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Shimmermist Cave is a lot colder than he’d expected.
Not that he’d expected a dark, dank crevice in the Whiterun tundra to lead to an oasis of warmth, no — but the damp stones underneath him leach all heat from his bones not unlike a Vampiric draining spell. It seeps deep into his marrow, stiffening his muscles to the point that his movements are now sluggish, slower than he’s been in years. The cold bites into his skin, and he clenches his jaw shut to keep his teeth from chattering. Shimmermist Cave is colder than expected, but then again — he hadn’t expected to be here for more than a few hours, either.
He’s not sure how much time has passed already — the darkness envelopes him, torch long since burnt to embers, and he’s deep enough into the tunnel systems that there isn’t even a breeze to feel on his skin. Hunger gnaws on the edges of his stomach, familiar and unwanted, and his potion of minor healing stares at him tauntingly.
It’s of no use. Even if he takes it, heals the scrapes and bruises that he knows cover his skin after the fall, it still wouldn’t change anything about the situation. He’d still be stuck here, so far down, down, down, into a stupid pit he hadn’t seen under the faint glimmer of the glowing mushrooms that grew on the wall above.
He can still see the light they give off, way above his head — the barest hint of blue light at the top of the pit he’s in. They’d thrown off his perception, and he hadn’t noticed the crevice at his feet until the rock had given way and sent him careening into the depth, scrabbling along the rocky walls as he’d went.
You’ve really fucked it up this time, Jack.
He can almost hear Aela in his head, reprimanding and smug at the same time, the same way she always is. The city guards had mentioned the “small and wicked creatures” near the opening of Shimmermist Cave, and Kodlak Whitemane, harbinger of the Companions, had decided one of them needed to go check it out.
Like the brave, accomplished warrior that he is, Jack had volunteered. Like the reckless, brash adventurer he is, he’d charged in head-first with no one at his back, telling Aela and Farkas that didn’t need the backup.
That panned out great. An explosive sigh finds its way out of his lungs, and Jack lets his head rest back against the numbingly cold stone of what will likely become his tomb. At least if one of them had been here, they might have been able to get him out.
Or, he supposes, they’d have fallen in along with me. That’d be worse than being here alone — Farkas isn’t too bad company, even if he is rather abrupt and reticent, but Aela’s almost worse than he is when it comes to sitting still. If he’d been trapped here, in this pit that he can barely stretch his legs in, with another person equally-if-not-worse at waiting than himself, he might have given up altogether and simply asked her to strike him down immediately.
It’s a bad situation, he’s aware — it might take however-long for someone to realise he really should have returned already, but even then it might take even longer for them to arrive here. Besides — if Vilkas ends up being the one to have to drag him out of this pit, he’d never hear the end of it, and he’d be right back where he started four years ago — treated like an ignorant, untrained pup.
Vilkas had been the one to find him, all those years ago — he’d been living at Katla’s Farm, right on the edge of Solitude, after his parents had both died in the Imperial Legion. No one had bothered to tell him, at first — not until he’d asked if she’d heard anything, and Katla had sneered in his face that he was stuck with her, now.
He’d cared for the horses, and the goats, and the chickens, and the garden — all the things Katla couldn’t be bothered to do herself, and refused to ask her husband Snilling about. She wasn’t unkind, but she didn’t care much about him either, and he’d been grateful for the stable-master Geimund, who’d at least let him sleep on the horses’ straw alongside his two palominos.
It hadn’t been too bad, but when Vilkas had come along and taken care of the Ice Wraith that had appeared inside the farmhouse one day, wearing shining Wolf armour and brandishing a Skyforge steel greatsword — and had told him of Eorlund Gray-Mane, legendary steelforger and blacksmith at the Skyforge in Whiterun.
He’d let him try to hold his weapon, even though Jack hadn’t been strong enough to properly swing a greatsword at barely fourteen, and even though he’d been irritated at the dozens of questions Jack had aimed his way — “Where are you from? What’s your name? Who are the Companions? Can you teach me? Will you let me try?” — he’d seen potential in him, somehow.
He’ll never stop being grateful that Vilkas had given him a chance, despite the fact that they clash more often than not, and the moment that Vilkas had sighed and told him he’d have to be ready to leave in an hour if he really did wish to join the Companions was the moment Jack had realised how radically his life was going to change.
