jfraser

I appreciate the support, but there have been numerous typos. My record is far from clean. 😅

I don't think I would survive melissa either. I might be okay with sloan or trendil, at least for now. There is a slightly less chance of survival with the other 2, but they are the two least likely to murder someone out of the four, so it is possible I would survive.

I don't think we'll be making that one canon.

That is poor Trendil’s upbringing. Things will only get better. Puppies and sunshine for the foreseeable future. She came from somewhere in the general area, probably caught while the men were hunting. Hunting is everyone's favorite assignment because it gets them out of the fort for a day. Dammit. I read that line 500 times and still didn't catch it. Thanks!

Four days after they had defeated the dragon, the corpse still lay across the broken western wall. It was an unfortunate time for the weather to give them a break from the cold -- the smell had started on the second day, sweet and metallic. By the fourth, the men had stopped walking on that side of the fort unless they had to. The carrion birds had arrived soon after, black specks circling lower with each pass until they grew comfortable enough to land. At first, the soldiers had chased them off but after one day of that, they gave up and let the birds have their prize. Marcus had assured them it would rise again but could offer no answers to their questions. He wasn't even sure it would happen this time -- other things had changed, so perhaps this had well. Even if it did, he had no real idea when it would happen -- the first timeline's dragons had come back on their own schedule, not his, and he had only stayed in place to witness it himself one time. He only knew it took about a week, which left anywhere between two and four more days before the thing opened its eyes and the whole fort had to fight it again. Assuming it did not simply fly away first. The fort had settled into a rhythm after the dragon. The men moved differently now -- quicker to respond, slower to complain. Killing a dragon together had done what twenty-eight days of waiting could not: it made them a unit. They had a story now, a shared victory that helped cover some of the bitterness left over from Whiterun. They watched Marcus with something closer to trust than tolerance. But four days of that trust was a fragile thing and the novelty of the dragon was long gone. Now they were back to their routine of playing cards and dice and watching empty roads, only now with a cloying stench on top. Marcus shook his head and continued his rounds, circling past the armory, nodding at the watch on the eastern tower, stepping around a puddle of meltwater in the main yard. The routine was calming in its own way -- a checklist of small assurances; gate secure, stores adequate, no blood in the dirt where it should not be, watch routines maintained -- and helped him put aside his concerns for the moment. He was passing the old storeroom near the northern wall when he heard it -- a muffled sound, not quite a voice, not quite an animal. It came from beyond the heavy wooden door, low and rhythmic, buried under something else -- a creak, the scuff of boots on packed earth. Marcus stopped and listened. Another sound: a wet, choked noise, cut short. Then a man's voice, low and rough: "Hold her still, damn it." Marcus did not remember drawing his swords -- he only remembered the door slamming open and the scene that spilled into the light. Three men. He knew their faces -- knew their names, their voices, the jokes they told at supper. One had a woman pinned face-down over a crate with his hand clamped over her mouth. Another knelt between her legs, trousers around his ankles, hips working in short mechanical thrusts. The third stood by the far wall, half-undressed, waiting his turn or recently finished. The woman's dress had been torn from her shoulders and her wrists were bound with rope. Bruises bloomed along her arms, her jaw, the skin of her exposed hip. Her face was wet with tears and snot and blood from a split lip, and was filled with desperation and fear. The standing man held out his hands. "Marcus…" Marcus killed him first. A single step, a pivot, and the edge of his blade opened the man's throat from left to right. The man made a sound like a punctured bellows and collapsed. The man at the crate let go of the woman and reached for a knife on his belt, but not in time to be of any use -- Marcus put his second sword through the man's chest; felt the resistance of ribs, the wet slide of steel parting tissue, the sudden give as the blade sank home. The man's mouth opened and closed like a fish thrown onto shore, then he folded. The third man tried to scramble backward across the dirt floor, trousers still bunched around his ankles. His hands went up. "Wait, wait, we were just..." Marcus stepped over the first body and drove his boot into the man's chest, knocking him flat. Then he reversed his grip on the sword and brought the pommel down. Once. Twice. A third time, harder. The man's skull gave with a sound like cracking an egg on a stone countertop. Then, silence. Marcus stood over the bodies, breathing hard while blood dripped from his hands and blades. The storeroom smelled of sweat and release and copper. The woman had curled into herself against the crate, arms wrapped around her knees, making small sounds he could not quite parse -- sobs, maybe, or the ragged edges of shock. He wiped off and sheathed his swords, slowly, so as not to startle her, then pulled off his heavy cloak and knelt in front of her. "It's all right," he said. His voice came out hoarse. "You're safe now." She flinched when he raised the cloak, so he simply set it in front of her. After a moment, she took it and wrapped herself in it; it pooled around her like a tent. She clutched the edges and stared at him with the wild hunted look of an animal. "It's all right," he said again. "I'm not going to hurt you." Her reaction when he pulled out his dagger showed she did not believe him and she was shaking hard by the time he had cut away her bindings and removed the gag. “You’re going to be okay.” She did not answer, just dropped her eyes to the floor. Marcus stood and looked at the three bodies and let out an aggravated sigh -- he had just killed three of his own men. The thought sat in his chest like a stone dropped into still water, sending rings of likely trouble outward in all directions. They had deserved it, but that did not change what it meant -- they were Stormcloaks, HIS Stormcloaks, and he had executed them without trial, without witnesses, without any of the forms that turned murder into justice. He would have to make it make sense to men who had been cooped up for a month with nothing to do but repair walls and wait for a war that refused to arrive. He looked at the woman again; she was studying the ground as if it held the answers to all her questions. He forced his voice to soften. "What's your name?" She did not answer. Maybe she could not. He nodded anyway, as if she had. "All right. We're going to get you somewhere safe. I promise." He turned toward the door. "I'll be right back. I'm not leaving you." He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. The yard was quiet. A few men near the cookfire looked up when he emerged. He must have been a sight -- blood-spattered, cloakless, his jaw set in a line that discouraged questions. He ignored their stares as he crossed to the main gate to where Bent sat sharpening his hammer's pointed end with slow, methodical strokes. Bent took one look at his face and stopped. "What happened?" "I caught some men raping a woman in one of the storehouses." Bent's face went through a series of shifts -- confusion, disbelief, then a hard settling that meant he understood. "You killed them." "Yes." Bent set the hammer down and rubbed his beard with both hands. "Divines." "Yes." A long pause. Then: "The woman?" "She's fine. I left her in the storeroom." Bent’s eyes went wide. “You left the poor thing sitting alone in a room with the dead bodies of her rapists?! What’s wrong with you, man?” Marcus frowned as he looked back at the door. “I…I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about…” Bent was already moving, so Marcus turned and walked with him. “You’re going to have to tell the men, you know.” "I know." "And the woman needs to go somewhere safe. We can't keep her here." "I know. You’re going to take her to Mixwater. " “Where is that?” Marcus frowned. "What do you mean, where is that? We marched through it on the way to Whiterun.” “Oh, that dinky little milling town? Why don’t we just ask her where she lives?” “You can try. She wouldn’t talk, so I just…” Bent shook his head. “You are the best swordsman I have ever seen but you are awful at empathy. You would make for a terrible woman.” “Hey!” Marcus began, but they had reached the storeroom and Bent ignored him to open the door and step in. It took only moments for Bent, kneeling by the woman and talking in soothing words, to get her to respond to him and even give him a timid smile. Marcus had never felt so jealous of anyone for anything in his life. Bent helped the woman stand and the three went into the bailey to find most of the men had already assembled, watching the door with marked curiosity. Marcus sighed, motioned Bent and the woman to stop, then stepped forward. “I was hoping this would be obvious without me having to say it, but if I find any of you raping someone, preparing to rape someone, or helping others rape someone, you will die on the spot. If you have a problem with that, you know where to find me. Bring your weapon.” He started to turn away as mutters sprang up but then stopped as a realization struck him: they had been here for weeks with nary a woman in sight. Marcus had noticed the tension, like a high keening wind that screamed at a pitch just beyond hearing range, but it only occurred to him now what it was – nearly one-hundred horny men with nothing but their hands to relieve the constant pressure created by the lust-infused sacks of torment they inhabited. Well, closer to ninety, since some of the men were gay and had each other. The lucky dogs. Marcus turned back. “That said, I know we’ve been stuck here for weeks and it looks like we’ll be stuck here for longer. I am going to put in a requisition for Fort Amol to be added to the camp whore rotation. Take care of your own dicks in the meantime -- don’t force them on anyone else. Oh, and whoever is on cleanup duty today…” he motioned toward the ajar door, “…I’m sorry about the mess.” “See, that part you’re good at,” Bent said as they resumed their walk to the stables. “How kind of you to say. So I am to understand you think you are more woman-like than me?” “Were you offended by that? Most men would take that as a compliment. Well, most Nords, anyway – maybe Redguards are different. I was the only boy out of six kids, so I have a different perspective on the fairer sex than other Nords.” Marcus kept his voice flat and neutral. “So you would never ever even think about raping someone, under any circumstances.” “Of course not! Why are you looking at me like that?” “No reason. Be safe.” Marcus nodded at the woman. “I’m sorry my men treated you like that. I wish there was more I could say.” “Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper and she shivered and moved closer to Bent as she spoke, but at least she had spoken. Marcus considered that progress. He turned away as Bent mounted his horse and pulled the woman to a seat in front of him and was halfway through the bailey when the two passed through the gate, and it was only then that it began to dawn on him that he had quite possibly just made the biggest tactical blunder of his life. He cursed under his breath as he looked back at the already-re-closed gate. He should have sent someone else – ANYone else – to take her home. Visions of “I would never rape someone” Bent and the woman (whose name Marcus didn’t know but BENT probably did) falling in love, marrying, and having dozens of happy hammer-waving babies danced through his head, already feeling so real he nearly screamed. With no other way to vent his growing frustration, he yanked out his swords but, instead of going through forms he had no patience to do properly, he started hacking at the body of the dragon, splashing blood, rotting meat, and carrion birds in every direction while screaming with every swing. No one came near him the rest of that day. Next chapter Previous chapter Start from the beginning Join the Shae's Discord!

