Aithne felt it the moment Merks began the teleportation incantation -- not in the magic itself, but in its density. The spell folded inward on itself, syllables stacking where there should have been release. Teleportation was a bridge, not a knot; a direction, a destination, a letting‑go.

This one closed like a fist.

Her attention snapped fully into focus. “Merks…” she began, already turning toward him, already reaching to interrupt…

The spell snapped shut.

The world twisted violently sideways. Sound flattened into pressure, light smeared, and then Aithne gasped as gravity reclaimed her with violent intention. Chains bit into her wrists, cold and unforgiving, halting her fall with a teeth‑jarring jerk that wrenched breath from her lungs. Her arms were yanked overhead, spread wide. Her legs followed a heartbeat later, ankles caught and dragged down until her body was stretched taut between ceiling and floor. Pain erupted, white and immediate, fire racing along pulled muscle and stretched joints. Her breath came out in a broken gasp she couldn’t finish.

She blinked through the blur of her vision; as if in compensation, her ears starting ringing.

The cave was cramped and dark, lit only by an ancient brazier that flared in front of her, otherwise filled with shadows and secrets. The chains were not bolted on after the fact; they vanished into the rock itself, old and fused, part of the cave’s original construction.

This wasn’t restraint; it was presentation.

“Merks.” Her voice came out raw, lungs struggling against the pull of the chains to give her a full breath. “What did you do?”

The air cracked and he appeared a few paces in front of her.

He was wearing the mask. It sat wrong on his face -- too complete, as if it had always belonged there. The metal caught the cave light and gave nothing back. The artifact hummed faintly, resonating with the chains, with the stone, with something deep inside her chest that recoiled on instinct.

Then Merks laughed. It wasn’t controlled, wasn’t measured. He threw his head back and howled, the muffled sound adding an otherworldly cast that echoed off the stone and came back layered and multiplied. It scraped across Aithne’s nerves and she found herself shaking.

“Oh,” he gasped, laughter breaking into breath. “You lied to me. Gods, you lied so well.”

Aithne swallowed hard as her heart hammered in pained staccato beats. “Take it off. Merks, that mask is…”

His laughter cut off like it had smashed against a wall. “…the only honest thing you've ever given me.” He stepped closer, eyes wide and crazed through the thick holes in the mask. His gaze fixed on her, bright with a fevered kind of clarity. “It gave my memories back.”

Her stomach dropped and it took her a moment to wheeze out, “What memories?”

“All of them. I remember exactly what you were – a slave who thought too highly of herself. Who thought she was better than her master!” 

This was accompanied by a sharp slap across Aithne’s face, and she could not hold back a yelp; not from the pain so much as the fear that finally found the crevasses in her confusion and came pouring out like ants toward a picnic.

“You belonged to Urag.” Merks’ voice had turned conversational. “He got bored of you. Gave you away.” His head tilted, studying her. “To me.”

A familiar and long-since-buried darkness stirred. That was true. Sort of. The fact was there, if not the meaning.

“No." She gasped the words through pained lips. "You don’t get to say it like that.”

“I get to say it however I like, bitch.” He slapped her again as her breath stuttered. “You were very good at following instructions. But also very good at pretending you were above it.” His voice dripped with remembered amusement. “An act that fooled no one -- you always flinched when you thought I wasn’t looking.”

Her vision tunneled. Fragments surged up unbidden – the days in the Arcaneum, looking with pity upon the boys pretending to be men. Why had she pushed them? How had she been so bold? She swallowed hard.

“You didn’t own me. You borrowed me.”

Merks laughed again, delighted. “Listen to you! Even now, with your lies laid bare, you’re still rewriting.” He gestured broadly at the chains. “You really hate those, don’t you? You always did.” His voice softened into mock sympathy. “But they did keep you still.”

Her pulse roared in her ears.

“I remember your rebellions. First the shelves.”

Aithne went very still.

“Yes,” he said, head tilting to the side. It would have looked bizarrely hilarious if it wasn’t so altogether frightening. “You snapped. That was the word I used at the time. One moment you were pretending to behave, the next the entire room came down on me.”

Her breath hitched. Bookshelves crashing. Stone cracking. The terrible satisfaction of letting go.

“And then you smashed in my head. That’s how I really died. Not from falling. How stupid was I to believe that? I could fly! I was the best at flying! There is no way I would have died that way. No.” Merks leaned forward, eyes wide and bloodshot. “Hit in the heady by MY OWN TROPHY by a rebellious slave who never…”

He reached out with a hand and grabbed the front of Aithne’s robe and yanked. Aithne yelped as her shoulders screamed in protest at the movement, but the material held.

Merks growled as he yanked again. “…learned…”

She squeezed her eyes shut as another yelp escaped her. The material held once again.

Merks made a strangled sound and stepped back. “…her place! Lyon!”

With a swipe of his hand, Aithne’s robe and the underthings below split away. Merks stepped forward with another growl, frustrated because his ploy to dramatically strip her had not gone the way he expected and, even after using lyon, her body was still mostly covered and now he was going to have to very undramatically remove the rest in sections because the chains were in the way and this was all making him feel somehow embarrassed in front of a slave, which was not the way things should be and she was going to pay for every moment of it.

Aithne knew all this because the spell also neatly removed the necklace that had been holding back his thoughts. After a few moments of hearing his increasingly annoyed upper thoughts as he circled around her, zapping away her clothes from every angle, mixed with the deep carnal hunger that lay buried within, she longed for the amulet back.

The darkness surged. It crawled up her spine, thick and suffocating, dragging old instincts with it. Don’t argue. Don’t escalate. Don’t remind them you think. Her thoughts fractured, breath shortening as the cave pressed in around her. Borkul’s voice spoke from what felt like the bedrock of her existence: “You are a slave. You have always been a slave. You will always be a slave.”

She found her head shaking as the last of her clothes slipped away, leaving her bare and spread before Merks, who stripped himself of everything but the mask and approached her with a hunger that rose as rapidly as his cock.

“No.” She whispered the word. She had been through so much, had fought and scrambled to get away from exactly this. She would NOT let it happen again! She had beaten Borkul, had beaten Merks before! She was NOT THE WEAK WOMAN WHO HAD SUCCUMED!!  Fire raged in her and she felt magic flow. She didn’t need her hands to cast spells – just like at Korvanjund, she just needed to WILL it to…

“Oh no,” Merks said pleasantly. “No spellcasting.”

He gestured.

The silver collar snapped into place, tight and immediate, the enchantment biting hard as it locked around Aithne’s neck. In an instant, the mana was gone; not even a hint of it hovered nearby. The sound that tore out of her was raw and helpless, cut short as the spell sealed.

And then, despite her protests, despite all she had done, despite all she had become, despite all her victories, a moment later she was just a slave getting fucked by her master, and there was nothing she could do but weep.

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Nyatt said it from the doorway, arms folded, broad shoulders nearly scraping stone on either side. Snow clung stubbornly to his boots despite the heat of the suite, leaving wet crescents on the floor.

Aithne did not look up from the table. “It’s stone. Your tusks will survive.”

Nyatt snorted. “Stone that thinks it’s smarter than me. I don’t like it.”

Chyehye, sprawled sideways across one of the couches with a book upside down on her chest, didn’t bother opening her eyes. “You don’t like quiet. This place is quiet.”

Nyatt crossed the room in three heavy strides and planted himself opposite Aithne, looming over her notes.

“It’s been three weeks. We should go.”

Aithne turned a page, careful not to smudge the charcoal diagram beneath her fingers. “We are going. Just not today.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“And the day before,” Chyehye added, although her tone seemed to imply she wasn’t as bothered by the situation. “And the day before that.”

Aithne sighed and finally looked up.

The suite was too large for comfort -- vaulted ceiling, large windows, furniture chosen more for prestige than use. Someone had tried to make it welcoming. Someone had failed.

Her gaze flicked, unbidden, to the tower she could just see; it rose above Winterhold like a needle driven into the sky, and at its summit the Staff of Magnus now stood mounted in a lattice of stone and brass that had not existed a month earlier. Depending on which member of the college leadership was asked, it was called an installation, a stabilization measure, or a precaution, all of which were accurate, in their way, and perhaps the best explanation they could give when they didn’t really know why it was there, themselves.

Aithne felt the Staff constantly, a low pressure behind her eyes, a steady pull like gravity leaning slightly sideways. It drank ambient magic the way stone drank heat, smoothing currents that would have once surged or spiked. The wards around the College no longer crackled -- they breathed.

She sighed and refocused on her spouses. “I know. I just need a little more time.”

Nyatt’s jaw tightened. “Mor Khazgur’s ready.”

Aithne paused, hoping her annoyance wasn’t showing – she had hoped it would take at least another week for their new home to be built. “That was fast.”

“We are ṭi nyi -- they didn’t waste time.” Nyatt’s tusks flashed briefly. “They said the space is ours whenever we want it.”

Chyehye tapped an idle finger against the wall next to her. “Translation: they expect us.”

“They listened,” Nyatt added. “About the wolves. Put people on the walls.” He overrode the ensuing silence with, “We’ve done what we came to do. No one’s waiting on us here.”

Aithne shut the book and opened a new one while trying to push down the frustration that was building in her. Nyatt could have pushed, could have reminded her he was technically the one in charge. The fact that he had not deserved her gratitude. No matter how much she longed to just continue her studies for an indefinite time, she owed it to him to give in.

Just not quite yet.

“Two more days.”

Nyatt studied her face, long and intent, the way he did when weighing an oath. “You keep saying that. And every day you disappear into books while we sit here counting cracks in the stone.”

Aithne’s mouth twitched despite herself. “And how many are there?”

“Thirty-seven in the eastern wall.” Chyehye raised an eyebrow when both Aithne and Nyatt looked at her. “What? You asked.”

Later that night, after she and Chyehye had done their wifely duties and her spouses were asleep, Aithne returned to the quiet of room she had converted to her office and tried to think.

Everyone in the college had become too accommodating. It was unnerving.

No one argued when Aithne asked for restricted texts. No one questioned why she wanted old diagrams, half‑burned treatises, records of disasters no one liked to talk about. Aithne had expected resistance when she made her suggestions, had rehearsed arguments and contingencies. Instead, she had been met with a quiet, almost alarming readiness to agree. 

“Yes,” Faralda had said when Aithne suggested extending the college’s barrier beyond the bridge to encompass the town.

“Of course,” Tolfdir had murmured when she asked that Saarthal be left undisturbed beyond routine surveys. 

“Entirely reasonable,” the Archmage had said when Aithne pleaded that the giant orb remain buried where it lay, should it ever be found again. No one knew what orb she meant -- they agreed anyway, though their minds told her they still thought she was at least half-mad. 

Their compliance did not relax Aithne. If anything, it put her more on edge -- compliance born of ignorance was dangerously fickle. She did not want obedience, she wanted them to understand.

But how could they?

She, herself, after three weeks of nothing but study, had come up with a million ideas about what to do about a giant dragon who could fill the Eye of Magnus so full of power, it exploded. In less than five minutes. The amount of magic to accomplish that was beyond staggering – all the mages in the history of the world combined would take a thousand years to accomplish the same thing, from Aithne’s reckoning.

The Staff of Magnus worked because it consumed rather than commanded. The orb worked because it reflected, magnified, and returned force without judgment. Together, they formed a system that removed agency from everyone else, a pure closed loop. But they broke down if agency was forced upon them by, say, a giant lizard shoving more power into them than they could handle.

She read until her eyes ached and her fingers smudged with charcoal and ink. Patterns repeated themselves whether she wanted them to or not: objects that consumed. Objects that reflected. Objects that amplified until something broke. Again and again, she returned to the same conclusion and refused to write it down.

Some things were safe only as long as they never met.

Aithne felt Merks return before she heard him. He had resumed his studies and she had seen less and less of him as the days had passed. It was a nice change, in a way, although she did really miss his tea – he somehow made it just right every single time. She turned as he approached, then stopped short when she saw his frazzled expression. The room seemed to tighten around him -- he stood too straight, eyes too bright, like someone who hadn’t slept and didn’t care.  She ignored the temptation to pull Jorg’s amulet away from her skin so she could read his mind. 

“You found something.”

 “Yes.” Merks hesitated, itself a rare occasion. “I think so.”

 “Think?”

 “It doesn’t fit any catalog. It isn’t Dwemer. It isn’t Nordic. It isn’t…anything I’ve seen before.” His fingers twitched, restless. “The theory implications alone…”

 “Merks.”

 He inhaled sharply and forced himself into stillness. “It can’t be moved.”

 Aithne nodded and stood. “Where?”

 “Below the old break – a cave hidden by flickering anomalies. It can’t be mapped -- the walls rearrange when marked. Some sort of spatial recursion, but anchored.”

 Aithne’s heart thumped. “How could something like that have stayed hidden for so long?”

 Merks shrugged. “Because of the flickering anomalies. I’m not sure what caused them, but they…trick the mind into seeing something else than what is there. I only noticed because…” He stopped.

“Because?”

He shuffled his feet, a move that would have been adorable on literally anyone but Merks. “I was…practicing flying. And…sort of fell right in front of it.”

 Aithne laughed. “You were flying? That’s great!”

“It most definitely is not.” He took a deep breath. “I made a portal insignia in the cave. It is just within range – I can get us there once we are clear of the wards.” 

“All right, let’s go.” 

Aithne took one last look at her notes then followed him as she wondered what secret had apparently been hiding under the feet of generations of mages for who knew how long...and what finding it might do. Some things waited patiently beneath stone and years, and she had learned the hard way that waiting did not necessarily mean sleeping.

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The cold bit differently when it was chosen.

Aithne always noticed that first -- the distinction between weather endured and weather arrived at by will. The College of Winterhold shimmered into being around them in a rush of magic and sea wind, the familiar stone arches snapping into place as if they had merely been waiting for her to remember them. Snow scurried across the courtyard in thin, whispering sheets. The sea roared below the cliffs, patient and eternal.

Aithne staggered half a step as the teleport completed, the Staff of Magnus heavy and solid in her grip. Her wards flared out of instinct before settling, and she took a breath, grounding herself in the sensation of stone beneath her boots.

They were back.

Her family -- Nyatt and Chyehye -- appeared beside her in the afterglow of the spell. As did Merks. For a heartbeat, no one spoke. The College loomed, unchanged in its ancient caution, as if it hadn’t yet decide whether they were permitted to exist within its walls.

Aithne let out a long, quiet breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

Home.

Nyatt glanced around with a low whistle, ears twitching as he took in the gray towers and the yawning archway ahead. Chyehye’s eyes were sharp and thoughtful, cataloguing lines of sight and exits, the way she always did when entering unfamiliar territory. The orcs shifted, massive and uneasy, their armor ill-fitted to marble corridors and academic quiet.

Merks, for his part, simply nodded once, as if confirming something he had already known would be true.

“Still standing,” he said.

Aithne smiled faintly. “Winterhold tends to manage that much, at least.”

They moved quickly through the courtyard, Aithne guiding them by habit rather than conscious thought. Every turn felt etched into her bones. She half-expected to hear Mirabelle’s voice calling out instructions or see Tolfdir wandering too close to an active ward, oblivious as ever.

When she finally reached the door to her suite, her hand paused on the latch. There was a sharp fear that someone else would open it from the inside. It would be like Savos to take away her agreed-to suite the moment she seemed to disappear.

The door swung inward with a familiar creak, revealing the small, well-appointed space beyond. The shelves were bare, the desk untouched, the worktable standing exactly where she remembered leaving it.

Aithne laughed softly, the sound breaking out of her before she could stop it. Relief loosened something tight in her chest, something she hadn’t even realized had been braced.

“Well,” she said, stepping aside to let the others in, “it appears Savos is an elf of his word.”

The orcs filed in, ducking their heads under the doorframe, glancing around with something like suspicion. The suite was not designed for bodies like theirs, nor for lives like theirs. Aithne turned to them once they were all inside.

“I need to talk to Savos and get this staff where it can do some good. Technically you two aren’t supposed to be here, so please stay here until I get back. I’ll bring food with me.”

Chyehye shrugged while Nyatt let out a laugh and said, “Where would we even go? Do what you must. We can speak about what comes next after we have eaten and rested.”

Aithne nodded and turned to Merks, but he motioned at nothing in particular. “I’d better check on my professors. If we’re going to be here awhile, I’ll need to catch up on my studies.”

Aithne laughed. “I did say you should stay.”

Merks snorted. “You know I couldn’t do that, my lady.”

“Do me a favor while you’re out and order us dinner and breakfast. I have no idea how long I’m going to be caught up with Soren.”

“Of course.” Merks gave her a bow and slipped back into the corridors of the College, footsteps fading quickly into the stone.

Aithne gave her spouses brief embraces, adjusted the Staff of Magnus against her shoulder, and left the room, turning the opposite way Merks had gone.

She had nearly reached the stairwell when a familiar shuffle of boots and robes echoed ahead of her.  A moment later Tolfdir shuffled around the corner with a distracted murmur to himself, nearly colliding with her before stopping short.

“Aithne?” Tolfdir blinked behind his spectacles, eyes widening. “By the Divines -- what are you doing back here?”

She shrugged. “I still have research to do.”

“Is that all? Not to gloat about being right?”

The idea was so ridiculous, Aithne found herself laughing. “No, of course not. I would have been happy to have been wrong.”

The old profeeser nodded, then leaned forward in a conspiratorial way. “Please, tell me. I won’t tell the others, I swear. How did you know?”

Aithne tilted her head. “I told you. I came from the future.”

Tolfdir stared at her for a long moment, then gave a small, uncertain laugh. “Of course you did.” He smoothed his beard, nodding as if humoring a bright student who had wandered too far into theory. “Yes. That would explain it, wouldn’t it?”

But as she listened past his words, past the practiced geniality, she caught the truth beneath it.

An incredible coincidence, his thoughts murmured. Or an imaginative excuse.

Her mouth tightened slightly, though she kept her tone mild. “Believe what you wish. It doesn’t change what’s coming.”

“No,” he agreed with a sigh. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

He glanced down the hall toward the Arch-Mage’s quarters, then back at her. “Well. If nothing else, it’s good to see you unharmed. The College can always use…prepared minds.”

“That is a truth that can never be denied.”

Tolfdir offered her a polite nod and continued on his way, already drifting back into half-formed theories.

Aithne exhaled, rubbing her thumb along the smooth grain of the Staff. One disbelief down; many more to go, no doubt. Not that it mattered, she supposed. The college knew about the dragons – that was the important part.

She took two steps forward before nearly colliding with someone rounding the corner at speed.

“Ah!” The woman yelped, stumbling back a pace.

Aithne blinked. “Colette?”

The Restoration master stared at her as if she’d materialized out of thin air. Her expression cycled rapidly through shock, suspicion, and something that looked dangerously close to regret.

“I…you’re here,” Collette said finally. “You’re really here.”

Aithne inclined her head. “Apparently so.”

There was an awkward beat of silence. Then Collette straightened, squaring her shoulders as if bracing herself against something internal.

“I owe you an apology,” she said abruptly.

That, at least, took Aithne by surprise.

“For my behavior. Before. The jealousy. The rudeness.” Words tumbled over each other now that she’d committed to speaking. “It was unprofessional, and unfair, and I’m sorry.”

Aithne’s grip tightened slightly on the Staff. “Thank you,” she said carefully. “That’s…unexpected.”

Collette let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yes, well. Certain illusions don’t survive contact with reality.” Something brittle flickered in her eyes. “Urag and I are no longer together.”

Aithne’s breath caught, just barely.

“I see,” she said.

Collette’s mouth twisted. “It turns out admiration from afar is quite different from a relationship. He’s a good man, in his way, but -- being with him was…” She winced, color rising in her cheeks. “Physically painful. I thought I could manage it. That it would become easier. It didn’t.”

It was a pain Aithne was all too familiar with, but instead of the fear it had instilled in Colette, Aithne found herself suddenly flushed in lust. She had to restrain herself from letting out a moan.

“I’m sorry,” Aithne said after taking a deep shaky breath, and meant it in more ways than one.

Collette nodded, visibly relieved by the absence of judgment. “I just wanted you to know. And to say…I hope the College treats you better this time.” She hesitated, then added softly, “Whatever time this is.”

With that, she stepped past Aithne and continued down the hall, footsteps brisk and purposeful, as though speaking the truth had restored something of her equilibrium.

Aithne did not move.

The corridor seemed suddenly too narrow, the stone pressing in. The Staff of Magnus felt heavier, anchoring her to the present even as her mind betrayed her. Urag’s laugh echoed from a memory that was and was not hers. A ring on her hand she had once worn. A life lived alongside another, choices made from an entirely different fork in time.

And then -- Nyatt’s quiet warmth at her side. Chyehye’s fierce, steady presence. The life she had now, chosen with eyes open, heart scarred but whole.

The memories collided, overlapping images jarring against each other until her sense of self trembled at the fault lines. Aithne stood in the hallway of the College of Winterhold, caught between who she had been, who she might have been, who she was, and who she still could be.

And for a long moment, she did not know which of them would speak first.

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Aithne knew it before her feet even found the ground. Before the pressure in her skull faded, before the world finished stitching itself back together.

There was a smell where there should not have been one -- smoke, thick and oily, carrying the bitter tang of burned hair and blood. Heat licked her cheeks as if the air itself were alive and angry.

She staggered one step forward and stopped.

The Kwåim was gone.

Not gone -- not erased -- but ruined in the way only violence could ruin something. Huts lay collapsed inward like broken ribs, their thatched roofs burned to blackened frames. Fires still crawled across the ground, devouring what little remained, orange tongues snapping and hissing as they fed on spilled oil and splintered wood. The central fire pit had become a crater of glowing coals and charred bones.

Bodies were everywhere.

Orcs lay where they had fallen -- near doorways, beside overturned tables, half‑buried beneath collapsed walls. Deep slashes crossed green skin. Not the clean lines of blades, but the ragged gouges of claws and teeth. Some corpses were torn nearly in half, ribs pried open as if something had reached inside and pulled. Others were flung so hard into posts or stone that their bones had burst through muscle.

Aithne felt her breath catch in her chest.

Chyehye swore, soft but vicious, her hand already moving to a blade that had no enemy left to meet. Nyatt stood frozen, eyes wide and glassy as he stared at the destruction, while Merks’ mouth hung slightly open, his face pale beneath the soot drifting through the air.

Aithne took a step forward and her boot slid. She looked down and recoiled as she realized she had stepped in blood -- dark, sticky, already partially congealed – and her stomach twisted.

This had not been a battle. There were no signs of defense, no lines of resistance. The bodies were scattered, random, torn down wherever they had been caught.

“This is a massacre.” Chyehye whispered the words. “What could have done this?”

Her words seemed to have broken Nyatt from his immobility, but only enough for him to begin to mumble, “No, no, no, no…”

Aithne forced herself to start moving, counting as she went without meaning to.

One. Two. Five. Twelve. Too many. She gave up after fifty-three.

Near the remains of what had once been the granary, something moved. Aithne’s hand snapped up instinctively, magic flaring half‑formed in her chest before she checked herself and forced it down. She stepped closer, boots crunching over ash and bone.

From beneath a fallen beam, an orc’s hand emerged, trembling, smeared with blood and soot. Aithne dropped to her knees without thinking, and together, the group moved debris to uncover Dyaj’s broken body.

He was not dead -- his chest rose in shallow, painful breaths. One arm was bent at an unnatural angle, bone white beneath torn skin. His face was swollen, one eye nearly closed, but it was unmistakably him.

“Aithne,” he rasped. His voice broke on her name.

She swallowed hard. “Easy. Don’t move.” She started to cast her healing spell, joined a moment later by Merks’ much better one, but knew they were too late. “What happened?”

Dyaj coughed, a wet, painful sound. “Mwiw.” The name fell like a stone.

Aithne’s jaw tightened. “Tell me.”

Dyaj closed his remaining eye for a moment, gathering what little strength he had. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer as some of his wounds faded.

“It’s my fault. I knew of his penchant for breaking women. The stronger, the better. I should have put a stop to it long ago.”

Aithne felt a cold, sinking dread bloom in her stomach. “The werewolf woman…”

Dyaj nodded. “He tried to break her. She broke him instead. Then she freed her companions and…” He waved a weak hand, then coughed blood.

Chyehye muttered a curse under her breath while Nyatt continued his mantra of denial.

