In blinding dark ere winter came

Skyrim is stuffy, claustrophobic with its many peoples dispersed through the land, inhabitants old and new and newer still the silent raving sentinels of Atmora. Sweltering coasts and swamps and woods all carved up in a fever, parcelled out and jealously guarded. Tumorous sproutings of towns and villages all over, people domesticating themselves in one last betrayal of their frozen home. 

A veritable cacophony to senses weaned on glacial waters; honed on ritual hunts. People talking incessantly and clamouring and shouting the very earth into submission. Cages within cages. There’s a lord over them all now, by his own admission and ambition. He summons the mighty, the furious insane. Even among the last feral hermits his invitation is passed, there’s talk of accepting. 

The eastern lands sound cruder still than this drab shadow of mighty Atmora, heaps of foreign novelty. Many slink away from the fires, the settlements, called back out by blood. The wolf pelted earth breaker is among them– they won‘t be some scrawny king‘s lap dog.

Skyrim is divvied up, and yet there is enough wilderness to swallow them whole. Where there isn’t, the less reclusive Atmorans take it back, boasting and clamouring. Little farms and homesteads, almost Nord themselves now. The fey and the woodwalkers return to their pacing, territories vast like feral beasts. Not even time will make them band together. 

The wolf roams the lands deep south beyond the pearlescent lake that even with the spring thaws does not gleam quite as bright as their glacial home. They run from the clamour and cloying until harsh mountains cut their path. For a while it is peaceful, and ever restless they endeavour to keep it thus with claws and teeth.

They have no word of their people who with conquering swords and shouts never returned from the east, but the Nords spread like a disease. One year people settle on the lake, then further deep where snaking mountain passes meet a pleasant rushing stream. The last children of Atmora wish more to run than to fight, and the wolf sheds not their pelt to scream their protests unto land and sky. Wordless, out of sight, they surrender the ground. 

The ever receding depths of the forest –crushed now by sullen hands not gleaming sheets of ice– remain a sanctuary not intruded upon, warnings of one too far line crossed written in blood and pain. Atmora’s lost children live long lives, but even they might not outlast the torrential unbroken tide of just a few trees more below the axe. 

Instead they live long enough to be found. The dun pup, hapless and toothless, anointing them with blackberry sup alike enough to blood.They let the boy name them 'Mara'. They let the boy call them 'she'. The boy speaks with hands more than words, and she learns fast like remembering a hazy half-dream, teaching him the language of beasts in trade.

The seasons slow for them, curled up on a bed of rust coloured needles in a yew grove, sharing jam and pies as rain platters overhead and the trees weep red blood. Warm summer storms pass over them unminded, turning the stone slippery and the loamy hillsides navigable, until they run cold and sleety, mist rolling down the forested mountain slopes. 

They sing at the stars and moons overhead, drifting lazily together in snow or mellowing summer heat. Around them the birds sing and the streams gurgle, and she hears the earth itself hum a contented lullaby. They roam between the village and the lake, smelling and tasting and running. He gets overwhelmed, and sometimes so does she, seeing this land through fresh eyes. 

She hunts them game, the boy perched silently on her shoulders. With him, she never hunts down the woodcutters and mushroom gatherers and intruders into her woods. She doubts he‘d mind, but her pup has to grow his own fangs before they can truly feast. He picks berries from between the brambles, staring silently as hands dart cleverly between the thorns that would cut her muzzle. They catch fish in nimble claws and marvel at the gleam of sun on scales. 

The townsfolk grow weary of them, their urge to roam a distant memory. Even she can bury her bitter longing for home now. For a while. 

One crisp spring, the boy leaves. She follows him to the edge of the mountains eternally draped in ice, where her woods break on sheer rocks. She knows he knows she’s there, an unspoken offer like all between them. Still, she dislikes the mountain, the dragon, and she will not abandon the wilderness she has carved herself in this overflowing land. He looks back once, hesitates too long, places a precious sweet before the steep incline of the mountain pass.  

He leaves. She stays. The seasons stumble on. 

Time is a vague notion, when not measured by the inexorable creep of ice. She tastes the change in the air, startled over a bloody meal. The earth sings of their approach, humming in delight at the dizzy of one and one, coarse crude notes intertwined into a simple haunting harmony. Soft vibrations of the forest floor, crunching of mud and leaf, the smell of furs and foreign lands and ferns snapping underfoot. Yet in her heart she knows. 