Oh! Right, i have read some of those.

Some of those views were me looking over the chapter a few times for last second typos and other edits. You have mentioned that author before. I still plan on checking him out but have not yet.

Walking changes everything. On horseback, the world slides past you in big, forgiving chunks -- distance collapses into a dull ache in your thighs, hills become inconveniences, forests become obstacles you barely register. On foot, the land refuses to be abstract. Every incline makes itself known, every stone has an opinion. The wind doesn’t just exist; it negotiates with you. Constantly. Even if your slutty magical outfit makes you inured to the cold. Of course, neither is a nice as a car, and I would have given anything for a solid SUV right then. Or, really, at any point in this stupid story. We were heading south from Fort Hraggstad toward Solitude along a road that cut through mountains that grew steadily lower as we went. Kangme kept the pace -- efficient, relentless, maddeningly correct -- while Kellan and I fell into our usual pattern: long stretches of silence punctuated by comments that served no purpose beyond confirming we were still people and not particularly well-trained pack animals. I bitched about how we should have taken the horses at least a dozen times, and every time Kellan reminded me we hadn't because we couldn't afford Nigel anymore. Turns out looting ancient crypts only pays for so much. Perhaps it was because I was thinking of those crypts that I noticed the variation in the terrain, because it is the sort of thing I normally would have passed unwittingly right by. I slowed and said, “Wait a minute.” They both stopped. Kangme turned immediately; Kellan followed my line of sight, squinting into the pale winter light and said, “What?” I didn’t answer right away -- I was staring at the hillside to our left trying to decide if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing or if it was just a trick of the eyes. Snow and scrub covered most of it, but beneath that was stone shaped in a not-very-nature-looking squareness. Something, in short, that looked suspiciously like the remains of a broad stair, half buried and stubbornly refusing to vanish. I frowned at it. "Does that look like old stairs to you?” Kangme tilted their head, eyes narrowing just enough to be unsettling. “Artificial structure. Construction predates current road by a significant margin.” “Translation,” Kellan said, glancing at me, “you’re about to drag us uphill.” I shrugged. “We said every place like this -- every ruin, shrine, or vaguely ominous pile of rocks that looks like it might have a word wall.” “I know. They just usually turn out to be dead ends.” This was true. We'd developed a rhythm over the course of our travels: see a ruin, investigate it, hope for a Word Wall. The ratio was terrible -- nine out of ten were just collapsed stone structures of indefinable previous use full of spiders and disappointment -- but the tenth made it worth the detour. Unless there was a fucking dragon as well. Then it was just plain scary. The climb took longer than it should have. The trail, what there was of it, wound through switchbacks that seemed designed to punish optimism. By the time we reached the plateau, the sun had slid behind the western peaks, leaving the sky bruised purple and orange behind the statue. Oh, right, have I mentioned the statue? It was of a woman and it was at least fifty feet tall (I am terrible at estimating these things, so that might not actually be accurate. It was taller than ten feet, because that’s basketball hoop height, so if I picture some of those stacked up, it would be…fucking huge, all right?) It rose from the stone like a declaration -- pale, radiant, wings spread, arms lifted skyward in a posture that suggested benevolence while reserving the right to obliterate you for insufficient enthusiasm. Snow refused to cling to her; the air around the statue felt sharp and alert, like a room where someone had just stopped talking. “Which one is this?” I asked, and Kellan and Kangme answered as one in super eerie minor-key harmony, “Meridia.” I nodded, although that was a name I hadn’t heard before. “Subtle.” Kellan snorted and we turned away. The Word Wall sat fifty(-ish -- apparently everything looks fifty feet to me) feet to the left of and farther up the hill from the statue, half-buried in drift, the carved letters dark against pale stone. My chest tightened as the familiar pull, the hum that vibrated behind my sternum before I'd even read a single word, kicked in. I