Aithne had Chonji calmed with the help of a plate of sweetrolls by the time a pensive-laden Urag returned to the suite. She said simply, “The Archmage?” and took his shake of his head as confirmation of what she had assumed. “Well. Not to speak ill of the dead, but I’ll not miss him.”

 

He snort-laughed. “No, I imagine not.”

 

“What happens now? Who chooses Archmages?”

 

Urag shrugged as he sat at the table and snagged one of the sweetrolls. Fortunately, Chonji already had a double handful and did not protest. “The professors will get together and discuss it and vote.”

 

“Do you think it will be you?”

 

He laughed. “Gods, I hope not! I don’t need that kind stress.”

 

“Stress? I thought Professor Ervine did all the day-to-day things.”

 

“She does, but she’s not supposed to. Savos was a bit…neglectful of his duties. You didn’t hear it from me, but you’re not the only one who will not miss him.”

 

Aithne laughed in turn. “I do not feel so bad about not feeling bad, then.” A pause, then, as she girded herself for what she needed to say next. “Um…about our earlier conversation.”

 

“Hmm?” Urag took a moment to swallow a bite of sweetroll. Which one?”

 

“About me...um…going places.”

 

“Oh!” Urag set the remains of the sweetroll on the plate and placed his hands together, his full intense attention on her. She tried not to feel aroused.

 

“I did think about…going away? Just for a little bit,” she hastened to add as his expression turned from caring to concerned. “I haven’t…spent time by myself in…I don’t know how long. After everything that happened…and, of course, I am grateful forever to you, but…” She trailed off as her heart pounded in her chest.

 

He nodded. “I understand. You are right, all this time, you have not had a moment to yourself. Literally. Where were you go?”

 

She took a deep breath. “That giant statue of Azura on the hills above here. I’ve often wondered about it. I thought maybe I would go visit it.” And then to Labyrinthian because I need to figure out what connection it has to all this, she did not add.

 

The half-truth hung out here and she was certain Urag could tell she had not said all she meant. The darkness swirled, warning - or threatening – a chasm from which she could never climb.  But he simply nodded again.

 

“After what you have been through, the gods do owe you some answers. Maybe she will help provide them. At the very least, I hope it provides you the peace you seek.”

 

 She nodded and her grateful flush was unfeigned - just the reason she was grateful was.

 

***

 

 It had to be this way, she told herself for the millionth time as she flew toward her destination. She had learned her lesson in Saarthal – she would not endanger others ever again.
 

Also, thank the gods – or, more accurately, Tudyz – for ward spells. She refreshed the one that kept the freezing air from encompassing her.

 

Flying over mountains was not the most fun thing ever. Flying itself…well, it had been a revelation when she had learned that. But there was a big difference between flying over warm lower elevations, swooping down to scatter flocks of seabirds and kicking up spray on the ocean surface, and flying among the high frozen peaks.

 

The thought tickled her memory. She had had a thought like this at one point at a distant time. Where it had seemed illogical that higher up, closer to the sun, was colder than lower down, farther from the sun. She laughed a little at her own ignorance. Of course, now she knew that it was colder higher up because when Anu breathed air into the world, he had done so at ground level, where most of the gods’ created creatures would live. Only wisps of it had gone farther up in the air. It made so much sense. She shook her head again at her own ignorance as she crested a final rise and the spires of Labyrinthian appeared.

 

 What also appeared, appeared to be a battle. Soldiers in blue armor were fighting...she frowned as she flipped through the bestiary in her mind. Frost trolls. Giant white creatures full of muscle and rage. It was strange - trolls were supposed to be solitary creatures but there appeared to be a solid two dozen of them. Enough of them to give the soldiers all they could handle - several already lay on the ground while only a couple troll bodies had fallen.

 

She alighted at a point above the fray, picked out the one that seemed to have the fewest soldiers around it, and started sending fire bolts. This had an immediate effect on the battle as the troll roared and turned her way and the soldiers that had been cowering back shouted and leapt for it. She kept it occupied with fire bolts that tore through its skin. The soldiers were using just their normal weapons which would, after time, injure a troll but it took fire to put them down permanently. She shook her head. The soldiers had not been prepared for this battle.

 

She switched to using two hands and only a few heartbeats later, it finally crashed to the ground. The soldiers cheered and then hurried on towards the next one. Aithne shook her head again and floated to the ground to peer at the dead creature. She had seen pictures in books and read all about them but had never seen one close up.

 

It was a fearsome sight. Muscles larger than even Borkul’s over surprisingly soft fur, giant fangs and a face only a mother troll could love. Also, she could not help but notice, an excessively large red dick. She shuddered - she could only imagine the horrors someone like Sutfu would have put her through had he access to such creatures.

 

She tried to put the picture out of her mind as she turned away, discovering as she did that she had been wrong - the soldiers did have fire with them. Several soldiers stood out of the battle with lit torches. Every time one of the trolls fell, they rushed forward and plunged the torches into the creature’s wounds. It was a simple and inefficient tactic but it did keep the things from regenerating. It just took a long time to get them to the state where that could happen.

 

As she moved toward the next troll, she heard a voice shout, “Watch out!” and turned in time to see a massive white arm rushing toward her head. She had time to do nothing more than flinch and curse her missing eye but the arm passed in front of her face without touching her as the creature turned away. The dagger sticking from between its shoulders gave her probable cause for the thing’s sudden distraction.