“They rampaged,” Dyaj said. “Didn’t matter who. Warriors, elders, children—they killed anything that moved. They didn’t stop until the Kwåim was silent.”

Aithne squeezed her eyes shut for a heartbeat. “And then?”

“They left. Ran west, into the high forest. By the time the fires died down, there was nothing left but…” He trailed off.

Aithne looked around again, really looked. At the familiar shapes now reduced to corpses and ash. At the places where people had laughed, argued, eaten, lived.

When she looked back down, Dyaj had stilled. After a moment, she reached out and closed his eyes with her hand.

Silence fell, heavy and oppressive, broken only by the crackle of flames and the distant collapse of a burning roof.

“This place is dead,” Chyehye said quietly. “There’s nothing to save.”

Aithne nodded. She knew it was true, but hearing it spoken made it final.

They spent that night and the entire next day gathering the bodies, building pyres, sending their clanmates to Malacath in small groups. The air became acrid with the scent of burned wood and flesh, but they did not stop until the last of the bodies had flaked away to nothing. Then, wordlessly, they walked away.

The Kwåim did not watch them go.

It had already become ash.

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How long had it taken for her to get to the point of submissiveness Borkul had demanded? Sutfu had judged it to be months, and he seemed one who would know (this thought made her realize Sutfu was probably roaming about this new Skyrim somewhere; the thought made her shudder and quickly think about something else).

Today was the 12^th of Frostfall, exactly 75 days since the (second) sinking of the Spirit. Would two and a half months have been enough? At the very best, she figured the actual journey part of her previous life would have just started; at worst, she was still in that cave.

It seemed inconceivable – so much had already happened in the time 0since the reset, how could previous her still be so early in her journey? So many horrors had already been inflicted on past her, yet they were nothing compared to the long road ahead.

It was just another reminder of the evil that had been Borkul the Beast.

Aithne shook her head, trying to clear it of the dark visions that accompanied those memories, and focused on the area around them.

There wasn’t much to see. Or, rather, there was a lot to see because the salt flats were just that – flat. They went on for miles but, with the exception of a large hill/small mountain in the distance, near the center of the plains, nothing impeded her sight. There was a lot of see, all right – a whole lot of nothing save for some bird near that distant mountain, probably a vulture or some other carrion type, that flew lazy circles for a while before gliding on some invisible wind stream in their general direction; and, coming from the north toward them, what looked like a contingent of soldiers.

There was exactly one settlement on the flats, if a single partially-built stone house counted as a “settlement.” It took about five minutes to reach it, and Aithne decided it would be a good place to stop to rest and to let the soldiers, who were close enough now that she could make out individual faces, pass by.

However, as they approached, it was not the soldiers that caught her attention. It was the…

“Dragon!”

Aithne just had time to lift a ward as a blast of scorching fire turned the ground around them to a smoldering blackened streak.

“Speak of the Daedra and lo they appear!” Chyehye laughed as she dropped her packs and pulled out her sword.

Aithne nodded, though her eyes never left the monster as it circled in the sky. She had forgotten how damn fast the things were – it had reached them from the hill, miles away across the broken flats, in that same short five minutes. Shouts went up from the soldiers and several far-too-late arrows shot ineffectual parabolas into the air.

Aithne shook her head as she watched the dragon arc up and around. “Here it comes again,” she began. “I’m going to…”

“This is very exciting!”

Aithne jumped as a new voice spoke behind her and glanced back to find a Breton woman with short-cropped sandy-blonde hair peering into the sky. She wore only a simple dress and carried no weapons.

Aithne blinked. “That’s one word for it. We can handle this. Perhaps you should wait inside?”

“Hm?” The woman looked at her and laughed. “Oh, I think we’ll be fine. Right, dear?”

“This one is certain of it.” A grey khajiit, also wearing simple clothes, leaned against the wall of the house. “Your concern should be for that poor dragon.”

“I’m not...”

“Here it comes,” the woman said. “Be ready. I’m going to try to freeze its wings to ground it.”

“That’s not nec…”

“Aaannnd…now!” The woman lifted her hands and twin icy blasts shot toward the dragon as it swooped down at them.

Aithne shrugged, lifted her ward again (expanding it to cover the woman as well) as the dragon’s fire swept over and around them, then yelped as arrows plopped into the ground near her feet. She turned and glared at the soldiers.

“Don’t shoot at us, idiots!”

Whether they heard her or not, Aithne couldn’t say, but she didn’t have time to wait for a reply. She reset herself and concentrated on the dragon as it began another dive, then focused on a spot in front of its trajectory. “Kosa ngach:iig; wëwpa spa:iig!”

The dragon’s roar sounded more like a scream as a BOOM shook the area. Its wings froze mid-flap and its graceful descent became a hurtling careen. A moment later, the ground shook again as the lizard’s body slammed into it, snapping one of its wings in the process, followed by a brief shower of water.

“Whoa!” The woman gaped at the dragon, then at Aithne. “What spell was that?”

“Brelyna’s Major Binding. It was invented by a friend of mine for exactly this situation.” She turned and shouted at Chyehye and Nyatt (and Merks) as they hurried toward it, “It can still thrash and breathe, so be wary of its claws and stay away from its head!”

They reached the dragon which was, indeed, thrashing, and Aithne positioned herself between her weapon-wielding spouses (and Merks; she allowed herself a brief moment of imagining her “accidentally” not quite covering him while the dragon’s fire was spewing) and the monster’s head as they began to hack at it (joined moments later by a bevy of the soldiers), ready to ward off any fire it might choose to let loose

The woman stood next to Aithne and cast spikes of ice into the dragon’s body as she asked, “Can you teach me?”

“Maybe. How familiar are you with Dundler’s Law?”

“Not at all. I did not have formal training.”

“Ah. The relevant part of Dundler’s Law states that the momentum of an object can be nullified if an object of equal momentum collides with it from the opposite direction. Or, in our case, if it collides with an object that has enough mass to counter that momentum. So the first part of the spell condenses the air to a point in front the dragon, hopefully with enough mass to come close to equaling its momentum. If it has enough, the dragon will stall and begin to fall. The second part of the spell is a variation on Lita’s Major Paralyzation, targeting the wings so it can’t flap them anymore. We tried just that part at first, but the damn things are too strong, so the momentary stun effect from the first part is necessary.”

“That sounds…complicated.”

Aithne shrugged. “It’s not too hard once you know a little about atmospherics. It is dangerous because…well, you heard the sound when the condensed air was released. It is not strong enough to seriously damage a dragon but you don’t want to do that near anything or anyone you care about! Plus, it creates a temporary pocket of nothing where the air is pulled from and who knows what affect that might have on…” she waved a hand in a general sort of way, “…everything.”

The woman turned toward the khajiit, who was staring at the dragon with a speculative air (Aithne didn’t need to read his thoughts to hear the sound of coins jingling in his head as he thought through all the ways a dragon could be turned into profit). “Maybe I should go to the college after all!” She laughed at the cat’s inscrutable return glance, then turned back to Aithne. “So will you teach me?”

Aithne shrugged. “It is always good to have more people who can fight these damn things.” The dragon let out a last roar then ceased moving and Aithne lowered her hands and turned to the woman.

“The college’s true value is not that they teach spells – I mean, they do teach spells, of course – but the true value is in the things they teach about why those spells work. The best teacher I ever had told me magic is only bound by your imagination – if you can picture it, you can do it. But it is not really that easy.

“You can’t just heal someone by picturing them becoming healthy. You have to be able to picture broken bones coming back together; you have to know the way a person’s organs look and work in order to get them to work again. And that doesn’t account for the different physiologies of other species.

“The same is true of spells like this – it is one thing to be told you need to compress air, but without a fundamental understanding of how air pressure works, it won’t do you much good. By the way, that thing will come back to life in about a week. In case you didn’t know that yet.”
               

“Will it, now?” The khajiit stared at the dragon a moment longer, then turned to Aithne. “It is good to see you again. I see you have different companions this time.”

Aithne blinked as her mind turned for a moment before settling on a conclusion.

“Ah, you must have met one of my sisters. We…” Aithne was interrupted by the sound of footsteps and an imperious Nord voice.

“Greetings, citizens! We thank you for you assistance in taking down this beast.”

Aithne blinked as she turned toward the soldiers – Stormcloaks, she was pretty sure, although she hadn’t paid close attention to the factions of the war. Two stood side by side in front of them, while the rest had pulled back about thirty paces.

Holo nodded a polite greeting at the Stormcloak who had spoken as she replied, “Greetings! We thank you, as well, for your assistance. How may we help you?”

“You already have.” The speaker – presumably the commander of the group – motioned at the dragon. “We are claiming this beast in the name of Ulfric, the rightful High King of Skyrim.”

“Oh, this one thinks not,” the khajiit replied. “The dragon is on our land. By law, that makes it ours.”

“Law? What law is that?”

“Imperial Land Holdings law 1833-b.”

“Well, there is your problem – Imperial law holds no jurisdiction here.”

“Perhaps not, but the same law set has always been…”

“Yes, yes, very well. The Stormcloaks will pay you for it, of course. But we will take it with us now.”

“Take…how? This one does not think you have enough men to carry such a burden.”

“I…” The commander stopped, looked at his men, then back at the dragon. “Hmm. You have a point. Well, we’ll just take its head, for now, and come back with carts for the rest.”

The khajiit’s eyes narrowed. “This one has a proposition for you – we will ask for no payment from you as long as we may keep whatever of the carcass we are able to harvest before you return. You may have all the rest for free.”

The commander looked at the khajiit then at the dragon again, then scoffed. “Very well. In the name of the Stormcloaks, I, Benrad Grey-Mane, accept your terms.”

“Very good.” They shook hands, then Benrad turned back and started shouting at his men.

Aithne shook her head, then accepted a quiet invitation from the khajiit, Kra'aft, and his wife Holo, and she and her spouses (and Merks) make their way to the partially-built house and had a nice cup of tea to the tune of muffled shouts and work from outside.

“That was a bold move,” Nyatt said. “The two of you won’t be able to harvest much.”

“Oh, but that is the point. This one has many friends who will be here long before the Stormcloaks are able to make it back to Windhelm and back, especially if they really mean to carry that head with them.”

“Ah. So…”

“So I am afraid there will be very little for them to come back for.”

Aithne snorted. “Little, indeed, if they don’t make it back by the time it comes back to life.”

“Yes, please tell this one more about that.”

So she did. Not with all the details of the past, of course; just enough general information to give them the context they needed to understand the peril.

“If you have dragons this soon, you might be in for a long row. Perhaps consider moving.”

“Oh, no, this one thinks not. This one has never heard of a more profitable place to be.” Kra’aft smiled sharp teeth at his spouse. “Did this one not tell you this was a good place to stop?”

Holo rolled her eyes then tossed a playful glare at Aithne. “See what you have done? Now he is going to be saying, ‘this one told you so’ every day.”

Aithne laughed as she set down her cup. “I apologize. We should be going, though, we…”

Holo held out a forestalling hand. “Wait, why not spend the night here? It is a safe place…well, usually safe,” she paused a moment to laugh, “and I would really like to learn that spell.”

Aithne blinked, then smiled. “Of course! I’m sorry, I forgot about that. We can work on it tomorrow – I’m sure you will be able to pick it up quickly.”

Later that night, after she and Chyehye had worked together to give Nyatt his husbandly ministerings, Aithne lay in the silence and dark of the room and thought back to what she had been considering earlier, but it felt less pressing now, for some reason.

The past was the past, even after it came back again; she could do nothing to help that past Aithne, so it wasn’t worth the time to think about how things had been. She was here and needed to focus on the now and on the future. Divines knew, the past could take care of itself well enough.

With that thought, she closed her eyes and fell into sleep, and only had one small nightmare instead of her usual three long ones, which passed for a peaceful night.

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Merks’ voice sounded hollow and muffled from behind his mask, which annoyed Aithne to no end but, of course, she could not ask him to take it off – it had been her idea for him to wear it in the first place, after all. And at least she didn’t have to see his face when he wore it. She shook her head. “Nothing but the echoes of our footsteps. It is as we suspected – there isn't much of value here, in information or resources. Looks like the Imperials did a good job picking this place dry. I'm not sure what Delphine expected. Why, did you hear something?”

“I…” Merks paused, then shook his head. “I thought I heard whispering, but it was probably just the way the air passes through this mask.”

“Does the mask work? It is supposed to increase power, but I’m not sure how.”

“It doesn’t increase power, exactly. I did some testing and my spells did not seem to be stronger. However, it does replenish my used mana at a rapid pace. I can cast nearly double the amount of spells in the same period of time.”

“Ah. Maybe it has a core of moonstone?”

“That would be my guess as well, although I didn’t want to…”

“Voices ahead,” Chyehye interrupted. “Perhaps that’s what you heard.”

“Voices?” Aithne frowned. “Who else would be here?”

Her wife shrugged. “Who can say? There are always treasure hunters poking about these old ruins. We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Well, yes, but that’s because Delphine asked us to. I had never even heard of…Korvanjund? Is that what she called it?”

Chyehye shrugged again. “That…sounds right.”

“It used to be a temple to Stuhn, one of the old gods,” Merks’ hollow voice informed them, and Aithne and Chyehye turned as one toward him.

Aithne blinked. “How do you know about it?”

Merks took his turn to shrug. “I had a phase when I was eight where I got very interested in the old gods, so I read all I could find on them.”

“Truly? Then do you know what the Imperials and Stormcloaks were looking for?”

“No. I do not recall anything of particular interest about this place. The followers of Stuhn were one of the more stringent groups – they despised wealth and gaudiness. That’s probably why this particular tomb has not been heavily raided in the past.”

“Interesting. Well, shall we see what our fellow explorers are looking for?”

But when they turned a corner and came across said explorers, all thought was erased from Aithne’s mind in an instant of blind fury.

In the center of the room, a fat male khajiit sat on a large portable chair eating berries while four naked female khajiit slammed away with pickaxes and shovels at a doorway occluded by rubble from some past structural collapse. Aithne recognized it for what it was in an instant and sprang into immediate action.

“SLAVER!” Fire arced from her hands, streaking toward the fat cat, who fell back then cried out as the chair tipped over, sending him sprawling to the ground as Aithne ‘s flame formed a spear aimed at his heart. She stormed forward, shouting, “DON’T WORRY! YOU’LL BE FREE IN A MOMENT!”

The male khajiit’s eyes boggled at the spear of flame that hovered an inch from his face as he began to make a choking sounds.

Aithne laughed as his fear fed some well of hatred she had not realized existed. “YES! GROVEL, YOU SICK…”

“No! Stop, leave him alone!”

Aithne blinked as two of the females jumped between her and the male, holding out their arms defensively. At the same time, the other two ran forward brandishing their pickaxes and it was only perhaps because of the intervention of her spouses (and, she supposed, Merks) that she didn’t have to make any rash decisions on how to deal with them; the orcs (and Merks) interposed themselves between her and the pickaxe-wielding cats.

Aithne shook her head and yelled out, “It’s okay! I know your instinct is to protect your master, but you are…”

“We’re not slaves!”

“…free now and…what?”

“We’re not slaves!” The speaker was one of the women in front of Aithne, her furry, naked, grey-with-black-stripes body quivering as she kept her arms out while the other ducked under the spear flame and dropped to her knees beside the male. “He is our guide! We hired him to help us!”

“Help…they why is he just sitting there? And why are you naked?”

“Because we hired him to guide us, not do the physical work! And swinging pickaxes is hot work!” The cat glanced backward as the one on her knees said something, then turned back around with a new tone of desperation. “Please! He’s choking on something! He needs help!”

“I…” Aithne stood frozen while the rest of the room started bustling around her – everyone, including Chyehye, Nyatt, and Merks rushed toward the downed khajiit. “…but…”

“Aithne!” Nyatt’s roar brought with it a spike of startled fear and lust, something he had never engendered in Aithne before, and it broke her from her confused reverie. “Get rid of this…spear thing before someone gets hurt!”

“I…um, yes! Of course!” She waved the flaming spear away and stumbled forward, but there were too many bodies in the way for her to accomplish anything but helpless watching, and even that was occluded enough that she had no clear idea what was happening until the bodies straightened up and the congestion eased, revealing the male breathing heavily between sips of water as the khajiit who had first gone to him patted his arm on one side while Chyehye knelt on the other, one arm around his shoulders to support him.

“Um…” Aithne gripped her hands into fists and fought to keep from squirming like a naughty child in front of her teacher. “I…apologize. I…um…thought you were…”

“A slaver, yes, this one heard you.” The khajiit lifted a haughty nose and sniffed. “Do you not know slavery is illegal? Even if it was not, this one would never be so low as to do such an abominable thing. This one has never felt so insulted.”

“Um, yes, I know, I just saw…”

“You saw nothing but what your own mind wished to see. This one thinks you must be a sick individual.”

Aithne flushed and bit her tongue; though she wanted to defend herself, she could think of no reasonable defense. She clutched the pendant she had received from Jorg and cursed herself internally – had she been able to hear their thoughts, she would not have made such a gaff.

That thought led to another, and she released the pendant and bent forward enough that it hung from her neck without touching her skin. The khajiits’ thoughts came into sharp relief and Aithne felt a flood of mixed feelings when she discovered they were telling the truth; although it would have been a balm to her embarrassment to find she had been right, it was good that he was not really a slaver.

She supposed.

She stayed well back as the khajiit (Wammu, was his name) was helped back onto his chair, where he sighed overly-dramatically (at least, to Aithne’s ears).

Upon query from Nyatt, D’u, the grey who had first spoken, explained, “We came to confirm a rumor that a Nord relic had been interred here; the Jagged Crown, it is called. If it was here, we thought to sell the information to the Stormcloaks, for this one suspected they would have keen interest in such an artifact. It took us nearly a decade to discover its whereabouts, piecing together the tiniest scraps of clues from a hundred disparate sources, only to arrive to find both the Stormcloaks and Imperials had somehow discovered its location already. This one would give her fortune to know how they learned of it.” She dressed as she spoke, as did the other females; when she was done, she motioned at the crumbled passageway. “With our prize taken, we have little choice but to pick through what treasures remain after the Imperials ransacked the place or leave with a huge profit loss.”

Aithne blinked at D’u, then at the mass of stones blocking the hall entryway. “Um. We can help. It’s…it’s the least we…I can do. To make up for…” she stopped and motioned with an awkward motion at Wammu.

D’u shrugged and held out her pickaxe. “This one will not say no to someone else doing this labor.”

Aithne blinked again, this time at the pickaxe, then shook her head. “No, not like that. Like this.”

She concentrated on the first stone in the pile as she felt the mana coalesce around her. “Zir̀ yu: iig.” The stone lifted up and she shifted it carefully away from the entrance before letting it drop.

“Ah. Of course. Well, this one will not gainsay you if you wish to help – Alkosh knows this one has no love of digging.”

Aithne nodded, thankful she had something to do to keep from having to discuss her embarrassing mistake, and began moving rocks, only pausing a moment to toss another nod in the direction of Merks when he stepped next to her and began to help.

Although she didn’t have to talk about it, she couldn’t help think about it. The scene, as she had first seen it, was etched in her mind and she scoured it for clues she should have picked up. Such as the lack of chains or collars, for instance. Or the lack of one of the purported slaves sucking her master’s cock, although that clue was a little more precarious since it would have been possible that had already been done. Also, Aithne had seen no slaves in her time in this new Skyrim. She didn’t believe for a moment there really weren’t any at all – such a pure world could not exist – but such a display as she had thought she had seen would have been a rather blatant showing of it. Although they weren’t in a place where others might be expected to come across them, so…

She shook her head, frustrated. At herself, at this situation, at these damn rocks blocking the way and taking so long to move. She wished she could just GRAB and YANK them out all at once; and as she thought it, she clenched her hand into a fist and jerked it back as if such an ability existed, as if some sort of spell defining the parameters of what she wanted, something requiring so many words and modifiers it would become a ten or more second cast and therefore almost certainly lead to a rebound that would kill them all, wouldn’t be required for such a…

Her thoughts froze in place as the remaining giant pile of stone and debris swept out of the opening in a rumbling rush straight toward her. She panicked and dropped her hands as she flinched back, but at her release, the pile crashed to the ground and only a few shards of stone and a momentous amount of dust found their way to her. She choked and coughed as her surprised lungs sucked in a full complement of the dust and found herself jealous of the unaffected Merks and his mask.

Well, unaffected by the dust.

“How…how did you…” he started, but was interrupted by the joyous cries of the khajiit.

“That was amazing!”

“This one is impressed, this one must admit.”

“That would have taken us three days!”

Even Wammu looked nonplussed, although he just harrumphed.

Aithne smiled at their praise but her mind was reeling as she tried to determine what, exactly, had just happened. Was this what Urag had meant when he said imagination was the key to true power? Certainly what she had imagined had come to pass, but the expenditure of that much energy should have been impossible without so many supporting spells, it would have – should have - taken a minimum of six mages working in concert to achieve it. No amount of imagination could overcome Hanzar’s Law.

She shook her head at Merks’ repeated queries, though she felt sympathy for his building frustration (she, also, wanted answers!), and kept quiet and out of the way, leaving the farewells for the khajiit to her spouses. She needed time to think. Or, better, time in the Arcaneum, where she could think and read. And take notes. And experiment. In retrospect, she should have continued to go back every day, at least for an hour or two, just to keep her presence established.

Well, and maybe she still could. She saw no reason why her agreement with Savos wouldn’t still stand. And doing so would give her back access to the bath. She shivered at the thought and it calcified her determination – she would make sure to go there once a day (with permission from her husband, of course – no reason to stir that pot). She needed some new books, anyway.

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The pubhimej was nothing at all like that. It was, instead, a sort of flirty game.

It started with the six chosen women (“One for each of the commanders of the two sides of the war”), each wearing three layers of sheer material, standing in a circle around the very naked Makṭu (“Representing the city of Orsinium”).

The other women stood in ready stances, eyes alight with anticipation, while Aithne stayed as far back as she could. Her new pendant hung around her neck, blocking the thoughts of the others, but she gave serious thought to removing it just so she would know what was about to happen. The only thing stopping her was the fear of all those minds pulsing with lust at the same time all around her, and what that might do to her.

The only information Jorg had given her was the women would choose among themselves which “commander” lost, at which point they would be “punished” by having to “go the city.” Aithne inferred going to the city was a colloquialism for the sex part of the proceedings.

None of that made sense to her and, with her hazy notions of what an orgy looked like, she assumed there would be some signal and all the women would pounce on Jorg at once, and the thought intimidated her. She didn’t want to be in some weird spot where she was competing with the others over Jorg’s cock, like dogs fighting over…well, a bone. She decided she would just hang back, maybe slip behind Jorg and…rub his back, or something.

Her assumption was right in only one respect – there was a small hand gong, rung by someone farther back in the room behind the ridiculous circle of candles (that were, fortunately, placed far away from the women and their thin and presumably flammable garments), and the other women did leap into action. Except, instead of jumping at the Makṭu, they jumped at each other.

Before Aithne knew what was happening, the two beside her grabbed the top layer of her outfit and played tug of war with it, tearing it off Aithne’s body in a flash.

“What…” was as far as she got before the hands reached for her again, so she ducked under them and scooted away.

The entire room had erupted in chaos, as the women laughed and ran and grabbed and tore at each other’s clothes, and she finally understood.

It was a free-for-all game of tag, except everyone was “it” and instead of tagging, the goal was to strip off the others’ garments while protecting your own. When the next orc came near, Aithne twisted away and ran past, grabbing at the woman’s garment as she went. It tore in a very satisfying way, but she didn’t stop to see the result.

Her trepidation was washed away in the flurry, and soon she, too, was laughing and running and tearing, spinning away from outstretched hands while simultaneously trying to reach for others.

Another gong brought them to a stop, and Aithne looked around in confusion, one hand clutching the hem of someone’s wispy outfit.

One of the women stepped forward, her garments ripped clean away. She approached Jorg with a wide grin, then straddled him and ran her nails down his chest. He grunted, shifted, then grabbed her ass and pulled her onto his cock. They started moving in unison and the rest of the women crowded around, touching both all over their bodies while calling out advice and teases and laughter, and Aithne felt it perfectly natural to be there with them. Her fingers traced over Jorg’s bulging arms and chest while the other hand swept through the woman’s hair then ran lightly down her face, neck, and the swell of her breast.

