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Given exactly two minutes to come up with a decent retort, Teldryn Sero could lie his way into—or out of—just about any situation. That’s what he’d have liked to keep telling himself, anyway. Staring up at an ancient, half-crumbling, barely-living silt strider on the east side of Nowhere, Solstheim, he began to wonder exactly what he had agreed to be part of. Wonder, however, but not question. The pay was good, and it was better to ever so slightly lowball the other offers other mercenaries would have given the wayward Nord so that he could get a slice of the pie instead. It didn’t matter, really, what nonsense was on the horizon. Teldryn had been, up to this point, quite used to unorthodox employment—and just by the look on his employer’s face, this job, too, would be something to remember. Hopefully, barring any further incidents with overconsumption of sujamma.
Teldryn stood on the edge of a cliff that served as a home base of sorts to the creature’s keeper, pondering his life choices for the span of maybe a second or two. There had been no initial misgiving that he was conscious of, but occasionally pausing to adjust one’s moral compass never hurt, especially in this line of business. Upon inspection, his true north was still somewhat metallic—just as it had always been.
As if in direct response to that, a great deal of gold coins clinked merrily in his pockets as he finished tying a rather impressive series of knots. Revus Sarvani—that was the mer’s name—had somehow succumbed to a rather nasty bump on the head while he was going about his otherwise ordinary business. Teldryn had obliged to restrain the poor fellow and stash him away in the piece of fraying canvas that doubled as a sorry excuse of a tent.
The wayward Nord was currently busy stacking an absurd amount of stones of various shapes and sizes inside the unkempt cabin in the silt strider’s back. They weren’t all large, but the tedious work would have worn out the average person by now, or so Teldryn thought.
“And what, may I ask,” he began, wiping the dirt and ash off of his gloved palms onto his pants, “were you planning to do with a half-dead silt strider, sera?”
The wayward Nord grinned, and his eyes lit up like sunrise. Considering their errand—which was theft, really—this surprised Teldryn. That was usually no laughing matter.
“I read the, uh—the stories,” the Nord commented, tone more faux-nonchalant and cagey than anything. “I heard about the Red Year and how all this used to work before all that. I came to the conclusion that I wanna ride one.” He grinned again, perhaps even wider. “You know how it is.”
This one, Teldryn had noticed before, was strangely built: tall and lanky—all limbs with a bit of a paunch instead of the typical muscular stature of his fellows. He did have long, darkish sun-blonded hair—that he barely tied back—and a scraggly beard to match, at least. He’d probably been a scholar of some kind, but had heretofore refused to say. At the moment, he was wearing heavy armor, though, which spoke perhaps to a desire to change career paths. Teldryn was no stranger to this, either.
“Yeah, sera, I know how it is.”
Teldryn grinned behind his ever-present helmet. Little did this wayward Nord know that he’d been around during the time before the Mountain destroyed everything he once held somewhat dear. Silt striders had been so beyond normal back then that only outlanders would have found them odd at all. The wayward Nord was certainly an outlander, if nothing else. Teldryn had the odd feeling that it was even deeper than just his never having been to Solstheim. Then again, the man knew exactly where Dusty—the silt strider’s name—was perched, and seemed to have Sarvani’s schedule all but memorized.
Strange, that.
That wasn’t the kind of thinking that would lead to more gold, however, so Teldryn set it aside and moved toward the wayward Nord. The man was assessing the situation with a look like he might have known how to handle things—at least, he hadn’t asked for help yet.
“So, but, this line would probably go over here…” the wayward Nord muttered under his breath, moving bits of rope around as the silt strider let out an unusually loud mournful call, shifting its not-insignificant weight from side to side. Nothing else obvious was happening, though. “Aw, beans. Not that.” He paused and scratched his beard almost thoughtfully. “They never let us see this part back in three…but if I had to give it one more guess…”
“Excuse me,” Teldryn interrupted. The wayward Nord did flinch, but as he turned around, he pretended he hadn’t been startled at all, so Teldryn continued, “Have you ever done this before, sera?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” the wayward Nord answered. There was that smile again, like there was more to that statement than what he let on. “But let’s just say I have some ideas of how this used to work.”
