TES Summer Fest 🌻

—there is a mudcrab shell the size of a small town unto itself, towering over the market district like a squat mountain. Though it really cannot be anything else, Kireni glances down to her almost-a-map again, and compares the weird shape against... that. Someone knocks into her, sending her to stumble a step, but spares a moment to rasp a hasty apology before hurrying on their way. Feeling absurdly like she woke up in a storybook this morning, a notion that haunts her not for the first time in the past half-year, Kireni sidesteps a man leading a pack guar, ignores a hawker with a tray of painted shell trinkets, and walks on towards the chitinous citadel.

The weird shape, she finds soon enough, is actually a rather accurate depiction of an oval door sunken into the side of the massive carapace, now that she knows what she’s looking at. Because of course there’s a door leading into a crabshell larger than a modest village. Why wouldn’t there be. Two richly-spun banners with the crest of House Redoran flutter at its sides, each draped with three thick ribbons streaking it white-framed red. Past it, the second half of Taril’s directions immediately makes sense: a rope-bridge, and an arrow directing her onto the shell’s floor, around a—that looks like a stalagmite, almost—and to a shop’s door. The storefront sign is wreathed with the same odd confluence of red and white, but Kireni pays it no mind, focused instead on rehearsing what she’s going to say: when she enters, if something isn’t right, if everything is in order.

Another customer dawdles over choosing a potion when Kireni comes in, and so she settles in with a shoulder against a wall to wait until they’re satisfied enough to pay and leave. The shopkeeper, a Breton in gold-trimmed silks, yet with hands stained and scarred by her mixtures, turns to her with a politely inquisitive look—and, predictably, the moment they make eye contact violently unseats Kireni from the here and now—

“Good morning. Can I interest you in anything?”

—but that’s why she had arrayed the right words at the front of her mind, just prior, so that even the odd, distant actor she watches as if through fog now can set the package on the counter and say:

“Delivery for Cienne Sintieve, from Taril Fernhollow.”

The alchemist brightens immediately. “Ah! Yes, she mentioned she’d send a friend with my order, but I haven’t expected you for at least another day! Allow me...”

Someone very far away takes half a step back from the counter, and the woman who must be Cienne Sintieve unwraps the parcel only to grin delightedly at the contents: little square redware boxes, cushioned with saltrice straw and each wrapped with twine to lock its lid into place. Four cold to the touch, brimming with crystalline icy-blue powder clearer than freshly fallen snow, two filled with oddly gray dust that even to look at is to feel the ghost of a static discharge under one’s tongue: atronach salts that the alchemist calls on an apprentice to empty into her own workshop’s storage and give the ceramic boxes back.

“Marvellous quality. Give kena Fernhollow my admiration along with the payment. And your rate, of course...” Sintieve hesitates a moment, tilts her head as if weighing the matter like reagents on the scales. “Although, this raises another point. You will be seeing her soon, yes? And you must be well-acquaintanced, that she would trust you with carrying first the goods of so much value, then such an amount gold. Would you say that she specializes in the collection of daedric ingredients?”

That is not on the list of answers Kireni had prepared prior. Mercifully, Taril’s conversational tone over anecdotes of vivisecting her summons and the satisfaction with which she mentioned purchasing silvered scalpels and skinning knives, like a scribe might tell of buying a new set of nibs, are so unforgettable that even the stranger using Kireni’s voice right now can stumble over: “I think that’s– a fair assessment– yes.”

“You see, just yesterday the Tong chapterhouse here Under Skar has placed an order with me. You understand why that is not a client I’m comfortable telling to wait,” Sintieve says with a plaintive look on her face. “Kagouti hides I can source locally, but I also need daedra hearts quite urgently. Say, a dozen? Could I trouble you to deliver an order and the advanced portion of payment to kena Fernhollow, since you’re on your way back to her already? I will compensate you for the errand in addition for this current delivery, of course.”

“Ah, sure.”

The alchemist smiles again, relieved. “My deepest thanks. This will only take a moment.”

She begins penning down a quick, concise letter, while her apprentice deposits the redware boxes on the counter in professional silence. From somewhere far beyond the shop, Kireni watches the hands at the end of the bracers she had so recently bought collecting the boxes and wrapping the empty parcel up again; notices sailor’s knots on the twine, two portions snipped where Sintieve couldn’t untie it, and thinks distantly, Syress must have helped Taril package. With the letter sanded and set aside, and the apprentice signing it as a witness, Sintieve hefts a corkwood cassette full of drakes onto the counter: a method of making the transport of large sums of money a little more discreet, of making sure that coins stacked into the container won’t rattle along the way; of carrying a completely non-descript, when closed, flat box rather than a thick jingling purse. After adding more gold, the advance for that upcoming transaction, she meticulously counts out two courier fees rather than one—and once the brief missive and the coin-stacked cassette are packed into Kireni’s knapsack, and matters of thanks and good-day wishes accomplished by rote, Kireni sleepwalks out of the shop and up the rope-bridge and into the market again.

There is an odd feeling, somewhere curiously close, insisting that something isn’t quite right. Her mind trips onto a routine checklist of things to be done every morning, and soon grinds to a halt on the attempt to recall any occurrence of food. She has not eaten yet—that would explain why the ground’s tilting—not too far away, a scrib-patterned banner flutters on the wind, draped white and red too. The repository of rehearsed sentences carries the play that Kireni is watching from somewhere far behind her eyes through arranging for a meal and lodgings, until the time on her strider ticket. The publican laughs politely at her refusal of a stiffer drink, on grounds that it’s not even noon, and brings her a jug of water along with the food.

At some indistinct point, Kireni finds that it is herself who’s holding the spoon, and herself who’s chewing on another mouthful of warm, flavourful food: spiced saltrice with chunks of fried guar meat and a tart garnish of scrib jelly. She refills the cup she hasn’t drank from, but vaguely recalls the thought that even the water in Ald’ruhn tastes like an ash storm, and tries to scour the past... however long for anything substantial that she might have seen or heard as if from behind a thick wall of glass.

Ald Skar Inn. Room three, for two nights. Kireni nods to herself over her food. Strider back to Balmora just past daybreak, after night two, and she’s still fifteen drakes richer than she expected to earn today. Better not leave my pack in the room—she’s carrying too much of Taril’s money, and that cable-backed chitin bow in the case strapped to the knapsack’s side had cost her an arm and a leg—

She blinks, frozen with the spoon in her mouth. Great House banners and storefront signs, all draped white-red-white. Public mourning—for a death yet unavenged.

So as soon as she finishes the meal that’s already paid for, Kireni ventures outside again and beelines for the first guardsman she sees, his armour belted shoulder to hip with a sash of sheer white framing a streak of red, too. “Excuse me. I only got off the strider today—who died?”

The guard’s bonemold helm swivels to face her, and Kireni silently thanks whatever may be listening for that she can’t quite make out his eyes from behind the visor. “Councillor Remas Morvayn, Lord of Maar Gan. And most of his household.”

That can’t have been a Morag Tong writ. Can it? “What happened?”

“Fell beasts that came through the Ghostfence,” the guardsman tells her bitterly. “Morvayn Manor stands on the eastern edge of the city, outside of Skar, and the monsters overwhelmed the night watch just as viciously as they stormed the manor. Sera Morvayn himself fell in his own home, and his widow has ordered it sealed to starve those cursed things out, that no more Redoran lives are lost in the effort to slay them.”

“I’ll do it,” Kireni hears, and thinks, Who said that?

Already, so soon, reality stretches flimsy and tenuous, slipping from her grasp; the guardsman stiffens, and turns to face her more fully; her head swims; that’s how the spectacle goes, doesn’t it, but has the actor she’s watching ever learned the rest of their lines—

“From your sound, you are an outlander, so I will do you the courtesy of asking: are you even aware of what you pledge here?”

“I’m not Redoran. It follows to risk a mercenary where one wouldn’t want to risk a retainer,” the person using Kireni’s voice tells him pointedly. “Bloated once-men spreading incurable sickness, madness on the ash storm winds—I don’t hail from here, no, but I’ve been around long enough to understand what I just said. It doesn’t feel right to leave this be. Let me try to end it.”

The guard leans back, and though the helmet still shadows his face, a ray of late-morning sun finds his eyes to light the impressed look in them. “This is a matter for the drillmaster. Come.”

With only a hand-sign to another guardsman across the street—a nod returned, and no questions—he leads the way towards the gigantic carapace-citadel again; and with an absurd, sickened fascination, Kireni watches herself follow as if entranced. This time, it is not down onto the shell’s floor and nosing amid the storefronts there, but past the chitinous stalagmite and up to a three-way entrance, into a vast, richly-lit hall. A Redguard wearing finery like another would wear a suit of plate looks up at the sight of them, and rises from behind a broad desk strewn with documents; her face changes from professionally grave through stunned to politely on alert as she listens to the guardsman recounting the situation, and she sends him back to his post only to herself whisk the person Kireni’s watching farther into the impenetrable castle of shell. Corridors branching like arteries, doors where valves may have once been, rooms for weapons practice and rooms for barrack-like lodgings, and halls with wide stairs and stone planters and religious tapestries, and sets of sitting cushions tucked into manifold corners: the seat of House Redoran spindles and curves every which way like a fortified maze, its wealth expressed only in ways of defensibility and austere elegance, utility exalted far above luxury, form allowed beauty only as far as it would not impede function. The Redguard marches with confidence and very clearly from memory through this impossible confluence of paths, intentionally confusing at the same time as they are orderly with military precision, and only halts past yet another door to speak briefly with a mousy-looking Dunmer who seems surprised to see her—let alone leading another person—and who quickly ducks out through another door still. A few moments pass in silence with none of the walls moving past them, instead of continuing on a reel of ever more dizzying passageways and doors and halls that all look the same; then the Redguard, who’s standing with her back ramrod straight and her hands folded officiously behind it, clears her throat with such authority that Kireni startles into the present again.

“I hope you’re not having second thoughts now.”

“No,” Kireni says quietly. Corprus-beasts, locked in a manor. What a stupid– I’m a bowman, for Arkay’s sake. And there is no way she can possibly get out of doing what she had apparently offered she’d do—not if she ever wants to show her face in Ald’ruhn again. “Whenever I can, I try to do what I say.”

The Redguard measures her with a look that could strip paint, but eventually gives her a stiff nod. “Then we do have something to talk about, after all.”

A creak of hinges, and the mousy Dunmer pokes her head through that door only to hold it open for them. “The mistress will see you now.”

With a tilt of her head, the Redguard motions Kireni to go first, as if still expecting her to bolt if given half the chance—like I could find my way out of here on my own—so Kireni steps into a modest room that gives her an uncanny impression of a general’s tent for an army on the march. If the usual Redoran decor is austere, then here is downright bare-bones: the only item of beauty is a screen of corkwood and saltrice paper, painted into a marshmerrow paddy field with sparse strokes of faded ink, that separates a narrow bed and a clunky dresser from the rest of the room. Sitting cushions for six and a low dining table take up most of the remaining space, with no meal or teapot sitting upon the lacquered wood. A heavy desk that looks like it’s seen the penning of countless missives and sermons crowds another corner—a desk that a Dunmer woman in rumpled cashmeres and silks rises from behind now, grief and exhaustion etched into her face, yet her eyes clear as they flick between Kireni and the Redguard who steps up beside her.

“Three blessings, Neminda. Who is it that you bring before me?”

“Sera Morvayn.” The Redguard places a hand on the back of Kireni’s shoulder, over the knapsack’s strap, and bows—and under the none-too-subtle hint of firm pressure from that hand, Kireni stutters into an awkward bow, too. “One of the morning shift’s watchmen brought this outlander to me, saying she has volunteered her services for the cause of slaying the beasts that infest Morvayn manor.”

Lady Morvayn’s face stills like a crucible’s worth of lead cast into a mould, and she turns her attention on Kireni. “Is this true?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Not ma’am. Stop using Nibenese manners in Vvardenfell. Kireni fidgets nervously with her hands at having blundered already, and pins her eyes to her fingers. “I heard about the tragedy that struck your family– and that the– well, the guard said you forbade Redoran soldiers from going after the things that attacked your home. But I’m not one of your people. You could send me. If there are monsters on the outskirts of town, even if they’re sealed indoors, that’s another tragedy waiting to happen. I was only passing through, but– I understand why you don’t want to risk any other member of your House– but, I think, something needs to be done, and I think I might be able to do it.”

She pauses at the sound of a deep sigh, and risks a glance upwards only to find Lady Morvayn pinching the corners of her eyes, hard.

“And what kind of compensation do you expect for this deed?”

“I—” haven’t actually thought that far— “Well, maybe we can talk about that if I make it out alive.”

A bitter little twist takes Lady Morvayn’s lips. “Truly a dark age is upon us, when a foreigner wearing the face of a kinswoman comes to the door of House Redoran and humbles us with her charity.”

But then she makes a gesture of invitation towards the eating table, and Drillmaster Neminda’s hand steers Kireni to seat herself on the near side—so she follows, and hopes fervently that she won’t be served anything, because to call her grasp of native Houseman table manners limp is a compliment already. Even the cushions are something still she’s getting used to; she delays for a moment to shuck her knapsack before she sits, with Neminda taking the seat beside her and the Redoran councilwoman across from her.

“The beasts that attacked my home came under cover of night. My husband believed—” Lady Morvayn’s voice falters momentarily over the past tense. “—that they were attracted by a statuette we received as a gift several weeks prior: indistinct, but mer-like, made of packed red ash. You speak wisely, that to leave those creatures be within the city limits of Ald’ruhn is another tragedy in the making, but make no mistake: that statuette is the true culprit behind the evil that befell us already. With time, the beasts sealed within my home will devour one another, then starve, but the object that attracted them might lure more of their kind. If you are resolute to do this task for me, then it is paramount you understand that the task is not to slay the beasts—you are to retrieve that statuette and bring it to Lloros Sarano, the priest at our city’s temple, that he may destroy it. Do I make myself clear?”

“So if I grab the statuette, but I’m being chased by a monster,” Kireni says carefully, “my priority is to escape the manor and get the statuette to the temple, rather than killing the monster?”

“That is precisely what I am saying. The manor is sealed and the entrance kept under guard even as we speak. It can be sealed again.”

