before he could say more.

The spymaster frowned slightly.  “I recall the Blades’ archives once contained an impressive amount of dragon lore.”

“An interesting point,” the dean of history conceded.  “I will have someone go through what documents we were able to salvage from Cloud Ruler Temple.  As for dragonborn, I believe the Order of Talos was rather obsessed with the subject.  I will look into it.”

“Good,” the emperor nodded.  “Commander, what is your assessment of the dragon situation?”

The chair beneath the commander complained as he, in his heavy armor, shifted to more fully face the emperor.  “General Tullius reports that, on 17th of Last Seed a single dragon attacked Helgen.  The attack lasted fewer than twenty minutes.  While the walls and keep survive, many buildings have been flattened, and those that were not, burned.  The current best guess at civilian survival rate is sixty percent.  It is further noted that neither our archers, nor mages, did appreciable damage to the beast.”  He paused glancing back down at Tullius’ latest report.  “However, it seems the city guard of Whiterun have managed to fell a different dragon.  Not enough is known, at this time, for me to speculate on the source of their success.  I am certain that Tullius will report any further findings.”

“Thank you,” the emperor nodded to the commander before turning to the lord chancellor.  “Your thoughts?” 

“Given the report of a destroyed city, and multiple dragons, further, possibly extensive, economic damage to the province seems likely,” she replied, her voice remarkable both for its depth and calm.  “We should be prepared to send aid to those jarls who remain loyal to the empire.  We may also need to consider how to handle people fleeing both dragons and political unrest.”

“Seriously?” the head of the East Empire Co. cut back in with a vehemence that caused everyone in the room to look in his direction.  “We’re going to talk about dragons when there is a supposed dragonborn out there,” he jabbed a finger in a vaguely northward direction, “who is not an heir to the throne!”

“Afraid you’ll lose your place in line?” the dean sniped back.

The head of the East Empire Co. gave his cousin a sideways glance.  “You couldn’t pay me to be emperor,” he replied sourly.  “I like to enjoy my wealth in relative safety, thank you.”

“The current standing of the dragonborn need not be an issue,” the lord chancellor noted, her tone remaining as calm as ever, even as her glare practically pinned the head of the East Empire Co. to his chair.  “Our emperor has no living children.³  Given that this dragonborn is even marginally acceptable, the emperor may, with permission of the Elder Council, appoint them as his heir.”

The legion commander snorted at that but said nothing.

“I agree with the Commander,” the dean of history sighed.  “The Elder Council is unlikely to place some Nord barbarian above them no matter how qualified they otherwise are.” 

“Do we even know this upstart’s name?” the head of the East Empire Co. demanded, glaring back at the lord chancellor, before looking meaningfully at the commander.

“Tullius did not mention a name,” the legion commander replied, stoically.

The emperor met his spymaster’s eyes across the table. 

The chief librarian of the Cult of the Ancestor Moth steepled her fingers.  “Perhaps,” she began, “we should consider the possibility that there is more at stake here than the internal politics of the empire?”

“I am listening,” the emperor told her, with a curt silencing motion in the direction of his cousin.

“As the emperor knows, we, of the Ancestor Moth, believe that, at this time, the only prophecy remaining unfulfilled is The Prophecy of the Dragonborn,” she told the assembled council.  “A prophecy which indicates that the future of Tamriel turns upon the actions of the Last Dragonborn.”

“You want us to believe, what?” the dean of history snorted.  “That these are the end times?”

“A turning point,” the moth priest countered, calmly.  “Destruction or renewal, the prophecy is unclear.”

“Well, that’s uselessly vague, like all prophecies,” the dean muttered.

The emperor cleared his throat before the head librarian could respond.  “Thank you, my friends, for your council,” he began.  “This latest report from Skyrim has given us all much to think about.  I believe I would like to address the subjects of both dragons, and dragonborn, again, in a week’s time, after you’ve had a chance to look into them yourselves.  I thank you for your time.”

“Of course,” the Lord High Chancellor said, inclining her head slightly as she rose gracefully to her feet.  The legion commander followed her lead, pushing back his chair with somewhat less grace and a great deal more noise.  The dean of history, a preoccupied expression already covering his features, followed them out without even remembering to bow to his monarch.

Titus Mede met his cousin’s eyes.  “I’m not wrong,” the head of the East Empire Co. grumbled as he left his chair.  “It’s going to be a problem, Titus.  You need to be prepared.”  He closed the council room door behind him with more force than he’d likely intended.

The emperor swallowed an exhausted sigh and turned back to his spymaster only to find that the moth priest hadn’t moved.  “Is there something else?” he asked her.

“Perhaps,” the priest answered, steepling her fingers again.  “A friend of mine, a fellow moth priest, recently returned from Skyrim.  There he met, in his words, an extraordinary young woman.  A woman who, untrained, read two Elder Scrolls, in succession, and suffered no ill effect.”  She paused, infinitesimally, for her words to sink in.  “Initially it was our thought to offer one capable of such a feat a place among us, but now… I wonder.”

“Is this priest available for an interview?” the spymaster asked, in a carefully neutral tone.

“He will be made available,” the moth priest replied, rising to her feet.  “Come to the library when you have the time.”

The door clicked closed behind her and the emperor and his spymaster were finally alone.  Silence stretched.

“So,” the spymaster murmured to himself before meeting the emperor’s gaze again, “she has been revealed.”

Titus Mede II let out a sigh of relief years in the making.  “Talos be praised.”

“You have been awaiting this day for some time, have you not?”

“Since before the fall of the Imperial City,” he replied, rising stiffly to his feet.  “Your predecessor did not approve of my hands-off approach to the situation.  We argued about it… more than once.”  He went to stand before the wall sized map of Tamriel.  “It may seem a strange thing for someone in my position to admit, but, for more than two decades now, I have considered myself a regent rather than an emperor.”

The spymaster gave a slight snort.  “You think I do not know that?  The day you, and my predecessor, let me in on the single biggest state secret of our lifetimes - the existence of an unrevealed dragonborn - explained everything that had previously confused me regarding our approach to engagement with the Dominion.”

Titus Mede gave him a wan smile.  “Regrettable that so many have had to be kept in the dark.”

“Damaging,” the spymaster corrected.  “The Elder Council’s lack of understanding has eroded their faith in you.  Candidly, Imperial Majesty, at this point it is likely that even after learning that you have long been aware of the existence of a new dragonborn, and have been systematically taking her existence into account, they will not reevaluate their positions regarding their failing support for your rule.  In fact, it is entirely possible they will see her existence not as salvation for the Empire but as a threat to their own power.  Power they will seek to solidify as quickly as possible.”

“You are saying I should prepare myself for another round of assassination attempts,” the emperor concluded for him.

“Yes.”

“Understood.”

“Further afield, however…” the spymaster paused briefly as if searching for the best way to phrase a thought.  “The Dominion,” he began, “has invested significant resources in Skyrim.  I doubt their plans for the place included dragons, or a new dragonborn.  If you feel secure in leaving the affairs of Skyrim in the hands of the dragonborn, as a test of her character and abilities, such a distraction might be useful to us in… other quarters.”

“I leave the planning of such things to you and the Commander,” the emperor told him.  “Let me know what you decide.”

The spymaster nodded and made a note.  “As for Skyrim itself…” he looked up again.  “The last time we spoke you were not intending to attend your cousin’s wedding in Solitude.  Even if that does not change,” he added hurriedly before the Emperor could express his legendary distaste for sea travel, “I would like to suggest broadening the scope of Commander Moro’s current assignment.  He, unlike Tullius, is not taken up with fighting a civil war.  His insights on the current situation – and the dragonborn’s impact on it - might prove valuable and, should you decided you do wish to meet with this new dragonborn, his work regarding the political situation would mean the groundwork to secure your safety will have already been done.”

The Emperor nodded, “Do so.  And, before you ask, you now have my permission to compile a dossier on both the new dragonborn and the missing d’Arthe heiress.”

“How much longer do you intend to remain ‘hands off’?” the spymaster asked, apparently taking the change in his orders in stride.

“I am uncertain,” the emperor admitted.  “If asked, I believe I will admit to having heard the ‘rumors’ of a new dragonborn, but… I do not know if it would be better to approach her early, and offer what aid we can, or wait for her to approach us.”

The spymaster nodded once, more to himself than to the emperor.  “A better understanding of her will certainly help in deciding how best to proceed.  I will get to work.”  He gathered his papers and stood up.

“Be careful,” the emperor said, as his spymaster turned to leave.  “We’ve lasted this long.  It is important that we not stumble now just because we believe the end is in sight.”

Cyrodiil – The Imperial City

21^st of Rain’s Hand, 4E 202   (9 days after Alexa’s Conversation with Legate Fasendil, but before the report on her first conversation with Tullius would arrive in the Imperial City)

“Thoughts?” Titus Mede II asked, handing the dossier on Sikendra d’Arthe back to his Spymaster.

“Given what we now know, I see no obvious reason why you could not make this dragonborn your heir, if that is your wish,” the lord chancellor, currently the only other person in the room with them, informed the emperor.  “It is a certainty that many less capable persons have held the throne.”

“Forcing a person to accept a position of power they do not want rarely turns out well,” the spymaster countered.

“You are not worried by her apparent friendship with a Thalmor Emissary?” the emperor enquired.

“She is Breton, politically motivated relationships are to be expected,” the lord chancellor replied.  “Rather, thus far at least, I am impressed by her handling of the situation in which she finds herself.  Furthermore, it seems to me that, as someone who has accepted the title of thane thrice over, she cannot be completely averse to holding positions of power and influence.  It is possible that, while her stated wish to avoid her actions being equated with those of Tiber Septim makes it unlikely that she would take a position of power by force, she may be willing accept one that is freely given.”

“And what are your thoughts on approaching her?” the emperor asked.

The spymaster grimaced down at a piece of paper in front of him.  On it was a map showing the dragonborn’s known locations over the last few months.  It was an unreadable mess with no observable logic behind it.  “She seems… very busy,” he answered carefully.  “If the cause is something to do with dragons, while we could have a representative offer aid, I think any request for her time would likely be viewed as an imposition.”

“Busy?” the emperor asked.

“She has been almost continuously on the road since her first visit to High Hrothgar, nearly eight months ago.  Legate Rikka’s encounter report,” the spymaster continued, in response to the emperor’s frown, “indicates that the Greybeards are having the dragonborn learn the dragon language by reading enchanted inscriptions.  The locations of these inscriptions likely explain much of the dragonborn’s pattern of movement within Skyrim.  Lately, however, she has been spending a great deal of time on Solstheim.”

“Solstheim?”

The spymaster flipped to a different set of notes.  “She first traveled there after surviving an assassination attempt, originating from the island, in the first few days of the year.”

“Thalmor?” the emperor asked.

The spymaster shook his head.  “Reports indicated that something odd, and of a magical nature, began affecting the population of Solstheim sometime last Hearthfire.  The whispers from House Redoran were that they feared a resurgence of the Sixth House.”

“The Sixth House…” the emperor murmured, confused as to why this had not been brought to his attention before.  “Is that something we should be looking into?”

“No.  Councilor Morvayn’s latest report, to House Redoran, indicates that a member of House Telvanni,⁴ working under Telvanni Neloth, is dealing with the situation and has already alleviated much of the problem.”

The emperor nodded.  House Telvanni taking steps to deal with a magical problem, affecting the population of an island that technically belonged to Morrowind, made sense but…  “And the dragonborn, how is she related to a possible re-emergence of the Sixth House?” he asked.

“In my opinion, not at all.  I believe House Redoran has misjudged the situation.  Last month the dean of history forwarded to me the correspondence of an historian currently studying the native Nord population of Solstheim.  His letters indicate that the Skaal believe the magical disturbance is centered around a temple that once belonged to the dragon priest Miraak.  The historian’s description of the masks worn by the cultists now living in the ruined temple match the descriptions of those who attempted to assassinate the dragonborn.”  The spymaster met the Emperor’s eyes directly, “His correspondence further indicates that Skaal tradition holds that Miraak was dragonborn and that he may yet live.”

Titus blinked.  “Meaning there might be more than one, living, dragonborn?”

“I have assigned an operative, working for the East Empire Company, to investigate.  Now that the Raven Rock ebony mine has been reopened their presence on Solstheim is easily explained.  They should arrive about two weeks from today.⁵”

“Understood.”

“Returning to the matter of approaching the dragonborn,” the chancellor said.  “If the dragonborn has been as busy as you say, for as long as you say, she might appreciate knowing that she can ask the empire for help, if she needs to.”

Titus Mede nodded.  “I will inform Commander Maro.”

“The Penitus Oculatus serve the emperor,” the spymaster cut in quickly.  “Assigning them to the dragonborn may be…”

“Coming on a bit strong,” the chancellor interrupted.

“… the same as announcing your intentions to the Thalmor,” the spymaster finished, with a quick glare at the chancellor.  “Perhaps having the legion commander inform General Tullius that he is to be as helpful as possible, would be an acceptable first step?”

“Now is not the time to lose patience, Titus,” the lord chancellor added.

The Emperor blinked in surprise at the rare use of his first name and then sighed slightly.  “Understood.  I will inform the Legion Commander.  Is there anything else?”  He looked from his spymaster to the lord chancellor and back again.  “No?  Then I thank you for your time.”

The spymaster nodded, gathered his papers together, and left, the door clicking quietly closed behind him.

“Your sister’s death day is next week,” the lord chancellor noted casually.  Usually, the emperor’s attendance at his sister’s remembrance would not have been a question.  But there had been two assassination attempts in the last six months.

“I have already ordered flowers,” he told her.  “I fear I must ask that you place them for me.”

She nodded, understanding as always.

“You will have guards with you?” he enquired.

She smiled slightly.  “I have not lived this long by being a fool.”

“Do you believe I should make the dragonborn my official heir?” he asked.  “I ask, not as the emperor, but as a friend.”

She was quite for a moment.  “As a friend, may I ask how long you have known?”

“Known for certain?  Since the day the Elder Scrolls vanished,” he answered.  “But I, and many of the Moth Priests, have suspected that the birth of a new dragonborn was not far off for…  much longer.”

“Is that why you never married?” she asked.

He shook his head.  “No, I just never seemed to have the time, or interest,” he admitted.

“Do you regret?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

“Good.  Julia always worried that you were lonely.”  She was silent for a moment.  “I believe that, before you do anything official, you should meet the young lady.  Not just because it is the polite thing to do, but because I think, after all this time, it is something you need to do for yourself.”

Chapter Text

“Hadvar?” Alexa exclaimed, as a man in Imperial armor climbed out of a cart at the Windhelm Stables.

The legionnaire looked up, startled, and then smiled in relief.  “Alexa, it’s been a while.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, concerned.  “Especially dressed like that?”

“I’m carrying a message from the Jarl of Whiterun to Jarl Ulfric,” he replied.

“Not from the Legion?” she enquired, with a pointed glance at his armor.

“No, not exactly,” he answered, glancing down at himself.  “I, uh, probably should have changed to avoid any confusion, but I don’t have any other armor.”

“What’s the message?” Alexa asked.

“It’s… Jarl Balgruf’s axe.”

“Oh?”

Hadvar rubbed at the back of his neck.  “I’m just supposed to hand it to him and see what he says.  It’s… a traditional way to enquire about another’s intentions.”

“… Right,” Alexa sighed.  It seemed her return to Skyrim was none too early.  “To avoid giving Ulfric the impression that the Legion is involved with this message, why don’t I, as a thane of Whiterun, deliver the axe for you?”

“You’re a thane?” Hadvar asked, already handing over the axe, relief clear in his voice and posture.

“I killed the dragon that burned down the Western Watchtower,” she told him, as Teldryn took the axe from his hand.  “After which Jarl Balgruuf seemed to think securing my oath of fealty was a good idea.”  She took a few steps to glance around the side of the stables and saw that the khajiit caravan was in residence.  “Come on.  Let’s buy you some clothes that won’t get you killed for entering the city.”

Climbing the stairs to the palace courtyard, Alexa barely even glanced at the group of children laughing and slashing at the wall separating the palace grounds from the city.

“It’s bleeding,” Hadvar whispered, horrified.¹

“The city was built by captive Snow Elves,” Alexa told him.  “The Five-hundred took pride in how many of them died in the process.”

“This city is cursed²,” Teldryn muttered, more to himself than to Hadvar or even Alexa.

“How could it not be?” Alexa asked, pushing open the palace door.

The entire court turned to see who had entered.

“Dragonborn,” Jorleif stammered, hurriedly taking a step forward, as though drawing her attention would somehow defuse the sudden tension in the air.  “You’ve returned,” he added, ending on a slight squeak as Alexa came to stand directly before the dais.

“I’ve come with a message from the Jarl of Whiterun,” she told the court, her voice clear in the heavy silence of the hall.

Ulfric shifted his weight, drawing all eyes to the throne, and him, before leaning forward with a smirk.  “So, Balgruuf sends the dragonborn to me with a message?  I’ve been wondering when he’d come around.”

Alex accepted Balgruuf’s axe from Teldryn and then held it out to Ulfric.

The Jarl drew back slightly, straightening on his throne.  “Oh.”  He met her eyes.  “What’s this?”

She said nothing, her eyes locked with his.

His jaw muscles flexed.  “I see.  You’ve chosen.”  He leaned in again, looking down on her from the dais, and increased the thu’um rumble in his voice, threateningly.  “It’s a pity you’ve chosen the wrong side…”  He let it hang in the air before lounging, nonchalantly, back in his throne.  “You can return this axe to the man who sent it,” he finished, with a dismissive wave of one hand.  “And tell him he should prepare to entertain… visitors.” 

Alexa didn’t move, except to heft Balgruuf’s axe onto one should. 

“I expect a great deal of excitement in the city of Whiterun in the near future…” Ulfric added, as though her lack of response to his previous statement indicated a need for further clarification of his intentions.

Alexa chuckled and shook her head.  “You duel a child but send an army for a man…  Faal kodaavsebrom los nivah.”  (The Bear of the North is a coward.)  She turned away.  “Such a disappointment.”

Ulfric’s jaw clenched in anger.  “And you, Dovahkiin?” he called after her.  “Will you fight like a true warrior?”³

“Storm-cloaked is not the same thing as storm-crowned,” she informed the room, turning to look back at him, even as Hadvar held open the palace door.  “Warn your men that, when they come for Whiterun, they will learn the difference.”

She turned her attention to Galmar.  “I will see you in a few days, no doubt.  Your Jarl does not strike me as the type to lead from the front.”  Then, before anyone could respond, she was gone, the door thudding hollowly behind her.

“I think you may have made him angry, dragonborn,” Teldryn noted as they made their way back down into the city.

“I very much hope I did,” she replied.  “He’s been making me angry for years.”

“What now?” Hadvar asked, looking around him uncertainly.

“The three of us go to the inn for lunch,” Alexa said.  “Then you take that cart back to Whiterun and inform Jarl Balgruuf of Ulfric’s response.  Perhaps, while you’re there, you can also do me a favor and oversee the delivery of a few things to my housecarl?”

After seeing the legionnaire on his way, with three trunks of valuables from the house on Solstheim, Alexa had handed off a sheaf of letters to the couriers at the stables.

“And the reason we’re headed for Morthal rather than Whiterun?” Teldryn asked, climbing into the back of a second cart.

“Labyrinthian, actually,” she responded, trying to get the dogs to settle.

“What’s in Labyrinthian?”

“A pocket-plane.  I’d like your opinion on it and a few things I’ve stashed there.  I think some of them may prove useful in the near future.”

Chapter Text

Their fourth day in Skyrim found Teldryn and Alexa - now carrying a treasury’s worth of magic items – heading south and east along the road towards Whiterun.  The day was mild, the sun warm, the spring wildflowers were in full bloom…  It was all strangely idyllic.  Except for having to watch your step along the broken road lest you sink ankle deep in mud.  The dragonborn had even packed away her winter coat, and exchanged the mask she’d worn on Solstheim, and the masked cowl she’d worn in the mountains the day before, for a gold and ruby magic circlet¹.

As they approached the bridge, north of Fort Greymoor, Teldryn spotted a loan khajiit, in orange and yellow priest robes, standing awkwardly in the bushes.  It seemed Alexa had noticed him as well as she made a gleeful noise, hit Teldryn excitedly on the shoulder, and then darted ahead before he could think to ask what was happening.

“Good day, M’aiq,” Alexa hailed the khajiit.

“M’aiq wishes you well,” the khajiit answered with a nod and a sideways glance for Teldryn who had had to run to catch up.

“How have the Nords been treating you since we last spoke?” Alexa enquired, trying, and failing, to repress a grin.

“Nords are so serious about beards,” the khajiit observed.  “So many beards.  M’aiq thinks they wish they had glorious manes like khajiit.”

“Ah, that would certainly make sense,” Alexa nodded sagely to Teldryn’s incredulity.  She elbowed him in the ribs.

“What brings a lone Khajiit to Skyrim?” Teldryn enquired politely.  Clearly there was something going on here he wasn’t party too.

“M’aiq is always in search of calipers, yet finds none,” the khajiit informed him.  “Where could they have gone?”

“I… what?” Teldryn blinked, confused, as Alexa practically vibrated with suppressed amusement.

“Some say Alduin is Akatosh.  Some say M’aiq is a liar.  Don’t you believe either of those things,” M’aiq admonished Teldryn.

“You have been traveling alone, all over Skyrim, in search of calipers?” Teldryn asked hesitantly.

“Some like taking friends on adventures.  M’aiq thinks being alone is better.  Less arguing about splitting treasure.”  M’aiq gave Alexa a sideways glare.  “M’aiq has heard it is dangerous to be your friend.”

“Does the return of the dragons really not worry you?” Teldryn demanded incredulously.

“Dragons were never gone,” M’aiq sniffed.  “They were just invisible and very, very quiet.”

Teldryn gaped at him.

“Very true,” Alexa agreed.  “They were not visible because they were buried under ground and very quiet because they were dead.  But they were never gone because dragon souls have no afterlife to go to and so remain on this plane when they die.  See Teldryn, M’aiq is a font of wisdom!”

“M’aiq knows much, and tells some,” M’aiq agreed.  “M’aiq knows many things others do not.”

“So it seems,” Teldryn muttered.

“M’aiq is tired now,” the khajiit pouted at the dunmer.  “Go bother somebody else.”

“May the road lead you to warm sands,” Alexa responded affably, before taking Teldryn by the arm and dragging him away.

“What in Boethiah’s name was that?” Teldryn demanded once they were out of earshot.

“M’aiq,” Alexa answered with a laugh.  “Currently my favorite feature of the roads of Skyrim.”

“Sheogorath seems to have addled your mind,” he told her, “and his.”

“Undoubtedly,” she agreed.  “Still, I absolutely adore the insane fur-ball.  He is endlessly entertaining.”

There was silence between them as Teldryn considered everything that had just happened.

“You know, now that I think about it, I believe I met a khajiit like him once before,” Teldryn remarked as they passed Fort Greymoor.

“Oh?”

“He told me something very similar about dragons.²”

“Perhaps it was M’aiq’s father, or his father’s father,” Alexa suggested.  “He once told me they too were named M’aiq.”³

“An entire family of lone – male – wanderers?” Teldryn mused.  “Seems… odd.”

Alexa opened her mouth to say something and then clearly thought better of it.

“Go on,” Teldryn urged.

“That moniker M’aiq is so worried about, ‘liar’, feels… simplistic.  He may very well be lying about himself - his motives, his origins, etc. - but his observations on the world… have resonance.”

Teldryn gave her a surprised look from behind his helmet.  “Oh?”

“M’aiq’s understanding of the world is, in my experience at least, unique.  When I talk with him…  I cannot tell if he is like a child who does not yet have the vocabulary to accurately describe what he has seen adults accomplish, or if I am the one who lacks the references necessary to understand what I am being told.  I suppose it could be both.”

“Like?”

“Skyrim was once the land of many butterflies.  Now, not so much,⁴” Alexa said, mimicking the khajiit exactly.

“It seems to me there are still a fair number of butterflies around the place,” Teldryn noted.⁵

“Indeed, but… I wonder if he was being entirely literal.”

“You think he might have meant that the souls of the present once rested here but no longer do?”⁶

She stopped turning slowly in a circle, arms outstretched, to indicate the plane around them.  “This land was once the focal point of history.  It is said that here the armies of Auriel and Lorkhan fought over and over until the land itself was flattened by the force of their battles.  All of history turned on what happened here.  At that time this place was where all those destined to make history – the souls that made the present - came.  Now the basin they carved in the mountains is hollow, all but empty.”

“You really believe that is what he meant?” Teldryn asked skeptically.

“No,” she answered, with a soft smile, “and yes.”

“You have a theory, don’t you?”

“There is, I think, some possibility at least, that Sheogorath is not to blame for M’aiq’s eccentricity.  While the most common cause of this sort of unusual awareness is being in contact with one of the great powers, everyone I have met for whom that is true is very aware of it.  But M’aiq’s conversational style indicates that, whatever his source of revelation is, he does not experience it as external to himself.

“With that in mind, it is possible that there has only ever been one M’aiq no matter his claims to the contrary and that M’aiq is, himself, an avatar, or some facet, of an et’Ada… one that does not seek to engage with the hero of the moment – dragonborn or Nerevarine - but does wish to personally observe the events that are transpiring.”

“Neutral observation is not something the remaining et’Ada are known for,” Teldryn pointed out.

“True… It is also possible that M’aiq is a Forgotten Mane.”

Teldryn stopped walking, startled.  He hadn’t seen that one coming.  “Explain?”

“All khajiit born during a Dark Moon have the potential to be Manes, but only one is chosen.  Those that are not chosen are trained in the service of Alkosh, not to lead the khajiit people but to serve as protectors of Alkosh’s design.⁷  Would not such a one naturally be drawn to the same location as the hero of the moment?  Perhaps, ‘M’aiq the Liar’ is not his name at all, but a title given to such beings?  Or, perhaps, he was once a true Mane, one that was rendered immortal by surviving a failed attempt to achieve CHIM… or whatever the kahjiiti version of it is.”

“Wait… you believe the khajiit have their own version of CHIM?” Teldryn asked, mentally scrambling to keep up.

“It is said that, during their initiation, a Mane must climb the lunar lattice to the demi-plane of Jode,” Alexa told him.  “It is further claimed that, during their time there, they are gifted with visions of the future; knowledge a Mane can use to the benefit of their people.”

“‘It is said’, meaning you doubt the veracity of the claim?” Teldryn asked, still perplexed by where the dragonborn was going with this.

“On the contrary, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that visiting the body of the time-god Lorkhan, whose power is greatest in untime – when all things happen simultaneously – might show you visions of things yet to be, or even things that might never be as long as you play your cards right,” Alexa replied.  “But what if you did it in untime – during a dragon break – what would you see then?” she asked.  “Would you see not just a few scattered visions but the whole of this kalpa, or even all kalpa, laid out before you?  Would this sudden knowledge force Lorkhan’s own fate upon you?  Would you too gain the knowledge to achieve CHIM but fail and in failing be stuck here forever, sundered from your true self but with an altered – greater - understanding of the world?  And what would that look like to the rest of us?” ⁸

“There’s a lot of speculation in that, dovahkiin,” Teldryn observed.

“M’aiq does not remember his childhood,” Alexa said, again dropping into M’aiq’s voice.  “Perhaps he never had one.”

Teldryn grimaced at that but chose not to respond.  “How much longer to Whiterun, do you think?” he asked, turning in the direction of the city.  Distances on the plane could be hard to gauge.

“That’s the Western Watch Tower up ahead,” Alexa replied, pointing off the road to the right.  “Even if we take it slow, we’ll be in Whiterun by mid-afternoon.”

Chapter Text

“Greetings, dragonborn,” the guard by the gate began.  “Your housecarl, Lydia², asked that you be informed she has relocated from Dragonsreach to Breezehome.”

“Thank you,” Alexa said, tossing him a gold piece for his trouble.

“Breezehome, huh,” Teldryn said, following Alexa into the city.

“You know it?” Alexa asked, knocking on the door.

“I’ve been in a few times,” he answered.³ 

“Hey, Lydia,” Alexa smiled, at the tall, dark haired, woman who opened the door.  “How’s the house?”

“I have furnished the kitchen and bought you a bed, my thane,” Lydia responded, stoically as she stepped back to let them both in.  “I figured you would want to do the rest yourself.”

“Thank you, Lydia,” Alexa said, dropping her pack to the right of the door.  “I hope you managed to furnish your own room at least.”

“Yes, my thane,” she replied, digging a key out of her pocket and handing it to Alexa.  “There is some money left over...”

“Keep it,” Alexa told her, looking around.  “Anything I should know?”

“A previous owner of the house greatly expanded it with the addition of a basement including a bathing pool.”

Alexa arched an eyebrow at that.

“I have not yet had the chance to discover how functional it is,” Lydia added before Alexa could ask.  “Will your companion be staying here?” she went on, giving Teldryn a stern once over.  “There is a small room upstairs.  It is unfurnished but the Jarl’s steward has offered to let you purchase furniture out of the Dragonsreach storerooms, or I can go see what Belethor has to hand that will work until a new bedframe can be made.”

“Thank you, Lydia,” Alexa smiled.  “I will speak with Proventus when I present myself to the Jarl.”  She looked expressively down at herself.  “After I’ve changed into something that isn’t muddy to the knees.”

“I don’t think your housecarl approves of me,” Teldryn noted, as they headed for Dragonsreach about an hour later.

“I think it more likely that she is upset that her position, as the dragonborn’s housecarl, has mostly been an honorary one.”

“Is there a reason for that?” he enquired.

Alexa gave a noncommittal shrug.  “Lydia traveled with me for a while not long after I killed my first dragon,” she told him.  “Originally, when I sent her home, I had thought it was only for a short period of time while I spent some time at the College and did some daedra related… stuff.  I had fully intended to take her with me the moment I returned, full time, to the Greybeard’s training… but Miraak’s attempt on my life kind of ended that.”

“Why not bring her to Solstheim with you?”

“I… I think that it is better for the Nords to remain ignorant of Miraak’s attempted return.  The current political situation is complicated enough without adding the first, and only Nord, dragonborn to the mix.”

“Fair,” Teldryn admitted.  “If you believe professional jealousy to be the source of her reaction, and not something else, I can work with that.”

“Ah, dragonborn, you have arrived,” Balgruuf noted, not quite managing to hide the relief he clearly felt.  “Hadvar indicated you would be joining us but could not say when.”

“Please accept my apologies, my jarl,” Alexa begane, with a slight bow.  “There were some arrangements I had to make before coming to the defense of the city.”

“I see.  It is good to know that you will stand with Whiterun.  It is my hope that, as thane of Whiterun, you will join us in planning the defense of the city.”

“The war council will meet at ten tomorrow morning, in the library at the top of the stairs,” Proventus informed her.

“I will be there,” she assured them.  “On another topic, I was hoping to purchase some more furnishings for my home.”

Upon leaving Dragonsreach, more than an hour later, Alexa decided to go to the Bannered Mare for some food.  There was some time yet before the new furniture would be delivered, and she wanted to talk to Hulda about what had been happening in the city while she’d been away.  Teldryn chose to return to the house, grumbling something about the dogs, new furniture, and mud. 

“Alexa, welcome.  What can I get you?” Hulda greeted her, as she stepped through the door.  At just after four in the afternoon the common room of the inn was empty.  Even the ever-present Sinmir and Uthgerd had found other places to be.

“Some food – whatever you have - would be appreciated,” Alexa answered, smiling at the older woman and taking a seat at the counter.  “I know it’s a little early, but I figure that after I get done arranging furniture, I’ll be too tired to do anything but sleep.”

“I had heard that you purchased Breezehome,” Hulda began, bustling past Alexa to address someone in the kitchen.  “I hope this means you will be spending more time with us,” she continued, as she returned to her usual place behind the counter.

“I’d like to,” Alexa smiled.  “We’ll see how things work out.”

“These are uncertain times,” Hulda nodded knowingly.

“So… what’s the news around town?” Alexa asked.

Hulda leaned in a little conspiratorially.  “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Olfina and Jon eloped!”³

“Good for them,” Alexa responded, feigning slight surprise.  “How’re their families taking it?”

“The Battle-Borns are taking it a little better than the Gery-Manes, on account of a rumor that Olfina has become housecarl to jarl Elisif herself, but it’s been almost nine months now and both families are still, I think, a little in shock.”

“I’m certain they’ll come around once there are grandchildren,” Saadia smirked, placing a bowl of stew and a plate of bread down in front of Alexa.  “I’m glad you’re back,” she added.  “Things are getting a bit tense around here.”

“Have you managed to remove that blood stain from… the incident?” Hulda asked her, in a slight aside.⁵

“I’m still working on it,”⁶ Saadia, answered, already heading back to the kitchen.

“Have you been up to Jorrvaskr yet?” Hulda asked, before Alexa could enquire about “the incident”.

“Not yet,” Alexa admitted, between mouthfuls.

“The Companions have been doing well for themselves lately.  New members, money for new furnishings… the new Harbinger seems to have breathed some life into the old place.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Alexa smiled.

“For the city as well,” Hulda agreed.  “Aside from that, there’s not much to tell.”

Alexa frowned slightly.  “While we’re on the topic of the Jarl’s family, is there something I should know about Hrongar and Lydia?”

Hulda gave Alexa a surprised look.  “Why do you ask?”

“He cornered me in one of Dragonsreach’s storerooms for the express purpose of accosting me over my choice to travel with a Dunmer mercenary rather than my housecarl.  As Hrongar does not appear to have any problem with Irileth, I assume his issue with my choice has more to do with Lydia than with the race of my current companion or their status as a mercenary.  He’s old enough to be her father, and they don’t look anything alike, so… I was just wondering.”

Hulda nodded.  “Lydia’s mother was Hrongar’s childhood friend.  I’ve never heard for certain who Lydia’s father was.  Hrongar didn’t care and took Lydia in after her mother died.  She was… ten or eleven at the time, I think.”⁷

“I see.  Thanks, Hulda.”

“Of course, love.  Let me know if you need anything else.”

Evening found Alexa, Aela, Vilkas, and Farkas, sitting around the fireplace in Breezehome’s main room.  The three of them had arrived - suspiciously – mere minutes after Lydia and Alexa had called an end to furniture arranging for the day.  They had brought drinks though, so Alexa had decided not to question it.

The fire was burning low, and Alexa had run out of amusing anecdotes from her time on Solstheim, when Vilkas broke a brief lull in conversation.  “So, what brings you back to Whiterun, but not to Jorrvaskr?” he asked, glancing at the room around them.

“It’s the civil war, isn’t it?” Aela asked.  “Rumor has it the Stormcloaks will be here any day now.”