The cart ride back to Whiterun had been harrowingly long and boring, leaving him torn between asking Vilkas every single thing he’d ever wanted to know and wanting to stay quiet so as not to annoy him into leaving him behind, but the Companions had been everything he’d ever dreamed of and more.
Kodlak Whitemane was the harbinger, the one they all looked to for guidance, and he’d taken one look at Jack and decided that he was too young to be offered an initiation quest, instead offering that he could stay on in training with the older members until he was old and strong enough to beat Vilkas in a fight, and complete his own quest with no guidance.
That moment had come only a few months ago — after nearly three and a half years of training, he’d finally bested Vilkas during sparring, managing to send his blade careening out of his grasp instead of letting his own sword tumble from his fingers. After that, Kodlak had sent him out to rescue Jervar from Knifepoint Ridge, after bandits had taken him for ransom.
It hadn’t been a long fight, and though Jervar had promptly stopped talking to his father about his dreams of fighting dragons and going out adventuring, he hadn’t died, and Skulvar had paid handsomely for his return.
That had been enough to finally, finally let him be a full-fledged member of the Companions, complete with his own Skyforge steel. None of them had quite stopped making jokes at his expense, though — Njada still ruffles his hair whenever he walks by, even though she’s only three years older than he is, and Skjor still calls him whelp despite the fact that he’s only a few months out from turning nineteen, and Ria never stopped referring to him as backup even though he’s running his own jobs, now.
It’s infuriating, even if he can’t bring himself to do anything more than snap exasperatedly at them whenever they do it. They’re his family, after all — and they’re everything he’s always wanted to have. After his parents died and he’d ended up with Katla and Snilling, always on the outside of their family and working just to get a place to sleep, he didn’t think he’d ever have something like this, again. He didn’t think he’d ever actually belong.
And sure, Aela might sneak leeks from his plate when he isn’t looking and Farkas might huff and grumble about the fact that he uses “the little swords”, but Athis always backs him up on his choice of shortswords and Torvar heaps extra servings onto his plate more often than not. They call for him to sit with them by the hearth and they teach him fighting, each of them their different styles, and Tilma lets him help out with the cooking whenever he isn’t running through forms in the courtyard.
He sits in on the stories Kodlak tells of the honour of the Companions, on the true spirit of what it is to be one of the fighters to keep Skyrim safe and the proud, honourable traditions they hold — and he shares grins with Aela behind Vilkas’ back whenever she catches him fighting dirty during their sparring. They have a place for him in their hall, and he has a bed in their home, and they want him here despite the fact that he’s still not quite sure what he’s done to deserve the chance.
It’s all he can do to be a strong fighter, to keep the people of Skyrim safe whenever he gets the chance and take down sabre cats and cave bears and giants, and even though he still remembers picking pockets and locks, remembers dodging fists and nocking an arrow and sneaking around — it’s not the way of the Companions, and he’s learnt to be an upfront and close-range fighter from the best.
He might not be an honourable fighter, but he knows how to fight honourably, and it’ll have to be enough. It was enough, right up until he stopped paying attention to the ground beneath him and instead slipped right into a pit of stone deep enough that his screams wouldn’t even reach the outside of the cave, if he were to start shouting.
It’s dumb. It’s exactly the type of short-sighted, brash and reckless stunt that Vilkas has been reprimanding him for ever since he got here, and he laughs a little breathlessly at the irony of it all. He’d been so desperate, so determined to prove him wrong, that he wasn’t like that anymore, that he’d gone and done exactly that.
They’ll find him eventually, he’s sure — but there’s no telling when that’ll be, and he hopes it won’t be much longer. It’s cold down here, and sometimes it feels a little bit like the air is disappearing from his lungs, and once the hunger sets in properly he’ll stop being able to concentrate on anything but that.
He’d really, really like to avoid that.
Almost as if he’d spoken the words aloud, there’s a noise from up above — the scuffling of boots on rock, and then the clicking of a pebble as it skitters across the ground. For a moment he thinks he’s imagined it, but then something sharp and round hits his shoulder, bounces off his armour, and he realises that something did just fall down into his pit of despair.
Someone’s out there.
“Hello?” It is, quite possibly, not the most helpful thing he could have said, but it’s usually a good place to start. I’m stuck would be a little on the nose, and Down here! would just be plain obvious. Besides, he’s much more interested in who, exactly, is going to be the one to fish him up and laugh at him for getting stuck. “Who’s there?”