With the extra touches and the heightened (and exponentially increasing) feeling of arousal in the room, it did not take long for the woman to cry out and tighten on Jorg’s cock. Her body quivered and her nails bit into his chest then, with a final series of gasps, she slumped on top of him. They all stroked her back until she was able to sit back up and climb off him. Jorg’s eyes were closed and he breathed heavily but his erection remained, now slick from her.

Aithne thought there would be some sort of reset or a pause for a breather at that point, but the gong rang out almost at once and the women went back to grabbing at each other while the first woman out lounged on a small sofa beyond the candles and poured herself a glass of wine.

The pattern continued; they ran and laughed and tore and, when someone became naked, she climbed on Jorg and they all gathered to encourage them on. From the whisps of thought Aithne occasionally caught when the pendant of her necklace was not touching her skin, as happened often with the running and jumping around, she came to understand that the goal was to get the man to come. The greatest honor went to the woman who could manage the feat, although Aithne was fuzzy on just what that honor might portend other than the respect of the others.

As for the poor man, his job was to last as long as possible. Aithne took a curious peek into his mind during his time with the third woman and discovered he was picturing himself disemboweling an animal, painstakingly going over every detail about the process: where to start the cut, how much pressure to put on the knife so it didn’t damage the organs as it cut, where to stop…

“He’s probably thinking about hunting or something to distract himself!” she said to the orc woman who was riding him. “Don’t let him get away with that, Dwij!”

She felt the pang of surprise go through Jorg at her words and a wave of lust rushed through him as his mind came back to the moment, but he was somehow able to stave off the completion Aithne could feel he desperately wanted. She laughed at his anguished expression as he squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself back from the precipice.

It eventually game down to her and Chyehye, aided in no small part by the snippets of thoughts Aithne received that warned her when she was in danger. Even with that, her garments were down to a sleeve clinging like a lifeline to the tattered remains of the bodice, itself wrapped around her neck by the thinnest of threads.

Chyehye was in little better shape – her last garment was torn away from just above her breasts, but she still had both sleeves, and that turned out to be the difference. Just as with the trial, Chyehye was simply faster than Aithne, and this time Aithne had no opportunity to cast any clever spells to counter it. With a snap of her arm so quick, it registered only as a blur to Aithne, Chyehye yanked the neck strand away and the sleeve flipped slowly to the ground as the other women cheered.

Aithne laughed, then straightened, turned, and walked toward the Makṭu with head held high. Her breath was heavy, and not only from the exertion of the game of tag. Jorg’s cock rose before her, a perfect combination of the orc dicks she had had – it was long enough to give her the pain she craved but not so long that she couldn’t fit it all in, as with Nyatt; thick like Borkul’s, but not so much that it made her feel uncomfortably stuffed; and with a gentle curve, not straight like Urag’s, so it molded to the parts of her body that wanted it most.

Jorg looked concerned as she approached and looked like he might speak, but Aithne shook her head then, much as she had with Urag and her husband, she took control, clambering on top of him, shifting until his cock was teasing her labia, then, with a wild grin, impaling herself with a hard thrust. Jorg laughed, shook his head, and said, “I should have known.” And from then on, he held nothing back.

As with the others before her, Aithne could not last. The strip tag had been exhausting and more fun than she could have ever imagined and had turned out to be extraordinary arousing, his cock hit every spot of her need, the pain he caused her was exquisite in its sharpness, and the other women’s hands stroked every part of her body not occupied by the Makṭu like downy feathers. She found herself moaning and gyrating and shuddering almost immediately into an orgasm the size and gravity of which she had not felt since her early days with Urag. As with the others, she was left collapsed and gasping on Jorg’s massive chest while his erection continued throbbing unabated.

Then it was Chyehye, who stood like a predator staring at prey. She reached up, grabbed the tattered remnants of her garment, tore it off, and flung it to the floor. Then, instead of slowly stepping forward as everyone else had, she crouched and leapt from her spot onto the table, landing with a thud on top of Jorg.

They let out a simultaneous grunt, but Chyehye sat up, slipped herself onto his cock, and, as she began moving, kept her eyes on his. Every time she seemed to feel he was slipping away, she slapped him across the face, which brought him back to the moment with a shout. After the third time, he roared, lifted them both off the table and, with her legs wrapped around his waist and his cock still slamming into her, he took six long steps, knocking over several candles in the process (which Aithne hastily put out with a small water spell), shoved Chyehye’s back against the wall, and rammed into her with a fierceness that shook the building while her nails dug bloody trails across his back.

It was over only a few short heartbeats later – all at once, Jorg froze, straining, then howled an inarticulate cry that was matched a second later by Chyehye. This continued for several seconds, interspersed with moments of more slamming, before they stopped, both breathing heavily. Then Jorg loosened his grip on Chyehye’s thighs and she lowered her feet to the ground. They stood there for a long moment more, saying nothing, then Jorg stepped back and turned and the moment passed, bringing a feeling like daybreak to the room.

As if on cue, the room burst out talking as the women gathered what things they had brought with them and began to file out. Each one paused and gave Jorg a smile or a touch or a small kiss on the cheek before they left, and he responded in kind.

Aithne and Chyehye were the last to leave, and it seemed the easiest thing in the world to give Jorg a quick hug, ask if he wanted help taking down all the candles (“No, I will do it, but thank you.”), and walk out of the room, through the Immungot, out into the unexpected blinding sunlight (it felt much later than it was), and through the winding paths of the kwåim to the home they shared with their husband, chattering together the entire time. It was only until later that it dawned on Aithne that they had casually strolled through the public areas of the Kwåim completely naked.

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“’Is everything.’ And yes, until it is time for us to actually move, we are done.”

“It is strange to be moving so soon.”

Chyehye shrugged. “The greater the honor, the larger the house. Although the meyge was not prepared for a new family in ṭi nyi!” She laughed, still delighted, and Aithne gave her a smile.

“Did they say how long the new ngot it will take to build?”

“’How long it will take to build the new ngot.’ And it should only take a week or so.”

Aithne nodded but before she could reply, Nyatt entered and his expression spoke of the conflict in his mind without having to read it. “What is wrong?”

“I…nothing. Everything is very good.” He cast a troubled eye at Aithne. “Perhaps too good.”

Chyehye frowned. “No riddles, Nyatt. What’s going on?”

He sighed. “You both have been chosen for the pubhimej.” Then, hastily, as if expecting a volatile response, “Aithne, I will not say you have to, but…I am asking you to.”

Aithne blinked. “That is the…the honor rite? Where he has sex with woman?”

Chyehye laughed. “That makes it sound so crude! Yes, the Makṭu chooses women of the meyge and has sex with them. But it is still a rite, so it is not just an aganåbuṭ.”

“A…what?”

“Aganåbuṭ. Um, a party with many people fucking.”

“Ah. An orgy.”

“Yes. It is not one of those.” A pause. “I mean, I suppose it is kind of that, but the point is, it is an honor to be chosen and to refuse would insult him and bring shame upon all of us.”

Aithne laughed. “You make it sound like there is no choice!”

Nyatt shrugged. “As I told you on our wedding night, I will gainsay you nothing. If you do not wish to do this, you do not have to. I can handle the scorn – Malacath knows I am well-practiced.”

Aithne went to Nyatt and set a hand on his arm. “Fear not, my husband. I will do this. I even am forward looking for it.”

“That…is good. I thank you.” A deep breath. “He also requests that you go to him earlier, before the others arrive.”

She smiled, both at the intense relief she felt from both her spouses and at the thought of getting a chance talk to the Makṭu alone – it was time to discover what fear resided in the heart of a hero. “I would like that very much myself.”

****************

This is just a divider, there is more below

****************

She arrived at the Immungot alone, freshly scrubbed and wearing the same flimsy dress as before. She was shown to a giant room near the back, a lavishly decorated bedroom filled with rugs, tapestries, and finery from all over Tamriel.

The Makṭu sat in a chair behind a beautifully polished dark wood table that held only a bottle of wine and two empty glasses. He was dressed in regular leather and furs but his mind continued to be a fuzzy blank. He gave Aithne a hard stare as she seated herself on the chair opposite him.

Then, without preamble: “Why are you here? Are you checking up on me? I have kept my end of the bargain.” He spoke in perfect Common, which was a relief to Aithne’s poor Orcish-twisted tongue.

She blinked. “I’m not sure who you think I am, but I am not her.”

“Please do not patronize me. I am not a fool - I am aware you are not Melissa. But you are clearly related to her. I have told no one about our arrangement.”

“Melissa…is my aunt. Or cousin? Or…she is my father’s mother’s sister’s daughter. We are related, but I do not know her personally.”

Jorg harrumphed, his fear a palpable force despite the fuzz. “Please do not play games. It is too much of a coincidence for you to be here if not because of her.”

“And yet, I’m afraid it is just a coincidence.”

Silence, then, as they stared at each other, then Aithne sighed, reached across the table, and poured wine in both glasses, then pushed one toward Jorg while settling back with the other. “What is this bargain you struck that makes you so full of fear at the very sight of someone who looks like my aunt?”

Jorg shook his head. “If you are truly not involved, it would be breaking my bargain to tell you about it. Suffice to say, Melissa helped me out one time and my discretion about her involvement was part of the deal.”

He leaned forward to pick up the glass and the pendant around his neck hung away from his skin, and in that moment, all his hidden thoughts crashed into Aithne, a veritable caterwauling of unexpected emotions and memories. They went away in the same flash when he sat back again and the pendant tapped back to the skin of his chest and she nearly gasped at the abruptness of the change.

It took Aithne a moment to recover her equilibrium enough to ask, “What is that necklace?”

“This? Oh, it is just a piece of Dwemer scrap metal. It was from my first kill of one of those automatons that still guard their old cities.”

“May I see it?”

“Of course.”

He took off the necklace and handed it to Aithne. The moment it left the touch of his body, his thoughts again erupted; when it touched the skin of her hand, the world turned to blessed silence. Not complete silence – as with Jorg when he wore it, she could still feel fuzzy reverberations of emotion. But it was just background noise – very much, in fact, like living near the ocean and having the constant till and tug of the waves as the ambient sound of life.

Something must have shown in her face because Jorg closed her fingers around the pendant. “Keep it. I do not know what meaning it has for you, but your expression tells me it means something.”

Aithne blinked, startled, and tried to hand it back. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“It is fine. It is just a silly piece of scrap metal to me. I have a dozen more at home.”

“I…okay, thank you.” Aithne gripped it like a lifeline.

A long pause, then, as they stared at each other. Finally Aithne said, “You told my husband he was only the second one you have ever had to look up at.” She surreptitiously dropped the pendant in her lap as she took a sip of wine. “Who was the other?”

With his mind now open to her, she read the answer as it flashed immediately to the front. He, however, shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t…”

“It was Borkul, wasn’t it?”

A long pause as his mind sifted through a variety of emotions and thoughts, then, finally, he nodded. “So you know after all. The Beast himself, yes. I was assigned by the Council to track him down and bring him to Orsinium for trial.”

“And you succeeded.”

“No, I failed. He was much too strong for me. He left me bloody and broken and nearly dead on the shores of Vvardenfell.”

Aithne frowned. “Vvardenfell? What was he doing there?”

Jorg shrugged. “Hiding. He couldn’t move an inch in Cyrodil without being noticed anymore.”

“So how did you capture him?”

“How did you know he had been captured?”

Aithne laughed. “I was on the ship that was supposed to transport him to High Rock.”

“You were? What happened to it? There has been speculation ever since the Spirit didn’t make port.”

“The Jaunty Spirit hit an iceberg and sank.”

“I…see. And the Beast?”

“He is dead.”

“That makes sense – he was in a cage in the bottom of the ship when it sank. A terrible way to go, even for a monster like him.”
 

“No, he broke out of the cage and slaughtered the entire crew. That’s actually why it hit the iceberg and sank.”

“I…truly? Then how did you…”

“I was in the crow’s nest at the time, so he didn’t reach me until after the ship went down.”

“And then…”

Aithne paused, then decided on the truth, but a simplified one that combined her experiences - no need for things to become even more complicated. “And then he tried to rape and enslave me, so I yanked his arms out of their sockets and cut off his dick.”

“And this is why I feared for my life when I saw you.”

“That didn’t surprise you?”

“After seeing Melissa – by the way, if she is your grandmother’s sister’s daughter, that makes her your once-removed first cousin – in action, nothing about your family would surprise me.”

“Truly? Please tell me about her.”

“I…cannot say too much. I still have the bargain I told you about. Suffice to say, she agreed to help me against Borkul then…” A pause and he shuddered. “Their battle was something to behold.”

“How do you mean?”

A second pause, then, “Did you hear about the eruption of the Red Mountain?’”

“It was hard not to – the sky was covered in ash for three weeks even in Hammerfell.”

 “The Dunmer said it was extinct. There hadn’t been any signs of activity from it for centuries. Until…”

“Are…are you saying the fight between Melissa and Borkul…”

“Awakened the volcano, yes.” Jorg shook his head. “I have never seen anything like it. And hope never to see its like again. I have never been so frightened.”
               

Aithne blinked and opened her mind to his and saw her: a woman with short-cropped dark hair with just a hint of grey at the temples carrying twin daggers that seemed made from pure energy and wearing what appeared to be half a bodysuit (and nothing else). She moved with a speed that seemed inconceivable. Even Trendil – at least, the earlier version of Trendil Aithne had known in the previous Skyrim – had not moved so fast. Every motion was a blur.

Aithne nearly cried out as the too-familiar face of Borkul appeared. He stood in the center of a cave, fending off Melissa’s attacks with only his fists, moving with a speed that nearly matched hers. The ground shuddered every time the two clashed, such was the force behind their blows.

Jorg shook his head and cleared his throat just as cracks started to appear in the walls of the cave, and the memory was wiped from the front of his mind.

“I apologize,” he said. “I got caught up in the memory of it for a moment.”
 

“It’s…fine.” Aithne found herself a little dazed and shook her head as well. “As I said, I do not know my…cousin and am not here on her behalf. You found me here by happenstance. And, of course, your bargain is safe with me – it sounds very much like I do not want to cross Melissa either.”

“That is wise.” Jorg set down his glass and stood. “I must prepare for the pubhimej. I…apologize for choosing you – it was the only way I could think of to speak to you privately. You do not, of course, have to attend the actual ceremony.”

Aithne sighed as she stood as well. “Apparently I do, or shame will be cast upon my family. Who are very excited about their promotion, so thank you for that.”

Jorg shrugged. “When I saw you, I knew there was no chance you would only be ṭi sna. I assume you held back during your trial? I thought as much.. I was just righting a clear error.” A pause, then he added, “I admit to a large amount of curiosity about what led you to this place, not to mention what led you to marrying into the meyge. But it is not my business, so I shall not pry. Since you are here and have chosen to take part in the rite, would you mind helping me by lighting some candles?”

Aithne blinked and looked around. “How many?”

“One thousand two hundred and twenty three.”

Another blink. “You’re kidding.”

"I’m afraid not. One for each year of our people’s exile between the destruction of the original Orsinium and the building of the current one. The Rite of Honor is a sort of history lesson.” Jorg winked. “With sex.”

Aithne laughed as she sorted through fire spells in her head, trying to decide which would be least likely to burn everything down.

“That is not how I remember my history classes!”

“This is a special lesson for a special occasion. Shall we begin?”

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Aithne shook her head as she collapsed onto a chair and started to pull off her boots. “They are quite something to fight, but I don’t know what you mean - we haven’t even found one yet.”

“This is what I am saying. Hunting and killing are two different things, and of the two, killing is far easier – that is just stabbing something until it dies. Hunting is all the work that leads up to the killing – the planning, the preparation, the tracking. I had expected dragons to be easy to find, however, given their size and their ability to fly.”

“I wish I could help with that, but until near the end, I only saw one dragon last time and it was on the other side of Skyrim. And over a year from now. Probably.”

Aithne’s head swam as she tried to picture where she had been at this point in her previous journey. It felt like so much had happened since the restart, but it had only been about six weeks. Likely at this point, she had still been in the shallow cave being trained as a slave by Borkul, but it was hard to say. That entire time felt like a blur, a hole in time that had lasted an indiscriminate eternity; one she shied away from with anything more than a mental glance.

A commotion outside the ngot brought their combined attention to the door and Chyehye sighed as she began to pull her clothes, which were already in a heap on the floor, back on, but Nyatt shook his head and forestalled her.

“No, rest. I will see what is going on.” He strode to the door and walked out but, just as his wives were beginning to relax, the door slammed back open and he re-entered with an agitated air. “Quickly! Get dressed! In your finest!”

Chyehye frowned from where she sat on the corner of the bed. “What?”

“Get dressed! The Makṭu is here!”

“WHAT?!” Chyehye jumped to her feet. “He’s here?!”

“Yes!” Nyatt gestured but he needn’t have bothered for Chyehye – she was already clawing through her still-partially-unpacked clothes. He turned, instead, to Aithne, who was watching them both with curiosity as she rubbed her aching feet. “You also! We must hurry!”

Aithne shook her head. “I don’t understand. What is a ‘maku’ and why is he important?”

“The Makṭu is our people’s greatest hero,” Nyatt explained as he stripped and started digging though his own chest of clothes. “He ranks above all, even the Chieftains, answering only to the Grand Council in Orsinium. It is an honor for him to visit!”

“Here.” Cheyhye handed a bundle of material to Aithne. “Wear that. The seamstress finished it for you just yesterday.”

Aithne blinked. “I…she did?” She lifted and studied it.

It was a dress made of a soft wispy material that glided through her fingers - silk felt coarse by comparison. Meticulous patterns were threaded throughout; it was, by far, the most beautiful thing Aithne had ever seen.

On the other hand, it was cut in a way that would make whores blush – it was little more than a sheer low-cut front and an equally sheer back with only thin strings to connect them together. A moderate wind would show everyone all the wearer’s secrets. Aithne frowned at it then looked up, only to find Chyehye had already donned a similar outfit and was busy clasping a gold bracelet onto her wrist. She seemed to notice Aithne looking and grinned.

“You humans are so shy about your bodies. Which is funny, since they’re so small.”

“I…”  Aithne shook her head and stood, then began to strip. “I was just wishing there was time to take a bath.” At the college, she did not add out loud. “We are covered in dirt and sweat from the road.”

Nyatt laughed. “So is he, if that helps.”

Aithne tossed out a smile as she slipped into the dress.

“Here, there is a belt.” Chyehye fastened a linked silver chain around Aithne’s waist that would, at least, help keep the dress from flapping all the way up in the theoretical wind. “And some jewelry.”

This in the form of a solid silver arm band and another around her thigh, which felt like an odd place for it. Aithne wondered how long it would be before the thing slid off her leg.

“Are we ready? Let’s go.”

Nyatt seemed in high spirits as he led the way out of the ngot and toward the center of the kwåim. As they went, they were joined by others, husbands leading similarly-bedecked wives, and Aithne began to get a flutter in her stomach. This felt less like a meeting with an important person and more like a display of wares. Or an offering.

The entire meyge seemed to reach the open area in front of the Immungot, the massive structure that served as the chieftan’s home and the meyge’s seat of governance at the same time. The chieftain stood in front of it, his wives behind him dressed in similar fashion (only with more jewelry) as the other one-hundred-sixty-ish nearly naked women who stood behind their husbands, themselves arranged in a wide semi-circle in order of their standing.

 Aithne sidled to her right just enough to peek beyond Nyatt’s giant form and studied the so-called Makṭu, who was chattering idly with the chieftain as if the entire meyge was not standing there waiting for him. He was, she was not surprised to see, huge. Not as tall as Nyatt, but beefier; maybe a little shorter than Borkul and not quite as beefy. His skin was a paler green than any Aithne had yet seen, standing in striking contrast to his thick black hair and braided beard, and he wore a full suit of gold-colored heavy armor of some design she had never seen.

Odd as the armor looked, it was not what held her attention. The most striking thing about him was the realization she could not read his mind.

It wasn’t like with Sloan – he wasn’t a black hole of silence. He still emitted a fuzzy emotional aura, but even his surface thoughts, the kinds she normally had to fight to fend off, were shrouded behind some sort of thick veil. It was…sort of nice, she decided. Not as abrupt and jarring as Sloan’s total silence, not as intrusive and wearying as…well, everyone else. His mental existence matched his physical form but she didn’t have to work to keep from hearing his thoughts.

She had just started to speculate on why that was – did this so called Makṭu have some sort of mental or magical acuity? Or perhaps his exotic armor had some sort of cognitive protection built in – when Dyaj started talking to the meyge.

“Kachy pyapub adatt di Makṭu kachy che! Kachy uch adatt di Pubhimej ksak ṭob uch mmedatt o dwad!”

Aithne frowned as those around her broke into excited chatter and felt a small but growing sense of alarm as all the women, included Chyehye, started fussing with their outfits, arranging their hair, and otherwise doing what Aithne could only think of as primping.

She fought against the persistent urge to open her mind to everyone’s thoughts, though they pressed on her like teenage boys looking for their first lay, and tried to piece together what was going on via her rudimentary understanding of the Orcish language; but, although she had been studying it with all the diligence her new life allowed, she still faltered upon the reef of an unfamiliar term.

She leaned over to Chyehye, who was busy pulling her fingers through her hair and snarling at the snarls. “I think I caught most of that – we’re honored to have the Makṭu, we will have…pub-him-ahj, then a feast. What is…pub-him-ahj?”

“It is the Rite of Honor.”

Aithne waited for more, but more did not seem to be forthcoming, so she allowed herself just a peek in her wife’s mind.

Then jumped back out again when all she saw were mental images of Chyehye and the Makṭu having sex in the most inconceivably athletic ways imaginable.

“Um…” Aithne hoped her flushed skin wouldn’t give away what she had just done. “Does this…ritual involve having sex with the Makṭu, by any chance?”

Chyehye turned her attention back to Aithne. “Oh, of course you wouldn’t know. Yes, that is what happens – the Makṭu chooses from the women of the meyge. It is a great honor! Usually only those from ṭi nyi are chosen, of course, but as we are at the top of ṭi sna, it is possible we might be chosen as well.”

“But…what about our…the husbands?”
 

“I…suppose if the Makṭu preferred men, they might choose the husbands. I haven’t heard of that ever…”

“No, I mean, wouldn’t the husbands get jealous?”

“Why should they? It is just as big an honor for the husband - it shows all that he is doing his duties as a husband well. In some cases, it could even lead to a rise in his placement in his ṭi.”

“I…see.” Aithne started to go back to her thoughts – she wasn’t sure how to parse this new information – but was forestalled by Nyatt’s harsh whisper.

“Be ready! They are approaching us!”

Chyehye’s reaction was immediate – she stopped fussing and stood straight, hands clasped in front of her, and stared directly ahead at Nyatt’s wall of a back. Aithne blinked then shrugged and followed her wife’s lead.

Thanks to Nyatt’s bulk, she could only hear Dyaj speak. “Mbuw, Nyatt. Ṭːeṭ ip akwå me tshe ṭːa chtiyo yu. Me mmepå me chi nduh.”

Nyatt responded, “I am honored, Iåj. I would ask that we speak in småh – my Nyi-Chtiyo is still learning our language.”

A new voice, presumably that of the Makṭu, spoke. “Very well.” Then a laugh. “This is only the second time I have had to look up at someone! I am Jorg gro-Tod-nyi.”

“Nyatt gro-Tshak-sna.” Nyatt stepped aside, revealing his wives to the Makṭu (and vice versa). “My wives, Aithne gra-Tshak and Chyehye gras-Tshak.“

The Makṭu seemed even larger upon close inspection, helped in no small part by his bulky armor, which seemed to make him as wide as Nyatt and Dyaj combined. His attention first swept over Chyehye, and although Aithne still could not hear his thoughts, the pang of lust he felt was impossible to miss – clearly he found Chyehye as attractive as he seemed to be to her.

Aithne bit back the smile that thought produced as Jorg turned to her. Again, she felt a stab of emotion, but this time it was not lust. If she had to describe it, in fact, she would call it sharp surprise and fear.

Raw naked fear.

To his credit, his outward façade showed not even a hint of his internal panic. “A human as your Nyi-Chtiyo! How unusual.”

“Do not let her diminutive form fool you – she is the First of ṭi sna of Meyge Narzulbur.”