“From books? You learned all this from books?” Teldryn asked.
The wayward Nord nodded absently in response, still muttering under his breath in a language that might not have been exactly Common. Teldryn couldn’t quite place whatever language it was, though.
Wouldn’t it be funny if that was Akaviri or something?
Teldryn dismissed his own errant thought, crossed his arms and waited as more ropes were unknotted. There was an awful metallic screeching noise when, finally, an awning unfolded from the apparatus that was still strapped to Dusty’s back, despite her being out of service now for time out of mind. There were holes in the canvas, and the brilliant blue it had once been had faded considerably, but it was, for all intents and purposes, still very much intact.
“THERE WE GO!” the wayward Nord shouted. This time it was Teldryn’s turn to flinch, which only prompted more laughter from his employer. “Oh, come on. I wasn’t that loud. We’ve been standing around listening to this thing the whole time, anyway!”
“Fair,” Teldryn said and scrubbed the back of his neck as he stared up at the silt strider. “Well. Where exactly did you plan to take the old girl?”
“Oho,” said the wayward Nord, baring teeth. “Just wait and see. I have a whole thing planned.”
***
So it was that Teldryn found himself throwing stones of different sizes and weights at the least convenient windows of a mushroom tower from the back of an ancient silt strider for bonus pay. He wouldn’t lie and say he didn’t have a good time with it—messing with Neloth was one of the few joys left to be found on this Godsforsaken rock of an island—but the purpose of such a prank had yet to become clear to him.
Then again, he really wasn’t paid to determine the purpose of whatever it was his employers wanted—he was, under normal circumstances, pointed in a direction and made to stab things.
The situation this time was a far cry from ‘ normal circumstances,’ however.
At least I can’t complain that the job is boring.
Below the tower, one of the ancient wizard’s apprentices had begun shouting in sporadic Dunmeris at the wayward Nord, who had, moments before, used Dusty’s height to reach a balcony that should have only been accessible to one person alone, and only through their personal Mark and Recall runes. The Nord didn’t seem to hear—or care. One or the other, it mattered very little. The damage, as they say, was done—especially as the door to Neloth’s apartment burst open and flew inward off its hinges.
Meanwhile, the window Teldryn had been throwing stones against slammed open, revealing the form of an irate mad wizard—Neloth himself. Teldryn flashed the old toad his best grin, despite the crimson scarf he wore over the lower half of his face.
“Just what in the name of Azura is going on out here!?” shouted Neloth, fists balled at his sides. He stamped his foot like a child throwing a tantrum, which wasn’t too far out of character, really. “And what on Nirn are you doing to that poor creature!?”
“Oh, the silt strider?” Teldryn answered, voice dripping sarcasm, as it usually did. “Nothing out of the ordinary, I’d say.” He gestured to it and patted the side of the seating area, eliciting a mournful keen from the creature. “She’s just, you know, striding along, as one such creature is wont to do.”
“But that is my property! She was out of service for a reason! You have no right!” Neloth shouted. His pallid grey skin was going purple with rage and a Lightning spell was beginning to crackle over his near-skeletal knuckles as he gesticulated wildly.
Perfectly distracted, then.
Teldryn knew the wayward Nord was after a specific thing, though by the verbal description alone, he couldn’t picture exactly what was being talked about.
‘It’s the only thing I was able to bring from home,’ the wayward Nord had said before they’d gotten to Tel Mithryn, again as nonchalant as anything. The wind and ash rushed by them as the silt strider strode, ruffling the frayed edges of the deep green scarf that covered half the man’s face. Even through the half-dark lenses of the goggles he was borrowing, Teldryn could see the shift in his expression toward pure determination as he spoke the next few words. ‘It’s mine, and I want it back.’
As far as Teldryn was concerned, this was as good a reason to steal something as anything. He didn’t know where the wayward Nord’s home was, come to think of it. His accent was odd, and he used strange languages when he thought nobody could hear him, and his mannerisms were not as grim and lacking joy as all his fellow Nords’ always seemed to be. But, then again, he hadn’t been paid to ask questions or pry. Teldryn was here for one reason, and that was to keep the enemy off the wayward Nord’s back. This was the foundation of most of his jobs, no matter how the actual plan shaped around it.