Kireni nods, relieved. “Could you tell me the floor plan of the manor, and where to look for the statuette?”

Lady Morvayn’s eyes flick to look past her—but it is only to signal the mousy servant at the door, Kireni finds as she turns to look, too, the irrational fear that she’d switch to speaking with the distant stranger that Kireni watches acting so often, instead of with Kireni herself, quelled as soon as it has the time to flare. The Redguard drillmaster nudges her with a foot under the table, and Kireni turns again only to find herself fixed with a look so stern, she almost shrinks away behind the wall of glass that no one can find her through. And when the servant brings over a quill, an inkpot, and a few sheets of clean paper from the study-desk in the far corner, Lady Morvayn begins to sketch out the floor plan of her home as if planning the conquest of an enemy stronghold, offers concise yet detailed commentary on each corridor and room in turn: the hetman’s dormitory just right from the entrance, the stairs down into the main hall, the gallery that overlooks it, the storage, the kitchens, the servant quarters. Even as Kireni nods and listens, memorizing as much of the layout as she is able, that faintest spark of relief from earlier curdles into trepidation again. The room she’s told to look for the statuette in sits farthest away from the entrance, its own door flanked with a corridor on both sides—a deathtrap in the making, if the monsters were to find her inside it.

“I’ll need a little time to prepare,” she says once she’s reasonably sure she’ll be able to remember the floor plan without taking the papers. “And, may I leave my backpack here? I have a room at the Ald Skar, but I came to Ald’ruhn running errands between a skin-farmer and an alchemist, and I don’t want to worry about someone stealing their parcels while I’m dealing with corprus-beasts.”

Lady Morvayn arches a brow, but inclines her head, too. “You may. None will tamper with your belongings here.”

“Thank you, sera.” Hoping that she’s not about to commit an unforgivable breach in etiquette, Kireni stands up from table, and lugs her backpack along to prop it up against a wall. Trails her fingertips over the bowcase, regretful—I won’t be able to use this inside a house—and instead dismantles the moorings that secure a sheathed sword beside it. So odd still to have a sword weighing her belt down on the left side, knocking against her leg on every other step, rather than a quiver at her right hip; and Kireni does what she can not to look awkward with a blade at her side. Takes the spectacled, scarf-mouthed helmet of resin-sealed chitin from the top of her backpack, sets it aside for a moment, and rummages deeper for a bandoleer sash before she pulls the drawstring taut again. Head protection, sidearm, the means for its upkeep, and pocket money for the rest—I think that’s everything– or maybe—turns to the two Redorans again. “Is it going be dark inside?”

“Yes, I would expect so.” Lady Morvayn rises from the low table as well. “Repeat your task to me.”

Kireni tilts her head, puzzled. “Find the statuette made from red ash, and bring it to priest Lloros Sarano.”

Lady Morvayn gives her a nod and a stern look. “Remember that. I will send word to the troops keeping my home under guard; they will be expecting you. Make what preparations you must, but don’t tarry.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Damn it, not ma’am!—

“Almsivi guide you. Neminda, could I trouble you to dispatch a courier for me? Have this missive brought to Alds Baro in Maar Gan.”

“I will see it done, sera.”

With that, the drillmaster leads Kireni out of Lady Morvayn’s hastily arranged suite, then through the sprawling capillaries of doors and halls and passageways that turn the colossal shell into a manor district. And though Kireni keeps expecting her to speak, to question her on– anything, or to ask after Kireni’s unfinished errands in the event of her death, and would a 'don’t get yourself killed' really cost you so much, the Redguard only stops to address her when it’s also to point her down a corridor.

“Through that passage there, third door on the left, and down the entry hall.”

Kireni blinks at her. “I’m sorry?”

“Your way out of Council Halls and into the rest of Under Skar,” Drillmaster Neminda tells her flatly. “I trust you can follow directions?”

“Yes– ma’am.”

“Then be on your way. And don’t disappoint the councillor. She has suffered enough grief already.”

And that’s all she has to say before swivelling off towards a barrack wing, where she barks attention at the lower-ranking retainers lingering there, no doubt intent on picking one to charge with the responsibility of delivering Lady Morvayn’s letter. Kireni stares after her for a moment, unsure whether to even feel offended—and I thought the Balmoran Hlaalu calling House Redoran a perpetual exercise in distilling the Dunmer into their most taciturn, boorish, and dour selves had to be an exaggeration—but eventually proves her capability to act on simple instructions, and files out through the vast entryway, then the shell-domed aristocratic district, and out into the sun.

Right. Corprus-beasts locked in a manor. Find a bauble made of ash– what next, an ordination?

With a sigh, Kireni heads for the first passerby she sees, and asks them to point her towards a pawnshop. A paper lantern with solid moorings for the thick candle within is the first order of business, but no less important is a pair of leather gloves fit for a paddy farmer, thick guarhide waterproofed with resin. Her bracers barely fit overtop, tight and pinching the seams of the gloves into her forearms, but at least her hands are covered with something; and then comes the struggle of trying to persuade the pawnbroker to sell her a second-hand shirt that’s almost comically oversized for Kireni’s own frame.

“No, it needs to go on top of the armour,” she insists when the pawnbroker tries to interest her in something nicer. “Listen, I just need some fabric to put overtop my skin and my cuirass. I expect to only wear this once before it’s ruined. I don’t want it to be nice, that would feel like a waste.”

(Her cuirass and its matched set of greaves—the only things she owns that weren’t bought used. You can afford it, on the grounds of: I’m paying, Taril had said in a tone too dangerous to argue with, when she took Kireni to get fitted for moulding the bone-plates to her measurements. This is not a gift, and you cannot refuse.)

But at least that makes the pawnbroker laugh, and sell her a truly hideous robe for less gold that his asking price on the big shirt. He even helps her pull it on, and bind down the sleeves over the bonemold bracers protecting her forearms; and watches as Kireni girdles herself with the sword-belt and the bandoleer, and re-ties her hair with clumsy fingers through the guarhide gloves, and tucks the whole ponytail into her helmet before aligning its scratched lenses over her eyes and fastening down its chin-straps.

“Heading out into the Ashlands? You’re low on supplies for the trip, if I may say so.”

“Not the Ashlands.” Kireni tucks the lantern under her arm for now, where it won’t bump into the sword’s hilt. “Thanks for your help.”

“And for your business. Come again!”

Eastern edge of town, did the guardsman say?

It’s not hard to find. The above-ground portion of the manor sprawls taller and wider than the entire inn that Kireni has a room booked in—and if that weren’t enough of a giveaway, then the fortifications planted around it definitely are. The door itself stands glazed with a magickal shimmer; access to it is blocked with a portable barricade made of criss-crossing chitin stakes, grown into serrated fang-points and mounted through a central pole like a Bretic chevaux-de-frise; and at a distance of perhaps twenty yards, broad stationary shields of crabshell and bone stand fast, large enough for five Redoran men-at-arms to perch behind them in pairs, ready to fend off an assault on a moment’s notice.

Only one of them doesn’t have a weapon out—four heavy crossbows of Dwemer design, packed with bolts that glimmer idly with enchantment, are trained on the manor’s thoroughly blocked door—and rather than a polearm at his side and a blade at his hip, several scroll tubes line his weapon belt, with a reinforced satchel for potion-flasks slung over his shoulder to end up at the small of his back. He is the only one who turns at Kireni’s approach, and tilts his chin inquisitively, the motion exaggerated enough to be clear even through his helmet.

“Hello. Um, I just saw sera Morvayn about going inside?”

The Redoran battlemage nods. “We’ve been notified. I will unseal the door for you. Remember: as per the mistress’ orders, we cannot set foot within the manor, but her orders are to dispatch any fell beast that steps past its threshold, too. If you find that you must flee, bear in mind that the first thing you should do after flinging that door open is duck.”

“Oh. You’re– not going to lock it behind me?”

“I take full responsibility for keeping the manor open until dusk,” the battlemage tells her under the late morning’s sun. Then reaches out to offer her an Imperial-style handshake, and Kireni fumbles hastily with the lantern to accept it. “Go with the Lady’s own fury and the Poet’s own luck, outlander.”

Together, they lift the spiked barricade by its ends and set it aside. Kireni kindles her lantern with the faintest flicker of magicka, unsheathes the sparkblade she’s barely used, and tries to think back to the floor plan she was coached through less than an hour past. Meanwhile, the Redoran battlemage dispels the shimmering barrier from the door, uses a scroll to send unseen magnitudes of its locks into alignment, and steps back to where his men-at-arms are entrenched.

Right, Kireni thinks faintly, and struggles to take a deep breath, already hot and sweaty inside the helmet. The door has to open inwards.

Both of her hands are full. Hoping her motions aren’t too obviously awkward, she hooks her thumb into the lantern’s top-ring, and opens the door to Morvayn Manor. Sunlight filters lazily in her wake; blue-tinted firelight in her hand wards deeper shadows away.

The sight that greets her is the entryway clerk’s large desk knocked over: a quick-thinking retainer’s last act of service, an attempt to slow down attackers by flipping a massive block of wood into their path. Maybe it was enough to raise alarm, but as the lantern brings out a deathly-still heap of contorted limbs torn asunder in the far corner, Kireni knows it wasn’t enough for the clerk himself. Papers litter the floor, illegible, soaked and crusted with dried-up blood. The door on the left—stairs down, to the main hall—hangs askew on torn hinges. The door on the right—hetman’s quarters, single room, best check before I turn my back on it—is ajar, and seems undamaged.

Eyeing the breadth of the entryway, Kireni reluctantly closes the entrance into the manor. Extends her lantern-hand towards the door, and pauses as smeared handprints come into view. Sooner than touch it, she rests the point of her sword against the door, and slowly pushes with it—

The hinges creak loudly.

Something stirs on the hetman’s bed. Something that looks human in the dark, but uncoils too fast, head first– Kireni startles backwards with a yelp, and tosses her lantern, and prays fervently that it lands upright, and swings her sword low-to-high in a wild arc. The blade slides into flesh, she can feel through the hilt; lightning crackles along the wound; the corprus-creature’s horrific wordless mumble turns into a thin squeal, and its hands fly up to clutch at the cut. Her advantage is gone by the time she finds firmer footing, but just manages to twist her torso out of the way as the beast lashes out again to grab at her, and thrusts at it; another static crackle lights up the weeping sores across its chest; the creature grabs at the blade, heedless of its edge, and Kireni’s next cut is as much wound as it is a panicked attempt to get her weapon away from that, upwards and sidelong; she shears through the hand and turns the stab wound into a lighting-struck crater; the beast wobbles on its feet, and before it can catch its balance, Kireni takes her sparkblade in both hands and steps into a horizontal slash driven from the hips, and feels the blade slide right between the ribs—the corprus victim gurgles, and topples sidelong into the wall, where it paints a dark splash and slides to the floor, twitching into stillness.

Jerking her head to where the lantern fell, Kireni finds it standing upright amid the bloodstained papers. Air rushes out of her lungs on an explosive sigh of relief; she pants, and her shoulders quake, and the sparkblade’s hilt rattles in her hands—

I’m breathing too fast.

She wobbles onto her back foot and pulls the door to the hetman’s room closed before her. Like it’s going to change anything if she doesn’t look anymore.

Alright. Alright. One slain. It’s possible for me to do.

There’s a sour, vomit-like reek clinging to her blade. Stomach acid, maybe. Her instinctive urge to wipe it clean with– something– falters under the truth that she’s about to get more of the same and worse yet on it, anyway.

Just don’t sheathe it, for now—Kireni huffs out one more breath, still shaky but a little deeper, and fixes her grip on the hilt—four strikes. Four strikes, six left.

She faces the stairs leading down, tests how far their door swings on its hinges, and pulls it forward until its lower corner grinds against the floor, until she gets it stuck wide open. Then, Kireni retrieves her lantern, and begins to walk down.

If the depth of shadows is any indication, then at least she’ll have well more than enough room to swing the longsword in her hand. Odd noises, snuffling and squelching, echo out from the far side of the hall; she stills mid-step on the stairs, but doesn’t hear anything other than her own frantic heartbeat, doesn’t see any hint of motion in the dark. Careful not to step too loudly, Kireni continues down, and shifts her weight backwards just before she can trip on a pair of richly-shod feet.

That must have been the late Councillor Morvayn, she finds as she brings her lantern lower. Finery crusted with dried blood and corprus-pus, a beautifully ornamented sword with a silvered blade strewn on the floor beside his hand, his face sunken and unrecognizable and stiffened into a rictus. The back half of his head is scattered in a half-arc all over the floor, a nauseating mess of hair and bone shards and dried-up gristle; Kireni looks away, regretful of having checked. Still nothing stirs in the vicinity: not any of the three lanky forms like the one she just slew, curled up in dark puddles around the base of the stairs, and not the contorted, mangled remains of what had to be the manor’s household staff, each less intact than the last—some beaten into pulp grainy with shattered bones as if cudgelled to death, some strewn over too large an area as if scratched apart into rags of flesh, and some sprawled at the end of shaky stripes of blood painted over the floor, dragging a missing limb or a cracked spine behind them, fingernails split from clawing at the stone.

She ducks behind the stairs at the sound of ungainly shuffling from the far side of the hall, lantern and all, and waits to find out whether the single candle will be her death. After a moment, though, the sound subsides; no animal noise or hoarse scream of alert rings out; Kireni moves the lantern first to check if any of the corprus-beasts farther in will react to the light. When nothing happens, or seems to happen, she turns to the door in the near wall—kitchen and pantry straight through, servant quarters on the left—and after pushing the door only a crack open to try and glimpse if anything’s inside the square little hall that makes the junction and filters kitchen smells from the living spaces, Kireni steps inside and quietly closes the door behind herself.

The door to the termite-mound of little rooms where servants used to live hangs open. No bodies, no signs of struggle mar the area. Relieved that at least one corner of the manor is someplace she doesn’t have to worry about drawing out more horrifying, infected monsters from, Kireni backtracks and slips into the kitchen—where she’s immediately frozen in place with the dull, scraping sound of stone dragged against stone.