Jorg’s expression turned calculating as his fear receded a little, replaced by wariness. “Of that, I have little doubt.” He turned away with palpable relief. “Thank you, Nyatt gro-Tshak-nyi.” The entire meyge seemed to freeze as one but Jorg did not seem to notice. “It was an honor to meet your må.”

He turned and walked with Dyaj back to the Immungot while Nyatt stood in place, staring at them with his jaw hung open in apparent shock, while the rest of the meyge, in turn, stared at Nyatt. Finally, Chyehye whispered something to Nyatt, who shut his mouth with a click so loud, it echoed around the silent courtyard. It corresponded with the closing of the door to the Immungot and seemed to be the cue all had been waiting for; the entire meyge broke out into chatter and people began to move. Most headed back toward their ngots but quite a few approached Nyatt.

Aithne looked around in confusion. The sudden spike in thought had broken through her attempts to block them out, but none of the thoughts helped her make sense of the meyge’s actions. She tapped Chyehye on the shoulder.

“What happened? Why is everyone so…animated?”

“You did not notice?” Chyehye seemed ready to jump up and down, so strong was her excitement. She grabbed Aithne’s shoulders with the biggest grin Aithne had ever seen. “The Makṭu called Nyatt ‘gro-Tshak-nyi’!”

Aithne blinked. “Um…”

“Do you not understand? He promoted us to ṭi nyi!”

“What?! He can do that?!”

“Of course! He is the Makṭu!”

Aithne withdrew as others approached, letting Chyehye deal with them since each seemed as excited as Chyehye in their own ways (although Aithne could not help but notice the alarming amount of jealously that was interspersed with nearly every hearty congratulation sent Chyehye’s way).

She hadn’t cared about her status before and, for that matter, still did not, but she was happy for her spouses, both of whom had just gained something they had always hoped for. Especially Nyatt, who had been among the lowest ranked in the meyge just a mere month ago.

Her only real concern was the cost, because Jorg the Makṭu had not done this out of the kindness of his heroic heart; he wanted something – something related to that spike of fear.

Aithne shook her head as Nyatt and Chyehye finished their social chattering and joined them as they headed back to their ngot. It figured - the one time she really needed to read someone’s mind was the time she was unable to. She would just have to find another way to discover what the so-called hero wanted with them.

One way or another.

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Nyatt looked troubled, which was better than the rage Aithne had feared (yet somehow also secretly hoped for). He opened his mouth, seemed to think better of what he had been about to say, closed his mouth again, then, finally, “I would have understood, you know.” Aithne blinked as Nyatt continued, “I told you I would gainsay you nothing. If had told me you were going and simply asked me not to join you, I would have gladly agreed.”

Aithne felt herself flushing and wrapped one arm in front of her, gripping the other while she looked at the floor. “I…I know, my husband. I…was simply afraid. I apologize. I’ll trust you from now on.” A pause. “Not that I didn’t trust you before! I…”

“Except when it came time to seeing your parents?”

Aithne winced. “I…wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

Nyatt sighed. “I know Chyehye told you, but I will have to punish you. I want you to know that I do so unwillingly – you are new to the orcish lifestyle and simply wanted to see your parents. However…” he heaved himself to his feet and Chyehye rose with him, her face an unreadable mask. Well, not unreadable to Aithne, who could feel the conflicted emotions burbling beneath the surface. “…I will not hold back. I cannot appear weak in front of the meyge, especially since we are ṭi sna.”

“I understand, my husband.”

A pause, then he nodded and began making his way out of the ngot. Aithne fell into place beside Chyehye and followed.

Her heart thumped against her chest as they stepped into outside air. The emotions that had scattered earlier were now tangled into a giant knot that she began to pick at as they walked.

The dominant one was, of course, raw fear – this was going to hurt. Not like the beatings she had received from Borkul or the cruel games inflicted by Sutfu, but she was certain sitting was going to be uncomfortable for the next few days.

Then came the shame. Aithne had been whipped, raped, burned, tortured, displayed naked like a piece of art…nearly everything that could be done to a human body had been done to her. Yet a simple spanking was somehow more humiliating than any of the rest. There was something primeval about it; something etched into the foundation of societal ethos based on it being a punishment for children, and by extension as a punishment for anyone who was not deemed mature enough to be allowed their own agency.

Spanking was, in short, the ultimate weapon to use if you wanted someone to feel small and insignificant.  

There was also a spot of anger mixed in, based very much upon the principle of shame – she did not deserve this punishment, after all - but she ignored it. She had agreed to the unspoken social contract of the Orsimer people when she married into it; she had no choice.

Finally, the emotion she knew was there but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge: somewhere buried deep in the dark recesses of…okay, if she was being honest with herself, it was not buried, it was right up front and center. Some sort of unholy combination of the fear and shame mixed with her twisted Borkul-trained psyche had produced an alloy of pure lust. Somehow, the idea of being spanked in public had aroused her to such a state, she was afraid she would start panting.

Fortunately, her thoughts were interrupted at that point by Chyehye.

“I know you are tough, but cry out while you’re being spanked,” Aithne’s wife advised. “If you don’t,  it will make Nyatt look weak. If you can muster tears, that would help as well.”

Aithne bit back what she wanted to say (“It will take everything I have not to scream through the entire thing”) and simply nodded.

There was no ceremony to the event itself. Once they reached the clear area in center of the kwaim, Nyatt sat on a log and gestured to Aithne, who forced herself to walk with calm steps to him. Nyatt motioned at her trousers and, after a confused moment, Aithne took off her belt and pulled her pants down to her ankles. Nyatt swept her up with one hand, laid her across his knees and, a moment later, Aithne cried out as Nyatt’s hand smacked down on her exposed buttocks.

He took his time with it, pausing a few seconds between each hit. As it progressed, the other orcs of the meyge took notice and soon a crowd gathered. They hooted and cheered with each hit, often supplying helpful commentary and advice (in the Common language, so Aithne knew they were meant as much or more for her than for her husband):

“Don’t just spank one side! Make sure you cover her entire ass!”

Smack

“Ooh, look - human skin turns red! See if you can change her color permanently!”

Smack

“Looks like you’re going easy on her!”

SMACK

“Cup your hand as you swing!”

Smack

The lust Aithne had felt dissipated by the third hit; the reality of the spanking was far too visceral to leave room for flights of emotional fancy. By the time it was done, twenty evenly-paced spanks delivered with orcish strength to Aithne’s exposed bottom later, all she felt was pain and humiliation. She did not try to stem the flow of her tears as Nyatt lifted her back to her feet and she pulled her pants up, biting off the cry of pain as the rough texture scraped against the tender skin of her ass.

She shuffled after Nyatt and Chyehye back to their ngot, where both her spouses immediately turned from outward walls of stone to fonts of concern and care. Chyehye helped Aithne out of her clothes and wrapped her in a soft robe, then led her to the softest cushion they had (where Aithne sat in an awkward side-repose to keep from sitting on her ass) while Nyatt poured tea and handed her a cup.

Aithne thanked them with watery eyes and as much of a smile as she could muster, then sipped her tea in silence while she pretended she couldn’t hear Nyatt’s regret and Chyehye’s concern; the last thing she wanted at that moment was to forgive them.

It had been a long time since she had felt so helpless and she seethed for a time as she parsed through her thoughts and emotions. One thought, in particular, began to grow until it shoved itself to the forefront of her mind and planted a banner of defiance.

She did not have to put up with this. There was no reason she had to allow it.

It was one of those revelations that seemed obvious once it was noticed. As it percolated through the rest of her mind, Aithne felt a shift in her perception, in her very way of looking at the world.

Despite the apparently permanent spike of lust at the thought of pain that had entwined itself into the deepest parts of her psyche, she vowed she would not allow anything like this to happen again, even if she did break some inscrutable orcish rule.

If pressed, she would simply leave – she had joined the meyge on a whim, but she was not so invested in this new family that she would feel much sorrow upon leaving it. A bitter part of her regretted coming back at all after her visit with her parents.

Aithne blinked as another, simpler, realization crossed her mind. She shook her head at her own stupidity, reached behind her, and cast a healing spell on her ass while a distant memory of Urag laughed and teased her about her lack of imagination. She wasn’t sure how she kept forgetting the most important lesson of her life.

She thought she had managed to keep her outward expression neutral, but when, a few minutes later, Nyatt asked her if she needed anything, her tone or expression when she responded, “No, thank you” must have betrayed some of her internal turmoil; she felt a shot of fear rush through him as he fumbled through a hasty apology and retreated to the opposite side of the ngot.

Aithne hid a small smile behind her cup as she took another sip. Of all the things her husband could have given her, that reaction was the only one she would have wanted, and she felt much better as she finished the tea and set the cup down.

Whatever else happened, in this marriage or elsewhere, she would never meekly submit to her own degradation again. If her husband wanted to punish her, he would have to fight her first.

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Aithne had been married to two orcs for two weeks but she still was not used to the idea. There was something so foreign about it all. She lay in the furs of their large bed in their very large ngot – nearly three times the size of Nyatt’s previous home - next to her snoring husband while her snoring wife lay on his other side.

Seven times, she had had sex with her husband while Chyehye was in the vicinity, and seven times the reverse had been true. Aithne had, of course, had sex (or had been fucked, anyway) in front of others hundreds of times, but this felt different. There was just something about being naked and splayed out, on hands and knees or on her back or straddling Nyatt’s massive form while his cock slammed into her, with both of them grunting and moaning and sweating, all while Chyehye moved about the room doing mundane housekeeping chores as if they weren’t there. It was so intensely personal that it circled around to being simultaneously impersonal. Somehow.

It wasn’t just the sex, either. Aithne had grown used to having a lover with Urag; used to those little moments of quiet intimacy, of the little looks and smiles and gestures that came from learning to exist in the same space, the small tweaks to accommodate another’s life with one’s own. The same was burgeoning now, except not with her husband – Nyatt was more than eager to receive his husbandly daily quota of sex but was otherwise a brick wall when it came to intimacy – but with her wife. Bound as they were by their shared duties, multiplied by time spent together for Aithne’s lessons on how to be a proper Orcish wife (she had been doing a LOT of things wrong with Urag, it turned out), the two were beginning to bond in ways Aithne had never felt before.

In short, these hours spent off the road, after she had teleported them back to their ngot, were already beginning to feel like home.

It filled her with a sense of comfort but conflicted with a sense of guilt; she had married this second time out of necessity in order to join the meyge but surely she should not be enjoying it. It felt like a betrayal to Urag and Chtonji; like the years spent with them weighed the same as a mere seventeen days with her new family.

And, to add to the confusion, her conversation with Sloan had knocked loose memories of Aithne’s parents. Last time, by the time she had the ability to make her own choices, she had already been dead in her parents’ eyes for years. Though she had ached to see them, she had chosen not to for fear of tearing open wounds best left healed.

Okay, if she was being honest, it was really because she had been ashamed of what she had become. She had not wanted them to see her with a missing eye and scars all over her body. She had been broken more than once and had not felt she had the right to impose the shell of their former daughter on them.

But now…now was different.

Aithne shifted and pushed herself up, then dressed as quietly as she could, wrapped her belt with her purse around her, then knelt to pull on her boots.

“Going somewhere?”

Aithne jumped as Cheyhye knelt beside her. The orc woman was completely naked; something else Aithne had not quite got used to was the casual regard for clothing orcs had while in their own ngots. Another thing Urag had been decidedly un-orc about.

“Um. I’m going to see my parents. I won’t be long.”

“Your parents? Where are they?”

“Rihad.”

“Rihad…in Hammerfell?”

Aithne blinked. “Um. Yes. Is there another one?”

“I…suppose not. That is a very long way away.”

“It is a long distance, but not a long time. I’ll be back in time for my morning chores.”

“So why are you sneaking out? You really should not go anywhere without your husband’s approval.”

Aithne bit her lip as she thought, then decided honesty was the best way to go. “I was afraid he would want to come with me. And I promised him I would not gainsay him anything that is his husbandly right.”

“Ah.”

Aithne hastened to add, “It’s not that I am embarrassed to be married to him! Or you! It’s just…that would be a lot to bring to…there. I mean, for me, it has been almost seven years since I’ve seen them.”

“I understand. Just know, if you leave without asking, he will have no choice but to punish you when you get back.”

“I…punish? What…”

And then a picture formed in Chyehye’s mind that was so vibrant that Aithne, despite her best efforts to stay out of her wife’s head, could not help but see it. She blanched even as Chyehye said it out loud:

“A public spanking.”

Aithne found herself flushing red as her mind scrambled to gather the multitude of disparate emotions that were conjured in an instant but then scattered like fevered chipmunks in all directions. After a moment, her panicking brain settled on one action it could take and jumped on the opportunity before the rest of her had a chance to think about it. Her hands moved as if of their own volition while her mouth spoke familiar words and, a handful of staccato heartbeats later, she found herself kneeling on the floor of her bedroom in her parents’ house.

In retrospect, such as she was unable to consider until much later, her room was, perhaps, the worst choice she could have made as her destination. Her mind, already attempting to shovel her myriad of unchecked emotions back into a pile so it could sort them properly to figure out just what, exactly, she was feeling, completely gave up when confronted with the familiar smells, sights, and sounds of home. For some period of time she could not begin to measure, she did nothing but sob while curled on the floor in the tightest ball she could squeeze herself into.

She heard their minds before the footsteps, and the touch of their thoughts brought Aithne back to herself enough to concentrate hard to block them out. She did not want to hear her parents’ thoughts – she wanted them to be themselves, for her to be herself, for everything to have been just a horrible dream.

The door creaked open and she heard a gasp, then her mother’s voice.

“Honey?!”

“Honey?” Her father’s voice from behind the wall sounded incredulous. “Who is it?”

“It’s Aithne, dear, who do you think? Are you all right? What happened?”

Aithne’s mother stepped through the doorway and moved toward Aithne. Her still-pure-black hair was disheveled and she wore only a nightgown, the one with the blue flowers; such a familiar sight, Aithne was almost able to believe the lie of it all.

“It can’t be. Her ship would have just made…”

“It sank.” Aithne whispered the words as her mother knelt beside her, and Aithne wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and clung like the child she wished she still was.

“…port in…what?”

Aithne cleared her throat and, after a few deep breaths, managed to get her voice to emit more than a whisper. “It sank in the Sea of Ghosts.”

“Sank?” Her father, who had clearly grabbed the first clothes-like thing he could find, was wrapped in a robe two sizes too small for him. He stood in the doorway and frowned with a troubled expression. “How could that be? Terrick is not the best captain, but he is more than capable of handling the Sea of Ghosts in summer.”

Aithne sighed and lifted her head from her mother’s bosom. “One of the prisoners broke out and murdered…everyone. Then the ship ran into an iceberg. I was in the nest, so he didn’t…didn’t find me.”

She clamped down as hard as she could on the black wave of emotions that wanted to swarm her at that moment. Years had passed since the moment she first met Borkul, but that moment was etched in her deeper than any world refresh or dominating catharsis could ever fully heal.

“But…” Her mother pulled back just enough to peer into Aithne’s tear-streaked face. “…then how did you get back? And so soon?”

Aithne sighed and pitched a wobbly smile. “It’s a long story. Could you make me some sweetrolls?”

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Aithne hadn’t meant to tell them everything, but the tea and sweetrolls brought with them a level of comfort she had nearly forgotten existed and, once she began to tell her tale, it all spilled out – the wreck, Borkul, the slavery (although she did not go into detail on all that entailed), the eventual transition to the College, her family there, her magic, the dragons; then the world reset and her current state. By the time she was done, her parents sat in tongue-tied silence while Aithne sipped tea from her favorite childhood mug with shaking hands and concentrated very hard on not reading their minds.

“I know it is unbelievable, but it is the truth. Here.” Aithne produced a small flame on the palm of her hand and made it dance, then turned it into a crystalline shard of ice.

“I…” her mother finally said. She cleared her throat. “Honey, we believe you.”

“Most of it, anyway,” her father added. “That stuff about the world ending seems a little far-fetched.”

Her mother shot him a frown, then turned back to Aithne and smiled. “We have always known you had a greater destiny. We just didn’t know how it would…come about.”

Aithne frowned, looking from one to the other. “What?”

Her mother sighed but it was her father who took up the story.

“We…” he glanced at Aithne’s mother and then took her hand before continuing, “…we could not get pregnant. The doctors saw no reason for it, but no matter how much we…you know…” he cleared his throat, “…tried, it just did not happen. Finally we went to the temple…”

“The Temple of Mara,” her mother interjected.

“…the Temple of Mara and talked to the priestess.”

Her mother frowned. “She was not helpful. She just kept saying it was Mara’s will and there was nothing that could be done.”

Aithne blinked. “What? But then…”

Her father cleared his throat again and shifted uncomfortably. “As we were leaving the temple, heartbroken, a man came up to us. He…he said he could help us in exchange for…” He trailed off as his face reddened.

“For a bottle of my breast milk,” her mother supplied. “Which we didn’t understand because, of course, I had not had children, so I could not make milk. But then…” A pause, then she shook her head. “…suddenly I could. My breasts grew right there on the spot…”

“I liked that part!”

Her mother gave her father a sharp elbow, but both laughed.

“…and…well, we took that as a sign that the man was telling the truth. So we agreed.”

Her father added, “I thought he was just a pervert at first, but he didn’t want to watch, or anything. He just handed us a bottle and a lid, we filled it at home while he waited outside, then, after we gave it to him, he told us we would have you in exactly nine months.”

Her mother smiled. “And he was right! To the exact time of day.”

It was Aithne’s turn to sit in flummoxed silence while she tried to wrap her head around this revelation. Finally she asked the only question she could think of.

“Who was he?”

Her parents exchanged a glance, then both shrugged as one.

“He never told us his name,” her father replied.

Her mother nodded. “I don’t even remember what he looked like. The only thing I remember was that he smelled faintly of roses.”

Aithne frowned as that triggered a fuzzy partial memory that was gone before she could get a chance to examine it. She shook her head.

“I guess we all have our unbelievable but true stories.” She sighed and forced herself to her feet. “I…need to get going. Nyatt and Chyehye will be getting up soon and I promised I would be back in time for the morning chores.”

Her parents rose with her and they said tearful goodbyes and Aithne promised to visit regularly (“Oh, and bring your family next time. We want to meet them.”) and, with a final deep breath, she went home.

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 ]

Aithne made sure she had the door knocker/handle/key/whatever it was to Labyrinthian ready in her hand before she transported the lot of them to the front door of the place. The moment they arrived, she inserted it and yanked at the door.

“Quickly, inside. I don’t want to deal with the trolls.”

“Trolls?” Nyatt paused and looked behind him.

Aithne rolled her eyes and tugged at his arm. “Yes, at least a dozen. Come on.”

“Trolls are solitary,” Nyatt objected, but he allowed himself to be pulled into the ruin.

“Usually that is true, but for some reason, a large number have gathered here.” Aithne slammed the door shut then sighed and looked around.

The place looked exactly the same: a giant domed ceiling held up by massive pillars, and a layer of dust that could not quite hide the magnificence of it all. The other thing that was the same was the figure that appeared after they had taken a few steps forward, but something about her was different.

A Redguard woman in College robes perched on a broken pillar. She looked troubled and peered at them as they approached. Aithne waved an impatient hand at Nyatt, Chyehye, and Merks, all of whom yelled out in surprise and readied themselves for battle.

Aithne stopped in front of the woman and, after a moment, said, “Atmah?”

Atmah looked startled, as if she was the one seeing a ghost, then nodded. “You know who I am.”

Aithne exchanged a look with Sloan, who then said, “Do you remember us?”

“I…I do. I think. We waited in this place for so long, but you released us. I…but then I was here again as if nothing had changed. I thought I dreamed it. Except I cannot dream.”

Aithne smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ve come to release you again.”

Chyehye cleared her throat. “What is going on?”

Aithne blinked. “Oh. Everyone, this is Atmah. She and her friends were trapped down here by another so-called friend. They have been stuck in a Harborish sort of limbo between life and death for a little over a hundred years. One of the reasons I wanted to come here was to save them.”

Chyehye nodded, although Aithne knew that had not been the question her wife had been asking. She sighed and looked over her spouses – Merks also stood there - then took a deep preparatory breath as Chyehye asked the question Aithne had been trying to forestall.

“Yes, that’s fine. But what I meant was, how did you know about her in the first place? How did you know about the dragons or what is going to come next? What’s going on?”

“I guess it is time to tell you. We…” she motioned at Sloan, “…have already lived through this. We knew the dragons were coming back because we witnessed it before. We know what is going to happen over the next six years and we intend to stop it this time.”

A long pregnant pause as they digested this information. Aithne didn’t need to read their minds to recognize their disbelief, but she allowed their thoughts to come to her anyway, just to forestall the inevitable incoming garble of questions.

“No, I did not know either of you last time. Yes, I did know Merks. Yes, that is when I slept with other orcs. Sort of, my husband – one’s was not quite as long as yours but it was much thicker. Yes, ‘this time’ because last time, the dragons won and the world was doomed. No, I don’t know how we were sent back in time. I assume some Aedra or Daedra was involved. Yes, this is all true and yes, I know it sounds unbelievable. Also, yes, I can read minds. I couldn’t last time, so I don’t know why I can now.” She glanced at Sloan. “I still can’t read yours, for whatever reason. Just so you know.”

“Good to hear,” her pseudo-sister replied in a dry tone. “I’m jealous. All I got was the ability to see in the dark.”

“Don’t be – it is aggravating. It would be one thing if I could only do it if I really wanted to, but it’s the opposite- I get a steady stream of thoughts from everyone around me and I have to work to keep them out. It is exhausting. And debilitating if there are many at once.”

“That doesn’t sound pleasant. I bet you also have trouble falling asleep.”

“That isn’t too bad, actually – that is the only time most minds are still enough to ignore. Although I can hear dreams, so that’s…hmm? Oh. Yes, Merks, the other you is the one who made the vow that has haunted you all your life. I don’t know who that Merks made the vow to, but apparently he was taken seriously. But I still say you are under no obligation to honor that vow – he was a very different person. No, you don’t need to know about him. Just trust me when I say, you are the superior version. Oh, and that dream you have of falling off the College? That’s a memory of your fate last time, when the dragons attacked us. That is what we are going to stop this time.”

Sloan laughed while the others’ minds stumbled through trying to make sense of all they had just learned. “Wow, when you lay your cards on the table, you don’t hold any back!”

Aithne shrugged. “I didn’t mean for everything to go the way it has or get anyone but us involved, but I made my choices as they came to me and, for better or worse, this is now my family. You all deserve to know the truth. And, with it, the choice to stay with me or not. I would not blame you for choosing not to.”

Her words seemed to have a galvanizing effect on her audience, especially the word “family,” but Aithne did her best to keep the swarm of thoughts at bay. If they truly were her family, they deserved that much from her. Yes, she admonished herself, even Merks.

Chyehye was the first to respond. “I am…honored, I suppose, to be trusted with this information. However…” A pause. “…I admit, it makes me uncomfortable to know you can read my thoughts. Still, this has furthered my conviction that you are at or near the center of the calamity of our age, akin to the Oblivion crisis two centuries ago. I am willing to continue in this…family provided you swear to me you will no longer look into my mind, Nyi-Chtiyo.”

“I understand and I will do my best, Sna-Chtiyo. I am working every day to control it better. I even grabbed some books I thought might help from the Arcaneum before we left the college.” Aithne tossed a wink at Merks. “Don’t tell Urag.”

“I…I won’t, my lady. This is…I need some time to think.”

“Of course you do. It is a lot to take in all at once.”

She turned to Nyatt but he only shrugged. “You are my wife. Orcs do not so easily give up on family without good cause.”

Aithne was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to insult Chyehye, but the angry glare his second wife cast him said she was insulted regardless. Aithne cleared her throat and hastened to change the subject.

“Why don’t we get started? There are a lot of draugr here and a room with a skeletal dragon we’ll have to get through. Then there is the…thing at the end. He will be a challenge but I’m confident that, between us, we are more than enough.” She motioned at Atmah. “Do you mind showing them what you showed us last time? What happened to your friends?”

Atmah seemed startled by the request, but recovered quickly. “Of…of course. We were twelfth-year students of the College of Winterhold. Six mages burgeoning with power and hubris. We thought it would be fun to delve into a ruin of legend, so discover the secrets that had lain dormant for who knows how many centuries.”