was already walking toward it when Kellan called my name. I glanced back with my attempt at raising an eyebrow, even though I knew it never worked. “Look, um…” He stopped and an unexpected blush fell over him. “We...know what happens at these. Right?” I frowned. “Um. Yes. I get an incredible orgasm and a shout.” “Right, that. Um.” He coughed and I started to worry. “Are you all right? You look like you’re getting sick.” “No no, I’m…fine! I just…” He stopped once again, then visibly settled himself. “Look. Lane said it was best for you if…you didn’t do that alone.” I nodded. “I admit, the times you have been there were much easier. I could almost think clearly instead of being in a massive black hole of…” “Right,” he interrupted with a hasty wave of his hand. “So, I was thinking, maybe we should…prepare. Since we know what is going to happen.” “Prepare? What is there to prepare?” “Well, you know…” the blush deepened and I tried very hard not to laugh -- he was so cute when he was acting weirdly shy! “We could…be naked before you get there. It’s…a little hard to get your armor off while you’re…you know, convulsing all over the place. And mine takes a while to undo. So usually I’m only…helping you for a bit of the end.” “Oh!” The idea had never crossed my mind, but as soon as he said it, it made perfect sense. “That’s a good idea! For walls, anyway, not for dragons. Unless they are very polite dragons who agreed to wait for us to…” “Yes,” he interrupted again, “not dragons, of course. I don’t want to fight those naked!” He laughed then turned and grabbed something from his pack. When he turned back, I saw it was his bedroll. “You stay here. I’ll go to the wall and get ready. Then you...you know, take off your armor and come to me.” I nodded. “Let’s try it!” Kangme, standing a few paces back, let out a long breath that fogged in the cold air. "I will build a fire. Some distance away. Where I cannot hear…anything." They were already moving, gathering dry branches from beneath an overhang, pointedly not looking at either of us. Kellan crossed to the wall (where nothing happened, the lucky bastard) then swiped away snow with his feet before laying down the bedroll. After a moment’s hesitation, he took off his armor, then his clothes. He was already shivering as he turned to me and his dick looked like had decided to become an innie, so I wasn’t sure how well this plan would work after all, but when he gestured, I reached for the straps of my armor. When the straps came loose and the metal fell away, the cold hit me like a slap. It wasn't gradual -- there was no gentle transition from warm to cold. One moment I was comfortable, the armor's subtle heat doing its Sanguine-granted work; the next I was standing naked in a Skyrim winter and the air fucking bit like a bucket of ice-cold snakes chomping me all at once. My skin went tight all over, my nipples peaked so hard they ached, and my teeth started chattering like one of those plastic wind-up toys we always inexplicably got in our stockings (and not-so-inexplicably tossed in the trash soon after). I couldn't stop it -- the sound filled my own ears, a rapid click-click-click I couldn't control. "F…fuck," I managed, wrapping my arms around myself. Kellan gestured. "C…come here." I didn't need to be told twice. I crossed the frozen ground on numb feet and dropped to my knees on the fur just as the wall started to caress me. Su Grah Dun. The knowledge poured into me like water into a dry sponge -- the shape of the concept, the weight of it, the way it could be shaped and pushed through the throat and spoken. But alongside the understanding came the heat. It started in my groin and spread outward, up to my chest, down my arms, between my legs. The building pressure that demanded release, that coiled tighter and tighter until I thought I might split open. The cold of the air disappeared in a snap and I gasped. My hand gripped the fur of the bedroll, trembling, and I just managed to squeak out, “Kellan…” "I'm here." He was behind me, somehow; he must have lifted me, though I hadn't noticed. His chest pressed warm against my back, his arms around my waist. I felt him, even through the haze. I pushed backward into him, desperate for contact, for something to ground me. The first wave hit, crashing through me like a breaker and my vision went white. All surrounding sound faded to whispers as every muscle in my body locked tight. I cried out, or tried to; what came out was a strangled sound, half moan, half plea. My fingers dug into the fur and my back arched. The pressure demanded an