On the far side of the room, the hearth smoulders yet—magickal cookfire? But why not, in a mansion like this?—casting the kitchen in stripes of firelight and shadow. Spoilage and decay fouls the air. Between a table strewn with cuts of meat half-prepared for cooking and a barrel-sized stone mortar for pounding saltrice, a pile of bodies litters the floor: one corprus-beast bloated into horrendous, asymmetrical bulk, its head caved in and beaten into its shoulders with the saltrice mallet, and—how many–? That’s a pair of hands, that’s another arm laying aside, and that might be the third right hand between the lot—three Dunmer corpses torn apart into unrecognizability, likely the chef and two helpers. Past them, on its knees and with its back to the door, another of the emaciated things like the one Kireni fought at the entrance is dutifully scratching a circular sigil of sorts into the floor with a stone pestle it must have found somewhere across the room—so before it can turn around, Kireni sets her lantern aside, quietly steps up behind, and swings her sword down at it.

She hits a bone. The creature sways from the blow with a grunt, but little more, and rights itself so fast as if it were spring-loaded; Kireni leaps back a step, and brings the sparkblade up again; the corprus-beast blocks her strike with a bare forearm, and the blade creaks and crackles into its bones. The arm hangs at its side now, at least, and Kireni ducks that way when the creature lunges at her mouth-first; so close that she can hear its teeth click, and fights a sick squirm to her gut even as she thrusts the sparkblade at its unprotected side, then two-hands the grip and rips the sword out sideways, sending another splatter of blood and corprus-pus onto the rotting food arrayed across cook-tables. The thing stumbles on its feet, and huffs a hollow moan at her; Kireni runs it through again, and watches it crumple around the blade; frees the sword, and takes a step back as the corprus-beast drops first to its knees, then to its face, and she clenches her teeth to keep herself from retching when she hears its nose break on impact.

Five strikes. Five? Let’s call it five. Then I’ve only the one left.

Turning to keep both the door out of the kitchen and the door through into the pantry within her field of vision, Kireni reaches for the bandoleer slung across her chest and plucks out a soul gem from one of its sockets. The faintly translucent stone flashes, then dulls, then crumbles in her hand as she runs it across the flat of her dripping-wet blade. Habit nudges her to call it good and keep going; but as she considers the prospect of the sparkblade running out of sparks in the middle of a fight, she takes out another, and spends the soul in that, too.

(If you can kill a scrib or a rat with one stab of this, it should capture the soul into an empty petty-sized soul gem, which will top that sword off about halfway. And I wouldn’t exactly call soul gems luxury goods around here. It’s really odd, actually. I keep finding empty ones in the trash, Syress had said over an early drink once, while they were waiting for everyone else to show up. And when Kireni tried to pay her for the spiky little knife she’d enchanted with a soul substantially larger than just a rat’s, the young Orc dismissed the notion with a laugh and an easy wave of both hands. Please, I bought it from the pawnshop’s five-drake box along with a bunch of other junk to practice enchanting on. What am I gonna do with it? Sell it back to the same guy? You’ll get more use out of it than I will. Buy me another drink and we’ll call it even.)

She goes back for the lantern and swings the pantry door wide open—and though she can’t hold back a sigh of relief at finding no bodies there, moving or otherwise, it only adds to the unease cloying though her belly that very clearly, the once-human corprus-beasts have entirely ignored the room full of stored food. Even diseased animals still hunt and forage; what does the Blight do to people, that it wiped them clean not just of intelligence, but of base instinct as well?

Not now. Priests and sage-lords can debate that later. Right now, I just need to keep it together, and stay focused.

Defiled as the kitchen is, there are still clean dishrags around. Kireni gratefully wipes her thoroughly grimy sword into one, her resin-sealed gloves caked in gore into another, and crumples both together to toss them into the hearth. Then, considering, she takes a third and tucks it into the back of her sword-belt. Breathes deeply, and regrets the attempt as soon as she makes it: rotting corpses and rotting food, burning fabric and who knows what more, helping her stomach exactly none even through the scarfed mouth of her helmet.

But that’s the back wing cleared out. If I have to make a run for the exit, I don’t have to worry about that thing on the floor cutting me off at the stairs anymore.

The thought does not inspire much comfort. Not when she creeps out of the kitchen, through the small junction-room past it, and out into the main hall again. The odd noises from before are louder now, more clearly cut into increments; step by step, Kireni creeps towards the stairs, and tries to make out through the echoes which direction the sound is coming from. The gruesome landmark of Remas Morvayn’s body comes into the lantern’s circle of light, then the stairs, and then the long dining table. About the halfway point of the table’s length, heaped on the floor beside it, is another corprus-bloated carcass. Three shapes crowd around it, one just as thick and two familiarly lanky; the thick one on all fours, its misshapen head grown into the shoulders and the shoulders titled low as it noses into the corpse; the lanky ones crouched flat on their heels or seated cross-legged, each holding up a limb in both hands; all three gorging themselves on the diseased carrion of their compatriot’s body, gnawing the swollen meat right off the bone; one after another, all three look up, hollow eyes aligning on Kireni and mouths gummed up with gore opening to huff mindless bloodlust at the intruder amid their feast—and with her head empty but for the paralyzing distance of her own limbs and the thunderous roll of her pulse in her ears, Kireni bolts for the stairs.

—chokepoint, chokepoint, I can do this if it’s one at a time—

Two sets of bare feet strike the floor in her wake, and behind them an ungainly, lopsided shuffle. Halfway up the stairs, Kireni slows for just long enough to toss her lantern down with some semblance of care, that she may see them coming. Cankerous fingers snag the hem of her robe; yelping, she trips with only barely enough time to fall on her free arm instead of face-first, kicks backwards blindly, and doesn’t pause to feel queasy when she feels the heel of her armoured boot connect with something that crunches on impact. A frantic scramble, up and to even ground, and Kireni’s free hand closes on something hard and heavy littered along the floor, flat on one side and grooved with decoration on another—paperweight, oh thank you thank you thank you—whipping around, she hurls the dead clerk’s tool into her pursuers, earning a startled squeal and the incremental, echoing rattle of a body falling down the stairs.

The other body runs up just as Kireni scrambles to her feet, and she greets it with a two-handed thrust right into its own momentum. The corprus-beast makes a terrible, wet choking noise, bent double around the blade, but takes another step into it to claw at her; leaning back sharply, Kireni pulls the sword upwards and outwards, and feels the blade creak against the monster’s sternum; it drops to its knees, blotting viscera and chewed-up raw meat upon the floor, and Kireni stabs it under the chin, then kicks its chest to send it tumbling backwards under the others’ feet.

But the second gaunt shape doesn’t even stumble over the gutted remains of its companion, only takes two steps in one leap to crest the stairs and lunge at her teeth-first. One of its arms hangs limp, and whitish spikes of broken bone stud its shoulder on that side; and Kireni spares half a thought on another fervent thank you for the dead clerk’s paperweight, as she circles the beast from its bad side and delivers an upwards slash that sends it stumbling into the doorframe—

—there’s movement in the light—

—desperate to bring it down quickly, Kireni uncoils into another slash, and corprus-fouled blood streaks the wall as her sparkblade finds an artery. Despite its wounds, the creature pushes off the wall and teeters towards her; intent on striking a finishing blow, Kireni lets it half a step closer and stabs at a downwards angle to throw this one, too, into the next one’s path; but the corprus-beast keeps its footing, and clenches its good hand on her arm, and yanks itself forward to bite her; its teeth break on the bonemold bracer she’s wearing under the robe’s tied-down sleeves, and Kireni plants a foot in the creature’s midsection even as she angles her sword upwards again, and cuts one last time as she frees the blade.

The hulking, malformed behemoth doesn’t even flinch as its lankier brethren fall down against its chest—each time, it only grabs the corpses and flings them aside, off the stairs, into the dark of the main hall. Despite one leg bloated almost too thick to still bend at the knee, and the other match-thin in comparison, it’s faster than it looks; there’s no time for Kireni to breathe until it, too, is upon her. Nor does it even pause when she meets its ascent with a two-handed strike that would slice a being of lesser bulk open shoulder-to-hip, then brings the sword back around into a slash across its midsection, and then upwards at an angle again—and as a delicate tremor runs through the hilt in her hands, Kireni realizes that the sparkblade’s enchantment is spent.

Sharply, she flinches backwards, only barely in time to avoid a right-hook with the creature’s grotesquely swollen arm. The wrist thicker than her neck, the fist as large as her head; missing the punch throws the corprus-beast into a stumble, and it barely catches itself on its tree-stump leg rather than topple down headlong. Trying to exploit the brief window of opportunity, Kireni slashes into the meat of that arm, and evades back and to the side again as it retaliates with a backhanded blow that displaces air with a dull whoosh like a mallet—and she loses her breath to a spike of panic as she realizes that she just put that hulking monster between herself and the door leading out of the manor.

The corprus-beast grabs out towards her with its wiry arm, twisting its malformed torso sideways to extend its reach; unthinking, Kireni ducks underneath it and shears into the monster’s back, desperate to stagger it for long enough to get away; but instead of even wobble on its feet, it only spins around to face her, and Kireni loses more ground and any hope of reaching the exit as she backs away again, having to evade another swing of that hammer-fist. Herded too close to a wall on one side, she switches her grip on her sparkblade’s hilt and stabs as hard as she can—but as she tries to pull the sword out, it doesn’t budge, only pulls the corprus-beast into a longer step towards her, long enough for it to punch her square in the chest, sending her teetering to slam into the door to the hetman’s room, seeing stars and winded even through her cuirass. By the time she looks up again, the monster is advancing on her, so Kireni calls on the last thing she has, squeezes her eyes shut, and thrusts both hands out blindly; a flash of light and a searing hiss of magickal fire burst red through her eyelids; there are no more heavy, imbalanced, dragging footsteps, only a deafening thud of so much weight against the floor that both the door at her back and the knocked-over desk rattle in its echo; and Kireni whimpers into a violent sob where she sits, gloved hands fisted in the throwaway robe damp with blood and corprus secretions, the lenses of her helmet pressed into the bonemold kneepads of her greaves.

I can’t keep this up.

A year ago, at this time of season and day, she would be hiking to one of the hunter’s blinds dotted sparsely across the forests of the Nibenay Basin, or taking aim at a partridge in the rocky foothills of the Valus Mountains, or perhaps, if she was very lucky, dragging home a fallow deer that she shot down overnight, and thinking happily about the price its antlers and pelt would fetch, about the cuts that the Riverview chef would buy and the ones she could keep, to cook, to share, to gift the precious few who had the patience for her slow head, her insurmountable oddities, her perpetual absence from her own life. Instead, there she is: crying on the floor of someone’s mansion vast as the nave of the Great Chapel itself, surrounded by corpses, waving a sword she barely knows how to hold at people reduced to gaping-mawed monsters with the only contagious disease she’s ever seen that’s worse than rabies, and fighting the urge to take her helmet off for just a little, just long enough to wipe the sweat and tears from her face, just for a deceptively benign moment that would mean her death. All because the world slipped past her, caring little that she could not catch up, at an unfortunate time. All because the only way she can navigate existence among people without constantly inspiring belligerence, when she’s not often present enough to have any input with what comes out of her mouth, is by script—the guiding lines of expectation and etiquette, dividing the right things to say from the wrong ones, the safe error margin of social capital afforded to her with a sustained, desperate effort to build a reputation for being harmless and soft-spoken and for keeping out of everyone’s way, until no one in the whole city could say anything of her but well, the girl’s obviously not quite right in the head, but she’s always so polite and selfless, until the worst emotion that others could look at her with was pity and under no circumstances fear, until occasionally doing business with her would constitute an act of charity and never a risk. And now, none of that effort matters anymore. Now, she keeps trying to navigate a new set of rules while getting snapped at for every inevitable failure and called a foreigner in the tone of an insult—or in a tone that would more befit traitor than stranger, as if it were a moral failing on her part that she was born on one side of the Valus and not the other—for not knowing already, for having to ask, for trying to be respectful and deferential and to follow the lead of anyone present who clearly knows the meaning of good manners and courtesy in Vvardenfell better than she does.

When she’s cried for long enough to regain command of her limbs, Kireni backs herself onto her feet against the door behind her and wobbles up to the malformed heap of flesh on the floor. The hilt of her sparkblade sticks up from somewhere in the midsection, and continues refusing to budge when she experimentally yanks at it: first with one hand, then with both. Sighing, Kireni braces a foot against the corpse’s collarbone for more leverage, and fights not to throw up into her helmet when the charred layer of muscle and fat crumbles under her boot. Thinks ruefully, maybe I should have defaulted to frost, not for the first time. The effort to retrieve her sword takes so long that she almost cries again, pulling first by the hilt, then by the crossguard, and something in her left bicep protests with a flame-like tongue of pain that persists even after and flares again every time she tries to lift that arm—but in the end, eventually, an inch of the blade slides out of the corpse with a nauseating little crunch, like whatever it got stuck in crumbled when the blade’s point vacated it, and the rest of the sword follows. Kireni lets out a sigh of relief that turns into a pained grunt and bends her double; though her ribs don’t feel broken from the punch she took, no doubt thanks to the bonemold cuirass and the quilted jacket underneath, it still hurts to breathe too deeply, and she resigns herself to the future of lingering pain for weeks to come. Burns two more soul gems on refilling the sparkblade’s enchantment. Shakes herself with a violent, full-body shiver, tension and fear all coming loose. Then heads for the stairs again, where she dropped her lantern, and winces as her left arm protests against lifting even that slight a weight.

Right. No more heroics. Get in, find the statuette, get out– that’s not fair, this wasn’t heroics, it was trying not to get cut off from the exit—

She pauses at the half-headed corpse of the previous Councillor Morvayn. Only for long enough to pull that dishrag out of the back of her belt, unfold it, and lay it over his face, all while trying not to look. The sight of his brains splattered and dried out all over the floor was hard enough to stomach for Kireni, who’s never properly met the man; it would be a cruelty to let his widow see him like this.

She tries not to look, too, when she walks past the partially eaten corprus-bloated carcass on the floor beside the dining table. Beyond it, step by tentative step, the upper floor gallery comes into view, as do the stairs leading up to it from each side of the main hall. Heading for the near side, too conscious of the need to keep a clear lane between herself and the exit, Kireni pauses and listens at the base of the stairs curving up to the gallery. There is movement on the upper level, of that she has no doubt: the flat clap of bare feet on stone flooring, the dragging shuffle of at least one more of those behemothic manifestations of misfortune itself. Slowly, she creeps up, and pokes her head out from behind the bend. As far as she can see in the dark, the corprus-beasts must be scattered about the rooms upstairs rather than out on the gallery—and a pall of blood-red light falls upon its floor through an open door, right in the middle, the storage room she was directed to.