“Jack Wilder?”
It’s his name, called out in an unfamiliar voice, and Jack frowns as he cranes his head up, staring suspiciously at the shadow that hovers at the very top of the pit. “Who’s asking?”
He’s probably better off just letting himself be helped up, first, and then bothering to find out the name of his rescuer, but there’s something odd about the person who’s looming over him, a vague energy in the air that feels… oppressive, somehow.
“A friend,” comes the cryptic reply, and then a rope is tossed down. “I’m here to make you an offer.”
The rope feels coarse beneath his fingers. Jack wraps his hands around it, and gives an experimental jiggle. “Does my leaving this pit depend on whether I say yes?”
There’s a gruff chuckle, and then the rope tugs upward. He’s quick to steady his hold, and some of the rock wall gives away when he experimentally braces his feet against it as he slowly starts being pulled upwards. “I doubt you’ll say no, but don’t worry. I’m getting you out of this pit regardless.”
“That’s a relief.” The blue light of the glowing mushrooms comes closer, casting a shimmering rim onto the stranger’s hood. “Just don’t push me back in afterwards, yeah?”
“Deal.” There’s humour in it, despite the voice carrying the same rough quality that Farkas’ voice does, and it’s only when Jack’s able to reach up and clasp his hand around an unfamiliar wrist, guarded by intricate, dark-wrapped gloves, that he’s able to peek underneath the hood.
Determined, deep brown eyes stare back at him, unflinching, and there’s a tight set to the man’s mouth as he heaves Jack up and over the ridge. The edge of his armour presses uncomfortably against his ribs as he leans on the edge, and his boots scrabble for purchase underneath him until he finds his footing and manages to drag himself back into the cave properly.
He takes a moment to gather himself, dusting off the dirt from the fur lining of his armour and biting back a grimace at the stiffness in his limbs before he extends a hand, letting an easy grin show on his face. “Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome,” the stranger says, and clasps his hand firmly. They shake, for a brief moment, and then the other man lets go and takes a step back, muttering something quietly as he waves a hand. There’s a blinding light, and suddenly a glowing orb hovers above him, illuminating them both in a stark, white glow.
“You’re a mage,” Jack says, unbidden, and can’t help but gawk at the display of magic. None of the Companions are mages — they’re warriors, and they prefer to fight up-close and personal. Most of the people are wary about magic, too — they get travelers sometimes, who take a room in the Bannered Mare, who have magic swirling at their fingertips. They’re rarely respected by anyone — mostly, he’s overheard the guards talking about it, their mocking sneers as they call out, “So… you can cast a few spells. Am I supposed to be impressed?”
Occasionally it leads to a fight breaking out, and Jack himself has been sent to clear out a brawl in the tavern once or twice. Despite what the others say, and the mockery that seems to follow mages no matter the school they’re in — he’s always thought magic was kind of cool. It’s not for him, but it’s intriguing, and watching this man conjure light out of thin air takes his breath away for a moment.
“I know a few spells,” the stranger says, inclining his head, “but I wouldn’t call myself a proper mage. That’s why I’m here.”
“Oh, I don’t know any magic,” Jack’s quick to deny, holding up his hands before he knows it. “The last time I thought I could cast a spell was when I fell and had a concussion.”
That earns him a laugh, and the hood is pulled down to reveal a head of dark, slightly greying curls and laugh lines etched into the skin around his eyes. There’s a rustle of fabric as the cowl folds down, and Jack lets his eyes roam over the unfamiliar armour. He’s never seen it before, anywhere — not even Adrianne Avenicci, the second blacksmith in Whiterun, has ever had anything like it.
“My name is Dylan,” the other man says, “Dylan Shrike. I’ve been looking for you — for people like you, to help me with a quest. You’re welcome to say no, but I suspect you’ll want to hear me out.”
He seems— sincere, Jack supposes, even if there’s a tight set to his shoulders that he doesn’t quite trust. The armour he’s wearing is lightweight, suggesting the man prefers to stay quick on his feet or out of fights altogether, and though there’s no swords hanging from his belt, Jack spots the outline of a dagger hidden in the folds of one of the dark bracers.
“Is this something we need to discuss in here?” Jack asks, instead of any of the questions he wants to ask about the armour, “I’m actually looking forward to seeing the sun, if I’m being honest.”