Funny how Neloth always finds himself in the position of ‘enemy,’ though.
Teldryn grinned and flashed a rude gesture toward the ancient wizard. The old man raged, a shriek ripping from his throat to rival that of the screech of dragons. Teldryn unsheathed his moonstone sword and twirled it, bracing himself as Dusty became agitated under his feet, shifting from one set of massive legs to the other. But Teldryn was used to this—or had been, back in the Third Era. It was easy to slip back into the memory as if it was yesterday.
Mages were nothing to trifle with, however—least of all ones that had lived a few centuries past their intended expiration date. With some infernal power or the other, Neloth began to levitate out of the window he had thrown open. His crimson and gold robes whipped in the wind as he advanced on Teldryn’s position. Dusty was getting even more nervous, sensing the chaos unfolding above her. Teldryn spared a moment to pat what part of her he could reach outside of the seating area. It did little to calm her, unfortunately.
Neloth swooped toward him, heedless of her comfort—or Teldryn’s, for that matter. The ancient wizard chucked an arc of Chain Lightning at him with speed that could have deceived another person into believing there were far fewer years piled on that particular skeleton. Teldryn, however, was faster, and knew a thing or two about Wards, though he barely had the Magicka to make use of them for long.
He cast his spell just as the bolt of Lightning Magic crashed into him. His Steadfast Ward bore the brunt of the force, but Teldryn’s heels still squeaked backward. He grit his teeth and pushed, forcing the Lightning out and away. It snapped and crackled and flew off behind them all, fizzling out in the ash near where the apprentice was still shouting up at the wayward Nord.
Teldryn’s task wasn’t to kill Neloth—that would take away one of the only forms of entertainment left in this place. All the wayward Nord needed was a decent amount of time to infiltrate the private rooms of Tel Mithryn and get his item back.
As Neloth fluttered in closer, preparing another Lightning spell, Teldryn took the opening to dodge under the wizard’s outstretched arm and bonk him on the side of the head with the pommel of his sword. He hadn’t used even close to his full strength—he was just trying to be annoying.
Neloth let out an indignant squawk as he dropped his Lightning spell and listed sideways, feet unsteady on the not-platform the illegal Levitation spell made of the air. His concentration was broken, and the next attempt at casting only produced a handful of sparks and an astringent, metallic odor. The old mage shook his head and placed a palm against his temple. A Healing spell chimed out and filled the old mer’s eyes with a weird warm-gold color. He smirked at Teldryn, teeth razor-sharp.
“What a mistake you’ve made, Sero,” Neloth said, spitting his name out like a piece of undercooked grizzle. “I knew it was you! Still you haunt me, all these many years later—have you nothing better to do?”
“What, really, did you expect me to do with all this excess time?” Teldryn asked with a cackle. Neloth matched tone with him, his own laugh unnerving and eerie, like it shouldn’t have come out at all.
“Well, finally, a contest worth having,” Neloth said, flexing his fingers as another spell began to congeal.
“Only, it won’t be much of a contest,” Teldryn said. He’d slowly prodded Dusty to begin marching away from the inconvenient window and back toward the rendezvous point, which was the balcony to Neloth’s private apartments. The wayward Nord had estimated he’d only need about ‘ten good minutes.’ Teldryn didn’t want to think what ten bad minutes might have looked like, and hoped only that these had qualified otherwise.
“Such hubris,” Neloth commented. “You never change, Sero.”
“Pot. Kettle. Black,” Teldryn mocked, mimicking Neloth’s nasally tone. It was a phrase the wayward Nord had said to a group of Reavers early on whose insults barely counted as language. They were confused by what the wayward Nord had said, and the confusion had left an excellent opening to end their miserable existences.
Neloth, however, only responded to the taunt with a hurled Lightning spell, which Teldryn barely dodged. He smelled the malodorous stench of burnt chitin where the spell had glanced off his armor.
Excellent. Just what I needed.
Neloth was following the path of the silt strider, keeping a steady hold of his Levitation spell, which wasn’t great. He was distracted, sure, but the point was to escape without the wizard trailing after them. Did the old toad’s Magicka ever run dry? One couldn’t be sure, and that was a problem.