Breathe slowly. It’s almost over. Best not get careless now.

Hugging the wall, sword-first and lantern in her aching arm’s hand behind her, she inches forward. Past one door, then another, and a third—retainer quarters, main bedroom, guest rooms on the far side—going still at each entrance, then slipping past, so far unnoticed. The red-lit doorway belches that ominous glow forth like the mouth of a riverside valley might exhale fog; and, steeling herself, Kireni walks in.

No clawing hands or snapping teeth greet her. Only an odd, angular tower of crates stacked in the middle of the room, the topmost draped with a bedsheet stained into a misshapen crest with something she does not care to identify. Before this mockery of a banner, on a shelf arranged from the lopsided boxes, stands a red statuette: solid head-to-toe, only moulded and grooved into the suggestion of a mer-like silhouette, chunks of corprus-ridden flesh bundled into stretches of flayed skin laid at its feet like altar offerings. The whole construction stands festooned in what must be every single candle in the manor, each alight with a guttering, sanguine glow rather than a wisp of flame—the blue-tinted lantern in Kireni’s hand struggles to cast its own light against that, seeming pale and wan all of a sudden—the walls painted and scratched all over with the same, circular, bottom-heavy sigil, like the head and mandibles of a beetle, in a nonsensical pattern that crowds every flat surface, the array dizzying to look at—the entire room reverberates with a persistent echo of indistinct whispers layered one on top of another, promising to make sense if she only listens in for long enough to hear them out—and before she knows it, Kireni has her sparkblade raised over the left shoulder, ready to cleave the ashen idol in twain.

It would be easy. No more noise pressing down on her skull from every side, seeping through her helmet the longer she stands here and listens and watches. No errand to the temple, after this. It would save time, it would save effort, it would mean an end to it that she could exact here and now—

—but that’s not what I was asked to do.

Tearing her eyes from the statuette, Kireni pins them to a crate in the far corner; and startling even herself, huffs out an unsteady breath, light-headed and with her heart racing just from being in this unholy shrine. She’s listing on her feet, she finds with a spike of alarm as she stumbles towards a box knocked over and spilling clutter on the floor. Picks up a rolled kresh-canvas sack in two fingers of her sword-hand. Braces herself with a breath held, and turns back to face the altar-tower in the centre, and lays her lantern and her sparkblade on a shelf between boxes that’s unadorned with bloody candles, and thinks vehemently, flying, flying in the sky, until the inane drinking song is louder than the cacophony of whispers—and in a single motion, unrolls the sack and throws it over the idol as if abducting a hostage, yanks it off the makeshift altar, and ties the filled sack into her sword-belt.

Silence lances the room. And beyond it, four hoarse squeals and howls of distress lance the manor.

Shit.

With barely enough time to lunge for her weapon, Kireni spins on her heel to find a lanky corprus-beast bursting into the room; its mouth agape in a thin shriek like a horseshoe nail dragged against a chalkboard, there is even less cohesion in its attacks than what she’s seen before; and so Kireni greets the thing with a two-handed thrust in the belly, and rips the sword out sideways; and as it crumples, still it only tries to claw at the sack on her belt sooner than even attack her, and she twists her torso sideways in a brutal slash to the throat, and feels through the hilt when the blade creaks against the spine. No sooner than the creature collapses, knocking down half of the crate-tower and scattering a score of the guttering red candles into a pool of its own entrails, another of its kind rushes into the room—and with the echo of heavy, ungainly footfalls getting increasingly closer, Kireni reverses her grip on the sparkblade and drives the back of the hilt into the corprus-beast’s head, in a blow like a right hook driven from the hips, caring little for whether she hits the jaw of the temple.

(ALL of your sword is a weapon, not just the part that cuts, Ilam-Da had insisted to her, after they were asked to cede the training room floor to Antabolis’ scheduled class and sat together on the corridor with bruises and cups of water. The enchantment doesn’t just exacerbate damage from your blows—even when it’s spent, it makes common steel useable against ghosts and daedra. The crossguard doesn’t just protect your hands—when the quillions are curved, you can hook them over your opponent’s blade and try to disarm them. The pommel doesn’t just balance the hilt—it’s a thick lump of metal, and getting walloped with it isn’t a joke. The reason I told you to pick a sword is because of how many things you can use a sword for in a pinch, even before we get into risking damage to the blade.)

The creature staggers onto its hands and knees, burbling a dazed grunt. Before it can right itself, Kireni snatches her lantern, runs out of the room, and vaults over the gallery’s balustrade, and cries out in pain when the main hall’s long dining table breaks in half under the force of her landing.

The first few steps, once she picks herself up, are agony; but the ankle that hurts so much can’t be broken, since it still holds her weight, and she sends a fervent thank you the way of whoever it was that moulded the high bone-plated boots she’s wearing. Hobbles, then runs back to the stairs leading up, and tosses her lantern along the way for the late Councillor Morvayn to watch over. When she makes it to even ground, strewn that it is with a half-charred blocky carcass and a desk blockier still, she risks a look over her shoulder, only to find one of the hulking corprus-beasts on the stairs and another just entering the circle of bluish lantern light at the base. Heart in her throat and her hands shaking, Kireni goes straight for the door leading out of the manor, and yanks it wide open to hide behind it—and within one frantic heartbeat of the malformed, limping heap of muscle stepping into the sunlight that falls on the entryway’s floor now, four crossbow bolts strike its side under the wiry arm in rapid succession, sinking into its ribcage up to the fletching, each impacting with a pulse of lightning that sears a starburst of white through the bloated flesh. The creature’s face, impossibly, goes even more slack; its thinner leg bends under it like a snapped match, and it collapses sideways, striking its head on a corner of the massive desk, leaving it glistening wet.

“Reload!” Kireni hears the battlemage outside bark at his men-at-arms, and screams out:

“There’s another!”

“Outlander! Step away!” the battlemage shouts, and Kireni throws herself backwards without thinking, until she hits the door to the hetman’s room again.

No sooner than she does so—no sooner that the other asymmetrically, grotesquely oversized monster steps into the entrenched retainers’ line of sight—a blast of magickal frost turns the sunlight blindingly white for a moment, casting a lacework of colourful refractions across the entryway fouled with gore. The corprus-beast wobbles to a halt, its skin pale with sudden frostbite and the secretions weeping from its sores glazed into a thin sheet of ice; a second volley from the crossbowmen sends it toppling backwards to the floor.

Kireni breathes, and gathers herself against the closed door at her back, her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. Before she can formulate a thought, her head snaps up at the sound of rushing footfalls on the stairs: the lanky creature she had struck only to get past it, rather than kill, now with half of its face around an eye socket caved in, rushing straight for her across the corpse-strewn floor. She pushes herself forward to meet it, to force it into the sunlight, and steps into a backhanded slash hip-to-shoulder to break its momentum; the corprus-beast staggers onto its back foot, facing away from the exit into the city; one crossbow bolt shatters its hip, another crunches into the centre of its back, and a third pierces through its neck at such an angle that the tip catches a glint of sunlight, while a fourth breaks into splinters against the wall past it, leaving a blackened impact-stain in its wake. The creature sways once, then falls face-first, draped over the desk and bleeding out onto its writing surface.

Trembling, Kireni lowers her sword-arm. Clears her throat in a feeble attempt to steady her voice before she calls out:

“Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!”

When she walks into the sun again, the crossbows are pointed at the sky instead of at herself, she finds with a bout of relief that threatens to fold her knees under her. It feels like nothing more than habit is driving her through the motions when she turns to pull the manor’s door closed behind herself—then falters when she sees the resin-sealed glove on her hand, and stops short of touching the door handle. Fumbles instead with the sack at her belt, and awkwardly uses the scratchy kresh-canvas as a mitt over the glove. Remembers there are five Redoran warriors watching her, and switches the grip on her sparkblade to hold it hilt-first again—I don’t want to sheathe it yet, I don’t even know how to clean a scabbard from the inside—

The battlemage steps in front of the barricade, and Kireni thinks she can see him stiffen when he takes in her hunched shoulders, her limping gait. “You are injured.”

“They didn’t draw blood. I’m wearing armour under—” Kireni gestures at herself, to indicate the hideous robe streaked and splattered with blood and corprus weepings and other things she doesn’t want to look at long enough to figure out what they are. “But, I think we’ll want to burn my clothes. And that this was all of them. Dead, I mean. I think everything that was inside there is dead.”

“Truly?”

“Well, I didn’t check every room, but the last four were alerted in other rooms when I grabbed the– the thing– I, I need to get it to someone at the temple. Now.”

The battlemage signals one of his men, then turns back to her. “Nilos will escort you. I will reseal the manor for now, but if you are indeed correct, then you have graced House Redoran with no small honour today. Well done.”

“Thank you,” Kireni croaks, and bites her lip inside her helmet as she starts limping towards the squat, broad dome of the Ald’ruhn Temple.

One of the men-at-arms locks his crossbow in a position where its trigger won’t release the loaded bolt, then hooks the weapon into his belt across from the Akaviri-styled sword, picks up his polearm, and falls in step with her. He keeps close enough to make it very clear they’re on the same errand, but at the same time gives her enough of a berth to make it impossible for Kireni to touch him, or for anyone else to brush past her, which maybe feels really bad for a moment before she can think but that’s his right– that’s good of him, even– I’m caked in a contagion– and when she loses sight of the temple complex through the shell-and-mudbrick skyline of Ald’ruhn’s back streets, he motions her along with his polearm and pointed nods articulated enough to work even though he’s wearing a helmet, too.

It’s not a very long walk. It wouldn’t be long at all, were Kireni able to walk normally; as it is, her right leg can’t quite support her weight, shortening her stride as she hobbles forth and longs for the moment she can touch a wall to lean against it and rest. The man-at-arms at her side patiently matches her pace, though, and Kireni resolves to keep up with him—and somehow, that resolution carries her through the rest of the distance, until the broad, low stairs to the temple come into view, until even she can walk up them unhindered, until a novice orients on the two of them immediately upon their entry into the temple’s antechamber and beelines for them with a look of alarm on her face. When Kireni asks for a Lloros Sarano, the novice politely tells her that the priest is busy. When she tries to insist her reasons are urgent—as if it weren’t patently obvious from the corprus-riddled detritus caked on her garb, the sword she’s still carrying unsheathed, her company of a House warrior armed to the teeth—the novice asks her patience and her understanding, at which point the man-at-arms at Kireni’s side is the one whose composure snaps.

“We are here under orders that came directly from a Councillor of House Redoran,” he barks with enough hostility to make the girl flinch where she stands. “Fetch the priest, neophyte. Now!”

Finally, the novice ducks out of the antechamber with an acerbic murmur of deference, and Kireni lets out a sigh.

“Thank you,” she tells the man-at-arms, too, quietly but with feeling.

His helmet swivels to face hers, but the silence between them lingers for a significant moment. When he does speak, his tone has lost none of the harshness he’s just shown to the novice—only reined it in. “You are confident of having slain all of those thrice-damned beasts?”

“I think if there were any more, they would’ve attacked me along with the last four when I picked this up, too.” Kireni gestures with the kresh sack for emphasis. Her aching bicep protests the motion immediately, and she lets the arm hang. “The lady– sera Morvayn– I’m sorry, I’m still getting used to– she was very firm in telling me that my job was to pick this up and bring it to Lloros Sarano, not to kill every monster in there. But, every monster I came across in there, I did kill. Or baited to the door for your, um, your blockade to kill.”

“Know, then, that you have avenged the death of my son, and opened the door for giving him his last rites without risking the lives of priests,” the man-at-arms tells her, the hoarseness to his voice edged sharper than a blade.

Behind the scratched lenses of her second-hand helmet, Kireni closes her eyes. “I’m... very sorry for your loss.”

The man-at-arms doesn’t answer. In that silence, Kireni contemplates how grateful she now feels for the Redoran obsession with armour, for that they can’t see each other’s faces: hers tear-streaked and miserable, and his– she doesn’t even want to imagine the expression he might be wearing.

Before courtesy can demand any more inane words are exchanged over matters that can’t be fixed anymore, the novice returns, wearing a thin veil of humility over venomous irritation and leading an older mer in humble Temple garb, but with a Redoran-crested sash belting his robe at the waist. When Kireni explains her purpose and quickly recounts the morning she’s just had, the priest thanks the man-at-arms and sends him back to his post, and leads Kireni to a secluded room with a low triangular podium to wait for his acolytes in, and plucks the ashen idol out of the kresh sack as she holds it open for him, careful not to touch the canvas itself, with a promise to nullify its fell powers and come notify her once he’s successful. Soon after, several more priests file into the room, wearing resin-sealed gloves much like the ones on Kireni’s hands—she’s provided with blessed water to wash the corprus-filth off the gloves, and with a towel to wipe them into, and with a dagger to cut the fouled robe off of herself, that the rags of it may be cast into a brazier-pot along with the towel and the kresh sack to dispose of in fire. Her sparkblade receives much the same honours, dutifully washed and patted dry with soft fabric; one of the priests even gently asks Kireni to unbind the hilt, and assures her that any of the smiths in town would fix it up for her in no more than an hour when she hesitates, and so Kireni reluctantly commits the grip she was beginning to grow familiar with to the brazier, too. Then comes the request to strip off her armour, though thankfully not to burn any of that—only that her helmet, cuirass, greaves, bracers, the guarhide gloves she bought only a few hours past, her half-empty soul gem bandoleer, her boots, and her weapon are arrayed before her, to be cleansed along with herself. And then comes the request for her patience, and as Kireni sits on the triangular pedestal with her equipment, the priests pass a match to kindle stout candles and begin to encircle her, over and over, with thuribles exhaling heavily-scented smoke and with hymns and exorcisms and blessings; flickering candlelight and swishing robe-hems and droning invocations drown out time and sense of self alike, and Kireni sits with her injured ankle pillowed on her thigh in a loose half-lotus and breathes in the incense and stares at her gear until its afterimage winks purple-and-black on the inside of her eyelids, until it feels as distant as the vague, alien sense of wrongness, of danger, of dread that seeps into her periphery as if from another world, where it affects someone she’s not, someone who’s not here.