Where the massacre stopped the hastily raised war camp itself turned a half decayed cadaver, oozing and bloated. Toppled walls overgrown with motley lean-ons provided scant shelter, and the great war tent squatting safe and modest between them had foregone even that precaution. Jumbled blankets piled onto the sleeping giant of a tent –requisitioned from freezing soldiers or raided homes in the breached outskirts– hiding the bitter acid stains pockmarking its less fortunate canvas brethren. All colour had long been lost to the ash drifts. 

The same could be said for the banners trod into the muck, their grand heraldry barely discernible underfoot, mourning grey and royal purple indistinguishable in their defacement. Had one of the lost mer not leaned too heavily on a dragged spear, had he not near tripped over the buried corner a streamer, they could have ignored this slight as painfully easy as the disfigured corpses with their carefully untouched faces. 

They had not come to bend nor bow, but neither tyrant saw them brought so low in the merciless ash.  No reception awaited them outside, no fanfare, only the gloating malicious reminders of how thoroughly they had lost. The grand war tent’s entrance loomed before them framed by the gory arch of a hacked off pair of mandibles, the only mutilated trophy of the brutal campaign to find its way into the camp. Amid all the horrors, even this barely roused a reaction anymore. They had to ground the precious few remaining beasts, after this first loss drove them into a frenzy. If the storm kept up, they might still have to put them down.

Eating the insult the mer faced their own fate, a dozen shifting faceless creatures and one squat Nordic scamp leering at them as they crossed the heavy curtained threshold. Drab fabric parted under the spear’s stroke to let in ash and supplicants, as by some whimsy they had not been made to relinquish the pauper guard’s weapon made crutch. 

There sat the conquerors of dreary Ebonheart, the butchers having spat their bill over sky and land. The former Jarl of Mournhold lounging like a man much greater than himself, decrepit throne covered in furs, great axe gleaming under his lazy boot. Not a speck of blood marred the blade, nor rust from the acrid air, though too soft lips may have been tainted by either. 

Beside him the Jarl of Kragenmoor perched awkwardly on his stool, a man whose power was belied by this soft forgettable form, draped loosely in plain nondescript clothes that fell awkwardly even on the portly stature he favoured. Where the Blighter greedily took in the scene of their triumph, Bhag barely looked up when the mer entered, gaze restless as his hands.

Bruised and battered, exhausted to the bone now weaned off adrenaline, and in places cut to the very same; clad like unhappy politicians rather than great generals they stood before the armoured Nord on his throne and awaited judgement. Each wore the crispest robes available to him, loosely shrugged on over bodies marked from battle, bloodied and dishevelled. A pair of grimy, tired sentinels. No armour for them, no swords; they would not allow the Nords to take trophies beyond the gruesome mangled corpses they had already claimed.

The silence held as one more battle, one last attempt by the already vanquished to wrest a victory. And yet when the once-Jarl cut the tension hungrily, with words of no power, it was hard to tell who held defeat. 

“And so you have come,” he gloated with the unmistakable rasp of one who gave his throat no more respite than his men.

“So we have, and so we can leave.”

“Ah, we’d better have that talk first, Khizumet’e.”

There had been no letters to precede this meeting, and yet Khizumet’e seemed aware of just how it would turn. Letting the spear clutter to the ground the leader of the Dres crossed his arms tightly in front of his chest; a gesture of comfort as much as defiance. “I rejected your sick deals before. You know you cannot ask that of me.”

“I can ask anything of you.”

“With nothing stopping us from walking out and resuming this farce?” 

Nothing to stop them from damning themselves and every last inhabitant of Ebonheart –Dres, Ra’athim and civilian alike– to an excruciating, inevitable death. 

“I’d love to see you try to hobble back.” The way Chemua shifted his axe underfoot, letting its edge catch the dim fire light, required no interpretation. 

“Only a Nord would debase himself to lay hands on emissaries,” the surly white haired mer spat, having been previously rendered half-mute with rage and disgust. Only Bhag had shown an interest in his presence thus far, staring too long at the Ra’athim during this pitiful first exchange of threats.

“Your newest pet?” said debased Nord inquired, ignoring the answering snarl.

“What are your terms,” Khizumet’e returned them to the heart of the matter.

“Ah, who said there would be terms.”

“It’s a bit pointless to drag us out here to wish us good luck.”

“He’s got ya there,” Bhag piped in, and unlike the previous interjector he earned himself a long glare from his supposed ally. “Why if ya can’t think of anything, how about–”

“You can take what men you still hold in that city and slink away.”