“Right.” Dylan looks put out for a moment, and Jack wonders if he’s just interrupted whatever spiel the other had prepared. “Yes, of course — follow me.”
“I know the way,” Jack says sullenly, but dutifully lets Dylan turn around first and tries not to scuff his boots across the ground as he walks around the pit. Just because he’d been stupid enough to fall into a hole in the ground, doesn’t mean he’s lost. He’s perfectly capable of exploring caves on his own — he just needs the ground to remain solid beneath his feet.
Dylan huffs in response, but keeps walking, and it’s not long before the winding path takes them upwards and the air becomes a little fresher, a little brighter, and light starts spilling from around the corner. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Wilder.”
Jack grins appreciatively at the other man before rounding the corner, and promptly stopping in his tracks. The crevice he’d crept through to get into Shimmermist Cave is just as narrow and uninviting as it’d been before, but now there’s a body right outside the cave.
“Uh,” Jack says intelligently, and he resists the urge to point at it. “That wasn’t there when I got here.”
“I know,” Dylan says airily, “I put it there.”
“Right.” He doesn’t say anything else, and when he looks up, the sun is bright overhead, bearing down on him like it’s trying to burn. He feels a little unmoored from time itself, and it’s disorienting. When he’d gone in, the sun had only just been creeping up into the sky, and it felt like he’d been in there longer than just a few hours.
“It’s been a little over a day since you went in,” Dylan says, almost as if he’d read his mind — and Jack wonders, suddenly, whether there’s a mindreading spell that could tell you what someone is thinking. “Not quite long enough for any of the Companions to realise you were missing, but long enough that it won’t be much longer until they come looking.”
“That’s good,” Jack says, and then looks back down at the body. Startlingly, it looks a little bit like him. “So why then did you put that here?”
It’s probably a bandit, scouting for a location to set up camp, or looking for some quick coin to make raiding a cave or outlook, or maybe an assassin hired to kill someone. There’s a reasonable explanation, both for why this man was here and for why Dylan killed him, but when Jack looks back and tries to meet his eyes, Dylan avoids his questioning gaze.
“I’m looking for capable people,” he says instead, raising his voice slightly as though he’d rehearsed what he was going to say. “People like you. People that can fight, that are clever — people that maybe aren’t quite needed right where they are.”
What. He’s too late in wiping the frown off his face, given that Dylan squints at him in response, but he shrugs to let Dylan continue.
“The Greybeards have shouted for the Dragonborn. You might have heard them, all the way from High Hrothgar — the world is changing, and it’s changing quickly. Rumours of a dragon attacking Helgen have made the rounds — we need people capable of fighting back and surviving. Mages, warriors, assassins, thieves — all of them.”
“Thieves? Assassins?” There’s no keeping the incredulity out of his voice, now. “You want to rest the fate of the world in the hands of a bunch of cheaters?”
Nevermind that he was a thief, too. There’s no room for dishonourable acts in the Companions, and even though he knows the knowledge will never leave him — even though he still remembers the feel of tumblers of a pick in a lock clicking beneath his fingertips, there’s no need to fall back on those skills, anymore. Not when he’s got a place to land, and people to catch him. The Companions are honourable fighters, and that means he will become one, too.
“I want to rest the fate of the world in the hands of people who are creative.” Dylan frowns at him, something vaguely disapproving in his gaze, and sighs. “I know you weren’t always with the Companions. I’d hoped you would understand the nuance, the necessity of doing what you need to for survival. You can’t win only by playing fair. Sometimes you need to fight dirty, to use cheap shots. I thought you, of all people, would see the value in that.”
Dylan turns back, eyes drifting along the horizon of the tundra, the stark outline of the city of Whiterun along the sky, and suddenly, something desperate surges up in Jack’s throat.
“Wait—!”
He’s out of breath, even though he’s done nothing but stand here, and the importance of the moment looms above him like a heavy raincloud. “Stop, wait, just— why me? How did you know?”
Dylan pauses in his movement, face still turned away into the breeze, and he hums. “People talk, if you know how to listen. It’s one of the things they teach you in the Dark Brotherhood.”
Dylan turns back, and Jack feels his blood freeze. The Dark Brotherhood. He recognises the name, the same as anyone else in Tamriel would. The Dark Brotherhood is a notorious organisation of assassins, who appear to anyone who would dare perform the Black Sacrament to summon one of theirs to end another’s life. They’ve become somewhat of a myth, a folk tale to scare unruly children, but he’s seen the haste with which Ria had thrown A Kiss, Sweet Mother into the fire when she’d seen it in the stack of books he’d carried in, years back.