“If they’re not then I didn’t do a good enough job at antagonizing Ulfric,” Alexa told her, slouching lower in her chair with a tired sigh.

“You purposefully antagonized Ulfric into attacking us?” Vilkas asked in surprise.

“Jarl Balgruuf, likely at the urging of General Tullius, attempted to get Ulfric to state his intentions.  Which he did, to me.  After which I chose to see if I could goad him into acting sooner rather than later.  In the moment it appeared to work.  I’ll know more after I meet with the “war council” in the morning.”

“The war council?” Aela laughed softly, with a slight shake of her head.  “You’ve come up in the world.”

“I’m a thane of Whiterun,” Alexa reminded her, dismissively, and then frowned in sudden confusion.  “Wait, am I the only thane of Whiterun?”

“As far as I know,” Aela replied.  “Why?”

“I mean, I assumed, given how Nazeem acts…” Alexa paused before focusing on Vilkas.  “Why isn’t the Harbinger automatically made a thane?”

“The Companions try to stay out of politics,” Vilkas reminded her.⁸

“But why would you bring Ulfric here?” Farkas rumbled, bringing them back to the original subject.

“Because, while I, myself, do not particularly care about Ulfric and his pretentions, as the dragonborn, I need the jarls of Skyrim to give the return of the dragons the attention it deserves,” Alexa explained.  “Ulfric’s refusal to admit there is a problem, much less a problem worth trying to work with his fellow Jarls to address, is making that impossible.”

“So, you’ve sided with the Imperials?” Vilkas prodded.

“I believe that the Moot should decide Skyrim’s next high king,” Alexa told him.  “It is my hope that, if the Stormcloaks lose their first major military action, Ulfric will change his mind regarding the worthiness of that particular tradition.”

“They didn’t make him high king last time,” Aela pointed out.  “Why would he think they would now?”

“Last time there was an heir to the throne,” Alexa reminded her.

“Last time he hadn’t sent an army against any of them either,” Aela countered.  “If the Stormcloaks try to take Whiterun…”

“He has to win,” Vilkas concluded.  “He can’t afford to lose,” he went on, his eyes on Alexa’s face.  “But he’s going to, isn’t he?  That’s why you’re here.  To make sure of it.”

Alexa met his eyes solidly but remained silent.

“Without the Moot, Ulfric is just another conquer,” Farkas stated, breaking the moment of tension between Alexa and Vilkas.

“True,” Alexa agreed, while Vilkas and Aela were too stunned to respond. 

Aela took the bottle from Farkas’ hand and, after a suspicious look, and a quick sniff, checked its contents.  “Ale,” she announced, handing the now confused Farkas back his drink.

Vilkas shook his head slightly at Aela’s theatrics before addressing Alexa again.  “If you think that Ulfric will ever accept the possibility of Elisif wining by a single vote…”

“I think the Moot will be wise enough avoid promoting either Ulfric or Elisif,” Alexa replied before he could finish. 

“A third candidate?” Aela asked in surprise.  “Do you have someone in mind?”

Alexa rearranged the few pieces of still burning wood and didn’t answer. 

“Balgruuf,” Vilkas said, finally.  “He’s the only option that makes sense.”

“Will you three be standing in defense of the city?” Alexa asked, without looking up.

“The Companion will not take sides in the civil war,” Vilkas told her, regret clear in his voice.

“Do you wish to stand in defense of your city?”

“A warrior defends his home,” Farkas answered simply.

“Would it be different if you acted, not as Companions, but as shield siblings of the dragonborn?” Alexa asked, looking up.  Seeing the question on their faces she continued.  “I have requested a few friends join me here.  They should be arriving soon.  And…” she stood up and went to a chest from Solstheim she’d yet to unpack, and pulled out a large red blade, “I have some new toys for you to play with.”

Chapter Text

“Thane Alexa, Legate Quentin Cipius, Legate Rikka, General Tullius,” Proventus Avenicci declared, perfunctorily, as Alexa reached the top of the stairs. 

“Dragonborn,” Rikka said, nodding to Alexa in greeting.

“We’ve met,” Tullius noted without obvious inflection, or more than a quick glance up from the map. 

“I don’t believe we’ve met, however,” Alexa noted, with a slight nod to the male legate, as she stepped up to the war table.  The legate may have been an Imperial, but he had facial hair any Nord would have been proud of.¹

“Legate Cipius,”² he replied, followed by a brief, awkward, moment in which it became clear he was uncertain how to properly greet the dragonborn.  “General Tullius has placed me in charge of the defense of Whiterun,” he finished, settling on a stiff nod that was almost a bow.

“I was under the impression that you wished to avoid being seen in a military context,” Tullius noted, mercifully drawing attention away from the clearly flustered legate.  “Has that changed?”

“I am a thane of Whiterun, here in service to jarl Balgruuf,” Alexa replied, smoothly.  “It is my belief that fulfilling one’s oaths should supersede issues of personal comfort.  Do you not agree, General?”

“There is much that can be achieved, by skilled individuals, that cannot be attempted by traditional military might,” Irileth stated, from where she stood behind the jarl.  “I am certain the dragonborn can be helpful in more ways than by leading armies.”

Alexa shot Irileth a quick smile before returning her attention to Tullius.  “The army is yours, General, not mine and I will be glad for it to remain so.”

“I believe, Legate Cipius, you were about to start?” Balgruuf cut in, before Tullius could respond.

“Of course,” the legate cleared his throat and straightened his notes.  “Our reports indicate the Stormcloaks are massing their siege equipment at Fort Amol,” he began.  “We believe the greater part of their force will congregate there before moving into Whiterun hold proper.”

“Your information indicates that Galmar was planning to leave Windhelm yesterday?” Tullius asked.

“It does,” legate Cipius agreed.  “We believe he will arrive at the fort tomorrow and spend at least one, maybe two, days overseeing preparations there before moving out.”

“I don’t envy them the trip from there to Valtheim Towers,” Balgruuf noted, grimacing slightly at the thought.

“Our estimation is their carts and siege equipment will be slow enough, going up the hill, that they’ll be forced to spend the night somewhere near the top of the falls,” legate Cipius said.

“There’s a giant camp on an ancient platform above the road here,” Alexa offered, pointing to the map.  “Both it, and the cave behind it, would make an adequate campsite for a large group.”

“Galmar will have to send an advanced party to take, and hold, the towers,” Balgruuf informed them.  “But giants are another thing completely.”

“He will send mercenaries to take care of the giants,” Rikka informed them.  “Keeping an eye on the giant camp would give us advanced warning of their progress.”

“What about an ambush?” Irileth asked.

“Setting up an ambush at the falls would slow them down but I don’t know what that would buy us at this point,” Tullius answered.  “We will be as ready in two days as we are likely to be in a week.”

“An ambush could reduce their numbers,” Irileth countered.  “Fewer men camped outside our walls cannot be a bad thing.”

“I am not certain we have the extra men required for such a thing,” Rikka admitted.

“You worry about defending the city,” Alexa told them.  “I can handle reducing their numbers… on two conditions.”  She met Tullius’ eyes across the table and then addressed herself to Balgruuf.  “Firstly, that, afterwards, clemency is offered to those who put aside the Stormcloak cause and return to their homes and, secondly, that a genuine attempt is made to convene the Moot before taking further military action.”

Tullius considered her for a moment.  “You believe there will be a significant number of defectors.”  It was a statement, not a question.

“I think that a string of bad luck can be extremely demoralizing to those who believe that the gods are with them and that the righteousness of their cause will guarantee victory,” she replied, locking eyes with him.

“Done,” Balgruuf stated, with only the briefest glance at each of his advisors.

“Then I will go see what can be arranged,” Alexa said, stepping away from the table.

Rikka gave Alexa a worried look but said nothing. 

“You will let us know of any actions you take that may affect our defenses,” Tullius told her.  It was not a question.

“Of course,” Alexa answered with a slight nod.

“Irileth,” Balgruuf commanded.

“Of course,” the Dunmer woman answered.  “I will join you, dragonborn, if you don’t mind.”

“Working with you is always a pleasure, housecarl,” she answered, politely.

“What did you do with the sword?” Irileth inquired, as they reached the far end of the Dragonsreach bridge.

“Do?” Alexa asked, coming to a stop at the top of the stairs.  “Sword?”

Irileth gave Alexa a hard, level, look.  “Mephala’s hand no longer rests upon the jarl’s children.”

“You knew what the sword was?” Alexa asked, surprised.

“I knew the moment I laid eyes upon it,” Irileth answered.

Alexa cocked her head to one side and considered the housecarl for a moment.  “Ah.  The foresters really are everywhere these days.” ³

“Former,” Irileth stated coldly.  “The guild no longer exists.  Good work with the Brotherhood, by the way.  It took me more than a month to figure out who finally got to them.”  She paused, compressed her lips in what might have been frustration or discomfort, and returned to the original subject.  “I know of no solution to the problem of the sword.  I would like to know how you did it.”

“The dragonborn made a deal,” Alexa answered dismissively.⁴

Irileth’s eyes narrowed.  Then she nodded once in understanding.  “I see.  The Webspinner traded up.”  She took a step away from Alexa to look out over the city for a moment.  “I am certain the jarl would thank you, if he knew.”

“It’s fine,” Alexa told her.  “Even the brattiest children in the world don’t deserve that one as a ‘friend’.”

Irileth turned back to face Alexa, her eyes serious.  “Well, I thank you.  You are owed, dragonborn.  I will not forget.”

Alexa blinked at her, too taken aback to say anything. 

“Don’t look so surprised,” Irileth chided.  “Even after all the time I’ve spent here, I have not forgotten manners.”

Alexa gave a slight snort at that, and Irileth actually smiled in response.  “Shall we ride out to the falls and consider possible ambush locations?” she asked.

“No need,” Alexa replied.  “I’m going to set a dragon on them.  With any luck it will destroy any siege weapons they’re bringing with them.”

“That would certainly be helpful,” Irileth agreed, not bothering to even question if that was something Alexa could do. “But I don’t think that’s something I can help you with.”

“True…” Alexa admitted, stepping past her to the stairs.  “But I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on a few other things.”

“Expecting company?” Teldryn asked, coming to sit with her beside the fire, late in the evening after Lydia was already in bed.

“Is it that obvious?” Alexa asked, with a wry little smile.

“You’re jumpy,” he told her.  “And I have observed a suspicious number of bed rolls in the storage area off the kitchen.”

“The letters I sent from Windhelm included a few requests that some friends drop by for a chat.  I’m expecting the first group to arrive tonight... though I doubt they’ll stay until morning.  The bed rolls are for the people I’m expecting tomorrow.”

“Aren’t the city gates closed after sundown?” he asked, adding wood to the fire.

She shrugged slightly.  “That won’t be a problem for them.”

He arched an eyebrow at that.  “That sounds… suspicious.  Should I leave?”

“That is up to you,” she answered with a small smile.  “But I value your opinion.  You likely have significantly more experience than I when it comes to large scale political machination.”

“Ah,” he said, leaning back in his chair.  “I had wondered if you had a plan for what happens after Ulfric fails to take the city.”

She glanced, meaningfully, at his uncovered face.  “While I do not believe Karliah to be old enough, or to have spent enough time in Morrowind, to recognize you, you should know that she is the granddaughter of Drayven Indoril and Queen Barenziah.” ⁵

“That’s quite the lineage,” Teldryn noted, giving it some consideration.  “If memory serves, Drayven was long suspected of involvement with a cult of Nocturnal.”

“He was a Nightingale,” Alexa confirmed.  “A position that has remained in the family.”

“Then your friend shouldn’t have any problem keeping a secret, if it becomes necessary.  Shall I make us some mulled wine while we wait?”

Alexa gave him a sideways glance.  “Is that a real offer or a suggestion that I should do so?”

He chuckled at that.  “It was an offer.  I even picked up the necessary ingredients while you were attending the War Council this morning.”

About an hour later, there was a slight rap on the door and then three people, dressed head to toe in black armor, were standing on the other side of the fire.

Alexa stood, smiling.  “Thank you for coming.” 

“Hey, Alexa,” Sapphire said, pulling off her hood.  “Nice place.  You sure you’re not getting too fancy for old friends?”

“Is there anywhere in the world that is truly too fancy for you three?” Alexa laughed, accepting Sapphire’s quick hug.  “Don’t answer that.  Instead, allow me to introduce my current traveling companion, Teldryn.  Teldryn, these are my friends Sapphire, Brynjolf, and Karliah.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Teldryn said, rising to his feet in order to bow slightly to all three.

Alexa saw Karliah’s eyes flick from Teldryn to the sword⁶ leaning against his chair and then quickly back to his face.  “Brynjolf promised me a ‘devious and intricate’ plan,” Karliah murmured, kissing Alexa on the cheek in greeting.  “I am glad to see he was not lying.”

Chapter Text

The dragon had been a surprise.¹  A surprise definitely not mentioned by either the forward team Galmar had sent to take, and hold, the towers, or the mercenaries he’d hired to take the giant camp.  Most of the men had managed to take cover in the cave behind where they’d been camped, but their wagons, and horses, hadn’t been so lucky.  The relentless attacks, by the dark sprits the dragon summoned while it helped itself to their supplies, had left an unfortunate number of his men injured enough that they had to be sent back to Fort Amol.  As for the damage the beast had done to the siege equipment… that would take time, and expertise, to evaluate.  

So, they had repaired those carts they could and moved on, already half a day behind, the men now pulling the carts behind them down the road.

Now acutely aware that their camps would make easy targets for a dragon, and that dragons were not as easily defeated as the success of Whiterun’s guards had led him to believe², Galmar chose to split his men between the Stormcloak ‘hidden camp’ location, east of the river, and the new camp they planned to set up just south of the city.³

Heavy rain had set in as they pitched their tents, making Galmar wish his command tent came equipped with the raised wooden floors he remembered from his time in the Legion.  Just because a Nord should not need such fripperies did not mean staying dry was not more pleasant than sleeping in mud.⁴  He grimaced in the direction of the farmhouse.  No, solidarity between the ranks was part of what being a Stormcloak was about.

Thankfully, at this time of year, the down pour wasn’t likely to last more than a few hours.

It was still raining when Galmar woke.  Glancing out of his tent he saw that the sky was ominously dark with swirling cloud that showed no sign of lifting.  He scowled.  The already deepening mud was going to be – unfortunate - if this continued.  Still, assessment and repair of the siege equipment could get underway while they awaited those soldiers who had yet to arrive.  If things went well, they would be prepared to take Whiterun in two days.

It was nearing noon when hubbub on the outside of camp caught his attention.

“What’s going on?” Galmar demanded of Ralof who was already heading towards him.

Ralof gave him a worried look.  “One of ours, sir.  Says he’s all that’s left of the recruits coming from Falkreath.  He claims…”

Galmar pushed past him to where a sodden young man was sitting on a stump, sucking frantically on a hawk feather the camp healer had given him.⁵  “Report,” he commanded, gesturing for the bloodied recruit to remain seated.

“A werewolf, sir,” he gasped.  “In the night.  Sun-killer, he told us to run, while he stayed behind to fight it.  But… it just jumped over him, and killed the others, before turning around to face him.  I run fast, and was on watch at the time, so I got away but… I think I’m the only one left, sir.”

Cold silence spread out around them.  “Get some rest, soldier,” Galmar told him gruffly, before turning away.

On his way back to the command tent, Galmar gestured for his best scout to follow him.  He waited to speak until they were, at least notionally, out of earshot of most of the men.  There was one other group that had yet to check in.  “Go, find our brothers coming from the Reach,” he ordered softly.

The next day Galmar was overseeing the placement of the remaining catapult when the scout returned.  “No sign of our men on the road,” he reported quietly.  “I spoke with a hunter camping near Sunderstone Gorge.  He hasn’t seen them.  But he did say that there have been an unusual number of Foresworn about.”

Galmar nodded once.  “Thank you, soldier.  Dismissed.”  It seemed he should not wait for any more men.

“One more thing, sir,” the scout, continued.  “The rain, it ends – suddenly - just past the Western Watchtower, sir.”

“Understood.”  He waited for the scout to leave before turning to Ralof.  “Go tell Hjornskar Head-Smasher that tomorrow we take Whiterun.”

It had not been a good night.  Around midnight a runner from Hjornskar’s camp had arrived to report that all those camped on the other side of the river were suffering from a sudden onset of severe intestinal cramping, and to request the aid of the camp’s healer.  Then, about two hours before dawn, the storm, that had already lasted far too long, had picked up.  Lightning had struck the remaining catapult and a tree behind the camp, showering the tents with sparks and burning debris.  Nobody had gotten much sleep after that.  The men were sodden, muddy, on edge and running on very little sleep.  Morale, which only a few days ago had been usually high, bolstered by being part of the first true display of Stormcloak strength, was falling off rapidly.  At Fort Amol the conversations around the fires at night had focused on the prospect of honor, personal glory, and freedom.  Now, when the men spoke to each other at all, it was their resentments they voiced, leading Galmar to suspect that the only thing keeping a fair number of his soldiers from desertion, at this point, was the expectation of looting one of the wealthiest cities in Skyrim.  That did not bode well for the citizens of Whiterun.  Galmar pushed the thought away irritably.  Being on the wrong side of war had its consequences.  Maybe the other jarls would learn from the example of Whiterun.

Hjornskar Head-Smasher arrived just after dawn, still looking green around the gills.  “Spoiled food?” Galmar enquired, not particularly interested in the answer.

Hjornskar grimaced slightly at the burnt and debris littered condition of the camp, and the bedraggled and mud-covered condition of the soldiers, but wisely kept his opinions to himself.  “Hard to tell,” he answered as he stepped up to the map table.  “I’m lucky I had a potion of cure poison on me or I wouldn’t be here.  The men from the hidden camp won’t be any good to us for a day at least.  Perhaps, given the weather, we should wait?”

“We cannot afford a prolonged siege,” Galmar told him.  “Besides, Talos bids us win honor and glory in battle, not starve fools into submission.”

“We won’t be able to get a battering ram to the gates in all this mud,” Hjornskar pointed out.  Even if we could keep one intact overnight, his tone added.  “Taking the gates without it will be difficult.”

“True,” Galmar grunted.  Their current force was about half what they’d been planning on to take the city and they had no siege equipment with which to breach the walls, but the situation in the camp was growing more untenable by the hour.  The Legion would have turned back, withdrawn to Fort Amol, and awaited more favorable conditions.  But telling Ulfric they had dishonored his name, by quitting the field without engaging, was unthinkable.

“Too bad Ulfric isn’t here to shout the gate down for us,” Hjornskar offered, with an attempted laugh.

“We are here to prove our strength, and the strength of our cause,” Galmar reminded him gruffly.  “Ulfric has already proven his own.”

“Of course,” Hjornkar agreed quickly.  “I did not mean…” he let his protests die under Galmar’s scowl.  There was a brief, uncomfortable, silence.  Hjornskar shifted his weight and looked at the sky.  “Do you think it’s her?” he asked Galmar softly.

“Never heard of a shout that made a man shit himself,” Galmar grumbled.  Or controlled Forsworn and werewolves, his mind added.  “But the weather…” he glared in the direction of the city.  This storm had finally moved beyond what he was willing to believe was natural.  “Our misfortunes seem to be piling up at an unnatural rate,” he allowed.

Silence stretched between the two men again until Galmar growled deep in his throat and straightened to his full height.  “No.  Delay will only further weaken our position,” he decided.  “Gather the men.  We go in two hours.”

Chapter Text

Activity in the Stormcloak camp indicated that this would be the day.  The people of Whiterun took their places and waited as boredom and anticipation grew over the next few hours.  With nothing left to do, or think about, Teldryn’s mind turned to the other warriors currently positioned between the city’s exterior gate and the drawbridge. 

The dragonborn had acquired an eclectic set of friends during her time in Skyrim.  He was uncertain if the Forsworn princeling – now in possession of Deathbrand’s armor and weapons – or the daughter of Coldharbor – wearing the mask of Vokun, Ahzidal’s ring of necromancy, and carrying a nasty vampiric sword she was unlikely to ever use – were more, or less, surprising than the female champion of Malacath, now wearing Dukaan’s mask in addition to a full set of enchanted ebony armor.

Marcurio and Mjoll, though both fairly standard mercenaries by comparison to the rest of the dragonborn’s companions, were – now that they were both wearing dragon priest masks and carrying impressively magical weapons - exceedingly well outfitted.²  Lydia, for all her hurt over not being the Dragonborn’s default traveling companion, was wearing a very fine set of enchanted steel plate, Otar’s mask, and carrying Dawnbreaker and an artifact Alexa refered to as “Ariel’s shield”. 

Vilkas - currently wearing Rahgot, enchanted Nordic carved armor, and carrying the Bloodskal blade - was… exactly as Teldryn had pictured him.  Though, having eavesdropped on the conversation between Alexa and the Circle their first night in Whiterun, it was possible the boy had grown up a bit since his relationship with Alexa had ended.  Either way Teldryn was uncertain whether he, and the other two members of the Companions, was here to defend the city or, like the rest of them, because Alexa had asked it.  How split were their loyalties? he wondered.  Would Alexa be able to depend upon them when it wasn’t their own home that was at risk?  He glanced up at Aela standing over the gate, Krosis hiding her face and the black Dwemer bow from Kagrumez in her hand.  She was talking quietly with Alexa while Farkas – wearing Ahzidal’s mask and carrying a Blades Oath-blade³ and a shield made of dragon bone - sat blocking the bottom of the stairs up to the platform the two archers were standing on.

“Hmmm,” the large Redguard, who’d arrived with the vampire, standing beside Teldryn rumbled, as he inspected the sky.  “Weather’s lifting.”

“She’s getting good at not making a lot of noise when she shouts,”⁴ Teldryn agreed. 

“Something tells me you’ve seen a few of these in your time,” Isran said, glancing towards the gate.  They were standing guarding the north-facing gap in the wall.  Nice view of the mountains, no view at all of the main body of Stormcloaks to the south.

“A few,” Teldryn admitted.  “What about you?  This doesn’t really seem like your thing.”

“A few.  And it’s not, anymore.  But… I’m interested in seeing what she can do now that she has settled into herself.”

“I think you’ll be disappointed then,” Teldryn told him.  “She doesn’t want this to be about what she can do.  She wants it to be about what they can’t.”

Windhelm, five days later… ⁵

Ulfic glowered at Hjornskar Head-Smasher.  His report, so far, was ludicrous - more like something out of old tales than anything that could possibly be true.  Dragons, unseasonable storms, swords that cut down five men at a time⁶, bolts of sunlight - raining from suddenly clear skies - that burned Stormcloak but not Imperial.  His army had failed to even lower the drawbridge much less breach the city itself.

“How bad are our losses?” Ulfric enquired, still trying to gauge whether it was poor leadership or genuine danger that had caused his men to break and run.

“Of those that participated in the attack, we estimate one in six killed outright,” Galmar answered deliberately and without inflection.  “Twice that removed from the rosters for the next several months due to injuries sustained both before and a during the battle.”

“You indicated that almost a third of the forces gathered at Whiterun were not committed?”

“Those who had camped on the east side of the river were not fit for duty,” Hjornskar answered.

“That’s something at least,” Ulfric muttered.

Galmar grunted slightly at that, drawing Ulfric’s eye.  “You do not think so?” the Jarl demanded.

“Our hidden camps report that many men we believe to have survived have not returned to their posts,” Galmar told him.  “It seems the traitor Jarls are following in Balgruuf’s footsteps and offering clemency to deserters.”

“We do not need weak-hearted fools that can be swayed by such an offer,” Ulfric growled dismissively, even as his hands clenched into fists.  “Our army can only be strengthened by their loss.”

“Even without those from the secondary camp, we still committed the bulk of our forces at Whiterun,” Galmar told him sternly.  “We must hope the Empire does not know and so does not press its advantage while we remain in disarray.”

With a roar of rage Ulfric upended the war table.  “The dragonborn played me!”⁷ he yelled, turning to pace about the room.  “She provoked me into attacking before we were ready.”

“Aside from the possible use of weather magic it does not seem to me the dragonborn had much of a hand in what happened,” Hjornskar Head-Smasher disagreed, helping Jorleif put the war table back on its feet.

“What about the dragon that, twice, attacked us but not the city?” Galmar countered, picking the map up off the ground a spreading it back across the table.

Ulfric stopped pacing, turning to Galmar, “You believe she can control dragons?” he asked, his voice low and unusually– terrifyingly - calm given his recent outburst.

“At least one,” Galmar answered warily.

“That is… interesting.”

“Did not Vignar’s⁸ report indicate that it was the dragonborn – and her companions – that held the gate?” Jorleif inquired, as he set about collecting map markers off the floor.

“It did,” Ulfric mused.

“She has clearly shown the strength of her retinue, if not as clearly her own,” Wuunferth the Unliving noted, from where he stood in a shadowy corner⁹.  “As well as what it means to have her support.  That will certainly gain the attention of quite a few persons.  If I were she, I would start keeping a watch out for Thalmor assassins.  I hope Arch-Mage Aren is prepared to entertain them.”

“What did you say?” Ulfric demanded, abruptly turning to face his court mage.

“That the College of Winterhold would do well to expect assassins?” Wuunferth clarified, uncertain which part of his previous statement Ulfric was asking about.

“She’s a member of the College?”

“She is.  And quite skilled in both illusion and alteration magic from what I hear.  Not so good with destruction, apparently,” the mage added smugly.

“I see.”  Ulfric took a red map token from the box on the windowsill and placed it on the College of Winterhold.  “Galmar, let our men at Fort Kastav and Fort Dunstad know that no supplies are to reach the College.  Wuunferth, let the Arch-Mage know that the dragonborn is to blame for the change in circumstance.”

Galmar shifted uncomfortably.  “There is no way to starve the College without starving the city,” he stated.  “A city that is, at this time, friendly to our cause.”

“No need to worry about that,” Ulfric replied dismissively.  “Jarl Korir already knows what is to blame for the state of his holdings.”

Chapter Text

Brina smiled when she recognized the customer coming through the door.  “Alexa, I didn’t know you’d returned.  Is there something I can get for you?”

“I just noticed the khajiit caravan in town and thought I’d drop by and ask how business is going,” Alexa explained.  “Everything working out?”

“It is,” Brina quickly assured her.  “I did as you suggested and used your investment to buy the abandoned building across the way.¹  Now I rent the space to the khajiit and the jarl can’t do anything about it!”

“The competition isn’t a problem?” Alex enquired, taking in Brina’s new dress, and the relatively full shelves behind the counter.

“Not at all,” Brina assured her.  “We came to an understanding about the types of things we each sell.  When they arrive, before they do anything else, we exchange any strange things I’ve purchased in their absence for any everyday things they have which didn’t make it on the last shipment from Windhelm.  My profits are up and, best of all, I don’t ever have to worry about not being able to offload something.”

“I’m glad everything worked out so well,” Alexa smiled. 

“I uh, do have one thing I’ve kept aside…” Brina admitted, blushing slightly, as she put a red-ish brown dragon claw on the counter.  “It’s… well, it looks like a dragon claw, and you, you’re the dragonborn,” she explained.  “I thought you might like it.”

“What do you know about it?” Alexa asked, examining the claw.

“The man I bought it from said something about this claw thing and Yngol Barrow.  He said it was worth more than its weight in gold to the person who took it back there.  Something about placing it back in Yngol’s chamber, I don’t know.  But I, uh, thought of you.”

“How much do you want for it?” Alexa asked.

“You’ve already done so much for me but I… I was hoping for a favor?”

“What kind of favor?” Alexa asked, suddenly cautious.

“My brother, he didn’t used to be like he is now.  Not until Isabelle left and broke his heart…”

“Left?” Alexa asked carefully.

Brina nodded.  “Ranmir claims she ran off with some thief named Vex.  If you could - I don’t know – keep an eye out for her, or this thief, and find out what actually happened?

“I’ll ask around Riften the next time I’m there,” Alexa promised, accepting the claw even as her mind boggled at the idea of Vex actually encouraging a potential romantic partner.²  Something about this situation was definitely not as it seemed.

“Welcome, friend,” Ahkari purred as Alexa stepped into the formarly abandoned building just to the right of the bridge.  “The alchemical supplies from Morrowind have been restocked since last we met,”³ Ahkari added in a knowing tone.

Alexa looked around her.  The khajiit had been busy.  The walls of the house had been repaired, to a heigh of about six feet, with wood that looked like it had been scavenged from the other abandoned buildings in town.  Tanned mammoth hides, fur side down, had been tented between them to form a makeshift roof.  Three lanterns, lit by the Magelight spell rather than flame, were evenly spaced along the ceiling, indicating either that one of Ahkari’s group had some skill in Alteration magic or that someone at the College had pressured Sergius Turrianus into doing something useful with his time.  Woven straw mats, like the one Zaynabi was currently working on outside, now covered much of the interior floor.  Crates and bags lined the walls displaying the caravan’s wares.  “It’s a step up from Dawnstar at least,” Alexa noted, a little disappointed that more had not been done, given how important the caravan was likely to be to the continued welfare of the College.  Though, it was likely Mirabelle had done as much as she felt she could without further aggravating the jarl.

“The good word of the Dragonborn has brought us much,” Akhari agreed.  “Risaad hopes our efforts here will quiet the other Jarls’ worries regarding allowing us into their cities.”

“Are you staying warm enough without a proper roof?” Alexa enquired.

“Straw is expensive at this time of year,” Akhari answered.   “Until harvest time, when straw is more plentiful, we will make do by being grateful it is not winter and by sleeping very close together.”

Alexa eyed the fireplace.  While there were signs it was in use, the fire was currently little more than banked coals, and she had noticed no wood stacked outside.  Wood, she assumed, was also rather hard to come by in Winterhold, and not a particularly profitable thing to carry on one’s back, especially in the sort of quantity needed to keep a fire going all day.

“I… have an idea,” Alexa said, putting down her pack.  “Would you mind if I interfered somewhat with your fire?”

“As long as you promise to start it again, should whatever you plan fail, Kharjo can remove the ash and embers for you,” Ahkari said, with a wave at the cat, in full plate armor, seated against the far wall.  “Please consider our wares while he works.”

“What is this?” Alexa asked, picking up a purple bottle, a few minutes later.

“The label says that it is sleeping tree sap,” Ahkari replied, accepting, and beginning to tally up, the other items Alexa had brought over.

“And that is?”

“This one does not truly know,” Ahkari admitted.  “We acquired it off a dead body by the side of the road.  It was the only bottle on him that survived whatever killed him.”⁴

Alexa uncorked it and wrinkled her nose at the smell.  “You recognize it?” she asked Teldryn, handing him the bottle.

“Smells like Hist sap,” he said, handing it back.

“I am not going to ask how you know that,” Alexa muttered.

“There are no hist trees outside of Blackmarsh,” Ahkari informed him, sternly.  “Please, do not cast such aspersions upon our wares.”

“Wares you picked up on the side of the road,” Alexa reminded her blandly as she added the bottle to the pile of alchemical ingredients. 

“This one is done with the fireplace,” Kharjo announced, “and quite interested in seeing what you have planed.”

Crouching down beside the fireplace Alexa positioned a large Dwemer plate, taken from a Dwarven sphere, as a makeshift fire-back, wedgeding it in place with a large piece of solid Dwemer metal.  She then put a centurion dynamo core on the solid metal bar and propped the small control lever on a stone, just close enough to slow the rotation of the core’s shielding without the lever making contact with the bar of Dwemer metal.  It wasn’t long before the air over the solid metal began to shimmer with heat.⁵

“There,” Alexa smiled, standing up.  “You shouldn’t need wood now.”

“The little piece of metal, it changes how hot the jewel is?” Kharjo asked.

“Basically,” Alexa replied.  “The distance over which it effects the – jewel – is only a few inches, though.  More than that and the jewel will put out no heat at all.  Too close though and you might risk the heat damaging it over time.  I haven’t done enough experiments to know.”

Kharjo nodded, his eyes not leaving the core and its spinning shielding.  “This Dwemer contraption, there are more?” he asked.

“There is one at the heart of every steam centurion,” Alexa told him.

“Oh,” he looked disappointed.  “This one does not think he is ready for such an endeavor.  Still, it is a useful thing to know.”

Alexa turned back to Ahkari, “How much do I owe you?” she asked, indicating the fair-sized pile of ingredients she’d set before the caravanner.

Ahkari glanced at the fireplace, and then back at Alexa.  “For you, and considering your trade, five hundred gold.”

“A fair price,” Alexa acknowledged.  “I assume you still accept gemstones?”

“Something you want to say?” Alexa asked Teldryn, a little later, over a late lunch at the inn.  It was the third time he’d opened his mouth only to closed it again without saying anything.

Teldryn glanced up at her, startled.  “What?”

She gestured to the unusually empty room.  Nelacar was apparently busy in his own room and Dagur, upon learning that Teldryn would be making an extended stay, had muttered something about “clean sheets” before disappearing downstairs.

“You ever see that glowing tree on the plane west of Whiterun?” Teldryn asked her.

Alexa nodded.  “I try to avoid going near it as I’m pretty sure that thing’s either daedric or corrupted by something that is.  Why?”

“You ever ask anyone in Whiterun about it?”

“No,” she admitted.  “Have you?”

“My previous patron was aware of two stories.  The first was that when Red Mountain erupted, a piece of it was blown to the middle of Skyrim and the tree grew in the crater.  Strange since no such trees grow in Morrowind, or on Solstheim, as far as I know.  The second story was that it was a spore that fell from an island floating in the sky.”

He watched her eyes track rapidly back and forth as she considered that.  “An um-hist?”⁶ she asked finally.

“Possibly.”

“If the city could spread spores… how come there aren’t um-hist in Morrowind now?”

“The Argonians, even those in Morrowind, were very thorough about dealing with them.  But I don’t think it occurred to anybody that one might fall as far away from the city’s path as the middle of Skyrim.”

“Well, that’s certainly something worth adding to my to-do list,” Alexa muttered to herself.

“After you defeat Alduin,” Teldryn told her sternly.

Leaving Teldryn to get settled at the inn, Alexa made her way to the College.  She was halfway across the first span of the bridge when she suddenly stopped, her attention caught by one of the holes, and its radiating cracks, that would – one day – result in the rest of the bridge tumbling into the depths below.  “I’m going to try something,” she announced, turned around and marched back towards Faralda.

“Try something?” Faralda asked, in surprise, when Alexa took her by the arm and dragged her off the bridge.

“I learned a new shout in Solstheim,” Alexa explained as they curved around to the left, as if to take the path running under the bridge but, instead, walked over to the cliff edge to get a good look at the bridge’s broken piers.  “Having had time to think about it, I believe combining part of it with part of the shout Alduin uses, to call dragons back from their graves, might have interesting results.”