Teldryn taunted Neloth again, dodge rolling nearly ineffectually in the tight space as the wizard swooped at him, hand outstretched as if to grab for his neck. Teldryn had explicit orders not to maim the old wizard, but did he ever want to break a wrist or a nose or something. Instead, he turned his sword around and bonked the wizard’s bald, wizened head again with the pommel.
“Would you cease this foolish nonsense and fight already!?” Neloth shouted, more like a petulant child than even before.
“Best swordsman,” Teldryn said, jabbing his free thumb into his chest, “in all Morrowind.” He grinned, but it again went unseen and was lost on the wizard. “Wouldn’t be a fair fight.”
“ Wouldn’t be a—oh for pity’s sake!” Neloth snarled, dropping his pending spell and pinching the bridge of his nose. “You have such an inflated ego, it’s amazing you’re even able to fit through doors anymore.”
It was at that time the wayward Nord decided to make his presence known.
There came a hell of a noise from the balcony jutting out from just under the cap of the enormous mushroom which made up Neloth’s home. The air itself almost seemed to shake as the wayward Nord shouted…something.
“WULD NAH KEST!”
It didn’t sound like Common, or the other language the man had been speaking all this time. Then, in an explosion of wooden splinters and mushroom flesh, the wayward Nord was flying—arms flailing, armor glinting and everything—aimed straight for Teldryn.
Neloth, however, had turned around, aghast, and placed himself directly in the wayward Nord’s path.
A mistake.
Teldryn cringed as the two collided with an audible crunch and fell in a struggling heap into Dusty’s back. The silt strider let out a surprised shriek of a noise and began jogging away from the tower. The mage’s apprentice shrieked as well and tried casting Calm, but to no avail. In what felt like an instant, Tel Mithryn was fading into the distance as Raven Rock loomed ahead.
Neloth was the first to rise, and he was already on the offensive, Chain Lightning crackling in both hands. The wayward Nord staggered to his feet and pulled an amulet of Talos out of his pocket, cradling some kind of small, strange, colorful, cylindrical container under his other arm. Somehow, he’d lost his scarf. He’d never had a helmet, and so his hair and beard were rats’ nests, tangled with bits of mushroom and wood stuck in the strands. One of the lenses in his borrowed goggles was cracked. The rest of his armor had been dinged and scratched before, but now bore a dent in the left pauldron. He was still grinning, and the expression was decidedly not friendly. The wayward Nord inhaled sharply. Teldryn dropped his sword, which clattered onto the resin floor pads underfoot.
Gods above! Is that the—? Could that mean—?
“Now, wait just a—” Neloth began nervously, dropping his spell. His palms were up and facing the wayward Nord, but it was a gesture of peace come far too late. Teldryn noticed he’d begun sweating.
“FUS RO DAH!”
Each alien word the wayward Nord spat was enunciated in such a way that Teldryn felt them quaking in the very bones of his ribs—all this beyond the vertigo of enduring Dusty’s stumble as the ground shook beneath all of their feet.
Neloth was caught up in a sweep of pure power as it crescendoed out of the wayward Nord’s mouth. The amulet of Talos shone briefly with a silver-blue light and then faded, a crack appearing on the surface of the bronze hammer.
“EAT SHIT, NERD!” the wayward Nord shouted as Neloth tumbled screaming through the air, barely able to get his balance in time to break his unceremonious fall into the ash below.
These words, too, carried with them a kind of power—though nothing as volatile as the Shouts he’d been loosing before. The ground still shook, true, but not nearly as violently this time. Teldryn, come to think of it, wasn’t exactly sure what a ‘nerd’ even was, but he figured any insult good enough for Neloth was another to tuck away in his ever-expanding repertoire.
***
“Did you get what you came for, sera?” Teldryn later asked, as the noise of their escape finally settled and Tel Mithryn was no longer visible against the horizon.
The wayward Nord calmed Dusty with a few prods in the correct globules of nerves exposed at the helm where a silt strider’s handler would normally stand. The enormous bug slowed her pace and her keening cry seemed less panicked than before.