The Dark Brotherhood is a shadow, but they still lurk in the very corners of the hold, and people’s voices are hushed in superstition whenever they dare speak of them as though the mere mention of their name is enough to summon one of their dreaded assassins.
They kill, indiscriminately, and Dylan just admitted that he’d learned from them.
“Are you…?” Here to kill me? An assassin? He’s not sure where to end the question, but Dylan laughs anyway, shoulders losing some of their tension.
“No,” he says easily, and somehow, Jack believes him. “I just believe in learning from every source I can find, which includes those that society finds less favourable. Killing is killing — the only difference is whether we find it a noble death.”
It makes sense, is the thing — Jack can’t imagine taking a life solely for the hell of it, or because there’s coin in it, but he knows the Companions take contracts on bandit leaders who cause a ruckus, and— aren’t they people, too?
He’s never dared question the morality of it all — it’s never been his place, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be comfortable with what the Dark Brotherhood does, but… if Dylan’s right, and if he sets aside the moral code that the Companions have — he can see that it makes sense.
“Okay,” he says, “so— you learned from the assassins. Did you learn from thieves, too? Or the mages?”
“Some,” Dylan says, “I don’t run with the Thieves’ Guild, nor with the College, but I have acquaintances in both that help me when I need it. The same goes for the Brotherhood. And,” Dylan takes a slow breath, and Jack mirrors him in anticipation, “the same goes for the Companions.”
“You have contacts in the Companions?” It’s unfathomable. Dylan… does not seem like an honourable man, not by Companion standards, but no one in Jorrvaskr would dare deal with a disreputable man. Or they’d keep it very, very quiet, a small voice in the back of Jack’s brain supplies, and he promptly ignores it. “Who?”
Dylan laughs, and shrugs. “That’s not your business. Not yet, anyway.” He casts a look over his shoulder, the Whiterun city wall a dark shadow against the bright clouds, and when he looks back, his eyes are dark. “So— you running back to your Companions? Leaving me and my dishonourable ways behind?”
There’s a sardonic smile on his face, and Jack knows, already, that he’s in too deep. That the curiosity that’s already gnawing on the inside of his skin will only sink in deeper if he leaves now. “Tell me about your plan,” he says instead, and he sinks down to sit on a rock — carefully angled away from the corpse.
It doesn’t smell, yet, but it won’t take too long. From up close, he can see a splatter of red staining the lining of the armour. It’s not the broad slash of a greatsword, nor is it the thin, telling slices of a shortsword. He thinks back to the dagger hidden in Dylan’s bracer, and promptly looks away again.
“I need people,” Dylan says again, “to learn from, to learn with — people who will have each other’s back, no matter what. Different backgrounds, different skillsets — so that we’re as prepared as we can be to handle whatever comes up.”
“What makes you so certain things are coming up?” Jack asks, difficult for the sake of it, and Dylan breathes out lightly at the question.
“I was there,” he says, sinking down onto another one of the rocks protruding from Shimmermist Cave’s entrance, “In Helgen. When the dragon attacked.”
There’s a moment where the words hover between them, and a dozen more questions crop up immediately. Why was Dylan there? The last thing he’d known about Helgen was the execution, Ulfric Stormcloak in bounds and the Imperial Legion ready to end the civil war — right up until fire and death rained from the sky, the first dragon to be seen in centuries appearing out of nowhere. He swallows them all, though, and lets Dylan continue.
“Things are being set in motion that have been waiting for a long time. The Daedra are shifting, getting involved in mortal affairs again, and if the Greybeards’ shouting is to be believed, they are signalling the return of the Dragonborn. More things are coming, and I want to be prepared for them all.”
“What do you want with me, then?” It’s not a difficult question, but it is an important one. If what Dylan needs is seasoned, strong warriors — well, he might be bold, but he’s not stupid enough to claim that he’s better than Vilkas, or Farkas. Hell, even Aela’s quicker on her feet during Vilkas’ lessons than he is, loathe as he is to admit it. If Dylan is looking for someone to help him change the world, he shouldn’t be asking someone who’s barely reached his eighteenth summer.
