jfraser

This is a looooooong time of a lot of big events that I didn't want to bore everyone with when I wrote it, so here is exactly what happened during this extended travel montage of a chapter: our version of skyrim is roughly the size and shape of Poland (with a little Ukraine - Riften sits right on Kyiv). The year is 203. so, walking casually, it would take about a week to get from Markarth to Morthal and another day to find Ustengrav. so we'll put Ustengrav on 5 Last Seed (aka August). it is another week to get to Riverwood, so Sian meets Delphine for the first time on 13 Last Seed. Delphine would not want to dilly dally on the way to Kynesgrove, so they get there in 5 days and witness the dragon being reborn (and then kill it) on 18 Last Seed It takes four easy days to get from Kynesgrove to Ivarstead and then another day to climb the Fucking 7000 Steps, as Sian would call them, so she receives her second round of greybeard training on 23 Last Seed Another day down the mountain and another relaxing at the in gives us a total of six days before she is able to come around the mountain back to riverwood, which she reaches on 29 last seed. Alas, delphine is still waiting on word from her contacts, so sian is forced to wait around in boredom and hunger (she probably would have enjoyed all this downtime if she hadn't been all Mollied up) until 16 hearthfire (september), when she finally heads toward solitude. She reaches solitude on 24 hearthfire but the party is not until 9 frostfall (October). this is actually good, though, because she is a terrible spy and fails to notice every single one of the increasingly more blatant signs her contact tries to give her. eventually he gives up on subterfuge and just knocks on her inn door.

sad times! it will be worth the wait, i promise. one of my favorite chapters yet. (also, you are not entirely off )

deleting the chapter deleted all the comments. go back to imagining what happens to merks. madagascar_penguin_you_didn't_see_anything.gif

I didn't look. Or read what you wrote. I deleted it the moment I saw it had posted. I was at jury duty, we were all waiting to be called into the courtroom, so to pass the time I was doing minor edits to the chapter. Apparently I hit "publish" when I was done.

august 2nd. XD i wonder who else saw it. cat's out of teh bag, so i could just post the one that came before it and repost it now. it's too bad - that is a chapter worth waiting for, imo

@HM1919oopsie doopsie. XD

He was there, it is true. This might be easier than I thought.

Well, there are plenty of strongholds out there, surely there must be others. The second idea seems more usable. What are some things they can think of to pin the blame for the capture of the companions on merks?

I literally LOLd Right? The college has to have a low level course on artifacts and the importance of not listening to them. the general view on slavery is that it is bad. The implication here is that the mask has reverted his view of slavery to the previous skyrim's. Which is surely helped along by his probable deep internal feelings - without the mask, if slavery popped up again, he would surely be someone who would be for it. Unless it happened to him, ofc Thank you for the kind words. Aithne is not quite so happy with this stage

The teleportation incantation was wrong. 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. Next chapter Previous chapter Start from the beginning

Horrible Harassment, maybe? It's been a while

Lucky Colette was there, I expect. If she had arrived any later, she would have likely had a LOT more healing to do

An enraged Urag would be something to witness. Preferably from a distance. Behind heavily shielded walls.

"All this fire starting material wasted." Now we need an Evil Aithne to come along and try to repurpose it for that. There has been no on-page going to Saarthal in this timeline, but the College's Saarthal exploration started well before Aithne was involved last time. In truth, in this timeline, they have just begun the initial excavation - it will be another four years and a handful of months (1,597 days, to be exact) before they have delved as far as they had during the first timeline. She was just being proactive. Maybe it would have been better to just keep her mouth shut and hope they don't find the orb, but she didn't want to risk it getting brought to the college again, especially since the passage to it was in the first section the college studied -- since things are different this time around, it is not unreasonable to imagine someone might stumble upon the orb earlier this time. Exactly. Just bringing the thing up has very likely sparked lively curiosity in everyone, so there is an excellent chance her proactive plan will backfire and everything there will be accelerated instead. Minor not-really-a-spoiler alert: there is no augur, just as there is no psychic order (at least, not one that is involved the way they are in the game). I never understood why they even added either of those. maybe just trying to make everything feel all mystic-y?

“This place is rotting my tusks.” 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. Next chapter Previous chapter Start from the beginning