A gap appears in the wall of Temple rite that pens her in, eventually. Confusion blankets her numb mind, until she processes the change into a feeling of weight and warmth that doesn’t originate from her, laid over her shoulder. And then Kireni blinks a few times and breathes a deeper, sharper inhale, as if waking up from a stone-deep sleep, and looks up at the older mer from before.

He’s touching me.

That means it must be safe for me to be touched again.

“I commend the depth of your meditation,” Lloros Sarano tells her in a voice somehow both scratchy and pleasant on the ear. Beyond him, the three other priests are silent, picking up their versebooks and snuffing out candle-flames with their fingers, meticulously saving the candles for another rite. “The idol you brought to me is no more. I took the liberty of dispatching a messenger to mistress Morvayn, that she may know of your success and your survival. Yours was a valiant deed today, child.”

As much to test whether it’s herself as whether she can speak at all, Kireni licks through a thin film sealing her lips and murmurs again, “Thank you.”

“You are free to go. May the Three guide your path.”

Another robe-hem swish, and he’s gone. Kireni looks down at her equipment; flexes her fingers, to feel if they are there, and slowly reaches to put on the armour she’s been gifted and the armour she’s kept saving up for weeks on end per piece. Time remains a tenuous proposition: how long it takes her to don the bonemold carapace that kept her own bones intact, but tie the chitin helmet’s chin straps into her sword-belt and tuck the guarhide gloves next to it, no metric she knows of can measure but for the tempo of the three priests around her, finishing up to tidy the chamber she has spent today’s lifetime in. When she’s done, she finds that one of them has waited for her, to politely point her way to the exit—and once Kireni walks through it, and finds herself under a reddish afternoon sky that threatens an ash storm ahead, she decides: I don’t much like going to temple.

Her stomach feels flattened so close to her spine as to almost stitch itself on there. Her ankle aches enough that she’s conquered every flight of stairs in the temple complex with one hand against the wall and the other on the railing—but the thought of going back to ask for a healer floods her mouth with a vile taste that makes her fight the urge to spit. Kireni shakes her head, as if the motion will help her unseam the vaporous incense-fog from the already too dark, cavernous maze that her scarce thoughts wander about without meeting often enough, and she heads towards the Ald Skar Inn with a hobbling, uneven gait that she firmly bars herself from associating with something else.

The publican gives her a long look when she limps up to a seat by the countertop and raises a hand to order something. “You’re the one who booked room three fresh off the strider, this morning.”

“I am,” Kireni admits, concerned. “Is there a problem?”

“No, not a problem.” The publican watches her for a moment, busying their hands with wiping a glass into a dishrag. “You know, half the city is abuzz with gossip about how some outlander volunteered to clear out the Blighted monsters from Morvayn Manor and not only delivered on it, but made it out alive, too.”

Kireni feels her shoulders sink, and her ears over them too, as she looks down glumly. “Ah.”

“So tell me what you want to eat.”

“I—” Kireni rests an elbow on the countertop, and pinches the corners of her eyes. “It’s so late that I really should eat, but I don’t think I can keep anything down. Not after– the bodies in there. The moving ones and the– the ones that didn’t.”

“Then let’s draw you a bath first. Soak until you feel better and you’ll get hungry, you’ll see. Did I see you limping?”

“I took a long jump,” Kireni mumbles with downcast eyes. “It hurt my leg.”

“Well, I think we still have some of the good stuff for that. Import from Deshaan. Timsa-come-by grows all over, but there’s supposed to be some alchemical preparation involved with the flowers before they’re good for an infused bath—I don’t know, it goes over my head, I just know what you can and can’t put in a cookpot together. Anyway, it’s said to be something that House warriors and Buoyant Armigers bathe in after battle to recover. You’ll tell me if it works, once you’re done.”

“Um– thank you, but I don’t think I can afford that.”

The publican snorts, a reaction so un-Redoran that Kireni looks up at them. “Don’t be ridiculous. My sister-in-law was on watch at the manor’s door today. She won’t have to be tomorrow, and I won’t have to worry about losing her to the Blight. So how about you take a bath, eat well, don’t insult my hospitality again, and we’ll call it even, huh?”

Despite herself, Kireni manages a wan smile. “Well, I didn’t come here to insult anyone, so... it’s a deal.”

“Ah, don’t take that too seriously. I’m not properly House, either, it’s my brother who married in. And between you and me, more contact with Cyrodiil has been good for Vvardenfell. Made the air a little less stale around here.”

They point a thumb over their shoulder at the chalkboard on the wall, scribed with the selection of food and drink and their prices, and walk off to hail their staff about getting one of the inn’s private bathing rooms ready. Kireni sends a grateful look at their back, then pushes her elbows off the countertop and squints up at the menu, painstakingly reading the daedric alphabet one letter at a time, the words emerging as much from the effort as from context and guesswork. She makes her way through about half of the food section, before the publican comes back to send her to clean herself up, and picks a moderately-priced meal for afterwards.

There’s a mirror on the wall beside the bathchamber’s door, Kireni finds, and studiously avoids looking at it. Underneath sits a locked dresser with broad drawers—no doubt filled with bedsheets for the inn’s guests, stored away until the change on laundry day—but one end of the shelf its surface forms is taken with folded towels and a bathrobe waiting for her. Realizing that the rest of the space must be meant for her own garb to clean and wash by the staff, she strips off her armour again, then the quilted jacket and breeches, and folds her footwraps in an attempt at an apology for the state they’re in—when was the last time I remembered to bathe, anyway?—unties her hair to let it fall freely against her back, and runs her hand through it—okay, too long ago—and while the bathchamber’s setup gives her pause for a moment, she puzzles out the intended sequence relatively quickly. The low stool prepared with a bar of soap, a stiff-bristled brush, and two buckets of idly steaming water comes first, to wash her hair and scrub herself off; the bath itself must be meant for later, simply to enjoy.

Her left arm still protests when she tries to lift it, to speak nothing of using it. The ankle she’s been limping on continues to ache, though not as much when she’s not trying to rest her weight on it, when she takes that foot in both hands and carefully checks how far the joint will bend. And her torso—from collarbone to the low tip of sternum, pouring side-to-side so far as to overtake half her ribcage, a livid bruise blackens the cool gray tone of her skin, tender enough to make her wince even when she only tests it with her fingertips. Thinks, maybe I shouldn’t get this into hot water after all. But the promise of a relaxing soak with no one banging on the door to hurry her up turns out too tempting in the end; and once she has finally completed the incremental washing of her body, skin-sheathed collection of taut cables that it is, Kireni commends it to the bath with a murmur of relief, rests her head on the edge, and closes her eyes. Petals of dark, saturated pink float on the water’s surface, turning the steam delicately fragrant, honey and clear-skied sunlight and a warm breeze over plains of wickwheat and wildflowers, soothing the last traces of the stifling, numbing, ponderous weight of Temple incense out of her lungs. Muscle by muscle, breath by breath, she finally begins to unwind from the tightly-coiled spring the day’s demands have turned her into, until she can stretch her legs out under the water, until she can yawn, until she must turn onto her side and pull an arm out of the bath and hide her eyes in the crook of her elbow, and shudder so hard that her teeth knock together, and stay like that until the terrifying absurdity of what she has done today seeps out and lets her slump back into the water with fresh tears on her face, with the last vestigial shivers still hunching her shoulders.

I almost died a few times over.

And yet she did not die. Somehow, through some odd confluence of forethought, luck, and the kindness of others—new friends and perfect strangers alike—she managed not to get ripped apart, eaten, or infected with the Blight. A task that seasoned warriors were forbidden from undertaking, for fear of their lives, and she’s managed to stumble and panic her way to its completion alive. A difference made for the better, with her own shaking, unsuitable hands: a lure for Blighted monsters that would no longer beckon to more of their kind, and a nest of the beasts that wouldn’t live to infect anyone else.

Would I do this again?

Kireni breathes in the steam, and splashes flower-infused bathwater over her face.

Not like I am. Not without more skill, more preparation. Better equipment, maybe. A backup weapon. Spell scrolls. Another fool willing to take the same risks. A huff of furtive laughter curls her lips off her teeth. Look at me. I’m preparing for next time already, now that I know roughly what to be preparing for. May there never be a next time. May such a thing never be needed again.

She turns onto her back again, and props herself up on her elbows in the water until only her face breaks the surface, hair floating and weightless, swirling about her shoulders like moons-lit mist, and lets the bath buoy her thoughts along to a comfortable end.

“Cliff racer fly so high,” she mumbles to no one, off-key.

It takes her until the water turns lukewarm to get out of it. She finds her garb back in its place already, the clothes washed and dry—only the faintest whiff of Temple incense still clings to the fabric—the armour polished far better than she’s been able to figure out how to do. The huge bruise doesn’t feel as tender anymore, she notices with a bit of surprise as she ties the quilted doublet’s strings shut over her chest. Come to think of it, neither does her left arm hurt just to raise: there’s still a persistent ache, well more than enough warning not to lift anything heavy with it for a few more days, but she doesn’t have to keep it hanging uselessly at her side anymore. She might even be able to use a fork with the hand.

Chasing the water out of a towel with the faintest fire spell and a cloud of steam each time, Kireni dries off her hair in a few passes, in-between brushing it out until it falls in a presentable way and tying it back into the same high ponytail she’s worn ever since she was old enough to tie her own hair at all. She winces at the unusable hilt of her sword as she buckles its belt around her waist, and ties her helmet by the chin straps next to the scabbard, and tosses the soul gem bandoleer across her chest, off one shoulder. Then, she clenches her teeth and gives the mirror on the wall one critical look, like she would for someone else asking her how they looked, and finds another Dunmer tidy and almost unharried, and looks away within perhaps five seconds—and still it takes great effort for Kireni to loosen her jaw in a rolling motion, and for Kireni to breathe more deeply and focus on the air moving through her chest, the beating of her heart underneath the air.

It’s me. I’m here. That was just a reflection.

I hate mirrors so much.

She shakes herself, stretches her arms over her head, and heads out to the inn’s countertop again. Someone dawdling there with a cup of water straightens up at the sight of her; and the publican lifts their eyebrows with pleased look on their face.

“Fancy that. You’re not limping.”

“I’m not,” Kireni admits, only now realizing that’s in fact the case. Her ankle still hurts—but much like the bicep, not badly enough that she still has to limp. “I feel much better now. Thank you.”

“Well, that’s good, because you have a visitor.”

They gesture at the mousy-looking woman, who finishes her water and sets the cup aside, and turns to Kireni with a shallow bow, hands clasped officiously in front of herself. “Mistress Morvayn requests the pleasure of your company, at your earliest convenience.”

Kireni sucks in a breath through her teeth, wincing. The publican sends her an amused look.

“After the time you took in the bath, I’m sure the mistress won’t mind waiting a little more.”

“Maybe it’s not the greatest of ideas to find that out,” Kireni says, sounding strangled even to her own ears.

The publican snorts. “You’re too easy to tease. Hey, I don’t suppose the mistress plans to treat her to dinner?”

“Tea,” the servant explains at length.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Here.” The publican puts an oval little wheel of scuttle and two thick slices of soft saltrice bread on the countertop. “I’ve got enough oven space to keep your meal warm, but try not to pass out from hunger at a House Councillor’s table.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” Kireni breathes, grabbing the food she can eat while she’s walking.

The publican wheezes a laugh, teeth bright in their face and their eyes lit up with delight, and even the leaden, going-through-the-motions look on the servant’s face eases a little. “You’re adorable. Go on. Go mingle with the nobles, now that you’re clean enough for company.”

The servant inclines her head to beckon her along, and Kireni hurries to follow her new guide across the city square and into the manor district under the vast mountain of shell, only slowing with her food barely enough not to choke and not to make a mess of herself. The afternoon borders on early evening, by now; and a few times, Kireni draws a breath to ask the servant how long she had to wait at the Ald Skar, but each time the words die on her tongue when she catches a glimpse of how distant, how unseamed from normalcy the servant looks, how she only seems to keep herself together by force of habit and the force of knowing that there are expectations placed upon her.

“Hey,” Kireni tries in the end. “What’s your name?”

It takes a moment for the servant to react, an oddly surprised look on her face now, as if she hadn’t expected to be spoken to. “...Me? I’m just the mistress’ maid. I– I think I’m the only one on the staff who’s—” her voice cracks, and her face falls into a tight, pained look. “All of my friends are dead. My cousin was apprenticing to the cook, now it’s just me and my uncle—you’ve met him, at the barricade—and Sera Remas, he was always so courteous with us, every time he spoke to a servant he made it feel as if we were his equals—”

She cuts herself off with a hand at her mouth, and bites into a finger to keep herself from crying; Kireni looks away, uncertain what else she can do. Though ragged at the edges, a deep breath is all the servant needs to brick up the crack in her composure, and turns to Kireni again with wet eyes.

“You said you’ve only come to Ald’ruhn as a courier. Thank you for delaying your tasks for us. For taking the risk to help.”

“Of course.” Kireni clears her throat awkwardly. “Um, I think I need your help, too, I... don’t know anything about formal Houseman table manners. Could you please give me some pointers while we walk? What’s considered rude? What do I avoid doing?”

The servant blinks at her. “Ah. Well– I don’t know enough about Imperial etiquette to compare, but... there’s going to be one teapot for everyone to share from, and a platter of confectionery. Don’t take anything until the host has—same with the tea, wait for the mistress to take the first sip—there’s... usually a hierarchy in the order of...” she shakes her head with a wince as she considers. “But don’t worry about that right now, you’re not House and you’re not even from Morrowind, so you’ll be excused for not knowing, and trying to do everything last might look like you’re waiting to see if it’s poisoned, and that implication would be incredibly insulting.”

“Right,” Kireni says faintly. “How many people are going to be there?”

“Only yourself, the mistress, and Drillmaster Neminda. Try to imitate her if you’re unsure—she’s an outlander like you, but was adopted into the House by Councillor Sarethi years ago. And, well, while I’m not going to be a guest, I’ll be present to wait the table.”