“So, you believe two separate Shouts can be combine into a new shout?” Faralda asked, uncertainly.

“Isn’t that true for anything that fits within a theoretical framework?” Alexa asked her.

“I suppose...” she said, sounding dubious.

“Don’t worry, I’ve absorbed the soul of the greatest master of the thu’um to have ever lived,” Alex confided.  “His knowledge of how to create new shouts was extensive.  And, all things considered, this is a very minor alteration.”

“And what kind of results are we talking about?” Faralda asked, still clearly uncertain.

“GOLZ-TIID-VO!”⁷ Alexa shouted at the bridge.

The bridge shuddered and quaked as the pieces from the ground below flew back into place. 

“Impressive,” Faralda murmured.  Even the natural arch that had once supported the bridge had been remade.

“Ow,” Alexa croaked, holding her throat. 

“You okay?” Faralda demanded, suddenly concerned, even as Alexa cast fast healing on herself.

“That really hurt,” Alexa admitted, voice still a little hoars.  “Slowing time seems to be entirely different from undoing it.”

Faralda blinked at her.  “You just undid 80 years?”

“Very locally,” Alexa confirmed, as a bone leeching fatigue overtook her.  “I… I think this explains why the return of the dragons has been so slow.  I doubt even Alduin can shout away thousands of years without needing to rest in-between.  Wow… I… need to sit down.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Faralda prodded, crouching down beside Alexa.  “You’ve gone a little pale… pale-er,” she amended, acknowledging the look Alexa gave her.

“Shouts draw the energy they use to alter reality from the soul of the caster,” Alexa explained.  “The draw required to breath fire is barely noticeable.  Summoning something from Oblivion, well, someone without several dragon souls to draw from would probably need to get a good night’s sleep to recover.  Slowing time…” she paused for a moment, thinking about it.  “I think it likely that – due to dragon’s singular relationship with time – it would cost others a great deal more than it costs me.  But undoing time, even for dragons, seems…”⁸  She shook her head.  How was Alduin managing it? she wondered.

“I read your paper on the thu’um and its relation to Alteration magic,” Faralda admitted, interrupting Alexa’s pondering. 

“Oh?” Alexa asked, groaning wearily to her feet.

“I think you may have understated the level to which the thu’um surpasses common magic in its ability to alter reality,” Faralda told her dryly.

Alexa gave her a level look.

“On purpose?” she asked, surprised.  “I see.  May I know why?”

“I wanted people to underestimate me,” Alexa answered.  “For as long as possible.”

Faralda nodded, and then smiled.  “And to think Mirabelle once questioned me even letting you into the College.”

“Here, the translation of the latest piece of Shalidor’s you brought back.  See what you can make of it,” Urag grumped, placing a book down on the counter in front of her.  “And the location of another of Shalidor’s works as well as the location of another rare tome.  Is there anything else you need?”

“A recipe for ink that will work with a quill of gemination⁹?” Alexa asked, as she handed him the second rare tome from Solstheim.

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll have a copy of the recipe for you,” Urag told her, already inspecting the condition of the book she’d brought him.  “Though, if you need copies of your work made, and don’t want to pay Sergius for a quill, I can make copies for you… for a fee.”

“Good to know,” Alexa laughed.  “I think I’ll try my own hand at it for a while though.  I’ve never used copying magic before, it should be interesting.  Anything new on the orb downstairs?”

“Hmmm, that depends,” he rumbled, walking over to a locked bookcase containing singular texts from the second era.  “Some of the faculty have suggested that what we can see of it is just a container,” he told her, withdrawing a slim volume.¹⁰  “Which reminded me of something.  It took me a while to find the reference but…”  He opened the volume to a specific page and placed it on the counter in front of her.

It was a transcription of a letter to the Bards’ College of Solitude, requesting research funding, and listing the questions the author hoped to answer.¹¹  The section Urag indicated read:

"The leader of this second invasion was the King of Kamal, Ada’Soom Dir-Kamal. We know little about him or his reasons for invading Tamriel, even from our agents in the Eastern Kingdom: few captured Akaviri knew any Tamrielic, and most died under interrogation. One report stated that Dir-Kamal was seeking someone or something called the “Ordained Receptacle”—but this could easily be a bungled translation."

“Ordained receptacle?” she murmured.  “I suppose, if the Night of Tears is correct then it wouldn’t be the first time an army had tried to take the orb...”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Urag noted.

“If they were looking for Saarthal I’d have expected the Akaviri to get further west than Windhelm before turning around and heading into Morrowind.  Is it possible the Kamal knew the Planemeld was about to happen?”

“Demons that spend every waking moment trying to conquer someone?” Urag rumbled.

“Sounds like a group aligned with Molag Bal,” Alexa agreed.  “Maybe they were looking for the Amulet of Kings?  Mannimarco, after all, didn’t start looking for it until after the invasion was over.”¹²

“Strange that an object like the Eye could leave so little impact on history,” Urag noted, as he returned the book to its shelf.

“I…”

“Yes?” he asked, returning to the counter.

“I think it likely that the structure it was suspended in, in Saarthal, rendered it mostly dormant.”

Urag frowned at her.  “You got proof of that?”

“The glass of the circle utilizes true warp tones,” she told him softly.

The librarian’s eyes narrowed.  “That’s a lot of work to trap something,” he commented, his tone carefully flat.

“Something that has been bathing in magicka for three months now,” Alexa added.

“You think it’s going to be a problem?” he asked.

“You ever hear of anything like that which wasn’t a problem?” she returned.

“You ever going to stick around long enough to actually study it?”

“Hopefully.  I don’t have anything on my schedule, currently, until early next month,” she told him.  “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

It lasted right up until she ran into Mirabelle in the courtyard on the way back to her room.

“If I could have a moment, dragonborn?” the master wizard began, holding up a piece of paper in one hand.

“Of course,” Alexa answered, going to where she stood beside the focal point.  “What can I do for you?”

“It seems Ulfric did not appreciate your involvement with the defense of Whiterun,” Mirabelle told her sternly, handing over Wunfurth’s letter.  “I assume your efforts on our behalf have already taken this possibility into account,” she added, after Alexa had finished perusing the letter’s contents.

“They have,” Alexa answered, handing Wunfurth’s letter back to Mirabelle.  “Though I will need to go to Solitude to finalize plans with the East Empire Company and the Imperial Legion.  I will leave in the morning.”

Chapter Text

When Ondolemar visited the Thalmor Embassy he tried not stay there over-night, choosing, instead, to sleep at the “Thalmor Headquarters” in Castle Dour, well outside of Elenwen’s personal domain.¹

“Ah, Commander, I was beginning to think you wouldn’t be joining me this evening,” Tullius hailed the Thalmor Emissary as Ondolemar entered Castle Dour’s war room.

“I almost didn’t,” Ondolemar replied with a brief smile.

“Elenwen in one of her moods?” the General asked sympathetically with a gesture of invitation towards the chessboard on the small table against the wall.

“The Ambassador is far too accomplished a diplomat to have ‘moods,’ General,” Ondolemar deadpanned, accepting the general’s invitation.

Taking a seat across from the Thalmor commander general Tullius grimaced in actual sympathy.  “Of course.  My mistake.”  He moved his king’s pawn.

Ondolemar responded with his own king’s pawn and the game began.  A few minutes of quiet passed between them. “I hear congratulations on the defense of Whiterun are in order,” Ondolemar offered.

“Perhaps,” the general allowed, not looking up from the bored.  “Though I am probably not the one who deserves the praise.  The dragonborn, and her friends, are a force to be reckoned with.”

“The Thalmor are uncertain how much of the reports they’ve received should be taken seriously,” Ondolemar admitted, watching the general carefully.

A sour expression ghosted across Tullius’ face.  “I can certainly understand how that might be the case.  Though I think much of it can be written off as the dragonborn having collected a surprising number of powerful artifacts.”

“She does seem to have a knack for that,” Ondolemar agreed.²

Tullius shot him a quick, penetrating, glance, a question evident in the slight lowering of his brows but was interrupted by someone entering the room.  Ondolemar glanced over, wondering who could have business in the war room at this late hour, and saw Solitude’s Imperial Legate accompanied by Alexa.  She, for once, was not wearing armor but College of Winterhold Master robes the banding on which, he noted, seemed to indicate dual mastery.  Strange that, as far as Ondolemar was aware, Ancano hadn’t reported Alexa attaining a single mastery much less two of them…

“I spent the day with Vittoria,” Alexa was telling the Legate as she spread a piece of paper out beside the map on the table.  “An East Empire Company pilot has agreed to anchor here, in the bay on the northwest side of this island.  Initially, until a jetty can be built, the cargo will have to be loaded onto a rowboat which, at this time of year, shouldn’t have too much trouble getting close to the College… probably around here,” she indicated another point on the map Ondolemar couldn’t see.  “The shore, however, is not safe.  There are bears, ice wolves, horkers, and, of course, the ever-present problem of bandits.  The College would appreciate the Legion’s help ensuring the safety of those moving our supplies the short distance from the landing point to the College.”³

“Stormcloak scavenging is affecting the College,” Tullius informed Ondolemar, in an undertone.  “While the College is still not actively taking sides, they have been forced route their trade away from Windhelm.”

Alexa looked up from the map, caught Ondolemar watching her, and smiled.  “I see,” he muttered, returning his focus to the board in front of him.  “I had no idea that was such a problem.”

“It’s a long climb up the hill from there,” the Legate told Alexa, his tone indicating that, whatever else they might be, legionaries were not porters.  “And the Imperil Legion is not welcome in Winterhold at the moment.”

“While there is a pathway up the hill from there, the College will be installing a levitation circle⁴ here,” she said.  “It should save a lot of time and effort… and avoid interference from locals.”

Tullius cleared his throat.  “I assume the College is aware of the Levitation Act⁵?” he said, addressing Alexa without looking up from the bored.

“The College is a legally independent entity⁶,” Alexa replied, “and the spit of land it occupies was ceded to the College in the second era.  As neither Skyrim, nor the Empire, has formally asserted new boundaries to college land - in the aftermath of the Great Collapse - the College currently maintains that its territory includes the beach below the rock on which it stands.  If the Empire wishes to disagree, the College would be happy to enter formal boundary negotiations once the Imperial Guild of Cartographers has fully mapped the area in question.”

Tullius glanced up at Alexa, his lips twitching in a very slight smile.  “Understood.”

The Legate shook his head.  “Well, I won’t argue with what you think is possible, or legal, on your end.  Providing a few plain clothed soldiers to keep off wildlife, and would be pirates, is easily done.”

“A member of the college will be on hand to demonstrate how the circle works, and answer any other questions,” she assured him as she walked over to observe Ondolemar and Tullius’ game. 

Ondolemar suddenly found it difficult to concentrate.  He moved a knight and hoped his inattention hadn’t just cost him the game.

It was Tullius’ turn to frown at the board.  After a few seconds Alexa leaned over and whispered something in the General’s ear.  He looked a little surprised and then smiled slowly.  He moved a rook.

Ondolemar glanced up at Alexa.  “Cheater,” he said, emotionlessly.

“You are in check, Commander,” she informed him with equal calm.  “Mate in four moves, I think.”

“I don’t recall chess being a three person game,” he told her, scrutinizing the board again.

“Truly?” she asked, sounding surprised.  “I thought that was the only way the Thalmor played.”

Ondolemar would swear that the General – though well enough trained not to visibly show surprise – stopped breathing in the slight pause before Alexa’s next comment.

“How awkward to have been wrong all this time,” she continued.  “Luckily I am prepared to buy your forgiveness.”  

She drifted away and Ondolemar steeled himself against looking to see where she had gone.  It was his turn again.  He moved quickly before she could return and distract him.  Then Alexa was back with two small glass jars in her hands.  She set them gently on his side of the table. 

Frowning Ondolemar picked them up to see what was inside.  It couldn’t be… he cracked one open and inhaled the heady scent of blue lotus.  The jar held six, blue-white lotus-tea balls: blossoms the centers of which had been filled with tea and other herbs, and then shaped, sewn together, and dried into a compact ball that would ‘bloom’ when placed in steaming water.  The other jar contained six pale-pink ‘pearls’ made from several, extremely toxic, alchemical components, powdered and then hardened into small spheres by the addition of a very small amount of moon sugar.  Combined the two made the rarest, and most sought after, infused drink in the Summerset Isles.  Alone each was a deadly poison.  The rarity of the drink was caused, not by rarity of ingredients, but by the number of persons capable of creating the blend being easily counted on one hand due to the fact that those alchemists who wished to produce it commercially were expected to prove the safety of their personal blend by drinking it themselves.⁷  “Is this…”

“Lotus pearl tea⁸,” Alexa confirmed.  “My own blend.  I hope it meets with your approval.”

He looked up at her meeting her eyes.  “Where…” 

“What?  No demand to know if I am attempting to poison you?” she laughed.  “Rather unexpected since I just handed you two jars of poison.  But, to answer your questions, dragons know the damndest things, the khajiit caravans carry the most interesting array of goods, and no, Commander, I am not trying to poison you.  My dunmer traveling companion can confirm I achieved the appropriate ratio of ingredients to render the toxins inert.  Though he claims the taste of elder flower does not provide an appropriate counterpoint to that of the blue lotus… But what does he know?  He thinks alcohol distilled from ash yams is not only potable but that it doesn’t taste of despair.  Which is ridiculous because that is exactly what it tastes like.”

“I get the impression that was a rather extended argument,” Ondolemar noted dryly, placing the jar he was holding, reverently, back on the table beside the other.

“Debate, Commander,” Alexa informed him with a slight sniff.  “When dragons argue they do so until one or the other is thoroughly defeated.  As Teldryn is still very much alive it can’t possibly have been an argument.”

“I stand corrected,” Ondolemar noted, bemused.

“I take it you two know each other?” Tullius asked, relaxing visibly.

“I believe the Thalmor have listed the Commander as my handler,” Alexa replied airily, as though that piece of information was both common knowledge and not at all problematic.

“You’re a Thalmor asset?” Tullius demanded in surprise. 

Ondolemar gave Tullius a slightly aggravated look.  “Frankly I consider it a good week if I can inform Elenwen of where she is let alone explain what she up to.”  He moved his queen.  “It is your turn, general.”

“I apologize,” Alexa replied, with obvious insincerity.  “I can see how ‘hunting through an Oblivion realm to kill a four-thousand-year-old dragon priest’ may have been difficult to explain.  Though, in my defense, it is exactly what I was doing three weeks ago.”

Tullius blinked once at the dragonborn before addressing Ondolemar.  “You, sir, have my condolences.”

Alexa reached out and moved Tullius’ knight.  “Checkmate, Commander.”

“I see now how Ulfric came to lose so completely,” Ondolemar said.  “You two make a formidable team.”  He rose to his feet.  “I will be in town for a few days,” he informed the General.  “Perhaps we can play again before I leave.”

“Of course,” Tullius answered, rising as well.  “I will be busy tomorrow evening but should be free the following one.”

“Then I shall bid you all a goodnight,” Ondolemar said, with a slight nod to the general.

Tullius waited for the sound of the door closing behind the Thalmor Emissary before sitting back down.  “You, young lady, appear to be playing with fire,” he noted, glancing up at her.

Alexa settled into the chair Ondolemar had just vacated, with a slight grimace.  “And here I thought I was playing with men… well, mer in this case.  That’s much more interesting than fire.  But, truthfully, General, all joking aside, contact with the Thalmor – once the Greybeards made their announcement - was inevitable.”  She gave a tired little sigh.  “I’d rather it be on my terms, as much as possible, rather than theirs.”

“And you believe you have achieved that goal?” he asked, watching her closely.

“I believe that they have not, yet, hired someone professional to kill me,” she answered.

“Fair enough,” Tullius allowed.  “You should know,” he continued, changing the subject, “that I have – finally – received orders on how the ‘Dragon Crisis’ is to be handled.”

“Oh?” Alexa asked.

“I am to offer you any aid you require.”

Alexa tilted her head to one side in consideration.  “I see.”

“Is there anything you require that the Legion can provide?” Tullius asked.

“The civil war to be decided by the moot rather than by armies,” she answered simply.

“You mentioned something about that in Whiterun,” he noted.  “Would you mind explaining why it is so important to you?”

“Alduin – the black dragon from Helgen - was greatly weakened by his time away,” she replied simply and with every sign of sincerity.  “I’d like him to stay that way for as long as possible.”

“It is difficult to believe that the thing which demolished a city in under twenty minutes is in a weakened state,” Tullius told her.

“Alduin’s shadow was cast like carpet-flame on east, west, south, and north...[he was] epoch eater.  For as far as any man’s eyes, only High Hrothgar remained above the churning coils of dragon stop,⁹” Alexa recited.  “Al-du-in means destroyer-devour-master,” she continued.  “A dragon’s name is not merely a pretty epithet, general, it is a description of his role in creation.  There is every reason to believe that, once Alduin has grown strong enough, he will literally devour the world.”

“And that relates to the Civil War in what way?” Tullius prodded.

Alexa leaned back in her chair appearing to consider him for a moment.  “Dragons can draw life force from other beings, add it to their own, and grow more powerful,” she began.  “Ysgramor’s five-hundred’s acquiescence to this type of interaction is what, initially, distinguished the relationship between men and dragons here in Skyrim from what it had been in Atmora.  It should surprise no one that, under such conditions, the dragons of Skyrim would come to view people as little more than self-replenishing soul gems.  The atrocities that followed are exactly what history has taught us to expect from that type of exploitive situation…

“Alduin, however, is uniquely gifted in this type of power acquisition,” she went on.  “He alone – of all dragons - can consume not just a mortal’s vitality but their soul as well.  Specifically, he found a way to absorb the souls of those who have died in battle.  I believe that is how he is currently obtaining the truly inconceivable amount of energy required to return his long dead followers to life.

“If I am right, then, logically, the more people that die in battle, the more souls will be available for him to consume, and the less time it will take him to finish raising his dragon army.  I think we’d all rather he didn’t get the chance to finish that particular project.”

“I see…” Tullius sighed.  “I fear that I am not in a position to promise, dragonborn, an end to the bloodshed.  But I can promise that I will support any moot that is summoned.”

“I understand,” she replied, sounding a little disappointed but resigned.  “While we’re on the subject, there is one other thing you could do for me, General.”

“And that is?” he asked warily.

“Winterhold requires bridges, causeways, roads, earthworks, cisterns, and a port…  But there is not, currently, at the College or in the city, a person with the background to even begin the interview process for hiring a competent civil engineer.  The Imperial Legion, however, is well known for just the type of engineering Winterhold requires.”

“You’re really intending to rebuild Winterhold?” he asked, stunned.

“Without a city, the College dies,” Alexa told him, seriously.  “The College is a resource Skyrim cannot afford to lose if it is ever to hold its own against a truly hostile outside force.”

He nodded in understanding.  “I will forward your request.”

“Thank you.  Please indicate that any response should be addressed to the Master Wizard of the College of Winterhold, not myself.”

“Understood.”

“Is there anything else the dragonborn can do for you, general?” Alexa asked.

“There is, actually,” Tullius answered, frowning again.

“Yes?”

“If you manage to kill this dragon – Alduin - what happens then?”

Alexa blinked, her eyes becoming unfocused as she considered the issue.

“From the perspective of the Legion,” Tullius clarified.

“Oh,” Alexa whispered, shaking herself out of her revery.  “Right…  Well, dragons are uniquely unimaginative beings.  The dragon memories I have absorbed indicate that the creativity of the Dragon Cult’s horror came, not from the dragons themselves, but from their priests.  Dragons are also extremely hierarchical.  This combination means that the way in which they interact with the world – with mortals - is set at the top.  So, what affect changing their leader – killing Alduin – will have on them depends entirely on who replaces him.”

“Any idea who that is likely to be?”

“As I understand it no one has ever been as powerful as Alduin.  The tier below him, however, contains severalindividuals.  It is likely that – should Alduin die – a few of these contenders will seek to become the new leader.  Eventually one of them will rise to power above the rest but that could take centuries.  In the meantime, the threat posed by any group of dragons will depend entirely upon its leader.”

“Is there some way the Legion will be able to protect people should a group of remain as aggressive as they are now?” Tullius pushed.

“If I kill Alduin, and survive, I should be well positioned – and finally have the time - to mediate between any aggressive dragons and the mortals they may impact.  If I am dead…” she hesitated for a moment.  “When I get back to the College, I will work with the librarian to create a packet of important dragon information.  Should I die, he can be trusted to make sure the appropriate persons receive copies.”

“Thank you,” Tullius said. 

“Anyway,” Alexa smiled, rising to her feet.  “I think the Legate and I are in agreement as to the next steps we must take to ensure the College does not starve.  I am also certain I have taken up enough of your time.”

Tullius nodded in agreement, and dismissal, pretending to already be too involved in the new map she’d left on the table.  He noted that she did not follow the Thalmor commander’s lead and leave via the front door but, instead, took the stairs from the war room to the hall that would let her out onto the wall walk.  Was she interested in a late-night breath of fresh air, or was she hoping to avoid being seen reporting to the emissary?

Once Tullius heard the door close behind her he stepped away from the war table.  Any interaction with the dragonborn now required filing a report.  While their conversation had yielded a fair amount of information to put in said report, when considered as a whole, it was either internally inconsistent - indicating the dragonborn had no plan and was simply doing whatever seemed best in the moment - or he still lacked some crucial piece of information that would make everything else make sense.  A month ago he would have bet on the first option, but now… now he found himself worrying that there was a plan and the fact that he couldn’t figure it out was compromising the security of the Empire.

Chapter Text

Upon entering Thalmor Headquarters¹, Alexa found Ondolemar reading at the table in the main room.  She noted, in slight surprise, that he had shed his gloves and coat, and exchanged his boots for a pair of fur slippers.  She could not recall him ever seeing him so relaxed before.  He glanced up and, seeing her, smiled before, unhurriedly, placing his bookmark, and putting the book he’d been reading down on the table. 

“Were you waiting for me?” she asked, with an answering smile.

“I had hoped you’d come by,” Ondolemar admitted, rising to his feet.  “How long have you been back?”

“About two weeks,” she replied, letting him take her cloak to hang somewhere behind her in the entrance hall.  She took the time he was occupied with that to look about her with interest.  She had never been inside the tower before.

“The first dragonborn is dead?” Ondolemar asked, coming back into the main room.

“As dead as Hermaeus Mora can make him,” she answered, turning away from the bookshelf she’d been inspecting.

“I see,” he gestured towards the table.  “May I offer you some mulled wine?”

She cocked her head at him in surprise.

Ondolemar smiled faintly.  “I’ve been brushing up on Breton etiquette.”

“So… you wish to indicate interest in a prolonged, relatively sober, conversation?”

“I do,” he acknowledged, pulling the chair across from the one he’d been sitting in, out for her.

“Alright,” she said, moving to take the seat he’d offered.

There was a sudden loud clanging noise downstairs, as if someone had just knocked over something heavy and metallic.  Ondolemar glanced in the direction of the stairs and sighed.  “Upstairs, perhaps?” he suggested, quietly enough not to be heard by anyone who might be eaves dropping below.

“After you,” she smiled, stepping aside.

Shaking his head Ondolemar handed her the pitcher of mulled wine, picked up his book and the two goblets on the table, and lead the way.

Arriving on the upper floor he placed the goblets on the small table in the sitting area, just to the right of the door, gestured for Alexa to take a seat, and made his way into the back room.  He returned, a moment later, holding a greater soul gem, which he activated with a murmured word, and placed on the table beside the pitcher of wine.

“Sound dampening,” Alexa noted in slight surprise.  “This conversation must be more serious than I was anticipating.”

“Or I’m just feeling petty about eaves dropping guards,” Ondolemar offered, sitting across from her.

“Fair enough,” she smiled, topping up his goblet and handing it to him.  “What did you want to talk about?”

Ondolemar leaned back in his chair, clearly trying to decide where to begin.  “You bought a house in Whiterun recently, may I ask why you chose to buy land in a place you have not lived in over a year?”

“I was feeling bad about Lydia,” she answered, sipping her wine.  “A house carl without a house, whose thane practically ignores them… that’s got to be hard.”

“So you bought her a house?” he asked, his tone flat but somehow still indicating disbelief.

“My time on Solstheim was extremely lucrative,” Alexa told him, truthfully.  “Deathbrand’s treasure alone was more than enough to set a single person up for life.²  Given that my current life expectancy can be counted in weeks or months, why shouldn’t I spend it now?”

“You’re being flippant,” he noted thoughtfully.

She cocked her head, questioningly, at him.

“I’ll admit that your propensity for obfuscating a greater truth with a lesser one has taken getting used to, my love, but I didn’t make it to the rank of emissary by failing to observe people,” he told her dryly.

There was a short silence between them.  “I don’t really know why I bought it,” Alexa finally admitted.  “I mean, I’ve got a million stupid, frivolous, things I could tell you, which, while not untrue, would never amount to a good reason for spending that much money.  I think…” she paused infinitesimally.  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a home - not just a place I was staying – and I know that simply owning a house doesn’t make it a home, but…” she shrugged slightly.  “Maybe having a house, in a place I’m fond of, is a start?”

“So, you’re intending to stay in Skyrim?” he asked, surprised.

Alexa squirmed slightly at that and then sighed tiredly.  “Truthfully, I’m afraid that, for the moment at least, I’ve given up planning anything regarding my life after my confrontation with Alduin.  Putting my affairs in order and seeing that anyone I am, in any way, responsible for is taken care of, seems like a good use of the time I have left.”

“You still doubt your ability to prevail?” he asked, sounding surprised.

She nodded, once, but said nothing.

“Do you have some idea of when this fated confrontation is to occur?” he prodded.

“Alduin, for the time being at least, appears to be avoiding contact with me,” she told him.  “It seems likely that I – as the lesser dovah - am expected to challenge him.”  A wry smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.  “Funny.  Despite the insults, if Alduin truly saw me only as prey, then he would come for me himself.  The fact he has not indicates that he does, in fact, recognize me as dovah.”  She swirled the wine in her goblet meditatively.  Ondolemar remained silent, waiting for her to actually answer his question.

“Either way,” she sighed, looking back up at him, “I require five more words to complete the Shouts I currently know.  Assuming those are all the Shouts the ancient Nords left behind, and that the Greybeard’s consider my training complete upon the acquisition of the final word – neither of which I would bet on - then I would expect to be done by mid-summer.  But, even with thu’um training complete, there are still issues to resolve regarding how one faces the World Eater that I would like answered before I address the issues surrounding how one delivers a challenge to a being that appears to be actively avoiding you.”

“Issues like what?” Ondolemar asked.

“There were no other dragons present when the Nord Tongues defeated Alduin during the Dragon War,” she told him.  “So, absorbing their memories has not shown me how it was done or why the solution they came to was impermanent.  Both of which are things I feel would be useful to know if I am to do a better job.”

“Logical,” Ondolemar conceded, with a slight smile.  “Perhaps the Greybeards know and will be willing to tell you once your training is complete.”

“Perhaps,” she acknowledged, unconvinced. 

“You sound worried,” he noted.

Alexa opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again without speaking.

Ondolemar reached out and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.  “Talk to me, please.”

“Tullius… earlier, he asked what would happen if I killed Alduin, and I realized, I don’t know.  I don’t even know if anyone has fully killed a Manifest Metaphor before or if it is truly possible.  If the Metaphors are physical manifestations of Aurbic law, are they also written into the Convention?  How intrinsic is their existence to the existence of Nirn?  Will destroying Alduin damage the Convention such that all I achieve is initiating a different countdown to Nirn’s premature destruction?  I… don’t know, and – though I haven’t yet meditated on these questions – I suspect the dragons didn’t know either.  And if they don’t know…” her voice died away.

Ondolemar squeezed her hand reassuringly and then shifted, uncomfortably, in his chair.

“Alexa,” he paused, briefly, clearly trying to put what he wanted to ask into words, “the Towers.  Is their non-functionality a threat?”

“I… don’t know that either,” she answered softly.  “Every dragon I have absorbed has known, in its bones, that the Towers – especially Adamantium and Red Mountain– are critically important.  But that knowledge is so intrinsic to their being – to my being – that I have no explanation for why, and the last year hasn’t, exactly, given me time to properly interrogate the less pressing foibles of dragon psyche.”

“Didn’t you once tell me that the Numidium – the Brass Tower - unmade reality?” he asked, confused.  “How could such a thing be necessary to the world?”

She shook her head slightly.  “The Altmer experience with Walking Brass is the experience of a Tower gone wrong,” she told him.  “Its purpose perverted by ennui and false understanding.  In this kalpa Walking Brass has always been incomplete, broken, misunderstood.  But the other mer Towers are not – necessarily – like that.  Without the protection of Crystal-Like-Law, for example, I think the Numidium would have obliterated the Summer Isles more completely even than the sword-singer’s failed attempt to harness the power of Orichalc destroyed Yokuda.  But… I’ve never had the chance to interact with a fully functional Tower.  So, I can’t say for certain.”

“Does the fact that so many are currently inoperable worry you?” he pressed.

“I… I think it probably should,” she admitted.  “But I don’t think I have the emotional capacity, at this point, to be worried about anything beyond my confrontation with Alduin.”  She was silent for a moment.  “But… when Alduin consumes the world, the Towers are left behind.  If there are no functioning Towers, then nothing will be left from this cycle to move into the next.  Clean slate.  Possibly a break in the iterative creative process?  I don’t know if that is good or bad.  It could be neither, of course.  Some things simply are.”

He nodded thoughtfully, apparently accepting the mess of an answer she’d just given.

“What brings you to Solitude?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Elenwen has finally gotten her superiors to acknowledge the return of dragons to Skyrim,” he replied with a slightly aggravated expression and a resigned sigh.  “They have responded by sending us more people… which, in turn, requires a complete reassessment of operational logistics in preparation for their arrival in a few weeks’ time.”³

“Fun,” Alexa murmured, sardonically.

“Elenwen was at Helgen,” Ondolemar reminded her.  “She is uncharacteristically worried by the number of dragons now being reported.”

Alexa considered him for a moment and then gave a slightly dismissive shrug.  “If the Ambassador wishes to slow the dragon’s rate of return, decreasing the rate at which Nords are dying in battle is, likely, the only option available to her.”

Ondolemar cocked his head at that, his eyes narrowing.  “Are you the one behind the renewed push to call the moot?”

“I am,” she confirmed.

Ondolemar waited a moment for her to explain herself.  When she did not, he sighed.  “If I am to attempt to convince Elenwen to actively push for a ceasefire, I’m going to need some sort of evidence that the civil war and the return of the dragons are related in some ongoing fashion,” he told her.

Alexa thought for a moment.  “Aside from the oral tradition, which I assume is of no use to you in this circumstance, there is a book: The Alduin/Akatosh Dichotomy.  Given the current state of the world it is fair to say the book’s author came to the wrong conclusions about a great many things, but that doesn’t – necessarily – invalidate the data they gathered along the way, just the givens they used to interpret it.  If you believe the ambassador is capable of that level of nuance, in relation to source material, the book contains the following passage:

Whether or not he [Alduin] is actually a deity remains in question, but the Alduin of Nord folklore is in fact a dragon, but one so ancient, and so powerful, he was dubbed the ‘World Eater,’ and some accounts even have him devouring the souls of the dead to maintain his own power. ⁴

“And, before you ask,” Alexa continued, “I have not yet killed a dragon trusted enough to know how, exactly, Alduin does that either.  They just knew that he could.”

“Well, the book would be a good start at least,” Ondolemar agreed.  “I wonder if I can find a copy to give to Elenwen.”  He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, thinking.

Alexa blinked at him, surprised, and then began to laugh.  “You didn’t stock the bookshelves downstairs, did you?”⁵

“Aside from regularly checking to make sure nothing enchanted, or enspelled, has been added to them, I can’t say I’ve taken any interest in the decorations here,” he admitted.  “I take it there is a copy in the bookshelf you were looking through earlier?”

“There is,” she affirmed.

“Interesting, I wonder if it has been there this whole time or if some Nord has added it recently as a gentle hint.”

“I don’t typically think of Nords as the ‘subtle hint’ type,” Alexa answered, still smiling.  “If your average Nord wanted a Thalmor Emissary to read a book, I expect they’d just throw it at your head.  Stocking the shelves of Thalmor Headquarters with the information needed to make informed decisions… that sounds more like something a member of the Bard’s College might have tried.”

“Does the Bard’s College have a great deal of information on dragons?” Ondolemar asked, surprised.

“It’s been years since I last spent appreciable time there,” Alexa reminded him.  “But Viarmo was, at one point, quite excited that he would be the one to add the return of the dragons to the Poetic Edda.  No doubt he has collected what books and songs he can on the subject.  Additionally, Giraud Gemain has spent much of his tenure at the college, translating the college’s collection of ancient Nord texts, several of which are in the dragon script.  Since I was able to provide the college with a dragon language primmer last Sun’s Dusk,⁶ it’s possible he has made progress on translating them by now.”

“And the content of these dragon texts doesn’t interest you?” Ondolemar enquired.

“I have faith that Viarmo would inform me if Gemane had translated something that might be useful to me.”⁷

“I see…” Ondolemar murmured thoughtfully.  After a moment he sighed and topped up his drink.  “I’m afraid I didn’t get very far with those orders you left with me.”

Alexa blinked, startled by the change in topic.

“The order for your death wasn’t issued in Skyrim, I know that” he continued.  “Whatever it’s about, it’s been following you for more than three years.  Long before anyone knew you were dragonborn.”  He looked her over, eyes searching.  “You suspected as much.”

“Suspected, yes.  It is why I have not used my name in Skyrim.  But proof has been rather hard to come by.”

“I see.  Would you tell me, as precisely as you can, what you believe the situation to be?”

“Earmiel didn’t tell you?” she asked, actually surprised.

“Earmiel and I are not currently speaking,” Ondolemar admitted.  “Besides, I think this is something I’d rather hear directly from you.”

She hesitated for a moment.  “I have always believed, and Earmiel concurs, that the order has something to do with my status as a grand master of Restoration.  A title I gained about two years before the first Thalmor attempt on my life.”

Ondolemar blinked, opened his mouth to say something, closed it again, and was silent for a moment.  “And when was that, exactly?” he asked finally.

“The first attack on my person was in 189, while I was at school in Cyrodiil.  Then, again, in 192.  After the third attempt, in 198, I was able to faked my own death, rather than just disappearing as I had before.  If I had stayed on the move, and the dragonborn thing had not happened, maybe...” she shrugged.

Ondolemar frowned.  “I have been told that the designation of grand master comes with physical markings…”

Alexa pushed her sleeve back and cast Healing.  As golden light pooled in her palm, silver and lavender petals drifted across her skin as though her arm was at the center of a whirlwind.