Atmah waved a hand and the ghostly figures appeared, standing as before in a rough line. Aithne did not listen, though – her thoughts strayed ahead to the challenges awaiting them, trying to form plans of attack for each obstacle. Her vow was always in the back of her mind – whatever happened, she would make certain everyone there survived.

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Aithne needn’t have worried; Chyehye was not the warrior Trendil was but she was good enough. Sloan was…well, herself. Nyatt could, at least, hit slow moving targets, and one hit was usually enough to stop them from moving. And Merks continued to prove himself a prodigy of fire magic.

In the room with the skeletal dragon, for instance, while Aithne wasted mana on firestorms, he surrounded the party and the dragon with a simple circle of hot flame. The swarm of skeletons mindlessly ran into it and turned to instant ash, effectively removing themselves from the fight without any effort from anyone else, leaving them to concentrate on the dragon together, and Aithne was left wondering why she hadn’t thought of such an easy solution herself, this time or last.

It was a well-deserved needle poke in the bubble of her burgeoning hubris.

She fared better in the room with the bound draugr mage, somewhat because she played the same role as before – hastening in front of as many of its magical attacks as possible to suck up the energy with the staff - but mostly because it turned out (much to her surprise) that she could read its thoughts. Which was how she learned its name was Morokei, a one-time third-tier Dragon Priest, and that the mask it wore that she had taken last time but never got around to studying amplified magical power.

She cursed herself for missing on something that might have helped against the dragons even as she relayed the information. On her next attack, Sloan was able to gouge a knife into Morokei’s face and knock the mask off before dancing away from its clawing attack and Aithne continued to yell out the priest’s intentions as it moved.

“Here comes a shout! He’s aiming at you, Nyatt!”

“He’s going to firestorm the bridge you’re about to step onto, Chyehye!”

“He’s turning your way, Sloan! Merks, his back should be to you then. Be ready!”

“Yes, my lady!”

It turned as predicted and Merks caught it dead on with twin firebolts that tore through its husk of a torso and, with a final rattling shout, it collapsed.

“Is everyone all right?” Aithne asked into the sudden silence that followed as she retrieved the mask from where it had fallen. There was a series of assents and the feel of healing magic as Merks erased the abrasions of Chyehye and Nyatt. Aithne went to him and handed him the mask. “Here, you will probably find this useful. Although I suggest washing it very thoroughly before wearing it.”

“I…no, my lady! You should take it!”

Aithne hefted the staff. “I am taking this, so it is only fair you get the mask.”

“But…”

She didn’t say anything else, just stood holding the mask out until he took it in clearly reluctant hands. “Thank you, my lady.”

“You deserve it. You more than live up to previous you’s reputation for magic.”

He looked discomfited. “I…thank you. I guess.”

Chyehye cleared her throat. “So it is over? Do we continue to Ustingrav?”

“That depends. Sloan, last time you and Trendil stayed to search for more treasure. Did you find any worth spending a little more time retrieving?”

Sloan raised her eyebrows. “Yes, actually. And I know where to go this time, so we won’t have to waste time searching empty chambers.”

Nyatt frowned. “Do we have time?”

Aithne shrugged. “If what Delphine told us is true, we should be days ahead of Sian. We have time. Let’s do what we can to put poor Atmah and Hafnar to rest, then we can clean this place out and call it a day.”

Aithne looked around at the small group as they gathered to pay their respects for the fallen and a small smile crossed her lips. She had called these people her family, and although it had only been true in words, a small part of her was beginning to accept it as something more. Even Merks felt a bit like a little brother. Well, maybe not a brother. More like a bratty cousin. But still, a little like family.

The biggest part of her still yearned for her past life, for Urag and Chtonji - the pain of losing them was a constant ache in the back of her soul. But at least now she had the kindling for a new beginning. It was a step further than she had had even a week ago, and that thought provided the first drop of peace into her pained existence that she had felt since her past life ended along with her husband’s and son’s on the roof of the College all those months ago. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and she held onto it with all the strength she could muster.

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“Have you found either of the others? I assume not the Dragonborn or she would be with you, but…”

Sloan shook her head. “I just came from Windhelm but there is no sign of Trendil. She may be on some Stormcloak mission – I was unable to tell for certain. I did happen to run into Delphine, of all people, so if we go to her, we will probably run into Sian soon after.” A pause. “Although I guess I should not assume you are coming. You are just married, after all. Congratulations, by the way – I don’t think I said it before.”

“Thank you, but I have already talked to Nyatt about this. I am going…”

“You said you had things to do, but this…”

Aithne blinked and turned to her husband, who was staring at her with an aghast expression. “Hm? This what?”

“This sounds…dangerous.”

“It will be. Exceedingly. But it is what I came here to do. Well, not here at the kwåim.” Aithne laughed. “I got a little sidetracked. But it’s just as well, because…”

Nyatt garumphed. “I’m going with you.”

“…I wasn’t…what? No, you don’t have to…”

“Let my new wife run off to fight dragons by herself? Yes, I certainly do have to.” He paused, then quickly added, “Go with you. Not let you. I meant. Not not let you as in not let you, but not let you not go without…” His words fizzled out as his tongue finished tying itself in knots and his dark green blush started again.

Aithne laughed and placed a hand on her husband’s arm. “Of course, you may do what you wish, my husband. I have no right to tell you otherwise. But…” She paused, uncertain how to phrase what needed to be said in the delicate way it must be said. “…as you said, it will be dangerous.”

Nyatt huffed. “I am an orc. I may not be the best warrior in the meyge but I still have my pride. I could never let my wife face danger while I just sat at home and…”

His voice was beginning to rise along with his color, so Aithne patted his arm and attempted to forestall his building tantrum. Although a small part of her would not have minded if he continued.

“Of course, my husband, I apologize – I did not mean to impugn your honor.”

Nyatt strangled the rest of his words and, after a few grimaces, settled back on his chair and rubbed his face with both hands. “I…apologize. I am not one to lose my temper.”

Chyehye laughed. “You should more often! That was the most orcish I have ever seen you act, Nyatt! Marriage is good for you!” Nyatt glared at Chyehye, which only made her laugh the harder. “Yes! We’ll make a proper orc of you yet!”

Aithne turned back to Sloan. “Anyway, yes, I am going despite being recently married.”

“I am glad to hear it. We’ll need as many allies as we can find. I understand Orsimer society often includes multiple wives – are there more coming with us?”

Aithne laughed. “Fortunately, no. Multiple wives are common but I am Nyatt’s first, for which I am grateful. I’m not sure if I am prepared to be part a harem just yet.”

Chyehye cleared her throat. “Um…about that.”

Aithne blinked and turned to the orc woman. “About what?”

“Um…I want to marry you.”

“I…what?!”

“Technically I would be marrying Nyatt, of course.” She must have misinterpreted the look on Aithne’s face because she hastened to add, “Do not worry – you will be Nyi-Chtiyo.” At Aithne’s blank expression, Chyehye amended, “First Wife. I know well you could defeat me easily if you are not held back by using only a weapon.”

Nyatt frowned. “You are already married to Chach.”

“I know, but I will divorce him. I’m tired of dealing with Tsih’s drama anyway.”

Nyatt’s orcish anger returned to his face. “You have always had my respect, of course, but you have always been…unkind to me. What if I say no?”

Chyehye sighed. “It is true that I have held you in disdain, Nyatt. You are attractive enough and have strength but are clumsy and therefore hopeless in a fight. Although I now realize how hurtful my words have been,” this with a side glance at Aithne, “it is too late to retract them. I understand there is little love between us. However, I swear upon Malacath that my time of distain is past - I will be a faithful and dutiful wife for you.” A pause while Nyatt’s stormy face cast withering tendrils of anger. She sighed again. “Also, consider this: marrying me will bring the two highest ranked members of ṭi sna into the marriage, which will be enough that you - both of you – will be lifted into ṭi sna. The ṭi to which Aithne rightfully belongs and to which you, my soon to be husband, will now be able to claim.”

Nyatt’s expression turned at once from enraged to one of wonderment, but Aithne frowned at Chyehye. “But why? You had no interest in marrying him – us - up to this point.”

Chyehye grinned in something reminiscent of a wolf spotting pretty. “It is very simple, Nyi-Chtiyo – you are clearly near the center of world-changing events. Though it may cost my life, that is a challenge I cannot pass up - I must be part of it.”

It was hard to argue with that point, so Aithne did not. A glance at Nyatt told her he had already made his choice and she sighed as she resigned herself to being in a harem after all. At least Chyehye was someone she liked. “I guess that’s settled.” She returned her focus to Sloan, whose expression remained as unreadable as ever. “Where are we going?” As she said the words, her mind came to a realization that her mouth put into words before she realized she was speaking: “I can’t read your mind!”

Sloan laughed. “I should hope not! You probably would not like what you found there. We are going to Helgen. Or possibly Riverwood. It depends on what we find when we get there.”

Aithne nodded by rote, though she had stopped listening. It was disorienting; after days of people’s thoughts passively intruding on her mind, Sloan’s mental silence felt like having a blind spot in her vision.

“I…very well. I have not been to those places, so we’ll have to walk. Unless we own horses?” She glanced at Nyatt, who shook his head. “No? I thought not.” She sighed and turned her gaze to Merks. “I suppose that puts an end to using the College as our base. I have stretched Savos’ patience far enough without bringing extra guests. Pity – I’ll miss the bath so very much. I can bring you back if you want to continue your studies – I don’t need you as an escort now. No? Very well.” She turned back to Sloan. “I guess we have our plan, little enough as it is. But for now, I need to sleep – it has been a long week and I ate far too much tonight.”

“That is something else we have in common. Never let it be said the Orsimer don’t know how to put on a feast!” Sloan stood and bowed. “Congratulations again on the nuptials. To all three of you, I suppose! I shall see you in the morning.”

She took a step away then seemed to vanish into the dark beyond the torchlights and Aithne felt an unexpected moment of envy – on a whim, she had tied herself down to a husband (and soon a wife – how did that work, exactly? She mentally quailed away from the question even as it popped up), and so had lost her freedom, in a sense – her freedom of movement, of time to herself. Those were things precious to her, things she had had for only the briefest of moments. Last time, it had been taken from her; this time, she had willingly given it away. What daft notion had…

“Are you all right?”

Aithne blinked out of her reverie as her husband's giant but gentle hand touched her shoulder, and she laid a hand of her own on his and smiled up at him. “Yes, my husband. I am fine. Just trying to plan ahead. It will be a long journey – we’ll need supplies.”

“That will be my job,” Chyehye responded as she stood. “I am well practiced at long journeys – I’ll have everything ready by the time we leave. For now, though, I need to talk to my current husband. He will be none too pleased, but since I outrank him, he will have little choice.” She patted Aithne’s other shoulder in a gesture as awkward as it was sweet. “I know you have trepidations about this arrangement, but fear not – we will make sure you are as safe and well-taken care of as we can. Right, my soon to be husband?”

“I…of course!”

Aithne smiled at them both and tried to feel…well, not trepid, but their attempts at reassurance only turned her focus from her new self-imposed lack of privacy to the realization that she had put more innocent lives in danger. They had promised to protect her, but it was she who would be doing the protecting, and that…that had not gone well last time.

As she stood and walked with Nyatt through the kwåim toward his…their home, her thoughts turned to all the ways she had failed those in her charge; the thousands of lives lost because of her arrogance. She gripped her fists as she stepped through the doorway of the ngot – it would not happen again. Whatever happened, whatever she had to do, she would make certain no one under her care died ever again.

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“You made me a lot of coin tonight, so thank you,” Chyehye said as they walked.

“What? How so?”

“There was a bet whether you would be able to walk out of the bridal ngot without help. I had full confidence in you.”

Aithne laughed. “I admit, I am in some pain, but I am used to it.”

Chyehye tossed a sideways glance. “Dare I ask how that is possible?”

Aithne winked and kept her tone light, a challenge when her words so loosely covered the yawning pit of emotions embedded in her response. “My husband is not the first orc I have slept with.”

“That…explains much yet raises so many other questions. But I am not so rude as to pry. Here is who I wanted you to meet.”

They had arrived at the last table, tucked into a corner of the kwåim. Aithne froze in place when she recognized the lone figure sitting at it.

“Sloan! Or maybe Trendil? Although I don’t see any swords, so…”

Aithne’s pseudo-sister smiled as she rose and stepped forward in that graceful way of hers. “You were spot on the first time. You are a long way away from the college – I could not have been more surprised when I saw who stepped out of that hut.” Sloan’s silver eyes met Aithne’s. “That eye suits you. Although I see yours have turned silver as well. Can you see in the dark, by chance?”

Aithne blinked. “No, I…”

“So you two do know each other!” Chyehye laughed. “I guessed as much. Twin sisters, I take it?”

Aithne said, “Not exactly,” at the same time Sloan responded, “That is yet to be determined. Also, we are quadruplets, at least. Or so we hear.” Sloan pulled Aithne into a hug. “You cannot imagine – well, actually, you likely can very well imagine how glad I am that you recognize me. I was afraid I was the only one who remembered.”
Aithne laughed as she returned the embrace. “I feel the same! Things are so similar but so different at the same time.”

“So very different.” Sloan stepped back and gestured at the table, then sat back down in her chair as she added, “But the most important thing is the same. I don’ t know if you have heard, but they are back.”

“They?” Aithne blinked as she took the chair across from Sloan. “Who…oh! It happened?”

“It appears so. I have it on good authority…” Sloan paused and looked around. “He’s around here somewhere. I met one of the Greybeards. He told me they have returned.”

“One of the what?”

“Greybeards?” Chyehye sounded skeptical as she sat on the end chair between the two. “Is that what that old man claims to be? The Greybeards never leave their mountain.”

“That’s what I thought as well, but apparently they are allowed a sabbatical every ten years. Only his got cut short because the dragons have returned.”

“WHAT?!” Chyehye’s incredulous shout was loud enough to attract the attention of the surrounding orcs. “That’s impossible!”

“I assure you, it is not only possible, it has happened.”

“This will make things interesting at the college,” Aithne murmured as her mind stumbled through the implications. Of course, she had known this was going to happen, had expected it any time, even, yet somehow she was caught off guard by the news. “At least they might start listeni…”

“Is everything all right, my lady?”

Aithne jumped at the sound of Merks’ voice and glanced up to find her nemesis-turned-servant standing over her.

“Ah. Yes. I just…”

“Why is there another one of you?”

Aithne jumped again at the sound of a different voice and turned to her other side to find Nyatt towering over the table. “Dammit, you two, walk louder.” A sigh. “She is…” Aithne paused, then decided the truth was just too convoluted. “…my sister, Sloan. Sloan, meet my husband, Ug Hwow Mmenyått. Oh, and this is Merks.”

Her husband gave Sloan a nod as he sat beside Aithne. “You may just call me Nyatt. What is impossible?”

Sloan smiled. “I am glad you asked, Ug Hwow Mmenyått.” She got the pronunciation perfect the first time, a fact that slightly annoyed Aithne, whose tongue was still having trouble wrapping itself around the thick Orcish phonemics. “After who knows how many thousands of years, dragons have returned to Tamriel. Their numbers will start small but grow rapidly until, in about six years’ time, there will be enough to overwhelm all of Tamriel, end life as we know it, and begin a new age of dominion over the tattered remnants of men and mer. And orsimer.”

Aithne could not hold back a laugh at the stunned expressions of the three non-Shaes at the table. “That may have been a bit too large a potion to drink all at once! Surely just the news that the dragons have returned is big enough for now.”

Sloan shrugged. “Best to have all the cards on the table. People need to understand the implications of ignoring them this time or it will just be…”

Chyehye cleared her throat. “This time?”

Aithne jumped in before Sloan could make things even more complicated and unbelievable-sounding. “The last time dragons were around, she means. When all the people were nothing but slaves under them.”

“Ah.” Even without mind reading, Chyehye’s expression said she suspected that wasn’t the real answer, but she didn’t press. “Since you somehow know so much about them, even though they may or may not actually exist, does that mean you know how to stop them?”

Sloan shrugged. “Of course. We need to find the Dragonborn and make sure she is able to do her job this time.”

“Dragonborn?” This time the incredulous question came from Merks. “From one legend to another! Are you saying…” He stopped then flushed. “Um. My apologies, my lady. It is not my place to speak out.”

Aithne fought a brief internal fight against what she wanted to say (“You’re right, Merks. As punishment, you need to go back to the college immediately!”) and what an actual adult who could look at things in a fair way would say. Alas, her better side won out.

“Nonsense, Merks. You are a servant, not a slave. And even the servant part is your choice, not mine - I have no right to tell you when you can or cannot speak. Say your piece.”

Merks cleared his throat. “There have been maybe ten Dragonborns in the entire history of the world. If you say the dragons are back, I believe you, my lady, but just because the dragons are back does not necessarily mean there is a new Dragonborn as well.”

Even without prying, his thoughts clearly belied his statement of belief, but Aithne chose to take his words at face value and snorted. “You will trust me on the one but not the other? Suffice for now to say we were forewarned of this series of events. If you choose to continue this course, you will learn the truth of it soon enough.”

Merks flushed. “I…of course, I will follow you anywhere, my lady! I was born to…”

“No one is born to do anything, Merks. We make choices and live through the consequences.” Unless forced to do otherwise, she didn’t add. A thought came to her in a flash and she jumped on the idea it presented. “If you need to hear it, I release you from any vows you may or may not have made in this life or any other.”

“I…no! My lady, I have waited my whole life for you! I would never abandon you!”

It had been a nice try. Aithne sighed. “Fine. But if you choose to follow this path, know that it is you who are choosing it. Don’t blame some hazy feeling of destiny or some god’s calling for what might befall you.”

“Of…of course.”

Aithne closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and wished she had a way to go back in time…well, not time, to go back to the other Skyrim to stop Merks from making his vow of service. It had seemed meaningless at the time, much like his vow to leave her alone after their duel. What had happened at the temple when he went to get “cleansed?”

She shook her head and set aside the question, as she had done to so many others since her return. Whatever had happened, it was too late to change it now. Besides, to give credit where it was due, whatever else he had been, Merks was a gifted mage. Aithne had no doubt he would be useful in the fights ahead. She just wished it had been anyone else.

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It had all been an illusion, of course; the universe was the cruelest master she had ever had. Sutfu’s ministerings had nothing on the universe– he had merely tortured her. Giving her nice things for the sole purpose of taking them away again, breaking them, then handing back the shattered pieces while laughing was far more painful.

She shook her head, trying to clear it of her melancholy. That day, she had married for love; today, she married for…

For what? Aithne blinked as her mind stumbled upon the question. An orc wife had rights within the larger orc society – her vote was counted just as much as a male’s when it came time to choose leaders and they were often part of the kwåim council of elders – but at home, she was little more than a servant for her husband. That much had been made clear, not just by Chyehye (although she had certainly emphasized it enough times that Aithne wondered if the orc was trying to talk her out of the wedding), but by the thoughts of the meyge.

So what was she getting out of this? It was one of many questions she had not stopped to ask herself, and she felt it very unhelpful for the question to raise itself at this moment, when she was standing next to her groom listening to Dyaj speak about honor, commitment, and death to enemies (no mention of the word “love,” she noted) in Malacath’s name.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the pronouncement of her new name: Aithne gra-Tshak. It had somehow never crossed her mind to wonder what her fiancé’s real name was, and it was during her musing on this topic that the part of the ceremony she had most dreaded (having built it up in her head to something akin to that moment when she had first stepped into the kwåim) came and went in a disorienting heartbeat she barely had time to process. Nyatt gripped the front of her dress, tore it open in one yank to a roar of approval from the crowd, swept her into his arms, and stepped into the ngot. The door had already closed behind them before Aithne’s brain registered what had happened.

“What…” she managed to squeak out as Nyatt set her gently on her feet.

“I’m sorry.” Nyatt stepped back as far as the tiny ngot would allow. “At most orc weddings, the tearing of the gown is…emphasized much more, but since you’re a human, I thought…I mean, I wasn’t sure how…um…if…”

Aithne raised her eyebrows as she studied her new husband while her brain finished catching up. “You’re blushing!”

He was, and the pointing out of it only increased the dark green flush of his skin. “I…” he started, then paused and gripped his fists. “I do not know what madness came upon you to choose me when the entire meyge offered themselves, but I am grateful.”

Aithne shrugged. “I’ll be honest, Nyatt – I chose you because I felt you would demand the least from me. I have things to do and need to leave in order to do them. I cannot afford to sit here playing house.”

A pause, then, as his mouth opened then closed again. Aithne could feel him deflate a bit but then rally himself. “I…see. Well, it is true – you saved my life and then raised my ṭi, something I was certain could never happen. I owe you more than I could ever repay, so I will, of course, gainsay you nothing.”

Even as he said it, she could feel his inward cringe. The tiniest of peeks told her what she supposed should have been obvious – the man who had been emasculated his entire life saw this new step as more of the same. She cringed at her previous words and made haste to amend them.

“Do not worry, my husband. Chyehye has been most thorough in her teachings - I am well aware of my role as your wife, and I shall likewise gainsay you nothing that is your right as the head of our household. When it comes to matters of our family, you will always have the final say. I ask only for the boon of freedom of movement. Have no fear – no matter how far away I travel, I shall have your meals prepared and spend every night in our bed.”

How, exactly, that would work was something she would need to figure out later. Hopefully Nyatt liked the food provided by the College because she would not have time to cook three meals a day for him, as her duties required. While she was glad she had not married into a harem (another tricky subject she had not taken the time to think about beforehand), having someone to share the housekeeping duties would have been helpful.

For the moment, however, she could feel her words alleviate some of his anxiety. A good time to double-down by refocusing on the present. “Speaking of which.” She let the tattered remains of her wedding dress slip from her shoulders and gestured toward the bed. “I’m sure the meyge is growing anxious for the feast. We should not delay them longer.”

Nyatt’s anxiety spiked up again and Aithne frowned, although this time she managed to resist the temptation to peek. She was beginning to get in the habit of looking into people’s thoughts, and it frightened her a little to realize it had started to feel natural instead of invasive. She instead tried a guess at the reason for his calcitrance.

“I apologize, I know I am probably not attractive to you. I do not mind if you keep your eyes closed and picture someone you would rather be doing this with. But..”

“It’s not that! I just…”

He stumbled to a halt, his already-flushed skin darkening even more, until it appeared almost black.

Aithne frowned. “Are you…you have done this before, right?” And, at his incredulous look, clarified, “Had sex?”

“I…of course! All orc boys do it during their kodu. It is part of the ceremony to become a kwontå.” He paused, correctly surmised her expression meant she didn’t understand, and added, “The ceremony to go from boy to adult.”

“Ah. Then…”

“I just…don’t want to hurt you.”

Aithne couldn’t hold back the burst of laughter. “Oh, Nyatt, you don’t have to worry about me. I also have done this before.” She clenched her fists in front of her, concentrated on his clothes, then yanked her hands apart. ”Fuu blap!”

His clothes shred themselves to tatters, revealing his soft-toned body, itself a minor surprise – it was the first orc body she had seen that did not seem chiseled from marble – and she stepped forward and started to stroke his slowly rising cock as she pulled him toward the bed.

Despite her bravado, she felt conflicted as Nyatt’s orcish instincts kicked in and he took over, grabbing her and shoving her onto the down mattress. On the one hand, his cock was everything his extreme height had promised and the thought of the pain in would inflict filled Aithne with the familiar fear and lust combination that had kept her buoyed throughout her previous relationship.

On the other hand, that previous relationship was still so recent, it felt like a betrayal to Urag to be sleeping with someone else. Even though he had died; even though the new Urag had no interest in her; even though the one who now slammed into her, fulfilling the promise of blinding pain and ecstasy in one stroke, then redoubling it with each subsequent pound, was her legitimate and lawful husband.

Still, she could not shake the feeling of shame.

Aithne shook her head, then shifted, using just a little magical force to push Nyatt to the side then over, until she was straddling him. His cock never missed a beat, but now she could control its angle a little better, so it wasn’t hitting her in the exact same spot every time.

This pose reminded her of Borkul, and the thought of HIM helped ease her conscience. She pictured the icy beach, thought of Borkul under her complete control; of taking the power he had held over her and turning it into against him. SHE had the power now; he was nothing but a toy, a plaything.