“So... do we pour the tea for ourselves, or—”

“No, no. Try to give me a sign if you want a refill. Discreetly. Maybe a nod.” The servant pauses for a moment. “And since you’re asking: try to sample different kinds of confectionery, it shows appreciation of the host’s effort to assemble the variety. Don’t take too many of the same kind; I think no more than two is a decent general rule to keep in mind. Don’t use eating as a way to buy yourself time in conversation if you don’t know what to say. Use tea that way if you have to gather your thoughts, that will make you look contemplative and dignified rather than like a child stuffing their mouth full of treats before anyone else has the chance to share in. And keep in mind that it’s not going to be a meal. If you’re entering the room hungry, you’ll be walking away hungry. It’s... hm. How do I put it?”

“The food is ceremonial rather than substantial?”

Several different emotions flit over the servant’s face in rapid succession, before she settles on looking cautious. “I wouldn’t say that... but it’s not necessarily inaccurate.”

“So then—”

“Never try to lighten the mood with a witty remark or a joke. Every Redoran from Ald Velothi to Mournhold will find that appallingly disrespectful to whatever you’re making light of, whether an event or a tradition.” She pauses. “Unless you’re intentionally mocking the customs of foreigners or rival Great Houses. Then, I suppose, that would be a method with which to mock them.”

Kireni exhales slowly, and tries to memorize what other bits of advice she’s offered: how to sit on the floor-cushions to maintain a formal posture over long periods of time more easily, how to hold the teacup, how to politely ask for her gear back afterwards in case it doesn’t come up naturally. All too soon, the triple doors into Council chambers are before them; and as the servant speaks briefly with the drillmaster to ask her along, too, the severe Redguard woman only signals one of the entranceway’s guardsmen to watch her desk again and falls in step at Kireni’s side, side-eyeing her thoughtfully for a long moment in silence.

“I hear you were more than successful.”

“Only thanks to the House’s warriors entrenched outside,” Kireni says quietly, keeping her eyes on the floor ahead. “And the lady’s willingness to teach me the floor plan of her home.”

Drillmaster Neminda raises a brow at that, but her expression stays otherwise unreadable. “Have you given any thought to the reward you’ll demand?”

“Oh. Um– no, I haven’t.”

“Hm.”

Where earlier, the rooms and corridors of the Redoran Council Halls seemed an endless fabric-roll unwound before Kireni’s eyes into a tapestry of austere, militant spaces, now they only feel like a clock ticking down to inescapable doom. There is no way she can prepare herself—I don’t even know what to be preparing for—only desperately try to memorize and recall everything she’s managed to learn about Vvardenfellic manners, and tentatively guess at what sort of behaviour the Redoran might consider courteous, given how thoroughly grave they are. Still it feels as if she hasn’t had the time to recount anything to herself before the servant murmurs something about notifying the mistress, ducks out through the final door, and promptly appears again to beckon them inside.

Although Lady Morvayn looks no less exhausted, there is markedly less tension coiled through her shoulders, and she moves with an air of hollow relief as she rises from another handful of half-drafted letters at her ugly desk. This time, Kireni bows without being pushed into it, only makes sure to match the drillmaster for the depth of it; and takes a little more care to sit on the same flat cushion as before in a way that won’t make her ankle worse again.

“You must forgive me,” Lady Morvayn says in a tone gentle enough to soften the statement into a request. “This recent attack on my family and displacement from my own home have taken enough of a toll on me that I did not have the mind to even ask your name.”

Foundling. Orphan. Charity case. Ohtesse’s ward. The idiot girl. The star-cursed brat. Two words that don’t mean anything: “Kireni Sethan.”

A pause falls—and lingers. The servant silently brings over a lacquered tray with a fat teapot and three cups, and lays out fine little plates in front of everyone in turn. Lady Morvayn tilts her head over one shoulder.

“After the deed you have done for me, young one, it would be unseemly to let you leave Ald’ruhn a stranger. Tell me of yourself. Where do you come from? What trade do the Cyrodiilic Sethans ply?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Kireni pins her eyes to her hands, clasped tightly where she laid them over the table, when she hears how bitter she sounds. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to seem– ungrateful, or– I realize that what happened to me was the kindest thing that could have happened, under the circumstances. I grew up in Cheydinhal. The evening I was born, I was abandoned at the Chapel’s doorstep with a piece of paper tucked into the blanket, holding my name. One of the priestesses found me before it was too late, and took me in. Maybe whoever got unlucky enough to have me couldn’t afford to keep a child, but couldn’t stomach just snapping my neck or tossing me downriver. Or maybe they hoped that the priests could uncurse me somehow—there’s no shortage of superstition about the constellations, and I was born when the Serpent took the sky. I guess the reasons why don’t matter, in the end.”

“I suppose they do not,” Lady Morvayn concurs gently, and takes a sip of the tea, with Drillmaster Neminda blowing on her cup in silence as she sits at Kireni’s side and studiously avoids looking at her. “Recall to me, which of the Aedra does the chapel in Cheydinhal commemorate?”

“Arkay.”

The Redoran noblewoman makes a thoughtful noise under her breath. “I would be curious to hear your impression of Velothi traditions surrounding relations between the living and the dead, then, as an acolyte of a god of mortality.”

“I’m not an acolyte,” Kireni corrects with a finger lifted to protest the notion. “The priestess who took me in did so in the capacity of a legal guardian, not a master providing for an apprentice, and I was never groomed to become her successor. The most I’ve ever done around the Chapel was household duties I’d be expected to perform anywhere else, too—washing dishes, washing linens. Never anything around the preparations for service, or even sweeping in the nave. My guardian was always very clear and very open about wanting me to choose who I become, and if I chose priesthood after all, that it would have to be my own choice, never an expectation she had of me.”

“She sounds like a woman of great integrity.”

“She is.” Kireni unclenches her hands, laces them around the earless teacup. “I have no doubt she came to love me as if I was her own, not just a– a commandment of her conscience.”

“Regardless, it must have been a great clash to first hear about the particulars of ancestral veneration still common among Tribunate Dunmer,” Lady Morvayn prompts, her conversational tone a whisper of silk over the steel of her refusal to let unanswered questions lie.

Kireni leans her face into the steam rising from her teacup for a moment as she thinks, then says slowly, “Not as such. Arkay’s domain over mortality, his rules about honouring all spirits living and dead, it was always too... too broad, too vague, to connect to as a child. I never really understood what those mandates mean, or why some link Arkay to the cycle of seasons when the passage of time is the domain of Akatosh, or whether all spirits includes wild animals, too, when nature is the domain of Kynareth. I think if the idea is to honour the spirits of other people, whether they’re still alive or not, then this has to be done in accordance with those people’s own custom. I’d call it ridiculous to, say, treat a Bosmer delegation to a vegetarian meal only to later insist that I was perfectly polite, since I offered them food. And if that’s so, then it follows that acting properly towards the dead must be done within the tradition these dead have come from. There’s no custom in Cyrodiil to bind a spirit that will guard the family mausoleum, but I expect that within the context of ancestral tombs in Morrowind, neglecting to appoint such a guardian would be seen as unfilial and irresponsible. And, I think what the Imperial side of this argument likes to wilfully overlook, is the consent of the dead—in Cyrodiil, undead creatures only appear when someone enacts violence on the dead or their remains, and then forces those into committing more, while ancestral veneration– well, it’s in the name. It wouldn’t be called that if it weren’t a respectful dialogue between the dead ancestor and the living relative. And if the dead expect to be present in the lives of their families even after their passing, then I think declining them the option to would be the crueller choice.”

She pauses to consider what else she could say without using the words necromancy or daedric cult, and catches Lady Morvayn looking at her with a distinct glint of approval in her eyes, while Drillmaster Neminda nods thoughtfully over her teacup.

“Would that more outlanders had your tact and your willingness of understanding, there would be no reason for strife between Cyrodiil and Morrowind.” Lady Morvayn inclines her head in return, when Kireni bows where she sits at the praise. “Given your background, how do you find the Temple compares, I wonder?”

“Its ministry to the sick and the poor is something I’m well-acquaintanced with from the Imperial cult,” Kireni says carefully. “I’ve been looked after by each, and so of course I respect and admire both. The concept of saints is not something I’m entirely unfamiliar with: cultural heroes or role models who exemplify the virtuous lifestyle, who the faithful are encouraged to look up to for guidance, to imitate in their own lives. But I admit that perhaps the– the most difficult concept to get used to, is that the gods are alive and present, and walk alongside us in the flesh, as if we were their equal and they only the first among us. Aedra are part of the world in a far more nebulous way—my guardian always says that the Divines have no hands but ours, that they’ve spent themselves in the forming of Nirn and that our part in the same work is to keep and maintain that which they gave themselves up to create, that this is why living well is what they grant us their blessings for, unlike the Daedra who take champions to have deeds and tasks performed in their name. Here, the gods– very much have their own hands, and the hands of a legion of faithful besides. And I think I haven’t been in Vvardenfell long enough yet, and haven’t learned enough yet, to– to truly know what I think.”

Lady Morvayn arches a brow, looking faintly amused. “You do not feel as if you belong with the faith of your people, then?”

“I didn’t feel as if I belonged with the Nine Divines either, despite growing up in the Chapel of one,” Kireni points out, politely as she can. “Every Tribunate Dunmer I’ve met so far has greeted me as a foreigner and outsider, and whatever ancestors I have... clearly didn’t want me. Before the Tribunal, I’m as rootless as I was before the Nine.”

“It is within your power to change that,” Lady Morvayn says calmly, and sets her teacup down. The servant, kneeling with eyes respectfully downcast just far enough away from the table to make it clear she’s not another guest, steps up to pour her mistress more tea. “I do not dispute your impression of having been uprooted, but now you’ve made your way to the land of Prophet Veloth. Involve yourself with the Temple’s work. With time and humility, you will find yourself grounded again, within an effort both holy and greater than the sum of its parts.”

“It’s not a decision I’d like to make lightly. And I think it would only show disrespect, if I attempted to beg my way into a priesthood without putting more effort into understanding the faith.” Kireni takes a sip of the still-steaming tea, if only against the dryness in her throat. The taste is earthy, clear, and slightly bitter—only just enough to calm the nervous judder of her heart, only just enough to still her fright-scattered thoughts. Trama, she recognizes with relief. “I can say for sure, though, that I have a lot of respect for the Temple’s work: not only its generosity towards the unfortunate, but its settling of feuds between the Great Houses—or at least, the feuds that can be settled without involving the Morag Tong instead—its ideals of self-improvement and humility, its place as the bulwark that won’t let Morrowind be subsumed into becoming just another Imperial province and won’t stand for its people being cheated out of their own distinct identity. Whether or not I decide to join the faith myself, too, after I know enough to make an informed decision, it won’t and shouldn’t affect that respect, I think. I don’t have to be part of something to admire it.”

Lady Morvayn leans back where she sits, just slightly, and regards her with keen eyes. Kireni feels her fingers twitch reflexively around the cup in her hands.

This was a test. Not just a field of social quicksand– all of it, until right now, she was testing me for something—

I think I may have... passed?

But then the lady gives a sign to her servant, and Kireni sinks her teeth into the inside of her cheek in a desperate effort to keep herself grounded, present, until she’s released from this room. A triangular plate, almost ornate in comparison to the rest of the set, is placed in the centre of the table; upon it are three skewers, each holding three little balls of saltrice dough, spherical dumplings less than an inch in diameter, coloured yellow and blue and red. Kireni stares at the snack, and only through force of habit does she remember to murmur a thank you at the servant as she lays an extra skewer next to everyone’s own plates, as all of the anxiety of Kireni’s initial visit about being served food comes back into roaring focus.

How do I eat that. Because I don’t suppose this kind of setting is going to permit for just biting those things whole off the skewer like I’d do if I bought it from a street vendor. What’s the other one for, it can’t be meant for use as chopsticks along with the—

“You are unfamiliar with this custom,” Lady Morvayn’s voice cuts into her thoughts, though not ungently.

“I am,” Kireni capitulates immediately. “I’m sorry.”

Lady Morvayn huffs out a faint laugh, closing her eyes for a moment. Then, her forehead smoothes out; her shoulders droop a bit. “Once again, you have my gratitude. I have had little cause to smile in the past few days.” She collects herself without hurry, and when she next looks at Kireni, her eyes hold the slightest glimmer of fondness. “At solemn occasions such as this, it is sometimes best to pause for a spell and remember the Tribunal’s example, the lessons they have passed unto their people. Please.”

She gestures with an open hand at the triangular plate. Kireni reaches to take one of the skewers, when she sees Drillmaster Neminda do the same, and waits to see what else the two Redoran at the table will do, so she can imitate them.

“These are the deeds of Lady Almalexia: to stand fast against adversity, to fulfil our duty to the lords we serve and the retainers we command, no matter how vast and terrible the evils before us. As Mehrunes Dagon of the House of Troubles strode upon Nirn in the flesh, to sack Mournhold of old, the goddess challenged the Daedra to face her sooner than allow him to chase after innocents any longer; and though she was near death in her victory, she has protected her people, banished the Daedra, and shown us all the merits of valorous leadership.”

With well-practiced motions, both the mistress and the drillmaster take up the extra skewer, use it to slide the red dumpling onto their plates and slice it in two, and eat each half in turn, then follow it with a long sip of the tea, unhurried. Kireni follows suit, half a step behind them in every motion. The dumpling itself is unsweetened, she finds, but not unflavoured—the colouring that affords it a dark red shade, almost the hue of dried blood, prickles at her tongue with a distinct tang of black anther and something yet more, something she can’t quite make out before the tea washes that compound flavour away. The tea that seems just slightly less hot all of a sudden, Kireni notes unexpectedly, and swirls it in her mouth before she swallows; and out in her peripheral, she notices the slightest tightening around the corners of Drillmaster Neminda’s eyes. Belatedly, she recalls every time when Ilam-Da, Syress, and Taril have all independently commented on how scalding hot the food and drink in Vvardenfell tends to be served—and realizes that, no matter the treat’s subtle alchemical illustration of the accompanying parable, the drillmaster just burnt her tongue.