Ondolemar took hold of her wrist, gently but firmly, pulling her arm a little towards him to better inspect the phenomena.  “No wonder you don’t use Restoration magic at the college,” he commented, letting go of her.  “Even Ancano would find that hard to miss.”

Alexa gave a soft snort of bemused agrement and canceled the spell.

“Are they only visible while casting?” Ondolemar asked.

“No.  There are marks on my back which are visible at all times,” she told him. 

“May I see them?”

“Are you asking me to take my shirt off?” she smirked, shrugging out of the coat from the College’s men’s uniform she wore layered over her College robes.  “Are you sure that is entirely appropriate?”

“It is always appropriate to verify claims made by a champion of Sheogorath,” Ondolemar replied, unfazed by her teasing.

“I suppose that’s fair,” Alexa acknowledged, rising to her feet.  Turning her back to him she dropped her belt over the back of her chair, undid the closures at the neck and left side of her robe and then pulled it over her head without removing her arms from the sleeves.  The tense moment of silence that followed lasted just long enough for Alexa to become antsy.  

“How have you managed to keep something that covers so much of your body a secret from the other members of the College?” Ondolemar asked, rising to his feet.

“By not spending a lot of time there,” she answered.

“And what is this?” he asked, concern filling his voice.  She shivered as his fingers brushed over the pockmark on the left side of her lower back.

“Hircine shot me,” she replied.

“Oh.” 

She could almost feel his hand drop back to his side.

“Something wrong?” she asked, looking back at him over her shoulder.

“No,” he answered, softly.  “It’s just…” he gave her a slightly sad smile, “I appreciate the level of trust you have in me.”

“Really?” she demanded, turning fully around to face him.  “After all this time, that’s what surprises you, not… everything else?”

“Why – after all this time - would I be surprised by you, the dragonborn, being singularly good with magic?” he asked her mildly.

Alexa kissed him. 

Caught by surprise, she was already pulling away before he could respond.

“Thank you,” she whispered, relaxing the grip she had on his tunic.  He covered one of her hands with his, lacing their fingers together, preventing her from withdrawing further. 

“For what?” he asked, his voice low and a little rough.

“For being willing to take so much in stride,” she answered.

“You, Sikendra d’Arthe, dragonborn, grand master of Restoration, and champion of more than one daedric prince, are worth practicing a little acceptance for, I think,” he told her.

This time, when she kissed him, he was ready.

Chapter Text

A bit of mountain climbing had allowed them not only to retrieve a word of power, but kill a dragon priest and take his mask and staff, without even entering the ancient Nord ruin of Volskygge.  Unfortunately, a quick use of Clairvoyance had indicated that the manuscript she had actually been looking for was somewhere inside.

Alexa had left Teldryn outside, on the peak with the dogs, but, it turned out, hadn’t really needed to as Shalidor’s manuscript had been in a chest just inside the door at the bottom of the stairs to the peak.  As a result, they had left the ancient ruin behind without ever alerting the bandits at its entrance.

“So, what was so important you went inside for it?” Teldryn asked her the moment they were done setting up camp in the ruins of Pinefrost Tower. 

“A fragment of Shalidor’s writings,” she answered, carefully rolling out the folio sized piece of velum on top of her bedroll to keep it off the ground.

Teldryn peered over her shoulder at it in the dying light.  “Can you read it?” he asked.

“Some of it.  Miraak’s knowledge, and the knowledge of the dragons from Apocrypha, have been quite helpful regarding languages, arcane scripts, and less than clear handwriting.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Well, I’m beginning to think all the pieces I’ve been collecting for the College belong to a single body of work…” she offered.

“What on?” he asked, moving to crouch down beside her rather than peering over her shoulder.

“I think they’re a section of Shalidor’s notes on the Folium Discognitum².”

Teldryn gave her a long, level stare.

“The Folium is an artifact of Sheogorath’s containing the insights of madmen.  But…” she gestured to the various paragraphs of text on the page before them, “see how Shalidor has perfectly copied three separate pieces, in three entirely different scripts, onto a single page?  I’m willing to bet that the Folium is a collection of the actual writings of madmen – in their own hand - not a well-ordered list of their insights… And I doubt it’s ordered by topic.  At least not the topics Shalidor was interested in.  I think these notes were a first step in his attempt to make sense of that chaos.”

“What was he interested in?” Teldryn asked, frowning at the page.  If the writing on it had been transferred from an artifact of Sheogorath’s that would probably explain the smiley faces dotting the last paragraph of text.

“Most of the pages I’ve retrieved, so far, seem to pertain to an historic event.  Odd that Urag has managed, mostly I think from the images, to extract insights on the various schools of magic, but has not, as far as I know, paid much attention to the original purpose of the work… besides, I suppose, sending the dragonborn out to fetch as much of it as he can locate.”

“And the subject that so intrigued the most powerful mage in history?” Teldryn prodded.

“Alduin’s disappearance,” she answered quietly.

Teldryn blinked at her, once, and then looked back down at the page.  “And what does this one say?”

Alexa cast Candlelight and leaned in.  “This first part, at least, is in common.  It says: ‘Finally one dragon that we know of decided to join the human side – this was Parthunaax.  He is the Prometheus to the proto-Nords – he taught them to use the Voice.  This turned the tide and the proto-Nords continually defeated Alduin and the dragons and...’ it just cuts off there.”

“I recall you mentioning that Paarthurnax is your dragon teacher,” Teldryn said.  “But who, or what, is Prometheus?”³

“No idea,” Alexa replied, without looking up.  “But I’ve also never heard of the Atmorans being referred to as ‘proto-Nords’ so...” she shrugged.  “The second paragraph is written in that cipher first era mages used.  It says, ‘Alduin’s civilization was the Dragon Cult of Atmora.  He’s basically the Dragon God on Earth.  The Dragon High Priests are his acolytes and everything is ordered…’ and then cuts off, mid-sentence, again.

“The last paragraph…” she paused reading it through multiple times before shaking her head.  “I think its just a group of statements made incomplete by the random insertion of these smiley faces.  Let’s see, it starts with ‘…everything else.’  Then ‘Alduin was the creator of dragon civi- :) -ation – the Firstborn and the swar[n] :) .’  Then something mostly missing, ‘were attributed to human appe[aring]?’ maybe.  Then a line I can’t read enough of to make any sense.  Followed by, ‘of this world as a gift, a god’s bones.  Alduin knows Akatosh created Mundus.’  Then a word I can’t read at all, and ‘humans learned their…’ and that’s it.” 

“Do you think Shalidor ever figure out what happened to Alduin?” Teldryn asked.

“Not in what I could read of the pages I have retrieved,” Alexa answered.  “But these notes may have led him to someone who could tell him.”

“What do you mean?”

She dug through her pack and pulled out her notebook.  “I made note of the images he’d put on the pages,” she explained, opening her notebook, and placing it on her bedroll between them so that they could both look at it. 

“See here, a golden spiral, the lettering indicates that it is spiraling towards an ending at its center.⁴  I think this page was about time, but I could not read the text below the image.  The mage’s cypher on either side of the image, however, said ‘that led here, to this’ and ‘What Skyrim.  Septimus lives near’ and then ends with just the letter U.”

“Septimus?” Teldryn frowned.  “That’s an imperial name, isn’t it?”

Alexa nodded.  “This one,” she pointed to an image of a star made of two overlapping squares, “mentions a Septimus Signus.  It says he lived in an iceberg, with a Dwemer lockbox inside it containing the Oghma Infinium.  It also said that Hermaeus Mora would appear to the player there.”

“Player?” Teldryn asked, confused.  “Is that symbol some sort of game board then?”

Alexa made a frustrated noise.  “I don’t’ know.  Frankly, it looks like something I once saw in a book on geomancy.⁵  Either way, if this Septimus had access to the Oghma Infinium, maybe he, and not the contents of the Folium, answered Shalidor’s question.  They do say that Shalidor came to regret his bargain with Sheogorath.  Perhaps this is why?”⁶ 

“What was this one about?” Teldryn asked, pointing to an image of the sun aligned with the moons in eclipse over a fire.

“The text around it was a summary of the third song of King Wulfharth,” she answered.  “In which the ghost of Shor fought the ghost of Alduin on the spirit plane.  Wulfharth managed to learn a thu’um, by watching the sky during the battle, that would undo what Alduin had done to the Nords of that time.  I think – if it existed and isn’t just a complex metaphor – the shout was like the flesh-time-undo shout Alduin is currently using to bring the dragons back.  The story also contains the advice not to try this sort of Shout yourself, as a Shout that uses too much energy can lead to rapid aging and death.”

Teldryn’s brow furrowed.  “It says that Shor fought the spirit of Alduin – which had been summoned to cause harm in this realm – in Aetherius?”

“It also claims that Wulfharth could observe a battle fought there by watching the sky here,” Alexa pointed out.  “Which is not a thing…” she stilled, clearly thinking something through.  “If Alduin can travel to Aetherius – to Shor’s realm of Sovngarde - that would explain how he can consume the souls of Nords who die in battle.”

“It certainly would,” Teldryn muttered in agreement.

“Thank you,” Alexa smiled at him.  “That feels… important.  I will ask Paarthurnax about it.” She stowed both her journal, and the manuscript, away.  “I kind of wish I’d thought to ask the map makers if they’ve run into an iceberg with a Dwemer lockbox in it,” she added, climbed into her bedroll.  “It would be interesting to know if the box at least is still around after all this time.”

Chapter Text

Alexa had slept in.  She and Teldryn had returned to Winterhold late the previous day.  After handing off Shalidor’s insights to Urag, and picking up the copy of the ink recipe¹ she’d asked him for, she had spoken to Mirabelle only to discover that Vittoria Vici had already been in touch.  So, when she woke up the next morning, Alex found herself with nothing particularly pressing to do.  Yes, she should go check in with the Grey Beards, regarding locating more of the rotmulaag, but picking up a new word only took an average of five days, and she didn’t need to be in the Reach, to support Taren on Hircine’s summoning day, for another ten.  Which meant, adding some travel time to get to the Reach from wherever the Greybeards sent her, she didn’t have to leave the College for three, whole, days.

Alexa did have one thing she wanted to do with what was left of her down time, however, and that was to begin learning how to cast mage armor spells that worked better unarmored.  Maybe she could schedule some one-on-one training with Tolfdir… away from the “Eye”.

It was mid-afternoon by the time she decided to go looking for him.  As expected, he wasn’t hard to find.

“Ah, Alexa, there you are,” Tolfdir hailed her as she stepped into the Hall of the Elements.  “Do you have some time to theorize with me, or was there something you needed?”

“Both,” she answered, with a slight smile.  “I was hoping to get your help with the finer points of armor spells, but I am not currently busy.”

“Ah, good, good…” he said, his attention already being drawn back to the orb.  “I just can’t seem to tear myself away.  Whatever it is, its beauty is like nothing I've ever seen before.  If you’d allow me to indulge myself for a moment, I thought I might make a few observations...” he began to circle the orb in order to maintain relative position with one of the orb’s panels.

“I know you’ve already noticed the markings are quite unlike anything we’ve seen before.  Ayleid, Dwemer, Daedric... Not even Falmer.”

“I thought only Urag’s mysterious contact knew how to read Falmer,” Alexa cut in, surprised.

“Oh, I can’t read it,” Tolfdir assured her.  “Still, the alphabet is easy enough to recognize.”

“True,” she allowed.

“Anyway, as I’m sure you know, none of them are a match.  Quite curious indeed…” he glanced quickly in her direction.  “Something I read once indicated that dragons are master linguists…”

“Ancano asked the same question the last time I was here… did he not share my answer?” Alexa asked, feigning surprise.

Tolfdir stopped walking, turning to give her his full attention.  “He did not.”

“Oh, well, while I cannot yet read this script, I have seen it used in Apocrypha,” Alexa told him.²

Tolfdir’s eyes narrowed.  “Yet?”

“I killed several dragons while in Apocrypha.  Since I have not yet been able to fully absorb their knowledge, I cannot say whether this writing system will be a part of it.”

“Well now, that is an exciting prospect,” Tolfdir beamed.  “I hope you will keep me posted on any future developments.”  He turned his attention back to the orb.  “Now then, I’m not sure you’re quite as attuned as I am, given my extensive years of experience³, but can you feel it?  This marvelous object practically radiates a magicka unlike anything I’ve felt before.”

Alexa grimaced slightly.  Tolfdir wasn’t wrong… while the energy was very similar to the thu’um – which Tolfdir would have very little experience with, given how little time she actually spent at the College - there was something a little different about it.⁴  It also seemed to be getting stronger.⁵  The last time she’d been at the college she’d spent several hours drawing the orb to no noticeably ill effect… now, after only a few minutes, the ghost of a headache was setting in.

“Arch-Mage Aren is hard at work to determine the nature of this new magicka,” Tolfdir confided.  “Hopefully we’ll have more information soon.”

“Do you know if he has considered the older magic schools, like Mysticism?” Alexa asked, just as Ancano, at his most imperious, sailed into the hall.

“I’m afraid I must intrude,” the Altme announced, striding up to them and addressing himself to Tolfdir.  “It is urgent that I speak with your associate, immediately.”

Tolfdir glanced in Alexa’s direction, recognized her surprise, and rallied to her defense.  “This is most inappropriate!” he huffed.  “We are involved in serious research here!”

“Yes, I’ve no doubt of its gravity,” Ancano replied in a tone that suggested he had quite a lot of doubt on the subject.  “This, however, is a matter that cannot wait.”

“Well, I’m quite sure I’ve never been interrupted like this before... the audacity!” Tolfdir protested, glancing again in Alexa’s direction.  She gave a slight shrug and he relaxed visibly.  “... I suppose we’ll continue this at some later time,” he told her, with a quick glare for Ancano, “when we can avoid interruptions.”  He turned his back on the Advisor and walked, pointedly, to the other side of the orb, but didn’t actually leave the room.

Ancano stepped up to tower over her.  “I need you to come with me immediately,” he informed her.  “Let’s go.”

Alexa cocked her head to one side and didn’t move.  “Is something wrong?”

“Really, you don’t know?” he blinked, clearly surprised, but recovered quickly.  “Well, allow me to clarify the situation.  I’d like to know why there’s someone claiming to be from the Psijic Order here at the College.  More importantly, I’d like to know why he’s asking for you specifically.  So we’re going to go have a little chat with him, and find out exactly what it is he wants.”  He moved as if to grab her arm, clearly thought better of it, turned the movement into an abruptly about face, and strode off in the direction of the stairs to the Arch-Mage’s quarters.

“That does sound like something that requires clarification,” Alexa agreed, as she followed slowly after him, “but why are you so concerned about this, Advisor?

“I’ll be the one asking the questions,” Ancano all but snarled as he shoved open the door to the stairs.  “All you need to know is that the Psijic Order is a rogue organization, believing themselves to be above the law.  They have clashed with the Aldmeri Dominion before, and I have no intention of allowing that to happen here.”  He took a deep, slow, breath.  “Now, you are going to speak to this... Monk... and find out why he is here, and then he will be removed from College grounds.” 

“Understood,” she replied mildly.

“Good.”  He turned and started up the stairs ahead of her.

“A question, Advisor,” Alexa began as they came to the first landing.  “Is there a devious purpose behind the Thalmor decision to design your uniforms such that the gold filigree naturally draws the eyes of anyone walking behind you to your bottom?”

“This is not the time for frivolity, apprentice,” he snapped back at her, even as he pushed open the Arch-Mage’s door and gestured for her to precede him.

“Master,” she corrected, stepping past him.

“Please do not be alarmed.  I mean you no harm,” the Altmer in a fancy yellow coat was saying to the Arch-Mage.  Then Alexa stepped through the arch way into the chamber proper and the world around her slowed to a halt. 

“I am Quaranir,” the Altmer continued, turning to address her.  “It is good to meet you in person, Dragonborn.”

“Time-stop?” she asked, looking around her.  It felt different from the last time she’d spoken with a Psijic monk…

He inclined his head slightly.  “I’ve given us a chance to speak privately, but I’m afraid I can’t do this for long.  We must be brief.”

So, the last time hadn’t been a time spell.  Which would explain how Tolfdir had been aware that something had happened…  Dreamsleeve transmission.⁶  She blinked in surprise as knowledge, that had probably once been Miraak’s, supplied the answer.

“The situation at your college is of dire importance,” the monk had continued, apparently unaware of her distraction, “and attempts to contact you, as we have previously, have failed.  I believe it is due to the very source of our concern.  This object… the ‘Eye of Magnus’ as your people have taken to calling it.  The energy coming from it has prevented us from reaching you with the visions you have already seen.”

She held up a finger, to interrupt him.  “You are saying that my current proximity to the 'Eye' – now that it is no longer contained as it was in Saarthal - has made it impossible for members of the Psijic Order to contact me via the dreamsleeve?” she asked.  “As in, the dreamsleeve is currently inaccessible from this location, or the energy from the orb is, somehow, interfering with my soul’s innate connection to the dreamsleeve?”

“Yes,” he answered shortly.  “And not just yours.  Knowing that, I’m certain you can appreciate that the longer the Eye remains here the more dangerous the situation becomes.  And so, I have come here personally to tell you that it must be dealt with.”

“Well, I certainly won’t stand in the way of the Psijic Order doing something about that thing,” Alexa told him, taking a step sideways and gesturing towards the stairs.

Quaranir grimaced slightly.  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.  You must understand, the Psijic Order does not typically… intervene directly in events.  My presence here will be seen as an affront to some within the Order.  As soon as we have finished, I will be leaving your college.”  He glanced in the direction of the Thalmor Advisor standing, frozen, in the foyer.  “I’m all too aware that my arrival has aroused suspicion, especially in Ancano, your Thalmor associate.”

“The dragonborn is rather busy right now,” Alexa told Quaranir sternly, more than a little put-out by what was clearly going to be the end of her hoped for three days of rest.  “Surely, even as isolated as the Psijic Order is, you are aware that there’s a Manifest Metaphor of destruction on the loose.”

“I understand.  Nevertheless, my order will not act directly.  You must do so yourself.”

The odd note of strain in his voice caught her attention, causing her to consider him carefully.  He was worried.  “Alright… What – exactly – is the problem you’re asking me to solve?”

“As you may have learned, this object… the Eye… is immensely powerful.  The world is not ready for it.”

“Yet?  So, it is from the future,” Alexa murmured.

Quaranir frowned at her but continued without commenting.  “If it remains here, it will be misused.  Indeed, many in the Order believe it has already...  Rather, something will happen soon, something that cannot be avoided.  We believe that your efforts should be directed toward dealing with the aftermath, but we cannot predict what that will be.  The overwhelming power of the Eye makes it difficult for us to see.”

Alexa raised an eyebrow at that.  The Eye was making it difficult to see the future?  Was it possible the Psijics were unaware that it was a Real Moment… or did they just think she was unaware and didn’t want to bother with explaining?  Or was it something else… was the dreamsleeve the only way the Psijics knew how to view the future?⁷

“If the power of the Eye makes the orb hard to see… how long have you known it was down there?” she asked carefully.

“We have always known.”

“And your failure to do anything about it until now?” she enquired.

“It was neither our problem to fix nor – until now – an imminent danger,” he told her, sounding defensive.

“So the stance of the Order is that, as the Eye is a thing out of place in time, the jill should be the ones to deal with it?” she asked.

“It is,” he affirmed, shifting his weight slightly.  The toll maintaining the time stop was taking on him was beginning to show.

“And you’ve continued to maintain that stance even after multiple dragonbreaks have failed to remove it from Nirn?” she demanded, incredulously.  “Did you not understand that the type of prison it was in would leave it inaccessible in un-time⁸ or was the Order knowingly wagering the safety of the world on Akatosh’s willingness to bend the laws of reality to save this kalpa?”

Quaranir’s lips drew into a thin line.  “I fear I have already overstepped the bounds of my Order by telling you as much as I have,” he said, reprovingly.  “But I will offer this last piece of advice: seek out the Augur of Dunlain, here in your college.  His perception may be more coherent than ours.”

Alexa cocked her head at that.  An augur who might be able to see the future in a Real Moment and without access the dreamsleeve?  That was an interesting claim.

“He was once a student here at the College” Quaranir continued hurriedly, the strain now showing in his voice as well.  “Now he is... something different.”  Sweat was beading on his brow.

Alexa relented.  “Fine.  Where can I find this Augur?”

“I... I am unsure.  He is somewhere within the College.  Surely one of your colleagues must know his location.  I am sorry I cannot provide you with further help, but this conversation requires a great deal of effort on my part.  Now, I am afraid I must leave you.  We will continue to watch over you and guide you as best we can.  It is within you to succeed.  Never forget that.”

She met his eyes.  “It is not wise to condescend to a dragon, Quaranir.  Keep it in mind should you find yourself speaking to one of my brothers.”

“Ah.  I meant to be encouraging, not condescending.  I apologize.”  He bowed slightly to her, and then time started up again.

“I’m sorry, were you about to say something? Savos asked.

“Well?” Ancano demanded, striding up to Quaranir before he could answer the Arch-Mage.  “What is the meaning of this?”

Quaranir looked around in apparent confusion.  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Don’t play coy,” Ancano responded.  “You asked to see a specific member of the College. Here she is.  Now what is it you want?”

Quaranir looked in Alexa’s direction and then back at the Arch-Mage.  “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.  Clearly I should not be here.  I shall simply take my leave.”

“What?” Ancano demanded, refusing to get out of the monk’s way.  “What trickery is this? You’re not going anywhere until I find out what you’re up to!”

“I am not ‘up to’ anything,” Quaranir objected, stepping around the Advisor.  “I apologize if I have offended you in any way.”

“We will see about this...” Ancano hissed, following after him.

Alexa and Savos watched them go.  Watched a Psijic Monk walk away from them.  Was something about the energy from the Eye also interfering with the famed Psijic ability to teleport? Alexa wondered.  Was it possible that all the unique abilities of the Psijic Order were just a result of having learned how to access the dreamsleeve?  If so, it was entirely possible they couldn’t do anything about the Eye and just hadn’t wanted to admit it… which was a disturbing thought.  That much pride, in a powerful individual or group, could be exceedingly dangerous.

“I’m... I’m not sure what just happened,” Savos Aren confided once the door was well and truly shut behind both retreating Altmer.  “A monk from the Psijic Order, here, after all these years, and then he just… leaves.”  He gave a slightly worried sigh and sat down in his usual spot at the table.  “I hope we didn’t offend him somehow.”

“Is that level of confusion common in those that practice the school of Mysticism?” Alexa asked.

“I do not know,” the Arch-Mage confided, “but I suppose – after a few millennia – anything is possible.”

Alexa nodded thoughtfully and then waved a hand as if dismissing the Psijic and his odd behavior from her mind.  “On an entirely different topic, if you don’t mind me asking, I recently heard a rumor about someone called the Augur of Dunlain?”

The Arch-Mage glanced up at her in surprise.  “Has Tolfdir been telling stories again?” he asked.  “I thought I made it quite clear that this was a subject inappropriate for conversation. Please don’t allow him to continue to discuss the subject.”

“Understood,” Alexa smiled.  “I’ll just go back to what I was doing before Ancano interrupted me.”

Chapter Text

Later the same day…

Reality shivered and Arniel Gane flashed out of existence.

“Well, shit,” Alexa muttered, stepping out of the corner she’d retreated to the moment she’d realized he intended to use Keening as a striking hammer.  “That was a lot more accurate than I was expecting.”  She bent down and picked up Keening.  “Into the dragon shrine with you, I think,” she told the knife, slipping it into a pocket.

“What, in the names of all the divines, was that?” Mirabelle demanded, coming into the room.

“Adept Gane has completed his experiment,” Alexa replied, leaning over to inspect the warped soul gem without touching it.  “Not without some success, I think.  Though, it seems I will be required to write up an incident report as a result.”

“And where is Adept Gane?” Mirabelle inquired, looking around the room.

“He was attempting to replicate the disappearance of the Dwemer,” Alexa told her.

“Right,” Mirabelle said, clearly transitioning into administrator mode.  “Please include the outcome of any tests you run in your incident report and have it on my desk before you next leave College grounds.”

“Of course,” Alexa replied with a slight nod, still unwilling to actually touch the gem.  “Before you go, can you tell me where I might find the Augur of Dunlain?”

Mirabelle blinked in surprise.  “That’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

“I am a Master of this College, in good standing,” Alexa reminded Mirabelle.

Mirabelle’s eyes narrowed slightly at that, then she sighed, tiredly.  “Very well.  I’ll tell you about him when you deliver your incident report.”

“Alright,” Alexa agreed, even as Mirabelle walked away from her.

“You were asking about the Augur?” Colette asked, peering out of the doorway of her own room the moment Mirabelle had disappeared down the stairs. 

“I was,” Alexa answered, walking over to join Colette.  “Do you know anything about him?”

“Tragic story, really," Colette confided.  "At least, the way I heard it.  But that was a long time ago.  It was some experiment gone horribly wrong.  Ghastly results, I was told.  And his ghost still roams the halls, they say.”  She paused, eyes widening slightly as if she’d just realized something.¹  “Of course, on further reflection, that may have simply been an attempt to scare me. Hmm.  Perhaps I’ll ask Tolfdir what really happened.  I understand he was here at the time.”  She smiled awkwardly at Alexa.

“Thanks,” Alexa said, turning away with a frown.  That the Psijics would tell her to look for a dead person seemed unlikely.  Was Colette lying or just mistaken?  Alexa walked to the other side of the tower and rapped, politely, on Enthir’s doorframe.

“Hey there, dragon-lady, what can I do for you?” he began, looking up from his books.

“The Augur of Dunlain?” she asked.

His eyes widened.  “Oh, no.  No, that I can’t help you with.  Not my problem,” he told her hurriedly.

“You’re being weird,” she noted, leaning up against his door frame in a way that suggested she wasn’t about to leave.

“Me?  Nooo.  It’s just that I have a robust survival instinct, and part of surviving is knowing when not to get involved in something.  You, on the other hand, attract more than enough trouble on your own, and still go looking for more.  No, thank you.  Go ask Tolfdir and leave me out of whatever this is.”  He picked his book back up and made a show of going back to reading it.

“Right…” she drawled, refusing to be so easily dismissed.  “You talk to Karliah yet?”

Enthir ignored her.

“Fine,” Alexa rolled her eyes.  “I’ll ask Tolfdir my questions if you give me something safe to put that warped soul-gem in.  Also, Karliah needs some alchemical stuff made.  None of it should be too complicated for someone of your many talents to handle.”

Enthir sighed.  “Fine.  I assume you have the relevant recipes.”

Alexa removed a folded piece of paper from her pocket and held it out to him.

Enthir took it, and then glanced meaningfully in the direction of Arniel’s work room.  “There isn’t any possibility he’s in it, is there?”

Alexa glanced over her shoulder at the soul gem still in its stand, glanced back at Enthir, and shrugged.  “If my theory on the Dwemer animunculi is correct, then there’s a fair chance his intellect is.  Can’t be certain though, it being a warped gem originally.”

“You think Arniel Gane may have inadvertently rediscovered one of the lost secrets of necromancy?” Enthir demanded, obviously stunned.

Alexa met his gaze, shrugged again, and pushed away from the doorframe.  “Let’s find out, shall we?”

Enthir put his book back down, stood up, and took a box he usually used for black soul gems off his shelf.  “You want gloves?” he called after her.

“I already have a pair,” she said, pulling them out of her robe pocket and putting them on. 

“You’re still suffering from cold hands at this time of year?” Enthir asked.  “It’s almost summer.”

“It still drops below freezing every night,” Alexa reminded him, picked up the soul gem in a gloved hand.  She sighed in relief when nothing happened. 

“Good first step,” Enthir mutter.

“What do you think?” she asked him.  “Object type summoning rather than trans-planar summoning?”

“If he is in there,” Enthir agreed.

She began the same sort of summoning spell she used for Arvak and then Arniel’s – shade²? - was just there.

“You didn’t even complete the spell, did you?³” Enthir commented, his voice a little flat.

“No… I just made the connection between here and the gem.”

“Meaning he initiated the transition?”

“I can hear you, you know,” Arniel remarked.  “What happened?”

“Oh boy,” Enthir muttered, handing her the box.  “Have fun dealing with this.  I’m going to go make potions.”  He went back to his room.

“Coward!” Alexa called after him.

What was left of Arniel Gane made a throat clearing noise.

“I think you’re in the soul gem,” Alexa told him.⁴ 

“Oh… where’s my body?” Arniel enquired.

“Gone?”

“Gone!  What do you mean gone?  My experiment, the design…” the shade began to pace back and forth.

Alexa sat down on one of the crates against the wall and waited. 

Arniel finally stopped and turned towards her.  “What did we get wrong?” he asked, sounding a little dejected.

Alexa opened her mouth to say something, stopped, frowned, and decided to change tack. “What did you think had happened to the Dwemer?” she asked.  “What results were you expecting?”

“I don’t know, planar travel, maybe?  I mean, if the Dwemer had been killed or incinerated there’d be some evidence of it.  But they left no bodies behind.  No bodies mean they went somewhere.”

“…Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I’m pretty certain that if your body was intact somewhere it would still be holding on to Keening,” she said, pulling the knife out of her pocket to show him.  “But when you…” she waved a hand, “dis-corporate-ed, there was a blinding flash of light and, when I could see again, you were gone and the knife was on the floor.”

“Really?” the shade asked, clearly intrigued.  “Fascinating…  Any theories as to how we went wrong?”

“I’ll have to do some tests to know for sure, but, if I had to guess, I’d say that Keening’s harmonics turned your matter into light.”⁵

“What, like the Augur?” he demanded, sounding surprised.

“What?” she asked, startled.

“Oh, um, nothing.”  He bent over and peered at the gem she was still holding in one gloved hand.  “Do you think it can be undone?”

“I, uh… I think Mannimarco may be working on something similar?” she answered uncertainly.

“Oh…”  He was silent for a moment.  “No, that won’t do.  I can’t be associated with him.”

“I could try putting you in a Dwemer automaton,” she offered, bemused by the fact Arniel hadn’t seemed to register her suggestion that Mannimarco was still active in the world as anything unusual.  “It wouldn’t be a flesh body but… it might work.”

“Hmm… yes well, there is much to think about.”

“Before we think about anything,” Alexa interrupted, “we need to write up an incident report for Mirabelle.”

“You’ll find all my most important experiment design work in the false bottom of the right-hand drawer in my desk,” Arniel told her.  “I’d help, but I’m finding remaining here remarkably difficult…” he faded out.

Alexa ground her teeth and dropped the soul gem into the box Enthir had given her.  Typical.

When she got back to her room, Arniel’s experiment design notes under one arm, Alexa found Mirabelle had left her a leather-bound journal with “Incident Report” and space for a name and date on the cover.

Alexa sighed heavily and picked up the journal.  This was what happened when you allowed yourself to be sidetracked.  An experiment, which should have only taken minutes, was going to eat up hours of time she was supposed to be spending looking for this Auger person.  Still, “loss” of life aside, the results were clearly worth taking some time to think about. Perhaps the Psijics could wait until morning.

“I don't like doing business with Azura’s faithful,” Nelacar⁶ announced as Alexa entered his room at the inn about an hour after Arniel’s vanishing act.  “Make it quick.”

“Surely there is a difference between being a daedra worshiper and simply not wanting to call down upon myself the same wrath Maylen had,” Alexa remarked, settling into the chair across from the Altmer mage.

“You’re the dragonborn,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t know that at the time,” she reminded him.  “I am also uncertain it would have mattered much.”

“Fine, what can I do for you?” he asked sourly.

“Has Arniel talked with you about his research?” she asked.

“On the Dwemer?” Nelacar asked, sounding actually surprised before quickly collecting himself and returning to his normal tone of ennui.  “Briefly.”

“What can you tell me about his experimental design?” she enquired.

“Only that it hinges upon on turning a soul gem into a functional replica of the Heart of Lorkhan.”

“And what makes him think that is possible?” Alexa asked.

Nelacar gave her a sideways glance.  “It’s Arniel’s theory, shouldn’t you be asking him about it?  You’re working with him, aren’t you?”

“I will,” she answered, “but I’d like an outside perspective first.”

Nelacar grimaced slightly and then gave in.  “How conversant are you with regional design variations in Dwemer animunculi?”

“I’ve never had the chance to study an animunculi outside of Skyrim,”⁷ she answered.

“Then you may not know that Dwemer animunculi from Morrowind do not contain soul gems and will cease to function when moved out of a certain distance from Red Mountain.⁸  Arniel has some theory involving the Dwemer of Morrowind’s use of forges heated by the magma from Red Mountain naturally imbuing metal with power from the Heart,” Nelacar added, responding to Alexa’s surprised look.  “You’ll have to ask him if you want greater detail.⁹

“Anyway, the point is that the only major design difference between Morrowind animunculi and the ones here, is the inclusion of a modified soul gem.  Thus, Arniel believes that the Dwemer must have found a way to alter soul gems such that the soul gem could reproduce the condition of being in proximity to the Heart of Lorkhan.”

“Seems logical, I guess…” Alexa mused.  “Have you ever seen a Morrowind spider automaton?”

“I have.”

“Do they have that little glowing red gem-thing near the top of them, like the ones here do?”¹⁰

“They do… why?”

“Any idea what those are made of?”

“None.  As far as I know they have never been studied as they vaporize upon forceful deactivation of the spider.”

“I see," Alexa murmured.  "So, how’d Arniel find out about the Dwemer convectors required to alter soul gems into the correct type of exotic morpholith?”

“He has some partial text on the process," Nelacar told her, grumpily.¹¹  "Just enough to know they’re a necessary part of prepping soul gems for use in animunculi.  Not enough to really understand how they work.”

Alexa considered that for a second.  “Why use a warped soul gem?  None of the soul gems I’ve found in animunculi are warped.”

“The Dwemer text also indicated that the resulting morpholith would be unstable outside of a properly tuned container.  Arniel wanted his morpholith to be stable,” Nelacar answered, his eyes narrowing slightly.  “It was my understanding that the transmutation had held... if it hasn’t, I’ll need to analyze it in person before suggesting a replacement.”

“Your research on soul gems has clearly been extremely useful in this endeavor,” Alexa noted.

“Indeed, Arniel was extremely lucky Enthir was able to find a gem that met our requirements,” Nelacar agreed.  “Is that everything?”

“One last question,” Alexa said, leaning forward slightly in her chair.  “Did you advise him in a way that would help his research or in a way that would actually help yours.”

Nelacar went from cautious to defensive in record time.  “What do you mean?”

“She’s asking if you killed the poor bastard on purpose,” Enthir said, stepping into the room.  “I too would like to know the answer to that.  I don’t appreciate being an accessory to the murder of one of my best clients.”

“Arniel’s dead?” Nelacar asked, going pale.