The anger and heat from that moment came back and washed away the last vestiges of her guilty feelings. Aithne snarled something inarticulate as her nails bit into Nyatt’s chest, drawing blood and a howl from him that was joined a moment later by one of her own. She felt his hot spunk splash inside her even as her body convulsed. She gripped him, squeezed his hips with her knees, his cock with her pelvis, as they strained together until her strength left her all at once and she collapsed, gasping, upon his chest.

After some time, when their breathing had slowed to something resembling normal and the chill of the air on their sweat-drenched bodies began to create shivers, Aithne lifted her head and smiled at her husband.

“Well? How am I doing as an orcish wife so far?”
Nyatt laughed as one hand stroked absent fingers down Aithne’s back, giving her a second reason to shiver. “I…have no complaints. My agan owta - my guide during my kodu – was nothing like that.”

“Glad to hear it.” She rolled to one side then stood as Nyatt shifted up.

“I suppose we should go out there and start the feast. Only…” Nyatt paused as his apprehension rose once again.

Aithne grabbed the outfit Chyehye had placed in the ngot for her, this one a normal orcish tunic and trousers made of thick leather and fur. “What is it?”

Nyatt gestured at Aithne’s clothes. “I no longer have clothes. You tore them apart, and it is not the normal custom for the husband to require a second outfit.” His voice sounded amused but his mind addendumed (too loudly for her to avoid hearing) <How did you tear them apart?>

“Oh! Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“It is no matter. However…” again, a pause.

“Yes?”

“I am…going to have to tell you to fetch some for me from my ngot.”

“I…okay, I don’t mi…”

Nyatt mumbled something and Aithne frowned. “What?”
He sighed. “I’m going to have to tell you to do it in front of the meyge. So they can see that…that I am in charge.”

He said the last word almost as a whisper, and Aithne blinked. “I…see. And you are concerned because you feel I might be shamed by this because I am of ṭi sna?”

“Well…yes. Although you are no longer in ṭi sna. To my shame, my low placement has lowered you to ṭi chyːu.” Another sigh. “I am aware of my own weakness, as is the rest of the meyge. I do not have the strength to oppose you, should you choose to ignore me. Although it is against custom, it is not unheard of for a wife to refuse her husband’s commands.”

“My husband, it is as I told you before – I am aware of my duties as your wife, and I will fulfill them, as I promised. When you tell me to fetch something for you, I will fetch it. Only…”

Another spike of fear from Nyatt. “Only what?”

She grinned. “You’ll need to tell me where your ngot is. I have no idea.”

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“It took longer than expected. My apologies – we found traces of the ba-ṭːa-tswas while hunting for your feast, so we tracked them down.” Chyehye set the clothes on the large bed – the only piece of furniture in the hut – and began to sort through them. “Take off your clothes and try this on.”

Aithne blinked again, then stood and slipped out of her college robes. “You found them? Is everyone okay?”

“Yes. We were prepared this time; it is better to be the ambusher than the ambushee!”

Aithne could not hold back a bitter laugh. “Don’t I know it!” She shivered as she beat back visions of Borkul and slipped on the dress Chyehye had suggested. “So how does this wedding work?”

“It is very simple. That one is still a little too large. You humans are so tiny! Here, try this one. Every eligible male who desires to marry you will step forward and you will choose one. The higher his ṭi, the better, since the average of your combined ṭi - along with those of his other wives, of course – determines your final placement in the meyge.”

“Ah. So if I chose someone from a lower ṭi…”

”Your status would be lowered. You could even drop to a lower ṭi if you chose someone from ṭi ṭːoh, for some reason. It is rare, but it happens; some romantics marry for love instead of status. That one is better but still not quite right. Here, try this one. Of course, as the top ranked in ṭi sna, you will lose a little status marrying anyone of your ṭi, since they are all below you. But if one from ṭi nyi steps forward, you should choose him – that will lift you into ṭi nyi, and you can never lose that status once you have it.”

Aithne frowned as she slipped on the next dress. She wasn’t interested in status; she needed someone who would let her leave when she wanted to. The question was, which ṭi would be least likely to care? Assuming there were enough to choose fr…

“Better, but that one is too thick. It’s embarrassing for a new husband to be unable to tear off his wife’s wedding dress in one try!” Chyehye laughed while Aithne’s eyes grew wide and her train of thought fizzled out. “But I’m sure it’s the same for…”

“Wait, are you saying part of the wedding ceremony is him tearing my clothes off?”

“Well, of course! Doesn’t that happen at human weddings? No? Huh. The ceremony ends with the husband tearing off his new wife’s wedding dress. He is not allowed to carry her into the bridal hut until he is able to complete the task, and if he cannot do it at all, the marriage is called off. In the old days, when the wife’s husband was chosen for her and it was someone she did not like, she would make the dress out of tough material that was difficult to rip. In one famous incident, Tto hated her would-be husband Duggup so much, she cunningly wove strands of steel throughout her dress. Duggup was so embarrassed by his failure, he moved to a different kwåim.”

Aithne found herself flushing and fought to keep her voice steady. “That must have led to some bad blood. Why does this happen right after the ceremony, not after the feast?”

Chyehye laughed, apparently oblivious to Aithne’s reaction. “It started a war that lasted two-hundred years. It is right after the ceremony for two reasons: if he fails, there was no wedding, so there is no reason to have a feast or give gifts. Also, it is best for the groom to get his lust out at the start – otherwise, he will just grow more irritable during the celebration and eventually fights will break out. Here, let’s try this one.”

Aithne combed through her thoughts as she tried on the pile of dresses. She had spent over three years as a slave and had been treated to many more humiliating degradations than having her clothes torn off in front of other people. Divines, it had been only nineteen days since she had appeared naked, bloody, and clinging to a giant cock in front of a good portion of the College of Winterhold. So why did the thought of her prospective husband tearing off her clothes in front of the entire meyge cause such internal distress?

Well, the meyge’s response when first seeing her was probably a big part of that. And her response to their response was an even bigger part. The combination fear and lust once again rose like bile, but she shoved it back down. At some point, she was going to have to sit down and figure out how to deal with her new gift/curse – it would not do to be caught frozen, like she had that day, in a time of crisis.

But now was not the time. She shook her head and focused on what Chyehye was saying, trying to ignore her knees and loins, both of which were quivering, but for completely different reasons.

It was going to be a long day.

*************************

The problem with doing so well in her trial, Aithne mused as she stood in front of the assembled meyge, was that the orcs who may have been inclined to let her do whatever she wanted now wanted her to stay. Strong wives were much in demand; whoever her husband, he would not want her to leave. She could hear it in their thoughts.

There were more to choose from than she could have imagined. Nearly every male from ṭi sna, her ṭi, had stepped forward to offer themselves as her mate. Many from the ṭi chy:u had as well, especially those closest to the top of the ṭi, hopeful for a quick promotion via marriage. Even a handful of ṭi ṭːoh orcs proffered themselves, though she didn’t need to read their minds to know they felt they had no chance.

In all, she had the choice out of nearly one hundred husbands. It was an overwhelming amount and her mind balked when she tried to get it to parse through them. How was she supposed to choose a life partner from one hundred strangers?

Then a gasp broke out from the crowd followed by murmurs as another orc stepped forward, one from the ṭi nyi group. Aithne heard Chyehye hiss but she didn’t need to ask to know why.

The orc’s Borkul-like hunger radiated from him like a wave of heat. It rang alarm bells in Aithne’s head while simultaneously launching a boiling wave of lust from her groin. He wanted to dominate her; to break her. Not to make her a slave, but just…because. Because that’s who he was – he carried an insatiable need to impose his strength on others. His wives stood behind him in submissive stillness, their gazes cast to the ground, the only orcs in the entire meyge not watching the proceedings. Aithne’s eyes locked with his and she had to fight not to kneel on the spot.

Movement distracted her gaze, and she turned away with silent gratitude as another of the ṭi nyi orcs stepped forward. This one, she recognized – the prodigy who had beaten her without trying. As if prompted, several other members of ṭi nyi stepped forward as well, including, after a pause in which the entire meyge seemed to hold its breath, Dyaj.

Chyehye’s hand gripped Aithne’s arm in a joyous squeeze; the orc’s excitement would have been palpable even without her leaking thoughts, which Aithne didn’t need to read – they poured out of Chyehye’s mouth in a harsh semi-whisper.

“The Chieftain himself! You will be a ṭån-Chtiyo!”

Many questions sprang into Aithne’s mind at that pronouncement, but she pushed them away – they were not important at this moment. “So you recommend I choose him?”

“You must!”

“Must I? Let’s see.”

Aithne could feel the weight of the meyge’s eyes as she moved from the front of the bridal hut to stand in front of Dyaj. She blocked out the individual minds as best she could but she could still feel them all as a collective, like some sort of giant hive mind reacting in unison to her every move. She tried to ignore it as she focused on Dyaj and read his mind.

No, not read it – she dug into it. For the first time, she gathered her strange new ability, set aside her qualms, and put it to its full use.

At first, she was overwhelmed by the myriad of thoughts, memories, and emotions that all tried to insert themselves at once. She wrangled them with difficulty into some sort of order she could parse and finally found what she was looking for.

Dyaj had stepped forward on an impulse fueled by curiosity and lingering regret over how she had been treated by both the meyge and by Dyaj himself. Now that she stood in front of him, he was beginning to regret his impulse. His mind flashed to his wives, then specifically to his First-Wife, Kinychye, and her reaction should Aithne choose him. Aithne bit down on the laugh at the conversation his imagination conjured (although a quick glance behind him showed Kinychye’s livid face, which lent credence to his fear), pulled out of his mind, then turned and stepped to the next orc in line, then the next. One by one, she forced herself into their most personal selves, learned who they were and, more important, what they wanted from her.

She learned less than she expected - most had roughly the same story and nearly all had the same wants. The prodigy, Aithne was surprised to learn, had stepped forward solely to protect her – he had been afraid she would choose Mwiw, the hungry Borkul doppelganger, so had stepped forward to give her a different ṭi nyi option. He was not actually interested in her; she had not impressed him during their fight and he suspected she had cheated in some way to get as far as she had. Which, of course, was not inaccurate.

The other ṭi nyi orcs were intrigued by her but had stepped forward only because two others of their ṭi had and did not want to lose face. They likewise were not interested in her, per se. Except for Mwiw, of course - when she tried to delve deeper into him, all she found was a black well of insatiable hunger. She withdrew from him almost as soon as she started and stepped hastily to the next, secretly begging her knees to keep her upright.

The lower Tier orcs’ motivations were different but similar – they weren’t attracted to her, of course, and she foresaw many lonely nights in her future with any of them; they saw her merely as a status boost for themselves. But, as she made her way through ṭi sna and started on ṭi chy:u, a sense of foreboding began to grow in her. It had been one thing when she had been considered so weak she would have been useless (and probably even a detriment); her strong showing meant she would be capable of the chores required of an orcish wife. Even if she chose a husband below her ṭi, she would need his permission to leave the Kwåim, and strong wives were needed at home. Perhaps this had been a bad idea after all.

The hive-mind of the meyge reacted in concert as she moved through the ranks; starting with an inexorable sense of certainty when she went to Dyaj (obviously he is the only choice!) to a slight surprise but with a certain acceptance and even grudging approval (she knows her place; she is not worthy of being a ṭån-Chtiyo) when she moved away, the group mind had become increasingly incredulous as she moved down the line. There was an audible gasp when she moved to ṭi sna but, when she kept going without making a choice, the collective began to understand she was merely sizing up her choices one by one. An interesting strategy, but she was a stranger, after all, and had not grown up with these orcs, so it made some sort of sense that she felt the need to scope them out. That logic began to unravel when she continued to ṭi chyːu (Why bother? There are plenty of options of better standing!) and a certain sense of impatience began to pervade the gathering as she made her way down the row.

It was when she finished with ṭi chyːu and moved to the handful of hopefuls from ṭi ṭːoh that she lost the crowd completely (Why even glance at them?! This is insulting to ṭi nyi!) Even the orcs she studied were shocked, but with the shock came stabs of hope, for they, too, saw her only as a way to boost their status. It was only when she came to the very end of the line and looked up (and up and up) at the tallest yet lowest-ranked prospective husband of the bunch, that Aithne finally found what she was looking for – a single orc who would not hinder her from doing what she needed to do.

In retrospect, she mused as she tried to prepare herself for what she assumed would be a painful mental shock as the entire meyge revolted as one, the choice had been obvious all along. She took a deep breath, smiled at her soon-to-be-husband, and called out in a voice loud enough to ring throughout the kwåim the formal words Cheyhye had taught her: “Ug Hwow Mmenyått, ttud uch chenyåp pub ṭːeṭ ksak uch mmo do bits?”

Nyatt’s face reflected the stunned silence of the entire meyge, and for a long three heartbeats, time itself seemed to stand still. Then Nyatt swallowed and said the traditional words of acceptance – “Di pub mmechti ṭːeṭ - ṭːeṭ adwagunu tshe kwåmm.” – and the meyge collapsed into pandemonium as the two grinned at each other as if sharing a joke only they understood.

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Start from the beginning

The Jaunty Spirit had foundered on Middas, 30 Sun's Height, She and Merks had left the college on Middas, 13 Last Seed, so, with the three days of travel and one day at Narzulbur, that made today Sundas, 17 Last Seed.  It was a day she would remember for the rest of her life, she was certain - the day she became part of the Orc community.

It was strange, holding a weapon again. Even though she had not touched a sword until her naval training began, her body had seemed to have a natural affinity for it; she had caught on quickly and acquitted herself well enough. Maybe if she had had one when she went to Labyrinthian, she would not have been so useless.

The image of her with a sword trying to keep up with Trendil and Sloan leaked into her mind and she laughed to herself; her “well enough” was nothing compared to the two of them! Aithne would have been just as useless. Either one would breeze through the trial Aithne now faced and she found herself wishing she could borrow their skills for the day.

Because she would not be able to use magic.

She hadn’t considered the idea until now, standing alone in the center of the entire meyge waiting for her first opponent. Certainly calling down a firestorm would create a healthy amount of shock, but it would also likely turn her opponents into crispy orc-kebobs.

But that wasn’t all. Only one of the orcs had seen her in action, and Aithne could hear Chyehye’s voice as if the orc woman was screaming in her ear – she was mentally pleading with Aithne not to use magic. Chyehye’s mind’s eye flashed to the implications: the anger from “honorless” wins leading to an unbridgeable mistrust. Aithne would be ostracized from the meyge before she even joined it. Her prospective suitors might even break tradition and impugn their own honor by refusing to marry her.

Without magic, she was just a slightly-above-average swordswoman who hadn’t practiced in over six years. She might – might! – manage to beat one opponent, if she got a lucky draw, but probably not more. Which wouldn’t have mattered to her so much if she didn’t know that that was exactly what the men expected.

But…that was only if they knew magic was being cast. What if they didn’t? She could use spells untraceable except to others of magical talent, such as the ones every novice (or 18^th-year, in Aithne’s case) learned when they started dueling. Ebonyflesh, for instance, hardened her skin to something akin to the hide of a mammoth. Rally and Call to Arms boosted stamina, health, and speed. She mumbled the words and hid the hand motions by pretending to fidget nervously.

These little bits of rote helped ease her tension and got her mind off the “what if” track it had been stuck on. Urag admonished her from her distant past: she had magic on her side and, as he had told her from the very start, her potential was only limited by her imagination.

As her first opponent was called to the circle, Aithne realized she had another advantage – she knew what her opponent was going to do before they did it.

The woman she faced was elderly, with a kind face, but she was an orc, after all, and when Dyaj called for the start of the battle, the woman howled and rushed forward, double-bladed axe held high. There was nothing more to her attack – she expected Aithne to stand still and get split in two. Aithne waited for the woman to get close, then sidestepped as the axe swung down and smashed the flat of her sword into the woman’s head with as much force (and just a little extra oomph from a whispered wind spell (with the minor modifier to avoid creating a gust that might be felt)) as she could muster. The orc went down in a heap as several onlookers cried out and jumped away from the skittering axe.

The next three were similar; straightforward attacks with no thought but to cleave. Aithne didn't need magic to win them and was pretty confident they would have been easy victories even without her strange mind-reading abilities – there was no skill involved, no need to even parry an attack.

After the fourth, Dyaj called out something. Aithne felt his minor surprise as her brain translated his words via this thoughts: she had passed the lowest level of their hierarchy, ṭi ṭːoh. Next came ṭi chyːu and, what’s more, Dyaj had decided he did not want to be embarrassed any further by having this weak human woman continue winning. For the ṭi ṭːoh, he had chosen the weakest fighters for fear Aithne would die too quickly. For ṭi chyːu, he picked the strongest first.

It was a burly male, shorter but also wider than most orcs. He carried a two-handed great sword and approached her with…not caution, exactly – he clearly felt he was in no danger of losing – but with a practiced sizing-up gait.

Aithne circled with him, listening to him pick through strategies. He decided on a quick-strike lunge, which Aithne parried; she followed it with an immediate riposte that tore a gash in his arm. He cried out in surprise and backed away.

Aithne felt him ratchet her up a few notches in his mind as the first hints of doubt crept in. She smiled and pushed her advantage, rushing forward and striking with a flurry of blows. He backed away further as he went into a defensive stance and Aithne could feel panic growing in his mind. His swung in a desperate wide horizontal arc that seemed very slow to Aithne’s magically-enhanced reflexes. She dropped her sword and jumped, wrapping her legs as far around his torso as she could while her hands gripped his throat.

She did not, of course, have the strength to do him any harm. She did, however, have the Strangulation spell. The orc’s eyes bulged and his sword dropped from his hands so he could use them to beat at Aithne’s back. She silently thanked Chyehbå (an orc, ironically) for creating Ebonyflesh and responded to his fists by reapplying Strangulation but this time with the amplify modifier. The orc turned from green to purple as his punches grew weaker and then he collapsed to his knees. Aithne had just enough time to disengage and roll away before his body crashed face-first onto the ground.

The stunned silence was, itself, amplified by the patent disbelief that flooded her from the crowd as she stood and picked her sword back up. Then, unexpectedly, a cheer rose up from someone and it was quickly picked up by others. Soon a solid majority of the circle appeared to be rooting for her.

The adulation only grew as she finished the next three opponents to pass ṭi chyːu and move on to ṭi sna. Dyaj, however, was not one of her new fans and impatiently gestured at a particular orc. Once again, the strongest of this ṭi had been chosen first, but this time, it was someone Aithne recognized.

“You have done well, better than any here could have expected,” Chyehye said as she stepped into the circle. “I admit, I am just as surprised. I saw how strong you are as a punyyå but it is rare, indeed, to find a punyyå who is also good with the blade.”

Aithne laughed. “I had…unique training.”

“So it would seem. Let’s see how good that training really was.”

The answer was given soon, in Aithne’s mind: not good enough.

Although she could read Chyehye’s mind, the orc was too fast for Aithne to take advantage. Even with her magically augmented skills, she was hard pressed to do more than defend herself. Even her sisters might have had trouble.

Well, probably not Trendil. She had seemed on an altogether different level.

Aithne needed a way to slow the orc down, even if just for a moment. An idea popped into her head, but it would be risky. Perhaps it would be better to concede; she had already surpassed everyone’s expectations, after all.

Dyaj’s smug thoughts chased away any idea of concession. He knew Aithne was outclassed; was certain of Chyehye’s victory. Aithne had to prove him wrong once again.

She jumped away from a swing, rolled a few times to gain some distance, pretended to be winded enough that she had to kneel to catch her breath while her finger sketched a rune of Paralysis. With a slap of her palm, she infused the rune with power while lifting herself back to her feet, then stepped away from the approaching Chyehye.

The orc circled, so Aithne circled with her, keeping the rune between them; it would do no good if her opponent didn’t step on the damn thing. Finally, Chyehye closed the distance, trying for a feint that would turn into an uppercut slash. Her foot hit the rune and Aithne dove forward; she had only a fraction of a moment before the paralysis wore off. Just enough time to dive under Chyehye’s lunging sword. The orc was moving again by the time Aithne hit the ground, but she had what she needed – Aithne’s sword bit deep into Chyehye’s hamstring and the orc yelped and crashed to the ground, clutching at her bleeding leg.

Aithne was up in a moment, kneeling by the orc’s side and whispering, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to cut that deep!” She started casting her healing spell, but Chyehye grabbed her hands.

“No,” she hissed. “You have done well to hide your magic thus far. Don’t look at me like that, do you think I could not tell when I stepped on whatever that was you put on the ground? I do not believe anyone else realizes, though, so do not make it obvious now. We have healing potions – I will be fine. Finish the fight.”

Aithne paused, then nodded and stood as two orcs ran to them with a stretcher. Chyehye gave Aithne a wink as she was carried off and Aithne bent to pick up her sword. She was suddenly tired and didn’t really want to fight anymore, but the next orc stepped into the circle and roared something at her, so she sighed, reapplied her defensive spells, and set herself. As Chyehye had said, she needed to finish the fight.

It ended four matches later, in Aithne’s first and only matchup in ṭi nyi, the highest circle. The orc she faced was some sort of orcish prodigy. Trendil might have been able to defeat him – she was the only person Aithne had ever seen move faster (well, she and Borkul, who likely would also have fared well) – but Aithne had no chance. She couldn’t even read his mind. Or, rather, she could read his mind, but he somehow had a way to choose multiple attacks at the same time, adjusting each swing based on Aithne’s reactions in split-second layers. Had she not had Ebonyflesh, his first blow would have split her in two. As it was, she was thrown across the courtyard and gained a nasty bruise that would have lingered for weeks if left untended.

None of her little tricks worked on him. He somehow never stepped on her runes, he was much too quick to jump on to try to strangle, and his weapon speed was thrice anything her enhanced abilities could match even when boosted. Had she been able to use the full force of her magic, she was certain she could defeat him, but without that option, she was finally forced to concede after a bone-shattering blow to her sword wrist (that would have severed the hand completely, had it not, again, been for Ebonyflesh. Chyehbå was fast becoming Aithne’s favorite orc of all time).

After the crowd’s roars has died down and, more important to Aithne, after she had drank the bitter healing potion (apparently orcs did not believe in flavoring their potions) and her pain dissipated, Dyaj stood one last time in front of the meyge and called out (as translated by Nyatt), “The trial is finished! Our meyge-pyots has earned her ṭi!”

He had mixed feelings about that but Aithne was too exhausted to care about what he thought anymore and shut him out of her mind.

“Tonight, we hunt, for tomorrow we celebrate the wedding of the newest member of meyge Narzulbur with a feast fit for a meyge-pyots of ṭi sna!”

Fortunately, Aithne did not seem to be expected to participate in the hunt. Many of the orcs rushed for weapons but Dyaj led the way to a small building, basically a hide-and timber hut, much less permanent-looking than the other buildings in the kwåim, and said, “You will have a better home on the morrow, once you have chosen your husband. As the highest ranking member of ṭi sna, your choice of husbands will include nearly all eligible ṭːa ba, so your new home will be among our largest. For now, though, I am afraid all we have is this guest ngot.”

Aithne gave him a tired smile. “As long as there is a place to sleep, I don’t care if it is in a dung heap.”

Dyaj laughed. “Not even ṭi ṭːoh would live in a dung heap. We have our pride.” A pause, as his expression darkened. “Speaking of pride, I…doubted you. Even after you saved us from the ba ṭːa tswas. Even after Cheyeye told me you did it, not your male companion. You have given me much to consider about myself. I apologize. And I thank you.”

“Well, look at me. I don’t blame you for underestimating someone half the size of even your…er, our smallest…um… meyge-ṭːa-its?”

He laughed again. “Its means ‘brother.’ If you mean to include both sexes, it would be meyge-ṭːa-poydiw.”

“Thank you.” She berated herself as the orc nodded and left her and Merks to themselves in the hut. Why hadn’t she learned Urag’s language? So foolish! Another regret added to her pile. She determined to get a book or three on the subject the next time she was at the Arcaneum.

In the meantime, all she wanted to do was sleep. She tossed the sword in a corner of the hut, ignored everything Merks was saying – he seemed to want to talk about something, but she just didn’t care – and curled up on the fur covered straw that the hut used as a bed, asleep almost before her head hit the fur.

Next chapter

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Start from the beginning

Aithne snapped back from the abyss when the orc spoke; his pale green skin and incongruously high-pitched voice shattered the Borkul illusion and left her struggling to hold back a giggle. It took her a couple attempts to be able to say, “My name is Aithne.”