“Yep,” said the wayward Nord. He set the cylinder down by his feet and, without taking his eyes off the ash wastes before them, pulled a small tome out of his armor from behind his chest plate. “That, and Neloth’s stupid notes.” He snorted and held the journal out behind him in Teldryn’s general direction. “Care to read these for me? Aloud?”
“What, sera? Forgot how to read?”
“Can’t drive and read, asshole,” the wayward Nord laughed.
Teldryn smirked and took the book, cracked it open, then settled on the crates beside his employer. He sighed, squinting at the cramped notes in Dunmeris Neloth had written about the object the wayward Nord had stolen, and snapped the book closed. “I could always drive.”
“How about no.”
“This is going to be quite boring, I assure you.”
“Didn’t I already pay you to just, you know, do what I say?”
“Fair point,” Teldryn said. He opened the journal again and smoothed the pages. “Once upon a time…”
“Ahaha. Very funny, dude. No, seriously. Read the damned thing.”
“Okay, fine…” Teldryn scrubbed his palm over his face, covered as it was, and began to read.
The notes—which were much too academic in nature for Teldryn’s liking—described the object as some sort of vessel or canister which kept its contents warm despite the ambient temperature around it, and did so without the aid of Magicka. There were no insets in which soul gems might be set. There were no recognizable Runes inscribed anywhere on the surface—which, Neloth noted, seemed to be crafted of steel, though how it was forged into this particular shape remained a total mystery to him. There was what appeared to be decorative text, but Neloth didn’t seem able to read it. Teldryn pulled the book up to his face and determined, even on close inspection of Neloth’s detailed drawings, he couldn’t read the words, either.
“Hehehe,” laughed the wayward Nord as Teldryn snapped the little journal closed. “They would think this thing was some kind of magical artifact.”
“If it’s not anything of the sort, sera,” Teldryn ventured, apprehensive, “then what exactly is it?”
The wayward Nord slowed Dusty to her most leisurely pace and set aside a few ropes. The silt strider let out another long, mournful keen—though, per usual, there were no answers for her call out across these ash wastes.
“It’s not really much,” the wayward Nord said. “Just my Thermos. It had soup in it—and now it doesn’t, which is a bummer.”
“I don’t understand half of what you just said,” Teldryn said, pondering over words like ‘Thermos’ and ‘bummer,’ and failing to figure out which area on Nirn the language would have even originated.
“It doesn’t matter,” the wayward Nord said with a sigh. He looked dejected. “I had it in my hands when I was—when I got here, to Skyrim. Then I guess shit hit the fan.” He shrugged. “Even though I haven’t been here a super long time…It’s been long enough. I just miss home. My brother. My family. My friends. I’m not super sentimental or anything, but this… Well, it’s the last normal thing to remind me of them, and it didn’t belong with a bunch of wizards.” As if the melancholy had no place in his body, he grinned again. “Plus the thing leaks like crazy. It doesn’t even work right, and never has. Makes their studies of it even more hilarious, if you ask me.”
Teldryn debated asking the next question or not, but after all the nonsense on this job, his curiosity got the better of him. “Where exactly is ‘home,’ to you, sera?”
“Decidedly not here,” the wayward Nord said, frowning again. “I guess you could say I’m an outlander, or whatever.”
“Well, anyone could tell that. But your language—this…this ‘Thermos’, your mannerisms—all of it speaks to places not even I’ve been, and I’ve been around a long while.” Teldryn cleared his throat. “And you never told me you were the Dragonborn! The very one the bards have been going on about in Skyrim proper, I suspect.”
“Hell, my dude, I never even told you my name,” the wayward Nord said with a sarcastic chuckle. “Why would I mention something like that?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
Teldryn waited while the wayward Nord contemplated his hands and grit his teeth. He fidgeted with the lid of the ‘Thermos,’ uncapping it and capping it back again with little metallic scrapes and clicks. Teldryn noticed the paint on the thing was also starting to chip, leaving behind bright silver underneath.