“And you get Ebonheart with no further bloodshed?” The laugh was too haughty for one vanquished. “So those are the terms you do not have?”

“No.”

“Mhm, so we can make this a negotiation? Delightful.” Khizumet’e turned his head toward his stewing shadow, not letting Chemua slip from the corners of his gaze. “What could we get you, Cru’? I’d say they hand over our prisoners and maybe we’ll leave them some living Nords?”

“Still no,” Chemua replied laconically. “You don’t get it, viidosti, I’ll rip whomever you abandoned to me limb from limb, and you will crawl back to Mournhold’s skirts under the garlands of their corpses.”

A wince, a sharp indrawn breath and then, “You would not dare.”

“Would I not?”

Impossible to argue with the row of speared bodies lining every approach to the city. Impossible to demand humanity, let alone mercy. Refusing to be drawn into trying, Khizumet’e held out a trembling hand in invitation. None in that tent would have expected to have it heeded– and yet. Gauntleted fingers abandoned wood and blade to trail split knuckles before stilling over indictingly bruising flesh, and to his damnation Khizumet’e offered, “If I trade myself for them you might have a sport of it after all.”

This close he can smell Chemua’s breath as he laughs in his face, raw and sour like his voice. Glacial eyes cold with rare contempt bit him as pointedly as steeled finger tips. “Maybe I should make you kill them instead.”

“Are you still too much a coward to bloody your own hands,” the insult fell flatly, a weak rebuttal of an all too sincere threat. 

“Hmh, should I show you?” There was that manic glint in Chemua’s eyes as he looked pointedly at Cruethys, eyebrows raised in mockery. The cage of his hand stayed clamped round Khizumet’e’s jaw, keeping him from exchanging a steeling glance of resolve with his nemesis of just until last night. 

All protests were swallowed as the Nord leaned in closer, robbing all breath from the acrid air. “You will wish I had let you lay hand on your darling pet, your foolish distraction. His skin I shall flay for you to sign your surrender on in his blood, his bones broken one by one then ripped off as trophies for us to share. And when you mourn your haughty idiocy I will tear–”

“Nah.”

“Tear you apa— nah?”

“Nah.” Bhag’s patiently repeated intercession came with such finality that Chemua broke his hold on Khizumet’e’s chin in disgust, rounding on his fellow Tongue with arms flailing wide.

“What are you playing at,” he growled, encroaching on Bhag’s space in a way that only served to snap the spell that he might have ever towered over them. 

With the Nord chieftains facing each other, Khizumet’e straightened behind Chemua’s turned back. The exhaustion and frailty lingered, and yet for a moment he carried himself with grim purpose, hand twitching decisively in the folds of his robe. 

The moment passed as fleeting as it had arrived as he failed to stagger forward, hand balled helplessly into an empty fist. 

“You can do as you will with your Khizmeddy there,” terrifyingly, as if he were in on their joke, he looked straight past Chemua as he talked, locking eyes with the guilty shuffling mer in question, “but this elf‘s mine.” 

A wide grin was on his face, daring Khizumet’e to act. From any other demon it might have been a warning, a sentence even, but on Bhag it simply gave the impression of a man eager to receive due payout from a wager. And yet Khizumet’e found he could not follow that invitation.

“Yours,” Chemua spat, the picture of helpless hypocrisy, “what ever were you doing with an elf?” 

“Tryna sound like Hoaga, are ye? I was hunting him, obviously.”

“Hunting him.”

“Up and down and up the mountains and coast,” Bhag confirmed cheerily, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “Good sport.” The ‘unlike some’ rang clear within it, though the target remained uncertain. 

“Geh, fine, have it your way.” As he evidently belatedly realised, if not recalled, even Chemua was not exempt from the futility of arguing with Bhag. “Kill your quarry now, if he evaded you for all those years.”

“Hand me a blade and I at least shall take you with me!” 

Cruethys’ outcry was buried under Bhag’s as he jabbed a finger into Chemua’s chest plate. “Oi,” he hit the point home, “I ent gonna kill him! Thrill of the chase, why‘d I want to give up on that?”

“Damned elf lover.”

“Oh, oh, you do sound like him!” Bhag clapped his hands in obvious delight. “Jealous cause your elves all spurned ya? If only you had a chance to make that right. Hah! Now, you two…” Still laughing about his own genius, he leaned to peer around his fellow Tongue.