“She just saved your life, Nyatt,” the orc woman interjected. “Show some respect.” The woman knelt beside Aithne and bowed her head. “I am Chyehye, by the way.”

“Aithne,” Aithne said again. “How are the other two?”

 “I’ll make it.” A deep voice, more orc-like; one that sent a trill down Aithne’s spine. One of the other males limped forward from somewhere behind Aithne, rubbing his head. He was of a medium green hue and stood, from Aithne’s estimation, nearly as tall as Borkul had. “Ṭåmmåm was not so lucky. Half his head got ripped off by those ba-ṭːa-tswas. No healing in Nirn is bringing him back.”

Aithne bowed her head. “I’m…sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a good death. He is at the Ashen Forge and will battle in Malacath’s realm for eternity with his thousand wives at his side.”

Aithne blinked. “Thous…”

“I am Dyaj gro-Pyum.” The deep-voiced orc bowed. “Much as I envy our fallen brother his afterworld gains, I am happier to still be alive. You have my gratitude, as well as that of Kwåim Narzulbur.”

“I…” Aithne shook herself and tried to match Dyaj’s semi-formal tone. “I am Aithne…” She paused, her married name on her lips; perhaps she should not use what would clearly be an orcish name when she had no proof in this world she merited it. “…Shae.” Her maiden name – or, in this world, just her name – felt foreign to her lips, it had been so long since she had spoken it. “We are glad we could…”

Another pause as the word “we” sparked a memory, and she cried out, “Merks!” She jumped to her feet and whirled around, only to find her nemesis-turned-servant standing on wobbly legs next to Chyehye. “You are okay.”

A rush of relief took a nosedive into a range of emotions tangled into knots she could not begin to untie and she fought to shove them somewhere deep as Merks nodded and said, “My Lady.”

Dyaj motioned. “Nyatt, are you able to walk? We should leave. The ba-ṭːa-tswas will likely be back.”

Aithne asked, “The what?” as Nyatt levered himself to a sitting position with a grunt.

Chyehye stood and held out a hand to Nyatt. “You would call them werewolves.” She helped Nyatt stand and Aithne blinked as the orc rose and then seemed to keep rising, until he towered over Dyaj and would have been, in her estimation, a head or more taller than even Borkul.

“They are more than that.” Dyaj held up a shield. It bore an unfamiliar insignia – a white wolf’s head against a black background.

Unfamiliar to Aithne – to everyone else (including Merks), it seemed to mean something. Chyehye growled while both Nyatt and Merks cursed.

Aithne glanced around in growing concern. “I don’t know that coat of arms. Whose is it that causes this much…” She stopped, not wanting to say “fear,” but her intention was written well enough on the faces of the others.

Chyehye sighed, a resigned sound. “They were Companions.”

At Aithne’s continued blank look, Nyatt supplied, “They are a guild of mercenaries. Doughty warriors, all.”

Merks’ unexpected voice chimed in. “Apparently these had the misfortune of fighting werewolves recently and were turned themselves.”

“Perhaps.” Dyaj looked troubled as he began to lead the way away. “There have been…unsavory rumors about the Companions for years. I hope this is an isolated incident and the ones that got away are just feral beasts. If they are not…”

^deep fear^…then we have witnesses that will lead the rest of them down on our Kwåim, his thoughts finished.

Aithne had a fleeting moment, as she followed, to ponder how she could understand his thoughts – surely they were in his language? – but her speculation was interrupted by Nyatt, who angled his pained-looking gait to walk next to her.

“I did not get a chance to properly introduce myself. My name is Ug Hwow Mmenyått, but you may call me Nyatt.”

Chyehye snorted. “Do not let him fool you. Nyatt’s name is similar to nyått, which means ‘to seek’ in Orsimari, so he has taken to calling himself ‘One who seeks.’ He should instead be called Ug Hwow Mmechti Snikheg, ‘One who is pretentious.’”

Her derision was imprinted all over her features and echoed by Dyaj and even, to a degree, by Nyatt himself, though outwardly he just glared at Chyehye.

Aithne allowed herself just enough of a deeper peek to fill in some context: his childhood filled with hope as he quickly outgrew his peers; the hope dashed as he proved to be the worst warrior of the lot; the bullying, despair, and self-pity; the adoption of a moniker to try to protect himself, and the inevitable response as it was cast back at him - a spear forged of ridicule, not least from himself.

From Chyehye and Dyaj, she learned his nickname: Pyu-o-ba, spoken with ironic intent – the largest of the orcs was named half-a-man. They both wished it had been Ṭåmmåm who had survived.

Aithne shook her head to clear the thoughts of others and gave Nyatt her biggest smile. “There is a saying I read in an elvish book, once: Week nyu wu imě̃s muup raw tsii yaw̃k nõpfawnyiir kũ fam. It means ‘Only one who seeks can ever hope to find.’ It is a pleasure to meet you, Ug Hwow Menyatt.” She struggled through the pronunciation but her intent was clear enough. She felt his surprise and delight as he grinned back. She also felt Chyehye’s scorn, but with it a shot of guilt and a sort of cautious approval.

It took only a little over an hour to reach Narzulbur, but they arrived none too soon – Nyatt’s limp had grown more pronounced as they walked and, though he hid it better, Dyaj’s injuries had brought him to the edge of collapse, if his thoughts were any indication.

The Kwåim itself was a fortress town protected by a twenty-foot wall of spiked logs with heavy timber buildings gathered loosely around an open central space and a structure roughly the size of all the other buildings combined nestled against – and partially under – an inward-sloping cliff face.

Aithne noticed none of this until much later; the moment their party stepped through the gates, a roar drowned out all other sounds as dozens of orcs rushed toward them. She read it in their minds in an instant – they saw the human woman and thought she was a prize, spoils of victorious battle; and all spoils of battle, whether gold or weapons or women, were shared equally among the tribe.

She could not have blocked out the surge of hunger and lust aimed very specifically in her direction had she been forewarned. Blind fear rose up within her, dousing all her senses and leaving her frozen in place.

The wave of fear crested and crashed and entangled her, then dragged at her, pulling her toward the depths of a sea made of desperation and panic; yet it brought also an unexpected undertow of lust, an unbridled hunger of her own that flared as she imagined hundreds of orcish hands grabbing her, yanking her down, stripping her; then a never-ending litany of orcish cocks slamming into her, filling every opening she had with merciless abandon, hour after hour, day after day, until her body was nothing more than an empty husk of blinding pain. She yearned for it and yawed away from it with equal fervor; her gibbering fear and slavering lust played tug of war, neither giving ground, and Aithne hung in the middle and could do nothing but quake.

A sudden flash of intense heat snapped Aithne out of her stasis. She blinked and found herself staring at Merks’ back and, just beyond him, the wall (or, perhaps better, circle, since it surrounded them) of flame he had created, separating them from the oncoming horde. The rush of lust and hunger splintered into an unfocused cacophony of emotions and thoughts that she was able to filter away, leaving her once again able to think.

The fire flickered out a few heartbeats later, leaving the party facing the murmuring mass of orcs. Dyaj stepped forward and started speaking in a loud and clear voice in Orcish while Nyatt leaned over and murmured to Aithne and Merks, “Please accept our apologies. Outsiders are rare here. The meyge thought you were captives. Dyaj is explaining everything to them.”

Aithne did not trust herself to talk, so she stuck to shaking her head but, for the first time in this new Skyrim, Merks looked like…well, Merks. He glared daggers at Nyatt.

“Your apologies? Your entire meyge,” he said the word in a tone that dripped with venom, “dropped everything to…?”

Aithne sighed. “Merks, it’s fine.”

Merks turned his glare at her. “No it is not!” After a pause, he seemed to remember who he was talking to and added, “My Lady.” But he was not done – he turned back to Nyatt and continued, “…to enslave us, I’m guessing. Which, as I’m sure you are aware, is illegal in Skyrim. Is that how you…”

“What?” The word sprang from Aithne’s lips without thought and Merks paused again.

“What what, my Lady? You saw them – they were clearly…”

“Slavery is illegal?”

A longer pause. “Um. Yes.”

Merks’ confusion had derailed his diatribe and before he could gather his momentum back (and before Aithne could process this surprising news), Dyaj finished whatever he had said to the meyge and turned to them, then took Aithne by surprise by dropping to his knees and bowing low until his forehead touched the ground. The entire courtyard went dead silent, save for a baby’s wail in the distance.

Then Dyaj lifted his head but stayed on his knees and spoke; his words were directed toward Aithne and Merks but he spoke them loud enough to be heard through the Kwåim.

“Your companion is entirely correct. I am ashamed of the behavior of Kwåim Narzulbur. Most outsiders shun us, revile us, think us nothing but mindless beasts. And today we have proven them right! The irony is that we acted this way toward two rare outsiders who actually believed differently, who put themselves in harm’s way to rescue us!”

He sighed into a silence that was somehow deeper than before; Aithne struggled to hold herself steady as a wave of regret and shame nearly as strong as the earlier lust and hunger enveloped the meyge.

Dyaj lifted himself to his feet and spoke softer, though his voice still carried throughout the silent Kwåim. “I had thought to honor you in thanks by throwing a feast and naming you orc-friends. It is the greatest honor our people can bestow upon an outsider. But now, that is not enough. If you are willing, I would name you Blood-Kin.” A gasp that matched a wave of shock sprang from the crowd but Dyaj ignored them, staring Aithne in the eyes. “If you accept, you will no longer be an outsider. You will be one of us, an orc by law, by name, and by blood.”

Aithne’s heart leapt at the thought even as she felt the wave of revulsion from Merks. He was one, she saw in a flash, who did believe the orcs to be little more than beasts, a belief only cemented by their introduction to the Kwåim; had he been by himself on the road, he would not have stepped in.

Aithne, on the other hand…

“What does it entail?”

“My Lady!”

Aithne waved an impatient hand at Merks, though her eyes never left Dyaj’s.

“There is little enough to the ceremony. First would be a trial of combat to find your ṭi. Then you would choose a husband from those of the same ṭi who are able to sustain another wife. Your companion, should he accept, would choose his first wife from those of his ṭi. It differs slightly by sex at this point – your companion would be named first, then his wife would take his name after the wedding ceremony. For you, we would have the wedding ceremony first, then you would receive your husband’s name. Then we would feast.”

Aithne blinked. She had been prepared to say “yes” no matter what Dyaj had said, but…

“I…have things I must do. Would I be expected to stay here?”

“That would be up to your husband,” were the words that came out of Dyaj’s mouth, but his mind told her the deeper truth: whoever she chose would do his duty and marry her (more wives meant more prestige, after all), but her husband would expect less than nothing from a frail human woman. He would likely not care what she did. Nor would his other wives want an ugly human in their midst.

Aithne raised her eyebrows as the implications of this thought process became clear: while Dyaj had felt honor-bound to offer Blood-Kin status, he did not expect her to accept it. Even if she did, he did not think she would acquit herself well in the trial. He thought her weak, as did the rest of the meyge.

He expected her to fail.

She tilted her head as this revelation rolled through her. He expected her to turn the offer down. If not, he expected her to fail. In spectacular fashion. He was already going through the list of the lowest ranking members of the meyge in his head, trying to decide who was the weakest so maybe Aithne would not die at the first blow from her first opponent.

Dyaj, who had been nearly killed by a werewolf - the same kind Aithne, herself, had killed with a single fiery blow – thought her incapable of defending herself. No doubt he believed Merks had been the one to defeat the werewolves.

Men were the same all over.

“I will not speak for my companion, though I think I know his answer. As for me…” A deep breath – she somehow felt she was born for just this moment. “I accept.”

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The other similarity was less encouraging - she found she was, exactly as before, completely dependent on the man she travelled with.

She had no money, nor means to easily make any, so she had no way of purchasing the food, warm clothing, or supplies necessary for a lengthy trip in the icy north. Merks had paid for all of it.

She hadn’t had to consider the foundational necessities of living in years; no, not just years, even. She thought back and realized, with some amount of horrified fascination, she had never in her life, even for a moment, had to consider any of those things.

She had lived with her parents until she joined the military, who had provided her room and board and clothing in the form of uniforms until Borkul and her subsequent masters, who had provided her with at least the bare minimum amount of the necessities of living. Then the college, where she had never thought to question the supply of robes (eventually) and daily meals.

The closest she had come to anything resembling self-sufficiency had been her bargain with Savos for the suite at the college, a place she had stayed in for all of nine days, which hardly seemed worth the cost of the bribery she had paid for it.

Although, come to think of it, she realized she had no reason to give up on it just yet. She stopped and frowned.

“Merks.”

“My Lady?”

“I want to try something. Give me your arm.”

“Of course, My Lady.”

As Merks stepped closer, Aithne looked around until she spotted an outcropping of rock on a nearby hill. Good enough for a landmark. She took Merk’s arm, pictured her suite, and, making very sure it was actually her suite this time, made the motions and whispered the words she had learned from Ghint all that time ago.

A moment later, they stood in her suite and she laughed, delighted, while Merks let out a startled squawk.

“It worked! We can just stay here at night. And eat here as well. That will be much better than sleeping on the ground again.”

“How…My Lady, we have been traveling for over four days!”

“Yes, so we weren’t very far away yet.”

“Weren’t very…we were at least a hundred fifty miles away.” Merks shook his head, still looking around like he was in a dream. “How did you pass the wards?”

Again with the wards. Aithne shook her head – apparently these people wouldn’t know a good ward if they bounced a spell off it. “The important thing is, we can walk throughout the day then pop back here and have a nice bath, good food, and sleep in a bed, then resume our trip in the morning. I wish I had thought of this earlier – my back is beginning to hurt from sleeping on rocks.”

“Resume? Won’t we need to start over?”

“Divines, no! Why would we do that? I’ll just teleport us back where we were.” She frowned at his incredulous look. “You…do know how to teleport, don’t you?”

“I…I mean, yes, of course. But…”

Aithne waved a hand. “Never mind, it’s not important. We still have a few hours of travel to go, but this is a good time for a break. Meet me back here in an hour.”

“Meet…”

“Yes, I’m going to take a hot bath. Why didn’t I think of this before?” She turned toward the bath, only noticing with oblique attention as Merks stashed their travel gear against the wall and left the suite.

An hour later, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, Aithne held Merks’ arm again and whisked them back to the road, where they found themselves in the remains of a battlefield.

Aithne fought through the disorientation of the moment as her senses clambered over each other for the right to present their status updates on the situation first. Slumped bodies, flashes of fur and green skin; a sound like the howling of wolves; the visceral smells of blood and sweat and shit; all of it swept aside by a single visual cue that garnered her immediate attention:

A creature made of dark fur and muscle pinned an orc woman down with one massive clawed hand while his red swollen dick slammed into her. The woman cried out and struggled but even her orcish strength was no match for the creature, who threw his head back and howled as his hips pounded his length into her.

 Aithne's body moved before her brain had time to consider. Her senses were drowned out by a sudden rage that burned through her body before erupting out as twin lashes of flame that struck forward and ripped through the body of the creature. Its howls turned to a guttural roar as it froze in place; then the flame burst through its chest and it slumped forward on top of the screaming woman.

Aithne had little time to consider what she had done; her brain finally caught up to her body as the rest of the world rushed back into place. She heard shouted curses and roars behind her and turned to find Merks holding off four more of the wolf-like creatures with a firewall. The cumbersome pack limited his movements, though, and even as Aithne watched, one of the creatures bunched its legs and sprang, leaping over the wall of fire toward Merks’ exposed head.

Fortunately, the most obvious spell to use in this situation was also one of the shortest.

“Te: iig!”

Without modifiers to control it, the Push sent out a large wave of force in the creature’s general direction. Fortunately, that direction also caught the other three creatures and the wall of fire; unfortunately, it also also caught Merks.

The leaping wolf’s trajectory changed in an instant – it flew, yowling, away to its right before crashing into the rocky face of a small cliff then slumping motionless to the ground. The other three, having been farther from the center of the spell, were merely pushed back a few feet. That is where their luck ended, however, because that matched the trajectory of the flame from Merks’ wall. All three yelped as fire engulfed them, then turned and ran, trailing sparks and smoke as they bounded away.

This was all fine and, in fact, far more than Aithne had intended, but it had also hit Merks. She found him alive but unconscious about twenty yards away; a spot of blood on a small boulder and a lump on his head the size of her fist told the tale well enough. She hastened to cast a healing spell, but those had always been her weakest school; she managed to stop the bleeding and get the bump to diminish to something closer to egg sized, but that was as far as her abilities could go.

She berated herself for not studying restoration more; it had always been on her list but it had a dauntingly large number of non-magical disciplines to learn (anatomy, physiology, other things she didn’t even know how to pronounce) so she had kept putting it off for things that felt more important. She shook her head as she laid a hand on his forehead; she couldn’t tell if he felt warmer than he was supposed to or not.

“So you are a healer as well as a punyyå.”

Aithne jumped and spun, lifting her hands while far too many spells jumped to her mind, rendering her capable of casting none of them in the time she had to face…

…the orc woman, now dressed in thick leather armor, peered down at them. Aithne cleared her throat as the adrenaline wave receded. “Yes. I suppose – I don’t know what a punyah (she tried to get her tongue to mimic the orcish word while her brain pondered the irony of having spent approximately a quarter of her previous life in intimate contact with orcs yet having knowledge of only four words of their language to show for it) is. How do you feel?” The orc looked hale and hearty, not like she had been getting raped by a wolfman only five minutes ago.

The orc snorted. “Foolish. You have saved me and have my thanks. Heal my meyge-ṭːa-its and you will have the thanks of my meyge as well.”

Aithne blinked and looked around, taking in the full field for the first time. She had caught glimpses of green but hadn’t paid much attention. Now she saw them – three male orcs laying in pools of blood. Aithne cursed and sprang to her feet.

“Of course! I’m sorry, I should have…”

She trailed off as she ran toward the orcs – her brain seemed to think that was enough because it failed to supply more words; it instead tried to decide what to do, but even in that, it came to no strong conclusions. She shook her head as set herself at a point that seemed equidistant to all three slumped bodies and cast the basic healing spell, she same she had used on Merks, but with the “many” modifier.

“Blas: ratva.” After a pause, she added the same boost modifier she had used for her Push. “:iig.” She winced as she felt the mana flow. Perhaps the last modifier had been the wrong thing to do. She couldn’t remember ever hearing anyone use it when healing before, so maybe it shouldn’t be used in that way?

Well, whether it had been a good idea or not, it was too late; the bodies shimmered briefly, then all seemed as before. Aithne dropped to her knees beside the closest orc and reached out a tentative hand, hoping she hadn’t been too late. Or hadn’t inadvertently killed them with her haphazard healing.

“Did it work?”

The female orc again, and Aithne glanced at her and shrugged. “I’m…not sure. The spell I cast should have closed their wounds but I don’t know enough to heal internal injuries, so I’m hoping they’ll be okay as along as nothing major was…”

She stopped as the orc she knelt beside groaned and fluttered open his eyes; then lost her breath as an ocean opened beneath her when those eyes latched onto hers and she found herself drowning in Borkul’s stare.

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He had already proven to be the only one in this new reality to have any concern for her at all, and, it turned out, he was really good at his self-proclaimed job as her servant; he always seemed to show up with exactly what she needed when she needed it. He never pushed, rarely spoke, and left her alone when his task was complete. Whatever supernatural linchpin has colored his youth, it had made irrevocable changes to the man he turned out to be. Although “man” was pushing it – he had been twenty-five when Aithne had, in her arrogance, killed everyone, which meant he would only be eighteen or nineteen now.

Aithne sighed as she sat back and sipped the tea (lightly honeyed to the exact amount she liked. The bastard.) and studied the man-child. He did not meet her eyes, keeping his studiously on the table, as if he sensed her deep loathing of other-him.

“Do you happen to know where Soren is right now?”

Merks blinked and glanced up, then dropped his gaze again as he ran a hand through his hair. “He always sups on the roof above his suite at this time of day, my Lady.”

“Does he then? Does he take his time?”

“When the weather is good, yes, my Lady. A couple hours, at least.”

“Good to hear.” Aithne set her cup on its saucer and scrubbed a hand over her still-swollen face. “I am going to pay his room a little visit – there is a book there that I need – then I am leaving the college.”

Merks sat up with a motion abrupt enough that it caused the table to shake. Tea sloshed out of the cups, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Leaving, my Lady? I’ll go with you!”

“No, you need to continue your studies. We talked about this.”

“But…then who will be your escort?”

Aithne frowned. “Escort? I don’t need an escort.”

“But you do, my Lady. It’s the law.”

“I…” Aithne blinked. “What? What law?”

This seemed to give Merks momentary pause, but then he shrugged. “The law that says women must have a male escort outside of cities and towns.”

“WHAT?!”

Merks cringed back but continued, “It was put in place right after the civil war started. To…protect them. Women. From…” he gestured, but he didn’t need to continue – who knew better than Aithne what could happen to a lone woman?

Still.

“This is some oxshit.”

“Yes, my Lady.” Merks’ head resumed its bowed position. “It…it wasn’t meant for women like…well, like you. Of course. But…”

Aithne sighed and considered her options. Assuming they would check for these things at the city gates, she could forgo the inspections and questions by simply flying into the middle of town. But that would attract a lot of attention she didn’t really want. Besides, the college had a strict rule about flying (or any other flashy spells) in cities – they were still mired in bad publicity from the quake that had destroyed most of the town of Winterhold.

Of course, she wasn’t really part of the college.

Still.

“How is your flying?”

Merks looked taken aback, and she could sense the spike of surprise and, more concerning, fear that shot through him. “I…”

He reddened and Aithne frowned and opened her mind to his for just enough of a peek to discover, “You’re afraid of heights?!”

Merks gasped as Aithne bit her tongue while just managing not to cover her mouth with her hand.

“How…how did…”

Aithne shook her head, stalling as her mind raced, but settled on the only answer she could think of. “I just guessed. From your reaction.” A pause as her brain caught up. “Most students love flying, don’t they?”
 

Merks had been fearless, and the best flyer in the school, including the teachers, last time. What could have happened to make him hate it now?

“It’s…I’m sorry, I know it’s strange. I…” He paused, then gathered himself and spoke in quick bursts, as if that would make his confession easier. “I have a recurring nightmare. I’ve had it as long as I can remember, even longer than…than my visions of you. It is strange, because in the dream I am on top of this very building. But I didn’t come here until I was five.

“It is this building, I swear it, only…it is different. It has taken massive damage. Most of the observation deck is…just gone. I am standing on the edge of what remains of the deck, overlooking the ocean. I am looking for…something, but I don’t know what. Then there is a giant boom and everything turns bright white, so bright I can’t even see.

“When I can see again, I…” He stopped, took a deep breath. His face had turned pale, nearly stark white. “…When I can see again, what I see are the rocks at the base of the college. I have two, maybe three seconds to watch them rush toward me and then…”

A pause and Aithne found she was holding her breath. She forced it out, then squeaked, “And then?”

Merks shrugged. “I wake up screaming. It is the exact same every time.”

They sat in silence for a long time as guilt and anguish took turns rolling through her body. Merks remembered, at least a little, the destruction of the college. He just didn’t know that she had been responsible for it. She, supposed Archmage, supposed dragon slayer, supposed protector. She, who had failed and doomed him, along with the rest of those under her care.

She took a deep, unsteady breath and forced herself to hold back her tears this time. She did not deserve grief. She had not earned the right to mourn. It took her several breaths before she was able to speak in a calm voice.

“Very well. We shall go together. I don’t suppose you have access to horses? I thought not. Pity.” She sighed and stood. “Gather what you need and meet me on the dueling pitch in an hour.” He nodded as he stood up as well and began gathering the tea set. Aithne began to step around him, but paused and added, “And stop looking at the ground when you’re around me. You aren’t some peasant groveling before a Lord. If we’re going to travel together, we’re doing it as…”

She paused. As what? Not as a couple, obviously. As equals? But he insisted on the servant role, so that didn’t really fit. As friends?

Divines, no.

“…as people. Regular people. Understood?”

Merks nodded, eyes still on the floor, then, at an Urag-like growl from Aithne, lifted his head and nodded again. “Yes. I understand, my Lady. I…thank you.”

She nodded as she resumed her path toward the door, then remembered the Archmage and, instead of walking, made the gestures while picturing his room and, with a flash, she was there.

“See, my love?” She mumbled as she hurried to the bookshelves and started yanking down books. “His wards are terrible.”

