#falkreath

"Andahrah!!! I know why it's been so expensive and difficult to hire good help lately and I will, of course, require an increase in my pay. Good news, however, your warding system has worked in all instances but one! Your protective enchanted constructs have mostly kept Potema's forces from even perceiving this place. I realized because it was pretty hard getting back in. Am I GREAT or WHAAAAAT"

[Andahrah, evermore confused in her fatigue, turns around to look towards Marcurio's voice, a bunch of grass pod straws hissing through he masque, sniffling. Marcurio, for once, spots a cue, and stops himself in his tracks;]

"...Anda? You alright here bud?"

[Andahrah breathes in, revealing she's doing it through the straws coming out of the sliver of room, hardly lodged into it, and then exhales so sharply several of them dislodge, but remain suspended to the masque with a frothing mix of mucus, tears and saliva, balancing pathetically in the air, to which Andahrah reacts by simply crying. She's had this thing on her head for weeks and apparently Potema is out and about with her armies and Marcurio was probably dead but thank the divines he was not dead but also now Rayya and Marcurio are in danger, and.... and... it was too much, she needed air.

Marcurio approached, taking out the list Andahrah had given him, and the assortment of items he was getting around the estate; a few soul gems, a scroll making instruction book, some paper, some troll fat, a chunk of ebony, and an ancestor moth wing.

With one hand, he laid the roll of blank paper down on the floor, anot bothering to find any other surface for his work, putting the chunk of ebony in the middle and gently holding the moth wing alongside one soul gem. Reciting from the book, he smashed the components together, while imbuing the ebony with a litany of restoration and alteration spells. After a while, the soul gem shards melded with the ebony ore, and like a flow of rivulets, the ore melted onto the page creating a special spell scroll that rolled and sealed itself up on the floor. Taking up the troll fat, Marcurio approached Andahrah]

"I can't say it wasn't fun to see you be this dumb and get your head stucl in there, but it's been long enough, right?"

[Slathering the edges of the masque in fat, inserting it with his fingers in the tight spaces almost ubiquitously filled with disgusting bodily sludges. Andahrah was too exhausted to protest the excruciating layering of horrifying sensations, too worried, too despondent. she let her steward do the work.

He pulled away after a good slather and went to take a linen on a nearby desk. wiping his hands, and negligently tossing the rag on the floor before picking up the rolled parchment.

in a burst of warm and colourful tones, the scroll crumpled up and took the form of an odd spell he applied to Andahrah. In truth, despite being trained in some magical schools, he had no real idea of what he had been doing at the behest of his thane's careful instructions.... and now came the moment of truth.

He put one hand, then the other on the masque, clasping in the spaces between Andahrah's greasy, unpleasantly clammy skin, and the metallic prison it had been in for so long. it was noticeably looser than before, and for the first time in weeks, Andahrah had some hope. Marcurio pulled. Unyieldingg at first, the spell's purpose became manifest; Andahrah's very bones had become flexible, and slowly but surely, the masque was coming off.

Andahrah felt it start sliding. Divines!!! Was it finally it??? She clasped her chair and bucked on the floor to give it all her dainty strenght, so unexperienced was she with heavy armor and heavy weaponry that she's have lost a brawl to a slaughterfish. Marcurio, of course, wasn't faring all that much better. Despite his endless facade of vanity and posturing, he had never had to carry nor work as physically as since he's offered his services as steward of this rather recluse witch. He grunts in frustration]

"don't.... move so much...."

[readjusting his grip, he puts one foot solidly on the floor, and the other on the chair. Pulling with all his erudite strenght, against Andahrah's limply flailing body. Truly the boone of Vile was doing its work and this circus would go on for lenghts all present parties would deny in he future for a showcase of jestery skyrim would never be to see, no matter how many timeloops saw it welcoming Cicero. But then, finally...

In a horrible sound of succion, the masque was finally warping Andahrah's scalp, and with a POP that resonated through all of Lakeview manor, from the tip of the alchemy tower to the cellar's bedrock, the helm was off and flying across the tiny space of the home entrance, the pityful force Marcurio was using still somehow sending him flinging backward.

what a view it was. A horned hellish fucking mask bouncing off the walls and ceiling, nearly hitting both Andahrah and her steward, which, for that matter, had knocked down a wardrobe, fell over a side table, and broke the entryway bed before getting back up to act like he didn't just lose most of his health in this endeavour, avoiding the flying menace through the room's remains.

Too stunned to speak, she remained seated, waiting for something, though unsure of what. both Marcurio and the masque were rapidly losing velocity, only stopping once he slipped on his own dirty greasy rag, falling on his ass, with the helm ending its own trajectory after a gracefully spinny bounce off a table and right above the mage's head, horns down.

With a resounding BONGG, marcurio, the self proclaimed most bestest beauteous mage in tamriel, suffered a humiliating but non-fatal defeat at the hand of a piece of essentially inert heavy armor, tongue out crossed eyes and everything. after a short moment of absolute silence, his upper body thudded on the floor, his head miraculously landing on the rag, accompanied by the heavy clanging of the masque of clavicule vice rolling on the floor next to him.

Andahrah, absolutely baffled, even by her own quirky metrics, was left the lone conscious being in a house of three people with an experimental spell making her skull shaped like that of some alien species unless she shaped it back up in time, seeing for the first time in weeks and having to take in so much more than she bargained for:]

she puts away the bag of bees and the 4 stamina potions resting in her lap and pulls out a little fly made of gold and amethyst from her satchel, alongside a pair of petty soul gems. She takes a deep breath, and begins casting what seems to be both an illusion and an alteration spels at once, both soul gems shattering.]

in her voice, resonating from inside the masque of clavicus vile, she says*

"marcuuriooooo, can you come get me from the top of the alchemy tower? it's getting cold"