“I wasn’t…well…back where I came from,” the wayward Nord finally offered, “I was sick in a way that tends to go pretty sideways pretty fast. I remember sitting at my PC—” Teldryn turned his head sideways in confusion and the wayward Nord chuckled. “—nevermind, I’m not explaining what that means.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I remember looking into this story one day after a pretty awful round of medication—alchemy, healing, whatever—and thinking, ‘God, I bet they don’t have to deal with this shit there.’ Before I knew it, I was being pulled through, like I’d opened some kind of portal. I woke up in the back of a cart, in serious, serious trouble—but I felt…I dunno. Alive , I guess. Not sick.” He shrugged again. “I haven’t necessarily spent my time very wisely so far, but that doesn’t really matter in the end. I somehow bought myself more time.” He paused. “Doesn’t mean I don’t miss my old life.”
“Believe it or not, sera,” Teldryn said after a brief pause, “I have been terminally ill before, myself. I have held the weight of the world on my shoulders, too. I have been so many different people with so much responsibility over the years that one’s head would spin if you’d even be able to understand half of what I was saying were I to tell the whole story.” He shook his head. “It’s never easy to begin again, and there’s always that pull to return home.”
Teldryn looked up from his own hands and noticed the wayward Nord staring at him. He knit his eyebrows and the wayward Nord just laughed.
“I knew it,” he said. “Nerevarine.”
Teldryn balked and instinctively stepped back. “H-how!?” He would have shrunk into his armor even further if it didn’t already cover every square inch of his skin. “There’s no way you could have known—”
“—Oh, calm down, dude. I’m not going to tell anyone.” He waved dismissively. “I mean. There was a theory one of my friends was stupid about back home. Wrote about a gazillion words on the topic for fun. I literally didn’t care, but…with what you mentioned? Yeah. Makes sense. If I ever see her again, I’ll have to tell her she was right all along.” He nodded at Teldryn. “Thanks for the solidarity, though.”
“Don’t mention it,” Teldryn said, feeling strangely proud and dismayed at the same time. He scratched the back of his neck absently.
The two of them let the silence hang there in the breeze between them amongst the wind and ash. Dusty breathed deeply, her footsteps a distant tremor in the ground below. The wayward Nord had returned to steering the silt strider, and now Raven Rock was becoming a smudge on the horizon to their left as the beast turned toward the frigid northern half of the island.
“So…what now, sera?” Teldryn ventured, convinced there wasn’t any real plan to be had.
“Well…I dunno. I suppose I have a predetermined destiny to do something about, after I’m done fucking around out here,” the wayward Nord said, laughter in his voice.
“Do you want me to stick around?”
“Sure, I guess. I already paid.”
“Do I get to know your name?” Teldryn asked with a laugh.
“Does it matter?” the wayward Nord asked, smirking. “I didn’t even go through character creation, so…I didn’t pick one.”
“You’re…nameless, then?”
“No, not quite. But…I mean. I left pretty much everything else behind, and the name that I came here with doesn’t exactly suit the setting.”
“I have, once again, no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“So, can I call you something other than ‘ Dragonborn’ or ‘that odd, wayward Nord?’ If you are truly without a name, just make one up,” Teldryn said, finding the conversation hilarious. He himself had not gone by ‘Teldryn Sero’ back in the Third Era, that was for sure. This was just one of a great number of aliases.
The wayward Nord let out an exasperated sigh. “I—ugh. Whatever, dude. I dunno. What about… Well… Is ‘Konrad’ a good enough Nord name? Does it sound Nord-ish to you? Do people in Skyrim go by names like that? I have no idea, either.”
“I had a neighbor in Windhelm named Konrad, so I’d say it qualifies,” Teldryn said with another snort of laughter. “Though I warn you, that one’s legacy was one of a skooma addict.”
“Of course it fucking was,” the wayward Nord—Konrad, that was—answered with a roll of his eyes. “It’ll have to do.” He stretched, popping joints in his elbows and neck and shoulders. “Right. So. Let’s go stop a Daedra in his tracks. Then we can, I dunno, maybe check out Windhelm if you want, I guess.”
“Nobody in their right mind wants to go ‘check out Windhelm,’ sera,” Teldryn drawled, mocking the man’s tone.
Konrad looked over his shoulder and beamed. “Like I said, whatever.”