Moments later, arms loaded, she blinked into Urag (and, apparently, Colette’s) suite, dropped off all but two of the books by his (and, apparently, Colette’s) bed, then blinked back to her suite and starting stuffing things in her bag. She would have liked to study some more – there were so many things she still did not know! – but she just couldn’t be here. Not when Urag was so close by.

But, no, that was not correct. He was not close by. Not her Urag. Every time she saw this…this caricature of her lost love, a small piece of her soul snapped off and shattered, never to be recovered. In time, she would be just as lost as she had been under Borkul’s heavy thumb.

Or, rather, dick. Although, come to think of it, his massive thumbs had rather resembled somewhat askew dicks. Aithne laughed at a sudden vision of Borkul waving hands lined with flaccid dicks.

Then a sigh as she shoved the last book into the bag, covered it with a spare shirt, and tied the bag closed. She hated to leave what she had long considered home, but she just couldn’t be here.

Not when Urag was so far away.

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Urag was doing the spriggan demonstration, one of his favorites. The leafy creature stood in its glass enclosure, a slight buzz the only indication it was anything but a gnarled tree. Aithne leaned against the doorway and watched, her mouth lifted into a small smile. She had heard this lecture many times, had even assisted him. In fact, she noted, he was going to need the sap in just a few seconds.

It wasn’t a decision; not really. She shifted from the doorway and made her way around the edge of the room, trying to remain inconspicuous. She needn’t have worried – all eyes were on the creature, the first time seeing one for most.

She reached the front of the class just as Urag said, “The sap is potent.” He reached behind him and Aithne lifted the jar and handed it to him. He glanced back and she felt the jolt of surprise go through him, but he took the jar as if it was part of the plan and his voice did not falter. “Just a small splash of this could be deadly.”

He opened the lid with care as Aithne pushed the human-shaped mannequin covered in rat skin forward. Urag applied a dab of the sap to the mannequin’s arm and, in moments, green shoots sprouted on the spot and grew rapidly, until the entire arm was covered in thin vines. The class gasped and some mumbles broke out, but when Urag spoke again, the commotion ceased.

“If it reaches your heart,” Urag splashed more of the sap on the mannequin’s torso and watched as it took root again, this time spreading throughout the chest and stomach, with some climbing the neck toward the head, “you will die, and a brand new spriggan will be born from your corpse.”

This was the best part, and Aithne couldn’t stop from grinning as she cast the spell. As the shoots reached their zenith and began to slow, the mannequin jumped forward as if alive, eliciting a few screams from the audience, then waved its arms as if in agony before suddenly stiffening then, with a groan, crashed with dramatic flair to the ground, where it writhed for a few seconds then lay still.

Silence greeted this as all eyes – including Urag’s, whose thoughts and emotions betrayed the startled surprise he kept well hidden from his visage – stuck to the “dying” mannequin. Which was Aithne’s favorite part of her favorite part. With a subtle wave, she enticed it to finish the show – sitting up abruptly, raising one fake arm to its fake brow, then falling dramatically back to the ground again, this time dead for good.

As always, the surprise of the moment turned to uproarious laughter as the tension broke. Several of the students broke into applause, which Aithne copied, trying to give all credit to Urag.

“All right,” he garumphed after a few seconds, “that is it for today. Read the spriggan chapter in Mallory’s. There will be a test tomorrow.”

Good natured groans met this as the students gathered their books and headed for the doorway, with not a few casting curious glances in Aithne’s direction. She focused her attention on gathering the tools and setting them in place – the last thing she wanted was to hear the unsolicited thoughts of the curious student body.

One of the older students – not a slave, Aithne noted with some surprise (it had always been a slave in the old world) wheeled the spriggan away as Urag and Aithne finished placing the supplies on the cart. Then Urag turned to her.

“That was an impressive trick. What was it?”

Aithne’s mind went blank for a desperate moment. She started her lips moving before she knew what she was going to say. Fortunately, her brain caught up just in time to form the words into something coherent.

“We…you and I, in…in my old world, came up with it together. We called it Urag’s Crashing Cadaver.”

Urag laughed, and the sound of it was like a balm to Aithne’s shattered soul. “He thought the presentation was lacking a finishing touch that would make it truly memorable.”

“A smart orc, this other Urag of yours!”

Aithne didn’t need to read his mind to know he still didn’t believe her story, but she didn’t blame him. Not that that mattered right now - she cast about in desperation for something – anything! – to keep him talking.

“Did you know the Archmage has a large number of your books in his rooms?”

Urag growled and Aithne tried to hide the hitch in her breath.

“Yes. Several of them are ones I need for my research. He keeps assuring me he will bring them back, but…”

Aithne grinned and turned her voice sly. “Want me to sneak in and grab them?”

For the second time since she had re-met him, Urag laughed. “That would be fantastic! But he has that room warded in nine separate layers. You wouldn’t be able to get in without his permission and, even if he invited you, it would be difficult to sneak any books out.”

Aithne frowned. The previous Soren had not had wards of any significance, that Aithne could remember. She had teleported right in after his death. Another curious wrinkle, but not important right now – all that mattered in this moment was to keep him talking.

She moved to one of Urag’s favorite topics: “Perhaps his example is what is causing the students such boldness. I noticed there were books from Section MZ that someone had put back in Section D.”

“I know!” He looked aggrieved, almost yelling the words, and Aithne quelled another pang of lust as he added, “I tell them not to put away their own books, but do they listen?”

“Some things never change. One time, someone filled the entire first row in section R with theoretical arrays books. I have to assume it was on purpose.”

That gave Urag pause. “Why would it be on purpose?”

“Probably for the pun. Some people think they’re funny.”

Urag’s brow wrinkled and Aithne just managed to keep from laughing. “What pun?”

“You know.  Here are the books on arrays in section R-A.” It was one of their oldest jokes, from before, made up between them in fits of snorting and guffaws as they worked it out together.

He burst out laughing for the third time and Aithne let her pent-up emotion turn into laughter that joined his and, for a moment, it was just the two of them again, husband and wife, and everything was right in the world. She reached out a hand to place it on his arm, half expecting Chtonji to charge into the room demanding food.

“Are you ready?”

Colette’s voice was like a pail…no, not a pail, an entire ocean of ice-cold water splashed into the room. Aithne froze in place, the laughter dying on her suddenly dry lips as her lungs forgot how to breathe. Urag did not seem to notice – he glanced up, gave Colette the smile that should have belonged to Aithne, and turned toward her.

“I am! This will be interesting – I have not gone to town in…years, maybe decades.”

Colette laughed, and to Aithne’s ears, she sounded like a braying mule. “I can say for certain it has changed a great deal since you saw it last. Shall we?”

“Let me just grab my coin purse.”

“Fear not, love, I took the liberty of picking it up from our suite.”

The emphasis on the word “our” could have been a trick of Aithne’s ears, born of her growing jealousy and dislike of her once-upon-a-time savior. She knew she was being unfair; knew, for instance, Colette actually had a lovely tinkling laugh that had always made Aithne smile.

But as Urag reached Colette and she stepped into his arms, there was no mistaking the brief look of triumph on Colette’s face as she stared at Aithne over Urag’s shoulder. The look was brief because Colette immediately turned the hug into a kiss; a long kiss, the kind usually reserved for private rooms, most often accompanied by a general strewing of clothes. Urag, being his orc self, met her kiss straight on and they continued for long tortuous seconds as Aithne fidgeted, unable to leave because the pair were blocking the door.

After they finally left (with Colette tossing one last meaningful glance at Aithne before turning and walking away with an exaggerated sashay of her hips), Aithne found she couldn’t leave after all – her shaking knees would not hold her weight. She collapsed onto a chair and buried her head on her arms on the cool table and tried to choke in the sobs that threatened to wreak her body. In this, as in her futile efforts to seduce her not-husband, she failed.

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“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” Urag gestured around the room with those long arms and Aithne just resisted jumping on him to try to get him to wrap them around her. “This is my suite! How did you get in here?”

“What?” Aithne looked around as light panic raced through her. She recognized their…his suite in an instant and flushed red. “Ah! Um. I’m sorry, I must have just pictured here by habit.”

“Habit? That proves we were never together. Otherwise you would know I don’t like people teleporting into my suite.”

“Well, yes. I usually teleported to just outside the room. You always walked everywhere.” Aithne let out a little laugh. “I wish I had done the same. I still get lost in this place.”

“So do I. That’s why I walk.” The orc sighed and rubbed his head the way he always did when he was working out some particularly difficult problem. “Look, crazy lady, I don’t know what you think is going to happen here, but…”

“No, no!” Aithne held up desperate, placating hands. This was not how she had wanted to approach him. “I know! I’m not trying to do anything. I just…”

She paused. Just what? Just longed to be home? Longed to have her life back? Longed, even, for the times of slavery if only it meant she could be with him again? All of that?

“Just…” he prompted, but then the conversation was interrupted by an unexpected third voice.

“Ury, where do you keep…oh!”

Aithne and Urag turned as one toward the bathing room, then gasped as one upon seeing Colette standing in the doorway wearing nothing but the filmiest imaginable robe. It was open at the front, revealing smooth skin from neck to her artfully shaved mound, while the sheer material teased the nipples of her shapely breasts.

 Colette frowned as she wrapped the robe around her (not that that hid anything). “What is she doing here?”

“Leaving,” Urag growled.

Aithne felt a wave of jealousy but couldn’t tell if it emanated from Colette or herself. She didn’t need to be able to read minds to feel the heat of his arousal. But since she could read minds, she unwillingly learned any number of things she absolutely did NOT need to know.

She did not need to know, for instance, that Colette had been pining for Urag for years but had been too afraid to approach him until forced into an act of desperation by the arrival of someone claiming to be his wife so had made up a false pretense to visit him then asked to use the toilet so she could change into this sheer robe. And she REALLY didn’t need to know that Urag had long held a reciprocal candle for Colette but had been too shy to say anything and was VERY amenable to being seduced by her.

Stuck in the very uncomfortable position between the two, a beet-faced Aithne took two steps toward Colette, whispered, “His favorite position is from behind,” then excused herself and beat a hasty retreat.

Upon entering her actual suite, she tossed the dinner she had begged from the kitchen into the trash, threw herself onto the bed, and sobbed in uncontrollable heaves for the next hour. Once the tears had subsided, she pulled herself up, tossed her clothes in a corner, and took a hot bath while she tried to decide what to do.

It was unbearable. Urag was so nearby, only steps away – the suite, as promised, was only two doors down the hall from the Arcaneum – but he might as well have been miles away. Or still dead. She would actually feel better if he was dead (not that she wanted him to die!) rather than have him back but not be able to have him back.

Had he and Colette had this kind of attraction before? Aithne had never got that impression from them – they had acted more like siblings than pining lovebirds. Besides, it was hard to imagine Colette giving the man she pined for a naked sex slave. So perhaps this version of Skyrim was not exactly the same as before.

Well, of course it wasn’t – Aithne herself had changed things by killing Borkul instead of being enslaved by him. She shivered a little at the thought, despite the heat of the tub. At this point, she would have been huddled in that little cave, still suffering from the broken ribs she had suffered in the crash and the hypothermia induced from jumping into the frigid water. Her training with Borkul would have only just begun.

But a change like that would not have changed the attitudes of two people who had been friendly but not…well, friendly. Would it?

Aithne shook her head and tried to dispel this fruitless throught process. She needed to be somewhere else, if only for her own sanity.

Maybe she should just leave. Go find Trendil and…well, just Trendil, since Aithne knew where she would be. Sloan had mentioned heading for Riften, but that didn’t mean Riften was where she had started. They could go to Labyrinthian again, free the mages and grab the staff, then try to find their Dragonborn doppelganger.

She sighed. She couldn’t do that. Not yet. She still had so much research to do. She had read some of the books on dragons before, but they had not seemed like a priority until it was too late – she had spent all her time on magic theory instead.

Now she knew better.

She sighed again as she lifted herself from the tub just as the door chime dinged. She wrapped a clean robe around herself then let in Merks, who bore with him three more books, a tray of assorted meats and cheeses, and a bottle of wine. For the first time since she had met him, Aithne felt grateful toward him. She told him so, then kicked him out, poured a glass of wine, arranged the food nearby, picked up a book, and settled in to read.

The sooner she finished, the sooner she could be away from this parody of the life she had lost.

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Also, she noted with annoyance, the books that rightly belonged in the Arcaneum were still there. Maybe taking some of those back would give her an opening to talk to Urag.

The thought pushed a wave of lonely sorrow through her strong enough that she missed Savos Aren’s opening words to their conversation.

“…hear you claim to be the Archmage of this institution, is that correct?”

Aren also looked exactly as she remembered, from the narrow angular head to the pitch-black eyes to the disapproving scowl. His voice, likewise, grated on Aithne’s nerves just as it always had. She blinked.

“Yes.”

The dark elf steepled his fingers. “You understand that we cannot just let anyone walk in here claiming to be Archmage and simply hand the College over to them.”

“Of course.”

“And you understand further that, even if dragons do somehow begin showing up after all these centuries, that will not completely substantiate your rather outrageous sounding claims.”

“Certainly.”

“Then what did you hope to accomplish in coming here?”

Aithne sighed. She had debated whether to press her claim, but being Archmage would require too much focus on the needs of the College. She needed every second she could spare to do her dragon research.

“I do not wish to take your position, if that is what you are afraid of.” Which he was – she could see it on his face even without hearing the thoughts that spilled out of his mind.

His emotions switched to cautious relief that he hid behind a raised eyebrow. “No? Then what do you wish?”

“I want a suite as close to the Arcaneum as possible and unlimited access to the books therein.”

For the first time, Aithne saw emotion flash across Aren’s face.

Savos: ^strong anger^ Over my dead body!

The emotion was wiped off his face almost immediately and none of leaked into his outwardly calm voice, but Aithne could still feel it churning inside him.

“With apologies, that will not be possible. Only teachers, students, and staff are allowed to live within these walls. There is an inn in Winterhold, if you are looking for a place to stay. And access to the Arcaneum is completely out of the question.”

Aithne smiled. She had been hoping she wouldn’t have to play her trump card so soon, but he had left her no choice.

“Atmah Naku says hello.”

Savos’ dark skin managed to turn pale as he froze in place. Blatant fear flooded him from head to toe and it took him a couple attempts to speak again.

“How…how do you know that name?”

“I met her. Well, her projection of herself, at any rate. Also, I lied - she doesn’t say hello. She seemed to be quite cross with you, in fact. ‘An all-around despicable creature,’ I believe she called you.”

The Archamage cast a quick glance at the Labyrinthian desk and then turned back to Aithne. For the first time since she had met him, his voice held a tone other than his usual even keel.

“I don’t know who you really are, but you are to leave. This instant!”

“Leave? Like you did to Atmah and Hafnar? No, you probably wouldn’t want to be stuck forev…”

“SILENCE!” Savos was on his feet, his body swept through with anger born of deep fear. His thoughts shouted at Aithne but she kept face as blank as she could manage.

“You all left poor Takes-In-Light as well. I can’t blame you for not going back for Gir…”

“I SAID SILENCE!!”

Magic was beginning to pool around the Archmage – he was getting ready to do something drastic. Aithne stood and stepped back a couple paces.

“And, of course, poor Elvali, your own cousin, dragged away without anyone even notici…”

“SHUUUT UUUUUUUUUUUUP!”

Thanks to her strange new mind-reading ability, Aithne was forewarned that Savos had chosen a psychic attack, which likely saved her life – psychic energy required an extra ward to protect the brain. She gathered in Savos’ power, siphoned it through her body, loosed it back out, let it coalesce around her in a pretty lavender haze.

“Don’t worry, I have no interest in spilling your little secret. It was, what, 108 years ago? Does anyone else here even remember they existed?”

Savos’ fear remained, tempered now by a sense of wonder and disbelief. He stared at the shifting purple energy as he responded, “103 years. And no. I am the only one. Except, apparently, for you.”

“Oh, of course. This is the year 201, isn’t it?” Aithne sighed and released the energy into the only place she could without damaging the room or its contents – through the lone window, which shattered as the power blasted through it. “Sorry about that.”

“What do you want?”

“I already told you. A suite. Access to the Arcaneum. Oh, and the doorknob thingy that opens Labyrinthian.”

“What?” His fear, which had faded to a more manageable level, spiked back up. “Why do you need that?”

Aithne shrugged as she let herself relax a little – the Archmage’s thoughts told her she had won. “Because we’re going to need the Staff on Magnus. Soon.”

*************

The suite was nearly identical to the one she had shared with Urag, including, Aithne was very pleased to discover, a smaller but just as functional tub. The first thing she did after moving her few possessions and the books Merks had procured was take a long (long long) soak.

Then she filled out a requistion for breakfast, teleported down to the kitchen to drop it off and beg for food for today, then teleported back to the suite, where she found herself face to surprised face with her once-upon-a-time husband.

After a long hanging moment, they both blurted out at the same time, “What are you doing here?”

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Aithne sighed and lifted her feet up to the chair seat so she could hug her knees, now wrapped in the familiar feel of a College robe. With the adrenaline of her encounter with Borkul drained away, she felt empty and tired, and full of regrets about her brazen self-introduction to the College. A more subtle approach would probably have been better.

Too late.

“I know it is difficult to believe. I assure you it is all true.” Aithne hoped they would just assume she had been a regular student at the previous incarnation of the college – she had not gone into exactly how she had arrived there, nor her previous social standing.

Fortunately, there were plenty of larger issues for them to discuss.

Mirabelle shook her head. “I don’t know where to begin with the questions. There haven’t been dragons in Tamriel for centuries, so how could they destroy the world?”

“They came back. I never learned how – I just know they did.”

“I guess we’ll be able to begin to judge the truth of these…stories if they come back again.” Faralda tapped a finger on the table – at each tap, a tiny spark flashed. “Do you know when or where they first began to show up?”

Aithne shook her head, mentally scolding herself for not prying more information from Delphine when she had the chance. “I’m sorry, I don’t know that, either.”

Tolfdir sighed. “Well, as Professor Awtesse intimated, we’ll soon know the truth about that claim. If dragons do begin to appear again, it will lend authenticity to the rest of your story as well.”

Aithne blinked. She had always heard Faralda called “Faralda.” Not even “Professor Faralda,” just “Faralda.” It somehow hadn’t occurred to Aithne that the fiery mage had a last name. Of course, they had never really talked. But still…

“Now, about your other claim…” Mirabelle paused, then spoke carefully, as if she feared she was approaching a delicate subject. “We already have an Archmage.”

“Yes, about him – where is dear old Savos?”

Tolfdir looked mildly offended. “Erm…Archmage Aren is in Solitude right now. He should be back in a few days.”

“Lovely. I can’t wait to have a little chat with him.”

Mirabelle’s voice turned dry. “I’m sure he’ll be excited to speak with you as well.” She steepled her fingers. “Do you intend to challenge for his position?”

Aithne raised her eyebrows. “Is that even something that can be done?”

Mirabelle shrugged. “Not normally. But if we are able to determine with some certainty that the things you have said are true, it could be viewed in some eyes as your right to stake a claim to the position. I can honestly say that I’m not certain what all that would entail.”

Aithne eyed the group, trying to get some feel for what they might be thinking. And then, to her vast surprise, she realized she knew exactly what that was.

Mirabelle: ^tinge of hope^ Maybe we can finally be rid of Aren. ^tinge of resentment^ Though I deserve to be Archmage, not some delusional stranger. ^tinge of fear^ She might be even worse than him.

Tolfdir: ^strong sanctimonious fervor^ I don’t know what Mirabelle is thinking. We can’t just replace Archmages willy-nilly. It would be unseemly and most improper.

Faralda: ^absolute derision^ This is a bunch of crap. She must have snuck in – there’s no way she would be able to teleport through our wards. This bitch was probably sent by the Synod. We shouldn’t even be entertaining her lies.

Urag: ^strong fear mixed with wonder^ We were married? How could that have happened? I can’t see a situation where I would marry anyone, let alone a tiny human. I would probably kill her if we had sex. ^very strong lust^

Aithne clenched her knees as a gasp escaped her as Urag’s lust seemed to become her own and rolled through her body. She blinked as it receded, only to find everyone staring at her, their thoughts once more their own.

Tolfdir cleared his throat. “It sounds like you have had quite an ordeal. Why don’t we stop for now? I’m certain we all have much to think about. In the meantime, you may stay in one of our guest suites, unless someone objects? No? Well, then, that is settled.”

There was a general rumble of assent as the others rose from their chairs. Aithne longed to go to Urag, to talk with him in private, but he didn’t pause for even a moment – without looking at her, he made the motions to teleport and blinked out of the room. Which meant he was truly upset – he always preferred to travel through the college on foot unless something pressing forced him to do otherwise.

Aithne sighed. It was just as well – she didn’t think she had the energy to talk anymore today, anyway. All she wanted to do was take a long nap. Which made her next encounter, with the person who seemed to have been waiting outside the door of the conference room for just this moment, all the more horrifying. She froze in place when she saw him approaching and couldn’t stop a low groan from escaping her throat.

When he stopped in front of her, she said only, “Merks.”

He looked…well, it was hard to say. Confused. Surprised. A little dazed, perhaps. He took a deep breath and said in a shaky voice, “You…you know my name.”

Aithne sighed. “Believe me when I say, of all the names I shall ever hear in my life, yours is very close to the last I could possibly forget.” She somehow felt the burst of pride that began to well up in him, so she popped that bubble before it could inflate. “That’s not a good thing.”

He deflated in an instant. “I…” A pause as he flushed, then, all at once, in a move as sudden as it was unexpected, Merks dropped to both knees in front of her. “My…lady. I…I’ve never met you, but I’ve been waiting for you my entire life.”

Aithne closed her eyes. “I’m too tired for this. What are you talking about, Merks?”

“I…I don’t know how to explain it. My earliest memories were of you. I knew we were destined to meet. Someday. And I…” He stopped, swallowed as his face reddened. Then he bowed his head to the ground and said something more.

“Merks, I can’t hear you when your face is on the floor.”

The head popped back up. “I apologize, my lady! I…I was just saying, I’ve known all my life that my duty – my entire reason for living – was to find you and serve you. One day.”

Aithne cursed inwardly. Of all the people to remember the previous life, it had to be him? Why couldn’t it have been Urag? “Merks, do you remember me? Our previous life? The dragons and the sl…” She stopped herself before the word “slavery” could slip out. Better not to bring that up if he didn’t remember.

“Dragons? No, my lady. I’ve never met you before today. In person. But I’ve seen you in my visions and dreams all my life!” His voice picked up pace as he began to warm to his subject. “I went to the temples, you see, when I was young. I told them about my visions of you and they told me the visions were from something…I couldn’t really understand it all. They explained it was like I was reincarnated. And that previous me made a vow to the gods that I would serve you forever. So now I am bound to you. Eternally.” He breathed out a long sigh and once again, Aithne heard someone’s unbidden thoughts.

Merks: They said I was crazy but I was right! She was real! And as beautiful as my dreams told me. Maybe she will come to see me as more than a servant and we can…

Aithne shook her head to clear it before that thought could finish. You will never touch me again, you fucking bastard!

Merks’ eyes widened and he seemed to jump a bit but he said nothing else and, after a moment of tense silence, Aithne let out a breath. She had not thought it possible to dislike Merks more than during his brash nemesis days, but this pathetic obsequious one was challenging that notion.

“What, exactly, do you mean by ‘serve’ me?”

“Um…I…don’t know. I mean, obviously I’ll defend you from…anyone who might want to attack you. For some reason. I’m strong with magic!”

Aithne sighed. “I know you are, but that’s not what I need right now. If you are going to insist on this serving thing, then go to the Arcaneum and get me…wait, I’ll write them down.”

She led the way to the guest area, let herself into the first unused room they came across, then plopped down at the desk, pulled out parchment and a pen, and made a list of books.

“Here. Go to the Arcaneum and get these books for me. Then get back to your own studies. I don’t know what you think this will be like, but you’re not living with me, nor are you going to be spending all your time with me. You need to continue to live your life, not pause it to be an extension of mine.”

“But I must…”

“You must do what I say. That’s what servants do, right? Now get going.”

He did, though clearly flustered, and, after the door closed behind him, Aithne collapsed on the bed and rubbed her face.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected – well, of course, she had acted more out of instinct than expectation in the first place – but whatever she might have expected, this wasn’t it.

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