Chapter Text

“Here,” Alexa said, first thing the morning after Arniel’s accident, as she handed Mirabelle her report, a sheaf of experiment notes, and the box with Arniel’s soul gem in it.  “If you have any further questions, you can ask him about it.”

Mirabelle arched an eyebrow at that but didn’t comment as she tucked the box under one arm.

“Now, who, or what, is the Augur of Dunlain,” Alexa asked, “and why won’t anyone tell me about him?”

“It’s not something often discussed,” Mirabelle told her.  “It might be… misunderstood by the locals.  The Augur is down in the Midden below the College.  I don’t recommend going down there unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

There was something – off - in Mirabelle’s tone.  Alexa considered the Master Wizard for a moment.  “And what part of ‘there’s a former student living beneath the College’ would the locals ‘misunderstand’?” she enquired, carefully.  

“He is… unusual, and Nords don’t like unusual,” Mirabelle told her primly.

Right, Arniel’s Shade had mentioned the Augur when she’d suggested the possibility Arniel’s body had become light.  If the Augur were incorporeal, that could explain how she’d failed to notice him the few times she’d been down there¹.  It might also explain her previous curious, in retrospect, lack of interest in exploring further than the waterfall room.

Alexa opened her mouth to ask something further, noticed Mirabelle steadfastly impassive expression, and stopped. There clearly was something else, but Mirabelle had no interest in disclosing it at this point.  Alexa weighed various possibilities in her mind and then let it go.  “Right, understood.  I’ll put my armor on before I go down.”

Mirabelle’s lips pressed together in silent disapproval, and then nodded once, to show that they had, indeed, reached an understanding.

On her way back to her room, to change into her armor, Alexa noted that Tolfdir had not yet headed over to the Hall of the Elements.  She stepped up to his door.

“Ah, hello there,” he greeted her affably.  “Quite an exciting day you had yesterday, I hear.  Is Arniel really in that soul gem of his?”

“Yes,” she answered briefly.  “Mirabelle has it, and my thoughts on the subject, if you’re interested.”

“Fascinating, I will have to go and speak with him the first chance I get.”

“Before you do that, I was wondering if you could tell me about the Augur of Dunlain?”

“Well now,” Tolfdir began, leaning back in his chair, “there’s a name I haven’t heard in some time…  My goodness, it’s been years since I’ve spoken with him.  I suppose he’s still down in the Midden, but I haven’t checked².  Are you going to see him?  Do tell him ‘hello’ for me, won’t you?”

“You’re not going to try to dissuade me?” she asked, surprised.

“Of course not, you’re perfectly capable of handling yourself.  You’ve proved that several times already.  I dare say he’d love the chance to speak with you even.  He was always interested in strange magic, just as you are.”

“What can you tell me about him?” Alexa asked, suddenly curious about more than simply where she was supposed to be going.

“It was all before my time, you understand,” Tolfdir hedged, suddenly turning cagy.³  “I’ve heard the stories, the same as anyone else…”  He glanced up at her face, saw her expression, and, with a slightly apologetic smile, dropped the act.  “He was a brilliant student, an accomplished wizard.  Delved into magic in a way none had seen before.  But, I think, he became too focused on just how much power he could acquire.  That’s what led to the accident…”  He met her eyes again, seriously this time.  “Remember what I told you, about how not being able to control magic could destroy you?  I didn’t simply mean it could kill you.  The Augur’s accident is another very real type of a life destroyed.”

“And by accident do you mean a successful application of an incorrect theory, like with Arniel, or like he slipped and dropped something that exploded in his face?” she asked.

“Since I don’t know what he was attempting, I can’t say,” Tolfdir answered. 

“Then how do you know it was an accident?” Alexa asked.

“Well, it’s always been described as an accident.  I can’t imagine it was intentional.  Something must have gone wrong, for him to end up in the state he’s in now.”

“And what state is that?” Alexa prodded.

“Why, fused to the energies that flow through the College,” Tolfdir answered as though it should have been obvious.  “I’ve never felt it appropriate to ask him about it, or about how that must feel… Or, I suppose, if he can feel at all,” he added a little sadly.

… well, that wasn’t ominous or anything.  “Fused with the same energy as the ‘Eye’ is sitting in?” Alexa asked.

Tolfdir blinked at her in surprise.  “That had not occurred to me,” he admitted.  “But yes, that must be true.  Why don’t you ask him about it while you are down there?”

One thing Alexa had learned, over the last year or so, was multitasking.  A trip into the Midden afforded her an opportunity to perform a bit of conjuration without having to explain herself to the other members of the college.  The combination of Shalidor’s Insight into geomancy, along with a few things she was learning from Miraak’s memories, appeared to indicate something interesting regarding the possible use of Conjuration magic – rather than the more typical Alteration based portal magic - to move quickly across great distances.⁴ 

Once in the Midden she summoned her dremora butler. 

“Thoughts on this?” she asked handing over her notes.

He read them over carefully and then handed the notebook back to her.  Something about his expression or stance made her think he’d be making a report to Sanguine the moment she dismissed him.  “With that you could likely go anywhere,” he told her.  “Even places you’ve never been.  And, as long as you are careful to choose one of my lord’s realms as your midpoint, you shouldn’t have a problem.”  He took a moment to look disapprovingly around him, his expression indicating that he was mildly offended her choice of location in which to summon him.  “Interesting,” he noted, with a slight sniff.

“What is?” she asked, surprised he’d done something other than imply that she should dismiss him.

“Rubies in the eye sockets of that one,” he said pointing at the skeleton, with the elk skull for a head, hanging on the wall.⁵  “That sort of scrying magic isn’t common these days.”

Alexa cocked her head at that.  “Do you know who still uses it?”

“Hagravens, shaman, a few necromancers,” he answered, dismissively.

“Elk skull suggests the first two over the third,” Alexa noted.  Also, Dunlain was in the High Rock portion of the Reach.  Had the Augur begun life as a Breton, or even Forsworn, shaman?  If true, it would go some way towards explaining Tolfdir’s comment about the Augur’s unusual magic.

“Anything else?” the dremora asked, imperiously.

“No, you may go,” she answered, dismissing him with a wave.

Alexa considered the solid wood, reinforced, door with only a ring handle and no obvious keyhole or lock.  It looked exactly like the only other door she’d seen in the Midden, only in somewhat better condition.  There was also, quite obviously, a mystic focal point on the other side of it.  She could feel the fizzy tingle of the magic from here.  She knocked.

“There is no solace in knowing what is to come,” a hollow, yet still oddly human, voice intoned.  “There is no help for you here.  Your perseverance will only lead you to disappointment.”

“I am acutely aware of at least that first part,” Alexa told the voice on the other side of the door.  “I’d still like to hear what an augur has to say about it.”

Nothing.  She pushed at the door.

“Still you persist?  Very well, you may enter.”  The door opened on its own.

“You are the Augur of Dunlain?” she asked the ball of energy hanging above the mystic focal point in the center of the room.

“I am that which you have been seeking,” he agreed.  “Your efforts are in vain.  It has already begun.  But those who have sent you have not told you what they seek.  What you seek.”

“I was told to find you,” she told it.  “It seems to me I’ve already found what I was seeking.”  It?  Or was the augur still a him?  If dragons could be male, or female, even without a physical sex she supposed a ball of light could too.  Him, then.

“So, you have come looking, though you do not know why,” he said, more as a summary of events than as any sort of question.

“And why do you think the Psijics sent me?” she asked.

“They seek that which all who wield magic seek,” he replied.  “Knowledge.”  There was an infinitesimal pause.  “You shall find this knowledge will corrupt.  It will destroy.  It will consume.”

Thinking of her recent experience with Mora’s Black Books Alexa made a face but said nothing.

“You, and they, seek meaning, shelter in Knowledge,” the Augur went on.  “The Thalmor sought the same thing.  You will not find it.  Like others before you, you blindly follow a path to your own destruction.”

“Yes, thank you, I know how thoroughly screwed I probably am,” Alexa told the glowing orb.  “Personal destruction seems to be part and parcel with the dragonborn thing.  But that’s the funny thing about fate, isn’t it?  It almost always leads to death, eventually.  The interesting thing about current circumstances, as I understand them, is that it’s unclear which thing that could kill me actually will.”

If it was possible for a ball of energy to look disapproving Alexa was almost certain this one would be.  “You, and those aiding you, wish to know more about the Eye of Magnus,” he intoned, returning to the initial topic of conversation.  “You wish to avoid the disaster of which you are not yet aware.  The one who calls himself Ancano has sought my knowledge as well, through very different questions.”

“Of course he has,” Alexa muttered.

“Your path now follows his, though you will arrive too late,” the augur told her.

“You seem very certain about the outcome of events within a Real Moment,” she told him.  “If even the Elder Scrolls cannot see what is to come, perhaps some uncertainty is warranted from you as well?” 

“Perhaps.”

“What questions did Ancano ask?” she enquired, morbid curiosity getting the better of her.

“He seeks information about the Eye, but what he will find shall be quite different⁶,” the Augur offered without really answering her question.  “His path will cross yours in time, but first you must find that which you need. 

“Your path differs from most.  You are being guided, pushed towards something.  It is a good path, one untraveled by many.  It is a path that can save your college.  I will tell you what you need to know to follow it further.”

“Then what do I need?” Alexa asked, patiently, when several seconds of silence followed.

“To see through ‘Mangus’ Eye’ without being blinded, you require his staff,” the Auger told her.  “Events now spiral towards the inevitable center, so you must act with haste.  Take this knowledge to your Arch-Mage,” he ordered, and then, before she could respond, disappeared.

Alexa gave a slightly aggravated sigh.  There were so many things she wanted to ask this entity and he had just... walked out on her.  Haste.  “Right, fine.  I’ll go and do what must be done to save our college, which you are – I’m guessing – intrinsically bound to,” she told the apparently empty air.  “But I’ll be back for a chat when this is done.”

Chapter Text

“Hey,” Alexa began as she and Teldryn stepped out of the portal she’d opened onto the stairs leading up to Mzulft.  “Did you really say AE GHARTOK PADHOME CHIM AE ALTADOON¹ to Dagoth Ur when you met him?”

“What?” Teldryn asked, taken off guard.  “No, before you answer that, when did you learn portal magic, and why did we have to go so far out of town before using it?”

“Miraak knew portal magic and, if a Psijic monk felt the need to walk out of town before teleporting away, I’m going to believe what he said about the current level of magical interference surrounding the college,” Alexa answered.  “As to my question, Lesson 15.”

“And how is magical interference related to your question regarding whether I said something, that I have no idea what it means, just because Vivec wrote that I should?” Teldryn asked,² following her up the stairs.

“Within the context of the Nerevarine facing Dagoth Ur I would interpret that phrase as ‘I am Padhome’s fist.  Starlight is my weapon’,” Alexa told him.  “Which is surprisingly close to a word for word translation.  And I don’t think the two are related at all.”

“Then why ask about it now?” he grumbled.

“Because I think those are the words I was almost hearing as I traveled through the deeper parts of the tunnels beneath the college.”

“Almost hearing?” Teldryn asked, suddenly alert.  “How heightened are your senses these days?”

“Since I have no way of knowing what ‘normal’ is, I couldn’t say.  And it was more like the stone was humming them than like they were being spoken aloud,”³ Alexa answered.  “The door to the main complex is this way,” she added, moving to the right.

“And what would those words mean in the context of the College basement?” Teldryn prodded, following after her.

“Notionally the same thing,” she answered.  “But maybe more like ‘My essence is to be a tool for change.  Magic is my instrument.”

“Typical Talvani nonsense,” Teldryn muttered.

“I suppose,” she replied, unconvinced.  Miraak’s memories indicated that there were phrases and words – or concepts? - of power beyond those of the dragon tongue.  Vivec, it seemed, had made significant use of them.  Had Shalidor magically imbued the vary stones of the College with one of these phrase-concepts when he created it?⁴  A sort of philosophical purpose that would guide those within?  It was not impossible.  The mer Towers, after all, were buildings, and they affected, not just those who lived in them, but Creation itself.  Though they had to gather quite a lot of energy to do so…  

Images of the College’s many mystic focal points suddenly flashed before her mind’s eye.⁵

“Since you could open a portal to this location, I assume you’ve been here before?” Teldryn asked, suddenly.

“Summer of 195...” Alexa replied, snapping back to the here and now only to realize the Mzulft’s main door was in sight.  “Wow, almost seven years ago,” she added, surprised.  It felt both like half that many years and an eternity.

“So you know what to expect,” Teldryn said, in a tone equally leading and resigned.  "I suppose that explains why you insisted we leave the dogs at the inn."

“The dogs are very bad with traps," Alexa agreed.  "As for Mzulft, it is a relatively small research facility.  Given that the Synod team has already cleared out anything that has taken up residence since my visit, it shouldn’t take us more than two hours, maybe three if they’ve thought to reset the internal traps behind them.”

“I did say it,” Teldryn admitted, “but only after I had dealt with the Heart.”

Five hours later… ⁶

“What the… You,” the man in the blue robe gasped.  “What are you doing here?  What’ve you done with Gavros?  You’re supposed to be dead!”

“Paratus,” Alexa sighed.  “And to think I had hoped never to see you again.  Gavros was badly injured but is fine now,” she added.  “We told him to give us a head start on clearing the ruin before following.  So, what are you doing here?”

“I am on official business of the Grand Council of the Synod,” he replied loftily.  “That’s all you need to know.”  He sniffed, before giving her a sideways glance.  “I might well ask the same of you, running around in this dangerous place, while pretending to be dead...”  His eyes narrowed as something clearly occurred to him.  “Are you here to steal my work?” he demanded.

“It seems to me that, as the author of the preliminary report on this location, I should already be getting partial credit for anything going on here,” Alexa pointed out.  “I’ll tell you what though, if you help me, I’ll continue to forget to tell the Synod I’m not dead and you can take all the credit for whatever you’re doing.”

“And where have you been, anyway?” he asked peevishly.  “What happened with that last research venture the Synod was funding?”

“I’m with the College of Winterhold now,” Alexa replied, “and the Synod has my journal regarding what I learned of the Aetherium Forge.”  At least the part of her excursion they’d actually funded, she added mentally.  The Forge’s location she’d discovered somewhat later.

His eyes narrowed.  “With the College of Winterhold?  That explains why Savos wouldn’t even grant us an audience… you’re hiding your research from the Synod, aren’t you!  But now you come here expecting something from me?”

“I’m looking for the Staff of Magnus,” Alexa told him flatly.

“You are?” he blinked in surprise.  “Well.  I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.  I need the crystal to do anything useful, and I don’t have it.”

Alexa pulled the crystal out and, wordlessly, held it up between them.

“Ha!  You have it!  I was almost beginning to think Gavros had gone and lost it just to spite me.”  Paratus paused, clearly considering his next move carefully.  “Fine, I don’t much like this, but you saved my skin, so maybe I can overlook the past, for now.  Come on, I’ll explain on the way.”

“I’ll wait here and keep an eye out for Gavros,” Teldryn told them.  “Scream if you need anything.”

Paratus had already turned and was starting down the hall to the oculory.  “It didn’t work the first time,” he told Alexa.  “I tried to tell Gavros, but he wouldn’t listen.  ‘No, it won’t be too cold’ he said.  Well, I was right, wasn’t I?  Focused completely wrong by the time we got here!  The cold had warped it!  Gavros had to cart it all the way back to Cyrodiil.  Left the rest of us here to fend off the damnable Falmer…  You’re report said you’d cleared the place!”

“Seven years ago, and you could have waited for him in Kyne’s Grove,” Alexa sighed, following behind Paratus.  “They have an inn and everything.”

“And fall behind on our work?  No, never,” Paratus sniffed.  “There were repairs that still had to be made!  No matter what Gavros said, this was my idea first.  The Council is going to know that when I get back.  I was the one who thought of using this... this oculory.  I don’t know what the dwarves called it.  Something unpronounceable, I’m sure.  Our analysis of your report indicates that they were intent on discerning the nature of the divine.  That this machinery, all of it, was designed to collect starlight, and then... Split it, somehow.  It was my idea to replace one of the key elements with our focusing crystal.  Months of enchantments went into it.  Let’s just hope they got it right this time.”

Our analysis of your report… Alexa thought, bemusedly.  That deduction wouldn’t have taken much "analysis" as the report had straight up suggested the possibility.  Still, no reason to antagonize a man who’d always been touchy and seemed to have spent far too much time alone, in traumatic circumstance, lately.

“Here we are,” Paratus announced as they reached the main platform.  “It took an incredible amount of work to get it running again.  Now I’m hoping it’ll all be worth it.”  He held out a hand for the crystal.

She handed it to him and watched as he placed it within the central device.  They really had done a surprising amount of work.  She was impressed.  Too bad so many skilled individuals were now dead.  Maybe she’d write to the Synod suggesting that any future excursions of this kind include a few battle mages, or some mercenaries.  Actually, given the number of people Calcelmo had lost, a complete primer on safely navigating Dwemer ruins was likely in order.  “What now?” she asked as the apparatus moved back into place.

“Now the crystal needs to be focused,” Paratus answered, his distrust and anger momentarily replaced by the combined excitement of progress and having someone to talk to about it.  “It was created so far away…” he continued, his right hand beginning to glow with a frost spell, “we knew that some adjustments would have to be made.  I’ll make them.  You go get ready to rotate the ceiling.” 

It took three applications of the Frostbite spell before the rays of light aligned with the tracts on the ceiling.  “There!” he called up to her.  “Your turn.”

It took a few minutes for the ancient machinery to grind slowly into place but, eventually, she got all three sections of the ceiling aligned.

“Years of work, finally going to pay off...” Paratus announced, gleefully running towards the base of the wall she was standing on.  “Wait, what’s this?  These results...  They’re not at all what they should be!”

“What do you mean,” Alexa asked, jumping down next to him.

“This projection should be lit up like the night sky...  Something is creating an incredible amount of interference.  Something in Winterhold, it looks like.”

“Something in Winterhold?” she asked, examining the map.

“What are you playing at?” he demanded, turning on her.  “Is this some attempt to stall my work?!  What have you done?  You, you, of all people could have figured out what we were attempting.  Are you here to make sure your plan worked, that all our efforts have been for nothing?  Well, explain yourself!

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Alexa said, taking a step away from him.

“Do you think me a fool?  Do you think I’m too stupid to make the connection?  First Savos wouldn’t even grant us an audience and then you show up here, just as our work nears completion, and now I can’t get any results!”

“It looks to me like you’ve succeeded in modifying the oculory to display terrestrial sources of magicka… and that you’ve successfully located a source in Winterhold and one in… Labyrinthian.  What’s wrong with that?” she asked, confused. “I’m actually impressed by what you’ve achieved.”

“What is wrong?  Everything!” Paratus screamed at her, gesticulating wildly.  “This should be lit up brighter than the night sky, and it’s not!”

“You sure it’s interference and not just an issue of inadequate signal amplification?” she asked.  “You are currently focused on the entire norther half of the continent.  Maybe if you narrowed the field…”

“Do you think me a fool?” he demanded hotly.  “I ran the calculations a thousand times!  And then you show up here and now I can’t get any results because of something at your College.  How did you do it?”

“I haven’t done anything,” Alexa told him seriously, as Gavros and Teldryn arrived on the platform, likely summoned by Paratus’ yelling.  “And, frankly, the fact that all of Solstheim is lit up, as is northern High Rock, and yet Red Mountain isn’t even producing residual blur, indicates you’ve mis-calibrated something.”⁷

“What’s going on?” Gavros asked.  “Did it not work?”

“Just look at it!” Paratus exclaimed, waving at the wall, before he turned back to Alexa.  “Clearly you’ve interfered somehow.  Or...” he stopped, something clearly occurring to him.  “You have something at your College,” he said, with sudden, surprising, clarity, “don’t you?  Something immensely powerful.  Beyond anything I’d anticipated,” he took a step towards her.  “What is it?

“It’s been lovely to see you again, Paratus.  I suggest you get out of here before the Falmer return.  Kyne’s Grove has a lovely inn where you can wait for the Synod to send you more people if you want to keep working on this.  Though I would suggest you not be explicit about who you work for while in Stormcloak territory.”

“So, you do have something, then,” he pressed.  “Well, whether this was intentional or not, it suggests some interesting results.  So, despite your intentions, this time, I’ve beaten your little game!  Even if all you’ve said here is lies, I know you have something in Winterhold the Synod Council will be very interested in.  So, trudge off to Labyrinthian in search of your Staff.  I shall return to Cyrodiil and deliver my full report to the Council.  This is not over, I assure you.”

“I agree, returning to Cyrodiil really would be best for you,” Alexa smiled, backing away from him.  “You’ve clearly been on your own for far too long.”

“You’ve met him before, I take it?” Teldryn asked, softly, as they left the oculory.

“There are no Dwemer ruins in Cyrodiil, which means there aren’t that many people at the Synod who study them.  The few of us who did all knew each other.”

“Was he always like that?”

“No, though it’s not a surprise.  He was always suspicious and tended to blame his setbacks on the malice of others, but it was more subtle, less… manic.  Too bad really.  He has a brilliant theoretical mind, even if he always was overconfident in his practical skills.”

“It sounds like you may have made an enemy today,” Teldryn noted, before realizing that Alexa had stopped walking.  She was just standing there, her eyes wide and unseeing.  He waved a hand in front of her face.  “Alexa?”

She started back to herself.  “Sorry… it seems that, at this distance, the Psijics are capable of making contact again.”

“Oh?”

“Apparently we need to get a move on,” she answered.

“To Labyrinthian then?”

She shook her head.  “Access to the underground city is sealed by an extremely powerful ward.  I’m going to need to consult with the College about how to bypass or break it.”

“Given the size of the aura around Winterhold I assume we can’t trust a portal would actually get us there,” Teldryn stated.

Alexa nodded in agreement.  “There’s a dragon down on the flats,” she told him.  “Let’s see if he can’t be convinced to give us a ride back.”

Chapter Text

It was a very thorough report, Mirabelle conceded, upon finishing her second read through.  There was only one thing it left out: what had been done with Keening.  The Dwemer tool certainly wasn’t in the pile of papers Alexa had handed over with the incident report.

Mirabelle set the journal aside and opened the box she’d been told hand Arniel’s gem in it.  No, not in there either. Well, when the Dragonborn got back, they were going to discuss both her choice not to hand it over and what was best done with such a dangerous…

Mirabelle froze her attention suddenly drawn northward.  Something had just happened, and it had thrown the energy of the entire College out of balance.  She rose quickly to her feet and headed down the stairs. 

Out in the courtyard Drevis was coming out of the Hall of Countenance.

“Tell me I’m not the only one who feels that?” he called out.

“Of course not,” she snapped.

“You don’t think it’s the Eye, do you?” he asked, trotting after her as she strode towards the main tower of the college.

“Damn,” she hissed under her breath.  “I knew that thing was going to be a problem.”

Chapter Text

It was late into the evening when the dragon finally landed, heavily, on the Eastern wall of the college.  “Do you feel it, Dovahkiin?” he asked as his passengers slid from his shoulders.  “Reality is straining.”

“I do,” she replied through gritted teeth, already turning towards the Arcanaeum door.  The Psijic had been right, swift action was clearly necessary.

“Never again,” she heard Teldryn grumble to himself, beneath the sound of the dragon taking flight.

“What?” she asked, looking back at him, her hand on the door.

“There’s a reason Dunmer don’t have wings,” he answered, grouchily.

“Well, not anymore,¹” she murmured, under her breath, as she pushed open the door.

“I don’t know exactly,” Mirabelle was telling Savos, as Alexa and Teldryn arrived on the ground floor.  “It’s like a ward, but who’s casting it?  Ancano?”

“It could be the orb,” Alexa offered, as she joined them at the blocked gateway into the Hall of the Elements.  “It had a similar shield around it in Saarthal.”²

“I don’t care what it is,” the Arch-Mage snapped.  “I want it down now!”

“Were you successful?” Mirabelle asked, ignoring Savros Aren’s outburst.

“I know where to find the Staff of Magnus,” Alexa confirmed.

“Normally I’d suggest that we go retrieve it immediately,” Savos huffed, “but right now we have more pressing matters.  We need to put a stop to whatever Ancano is doing!”

“In Saarthal Tolfdir had to drain the energy³ before I could deal with Jyrik Gauldurson,” Alexa told them.  “But Jyrik was on the outside of the barrier.”

“Another good reason to take down the barrier then,” Savos said, turning away from her.  “We’ll throw everything we can at it.  Help us, will you?”

“I’m no good with destruction magic,” Alexa reminded them, even as the two college mages began casting continuous lightning and frost spells at the barrier.

“You said drain?” Teldryn asked, stepping past Alexa, and holding out a glowing hand.⁴

Savos nodded in approval at Teldryn’s spell choice even as the barrier began to dissipate like an evaporating soap bubble.

Even with the barrier down the feeling of wrongness, the tight heaviness in the air - as if local reality was being filled, and stretched, beyond its capacity - was still increasing.  Alexa hesitated.  The Arch-Mage didn’t.

“Ancano!” Savos called out, hands filling with lightning as he stalked to the far side of the focal point.  “Stop this at once!  I command you!”

Alexa only just heard Mirabelle’s warning, “No, don’t go near him!”, before a sudden discharge of both light, and momentum, briefly overwhelmed reality.  In the hanging moment after the flash Alexa had just enough time to register a strange sense of déjà vu before, like a released bowstring snapping back into its stable resting position, reality returned with disorienting abruptness.⁵  Her head hit stone tile with a sickening crunch.  Distantly she could hear Teldryn swearing with the sort of color and ingenuity only the Dunmer were capable of.⁶

It was pain, mostly in her head, that finally cut through the dream state Alexa’s mind had retreated into, reminding her she probably didn’t have time to contemplate what had just happened.  Alexa sat up.  The barrier around Ancano, and the orb, had already returned.

“Are you alright?” Mirabelle’s voice demand from somewhere to her left.  Alexa turned in the direction of the voice, too quickly, and her vision grayed around the edges as a wave of nausea washed over her.

“Can you walk?” Mirabelle went on, in a tone that indicated “yes” was the only acceptable answer.  “I need you on your feet.  We’re in trouble here.”

“I… think I’m okay,” Alexa answered, still feeling oddly disconnected from the situation.

“Good,” Mirabelle breathed, putting her head between her knees.  “I haven’t seen Savos since the explosion,” she explained, between shallow, shuddering, breaths.  “He must’ve been blown clear.  He may have been injured.  I need… I need you to find the Arch-Mage!”

Blown clear? Alexa thought, with detached interest.  They were inside a building and a cursory glance towards the exterior door revealed it was still closed; not open, or off its hinges, as it would have to be if a person had been involuntarily thrown through it.  How could someone have been “blown clear” if they hadn’t gone through the door? part of her mind wondered idly, even as the part of it still susceptible to early childhood training reflexively completed assessing her surroundings and determined it would be safe to begin triage.

Not trusting her own physical situation enough to stand, but still incapable of feeling concerned enough to do anything about it, Alexa crawled over to Mirabelle.  The Master Wizard, she determined, seemed physically unharmed, at least on the outside, but her pallor was off, her breathing was shallow and hurried, and she was shaking.  Alexa cast Grand Healing, twice for good measure.⁷  Somewhere behind her she heard Teldryn sigh in relief and get to his feet.

“Are you alright now?” Alexa asked Mirabelle, already feeling considerably better, and more present, herself.

“I’ll be fine… now,” Mirabelle assured her, though Alexa noted her breathing remained shallow, and her pallor was still not right.  Odd.  After the application of two Grand Healing spells, Mirabelle should have been fully healed, or as close to fully healed as made little difference.  But the only obvious improvement Alexa could see was that Mirabelle’s shaking had been reduced to a slight trembling in her hands.  It seemed that, whatever was wrong with her, it wasn’t physical. 

A panic attack, perhaps? Alexa wondered, and then dismissed it.  That option seemed… not unreasonable, given the situation, but very much out of character for Mirabelle. 

“Thank you,” Mirabelle was saying, gripping her hands together to hide their shaking.  “I just need a minute to catch my breath.  Please, go find Savos.”

Alexa frowned at her but stood to comply.  If the Master Wizard didn’t want to be fussed over, she was a grown woman, and that was a choice a healer should respect… at least until triage was complete.

“You alright?” she asked Teldryn as he moved to join her.

“Peachy,” he answered, shortly.

Outside the sky was brilliantly lit by a green aurora that hadn’t been there when she and Teldryn had landed.  The Arch-Mage wasn’t hard to find.  He was lying face down, and unmoving, surrounded by most of the remaining members of the college.

Seeing her Tolfdir broke away from the group, moving to meet her halfway.  “Are you alright?” he asked, as she continued past him.  “What happened in there?”

“Ancano has done something with, or to, the orb,” Alexa replied, crouching down beside the Arch-Mage’s body. “Mirabelle needs help,” she added, rolling Aren face up.  Like Mirabelle, like herself, and – presumably - like Teldryn, the Arch-Mage appeared completely uninjured, aside from some scuff marks on his face; likely obtained by sliding a few feet after hitting the ground.  The scratches were, she noted, of the post mortem variety.  Savos Aren had been dead before he hit the ground.  “Did anyone see how he got out here?” she asked, looking up at the people standing around her.

“There’s no time to talk about that now,” Tolfdir interjected, before anyone could answer.  “Whatever happened has affected Winterhold as well.  I need you to get out there, and make sure everything’s all right.  I’ll go help Mirabelle.”

Alexa nodded, wordlessly, and then stood, noting the unsteadiness in her own movement.  Even after having fully healed herself, she still felt… off.  Not unlike how she had felt immediately after Serana had partially soul trapped her, she realized, but not exactly the same either.⁸  She filed the thought away for scrutiny later.

“What’s going on?  What happened in there?” Sergius⁹ demanded as Alexa and Teldryn joined him, and Faralda, on the bridge.

“Ancano did something to the Eye,” Alexa told them.  “Tolfdir says Winterhold may be in danger.”

“It may be in danger?” Faralda scoffed.  “Take a look,” she continued, pointing towards the town.  “I don't think there’s much question about it.”  

A quick glance in the direction Faralda was pointing revealed about a dozen glowing dots moving quickly between the buildings.  This time Alexa didn’t hesitate, pushing past Sergius before breaking into a run.

“Come on, Sergius,” she heard Faralda urged.  “Let’s go.”

“They’d never lift a finger to help us,” Servius grumble, even as his footsteps joined the sounds of Teldryn and Faralda following behind her.

To Alexa’s surprise Enthir and Nelecar were already in the street.

“They’re acting like wisps!” Enthir called out as they joined him.

“They bite like them too!” Nelecar added.  “Watch yourself!”

There were also, Alexa discovered, incredibly resilient.¹⁰  Still, between the six of them, it wasn’t too long before the creatures had been dealt with.

Crouching down beside the remains of the final creature she’d killed Alexa used an arrow to poke at the glowing pile of dust and vapor it had disintegrated into and was a little surprised to find something that looked like a soul gem.  With gloved hands she picked the gem up and inspected it.  Filled.¹¹  Which meant these things were either constructs of some sort or native to a plane of existence unlike any she’d read about.

She stood up.  “Sergius and Nelecar, please collect the remains of these things, including their morpholiths, for study. The gems appear to be full.  Given recent events… I suggest caution.”

“You don’t say,” Nelecar muttered sarcastically. 

“Try to keep Enthir from selling off too many of them before you figure out what they are,” she added.

Enthir gave her a sardonic look.  “I’m not stupid enough to sell your research material, dragon-lady.”

“I’ve got some empty sample jars in my room,” Nelecar told Sergius, in an undertone, even as Alexa turned away from them and started back towards the college.  As interesting as this was, she still needed to talk to someone about finding a way through Labyrinthian’s front door and fast.

“I think I’ll stay here, for now,” Faralda announced as Alexa walked past her.  “Never thought I’d be guarding the town from the College rather than the College from the Town,” she added with a wry smile.

“If asked, blame Ancano,” Alexa suggested, without stopping.

“I intend to,” Faralda assured her.

Alexa found a somewhat recovered Mirabelle, and Tolfdir, observing Ancano, and the orb, from behind a pillar inside the Hall of the Elements.  The orb’s whirling energy-shield, she noted, hadn’t expanded beyond the size it had been immediately after the blast, a size easily recognized as it exactly matched the circle of college emblems on the floor.¹²  Alexa stopped, head cocked to one side, as she considered, for the first time, the floor of the Hall of the Elements and the double ring of pillars that created the space.  She frowned at the barrier.  It was, visually at least, unusual.  The barrier which had imprisoned Valerica, as well as those that had surrounded the Soul Cairn and the Skull of Corruption, hadn’t had this sort of visual, spinning, movement to them.  The barrier that had caged the Moth Priest Dexion, on the other hand, she realized suddenly, had been remarkably similar to the one in front of her now.¹³

“Well?” Mirabelle asked, walking over to where Alexa was standing, frozen in thought, by the door.  “Is everything all right out there?”

“For now,” Alexa answered, returning to the task at hand.  “Though I think the College’s reputation with the locals has taken another hit.”

Mirabelle nodded, understanding.  “Tolfdir and I can try and keep this contained.  You need to get your hands on the Staff of Magnus.  Now.”

“Slight problem,” Alexa told her.  “It’s in Labyrinthian and, last time I checked, the city is sealed.”

“What?” Mirabelle blinked at her.  “Are you... Are you sure?  The staff is there?”

“Very sure.”

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Mirabelle murmured, more to herself than either Alexa or Teldryn. 

“What can’t?” Alexa prodded, too tired after the long day she’d already had, to wait politely for Mirabelle to get to the point.

“Savos,” Mirabelle answered, her voice a little sad.  “He gave me something just a little while ago.  He told me it was from Labyrinthian, and that I would know what to do with it when the time came.  I think... I think he meant this for you,” she finished, pulling a heavy iron ring out of the satchel she always wore and handed it to Alexa.  “I’m not sure why, but there was something very personal about it for him.  Take it and get out of here.”  She turned away.

“Mirabelle?” Alexa, called after her, a little tentatively.

She turned back.  “Yes?”

“Thank you,” Alexa told her, sincerely.  “For everything.”  She saw the moment Mirabelle realized what she was saying, and the expression of acceptance that ghosted across her face before she set her jaw and stood a little straighter.

“Go,” the Master Wizard of the College of Winterhold ordered the Dragonborn.  “Bring back that staff before Ancano brings the whole college down around us.”

Chapter Text

“So, Labyrinthian, then?” Teldryn asked as they, once again, stepped out into the night air of the College’s central courtyard.

“I need you to stay here,” Alexa told him, as they walked to the Hall of Attainment.

“And why is that?” he asked, his tone ominously flat.