Somewhere in there must have been the final straw. With a sound of disgust, Chemua turned on his heel and stalked back to his makeshift throne. Picking up the discarded battle axe he pointed at Bhag –”This is my campaign still,” he reminded him– and then pointed at each mer in turn in a vague threat, “And you have come to grovel.”

Once more silence hung between them, more oppressive than when the mer had first entered. This time, it was on them to break it too.

“Clan Ra’athim does not grovel.” Done with the pace of events so far, Cruethys Ra’athim drew up to stand beside Khizumet’e.

“Who,” Chemua listlessly inquired, looking over the small gathering as if searching for someone who would enlighten him.

A sharp laugh escaped Khizumet’e, before he could cover it with a cough. 

“Those pesky bandits,” Bhag contributed with a vaguely westwards gesture. 

“The one and only lords of Ebonheart. The nightmare of every single of your maggot men.”

Chemua scoffed. “Your pet’s tongue runs looser than yours, Khizumet’e.”

“Ah, Bhag’s pet, if you hadn’t heard.”

Too receptive to the mockery, Cruethys stepped forward in anger, inciting a glint in Chemua’s eyes. The Nord inhaled deeply, casting aside his axe in favour of a worse threat. Where he had hesitated over the knife Khizumet’e gripped Cruethys’ arm tight enough to draw blood, blocking his path before he could try to get himself killed. 

No thu’um broke forth, and yet the tent seemed to rumble as held breath was expelled with a curse. “I should have torn you apart long ago—” Chemua started, rounding on Khizumet’e.

“What’s stopping you,” came the reply, as Khizumet’e fought to manoeuvre Cruethys decisively behind him. “You won, go claim some more spoils to torture.”

“ —but I hold no resentments. My offer still stands; you know what little I ask of you. Deliver, and I'll return Ebonheart back to you.”

Insulted somehow deeper still, Cruethys spat; evidently beyond caring if he sullied his own banners by now.

“You expect me to take a worse bargain than the one I refused before,” Khizumet’e replied incredulously. “Have you seen the shape of those walls?”

“It needn't have come to this. You forced my hand.”

“How sweet of you to still seek to fulfil my every dream. Go, reduce the place to rubble, better that than to let it fall into your hands.”

“Good, show the world what tyrant you are, Khizumet’e. What that indulgence of yours must think of you now.”

It was meant to hurt, clearly, to elicit some outburst, and yet the two mer only exchanged a long glance. Daring to let go of Cruethys’ wrist, Khizumet’e crossed his arms in a picture of defiance. “You have no claim to this city, and we won‘t acknowledge any right you think you have to take it.”

Chemua laughed it off. “And by what right did you hold Ebonheart,” he dug slyly, “if not by right of conquest?”

“Blood and matrimony.” The claim, boldly stated, drew an inquisitive ‘eh’ from Bhag, but rather than clarify Khizumet’e appended, “Ebonheart longed to recover the patronage of House Dres. As the people of Kragenmoor do to this day.”

“And you failed them like you failed everyone else.”

The blow landed, but it left Cruethys unperturbed to fill the ensuing bitter silence. “Clan Ra‘athim accepts no overlords. Be they mer or men, we shall give them no peace until their blood rots black like ebony in their veins. But know, Nord, that we can tolerate much to destroy you.”

“We were working through that,” Khizumet’e interjected, having found his bearing again. “But do keep slaughtering every Chimer in the city, it still won‘t give a Nord the right to rule its ruins.”

“I should make you watch that spectacle,” Chemua viciously agreed.

“You near tore yourself apart for days to as much as blemish our walls, I’d die of boredom before you were done!”

“Mhm, do you want to bet how long it takes me to reduce this city to nothing?” A hungry pause, before the threats could fully blossom. “How about Mournhold? Tear?”

“If you could you would have done it already.”

“Then why come crawling to me to bargain for your life, if not because I could simply seize it.”

Khizumet’e shrugged, not bothering to dispute the idea. “I realised I cannot stand the sight of Ebonheart any longer. No, please, you‘re doing me a favour, really, sending me back to lovely Mournhold. The company is better anyway.”

“Running from your duties again, Khizumet‘e? Why shouldn‘t I be surprised.”

The Dres nodded slowly, thoughtfully at that. Word games were getting them nowhere, not against people who spoke the world into submission, and catharsis would not save any lives. “Duty only bids me to bargain safe passage for my people, and peace for our dead.”