“These are the teachings of Lord Sotha Sil: to pay due reverence to that which we came from, yet strive to grow from our roots. Even in his divinity, he honours the name of the clan that bore him into this world. He who spurs us on to pursue greater insight and deeper understanding in all our wisdoms; he whose impulse it was, at the dawn of the Tribunate, to relinquish the barbarisms of daedric worship and rise above them, embracing a brighter future that gentler gods promised to safeguard—gods who were once themselves mortal, and so look upon their mortal faithful with greater empathy for it.”

The blue dumpling, the perfect shade of stoneflower, follows suit. Though focused and alert for eating the alchemically reactive food that she can no longer refuse without causing offence, still it takes Kireni a longer moment to realize its effect: what she reaches out for so rarely, the pool of magicka at the bottom of her soul, winks its negligible reservoir from just slightly deeper down.

“These are the words of Lord Vivec: to count only the hours of our happiness. Gravity and dignity have their place, but so do respite and joy. No matter the weight of our duties to clan and kin, to god and ghost, we must find the time to tend to ourselves, too, that we may regain our strength and rise again to our calling every next day. We must remember to celebrate the occasions we are given, and take these opportunities to rest our arms and exercise our wits in song, in riddle, in conversation; to remind ourselves that even our gods do not stand alone, only together, and that too is example we would do well to follow.”

The yellow dumpling comes last, and Kireni recognizes by taste that it’s been coloured with the yolk of a kwama egg. As she eats each half in turn, the treat divided like the preceding two—reveals the heart of the lesson, I guess—the day’s lingering exhaustion layered into her limbs seems to fray, and just slightly, to alleviate.

“The ending of the words is Almsivi,” Lady Morvayn offers with solemnity at the end. The servant nearby echoes her, just at the edge of hearing—but the drillmaster does not, only bows her head respectfully, and Kireni looks between them for a mite too long, undecided. “As you are not Tribunate, you do not have to say it. Though I expect that declining to do so amid wider company would rather immediately invite questions as to why you’ve refrained, and thence, an inquiry into the particulars of your faith. Those predisposed negatively towards you might consider it an opening left in your guard, so to speak, and seek to exploit it.”

So the advice is: say it anyway, but only after you make yourself look like you’re Tribunate in other ways, too, regardless of what you actually think. Kireni lowers her head in gratitude. “Thank you for taking the time to teach me, sera.”

Lady Morvayn regards her with faint amusement. “You are a gracious learner. I wish only the most virtuous of masters upon you.”

Kireni blinks at that, trying to puzzle out whether the remark was meant as a compliment or a warning. In that pause, Lady Morvayn deposits her skewers on the empty triangular plate, and so does the drillmaster, so Kireni hurries to follow; and as soon as she does, the servant whisks the plate away, only to replace it with a less ornate, but wider platter dotted with an assortment of little treats paired with the tea. And although Kireni thought herself vaguely prepared, for having seen tea setups like this arrayed between merchants or fine craftsmen discussing business in Balmora, still she can’t help but stare for a moment before she remembers herself. Tiny saltrice crepes rolled up around some sort of filling, and wrapped in turn into what looks like a whole comberry leaf each. Squat little saltrice cakes, each a flattened, almost angular oval, less wide than Kireni’s little finger is long, only just translucent enough to hint at a darker shade of thick paste inside. More dumplings on skewers, but lined up five apiece and uncoloured this time, instead dusted with finely ground nuts for flavour. Bite-sized cubes of seaweed gelatine, clear enough to look through, each coloured into a vibrant green, pink, or orange. In the centre, an entire candied flower of a fire fern, glazed into a polish that enhances its deep red, the powder of confectioner’s sugar lining the edges of every petal like rime.

And to Kireni’s relief, absurdly profound, the platter itself is rectangular.

“I am told you handled yourself admirably against the beasts infesting my home, and yet you said that your purpose in Ald’ruhn was to ferry goods and requests between our fine alchemist and her provider of daedric reagents,” Lady Morvayn prompts easily. “Is running errands how you’ve provided for yourself in Cyrodiil?”

“Ah, no. I mostly made ends meet with hunting—I had a license for the Nibenay Basin. There’s a mansion in Cheydinhal whose owner prides himself on throwing lavish parties weekly, and his chef often bought the finer cuts from me. Besides that, pelts and antlers were reliably something I could sell to craftsmen or the general store, sometimes even a trophy to decorate someone’s walls with. And sometimes, the alchemist from the Mages’ guildhouse would seek me out to collect plants or mushrooms for a small fee, if I was heading out into the woods already. I wasn’t wealthy—I’d never be able to afford my own house—but since I still slept at the Chapel, every time I had an income I put a tenth of it into the donation box. Just like I’d be expected to pay rent to a landlord, or help providing for a family.”

“Forgive me. I must have misunderstood you somewhere,” Drillmaster Neminda speaks up for the first time, sounding bewildered; and Lady Morvayn takes one of the jelly cubes as she cedes leading the conversation, her eyebrows raised slightly. “You haven’t mentioned receiving any martial training in your past, only a trade of shooting down game in Nibenese forests. And yet you offered to go into Morvayn Manor with a sword?”

Kireni feels her cheeks burn, and drops her eyes to her teacup again, empty that it is. “Um– it’s not that I haven’t had any training, but I largely specialized as a sharpshooter. I was taught by instructors from the Fighters’ Guild—I was never a member, but they’ve come to the Chapel in need of healing often enough, and my legal guardian is well-regarded enough, that she managed to convince a few them into repaying her services by training me up a bit. Then, when I was of age, I would sometimes use her standing into begging them to discount their training fees for me a little. The idea was to become capable of hiring myself out as a caravan guard, to escort merchants between cities and protect them from any brigands that slipped the Imperial Legion’s fist, but... well, I could never get hired. So I studied for the entrant hunter exam instead, apprenticed under a gruff old Breton for three years or so, and obtained my own license after that. I found that solitude out in the woods suited me better than a crowded wagon train would, anyway.”

“Archery is a tough skill to master,” the drillmaster points out. “You must have come into it young.”

Kireni nods. “I started when I was eight.” Right after I zoned out in the middle of lesson one with wooden swords, didn’t lift mine up to parry, and just stared at the instructor when his smacked me on the shoulder. At the very least, there was nothing about archery that she irrevocably had to be present for—only her arm, her eye, and her bow, elm-wood and muscle and breath folded into a seamless machine with weeks upon months upon years of repetition, until her body could put an arrow through a bird in flight even if her mind was not present for it.

“Then how did you come into swordsmanship?”

“I think it’s– a little much, to say that I came into it already.” Kireni hears her own voice crack, and clears her throat awkwardly as her mouth pulls into a painful facsimile of a smile. “I was lucky enough to make friends here in Vvardenfell already, one of them a veteran of the Arnesian War. He and another insisted that I absolutely must carry a sidearm with me. They were kind enough to advise me towards a longsword, and to begin showing me how to use it.”

“So those unsanctioned training sessions you’ve received from members of the Fighters’ Guild as a child didn’t include lessons with a blade?” Drillmaster Neminda clarifies.

“No. I think they were afraid of having to explain themselves, both to their officer and to the city’s main sermon-giver, if a child under their care got herself hurt in a training accident. Archery must have seemed to them the safest choice—the worst thing that could happen to me was bruises from the bowstring.” Kireni catches the servant’s eye, glances quickly down to her cup and back up; and clearly fighting a smile, the servant pours her more tea. “Thank you– I would call my skill with a blade passable, nowadays, but I’m very, very much still learning... and in need of more learning.”

The drillmaster stares at her, visibly perplexed, as if she can’t quite decide what to make of Kireni. “Based only on what you’ve accomplished today, I think 'passable' might be a touch inaccurate. Especially if you’ve only been using a sword for... how long, did you say, have you been in Vvardenfell now?”

Here it comes. The only question Kireni has come into this room expecting to have to answer, rearing its head behind the one she was just asked. “A week from now will make it six months.”

She takes one of the round-edged saltrice cakes, if only to partake of the tea snack platter at all before she’s thrown out. Sized just so that she has to take a bite out of it first, Kireni finds that the treat’s filling is made of the Deshaan prunes she could never remember the name of, only the endless Cyrodiilic argument whether it’s more like a peach or more like a plum; thick fruit paste that complements and enriches its casing of sweetened flour.

“You sound like your life in Cyrodiil was a modest one, but stable enough. What brought you here?”

Keep calm. Tell the truth, try not to make it sound more pathetic than it was, and for the love of all that is holy, do not breathe a word of Cosades.

Setting the half-eaten saltrice cake down on her plate, Kireni says tonelessly, “I was deported.”

The drillmaster’s face freezes into a thunderous frown. Lady Morvayn looks up, her own expression stilled into unreadability, and her voice devoid of any previous hint of fondness as she demands at length, “Why?”

Because a forester was having a bad day. Kireni takes a deep breath, fighting to keep her voice level. “There was a doe. Beautiful, whiter than starlight. A pelt like that would’ve fetched me enough drakes to save up in case of misfortune, or to share with those I cared for. So I stalked her, and I spooked her, and even after that, I kept trying to follow her trail. And I must have followed too far, because when I did finally down her– I had a license in the Nibenay Basin, but the Legion forester who saw me gutting her said that we were in the Heartlands now, and that– that made me a poacher.” She loses the fight not to bite out that last word with more venom than fetcher carries in Balmora’s back streets, and clenches her teeth for a moment. “So he took my catch, clapped me in irons, and had me hauled to the Imperial City Prison instead of the dungeon under Castle Cheydinhal, where I’d be able to explain this, no matter how I told everyone who would listen and everyone who would not that I’m in the wrong place. I wasn’t even tried. I only caught swamp fever in that jail. I don’t remember much of the trip, only a carriage, then a boat, and then a silt strider. My memories of Vvardenfell begin in one of the sick rooms of the temple in Balmora, with a vaguely familiar stranger at my bedside. That was in late Last Seed, last year.”

Lady Morvayn’s ears tilt downwards, pinned flat to the sides of her head in disgust. “I was not aware that the penalty for unlicensed hunting, even when the accusation stands rooted in fact, is so severe in Cyrodiil.”

“It isn’t. Or it’s not supposed to be. Heavy fines, jail time—at the count’s or countess’ discretion, maiming for repeat offenders, yes. But not exile to another province.”

“Do you have any inkling as to why such an odd exception was made for you?”

“No. Not beyond—” Kireni gestures sharply at her face, blood-red eyes and snow-white hair and lead-gray skin, as if she were made in the mockery of a Colovian fairytale. “—someone’s impression that they’d be sending me back where I came from, maybe.”

Lady Morvayn scoffs openly, and lifts her cup as if to let the tea wash away the foul taste of what she just heard. “Such is the greatest failing of the Empire: that it allows for those in power to hold it without virtue.”

“These friends you’ve brought up, that you made in Vvardenfell,” Drillmaster Neminda speaks again, though her tone is far from that of an interrogation. “Were they on the same prisoner transport as yourself?”

Keep calm, tell the truth—

“They were. But from what we’ve said to one another, everyone else was imprisoned for crimes that were victimless or accidental, too.”

—not another word, Syress was arrested while grinding down bones, and nothing of what Taril said adds up with her skill or the steel in her spine—

“Somehow I find it easy to believe, that constabularies in the Imperial City would seek to lighten their prison’s load by sending petty offenders into our lands as settlers,” Lady Morvayn says with palpable distaste, and the drillmaster sits back at that, in a slightly more relaxed posture.

—she told her to back off. She must be planning to check with the Census agent for the papers we signed there. Kireni glances warily between the two Redoran around the table, and puts the remaining half of her saltrice cake into her mouth. Nine in Aetherius, please let the both of them stop testing me now.

She’s getting tired, she knows. The effort to keep herself present, the tension of trying to find the right answers without making any of them untrue; the longer this keeps up, the more likely it becomes that she’ll slip up and miss a sentence, or that she’ll make eye contact for more than the absolutely necessary little glances up and back down again that only barely stave off the suspicion that she might be lying, or that she’ll say something she hasn’t thought far enough through for all the uncertainty and endless, unfamiliar variables ratcheting around in her head. That she’s trapped in this room without knowing how to politely excuse herself, to ask the milady and the troops-marshal if she can please go to bed now, helps her nerves exactly none, and Kireni sips the trama root tea again, in a cry for help to let her outlast this engagement.

But then Lady Morvayn laces her fingers and regards her overtop them in another thoughtful, evaluating look, and Kireni knows that it’s far from over yet. “You’ve remarked on having obtained your huntress’ license only after you could not find employment as a sharpshooter armswoman for hire. Why would you be turned away by caravans seeking skilled protection, and consistently enough to consider plying the same rare skill in a different profession?”

Kireni freezes. “Um—”

Shit.

Because of being known all over downtown Cheydinhal as the local idiot. Because a shortcoming that constantly made her look absent, haunted, and unfocused was harder to overlook than another archer’s drinking habit so developed that he could not shoot straight without a tipple. Because needing to have instructions said to her differently, and more often, than others made her too much work in comparison and not worth the effort. Because no one was willing to take the risk of finding out whether she had to be present in order to do the job they would hire her for.

Simply put, because she was not normal, and in a way that was impossible to hide.

(Don’t. Ever. Say these things to a Tribunate’s face. And in Vvardenfell, assume that every Dunmer you’ll ever meet is to some degree a devout, practicing Tribunate, unless the impossible has happened and you’re speaking with an Ashlander, Jiub had told her once when she tried explaining some of her difficulties during their regular group get-together at the Eight Plates, his carved-up face the most serious she’s ever seen it, beforehand and since. You’ll invite pity and sometimes unease with issues like this in the Empire, but as insulting as that can be, you’re going to find the Temple far less forgiving. Things like what you describe, or hearing voices, or even just having persistent nightmares, are called 'soul sickness' in Morrowind, and that’s caused by not believing in the Three hard enough. If you’re suffering, you brought it on yourself because you’re a sinner, because your faith was weak—and the snake that lives underneath the stone of 'The Thrice-Sealed House Withstands The Storm' is that if you’re a weak point in that seal, then maybe you should be cast out from the house or locked away, to protect everyone else from the dangers you’ve invited into it with your impurity.)