“Do you know what happened to us when that thing exploded?” she demanded, her frustration with the day’s events showing itself in the unusual force with which she pulled open the tower door.

“I may not be exactly mortal, Sikendra, but I’m also not a dragon,” he replied, in a grouchy undertone.  “And I’m fairly certain there’s no helpful Telvanni primmer for whatever that thing did that threw the Arch Mage through several walls, and left him dead, without damaging either the walls or his body.”

“But you are aware that, for a brief moment, those of us caught in the blast moved through a… an alternate space, in which the physical objects of this world didn’t exist but momentum gained here, and distance traveled there, were conserved, right?¹” Alexa countered, not bothering to lower her voice.  She could tell from the eerie silence of the space that the other students were not around.  With any luck they’d been smart enough to move to the inn.

Crouching down beside her pack, which was still propped at the foot of her bed, Alexa began a quick inventory of its current contents. 

“I think that is, pretty much, what I just said, yes,” Teldryn agreed, crossing his arms over his chest, and leaning up against her door frame, as he watched her begin the process of checking, and replenishing, the contents of her pack. 

Given the hurry they had been in, and the fact she’d already been through Mzulft, she had left it behind that morning.  But Labyrinthian, especially since she was still in too much of a hurry to sleep, was a different matter.  She would be surprised if she made it through the ancient city without needing a potion, or a way to carry home something interesting.

“What I don’t know is how such a thing would be possible,” he finished.

“The barrier between here and somewhere else was briefly, and very locally, overwhelmed by the sudden discharge of energy from the orb,” Alexa answered, as she restocked her potion supply with an emphasis on stamina regen to keep her awake.  “Energy that, after what we saw at Mzulft, I’d guess was pure, concentrated, varliance,²” she added.

“And that’s what killed the Arch-Mage,” Teldryn stated, in a tone that indicated he wasn’t fully buying it.

Alexa sighed and sat, tiredly, on the end of her bed, for a moment.  “You, of all people, must know that varliance, vitality, and magicka are – broadly – interchangeable, yes?³  Given the amount of varliance the Arch-Mage was exposed to – as the focus of the blast – his vitality…” her voice died away as she made a slight poofing gesture with her hands.

“Dissolved?” Teldryn offered.

“Like throwing hot tea over a snowflake,” she affirmed.  “Luckily for us, you and I have rather unusual levels of vitality.”

“And that – in your analogy - makes the two of us what, ice cubes?” he smirked.

“If ice cubes could regenerate,” she agreed.  “We’ll likely be fine after some rest.” 

“So, not that different from being affected by a drain spell then,” he said.

Alexa went silent, and still, for a moment.  “In the fight against those wisp-things, I noticed you weren’t casting spells as frequently as usual.  Your magicka regeneration rate…” she paused briefly and then started again.  “I assume that – like mine - it feels somewhat reduced?”

“So not exactly like a drain spell,”⁴ he amended, by way of agreement.

“I haven’t seen Mirabelle cast a single spell since the blast,” Alexa remarked, a hint of sadness creeping into the tired tone of her voice.  “Not even to heal herself.”  She sighed again, grimaced to herself, and stood up.  “If I’m right, there isn’t a healing spell in the world that can fix what has happened to her.  Maybe, if I had the time, the dragon memories would have a solution, but…”, she added several bundles of extremely high-quality arrows to her pack, “circumstances conspire. Given everything, I doubt I’ll make it back before the inability to regenerate health and magicka proves fatal.”

“So that’s what that exchange was about,” Teldryn said, a little world weariness creeping into his voice. 

“And that’s why I need you to stay here,” she told him, closing up her pack, “because you know the risks and, as a demigod with an incredibly high regeneration rate, are likely to survive them.”

“You have any instructions regarding that strange ward, the orb, or the Thalmor agent, while you’re gone?” he asked, apparently accepting her reasoning without, necessarily, agreeing with it.

“Leave the ward alone,” she answered.

“Alone?” he repeated, clearly surprised.

She nodded, as she slid the Wabbajack and the Sanguine Rose into their usual place.  “The only ward I’ve seen that looked like the ones surrounding the orb, was being used to keep the energy of a magical device confined to a particular space.⁵  Looking back on it, I believe it was the energy from the device, hitting the surface of the ward and being both partially absorbed and partially dissipated across the ward’s curved surface, that caused the appearance of spinning energy, not a peculiarity of the ward itself.  Currently I’d say the energy of the orb is being contained by one of the wards Shalidor, himself, built into the College’s spell-practice room.”  She shook her pack, hard, a few times to make sure the staves were securely seated in their holsters.  “The fact that the orb contained enough energy to overcome it and trigger a second barrier is… probably quite impressive,” she added.

“If the ward was intrinsic to the hall, then why did the Master Wizard say she didn’t know who was casting it?” Teldryn countered.

Alexa paused for a moment.  For the time being, the ward was level with the emblems on the floor, a position that both Mirabelle and Tolfdir seemed remarkably comfortable with, given everything that had already happened and how uncomfortable Savos and Mirabelle had been regarding the ward when it had been at the hall door…  “Perhaps they didn’t know there was a second ward on the room,” she suggested, “or...  Oh.”

Alexa hefted her pack and walked over to the mystic focal point.  “I suspect you can hear me,” she said to the empty air above it.  “I’d like to apologize for not stopping the Arch-Mage and Master Wizard from breaching what I now presume was a ward you cast.”

When she got no immediate response, Alexa rapped a knuckle thoughtfully on the stone rimming the magicka pool.  “I hope that, given what you are, you were not irreparably harmed by the blast.  While I am away, Teldryn will do his best to keep the others from interfering, negatively, with any further wards attempting to limit the area affected by the orb’s energy.

“I can’t promise anyone will listen to me,” Teldryn muttered.  “And I’m not even going to ask who you’re talking to,” he added, when she turned back to him.  “You’re really going into Labyrinthian now, without having slept, and without someone to watch your back?” he asked.

“I’ve got the Rose Dremora,” she reminded him.  “And I got a full night’s sleep last night.  I’ll be fine.”

Teldryn pushed away from the wall he was leaning on with a slight sigh.  “How long do you expect to be away?” he asked, following her out of the building.

“I’ll ride Arvak out of town far enough to open a portal to a safe distance outside the energy around Labyrinthian.  With any luck there will be a dragon at Skyborn Alter that can fly me back.  I have no idea how long it will take to find the staff, but I wouldn’t expect more than a day.”

“Fine.  You’ve got three days before I leave these people to fend for themselves and come looking for you,” he told her.

“Understood.  Keep the dogs safe while I’m gone!”

Chapter Text

Alexa threw herself off Arvak’s back, almost before he’d come to a stop, and ran headlong up the stairs before stopping, suddenly, in surprise.  Savos Aren’s shade was climbing the steps beside her.

“I knew you’d come,” it whispered to her, as they ascended the last flight together.  “It would seem I’m bound to this place.  The bitter irony of it all - my greatest failure and, even in death, I can’t escape it.  I never meant for any of what happened here – tried to seal it up, lock it away forever – but now it all comes out again...”

Even from the top of the stairs Alexa could see that the ward was gone from the great door.  She glanced over at Savos Aren’s spirit.  He had tried to “seal it up” and “lock it away forever”?  Neloth had said Savos Aren had a “knack for wards”.  Maintaining the sort of ward she’d found here, the first time she’d examined the door, would have required a soul-siphon².  If Savos had committed his own soul to such an endeavor it would go a long way towards explaining the Arch-Mage’s strange distracted, possibly even lethargic, indifference to the extraordinary events of the last year.  All this time he’d been expending a significant portion of his vitality, to imprison whatever – whomever – was inside.  She wondered, briefly, how many people at the college had recognized Savos’ condition for what it was.³  “Seems it wasn’t just in death that you remained bound to this place,” Alexa noted, cold settling into her stomach.

“There were six of us,” he told her sadly.  “Full of ambition, eager to conquer the world.  It was Atmah’s idea to come here, at first.  She talked me into it, and I convinced the others.  We were sure we’d find it all here, hidden away from time.  Power, knowledge...  All the things we didn’t want to wait for.  We thought it would be so simple.”

Alexa grimaced at the skeletal dragon, now fully dead again, before her.  “No soul,” she murmured, more to herself than either Savos or the Rose Dremora.  “It seems you died at Miraak’s hands and were then entombed here.”

Savos’ shade gave her a surprised look.

“I’d say that a dragon priest raising the bones of a dragon as his undead slave was twisted but, compared to the things Miraak was into, it almost seems respectful.”  Almost.

“Girduin died first,” Savos told her as she started walking towards the door.  “It happened so fast, none of us had a chance to react.  One moment we joked about what we’d find below, the next he’d been ripped in half.  And then we were all fighting just to survive.  None of us were prepared.  It was amazing the rest of us survived.  When it was over, Atmah, Hafnar and I stared, pale-faced, at one another, unwilling to admit we’d made a terrible mistake.”  He pasused for a moment.  “We could have turned back,” he added, forlornly.  “It could have ended there.  But we kept going.”

In the next room a tablet on a plinth caught Alexa’s attention.  Hail All - Brave City Bromjunaar, it read.  Forever These Walls Shall Stand / May Enemies See Her Majesty / May All Quake to Behold Her.  The tragedy of it all was nearly painful. 

Dismissing the Rose Dremora, Alexa pushed open the next door without saying a word.  As she and Savos walked past a lit brazier, and down another flight of stairs, a blue ripple filled the air, emanating from a door on their right, as a deep voice, speaking in the dragon tongue, echoed in her mind.

“Who comes to my dark kigdom?”⁴ the voice inquired as Alexa felt her already damaged magicka pool⁵ drain away and Savos’ shade vanish. 

Ignoring the apparently telepathic dragon priest’s question, Alexa started to look around her and then stopped.  Wait.  Telepathic?  As in Dwemer?  It seemed, unlikely that the dragon cult would have accepted a mer of any sort…  She shot the draugr in the alcove just to be on the safe side.

The Psijics had certainly contacted her mind directly - and across great distance - but the lack of visual to go with this voice indicated that the dragon priest was not contacting her via the dreamsleeve.  In The Doors of Oblivion the author indicated that a voice only link was possible between two skilled conjurers⁶, though the book also said that the link had come about accidently after working closely together for years…  What, she wondered, would be necessary to make such a thing happen on purpose?  Had this dragon priest been a conjurer who had actually figured the ability out, or was he using just another spell otherwise lost to time?  What were the limitations of this ability/spell?  Did the connection go both ways, or did both persons require the ability, or need to cast the spell, in order to converse?

No answers to her questions presented themselves in the dead-end of the hallway.  The only way forward was through a door made of ice; hard to pass with one’s magic drained, but the thu’um didn’t require magicka.  She shouted fire at the door and then stepped back into a shadowed niche and drew her bow. 

The ice cracked and shattered, and the door opened revealing a spirit that shed ice haze like an ice wraith.⁷

It, like everything else she’d faced in Labyrinthian thus far, was not a summoned, daedric, entity but undead; even if it was a type of undead she’d never encountered before.  Auriel’s bow dealt with the spirit before it had even managed to locate her.

The magicka draining effect came again as Alexa was systematically picked draugr off a set of stone bridges in the next room.

“Cowardly men shall find no mercy here,” the voice warned.  She rolled her eyes.  The bravery of their victims had never, to her knowledge, resulted in mercy from a Dragon Priest. 

I must remember to tell Earmiel that this drain effect may have something to do with the rapid decomposition we were noticing in the above-ground ruins,⁸ Alexa thought as she continued on.

The alchemy and enchanting lab on the next level down had a few interesting things in it, including what might be the corpse of a vampire⁹ and a tome for the spell “Equilibrium”.  Even though she’d only ever heard of the spell, and never seen it for herself, Alexa stashed the book away without reading it, instead choosing to spend her short moment of relative safety on a snack of bread, cheese, and stamina potion.  There would be time for curiosity later.

As she ate, Aelxa noticed that Aren’s shade had reappeared.  He was standing, silently, by the door, waiting for her to finish.  It had been a few minutes since the last time the drain effect had been used, she reflected, so she should not have been surprised to see him.  She was though.  She had seen no evidence that he, and his friends, had come to this room.  Which meant his shade was not simply reenacting his previous journey, it was accompanying her on hers. 

Given how little interaction she’d had with the Arch-Mage in life, Alexa was surprised to find herself swallowing around a sudden lump in her throat.  For the difference between traveling separately to the same destination and traveling together – with a ghost - to mean so much… she must be more tired, and stressed, than she’d thought.  Or maybe it wasn’t the strain of the immediate situation she was responding to but a deeper fatigue, built up over ten months of near constant danger and threat, and the growing sense of isolation she was experiencing as she grew into her role as dragonborn. 

But Aren, like any self-respecting Dunmer Archmage, would never admit he was not more than the equal of anyone else, she reflected.  If he hadn’t been able to defeat the dragon priest of Labyrinthian, it was likely he’d assume there was no way she could do it without his help.  Or, perhaps, that wasn’t quite right either.  She was not his friend, as his previous companions had been, but - from his choice to travel with her and his willingness to wait, politely, while she ate - it seemed Savos Aren had thought of her as a colleague.  A sentiment she found, in this dark place, she was profoundly grateful for.

“Welcome back,” Alexa whispered, to Aren’s shade, as he fell into step beside her again.

Chapter Text

“Have you returned, Aren?  My old friend?” the dragon priest asked, in common, as Aelxa, followed the glowing waterway to a standard, dark stone, door.

“In a manner of speaking he never left,” Alexa muttered to herself as she pushed the door open with her foot, bow already drawn.  It was worth noting, she thought, that Morokei – a dragon memory had finally supplied the name - couldn’t tell anything about the mind he was speaking to.  Or was the fact that Savos’ shade was traveling with her somehow confusing things?  She cast Stendar’s Aura as she passed through the next gate; skeletons simply weren’t worth wasting expensive arrows on.

“Do you seek to finish that which you could not?” Morokei enquired a little while later when she stopped, at the top of a waterfall, to look around.

The trolls were something of a surprise, she’d admit.  What were they eating so far beneath the ground?

“You only face failure once more...” Morokie continued - as Alexa passed through yet another gate - only to finally, finally, realize his mistake.  “You...  You are not Aren, are you?”  

“Nope, definitely not Aren,” Alexa muttered to herself.  Was it possibly the dragon priest had been unaware of the manner in which his front door had been sealed?  Only Savos’ death could have unlocked it.¹  The fact that someone was here at all should have indicated it couldn’t be Savos.

“Has he sent you in his place?” Morokie demanded, but she was too busy dealing with the Whisp Mother to answer, and probably wouldn’t have anyway.  How had a Whisp Mother even ended up here?²  It was stranger even than the trolls.

“Elvali died here,” Savos’ shade whispered to her when she was done.  “I don't even remember what killed her.  One of the countless faceless horrors.  I think she was glad, in that final moment.  Hafnar was covered in blood, but his stupid Nord pride wouldn’t let him admit defeat.  I... I don’t know why I pressed the others on, convinced them to keep going.  ‘If we can just make it through, it’ll all be worth it’, I told them.  And the fools believed the words I myself didn’t trust.”

“Well, this time we don’t have the choice to turn back,” Alexa told him, picking her way through the gravestones.  “We need the staff before Ancano, and whatever that thing from Saarthal is, tear an irreparably large hole in the world.”

She climbed the stairs to the room’s exit, dealt with the flame spirit, and shouted frost at the door.  Even though she’d never seen a flaming human spirit before, the existence of the frost-spirit had rendered the flame-spirit ‘to be expected’ rather than a surprise.  It was remarkable the kinds of things that could become ‘routine’ after only a few months of exposure, she reflected, sourly.

“Did he warn you that your own power would be your undoing?” Morokie’s asked, as the area-of-effect drain magicka spell filled the air, and Savos’ shade, once again, flickered out.  “That it would only serve to strengthen me?”

“No,” she answered, aloud, now all but certain the dragon priest couldn’t hear her.  “He didn’t tell me anything about you.”

“Come.  Face your end,” Morokie invited, apparently annoyed by Alexa’s second short snack break in her hours long descent through his city.

“I wonder if I’ll be that confidant when I’m several thousand years old?” she muttered, to herself, since the drain spell had, once again, caused her companion to vanish.

The glowing skeletal draugr were a surprise.  Thankfully the strangeness of their physicality didn’t seem to affect how to handle them.  She considered one closely as she retrieved her arrows.  They didn’t disintegrate into piles of ash, the way ghosts did, but remained intact like standard draugr.  She poked one with the arrow she’d just pulled from it.  It was as though their flesh and bone had been transmuted somehow.  And yet, she considered the strangely wet arrow head, ectoplasm seemed to makeup much of what was left of their physical form. 

There was something unaccountably sad about the spectral war-hounds, Alexa decided.  Strange too.  She’d never seen a dog-draugr before and had, until a moment ago, assumed that a black soul was required to achieve the state of permanent un-death that distinguished draugr from common necromantic thralls. 

The spectral weapons the glowing draugr carried, on the other hand, were familiar; closely resembling the Ghost Blade she’d been given in Ansilvund.³  She looted a few of each type for future study… assuming there was a future. 

The hall of fireballs was… annoying but becoming ethereal rendered it largely meaningless.  Habit forced her to collect the soul gems anyway.

The drain effect came again, this time without comment, as she approached what appeared to be a set of stocks carved with an ornamental relief of a dragon priest.  The guard’s quarters to the left - their unmoving corpses supplied with ebony weapons - seemed to indicate she was finally getting close to someplace important.  Under other circumstances she might have rested for the night here.⁴  Instead, she took yet another stamina potion, even though her stomach nearly revolted at the idea, and kept going.

Pushing through the ironbound door, at the other end of the hall from the guard’s quarters, resulted in another wave of magicka draining energy.  She stopped, not fully entering the room.  The timing of the drain spell - coinciding, as it had, with her entry into each new, and progressively more dangerous, area of the city - couldn’t be coincidental.  Morokei must, somehow, be tracking her progress… But, how?  A strong enough detect life spell would probably suffice, she decided, after a moment’s thought.  Given his ability to change the area of effect parameters on a drain-magicka effect, it probably wasn’t too far-fetched a theory.

The room ahead of her, she noted, now that her eyes had adjusted to the somewhat greater gloom of the larger space, had a word wall in it, and a throne with its back to her.  Hard won experience caused Alexa to summon the Rose Dremora, and cast ironflesh before moving forward.  She would have preferred to use ebonyflesh but the drain effect had made that impossible.

Even with the Rose dremora’s help, the spectral draugr was not an easy fight.  He must have been an absolute beast in life, she reflected, even as Savos’ shade reappeared.

“There were only three of us left,” Savos told Alexa as she, went, mechanically, to stand before the word wall.  “Takes-In-Light just sat down and gave up, and we left her here to die.  I’ve no idea what killed her, but I’m sure something did.  Atmah cried to herself.  Hafnar wouldn’t look at either of us.  And I kept telling them it would be all right.  I was in charge now.  I pushed them on, insisting it would be worse to try and go back.  What happened after was my fault.  All mine.”

“Ul,” Alexa said, placing a hand on the glowing word.  “Eternity,” she translated.

The shade blanched.  She pretended not to notice.

The magic draining effect was different this time; it woke nearly a dozen of the glowing draugr from their niches on either side of the hall. 

“That was… close,” she admitted to the Rose dremora, and Savos, when the fight was over.

“Too close,” the dremora informed her.  “You’re making mistakes,” it added.  “Why are you not using your dragon form to protect yourself?”

“Because I’m an idiot,” Alexa sighed, too tired to come up with an excuse.  “I’d apricate it if you didn’t tell my husband how stupid I’m being,” she added, already digging through her bag.

The Rose dremora grunted, disapprovingly, and returned to Oblivion.

Alexa grimaced at the bottom of her pack.  She was out of stamina potions.  She sat on the floor, cast a healing spell, and was surprised when doing so didn’t immediately trigger a return of Morokei’s drain spell.  She’d give the glowing draugr one thing, she decided - chewing on a taffy treat, of unknown age and origin, she’d found at the bottom of her pack - they didn’t smell as bad as the regular ones.  

From where she sat she could see some of the room ahead.  It had a sort of anti-chamber look to it; reminiscent of the room just before entering Potema’s council chamber.  One last push it seemed.  She refilled her quiver, drank an archery potion, resettled her pack, and went to stand beside Savos.  "So, this is it?" she asked.

“We all knew this was the end,” the shade whispered.  “Without even opening the door, we knew what was behind it would kill us.  None of our spells were potent enough, none of our wills were strong enough.  ‘No matter what, we stay together’, Hafnar said.  I looked him in the eyes and lied to him.”

That was probably the best the shade could do to warn her about what she was about to see: the souls of his companions used as spell components in the containment of Morokei in all his undead glory.  Unfortunately for the dragon priest she was no average mage but a grand master of Restoration, a champion of Meridia, and the bearer of Auriel’s Bow.  Even, tired as she was, she didn’t need her own magic to kill him.  One-on-one his undead corps didn’t stand a chance.⁵

"After all that bluster, I expected more from you," she informed Morokei’s ash pile as she crouched down to collect his mask.  She hesitated, for a moment, her hand hovering above the staff.  “It is said that the Staff of Magnus will leave a mage before they become powerful enough to threaten the existence of the world the staff is sworn to protect,”⁶ Alexa said to it.  “A statement that implies some level sentience.  And so, it seems only polite to ask if you are willing to aid a jill in her efforts?”

She didn’t think it was her imagination that a slight glow briefly illuminated the staff’s crystal.  She picked it up and sighed in relief when nothing happened. 

“I had no choice, don’t you see?” Savos’ shade began as she straightened back up.  “I had to leave them behind, had to sacrifice them so I could make it out alive.  If we’d all died there, if we’d loosed that thing on the world, who knows what might have happened?”  He paused, waiting for her to say she understood.  “That’s how I consoled myself for years,” he explained, sadly, when he realized she was not going to comfort him.  “After I’d sealed this place shut and vowed never to let anyone open it…  Now you’ve put it all to rest, but it can’t undo my mistakes.  They can never be undone...”

“Time flows in only one direction,” she agreed softly. 

This time, when Alexa moved on, Savos’ shade did not follow.  “Ul,” she whispered to herself, glancing back at the spirit still standing beside Morokei’s ashes.  He would likely haunt this place forever and, for the moment at least, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.  On the other hand, she was fairly certain the souls of his companions had finally passed on.

Chapter Text

“So, you made it out of there alive,” the Thalmor agent simpered.  “Ancano was right… you are dangerous.”

Later, Alexa told herself, she’d try to figure out how Ancano had known she was headed for Labyrinthian in time to send someone to intercept her.  Or how it was this monologuing agent had managed to find the back way into the exact same location – in an extensive underground city - that she’d been headed for.  But, right now, Alexa simply didn’t care.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to take that Staff from you now,” the Thalmor agent was saying.  “Ancano wants it kept safe… oh, and he wants you dead.  Nothing personal.”

“Firstly, there is nothing more personal than an execution order,” Alexa told him, flatly.  “Secondly, I just killed something that would have eaten you for lunch, and, thirdly, I don’t have the patience to play with you right now.  GOL-HAH!”²

Having found the back way out, Alexa took a moment to wedge the trap door shut behind her.  As long as he didn’t leave the room she’d found him in, the Thalmor agent would be fine, for a day or two, until she could return to ask him some very pointed questions. 

Once she was confident that the trap door wasn’t going to be opened from the inside, Alexa stepped out of the shadow of the cliff face and found she was standing on what, from the ground, looked like a broken aqueduct, about halfway up the eastern stairs and nearly two stories above the ground.

After so long underground the noontime sun was uncomfortably bright.  “Feim,” she muttered, before simply stepping off the edge, rather than attempting to find a safe way down while her eyes were still adjusting.  Then Alexa returned to Labyrinthian’s Ceremonial Door and removed the handle.  Weighing it in her hand she hesitated for just a moment, before deciding she did have time to put it – and Keening – in the dragon shrine. 

Ten minutes later Alexa had exchanged her shrouded hood for Otar’s mask³, summoned Arvak, and was headed for the dragon at Skyborn Alter.

The setting sun had turned the overcast sky above Winterhold an ominous red.

“Thuri, there is no place safe to land,” the dragon informed her as they circled the city.

He wasn’t wrong, Alexa decided, craning her neck to see the ground beneath them.  The only space large enough for a dragon to fully extend its wings – and so take off again - was the area directly in front of the bridge to the College.  But the energy field, now surrounding the College, made that seem like a very bad idea. 

“Understood.  If you would hover for a moment, I’ll get myself to the ground,” Alexa told him.  “FEIM-ZII-GRON!” she shouted, a few seconds later, before swinging her leg over and sliding from the dragon’s shoulder.  She, it turned out, had somewhat underestimated the distance to the ground.  Thankfully it seemed only Teldryn had been at an appropriate angle to see her land, rematerialize before she was fully stable on her feet, stumble, and, unbalanced by the weight of her pack, trip, and fall backwards into a snowberry bush.  For just a moment, lying there, on her back, surrounded by broken bits of woody brush, and staring up at the red, sunset drenched, sky, Alexa considered the option of just not getting back up again.

“You alright?” Teldryn demanded, his crab helmeted head coming into view as he leaned over her.

“My bones ache,” she answered, hazily.

“Fatigue will do that,” he replied, grabbing her by the straps on her pack and unceremoniously hauling her to her feet. 

“What’s the situation?” she asked, unholstering the Staff of Magnus.

“The orb’s energy has reached what I assume, from the look of previous damage to the area, is the last of the College’s barriers,” he told her, as he led the way around the building and out onto the main street.  “Every time a barrier breaks the resulting shockwave spawns more of those wisp-things.  We just finished with the latest wave of those.”

“Sounds like my timing is excellent then,” Alexa said, with an attempted chipper buoyancy that sounded strained even to her own ears.

“I would have preferred to see you half an hour ago,” Teldryn told her, clearly neither fooled, nor amused, by her tone.  “But I’ll take now over later.”

Tolfdir, Sergius, and Faralda, who were the only other people currently out of doors, turned towards them at the sound of her voice.  “You survived!” Tolfdir exclaimed, from where he was sitting, on the ground, beside a blue pile of vapor and sludge.  “I expect that explains why the dragon left without attacking,” he added, as he struggled to his feet.  “You have the staff, then?”

Alexa, wordlessly, held the staff up for him to see.

He nodded.  “Let’s hope it’s as powerful as the Psijics believe it to be.”

“Please tell me you three are not all that’s left of the College,” Alexa responded, suddenly a little worried.

“We’ve been taking things in shifts,” Faralda answered.  “The others are resting in the inn.”

“Mirabelle?” Alexa asked, as the five of them moved to stand before the barrier.

“She... She didn’t make it,” Tolfdir told her.  “When it was clear we were going to have to fall back, she stayed behind and made sure the rest of us got out…”

“As you can see, Ancano’s power is growing,” Faralda said, quickly covering for the older mage’s obvious grief.  “I hope your trip to Labyrinthian was worth it.”

“You’d better have something good up your sleeve,” Surgius grumbled.  “I’ve got nothing left.”

“We never should have brought that thing here,” Faralda added.

Alexa fully agreed but didn’t think it worth mentioning.  Instead, she pointed the staff at the barrier and activated it.  For a moment the beam of green lightning from the staff seemed to have no effect and then the barrier, and the energy inside it, dissipated as though they had never been.

“Well, that’s something,” Surgius noted, as they all moved forward.

There were more wisp-things in the courtyard.

“Surgius and I will handle these,” Faralda called out, already circling right.  “You three keep going!”

“If previous experience holds, we’ll need to drain the orb’s power to make Ancano vulnerable to attack,” Alexa reminded Teldryn, and Tolfdir, as they jogged across the courtyard, dodging the magic anomalies. 

“You deal with the orb,” Teldryn told her grimly.  “I’ll deal with Ancano.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for any more of whatever these flying things are,” Tolfdir added.

“So, you’ve come for me, have you?” Ancano announced as the three of them stepped through the iron gate into the Hall of the Elements.  “You think I don’t know what you’re up to?” he asked, his gaze falling on Alexa.  “You think, just because you’re dragonborn, I can’t destroy you?  The power to unmake the world at my fingertips, girl, and you think youcan do anything about it?”

A fireball bloomed around him leaving him unharmed.  Ancano laughed.  “I am beyond your pathetic attempts at magic,” he jeered.  “You cannot touch me!”

“Spells have no effect!” Tolfdir called out, answering the question of who had thought it even worth trying in the first place.

“Who said I ever wanted to touch you?” Alexa muttered, circling the focal point to be as far from Ancano as possible before using the Staff of Magnus on the orb.

She saw the moment the energy-drain from the staff broke Ancano’s connection to the orb.  “Enough!” he yelled, in frustration, and cast mass paralysis. 

Alexa gritted her teeth and, between being Breton and holding the Staff of Magnus, managed to absorb the spell.  Obscured from her vision, by the orb, she heard Tolfdir groan and then fall over.  To her right she could see that Teldryn, though he’d managed to keep his feet, had stopped moving.  It was… not an auspicious start to their encounter.

“Come then!  See what I can do now,” Ancano laughed, his invitation close enough to Morokei’s that it evoked, in Alexa, a brief sense of uncanny parallelism.

“MUL-QAH-DIIV,” Alexa hissed, preparing for the worst, even as the pieces of the orb’s outer shell began to shift, and then rotate, open.  There was the same, blinding, flash of light, as before, but this time reality remained solid beneath her feet.  The tradeoff of the orb’s power not being focused on reality, was that it was focused on her.  Even Miraak had never done as much damage in a single attack.  If she hadn’t taken her dragon form… the thought was cut short when Miraak’s glowing, rainbow armored, shade, separated from her, summoned a bound⁴ Ancient Nord battle axe into its hands, and charged her attacker.

Not about question, in this moment, how such a thing was possible - or why Miraak’s soul would choose to protect, rather than attack, her - Alexa cast Grand Heal, and summoned the Rose dremora to protect her from the wisps the orb’s energy had conjured.  As she did so she observed that the connection Ancano had previously been forced to actively maintain – when the orb was closed – no longer seem to require any effort on his part.  On the other hand, the orb’s outer shell being open also gave the Staff of Magnus direct access to its energy.  She activated the staff again and noted how the orb’s outer plating immediately began to close.

Ancano was so busy swearing at her, and fighting off the combined attacks of Miraak’s dragon soul and those wisp-things the Rose dremora had yet to kill, that he didn’t notice Teldryn break free of his paralysis.

There was no pretense of fair play, Teldryn simply ran Ancano through from behind.

A moment later the Rose dremora yelled in triumph and killed the last of the conjured entities.  The spectral dragonborn released its conjured weapon and then dissipate into rainbow energy which absorbed back into Alexa’s body.  The orb’s shell, Alexa suddenly realized, had been fully closed for several seconds now.  She deactivated the staff and took a step back from the focal point.  The immediate crisis, it seemed, was over. 

Alexa took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  They had survived.

“Was that Miraak?” Teldryn demanded, breaking the strange hanging moment she, at least, had been experiencing, as he kicked Ancano’s corpse off the end of his sword.

“I’m too tired, and hungry, to think about it,” she told him, massaging a knot in her neck.  “What do we do with this thing?” she added, indicating the orb. 

“I... I don’t know,” Tolfdir answered, scrambling to his feet.  “Ancano is dead, but whatever he’s done to the Eye doesn’t seem to have stopped.  I have no idea what to do.”

Alexa blinked, and then grimaced slightly at the Psijic now standing between her and the focal point.  “And the Order?” Alexa asked.  “Do the Psijics have any thoughts on what to do with that thing?”

Quaranir turned to her with a slight, almost beatific, smile.  “We knew you would succeed,” he told her.  “Your victory here justifies our belief in you.”

“And will allow the Order to continue to maintain its claims of infallibility,” Alexa added tiredly.  “Get to the point, Quaranir.”

The Psijic monk frowned reprovingly at her.  “The Eye has grown unstable.  It cannot remain here, or else it may destroy your college and this world.  It must be secured.”

“So, deal with it then,” Alexa told him flatly.

“We shall safeguard it,” he agreed, “for now.”

“For now?”

He gave her a condescending smirk even as two more Psijics apparated without apparent use of a portal.⁵  “For now, you have the opportunity to maintain your college,” he told her.  “And carry on with your life.  And,” he bowed ever so slightly, “you have our gratitude, Arch-Mage.”

“I see,” Alexa sighed, picking up on his meaning.  “Until we meet again, Quaranir of the Psijic Order,” she said, returning his bow.

She saw the corners of his mouth lift, in his first true smile, as he realized she’d understood his veiled invitation for what it was.  Then he turned and joined his fellows around the orb.

Alexa watched with interest as the Psijics, and the orb, simply faded away. 

“I daresay the Psijics are right,” Tolfdir began the moment the monks were fully gone.  “There’s no one more deserving to be Arch-Mage, in my opinion…”

Alexa held up a hand, cutting him off.  “I’m going to the inn to get something to eat, and then I’m going to go to my room, to sleep, for at least the next eight hours,” she told him.  “We can talk, as a college, about everything that has happened, tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

It was nearly noon when Alexa woke.  One o’clock found her seated on the edge of the focal point in the Hall of the Elements looking out over the remaining members of the college.  Half an hour earlier, Tolfdir had informed her that the faculty, and resident fellows, had chosen, unanimously, to agree with the Psijics choice to make her Arch-Mage; not because she’d conquered them, or promised them victory in future conflict, but because she had rescued them.  Alexa could only hope that the path of fate would note the difference. 

“A lot has happened in the last few days,” she began, acknowledging the heavy atmosphere of the room.  “The Arch-Mage and Master Wizard of the College are dead and our reputation with the locals has, undoubtedly, taken further damage.  Our past inaction and present, apparent, incompetence, endanger our continued existence.  There is much to be done if we are to remain an institution capable of maintaining its independence.

“By now I am sure you have all heard how it comes to be that the Eye is no longer here.  While I am certain there are those among us who are sadden by the loss of the research opportunities presented by such an artifact, I would ask you to consider that – after the events of the last few days – the whole of Tamriel will soon know that there was something here worth taking.  As things stand, the college would have been in no position to resist hostile action by any of the factions that might have wished to take such an artifact for themselves.”

She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“You have chosen to make the dragonborn your new Arch-Mage,” she said.  “I trust that you made this decision knowing it would not be without consequence.  I am not my predecessor.  I do not believe inaction to be the same as neutrality nor will I turn a blind eye to our current circumstances in the hope that they will simply go away.  I also hold strong views on things like experimental safety and what counts as actionable levels of negligence.  A review of the college’s standards and procedures will be conducted by the end of the year.