 

Aithne gulped the bile her fear had raised in her gullet and took a few precious seconds to get her lost breath back as the familiar darkness choked out light and sound. So close! She had some so close to dying. Had she learned nothing about the price of hubris? Of assumptions based on her imagined skills? 

 

A shake of her head pushed the darkness away enough to bring the world back in focus. The troll was attacking someone she couldn’t see but who Aithne assumed was her savior.  She took two steps, plunged both hands into the thing’s back, and let out a maximized double handed fire bolt that tore a hole straight through the creature’s body. It toppled to the ground and she found herself face to face with a woman.

 

Not one of the soldiers, it seemed. At least, she was not wearing soldier’s armor. In fact, she wore nondescript linen clothing and held only the daggers she yanked from the troll’s back. All in all, the woman seemed woefully out of place on this field of battle (yet somehow familiar, although Aithne didn’t have time to delve into where she may have seen her before). Still, Aithne owed the woman her life, so she nodded her thanks and turned and hurried back to the fray.

 

Even with her magic, the trolls were tough to bring down. Perhaps she could have made better time but she did not want to use up too much mana when she had all of Labyrinthian still to explore. She had learned her lessons about taking such endeavors for granted - she would need all the magic she could get.

 

The woman and she worked well as a team, it seemed. They wordlessly settled into a pattern similar to what Aithne and Shar had done in Saarthal - the woman got the creatures’ attention, slashing at them with her knives then dancing away as the creatures responded, while Aithne blasted them with firebolts. Either by a miracle or sheer reflexes, no matter how close the woman got or how quickly the trolls responded, the woman never seemed to get hurt. It did appear that a claw may have caught her once or twice but the only thing that seemed torn were her clothes. Several times, Aithne nearly forgot to do her part, so in awe was she.

 

They moved down the line, helping one batch of soldiers after another, until there was only a single troll left.  The soldiers in this section were more organized and followed a similar tactic Aithne and the limber woman had been using - the ones behind jumped forward to slash then jumped back as the monster turned, just for the ones that were now in the back to do the same. There were no soldier bodies littered among this group. Aithne waited for a clear shot then sent a single fire bolt at the creature’s head which left a smoking crater in the back of its skull. It hunched over as it turned toward her and one of the soldiers, a woman unique in that she had two swords instead of the usual shield or two-handed weapon, leapt onto the troll’s back and, with twin slices of her swords, decapitated the creature’s head. As other soldiers rushed up with torches, the woman lowered her swords and look toward Aithne and the other woman

 

“My thanks to you, mage. Your presence was equally unexpected as it was welcome.”

 

Aithne nodded as well, not bothering to mention that she was not technically a mage yet, at least not by the College standards. Instead she responded, “That was a lot of trolls. I have never heard of so many in one place.”

 

The soldier grimaced as she took off her helmet, tucking it under her arm and sweeping a hand through short, dark, sweat-matted hair. “Neither have I.”

 

Aithne frowned. This woman also looked vaguely familiar. The other woman, the one in the linen clothes, stepped beside her and burst out laughing. Both Aithne and the soldier looked at her then at each other and it finally dawned on Aithne why the women looked so familiar – she saw the same face every time she looked in the mirror. Except both of them had two eyes.

 

The woman in the linen clothes said, “Um...by any chance, have either of you met a woman named Delphine who asked if you had sisters?”

 

The soldier laughed. “As a matter of fact, I have! I saw her just a couple weeks ago.”

 

They looked at Aithne with matching expectant expressions but she shook her head. “I am afraid I have not had the pleasure.”

 

 The one in the linen grinned wider. “In that case, you don't happen to be the Dragonborn, do you?”

 

Aithne blinked. “Um…I have read about Dragonborns. But my understanding was that there hasn’t been anything of the kind in centuries.”

 

 The soldier raised an eyebrow. “So your name is not Shawn? Is that how she pronounced it? Something like that.”

 

Aithne shook her head while Linen nodded. “Close enough. Sian.”

 

“No, my name is Aithne. I’m a student the College of Winterhold.”

 

Linen laughed again. “We could have guessed that! I am Sloan.”

 

A pause but there did not seem to be more information coming so the soldier shrugged. “I am Swors…I mean, Trendil.” She glanced at Aithne and Sloan. “It is rather uncanny, isn't it? We look very much like each other. Except for the eye. What happened there?”

 

Aithne blinked. She had become used to people staring at the gaping hole where her eye once was, especially after her eyepatch had been burned away in the duel with Merks and she had decided not to bother replacing it. But no one - even Urag - had directly asked what had happened.

 

“That…is a twelve-drink-minimum story.”

 

Trendil nodded. “Understood. Not our business.

 

Sloan nodded as well. “Yes, I think we've all had our traumas. But perhaps none as many as this Sian person we supposedly look like!”

 

“So there is another one who looks like us?”

 

“Yes.” Sloan nodded again. “The Dragonborn is someone named Sian who apparently looks just like us. This is either an odd coincidence or some sort of weird twist of the gods’ humor.”

 

Trendil shrugged. “I'm voting on the latter. We have a camp just outside the walls here. Care to join us?”

 

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