Dylan sucks in air sharply, and his gaze is heavy when it falls on Jack. “You’re quick,” he says, “too quick for the Companions. You fight strong, but your talent isn’t just in your swordwork — it’s in the way you’re light on your feet, dodging and weaving in the ways the Companions aren’t supposed to. It’s in the way you know exactly which way to turn a pick to open a lock, and the way you know exactly how to disguise the weight of any item you want to steal from a pocket.”
There’s an uncomfortable prickle down his spine at being read so easily, seen so quickly, but Dylan continues. “You combine several styles — you learn quick and you adapt. I don’t need an honourable fighter, a true Companion — I need someone who can become anything that we need hem to.”
Just an hour ago, Jack thinks faintly, Dylan’s words might have stung him. I don’t need a true Companion. It implies that Jack isn’t one, not wholly — and even though he’s claimed the title, belongs in their ranks — he doesn’t fit truly, not really. He’s known it from the day he showed up, and he’s known it ever since — he’s too quick to be a bold and brazen fighter like Farkas, and he’s not bloodthirsty enough to be like Aela. He likes puzzles, and solving things, and outsmarting whatever enemy he’s been sent to deal with.
There’s no outsmarting a sabre cat, or an ice wraith. There’s only the thrill of the fight, fast and quick, and then the cleanup.
For the first time in four years, he lets himself wonder what it would be like to drop the Code. To let himself give into the curiosity of picking pockets, just to see what people are carrying, and setting up a trap instead of storming in headfirst the way a brave soldier does. He wonders what it’d be like to have people at his back who don’t scoff at him and call him whelp for his excitement, for his inability to sit still, and for his endless fascination with exploring and the Skyrim wilderness.
The Companions are his family, and he loves them as much as he loves the place they made for him — but he’s never felt like he could be completely himself. He’s not supposed to be — not when he can’t admit that he likes the thrill of stealing, of breaking the law silently where no one sees and picking locks just to see what lies behind the door.
It’s unlawful. It’s against the Code that they uphold, to remain true and do what’s right and protect the people of Skyrim from wrongness. It’s also something that’s as familiar to him as breathing, even though he hasn’t given into the compulsion for years. He’s never had a place where those skills wouldn’t be unwanted, and—
And here Dylan is, offering him just that.
He can’t just leave the Companions behind, not when he’s found a home in Tilma’s cooking and Aela’s cackling laugh and Ria’s well-intentioned advice, but he can’t ignore the fact that he wants this. He wants to give in and join this stranger, who’s here asking for him, who wants him because he thinks Jack could be important. Because he thinks Jack will become someone important.
More than anything, he wants to learn — everything and anything, whatever the world has to offer, and it’s the first time that he’s getting the opportunity to learn outside of Whiterun’s walls.
“Who else will be there?” he asks, instead of letting any of that spill from his lips, and Dylan laughs.
“You’re the first one I’m reaching out to,” he says, “but there’s five on my list. There’s you, the Companion, and next we’re heading south of Falkreath to pick up our Dark Brotherhood assassin. I think you’ll like her — you remind me of her. Afterwards, east to Riften — there’s someone from the Thieves’ Guild that I’ve got my eye on. I’m sure I’ll be able to convince her.”
“That’s three,” Jack says, when Dylan falls silent, and he holds up his hands innocently when Dylan glares at him. “What? I can count, and we’re still missing some people by then.”
“Then,” Dylan says, voice thick in exasperation, “We’re heading to Winterhold to pick up a mage. He’ll want to join us, but it’ll help if we pick up our Thief before that.”
It’s a little funny, Jack supposes — he’s never met Dylan before, and Dylan’s never met him, but the exasperation in his voice is an exact copy of the tone Vilkas has with him sometimes, whenever he knows he’s not supposed to strike first but can’t resist beginning the spar, anyway. It’s familiar, in a surprising way, and there’s a sense of normalcy in it. It’s not true irritation, anyway, which is the only thing that stops him from worrying that he’s already pissed the other man off.
“After all that,” Dylan says, “we’re heading for our final person — one of the court wizards. I can’t tell you who just yet, but we’re picking him up last. I get the sense that he wouldn’t get along that well with our mage.”
“Great,” Jack says, and then bites back a laugh. “You’re going to save the world with a band of five, and two of them likely won’t get along. You’re crazier than I am.”
