Chapter Text
It’s another long, late night, and Sovras yawns and stretches his hands out in front of him, fingers laced together to crack his knuckles. Distantly, he stares down at the limp form before him—the Dreugh’s long limbs hang down like the arms of a marionette cut from their strings, and its head lolls to the side. The carapace is infuriatingly still, the bright blue fungi that stretch out of its open jaws and empty eyesockets doing nothing except stare back at him mockingly. He wants to kick the stupid beast, crack the stagnant exoskeleton like flimsy glass under his boots, but—as if to remind him not everything seeks to get in his way—something clatters at his side. The Dunmer glances down, and though the tiny construct’s eyes are hollow, the way it looks up at its master with head tilted to the side and tail swaying back and forth is almost expectant. He sighs and reaches out his forearm, and it clambers up to curl around his shoulders.
“I always did like you better than those mushrooms,” Sovras murmurs. It clacks its jaw back at him. “Look at it. All those legs, and it can’t move a single one of them properly. Pathetic, isn’t it?” He feels a bony snout rub against his chin, and reaches back to run a gloved hand over the construct’s wing. “But we’ll try again tomorrow. Maybe they’ll cooperate with a little more fiddling. If not, well… that’ll teach us not to listen to the thoughts of some idiotic Spellwright. Some ideas can’t be saved even by the best of minds.”
With a snap, Sovras calls the ball of blue light he’d had floating above the pointless corpse back to him. As he turns away from his workstation, it follows him, and the construct perched on his shoulders watches it orbit around them with some form of wonder. After he shuts the door behind him and locks it, the Dark Elf calls out— “Ink?”
“Over here, muthsera,” his Mouth mumbles back to him. She’s in the sitting room, tinkering with a smaller creation of her own in an attempt to assemble the tiny bones of a mouse into something she can animate. Sovras can already tell that the creature she makes will be hunted down by his own near-immediately—the construct is already wiggling its tail with anticipation just looking down at the bones.
“I’m turning in for the night,” he tells the black-scaled Argonian as he rests one hand down on the back of the couch. “Make sure you clean up after yourself once you finish—I’m not coming up with an explanation for the exploded owl pellet on my tea table for some half-breed Armiger fool again.”
Ink-Stained-Claws hums in acknowledgment of his wishes, not turning from her work. As Sovras goes to leave, though, she looks up suddenly with frills fanning out. “Sera,” she calls to him, and he looks over his shoulder towards her. “I should tell you. The Mouths in Ald Isra are speaking of a writ; say there’s a spy in Tel Huulen the Masters want found and eliminated.”
Sovras pauses at that. “A spy?” he muses, bringing a hand up to his chin. “Are there any suspicions on who they could be working for?”
When Ink shakes her head, there’s a small shifting sound as the folds of her frills, now relaxed, rub up against each other. “Nothing, which only makes them more tense. I don’t doubt an agent of the Tong will be there soon enough to clean up the mess.”
A slight huff of amusement escapes the Dunmer’s throat. “You’d think such a selection of Councilmen would be better at dispatching their enemies themselves. It’s honestly rather pathetic. Thank you for relaying this to me, Ink; I shall watch this situation carefully. I trust you’ll do the same.”
“As always,” says his Mouth, and though the structure of her face makes it a little hard to tell, Sovras thinks she’s cracked a smile. “Goodnight, Master Sovras.”
“Goodnight, Ink.”