“More immediately, however, the college must acknowledge that we are responsible for failing to prevent what happened with Ancano.  So, before we can move on from the events of the last few days, and return to the usual business of the college, we have a mess to clean up.”

She turned slightly to look directly at Tolfdir.  “Tolfdir, the Thalmor will, undoubtedly, have questions regarding Ancano’s death.  Since I was not present for much of what happened here, I ask that you be the one to write up the initial incident report and that you have it ready for me by the end of the day.”

“Arch-Mage,” the older man acknowledged with a nod.

“Urag, I want you to do a complete inventory of the college including the Midden and the contents of the rooms belonging to Ancano, Mirabelle and Savos Aren.  I want to know if anything belonging to the college is missing, I want the work of our dead members complied so that it may be carried on by others, and I want their rooms cleared and made ready for new occupants.  I am placing you in charge of this project.  You have any authority you may need to assign parts of the project to other college members or students.”

“It would be my pleasure, Arch-Mage,” Urag grinned, menacingly, at the rest of the college.

“To that end,” Alexa added, “and until the inventory is complete, all work on personal projects is suspended.  Yes, Enthir, that includes you.

“Faralda, you are in charge of clearing out the Midden.  Please make sure that any and all non-animal bones you find are collected and sent to Falkreath for proper burial.  I will provide you with a letter, and payment, for the priest of Arkay in return for his services as well as money to hire a cart out of Windhelm.”

“Understood,” Faralda replied, coolly.

“Nirya, I believe Mirabelle had an arrangement with the East Empire Company regarding the delivery of supplies.  I am certain she left documentation behind.  You are in charge of making sure that whatever needs to happen, on our end, happens and that the college gets the supplies it needs.”

“Of course, Arch-Mage,” Nirya smiled, clearly pleased with even this small amount of power.

“Collette, I trust that you will make sure the personal effects of our dead members are returned to their families with our condolences.”

“That was already my intention,” Collette assured her.

“I also want you to liaise with the people of Winterhold and deal with any injuries caused by the recent unpleasantness.  Take Onmund with you to act as a friendly Nord face.  Your job is to make sure the college is seen to be taking responsibility for what happened as well as to actually remedy the situation.

“Sergius, you are to go to the inn and make it known that any guard who helped defend the city will be gifted with their choice of an extra month’s pay or a common weapon, or armor, enchantment.  Since you were there, I expect that you know who aided you and who did not.  I will leave money with Tolfdir and I promise to replace any materials you use.

“Drevis, please inform our members, outside the college, of the events of the past week, and let them know that the college will be celebrating Mid-Year by meeting to discuss the future direction of the college and to officially fill administrative and teaching positions.  Let them know that if they wish to have any say in the matters to be discussed, or want to be considered for a vacancy, they will need to be here.”

“Mid-Year is less than three weeks away,” Drevis protested.

“Then you’d better be quick,” Alexa told him seriously.  “This is not a good time for the college to be indecisive or short staffed.  Speaking of which, Tolfdir, until the college meets to officially fill the various vacant positions, you are to act as the Master Wizard.  I trust that you can handle things while I am gone.”

“And where will you be going, Arch-Mage?” Urag asked.

“The dragonborn is required elsewhere,” she answered, smothering a sigh.  “I will be leaving, again, in the morning.  But I should be back before Mid-Year.”  She looked around her, acknowledging every person in the room.  “Does anybody have any concerns they wish to air?”

There was a brief moment of awkward silence.  “Then I guess the Arch-Mage will go and speak with the Jarl now,” Alexa said, wincing a little as she stood up.  “This meeting of the college is adjourned.”

“You’ve blood on your hands, mage,” Jarl Korir muttered at Alexa as she entered his longhouse.

“The blood of that which would harm the people of Winterhold?  More than you, certainly,” she agreed, all of her aggravation with the man’s self-pity and complete failure to even try to provide for his people instantly rising to the surface.  “But that is to be expected when I defend your city, and you do not.”

“From a magical foe summoned by your kind?” Korir snorted.  “That is your problem, mage, not mine.”

“A jarl’s responsibility is to defend his people against all threats, no matter their origin,” she reminded him.  “And those ‘magical foes’ were little more than wisps.  A fact I know was declared loudly only feet from your front door.  One would think a true Nord warrior would have relished such a challenge.”

“Defend what?” Korir demanded, righting himself in his chair and leaning forward aggressively.  “There is nothing left of Winterhold to defend,” he growled.  “Nothing!”

“Not a surprising circumstance when its jarls have made no move to rebuild even the town square,” Alexa replied calmly.  “Do you truly expect people to remain here and patriotically starve for want of something as simple as a jetty for fishing boats?”

“There is no reason to rebuild the port when the coast line is unmapped and too dangerous even for rowboats!” he yelled at her.

“The coast is not dangerous in addition to being unmapped,” Alexa told him flatly.  “It is dangerous because it is unmapped.  A circumstance the Jarls of Winterhold have had eighty years to remedy.  The fact you have not done so is not a failing of the college, it is yours.  And, before you throw me out for saying, to your face, what every one of your remaining people is thinking, you should know that the Arch-Mage and the Master Wizard both gave their lives to defend your city from a Thalmor attack on the College.”

“Thalmor?” he blinked, surprised, and then snorted slightly, clearly dismissing the claim.  “A pretty lie.  But we know the truth about your college’s on-going attempts to finish off what it started eighty years ago.  You will fail, Winterhold will outlast you!”

Alexa sighed heavily and turned slightly to address Kraldar who was seated against the wall.  “I came here to inform the court that, with Aren and Ervine dead, I am now the Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold and that my views on what it means to be an independent, and politically neutral, institution differ radically from those of my predecessor.”

“Meaning you’re going to back the Imperials,” Korir spat.  “Don’t think I don’t know about you being at Whiterun, girl.”

Alexa gave him a cold, measuring look.  “I see.  I had thought to discuss the rebuilding of Winterhold with you, but, since you are not sober enough to avoid insulting,” she let the rumble of the thu’um, briefly, fill her voice, “the DRAGONBORN, I’ve clearly come at a bad time.”  She held up a hand before he, or anyone else present, could respond.

“You should think carefully, jarl, before you tell me you do not want the college’s help in the matter of your city.  Eighty years have elapsed since the Great Collapse.  In that time neither Winterhold, nor Skyrim, have mapped, much less patrolled or occupied, the land off the new coastline.  According to the ancient laws of Skyrim, in such circumstances, only sixty years need elapse for land to be considered completely unclaimed.  Since both Winterhold and Skyrim have failed to do what is required to retain ownership of the region, there is nothing to prevent the college – as an independent entity - from asserting its own claim. 

“With that in mind, I, as the Arch-Mage, say to you, jarl Korir of Winterhold, that while the college intends to benefit from existing in close proximity to a healthy and prosperous city, it is not necessary that the city be Winterhold.”

She paused for a moment, waiting to speak again until she saw understanding dawn on Korir’s face.  “But I am not unreasonable,” she continued, “and understand that such weighty decisions take time.  You - or whomever the incredibly dissatisfied citizens of Winterhold decide to replace you with – may have until Mid-Year-Eve to inform the college of your decision.”  Then she turned her back on the jarl and his court and exited the longhouse, before Korir’s rage, and affronted Nord honor, could force him to challenge the dragonborn to a dual, or something equally ridiculous.

“How’d it go?” Teldryn asked, from where he was sitting, enjoying the late spring afternoon sun, on the porch of the Frozen Hearth.

Alexa shrugged slightly as she joined him on the bench.  “Could have gone worse,” she answered.  “Wasn’t expecting it to go any better.”

He nodded.  “We sticking around here for a bit?”

She shook her head.  “I left a Thalmor operative imprisoned in Labyrinthian.  The longer we leave him, the less likely he’ll be able to answer questions.  The good news is, with the orb gone, and the staff no longer in the hands of a dragon priest, I think I can safely open a portal between here and there.”

“Leaving in the morning then?” Teldryn predicted.

Alexa smiled.  “Can’t leave before the Master Wizard’s delivered his initial incident report,” she agreed.  “Is Nelecar in his room?”

“I believe so,” Teldryn replied.  “He’s been somewhat consumed with studying the soul gems from those wisp things.”

“Has he made any progress on them?”

“No idea.  You’ll have to ask him,” Teldryn said, pointedly settling himself more firmly into his sunny spot.

“I may just do that,” Alexa smiled, rising to her feet.

Chapter Text

Ondolemar could hear the shocked murmuring of the keep guards even before Alexa made it into the throne room’s antechamber where he stood.

“You will walk up those stairs, on your own, or I will use the thu’um to throw you up them,” he heard Alexa coolly explain to the bound Thalmor agent walking between her and a Dunmer Ondolemar presumed was her current traveling companion.

“What is this?” Ondolemar asked, without inflection, when they came to a stop in front of him.

Alexa pulled a journal from her bag and smacked him in the chest with it.  “Fourth Emissary Ancano is dead and I have brought you an initial incident report and evidence,” she gestured at Estormo, “that I killed him in self-defense after he tried to kill me not once, but twice.  The first time he sent Estormo here to do it for him, the second time he tried himself.  I am pleased to report that both attempts failed.  I am somewhat less pleased to report that, since Ancano did manage to kill Savos Aren, and Mirabelle Ervine, I am now the Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold.”

“I see.”  He turned to his guards.  “Please escort this man to a holding cell until the claims against him can be investigated.”  Turning back, he indicated Alexa, but not her companion.  “We should discuss what happened at the College where it will not bother the Jarl.”

“I’m quite comfortable here, thank you,” she replied, briefly meeting his eyes.

Ah.  This, rather out of character, outburst was a performance meant for the court.  Willing to play along, for the moment, Ondolemar adopted an expression of profound boredom.

“A question, Emissary,” Alexa continued, sweetly.  “Am I to take being considered dangerous enough to assassinate a compliment from the political arm of the Thalmor?”

“You’re angry,” he noted calmly, refusing to answer an obviously rhetorical question.

“Angry?  Why would I be angry?” she demanded, her voice pitching up in a way that was typically indicative of a near hysteric level of stress or agitation.  “I’m just trying to deal with a Manifest Metaphor raining completely non-metaphoric destruction down on all our heads and now, on top of that completely stress-free day job, I’ve been made the Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold, because a bunch of Altmer wizards said so before flitting off back to their own magical disappearing island, and, on top of that, it seems their attention – which I never wanted or asked for - has marked me for assassination by the Thalmor.  Why would any of that make me angry?”

That… was a lot of information he was certain the Jarl’s court had not had.  Disquietingly, more of it was news to him than should have been.  Ondolemar couldn’t recall any of Ancano’s reports including information about the Psijics contacting the college.  That would require following up on, but not here, or now.  “Did Ancano cause any damage to the College?” he asked coldly, attempting to return to the original topic of conversation.

“Aside from the death of its two highest ranked members?” the new Arch-Mage countered, resentfully enough he was certain even the Nords in the next room could pick up on it.  “It shouldn’t be much trouble to fix most of it.  But the further damage to our reputation has been incalculable.  As such, I suggest that the Thalmor do not send a new agent to the College until I have had time to clean up the mess created by your last advisor.”

“The Thalmor have only ever wished for a good relationship with the college,” Ondolemar told her.  “To learn that relationship has been damaged, by one of our own, is disheartening.  I will inform the ambassador of your, more than reasonable, request,” he finished, with a slight bow. 

“Good, see that you do,” Alexa sniffed, and then, apparently done with her little performance, stormed off.  Her Dunmer companion waited, just long enough to draw Ondolemar’s attention and give him a slight nod of acknowledgement, before following after her.

Ondolemar watched them go.  That had been… a lot.  While, on the surface, Alexa’s performance would, probably, convince any Nord that the new Arch-Mage was appropriately anti-Thalmor, the level of agitation she’d displayed would also leave any Altmer who heard about the exchange thoroughly unimpressed by her apparent level of political aptitude. Unimpressed enough they might even conclude she hadn’t understood what she was doing when she’d publicly informed the military arm of the Thalmor that the organization’s political arm was not only ordering assassinations but also failing and getting caught at it.

While Elenwen would, doubtless, at least publicly, claim that Ancano had gone rogue, the fact that Estormo had been willing to act on an assassination order from the fourth emissary, without authorization from either the ambassador or the head of the Justiciars, was either impossible – and Elenwen had known - or a very bad sign.  And, currently, even Ondolemar wasn’t certain which of those options was the right one.  He was certain, however, both that this was just the type of situation that could cause ranked members of an organization like the Thalmor to turn on each other, and that, within a week, every Thalmor operative in Skyrim would have heard about this, very public, tantrum and be weighing the implications for themselves.

He grimaced slightly.  It seemed he should make room in his evening schedule for Alexa’s real report.  With any luck she’d be able to clear up a few things before he made his report to Elenwen.  Perhaps he should also take the chance to impress upon her the importance of not using him as a prop in her machinations.  In the meantime, he had a few things to think about, and someone in a holding cell that might be able to answer the new questions he had regarding were he actually stood in the chain of command.

Two hours later…

Taran was reading in the main room of Vlindrel Hall when there was a single, light, knock on the door. 

He glanced up from his book, a moment later, when Argis held something out to him.

“No one there,” his housecarl informed him.  “But this had been shoved under the door,” he added, as Taran took the small, letterlocked¹, piece of paper - with his name on it – from Argis’ hand. 

“I see.  Thank you Argis,” Taran murmured, already picking the letter open with a dagger. 

Taran tossed the note into the fire.  “It looks like I’ll be meeting with the Forsworn a little earlier than expected,” he told Argis, by way of explanation.

“Ah,” the larger man nodded, understanding.  “Am I coming with you?”

“No,” Taran replied, already headed for his room.  “I probably won’t be back for a month or so and I don’t feel comfortable leaving the house empty for that long.”

Chapter Text

“That was… dramatic,” Teldryn noted, casually, as they walked away from Understone Keep.  “Now what?”

“We’ll leave for High Hrothgar in the morning,” Alexa answered, glancing up at the late afternoon sun.  “Until then, I’ve got some things from Labyrinthian to sell, some shopping to do, and a lot – besides the meaning of words - to think about.”

“You need an escort?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“Then I’ll get us rooms at the inn and see about enjoying myself a bit before we go spend several days at a monastery full of silent people.”

“You know, if we’d brought the dogs along, you’d have had someone to talk to,” Alexa, pointed out, innocently.

“And here I was about to say how nice it was we hadn’t brought them along to be bored, and in need of exercise, on top of a dangerous, very steep, mountain,” Teldryn grumbled, already walking away from her.

And so, Alexa found herself with several hours to go before she could count on Ondolemar being alone in his room.  Which was for the best, really, she told herself.  Estormo had known surprisingly little, but what he had known had some wider implications she needed to think about before talking with Ondolemar.  What she needed now, once she’d completed the inventory management necessary to remain a well-supplied adventurer, was to find a quiet place to sit, and think. 

There was, it occurred to her suddenly, one place, in this city of sullen echoes, where no one was likely to disturb her.  Perhaps it was finally time she paid a visit to her brother.

Alexa had never visited Markarth’s shrine of Talos, beyond the one time she’d peeked behind an unmarked door to see where it led.  The shrine itself, she now saw, appeared to be situated in the remains of a Dwemer lift.¹

No… that wasn’t quite right.  Not only was there was no obvious place for an activation lever, for the, now missing, metal doors, the four cogs, standard to the corners of Dwemer lifts were missing… or covered over?  The extra stonework in the corners appeared Dwemer in origin.  Had the Dwemer decommissioned the lift, themselves, for some reason?

What could possibly have been down there?  The city’s entrance was through the keep and this room didn’t look fancy enough to have contained one of the mechanisms she’d come to believe were used to access Blackreach.²  Also it seemed incredibly unlikely that a cavern connected to both Raldbthar and Mzinchaleft could extend this far out.

More of Nchuand-Zel then?  A sort of servant’s entrance into deeper parts of the city than were currently accessible via the keep?  If so, the moment the Falmer rebelled, the Dwemer rendering the lift inoperable would make sense... but not from the top.  Unless, of course, this lift hadn’t accessed the Dwemer city, but a deep venue, and mine, worked, and lived, in by those Falmer not high enough status to live in the relatively small city above ground.³

Every place she’d found Falmer, she’d found aetherium, and there were both in Nchuand-Zel.  If the Dwemer here had created the above ground city to, initially, house the Snow Elves, as she suspected, then it seemed likely there had been a local aetherium deposit of greater density than that which currently illuminated the main deep venue of the currently accessible city.  Given the large boulders of aetherium she’d found in Darkfall cave,⁴ it wasn’t impossible there had been more of it, in that sort of concentration, in the region.  But, if so, one would have expected Nchuand-Zel to have been part of the Aetherium Alliance.  Unless all the Dwemer cities of Skyrim had been studying aetherium and only those cities working on industrial applications had needed to pool their resources together to build the forge.  What she’d seen of Nchuand-Zel’s laboratories suggested they’d been working on understanding aetherium’s effect on living things like plants and people, not on making things with it.⁵

Of course, given the lack of surviving information regarding Blackreach, it was possible that what had begun as a single enormous, naturally occurring, cavern – or even several, originally unconnected, natural caverns – had been expanded upon by the tonal architects.  Possible that, whatever it had been initially, it had become a network that had connected all the major cities of Skyrim underground.  If so, it was also possible that Nchuand-Zel’s Blackreach gateway mechanism was at the bottom of this lift shaft.⁶  She gave the statue of Talos an appraising look. 

No.  Now was not the time to find out.  Later.  If Sanguine was right, and she was now unageing, she’d have all the time in the world… once she’d defeated Alduin.

Alexa settled herself at the feet of the statue, facing the door, took a deep, slow, breath, and closed her eyes.  Now, how did everything she’d learned in the last few days fit together?

Alexa was roused from her revery, sometime later, by the sound of a throat clearing.

The white-haired man standing near the bottom of the ramp was, surprisingly, dressed in the uniform of the Penitus Oculatus.  Not only had Alexa never seen a member of the Penitus Oculatus, in Skyrim, wear their uniform outside of their posting in Dragon Bridge, but it also seemed incredibly unlikely, to her, that one of their number would be stupid enough to wear their armor into a relatively public shrine of Talos in a city full of Justiciars.  Something was off about this.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing towards the statue.

“Of course,” she answered, not bothering to hide a slight frown. 

Instead of moving to pray, the older man took a seat beside her on the statue’s base.  “You know,” he began with almost casual familiarity, “I’ve been following your exploits for a while now?”

“I’m not surprised,” she replied, carefully.  “How do you think I’m doing?”

“You did well in your confrontation with the orb from Saarthal,” he offered.

She considered that, and him, for a moment, and then decided to test a hypothesis.

“The orb, not just the circle and ward we found it in, was a prison, wasn’t it?”⁷

“That is my understanding,” he replied, with a slight nod of acknowledgment.

“The thing inside… it is connected to the dreamsleeve in some way?”⁷ she asked.

“Yes.”

“Ensouled?”

“A gestalt of fragments⁸. Dementia given dimension⁹, but in reverse,” he said, in such a matter-of-fact tone the strangeness of the statement took a moment to sink in.

“And what was it before that?” she asked.

“A thing for which there are no words yet.”¹⁰

Alexa grimaced slightly at that.  “But a creation of mortals?” she pressed.

“Yes.”

“So, there is more than one sense in which mortals may become makers.¹¹  We are not limited to mantling or the mimicry of the Dwemer anti-creations?”

“Within the infinity of cyclical time, anything is possible,”¹² he replied, with a slight smirk.

Alexa pondered him for another moment.  “Miraak won’t talk to me,” she offered, changing the subject.

“You did kill him,” the old man reminded her.

“Then why protect me?”

“An interesting question,” he agreed.  “Perhaps you should consider what it means to be an enantiomorph¹³?”

Alexa opened her mouth, closed it, and thought for a moment.  “Vivec,” she began, slowly, “used the term ‘Enantiomorph’ interchangeably with a being he called ‘Arctus-who-is-Septim’.  Who was, as I have come to understand it, an aspect of the human dragonborn who absorbed the soul of a mer Shezarrine and so became a living example of Vivec’s assertion that there is no difference between anuic and padomaic forces, and thus no difference between the anuic souls of drake and similarly sized fragments of Lorkhan himself, and so, by extension, no difference between the souls of men and mer.  He was proof that two forces that can appear to be in opposition may, in fact, be two sides of the same coin.  I am – uncertain - that I fit that description.”

“Truly?” he countered, sounding surprised.  “You, Iizkaandraal, are the dragonborn jill who has absorbed the soul of a dragonborn drake.  You are a grand master of Restoration who has taken into herself the words of destruction and domination.  You are drake and jill, time and un-time, preservation of what is and – possibly - restoration of what should be.”

“So, you are suggesting that the ancient dragonborn¹⁴ residing within me is the Miraak-who-is-Sikendra, an expression of the enantiomorph I have become, and so not truly Miraak as he was in life.  I will… have to think about that.”  Alexa tapped her fingers, rhythmically, on the stone steps beneath her for a while.  “Words of destruction and domination,” she repeated, before looking back up at him.  “There are shouts – word and concepts - the jill use, which the drake cannot teach me, aren’t there?”

“Tiber Septim met more than one jill in his time,” he told her.  “There were Shouts they used he didn’t even know the words of, much less how to use them in a thu’um.”

“Is there a way for me to learn them?”

“If you were anyone else, no.  But you?  I suspect they would be willing to teach you if you contacted them in un-time.”

“And how does one reach un-time?”

“You are the jill here,” he responded.

“You’re the god here!” she countered.

He chuckled at that and shook his head slightly.  “I know, that you know, the gods of this world are stuck inside creation, inside linear time.”

“The ones that were absorbed into creation, certainly,” she countered.  “But Trinimac remained here and wasn’t absorbed, Alduin rather clearly hasn’t been absorbed, and you and Vivec didn’t come into existence until long after creation was complete.”

He just gave her a wry look.

“Fine,” she huffed, when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything more on the subject.  “Do you know what will happen if I kill Alduin?”

“I do not.  Perhaps you will destroy him, perhaps he will simply manifest again, in another form, as so many greater beings have before.¹⁵”

“If I manage to slay his current form, will my fate be fulfilled even if he manifests anew?”

“I believe your fate is to face him, irrespective of if you defeat him or not.  I do not know if it is to face him only once, or over and over until one, or the other, of you is destroyed.  Put a different way, if you, or he, were to run, after your contest had begun, I do not know if fate would force you to face him a second time.  But fate is not the only force at work in the world.  Your jill’s interest in preserving this kalpa might drive you to actions that fate, alone, would not.

She nodded at that but said nothing.

“Do you truly not wish to be Empress?” he inquired before she could ask another question of him.  “The ruby throne, the White-Gold Tower, they truly do not call to you?”

“I see nothing interesting in wielding that sort of political power,” Alexa replied softly.  “I’m not even particularly thrilled with the idea of being the Arch-Mage of Winterhold.  Thought, to be fair, I do find the White-Gold Tower’s possible connection to the Wheel a fascinating proposition.  Especially in the absence of the Amulet of Kings.”

“And what about it fascinates you?”

“Of the Great Towers it is the only one I know, for certain, was created in this kalpa,” she told him.  “And not only did the aedra allow White-Gold to be built, but, of the daedra, only Mehrunes Dagon has ever sought to destroy it.  Why is that I wonder?”

“Dagon has destroyed Towers before, has he not?” the old man asked.

Alexa tipped her head to one side, thinking.  “Ah.  In Lyg.¹⁶  According to the Mythic Dawn at least.”

“And so, likely, according to Dagon himself,” the old man added.

“And you trust that?”

“I see no reason not to consider the possibility and prepare accordingly,” he answered.

“Hmm.”  She gave him a sideways glance.  “Since we’re getting personal, what’s your opinion on the Stormcloaks?”

“Sad that.  So willing to die ‘doing right by their people’ so mistaken about what the right thing is.  They deserve a leader that can tell the difference between what is best for himself and what is best for everyone else.”

“And if what is best for the world is different from what is best for man or mer?”

“What is best for the world is, in the long run, what is best for the people who live here,” he answered.

There was silence between them for a bit.  “Any ideas on how I get the Jarls to hold a Moot?” she asked.

“Call it yourself.”

“What?”

He gave her a bemused look.  “You’re the dragonborn.  If you want a Moot, convene one.”

“You think Ulfric would come to a Moot I called?”

“If every other Jarl were in attendance, I think he would not dare allow such a meeting to proceed without being there, himself, to influence events.”

That seemed like an accurate read on Ulfric but, “I don’t, typically, act that directly,” she told him.

“You did yesterday,” he pointed out.

“I… suppose I did,” she murmured. 

He gave her a full five minutes to think about that before speaking again.  “We can only use the tools available to us,” he told her, gently.  “If becoming an over-soul is what is called for, by the path we walk, then the changes that come with it are also part of our path.  All you can do is be mindful of your motivations and how the actions you take will affect things.  I have no doubt you will do better with those sorts of calculations than any of your brothers have.”

Alexa said nothing but her fingers began tapping again. 

He shifted uncomfortably.  “As pleased as I am that you finally stopped by, your time is still precious, and, I believe, you had other plans this evening.  Is there anything else you wish to know?”

She gave him a slightly startled look, and then smiled.  “Any idea where this lift shaft goes?” she asked, rapping a knuckle on the stone beneath them.

He blinked at her, once, in surprise.  “A Dwemer ruin?”

Alexa gave him a sideways glance.

“You expected more?” he asked, grinning.

“I just expected someone who’s achieved CHIM would be able to – I don’t know – see through time and find out, or something.”

“Who says I achieved CHIM?”

“Didn’t you?” she asked, genuinely surprised.  “The jungles of Cyrodiil…”

“It doesn’t take achieving CHIM to make alterations to the function of a mer Tower,” he told her.  “Especially after you’ve been ritually bound to its Stone.”

“Aah,” Alexa said, understanding.  Then she laughed.  “I don’t know if that’s disappointing or reassuring,” she admitted.  “So, just a god then.”

“In this time,” he affirmed. 

She cocked her head at that.  “This time?”

He smiled.

“Can actions taken in un-time be mended away?” she asked, a theory beginning to form in her mind.

“I do not believe so but, never having been to un-time, I cannot say.”

She narrowed her eyes at that.  “Did Tiber Septim achieve CHIM, in any timeline?”

“He did.”

“But you did not.”

“As I said,” he agreed.

“So… Tiber Septim achieved CHIM, entered un-time, and then mended away the moment in which he achieved CHIM, creating two versions of himself, one here - who we know as the emperor of Cyrodiil, the Underking, and now Talos - and one in un-time¹⁷.  Both with an Amulet of Kings?”  She glanced, quickly, up at him for confirmation and saw him smile.  “If true,” she continued as if she’d never doubted her train of thought, “then the one in un-time would, I think, still be able use his Chim-el Adabal to alter the functioning of White-Gold Tower to allow for his reentry into real-time whenever he wanted.¹⁸  Even if he only ever did so to prevent unfavorable timelines there should still be evidence of it.  He would still be bound by his own nature to act as drake; to use armies and force and… oh.  Oh, wow.  Kier-jo was right.”  She looked up at him, wide eyed.  “Why?”

“Not all successes are without consequence¹⁹ and not all failure leads to dissolution,²⁰” he told her.  “And, sometimes, achieving a greater goal requires walking away from a lesser one.”

“Oh,” she murmured, frowning slightly.

“Are you intending to try for it?” he asked.

“Actively seek it out?  It’s not on my current to-do list.  Which, admittedly, is rather short.  Can an et’ada achieve CHIM?”

“Yes, but only Lorkhan ever would have on his own.”

Alexa sifted through memories for a moment.  “Vivec wrote that Lorkhan had to travel beyond the Wheel, to the void beyond the Aurbis, to see the Tower.²¹  He also indicates that Lorkhan was not the only one to discover the void but that Lorkhan seems to have been the only one to observe, or care about, the Tower.²¹  Implied in this is the understanding that, without the type of change that is the essence of Lorkhan, the others could not understand, or make use of, what they were seeing.  So, rather than achieve CHIM himself, Lorkhan returned to show the others the way²²…”  Alexa’s eyes widened.  “But the only way Lorkhan could give the et’ada the changeability required to walk the path, would be to infuse himself - his own unique power - into them.”

The old man nodded encouragingly.

“Wait, is mortality the method by which the aedra are infused with Lorkhan’s essence so that they may have the chance to achieve CHIM?”

The old man smiled, clapped her, once, on the shoulder, and got up.  “It has been a joy to speak with you, briinah,” he said, smiling down at her.  “Tell the Nerevarine, when you see him, that I am pleased he still carries my token.”²³

Alexa opened her eyes, double blinked in surprise, and turned slightly to look up at the statue behind her.  “Neat trick. I’ll have to learn that one.”

Chapter Text

“I trust that future meetings between the Arch-Mage and the Second Emissary will not be as performative as the last one,” Ondolemar began, without looking up from what he was working on.

“That is my hope,” Alexa agreed, suddenly cautious.

“But not a thing you can promise,” he finished for her.

“I do not believe either one of us is naive enough to think there is any certainty such a promise could be kept,” she told him, after a moment of hesitation, and then added, “Our situation is complicated enough without the addition of expectations created by empty promises.”

“I see.”  He put what he was working on in a desk drawer and then turned to face her.  “Knowing you, as I do, I am certain you weighed your need to present a certain public appearance, regarding the events of the past week, against the possibility that such a display might result in the Thalmor reassessing your value as an asset or choosing to assign you a new handler.  You should know - in case you find yourself needing to make the same calculation again - that the possibility of either one of those things happening, especially in light of your new status, is already significantly higher than I am comfortable with.”

“So, it is the Second Emissary’s advice that the dragonborn not push her luck?” she asked, with a slight arch of one eyebrow.

“Alexa,” he said, sternly. 

She met his eyes.

“Please take the advice, and warning, in the manner in which they were intended.  We are both standing on very thin ice.”

Alexa nodded slightly.  “I have heard your concern, I have understood your warning, and I thank you for your advice,” she told him solemnly, never breaking eye contact.

Ondolemar let out a quiet sigh as his shoulders relaxed.  “Good.”  He stood up, stepped away from his desk, and held open his arms.

She stepped into them. 

“Are you alright?” he asked.  “The incident report you gave me was… worrying.”¹

“You know it’s been a bad week when the best thing about it was the Psijics running off with a singular object you hadn’t had a chance to really study yet.”

Ondolemar gave a soft snort of amusement, stepped away, and then gave the room around him a slightly puzzled frown.  “You know, I just realized that I have not seen a single couch anywhere in Skyrim.”

Alexa blinked, once, in surprise.  “Now that you mention it, neither have I.  Though the idea of comfort, generally, does not seem to be one the Nords have chosen to embrace.” ²

Ondolemar chuckled lightly at that and, instead of taking his usual chair in front of the fire, settled onto his bed with his back was against the wall.  “Why didn’t you tell me the Psijics had contacted you?” he asked patting the space beside him.

“Before what, five? days ago,” she asked, slipping off her shoes before joining him on the bed.  “Divines, it feels like twice that,” she sighed, settling next to him.  “Before the beginning of the current series of events, the Psijics had contacted me exactly once, three months ago, via the dreemsleeve, to say,” Alexa began ticking off on her fingers, “they were judging my actions, there were dangers ahead of me, and that I alone had the potential to ‘prevent disaster’.”  She scowled at the three fingers she was holding up before waving away the things they represented with a gesture that was both frustrated and dismissive.  “A group of statements so obvious, given and the current state of the world, as to be completely useless.³  Honestly, until a Psijic monk actually showed up at the College, in person, I was half convinced they had only contacted me so that, should I end up saving the world from Alduin, they could claim I never would have managed it without their ‘helpful’ warning.”

“Three months ago…” Ondolemar mused.  “I suppose that sheds some light on your complaint regarding older men too busy acting superior to be helpful.”⁴

Alexa looked up at him in surprise.  To remember that comment three months later… it must have hit a nerve.  “You know I wasn’t talking about you, when I said that, right?”

“You are unusually precise in your speech,” he told her, with a soft smile.  “If you hadn’t meant to implicate me, just a little, I think you would have used the word ‘condescending’ rather than ‘superior’, which, I am told, is a word I over use.”

“Unless, of course, I was alluding to the altitude at which the Greybeards live or to how far up their own asses they are,⁵” she countered.

Ondolemar blinked, looked slightly stunned, and then began to laugh.  “I suppose my assumption says something about me, then, doesn’t it?”

“Assumptions usually do,” she agreed before changing the subject.  “You should know, before you make your report to the ambassador, that the incident report I gave you earlier was compiled by the college’s acting Master Wizard and is very much his initial findings.”

“You believe your understanding of events may change?” Ondolemar asked, accepting her change of topic.

“Those members who got the chance to study the orb have not yet presented their work for review,” she explained.  “It is possible one of them learned something that may affect the college’s understanding of what Ancano thought he was doing or what he hoped to achieve.”

“Understood.  Please let me know if your evaluation of what happened changes.”

“Did you learn anything from Estormo?” she asked.

Ondolemar shook his head.  “As a member of the embassy staff, rather than a justiciar, he does not answer to me and is currently refusing to speak without the ambassador present.⁶”

“Annoying,” she noted, casually.

“From your reaction I assume you got whatever information you needed out of him before delivering him here.”

Alexa made a little humming noise that was neither a confirmation nor a denial.

“On a related note,” Ondolemar continued, “you might be interested to know that, as far as I am aware, Ancano never reported the that the college had found anything of interest in Saarthal or that the Psijics had contacted you.”⁷

“What?” she demanded, shifting around on the bed to face him.

“You are surprised?” he asked.  “It was my impression you were already of the opinion Ancano would betray anyone, including the Dominion, for power.⁸”

“Even after he learned I was an asset; he still didn’t report the orb?  What would have happened if I had reported it when he hadn’t?”

“That would have been extremely awkward for him,” Ondolemar acknowledged.  “Why didn’t you?”

“I assumed Ancano had and, since I hadn’t had time to study it myself, I had nothing more to say about it than he did,” she replied smoothly and then stopped, frowning.  “Honestly,” Alexa began again, a little quieter, and less sure of herself, “the orb coming to light during Miraak’s attempted return was inconvenient but,” she winced slightly, “I also avoided it.  It made me uneasy, and I couldn’t rationally explain why, even to the other members of the college.  And, before you ask, it doesn’t have anything to do with dragons or their return to the world.  I even asked a dragon about it.  All he could tell me was that the dragon cult had chosen not to rebuild Saarthal and that the orb was ‘a thing out of place’.”

“Do you think your discomfort with the orb, and the dragon’s decision not to rebuild, were related?” Ondolemar prodded.