exit, demanded release, and my body was trying to give it, clenching around nothing, pulsing against empty air. And then Kellan was inside me. I don't know how he managed it -- I was barely conscious of my own limbs -- but he'd shifted, lifted me, guided his dick (that apparently had changed its mind and become an outie again after all) into me in one smooth motion, and the sudden fullness was exactly what I needed. I moaned, deep and animal, as he filled me. The second wave crested and broke against his presence inside me. I clenched around him, trying to pull him deeper, held him there like an anchor in the storm. It was like having an itch that you just cannot reach finally getting scratched. Except in magnitudes of multiples. Like having a craving actually be fulfilled instead of just tempering the desire for a time. It was getting everything you ever wanted and having the feeling of emptiness that makes you want even more to finally be sated. Kellan didn't move at first -- he just held me, buried to his balls, his arms locked around my waist, his breath hot against my shoulder. I could feel him trembling -- from the cold, from the effort of stillness, from the sensation of my body clenching and releasing around him over and over...from all of the above or none of them. I couldn’t tell; I could barely keep track of my own feelings. The waves kept coming. They weren't discrete -- they rolled into one another, overlapping, building, receding, building again, like ocean waves that tumble over each other in their eagerness to be the one that touches the beach the highest. I lost track of where one ended and the next began, lost track of all thought. I just felt the heat of Kellan’s chest against my back, the thick pressure of him inside me, the endless pulsing rhythm of my own body milking him through haze after haze after haze. "That's it," he murmured against my ear from a million miles away. "I've got you. Everything is fine." I couldn't answer. I just held onto his arm wrapped around my waist and let the waves take me. I don't know how long it lasted -- time was meaningless. The Wall had given me a word and I couldn't even remember what it was anymore*. Su something something. My brain caught the words as a cadence and repeated in the rhythm of Kellan’s body within the fog of my pleasure-drunk brain. Something something something somethingsomethingsomething… Eventually, the waves began to space out -- the peaks grew lower, the intervals longer, and I became aware of my own body again, especially when the cold started creeping back in at the edges. Kellan still held me, still inside me and still hard, panting against my shoulder. For the first time doing this, he hadn't come. I realized that with a jolt of guilt -- he'd been so focused on keeping me tethered, on riding out my storm, that he'd put himself entirely aside. I opened my mouth to say something -- to offer, to apologize, to something -- but he kissed my shoulder before I could. "Later," he said, voice rough. "Let's get warm first." He withdrew slowly, carefully, and the sudden emptiness made me shiver, from loss as much as cold. I heard Kangme's fire crackling nearby, saw the orange glow dancing at the edge of my vision. Kellan helped me stand on shaky legs, grabbed the fur, and wrapped it around both of us as we stumbled toward the warmth. I found my arm-kini (looking like regular Imperial heavy armor, of course) by the fire – Kangme has kindly gathered it – and putting it back on gave me an instant blessed relief, so much so that I almost – almost! – actually sent a prayer of thanks to that fucker Sanguine. I glanced back just as Kellan was pulling on his shirt, and that’s when I saw it – plain as day, small, unassuming, on a plain leather cord, the familiar and distinct looping coiled pattern I had come to recognize all too well. An amulet of Mara. By brain leapt in every possible direction at once at the sight but could not form words to even make an attempt at articulation. Naturally, he seemed oblivious to my stare. Once his armor was fully back on, he turned to me and smiled. “How do you feel?” he asked as if he hadn’t just given me a fucking Rubix Cube wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a riddle. I had no fucking way to answer that question. Don’t feel the bastards. Feel yourself instead. *Su Grah Dun increases weapon speed by adding what I can only describe as a wind buff to my swings. It works with thrown punches as well. I ended up calling it Slicer Dicer. Next chapter Previous chapter Start from the beginning Join the Shae's Discord!