“Six, if you count me in,” Dylan says, but there’s a twinkle in his eye as he grins back. “We don’t need any more. If it all pans out, we’ll have access to any faction we need — the Brotherhood, the Guild, the Companions, the Mage’s College, the Nightingales — we’ll even have access to the Jarls, through our wizard’s influence. We don’t need more people — all we’ll need is time.”
The Nightingales. They’re a myth, something Jack’s read about in one of the ancient tomes Vignar Gray-Mane had left about in Jorrvaskr, an ancient order that gathered for one of the Daedric Princes. They’re Agents of Nocturnal, granted mystical powers of shadow and secrecy, and no one’s heard of them in decades.
Jack tilts his head a little, squints his eyes slightly against the brightness of the sun’s light reflecting off of Dylan’s armour, and huffs out an incredulous laugh. The unfamiliarity of the armour makes sense, now — the unknown crest in the middle of the chestplate, the smooth dark fabric wrapped around the wristguards unlike any other type of bracer he’s ever seen…
Dylan is wearing the armour of a faction that’s long since faded from knowledge in Skyrim, gathering people in the shadows to prepare for a changing world. It sounds too good to be true, but the chances of this being a test, or a trap, somehow — they’re too slim, given that Dylan would have had to dig up an ancient, forgotten armour just to gather a shred of credibility.
Wherever he got it, Dylan’s unraveled one of the greater mysteries in Skyrim, and if he’s managed that… What else is real? The Pale Lady? Red Eagle’s sword? The Gauldur Legend?
Wanderlust creeps up, bubbling and threatening to spill over, and the decision seems almost too easy. He loves the Companions, loves having a home and people to catch him, but this— this is offering him the chance to be greater. To have his name go down in history, along with the rest of them — and to save the people of Skyrim while he’s at it.
What better way to uphold the Code, than to make sure he stops the evil before it happens?
It’s just— “They’ll look for me,” Jack says, and the realisation strikes him like a lightning bolt. “I have to— to write a letter, or leave a note, and go back to pack my things. I can’t just disappear.”
“That’s what this is for,” Dylan grimaces, and there’s something almost apologetic in the slump of his shoulders as he looks down and nods towards the body.
The body that looks a little bit like Jack.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then meets his gaze. His eyes are a dark, heavy brown, but there’s no deceit in them when he says it. “You’re— you’re young, and you’re still under their protection. It’s like you said — if you disappeared, you’d come looking, and if you left, I doubt they’d welcome you back. But…”
“You’re going to make them think I’m dead,” Jack says, and his voice almost doesn’t feel like his own. Dylan sighs.
“If they think you died exploring Shimmermist Cave, they won’t search. They’ll even ignore any rumours of sightings of you across Skyrim. We’ll be safe, and once we’ve accomplished our task, kept Skyrim safe, you can return with the knowledge that you did what they would ask of you, honour intact. You can blame me for it, if you’d like. That way you’ll still have a place with them, afterwards.” Dylan lowers his eyes, face turned away, almost as if to give him a semblance of privacy. “It’s your choice.”
Let the people he loves think that he’s dead, or miss out on an opportunity that is everything he’s ever wanted — even when he didn’t know it yet? Despite the faint nausea that rises at the idea, he knows already what he’s going to say. It’s barely even a choice.
He nods, and has to look away when Dylan takes a step aside and readies his hands, flames crackling in his palms as he calls forth a Flames spell. It’s a novice spell, Jack knows, but there’s nothing simple about the way the fire sputters and churns, about the smell of burnt flesh that drifts upwards and leaves the unknown man an unrecognisable corpse.
The blackened skin, the burnt edges of the armour… it won’t be hard to mistake the body for himself, not when Shimmermist Cave was his last known location. When he looks up, the sun has moved incrementally further along the sky, and he knows they’re about to be out of time. They have to get moving, and their first stop… the Dark Brotherhood, apparently. He looks up, schools his face into something slightly more neutral, and offers, “So… Falkreath?”
Dylan stares right back at him, carefully contemplating, and the sun’s light reflects off of his strange armour. There’s a knapsack leaning against the side of the cave’s entrance that Jack hadn’t seen earlier, and when Dylan tosses it his way, it looks to be filled with foods and a few potions. It’s travel supplies, even a new shirt, and Dylan bares his teeth in a grin when he extends a hand out to pull Jack upright from his rock. “Falkreath.”