“At the time, I assumed so.”  She shrugged and was quiet for a moment, thinking hard.  “What about aetherium?” she asked, finally.  “Did Ancano ever report that I, or anyone at the college, was studying it, or was that another thing he was trying to keep to himself?”

“As far as I know, the Thalmor remain unaware of any work being done regarding a semi-mythical Dwemer material,” Ondolemar answered.

“Huh.  It seems I underestimated how completely rogue he’d gone,” Alexa muttered, more to herself than to Ondolemar.  Earmiel had once indicated to her that the “Thalmor” believed Arniel Gane had been working on aetherium.⁹  It seemed she was going to need him to clarify that statement.  “I wonder… Did anyone notice any sort of change in behavior on Ancano’s part?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, was this level of self-interest typical for him, or did his reports suddenly get shorter or more paranoid or, I don’t know, change in some way?  And, if so, did it happen before, or after, the orb was found?”

“He was always unlikeable and self-interested but keeping both the Eye and aetherium to himself is odd, as either discovery would have made him, and his work at the college, more valuable in the eyes of his superiors.  Why do you ask?”

She shook her head slightly.  “Because I’d like to know if something was affecting his mind and, if so, when it may have started,” she answered, shifting back to her previous place beside him.

“You think the Eye of Magnus can affect people’s minds?” Ondolemar enquired, as she slipped her arm through his. He took her hand and laced their fingers together.

“Between you and me, the orb we found wasn’t the Eye,” she told him, resting her head against his shoulder.  “But, for the time being, and until I’ve had some more time with the data collected by the other members of the college, I am happy to leave the misconception in place.  As for whether the orb was capable of influencing people…” she paused, briefly, to consider his question.  “Given some of the decisions people, who should have known better, made, regarding what to do with it, I would not be surprised.” 

“Really?  Then, if the Psijics thought you were capable of dealing with the orb, maybe the orb had something to do with your choice to avoid it?”

“Maybe?” she whispered.

“You do not think so?”

“At the time…” she paused again, searching for a way to explain.  “Have you ever experienced a sound you can feel but can’t hear?”

Ondolemar was silent for a moment.  “Not, I think, without it being in combination with sound I could hear.  Why do you ask?”

“While studying tonal architecture I found that there is something disconcerting about experiencing the pressure and vibration of a very loud sound that you physically lack the ability to analyze.  It’s the closest comparison I have to what being around the orb was like, for me at least.  I haven’t yet spoken with anyone else about their experiences of it.  Frankly, if I hadn’t needed to retrieve Estormo, I would have spent a few more days pulling together a functional theory, before coming to see you.”.

Ondolemar chuckled softly in response to that but said nothing.

“Hmm?” she asked, lifting her head off his shoulder to narrow her eyes at him.

“Nothing,” he told her with a slight shake of his head.  “It had just never occurred to me that you might avoid presenting me with a theory you were not yet satisfied with.”

“I’m an academic,” she grumbled, lowering her head to his shoulder again.  “Of course, I care about the state of my theories when I present them.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while.  Eventually Ondolemar broke it with a regretful sighed.  “There is a new rumor that you can control dragons,” he said quietly.

“I had wondered if the events around Whiterun would create such a rumor,” she admitted, with a sigh of her own.  “Summoning Durnehviir, from the Soul Cairn, is, in terms of control, not unlike summoning an unbound dremora you’ve bested in combat.  The only control one really has is the summoned creature’s own concept of honor.”

“Is that something people do on purpose?” Ondolemar asked her, clearly applaud.

Alexa shrugged.  “Shouts use vital energy rather than magicka, so summoning him is physically draining enough that it takes me the better part of two hours to recover enough to use even a simple shout like fire breath.”¹⁰

“So, dragon singular, and it’s not something you’re likely to do a lot of.”

“I certainly hope not,” she replied, smothering a yawn.

“I see.  Is there anything else I should know about?”

“I… had a conversation with Talos,” Alexa murmured.

“You what?” Ondolemar exclaimed, turning to look down at her.

“It’s not the first time I’ve had a conversation with another dragonborn,” she pointed out, grumpily straightening up from the awkward position the loss of his shoulder had left her in.  “I suppose it was my first conversation with a god,” she went on, rubbing tiredly at her face.  “So that’s something, I guess.  Though, since Vivec writes that there is no appreciable difference between gods and daedra, maybe it’s not.”

“Is he a god?” Ondolemar demanded.

“As much as Trinimac was,” she answered, evasively.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I believe he has not become earth-bone or become part of creation the way the planetary gods are.  I think.”  She sighed, in tired exasperation.  “I don’t know.  Our conversation literally happened just before I came here.  I haven’t had time to think about it yet.”

“Here?” he breathed, clearly taken aback.  His eyes narrowed.  “Why contact you now?”

“We… had a sibling to discuss,” she answered, evasively.

“Alexa…”

She tipped her head back, to look up at the ceiling, sighed again, and closed her eyes for a moment.  “The incident report I gave you” she began, her eyes still closed.  “It says that defeating Ancano took the combined efforts of myself, the college’s master of Alteration, my traveling companion, a summoned dremora, and a summoned specter.”  She opened her eyes, lowered her chin, and met his gaze squarely.  “But the specter wasn’t summoned.  It appeared on its own.  And,” she hesitated, her gaze breaking away from his, as she pulled distractedly at her fingers, “it looked like Miraak,” she finished, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“Miraak?” Ondolemar blinked, clearly thrown out of whatever line of questions he’d been preparing.  His eyes searched her face intently for a moment.  “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, helplessly.  “I…” she stopped, shook her head, straightened her shoulders, and met his eyes.  “I don’t know,” she repeated, in her usual steady, self-assured, manner.  “What I do know, without a doubt, is that Miraak is dead and that I absorbed his soul.  I know this because his memories and knowledge are available to me just like those of the dragons I have slain.  Under such circumstances he should have no shade left to be summoned.  No portion of his soul should be separate enough from mine to allow it to manifest into the world.  That was the situation I was contemplating when Talos reached out.”

As she spoke, and in the silence that followed, Ondolemar’s eyes never left face.  This close she could feel the moment he came to some conclusion.  He sighed heavily, and the tension between them dissipated. “Are you sure you’re alright?” Ondolemar whispered, real concern in his voice.

“I don’t know,” she answered, just as softly.

He took her by the elbow, pulling gently until she moved to sit between his knees, then he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.  He waited until she’d fully relaxed against him before speaking again.  “Did Talos have an answer for you?” he asked her, softly.

“He had a theory,” she admitted.  “But I’d need to contact the jill, in un-time, to test it.”

“Is that something you can do?”

“It’s not a thing I know how to do.”

Ondolemar snorted lightly.  “Interesting distinction.” 

“I’m glad you liked it,” she responded with a slight sniff.

He chuckled lightly at that and then went quiet.

“Septim for your thoughts?” she asked.

“I’m trying to think of a polite way of asking why - given all the things you know and secrets you’ve kept over the years - you would choose to tell a Thalmor justiciar that you’d just had a conversation with Talos,” he responded softly.

“You did ask if there was anything else you should know,” she pointed out, suppressing a yawn.  “But, before you tell me I’m being flippant, not so long ago you asked me if the destruction, or non-functionality, of the Towers was a problem.  So, I ask Talos, and he pointed out that book four of the Commentaries asserts that Dagon has destroyed the Towers in Lyg.”

Ondolemar was quiet for a long time.  She let him think.

“Aside from assuming that is bad,” Ondolemar finally responded, breaking the several minute long silence, “I don’t believe I know enough about the subject to think about it in any sort of constructive fashion.”

“Mmm,” Alexa hummed, sleepily.

“Are you falling asleep on me?” Ondolemar asked, poking her gently on the nose.

“No?” she mumbled, wrinkling her noise in protest before smothering another yawn. 

“Very convincing,” he told her, amusement coloring his tone.  “Do you have any other plans this evening?”

“Get to bed without running into trouble on the way,” she answered, a little groggily. 

“The fact that is a valid concern for you is…” he shook his head and sighed.  “I still have reports to write.  Why don’t you take a nap here while I finish them?  That way you can put off having to confront any trouble you are too sleepy to deal with.”

Chapter Text

One week later…

There was a slight bite to the pre-dawn air, as if it were autumn rather than the beginning of summer.  Above, the few stars still lingering in the sky were unfamiliar, and, though the quality of the light indicated that day would soon be upon them, the horizon was equally bright in all directions. 

Around them, a dual ring of standing stones stood atop a perfectly circular, flat-topped, hill.¹  Massar, many times larger than it ever appeared on Nirn, hung low over the horizon, full and almost perfectly centered between the tallest stones of the outer circle.

Below, dense, deciduous, forest ringed a grassland that extended, across uncannily even ground, a quarter mile in all directions from the base of the hill.  The transition between grassland and forest was unnaturally sharp. 

Aela inhaled deeply, and then exhaled, slowly, in satisfaction.  “So, this is the Hunting Grounds.”  Though she spoke at her usual volume, her voice sounded loud and out of place in the strained silence that had fallen over those gathered amongst the standing stones.  She grinned, wolfishly, at a few who bothered to acknowledge her existence with a reproving glare.

“You’re glowing slightly,” Taran’s friend Frór, the fourth member of their party, remarked to Alexa.

“We’re in Oblivion,” she responded, stepping away from the twelve other competitors to more closely inspect their surroundings.

The outer circle was made of the same dense gray rock as most of the non-magical standing stones of Skyrim.  There were twelve of them, arranged by height, such that the outer circle might be said to be mirrored down a line that ran from between the two tallest stones and the two shortest.  Outside the circle, in the space between the shortest stones, she found stairs, cut into the hillside, leading down to the grassland below.  Even these shortest stones, Alexa noted, were over eight feet in height. 

By contrast, the stones of the inner circle were of a darker color, only about a foot in height, and were each carved with a different, unusual looking, animal.  Though grass completely covered the rest of the hill, none grew upon the mound of earth within this second circle.

“These carvings seem important,” Alexa noted, softly, to Taran who had come up beside her.  “You recognize any of them?”

“No,” he muttered back. 

“And what of you?” Alexa asked, glancing up at a single raven perched atop one of the outer stones. 

The raven made a cackling laugh-like noise at her and then hopped from the stone, flapping, gracelessly, to the ground, where it transformed into a robed and hooded woman.  “You are here to seek Hircine’s favor?” the hag asked the assembled Forsworn.

“I am,” the only briarheart announced, pushing his way forward.

“I believe there are four groups of contestants,” Taran clarified, calmly, without acknowledging the other man. 

“You are aware that, in each hunt, only a single individual may recieve Hircine’s boon?” the hag asked.

“We are,” Taran answered.

“Then you are here to test yourselves in the only way that matters,” she told them all.  “A beast has been selected,” she pointed to a stone, of the inner circle, which had begun to glow softly.  Depicted upon it was a creature that looked like a beaked rabbit with claws and a long, serpentine, tail.²  “There is only one in this region.  The person who makes an offering of its heart, to Hircine, here, in this circle, shall receive his boon.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Alexa heard one Forsworn hunter whispered to another.

The hag fixed the speaker with a disapproving glare.  “Never forget, while you are here you are both hunter and prey,” she admonished, even as a glowing portal appeared in the space in front of the stairs.

Upon following the rest of her companions through the portal, Alexa was only mildly surprised to find herself alone.  She was slightly more surprised to find herself in an evergreen forest that still had patches of snow on the ground. 

How far did that portal move me? she wondered, looking around her for a landmark.  Finding none she grimaced slightly to herself.  She, and Teldryn, had both warned Taran that taking her with him - on this “traditional” competition for leadership that his grandfather, with the help of the Glenmoril, had managed to pull, last minute, out of his ass - might cause trouble.  Apparently, it had never occurred to Madanach that opening up the succession to the winner of a competition would mean he might end up stepping down in favor of someone who would have no reason to even pretend to listen to his advice.  Was the old man truly willing to risk everything on the possibility that none of the contenders would make it back?  And exactly how far away was she now from that damn circle of stones?  Was it even a distance that could be covered in a reasonable amount of time?

Alexa shook her head, once, to clear it.  No, Hircine would never create a competition that could not be won.  While the presence of the dragonborn, among the competitors, was likely to increase the difficulty of the challenge, for everyone, it would not make it impossible.  Regardless, the hunt, not how long it took to get back to the circle, was the challenge here.  It also seemed likely that either everyone had been split up, or the rest of her party was nearby.  Or both.

She cast clairvoyance on each of her companions.  Taran and Aela were, she discovered, in roughly the same direction but Frór was almost exactly in the opposite.  Aela, she decided after the briefest of hesitations, would have no trouble finding Taran. 

Alexa summoned Arvak and went after Frór.

It took Alexa fewer than five minutes to find Frór.  A search made somewhat easier by the sound of an exploding fireball as she neared his location.

When she reached him, she found his opponent already dead on the ground. 

He swung around, startled by the sound of Arvak’s less than delicate movement through the underbrush.  “What are you doing here?” the Forsworn apprentice-shaman demanded, starting towards her, just as an arrow whistled past his ear, missing him by the distance he’d just moved.  Frór didn’t hesitate, falling to the ground and rolling away from the place he’d been standing.

“LAAS” Alexa hissed, drawing Auriel’s bow.  There, partially obscured by the root mass of a fallen tree was a second person...  She loosed two arrows in quick succession.  The red glow went out.  She lowered her bow and returned her attention to Frór.

“Bastard must have heard the noise and come to finish off the survivor,” Frór grumbled, standing back up. 

“Nocturnal really looks after you,” Alexa noted, with a meaningful glance at the crow feathers woven into the shaman’s hair.  “Even here.  I’m impressed.”

“Why are you here?” he demanded, completely ignoring her comment, as he went to go see who she’d just killed.  “You should be guarding Taran’s back, not mine!”

“If we lose you, we lose the only unimpeachably Forsworn member of our party,” Alexa answered, riding over to him.  “Your word may be necessary to convince your people that their traditions were truly upheld.”  She held her hand down to him, silently offering to help him onto Arvak’s back. 

He arched an eyebrow at the implication he might need her help to mount up.  

Alexa smiled and retracted her hand.  “I suggest you ride side saddle,” she told him, as she pulled out the Sanguine Rose.  “Arvak is extremely bony and you’re wearing a skirt,”³ she finished, pointing the staff at the ground and activating it.

“I smell weakness,” the newly summoned dremora announced, eyeing the badly burnt corpse at his feet, as Frór vaulted up behind her. 

“The noise of this battle may draw others to this place,” she informed the dremora.  “Make sure they do not follow us.”

“There could be no other end,” the rose dremora assured her, drawing his sword.

“Now we go to Taran,” Alexa told Frór.

“Ah, there they are,” Taran announced, to Aela, who, it seemed, had dipped behind a tree at the sound of their approach. 

“Yes, here we are,” Alexa agreed, eyeing the three nearby corpses and the wound across Taran’s chest he was clearly doing his best to keep pressure on.  “You want help with that?” she asked, indicating the wound.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Taran admitted, even as Alexa cast Grand Heal without actually waiting for his reply.  He arched an eyebrow at her.  “Flashy,” he commented.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that spell before.”  He turned his attention to Frór, “Any idea if these three,” he indicated the nearby bodies, “were part of the same group or not?”

“Including the two we killed on our way here,” Frór began, jumping down from Arvak in order to turn over one of the bodies, “this makes one from Karthspire, and all four from Red Eagle.”

“Leaving three more from Karthspire, and all four from Lost Valley, unaccounted for, including the Briarheart,” Taran finished for him.

Frór nodded in agreement.

“As long as your grandfather didn’t pay those hagravens to open a second portal for assassins,” Aela added, stepping out of hiding, her attention still focused on the woods around them.

“Anyone here is part of the Hunt,” Alexa told her.  “That is the way of this realm.”

“She’s right,” Frór agreed, brushing his hands off on his skirt as he straightened up.  “Well, now that we’re back together…”

“Not to alarm anyone,” Aela cut in, “but I think we’re being flanked.”

“LAAS-YAH-NIR” Alexa hissed, lighting up more than a dozen figures moving through the forest around them.  Their movement was distinctive: werewolves.  “Aela…”

A day earlier…

“You understand that there is a good chance the former members of the Circle will be placed in our path?” Alexa asked Aela the first time they had a moment alone together. 

“Exactly why you cannot go without me” Aela responded, fiddling with the silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand⁴.  “They are my pack.  I share their blood.  I do not know how many have accepted the blood over the years but, if there are more than you can command, you will need me.”

In the Hunting Grounds Aela’s transformation happened smoothly - with no disjointed stretching or interruption to her movements - as she threw herself into the side of the first werewolf to break ranks and charge. 

They hit the ground and rolled.  Aela came out on top, her bared teeth to the other werewolf’s throat.  The situation lasted only the briefest of moments before Aela jumped off and away, in apparent surprise, a low whine issuing from her throat.  The other werewolf made a strange chuckling noise and began to transition back to human form. 

“Welcome to the Hunting Grounds, shield sisters,” Skjor laughed, rising to his feet with a grin.

Chapter Text

“I am Terrfyg², first among the Companions here,” a large, red headed, man announced, stepping into the clearing.  “What brings two of our number to the Hunting Grounds in the company of the Forsworn?”

Alexa remained silent, watching as Taran glace quickly in werewolf Aela’s direction. 

“They hunt with us,” Taran answered.  “What other purpose is there in this place?”

“We hunt as well,” the red headed Nord grinned, predatorily, at him before turning his attention to Alexa.  “And you?” Terrfyg asked.  “Are you the dragonborn beast-master Kodlak spoke of?”

“I am here as a member of my blood-brother’s hunting party,” she replied, mildly.  “Who, and what, I am, beyond that, has no bearing on my purpose in this place.  This is Taran’s test, not mine.”  She met the werewolf’s eyes solidly.  “For now, at least.”

“It sounds like you think yourself above all this,” Terrfyg rumbled, stepping closer.  “And you didn’t answer my question, girl.”

“Terrfyg, stop!” a female voice called out, halting Terrfyg in his tracks. 

“Something from you, Inga?” he growled, turning in the direction of the only werewolf, other than Skjor and himself, to take human form.

A tall woman with gray-blond hair and the arms of a blacksmith stepped forward and placed a hand on Terrfyg’s shoulder.  “She used the thu’um as we approached,” the woman, Inga, told him.  “Even you cannot have missed it.”

“Even if she were not the person Kodlak spoke of, she would still be a Companion, still our shield-sister,” Skjor added, stepping between Terrfyg and Alexa. 

“You should join us in our hunt,” Aela cut in, changing the subject as she rose to her feet, having returned to human form.

“And why would we do that?” Terrfyg asked Aela, glancing her way with an amused look.

“Because I, as a blood bound member of this pack,” she gestured to the rest of the assembled werewolves, “and the bearer of the ring of Hircine, ask it.”

“Bearer of the ring or not, you are still a welp when compared to those who stand before you here,” he pointed out.

To Alexa’s slight surprise his tone sounded, at least to her, more testing than dismissive or admonishing.

Aela gave a disdainful snort.  “There are only two hunts of note this day: our hunt and hunting us.”  She turned away from Terrfyg, to address the rest of the pack.  “Join us and let us find out together what kind of predator the Hunting Grounds will send to hunt prey such as we!  Then we may turn the hunt inside out and test ourselves against a foe worthy of our songs!”

Alexa watched Terrfyg and Inga carefully as first one, then another and another, werewolf howled in apparent acceptance of Aela’s offer. 

The light of Masser was just becoming a faint glow above the horizon when the werewolves called a halt beside a shallow stream that formed an abrupt dividing line between the shoulder-high grassland they’d been traveling through and a dense deciduous forest beyond.

“Rest and regain your strength,” Inga advised the pack.  “When Masser clears the horizon, we move again.  We should reach the stone circle by the time the moons set,” she added, addressing Alexa and Taran.

Dismounting, Alexa winced slightly at the stiffness of her legs and the sore spots on her butt she was certain had already progressed to deep bruises.  “I had almost forgotten how much I prefer riding dragons to riding Arvak,” she muttered, more to herself than to anyone else.

Taran, who had been riding behind her for much of the day – in order to keep pace with the pack - didn’t respond except with a wince a stifled groan of his own.  

Lacking contact with his summoner, Arvak vanished, leaving the crow, that had been sitting on the top of his head, briefly suspended in midair before it fell, gracelessly, to the ground.  Frór stood up, dusting himself off.  “A little warning would have been nice,” he noted.

“Sorry,” Alexa muttered, and cast Grand Healing.

“I’m guessing that was more for the stamina boost than for fear I’d injured myself,” he commented, considering the, suddenly significantly less tired looking, werewolf pack with an appraising eye.

“It’s been a long day,” Alexa agreed, already digging through her pack for something to eat.  “And it seems we have a ways to go yet.”

“The Companion’s help has greatly shortened the length of our hunt,” Frór informed Taran and Alexa, as he accepted the waterskin Taran was holding out to him.  “Tradition indicates that it can take longer than this to even find the hunt’s quarry.” 

“The shortened time frame, and the help, isn’t going to be an issue, is it?” Alexa asked, handing apples and cheese to both men.

“Not at all,” Frór assured her, accepting the food with a grateful nod.  “The time frame over which the Huntsman chooses to test a person is up to him.”

“The hunt is not yet over,” Terrfyg said, joining them.  “Now that we have our prey, we must still prove ourselves capable of keeping it.”  He waved away Alexa’s wordless offer of food.  “It was a good chase, and there was more of skill to your final shot than luck,” he continued, giving Taran friendly clap on the shoulder.  “Of the terrains in this region, the long grass is my least favorite for hunting.”  He looked towards Alexa.  “I’ve been told your skill with a bow is second to none.  I am saddened not to have seen it.”

“There is time yet,” Alexa reminded him, letting her gaze move past him to where Aela and Skjor stood together, a little apart from everyone.  “A question, if I may, shield-brother.”

“A surprisingly formal request,” Terrfyg noted, bemused.  “What is it you wish to know, shield-sister?”

“Do you know what is required to become a Packmaster?”

Terrfyg blinked once in surprise and then glanced in the direction she was looking.  “Ah.  Yes.  Our sister is very skilled,” he agreed.

It did not escape Alexa’s attention that, unlike Frór, Taran did not turn to look to see to whom they were referring.  In fact, she realized, he had managed to position himself facing entirely away from where Aela and Skjor stood.

“It is my understanding that the title indicates a Hircine gifted right to lead other werewolves; and will only be gifted to one who has both fully embraced their gift and has also gained the positive attention of the Huntsman,” Terrfyg answered.  “Your Forsworn companions might know more about it than I.”

Alexa gave them both an enquiring look.

“The only thing I know about it is that it is a rare title these days and – I have been told – is only given to those who can take full wolf form,³” Frór answered.

“I see,” Alexa murmured.  Once, and only once, on the hot spring flats outside of Kyn’s Grove, Alexa had seen a werewolf take full wolf form.⁴  Given Aela’s continuous assertions that lycanthropy was a gift, it was not surprising to learn that she had embraced it more fully than most.  Additionally, it had always struck Alexa as a little odd that it had been Aela’s blood, the blood of the younger pack member, that had been offered to her.  A choice that might make sense if Aela had not only been the more gifted of the two but also vying for leadership of the pack.  Wich raised the question, had Aela accepted Taran’s invitation to the Hunting Grounds for reasons beyond helping him in his trial?  And had he made the offer with any of those other reasons in mind?  She gave Taran a penetrating look.  He met her eyes, solidly, his expression both daring her to object and asking her not to.  She gave a slight nod and looked away.  This test was his, and she needed to trust that he knew what he was doing.

“I’m a little worried that we haven’t run into any of the group from Lost Valley Redoubt yet,” Taran said, changing the subject.

Frór snorted, derisively.  “Knowing that bunch they’ll have decided to take the spoils from someone else rather than try to take the prey themselves.”

“The cleared area around the hill will make setting up an ambush there somewhat more difficult,” Alexa pointed out.

“They will also discover that, in the Hunting Grounds, staying in a single location, for an extended period, comes with its own set of dangers,” Terrfyg added.

In the forest a wolf howled.  At the same time Alexa felt a pull, like the condensing of magic before a... “Powerful conjuration spell, or moderate size portal,” she announced, pointing in the opposite direction from the wolf.  “That way.”  A second wolf howled.  This time considerably closer than the first.

“Sounds like the hunt’s back on,” Tyrrfyg laughed, already beginning his transformation.

“Dragonborn,” Frór called out, dropping his crow form to run alongside Arvak for a short distance.  “What follows us looks like a single hunter with the head of a deer.”

“Hircine?” she asked.

“We’re moving faster than the hunter, but he’s not being delayed by harrying attacks,” Frór added, not answering her question.

Alexa nodded once.  There was no way that being hunted by an avatar of Hircine, here in the Hunting Grounds, was part of a ritual mortals were supposed to be able to survive.  Which meant this wasn’t a standard part of Taran’s leadership trial.  “How far do we have left to go?” she asked.

“From the air, I could see the standing stones, but, unless something changes, he’s going to catch up to us before we get out of the trees,” Frór responded.

Alexa pulled Arvak up short, dismounted, and handed Taran the reigns.  “Go,” she told him. 

“You think I would let my sister face a daedric prince alone?” Taran asked, moving to join her on the ground, even as the werewolves, realizing their human companions had stopped, circled back to them.

“MUL-QAH-DIIV”, she said, putting a hand on his knee to stop him, her skin turning to brilliant white scales.  She met Taran’s eyes.  “I do not believe that facing Alrabeg is part of your test.  And, as the dragonborn, I am telling you that I need you to finish this.”  She lifted glowing hands and cast Call to Arms⁵ on all those in rage.  “Now get going,” she ordered.

“Fine,” Taran relented, clearly still uncomfortable with leaving, but also knowing better than to waste time arguing with her under the circumstances.  “Just… don’t let him kill you.”  He didn’t wait for her response before pulling Frór up behind him and kicking Arvak into a run.

Chapter Text

Looking around to get her bearings, Alexa was a little surprised to find that Terrfyg and Inga had stayed behind.  “You take on a more draconic form and expect werewolves not to understand what that means?” Inga asked, dryly.

“We were promised a fight against that which would hunt us,” Terrfyg reminded her.  “We are being hunted, aren’t we?”

“Driven, I think,” Alexa agreed.

“Usually, prey is driven towards the hunter,” Terrfyg noted, his voice dry but not disbelieving.

“Or off a cliff,” Inga added.

“If he is driving us, then his belief that we are running from him, should make ambushing him easier,” Alexa pointed out.

Terrfyg nodded in agreement.  “You sent your brother ahead, what makes you think the true danger is behind us, rather than before him?”

“For a test to become traditional, it must be survivable,” Alexa explained, dropping her pack beside a tree.  “The only person I’ve heard of who successfully defeated Alrabeg, the Huntsman’s humanoid avatar, was a literal living god.¹  So, either the being that follows us is not what they appear to be, or they are not here to test Taran.”

“You believe that you are the one they hunt,” Inga stated, keeping her eyes on the way they had come.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Alexa muttered, beginning to dig through her pack.

“Oh?” Terrfyg asked.

“Three years ago, in the mountains north of lake Ilinalta², he nearly killed me.”  She smiled tightly as she slipped an extremely white arrow, tipped with a long piece of sharpened bone, into the top of her boot.  “This time, however, I came prepared.”

Terrfyg’s eyes narrowed.  “Why would the Huntsman hunt prey that has already been bested?”

“Last time no one knew I was dragonborn,” Alexa answered, dropping her quiver next to her pack and exchanging it for a quiver holding a small number of equally bright white arrows.  She pulled one out to check how visible it would be in the darkness of the nighttime forest.  The arrow shafts were more reflective than radiant, so, as long as she was fully in shadow, it shouldn’t give away her position.  The chipped stone arrowhead, on the other hand, pulsed a low, dull, red that would be considerably harder to hide.³

“You’re not afraid that your actions may affect the prince’s willingness to bestow the boon you came here for?” Terrfyg asked.

“If the Huntsman didn’t break the rules he’d agreed to, even when embarrassed by Sheogorath, he’s not going to break them over me,”³ Alexa responded crisply.

“And how can we help?” Inga interjected, her tone and posture indicating she didn’t think they had much time before whatever was following them arrived.

“What happens if you are killed here?” Alexa asked, with a swift glance at both of them.

“We reform, at one of the glowing lakes, within a day or two,”⁵ Terrfyg answered.

“Have you ever faced Alrabeg, Hircine’s huntsman avatar?”

“Never had the chance,” Inga admitted.

“Right, well, if you could keep him distracted while I put a bunch of arrows in him, I’d be grateful,” Alexa told them, as she closed her pack back up. 

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Terrfyg told her, taking in their surroundings with a strategic eye.

“If, after five arrows, he’s not down, then I’ve miscalculated and you should run, if you still can,” Alexa told them.

They both nodded and drew back into the forest to wait.

Alexa summoned her butler. 

The dremora looked around him, seemed to recognize where he might be, and went a little pale.  “A-at your service, my lady,” he stuttered, his voice noticeably quieter than usual.

“Please watch my pack for a bit,” she told him.  Then, Ariel’s bow in hand, she cast muffle and invisibility and circled down wind.

They didn’t have long to wait.

“Hello?” the dremora called out, a little tentatively, turning towards a sound Alexa couldn’t yet here.  “Hello, is anyone there?”

Then Alexa heard it, the sound of something large moving through the brush.

“Hello?” the dremora called out again, a little anxiously.  “I… I seem to be lost…”

The eight-foot-tall humanoid, that appeared out of the darkness, had skin spotted like a deer, and was wearing little more than a wrapped skirt, heavy belt, and deer skull mask, and holding a long spear in his right hand.⁶

“Your Highness,” the dremora began, panic clear in his voice, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know…”

The dremora’s babbling was cut short when Alexa dismissed him the moment the hunter was close enough to strike.

Alrabeg glanced swiftly around, sniffing the air, before taking the last two steps to crouch down and inspect the ground around Alexa’s abandoned pack.

“KRII-LUN-AUS,” she said, her words more of a command than a shout.

The hunter jerked from the impact of her thu’um and turned towards the sound of her voice, only to grunt in pain as her first arrow struck him in the right thigh.  He glanced down at the arrow, as the flesh around it reddened and blistered as if badly burned⁷, “A good first strike, Beast Master,” he acknowledged.  “Your weapons…” he was cut off by Terrfyg, in hybrid form, slamming into his left side and Inga following up with two strikes at him from behind. 

With a low, bear-like, growl, the hunter swung round to face his new attackers, giving Alexa her next shot.  Her arrow buried itself into the shoulder muscle of his right arm.

With a wordless yell of anger, Alrabeg, shoved both werewolves backwards, swiftly stabbing one, in the gut, in the process.  Terrfyg went down, hard.  More like something suddenly paralyzed than an animal succumbing to a wound, Alexa noted, as she moved to flank.  

The avatar, ignoring her for the moment, shifted his spear to his uninjured left hand, his eyes locked on Inga.  Without apparent thought for either of the arrows still sprouting from his flesh - though Alexa could tell his right leg was all but buckling beneath him - Alrabeg took two swift steps forward and, even as Alexa’s third arrow embedded itself in the lower left side of his back, delivered an impressive slashing cut to Inga’s chest.  This time Alexa was certain of the spear’s paralysis effect.  The avatar, it seemed, was using the Hunter’s Spear⁸, not the Spear of Bitter Mercy.⁹

Finished with the werewolves, for now at least, Alrabeg tried to pull the arrow from his thigh.¹⁰  She heard him grunt in annoyance when the shaft came free leaving its head still embedded in his flesh.  “Now it is just us, Dragonborn,” he said, throwing the shaft away as he turned slowly, menacingly, in Alexa’s direction.

“FUS-RO-DAH!” she shouted, hitting him square in the chest.  The strength of her shout lifted Alrabeg off the ground and threw him back ten feet into a tree behind him.  The force of his impact cracked the tree trunk and pushed the arrow in his lower back through to his front. 

Alexa took the avatar’s moment of winded, stunned, immobility to put an arrow into his stomach, just below the ribs on his right side, pinning him to the tree.

With a roar of anger Alrabeg dropped his spear and, without waiting for the arrow’s sun enchantment to run its course, attempted to pull it from his flesh.  Even though his hand blistered and smoked with the attempt it was obvious he no longer had the strength to remove it.  “What is this?” he gasped to Alexa as she walked towards him, her bone tipped arrow in her hand. 

“Turnabout is fair play, don’t you think?” she asked, driving the arrow into his chest just below the left clavicle.  There was an explosion of blinding light and, with a sound closer to an elk-bugle than a human scream, the avatar of Hircine dissipated like morning mist.

Without hesitating, Alexa cast Grand Heal, twice.  “You two still alive?” she called to Inga and Terrfyg, as she picked up the Spear of the Hunter.

“We’re fine, now,” Inga replied, getting up.  “That was… impressive.  You are as good with a bow as Kodlak boasted.”

“Did you kill him?” Terrfyg asked, groaning into a sitting position, his hand, reflexively, pressed to where his stomach wound had been.

“I hope not.  If we’re lucky those wounds will slow him down more than simply remanifesting would,” Alexa answered, shouldering her pack. 

“We should get moving then,” Inga said, pointing.  “The stone circle is that way.”

“Well, I’ve never seen a person disappear into nothing before,” Terrfyg noted, joining the women as Alexa set a brisk pace in the direction Inga had pointed.

“I have, twice,” Alexa told him.  “And in neither case was the person dead.¹¹”

“So, what did you do, exactly?” Terrfyg enquired.

“I inflicted upon the Huntsman’s avatar the same wounds he inflicted upon me, three years ago.  Only, instead of the poisoned Forsworn arrows he used on me, I used Auriel’s bow to deliver four sun hallowed arrows, tipped with heart stone, and then finished up by stabbing him with ensouled dragon bone¹²,” Alexa explained, keeping an eye on the density of canopy above them as they moved.  

“Was the material of your weapons important?” Inga asked, following after her.

“The chaotic creatia of this realm – the material from which bodies here are made - is attuned to Hircine and his power.  I speculated that introducing the power of other et’ada into the chaotic creatia of a body here, even an avatar’s body, would disrupt its attunement to this realm.  I admit, if that is what actually happened, the results were showier than I expected.”

“And was inflicting the same wounds also important or just revenge?” Terrfyg enquired.

“Both,”¹³ Alexa responded, vaguely, before changing the subject.  “We need to find a place we can see unobstructed sky.”

“How much sky are we looking for?” Inga asked, after a brief silence in which both werewolves clearly considered pressing for more answers before deciding against it.

“Enough for a dragon to pass through,” Alexa answered.

“Are you going to fully transform into a dragon to catch up with your friends?” Inga enquired.

“I’m going to summon a dragon,” Alexa told her.  “And then we are going to ride it to catch up with our friends.”