that just sound like modded Skyrim. Have you added or subtracted mods during the playthrough? If so, that is probably the issue -- every time you do that, it creates little cracks in the game that grow over time until you end up in the position you are in.

Since Vitta is no longer adorable, I condone her murder.

gotta break that imposing spirit she has first, i imagine

That vendor must be bad. Maybe he is overcharging and Vittoria is doing that to recoup the money he has stolen and she is graciously giving it back to the people. She is far too cute to be evil. (Although apparently i changed a mod because my current Vittoria is okay looking but I remember her being really adorable). this is not the Vitt i remember!

I played through the dark brotherhood questline in preparation for this and found it lacking. They made all these possibly interesting characters, but then they aren't really involved. Of course, that's also the same in my story, but still. Also, the one guy's new wife was adorable and they seemed so happy and I felt really bad about killing her.

Despite Sloan’s misgivings, things did actually return to something akin to normal – the “something akin” part being the constant muttering of a certain jester standing next to a certain box, of course – over the course of the next week. Life in the Brotherhood settled around the crate and its caretaker like water around a stone. The only real difference was the whispers. They began three days after the Night Mother's arrival. They were quiet, at first, and Sloan thought them just a new level of background noise to go along with the new background guests. By the fifth day, however, they had grown insistent enough that she found herself pausing mid-stride, head cocked, waiting for a sentence that never arrived. The others noticed -- of course they did; this was a house of noticing -- but no one commented directly. Naza's questions grew fractionally sharper; Tusef's spars grew fractionally longer. Even Babette's smile took on an edge of curiosity she made no effort to conceal. Sloan said nothing. What was there to say? I hear things that aren't there was not a confession one made lightly in a place where weakness was measured in ounces and repaid in steel. On the seventh night -- or what passed for night in the sunless depths of the Sanctuary -- she traced the sound to its source. The Night Mother’s sarcophagus had been removed from the crate and set standing in an alcove a short corridor away from the living quarters. Sloan stood before it for a long moment, listening to the silence that was not quite silence. The whisper was louder here; not in volume, but in presence -- it pressed against the inside of her skull like a hand against a door. The sarcophagus itself looked unremarkable -- dark wood banded with tarnished silver, carved with symbols she did not recognize. The lid was not sealed and, after a moment’s hesitation, she pulled it open. The body within was preserved in a state that defied reason. Sloan had seen corpses before -- more than she cared to count, in more states of decay than she cared to remember -- but this was not a corpse. It was a woman, naked, her arms crossed over her chest in the attitude of interment, her skin pale but not waxy, her lips faintly tinted as if with the last residue of life. Her hair lay spread around her head in dark, undisturbed waves, and her eyes -- closed, serene -- seemed ready at any moment to open. Sloan studied her in the dim light. There was nothing threatening about the figure before her, yet something thrummed beneath the stillness, a current she could feel but not touch. Beitild. The name surfaced in her mind like a bubble rising through dark water. Not a voice, exactly -- there were no tones, no inflections, no sense of gender or distance – but it was unmistakably communication. It was a word placed directly into her consciousness accompanied by something that was not quite an image and not quite a feeling: a sense of location, of a specified place where this person could be found. She could not have described it in words if her life depended on it, but she knew it, with the same bone-deep certainty that she knew her own hands. "Beitild.” The word hung in the air and she realized with a start she had spoken it without deciding to speak. Behind her, a bell chimed and Sloan turned. Cicero stood in the doorway of the chamber, his motley catching the torchlight in ways that made him look less like a man and more like a broken rainbow given treacherous life. His expression cycled through several emotions in rapid succession: first delight, then horror, then a sort of ecstatic betrayal. "You opened it!" His voice scaled upward into a register that should have been painful. "You opened Mother's box! Without ceremony! Without permission! Without…" He stopped, his eyes locking onto the sarcophagus, then onto Sloan's face, then back to the sarcophagus, as if trying to triangulate a crime. "Cicero did not say you could open it!" "The latches weren't closed.” "The latches!" Cicero pressed both hands to his cheeks, a gesture of such theatrical dismay that it bordered on parody. "The latches are not the point! The point is respect! The point is reverence! You do not simply open Mother's resting place as if it were...as if it were a pantry!" "It's just a body," Sloan said, though even as she said it, she knew it wasn't. Cicero's mouth opened; closed; opened again. No sound emerged. He looked, for the first time since she had met him, genuinely at a loss for words. The moment broke as others arrived, drawn by Cicero's rising voice and the novelty of disruption in a place that thrived on silence. Naza came first, her footsteps unhurried, her eyes taking in the