“Not yourself.” It was hardly a question, for all Chemua suddenly seemed uncertain.

“Our living. And our dead.”

“Well, we ent gonna leave them there,” Bhag piqued up from his stool.

Khizumet’e accepted the easily won mercy with a grateful nod, allowing himself to relax. For all his peculiarities, the Jarl of Kragenmoor was by far the more honest of the Nords.

“But we are.” Life had returned to Chemua with the chance to once more prove what monster he was.

“Nah, that‘s how ya get diseases.”

“Last time you slaughtered Ebonheart‘s people you Nords weren‘t so concerned,” Cruethys reminded them with undisguised bitterness. The riots had been a bloodbath as much as a familial tragedy.

“Necromancy makes ya looney,” Bhag explained nothing, “we ent like that, are we, Chemua?”

“It‘s treason to malign your king in front of his enemies, Bhag.”

“They‘re elves, they love treason! And they ent gonna tattle, are they?”

Cruethys stood with stone-faced contempt; only when his nominal ally nudged him did he give the barest jerk of a ‘no’.

“Pah,” spat Chemua, forced into bitter capitulation a second time.

“Fine, stop trying my patience and the people of Ebonheart can take down those corpses as soon as you are gone.”

“Wouldn’t do to have your grand entrance ruined by squeamishness, would it,” Khizumet’e needled.

Like a petulant child, if one that could unmake you in a tantrum, Chemua closed in on them again. “I said stop trying my patience.”

“Or what? You cannot harm him without breaking loose your own civil war, so what? You will strike me down? Do it.”

“–ah but you want me to, don’t you.”

Khizumet’e froze, silent, and the Nord’s demeanour transformed into elation.

“You do,” Chemua announced damningly, for their audience to hear. “Just like– but she put you up to this, after all. And then abandoned you like she will ruin everything. I warned you–” the pointed reminder was accompanied by a gauntleted hand placed gently on Khizumet’e’s cheek “–and when she stands over your dying body remember that I tried to save you.”

Weakly, Khizumet’e struggled to voice a protest, but with cold steel holding shut gnawed lips, Chemua shushed him. “There is nothing more for us to say, is there? You gave in, as you always would.”

It would have been an opening, a weakness, but when nothing was made of it Cruethys spoke up in general disgust. “Delude yourself to be a spider, Nord, but you’re not worthy as food for its hatchlings as they break with revulsion through your flesh.” The image was vivid, and Chemua recoiled, letting Khizumet’e find shaky resolve in the open hostility. “To be thrown to feral nixes is too good for you; only a coward would tremble before you.”

Foregoing to strike the Ra’athim down, Chemua barked, “Have you settled your demands with your pet, Bhag?”

“Don’t ya worry bout us, we’re good.”

“Make sure he won’t cause us trouble.”

“Bah, if he ent gonna cause trouble might as well kill him here,” the seated Tongue complained at the insistent meddling. “You wanted Ebonheart, you deal with it.”

“There’s no hoping then you’d accept us surrendering the city to you, Bhag, is there,” Khizumet’e inquired politely.

“Me? Nah, you and yer queen did me a favour taking it off my hands.”

A laugh escaped Khizumet’e at that, tainted as he memories of victory were by this recent failure. “We should have a little chat over Kragenmoor some day.”

“Aye,” Bhag agreed, “though ye might not like my price.”

“I find that I can hardly like it less than Chemua’s.”

A whimsical confession, yet enough to warrant a response.

“Must I remind you, Khizumet’e,” Chemua brought them back to the present, with a short-tempered snap, “that you are defeated? You have no more say over Ebonheart’s fate, no chance for misplaced heroism.”

Wordless understanding passed between the mer as Khizumet’e turned to face his sullen shadow, and only when he had received begrudging endorsement did he offer his surrender. “The city is yours. Give us an hour past sunrise, we will get out men and leave.”

“That you must always make it so difficult.” The Nord seemed little pleased at the inevitable capitulation. Thrill of the hunt, Bhag had put it, and now the prey would be free to ignore his boisting. “Go then, and when you’re done running tell Almalexia that there‘s nothing she can do. No walls she can hide behind that will keep her safe once I am through with Ebonheart.”

Falsely sweet, Khizumet’e leaned in for his farewells, one hand resting over Chemua’s chest as he eyed his bare throat too intently. “Have fun with the cursed thing. What a prize you‘ve won yourself there.”