scene with the practiced efficiency of someone cataloguing evidence. Tusef followed, broad shoulders filling the doorway behind him. Babette slipped in at the edges, finding a shadow to settle into. Lexzal arrived last, his staff tapping a slow rhythm against the stone, and stopped at the threshold -- unwilling, perhaps, to come closer. The chamber filled with overlapping voices: Cicero's escalating accusations, Naza's calm interjections, Tusef's gruff demands for an explanation. It was the kind of chaos that should have grated -- and it did, but distantly, as if filtered through water. Because beneath the noise, beneath the bickering and the posturing and the barely concealed suspicion, the whisper was still there. Fainter now, but present; a thread she could follow if she chose. "Beitild," she said again. The room went silent; everyone turned to look at her. Even Cicero stopped mid-gesture, his hands suspended in the air like a puppet whose strings had frozen. "Who?" Naza asked, her voice deceptively light. Sloan shrugged. "I don't know. It just...came to me." Cicero's eyes went wide -- wider than should have been physically possible. A sound escaped him, half gasp, half laugh, entirely unhinged. "You heard her! You heard Mother speak! You are the Listener! The void has chosen you!" "I'm not anything," Sloan said, but the words felt hollow even to her own ears. The others exchanged glances; a silent conversation passed between them, rapid and subtle. Naza's expression had gone carefully neutral; Tusef's jaw worked as if he wanted to speak but had decided against it; Babette's smile had sharpened into something watchful and speculative. Only Lexzal met her eyes, and in his gaze she read something she had not expected: not belief, but the suspension of disbelief. A willingness to wait and see. Cicero, meanwhile, had dropped to his knees in a posture of such extravagant devotion that it circled back around to being unsettling. "The Listener," he repeated, pressing his forehead to the stone floor. "At last. At last!" Sloan looked into the open sarcophagus, at the still face of the woman within, at the hands crossed in eternal patience over a chest that did not rise or fall. "I don't know what I heard," she said, and this time it came out quieter than she intended. "I don't know what any of this means." A footstep, measured and deliberate, from the corridor behind Cicero. The jester's head snapped up, his theatrical devotion shifting into something watchful as Kira stepped into the chamber. She moved past Cicero without looking at him, past Naza, past Tusef, past all of them -- her eyes fixed on Sloan with an intensity that made the hairs on Sloan's arms prickle. She stopped in front of the sarcophagus and her expression flickered through something too quick to read before settling into a smile. "It means you have been chosen to tell us who the Night Mother has agreed to slay after she heard some soul cry out to her." Kira's voice was light, almost conversational -- the tone of someone discussing the weather, or the quality of the wine at dinner. "Why don't you come with me, and we'll see if it is what it seems." Sloan kept her face still. She had learned to keep her face still through many things -- through pain, through fear, through the slow realization that someone trusted was about to put a blade in her back. She kept it still now, even as her stomach dropped and her pulse quickened and a voice that sounded very much like Mishi's sneered sloppy in the back of her mind. She recognized that tone. Loose, casual, almost warm -- the same tone Kira had used in the Vixen's office, just before she drove a hidden dagger at Sloan's chest. The same tone she had used while Mallin's body cooled against the wall behind her. "Of course," Sloan said, and her voice came out steady. "Lead the way." --- Kira’s office was smaller than the one at the Vixen but looked remarkably similar. It was intimate, the way a confessional is intimate, the way a trap is intimate before it springs. A desk of dark carved wood dominated the center, its surface cluttered with papers and a single oil lamp that cast a pool of amber light across the space. Bookshelves lined the walls, stuffed with volumes and scrolls and the odd trinket -- a glass jar of dried nightshade, a dagger with a chipped blade, a child's wooden doll with one eye painted shut. And there, leaning against the far wall with her arms crossed and her tail tracing lazy arcs through the air, was Gilna. Sloan's heart stuttered -- once, a single hard beat against her ribs – but she forced her face to remain still. She had not seen the Khajiit since Solitude, since the alley and the daggers and the message delivered with that sharp-toothed smile. She had assumed Gilna had reported back to Kira and moved on to other work, other cities, other targets. She had not assumed she would find her here, waiting in the Matron's private office as if she had never left. Gilna's ears flicked forward. Her amber eyes tracked Sloan's entry with the lazy attention of a predator who had already decided whether to pounce. Sloan held her gaze, nodded once, and said, "Hello, Gilna." The tail stopped mid-swing and Gilna's head tilted -- a slow, deliberate motion, like a bird considering a worm that had just spoken in tongues. Her eyes narrowed, and when she spoke, her voice carried that particular Khajiit cadence she had always used when she was circling something interesting. "You know my name. No one has spoken it.” The khajiit pushed off the wall with a single fluid motion and took a step closer, then another, her head still tilted, her ears swiveling forward. "I am certain of this. So tell me, little two-legs -- how do you know my name?" Sloan met her eyes and winked. "'Knowing is what we do, right?'" It had been one of old Gilna’s favorite sayings, and Sloan had to fight to keep from grinning at the effect of it. Gilna's face went through a transformation Sloan had never seen on it before -- not surprise, exactly, but something adjacent to it, something that flickered across her features and was gone before it could settle. Her ears flattened, then rose and her nostrils flared once, as if testing the air for lies. And then she smiled -- that same sharp-toothed, feral smile Sloan remembered from a thousand lessons and a hundred deadly games -- and said, "So true." The silence that followed was not hostile; it was studying, the way a scholar studies a text that refuses to sit still under the erratic flicker of candle. Gilna held her position, her tail resuming its lazy swing, and Sloan let herself breathe. Kira had settled behind her desk during their exchange -- Sloan had tracked the movement peripherally, the rustle of fabric, the creak of leather, the soft click of a drawer opening and closing – and now folded her hands on the papers before her and regarded both of them with the patient expression of a woman who had all the time in the world and was not afraid to use it. "Gilna has been watching you since Solitude," Kira said. Sloan felt something cold settle in her stomach. She kept her face neutral, kept her breathing even, but the words landed like stones in still water -- for weeks, apparently, the Khajiit had been tracking her movements through the Sanctuary and her assignments, observing her training, her meals, her sleep, her conversations, and Sloan had not known. She had felt no eyes on her, no prickle at the back of her neck, no shadow that lingered a breath too long. It was a humbling reminder that she was not as far along as she sometimes liked to believe and she needed to adjust her expectations of herself to match reality before she took a step too far. "A difficult task it was," Gilna added, her voice carrying that same melodic amusement Sloan remembered. "It is like you can see in the dark. Most people I can follow from across a city and never break stride. You…" she flicked an ear, "…you turned around three times before you ever left a room. You checked windows and doors before you entered them. You never took the same path twice, even to the privy." Sloan said nothing. There was nothing to say; the cat was right and admitting it out loud would only give her more ammunition. "I lost you twice," Gilna continued, settling back against the wall with a theatrical sigh. "Twice in the first week. I have not lost a mark in…" she paused, counting on her fingers, "…well, longer than you have been alive, I think. But you? You vanished. Once in the kitchens, once near the armory. I had to pick up your trail from Lexzal's observations both times." Sloan filed that away as well: Lexzal was reporting on her movements too. Of course he was -- everyone in this place reported to Kira, sooner or later. She had allies, not friends. Kira cleared her throat -- a small sound, barely audible, but it cut through the room like a blade. Gilna fell silent immediately, her ears swiveling toward the Matron with an attentiveness that spoke of long habit. "The matter at hand," Kira said, and her voice had shifted -- still light, still conversational, but with an edge beneath it that Sloan recognized from the warehouse, from the Vixen, from every encounter she had ever had with this woman. "You claim the Night Mother spoke to you. You claim she gave you a name." "I claim nothing but that I heard a voice say Beitild. Whether that was the Night Mother or my own imagination, I cannot say.” "Yes." Kira's eyes were very flat, very cold, very watching. "That is the name you spoke. The question, of course, is whether it means anything. I will reach out to my contacts and our agents in the field.” Kira tapped a finger once against the desk -- a measured, deliberate motion. “If there is a contract for someone named Beitild -- if someone has performed the Black Sacrament and called out to the Night Mother with that name on their lips -- then we will know. And we will know if the name you gave matches the name we find. Until then, you will do nothing. You will speak nothing. You will not mention this name or any other names that might somehow pop into your head. You will train. You will eat. You will sleep. And you will wait." Sloan met her eyes. "And if the mark is real?" Kira's smile was beautiful and cold and did not touch her eyes. "Then we will have a very different conversation." The dismissal was implicit. Sloan inclined her head and turned toward the door, but pause with a hand on the frame. "Gilna." The Khajiit's ears perked. "Hm?" "You were right. In Solitude." Sloan did not turn around. "Curiosity can be dangerous. But survival? Survival is a matter of knowing who to trust. And I have always trusted you." She stepped through the door before Gilna could respond -- before she could see whatever expression flickered across that feline face -- and let the door swing shut behind her. The corridor was empty, the torches guttering in their sconces, the shadows long and familiar. Sloan stood in the silence and let herself breathe, let herself feel the tremor that had been running beneath her skin since Kira's voice had gone soft. The Night Mother was silent, but Sloan could feel her waiting -- watching, the way Gilna had watched, the way Kira was watching, the way the whole Sanctuary seemed to be watching -- wondering what she would do next. Which was fair – she was wondering the same thing. Next chapter Previous chapter Start from the beginning Join the Shae's Discord!

It does, briefly. Hers is a curse i would not want