“I suppose,” Kireni says faintly, “that my age and inexperience played a role. I’m not a Legion veteran, or a Fighters’ Guild member, I’m just... a girl from the Chapel’s doorstep. It’s not exactly a background that invites being taken at my word when I call myself a specialized sharpshooter—of course no one would take a risk on me, not when they could hire guards with the Guild’s reputation behind them instead. Earning my hunting license was proof not only of that I was a decent shot, but that I could recognize, stalk, and retrieve the game I brought down, as well as maintain a work ethos and obey the laws that regulate hunting, and carry on the traditions of Nibenese hunters. It gave me a trade I was skilled enough to perform already, and the ability to support myself rather than still depend on the kindness of others for a living.”

“So would enrolling with that Guild, I expect,” Lady Morvayn points out calmly.

“Yes, but the Fighters’ Guild takes any violent contracts permitted within Imperial law. Many of them very dangerous. I didn’t want to risk having to choose between losing my profession or losing my life, if I got sent to execute an escaped murderer, or slaughter a goblin shantytown, or hunt ogres for their teeth every time the Mages’ chapterhouse down the street ran out. And I know that my guardian would be worried sick for me every time I left on a contract, if I joined the Guild—I think I owe her more respect, for rearing me up, than to inflict such a thing on her.” Kireni pauses to pick a treat from the platter. “This isn’t to say I’ve never been in danger as a hunter—that I never got stalked by a mountain lion through the foothills in the Valus range, or strayed into bear country, or taken a bad fall while alone and miles away from anyone who could help me. But if I was facing the risk of death, then I didn’t want it to be for– for turning myself into a thug-for-hire that other people would be afraid to walk past on the street. For money.”

A lull falls in the conversation, and Kireni takes the opportunity to eat the stiff, solid cube of mossy-green jelly that she picked up. To her surprise, she finds that while sweet, it still tastes more like marshmerrow than like sugar, a careful balance that prevents it from being overwhelming—or from no longer pairing well with the tea.

“All this time, you make no overtures to discussing your compensation for what you have done for me today, and now you say that you never wished to risk life and limb for money,” Lady Morvayn says in the end, even-toned. “It begs the question of what you do intend to demand of me, in place of gold.”

“Oh. No, that’s– not what I meant to imply, I didn’t... come here with a reward in mind, I just—”

Lady Morvayn lifts a hand to silence her, and Kireni cuts herself off, feeling like a blackbird caught in a horse-hair snare. “Do not think me a beggar. I would not be surprised if during your time in Balmora, you heard the Hlaalu there amuse themselves with mocking the pauper lords of Maar Gan. It is true that our domain is no cradle of nacre and ebony; it is true that I have come to inherit my husband’s lordship and House Council seat only in the circumstance of violence and tragedy. But even so, you would do well to consider that I am not without means. If it isn’t wealth that you slew diseased beasts and risked sharing their fate for, name something that you do want.”

I want to go home.

It isn’t until the rise to Lady Morvayn eyebrows suddenly unhardens her expression, the drillmaster turns to her with an air of being genuinely taken off-guard, and even the servant lifts her head with a look of excruciating sympathy scraped raw onto her face, that Kireni realizes she said that out loud, and lifts a hand to her mouth in a doomed effort to keep herself from crying. “But I– know, that I can’t. That I’d only get my guardian, my friends there, into trouble– that I’d just get exiled again, or worse. All it would do is make a waste of your generosity. I was being truthful when I said I haven’t offered to– to do what I did, with a reward in mind. I don’t know what to ask for. I didn’t mean to offend with it. Anything you find proper, sera, I’ll be grateful to accept.”

“Calm yourself,” Lady Morvayn tells her, though in a gentler tone.

“I’m sorry.”

“Neminda, yours is a uniquely pertinent perspective here. I would hear your impressions.”

Whatever the drillmaster responds with, Kireni doesn’t hear, too desperately focused on trying to straighten out the ragged flow of her breathing, hands folded over her face and fingertips dug into the corners of her eyes. When she doesn’t have to bite her lip anymore to keep it from wobbling, she takes another treat from the platter at random, just to have something to busy her hands with.  Unfortunately, she finds as soon as she sets the little rolled-up saltrice crepe on her plate, she has no idea how to eat that.

Do I... peel the leaf off? How do I tell if it’s a decoration or an ingredient?

While the mistress and the drillmaster are talking still, with an air of both knowing exactly what they’re being oblique about without either of them having spelled it out, Kireni glances at the servant with an imploring look out of the corner of her eye, and digs just the edge of a fingernail under the leaf wrapped around the crepe. The servant’s eyes flick to Kireni’s hands, then back to her face, and she gives a near-imperceptible shake of her head.

Eat the leaf, then. Kireni packs as much gratitude as she can into another discreet look. Then, unsure about how runny the treat’s filling is, folds up the back edge of the crepe in her fingers, and takes a careful bite. Firmer than she thought, she finds: the flesh of a young corkbulb root, but rendered almost into a cream, instead of the fibrous texture she knows. Equally unexpected is a sour tang that cuts into the sweetness, and Kireni realizes that the comberry leaf wrapped around the rest of the treat has been pickled.

When she’s sipping the trama tea afterwards, both hands steadied around her cup, Lady Morvayn catches her eye again, and Kireni remembers with an awful feeling that she hasn’t been paying attention for a good few minutes now.

“—the lack of martial skill is always easiest to remedy, particularly if one is tactically-minded already,” Drillmaster Neminda is saying, when Kireni picks up the thread again, in the matter-of-fact tone of an evaluation. “Her request for the floor plan prior, and the way she made use of assistance from the barricade without putting the men-at-arms there at risk, or testing their commitment to orders from you, sera, speak well of her predisposition to such. And when I’ve been inclined to conduct an assessment through trial by fire, I must confess to having assigned tasks far less demanding than an infiltration of a burgeoning Sixth House den that she also managed to slay every beast in.”

Assess– what? Since when has this been a—

...I thought there were only five Great Houses?

“Hmm.” Lady Morvayn gives Kireni another long, contemplative look that she struggles not to squirm under. “Neminda. Your sound judgements and your clarity of thought are a great credit to the House. I shall remember it to Athyn, next time I have the pleasure of his company.”

The drillmaster bows where she sits. “It honours my patron and myself that you would regard me so highly, Councillor.”

“Young Kireni. You have done me no small service, with nary a thought for its dangers or for what it could win you, as an outlander wronged by outlanders, adrift and clanless in the cradle of your ancestors.” Lady Morvayn rises from behind the low table and rounds it, and Kireni hurries to do the same when she sees the drillmaster beside her follow suit—and goes very still when the mistress lifts one hand and points sharply downwards. “Kneel.”

Burgeoning panic voids Kireni’s lungs of air. She catches the look of shocked realization on the servant’s face, who mouths frantically at her, one knee—and so she yields to the terrifying, unknown inevitable before her, takes a knee, and folds her hands overtop the other for want of anywhere else to put them. The drillmaster and the servant step up at her sides, only to each touch her shoulders: the drillmaster’s hand as solid and firm a presence as all else about her, the servant’s tentative, as if she too was uncertain of her place in the sudden ceremony, and somehow more reassuring for it.

“The gods teach us that honour is given, but justice is taken. You have graced me with the honour of returning my home to me, and exacted justice upon the beasts who slew my husband, my oathmen, and my servants,” Lady Morvayn speaks again, her tone leaving no room for even the concept of interruption. “Let this be the first act in my capacity as Councillor of Great House Redoran and Lady of Maar Gan: in the sight of Almsivi, and the presence of these witnesses—”

The mistress’ hand comes to rest at the crown of Kireni’s head, in a gesture that somehow feels comforting and demeaning at the same time.

“—I name you Redoran Kireni Sethan.”

An undignified splutter escapes Kireni’s mouth, and for a moment she’s certain she must have heard wrong, until half-heartedly resolving that she’s not insane enough for her wandering mind to have fabricated such an occurrence. The mistress’ hand eases away, in the meantime, and Kireni lifts her head only to find Lady Morvayn looking at her with a tinge of sorrowful kinship to her expression—otherwise grave, and more exhausted than Kireni feels.

“I cannot return you to your home in a meaningful way, nor can you return my love and my household members to life. But it does rest within my power to adopt you into the House and give you a place at my side, and with it, a new home that will welcome your every return, for as long as the virtues you exemplified today hold true.”

“Thank you,” Kireni stammers, though a chill runs through her at the condition. Don’t– cliché– but what else can I say— “I’m– I– it’s a great honour—”

“You may rise.” Lady Morvayn pauses until Kireni is on her feet again. “Your belongings await where you left them. I recall that you have errands to complete—depart when you must, and once your business is concluded, return to me. We will discuss the meaning of your new status in greater detail.”

“Of course, sera. Um—” Kireni wrings her hands together, tight enough that her fingernails dig into her skin. “I’m still in Ald’ruhn tomorrow. If there’s anything you could require, I’m at your– at your disposal.”

Lady Morvayn considers for a long moment, but inclines her head in the end. “Then come to the temple at noon. It will be a learning opportunity for you, and a comfort to myself.”

“I’ll come.”

“Wear white over your armour. A shawl or a capelet will do.”

Mourning. Of course. She’s asking me to her husband’s funeral. Kireni bows again. “I’ll look to buy something fitting first thing tomorrow.”

Then, with only austere, formal goodnights left to exchange, Kireni picks up her knapsack and steps out of Lady Morvayn’s suite alongside the drillmaster, feeling winded and light-headed all at once. As soon as the door closes behind them, though, she finds that she’s not the only one to have struggled—when the drillmaster clasps a hand over her mouth and discharges a glimmer of magicka from the palm, the stark white-blue of a restorative spell, and rolls her jaw so hard that the joints crack.

“Hnh. That’s better.”

“The tea?” Kireni asks weakly.

“Every time,” the Redguard says with a sigh. Then begins to walk, and Kireni falls in step beside her. “Well, you’ve earned congratulations twice over. Three times, perhaps, considering how well you’ve handled yourself just now.”

“Ah– thank you.”

“I doubt Councillor Morvayn will feel the need to ask me along for speaking with you again. Keep in mind that while you’re her retainer first and foremost, you’ll likely find yourself without specific instructions from her, sometimes. And I would advise you to make it very clear that you serve the House at large, too, not only your sponsor within it. When you’re ready to do so, I’m the one you report to for duty.”

“I understand.”

“What happened to your sword?”

Kireni glances to the naked, scarcely useable hilt at her hip. “Oh, the– well, it was caked in Blighted filth. One of the priests asked me to cut the grip off, and have it burned along with the rest.”

“Get it fixed up in the morning. You don’t want to look incompetent at the councillor’s side tomorrow,” Drillmaster Neminda tells her pointedly. “I’ll show you where the House’s own blacksmith plies his trade, afterwards. And unless the councillor commands one to tutor you herself, I’ll introduce you to our arms-masters. They are going to demand compensation for every training session, but Redoran war-craft is well worth the price, and they would not offer to share their expertise with someone outside of the House.”

“If I may ask your advice,” Kireni hedges as they walk. “While I’m getting my errands done tomorrow, are there any books on Redoran etiquette that I should ask after? I barely know which end of a teacup to hold. I don’t want to risk shaming the lady on accident.”

“Depends. Can you read daedric letters?”

With a wince, Kireni admits, “Not... all of them just yet.”

A wry smile curls the drillmaster’s lips. “Then don’t waste your time in the bookstore. I’ll look through what I’ve learned from, at the time of my own adoption by Councillor Sarethi. Call it a House-warming gift.”

Kireni huffs an exhausted laugh. “Thank you.”

“Besides, I saw you taking cues from the Talds girl. I doubt she’ll object to filling in the gaps, or coaching you through anything you might find confusing.” Drillmaster Neminda stretches her shoulders back as she walks, loosens their stiff set before folding her hands behind herself. “It’s good to see you’re treating this seriously. I expect Councillor Morvayn will depend on you quite a bit—and while it’s true she doesn’t command power as great as Archmaster Venim or respect as widespread as Councillor Sarethi, her domain is a crucial pilgrimage site for the Tribunal Temple. If you honour her with faithful service, it will afford you with every chance to earn reputation for steadfastness and piety within the House... and to do much good, not only for the House itself, but for all who make the pilgrimage to Maar Gan or seek shelter against the dangers of the Ashlands there.”

“I’ll do my best not to disappoint,” Kireni murmurs, daunted with the reassurance sooner than put at ease.

She makes her way out of the massive crabshell citadel, and out into the fury of an ash storm raging over the empty marketplace. Heads to the Ald Skar, and demolishes the dinner she delayed for far too long almost faster than she has the chance to taste it at all, marinated houndsteak seared over charcoal and a hefty serving of roast yams garnished with spicy oil beside it. Falls into bed and dreams up a procession of corpses, shattered bones aligned like jigsaw puzzles within their wounds, torn limbs reattached into their sockets with sashes and sleeves and jewellery, and herself with poison-blackened veins in an alien body among them. It’s well into the morning by the time she gathers herself within the underground room, where she laid deafened to the night-long empty howling of wind and ash outside, as if the walls were an egg for her to incubate in; and though the storm hasn’t entirely cleared away yet, it’s diminished enough for passersby to venture out and for stall-vendors to ply their trade. She breaks fast with whatever works, asks the publican if she may put her gold-filled knapsack and the bowcase filled with more than just gold under the countertop for them to watch over, and leaves to find a smithy. The craftsman there sets aside what he was doing to bind the hilt of her sword without telling her to wait her turn, with a strip of pufferfish leather that he says will mean an easier time of keeping a steady hold on her weapon even if the grip gets slippery; names a price half of what she had expected, and stoically refuses to charge her a single drake more when she points that out. Then, after considering her garb—mishmash of bonemold, worn leathers, and commoner-quality cloth that it is—she makes for the market district’s tailor, rather than the fine clothier Under Skar. Predictably, there is very little white fabric left on offer, after every single business and more than one house in Ald’ruhn draped their entryways in white for mourning; but the process of attempting to choose the most suitable option, out of the few she can choose from at all, gradually allows Kireni to seep back into her own thoughts, until she catches herself on admiring a broad white sash trimmed with a sunny shade of marigold—something she could wear across her cuirass and keep the edges from tangling around her sword.

“Would this be appropriate?”

“Oh– kena, I cannot recommend wearing yellow or brown accents to a Redoran funeral,” the tailor tells her in a strangled tone, as if she’s fighting the fear of overstepping a social boundary even by having to say so.

Kireni blinks up at that, baffled. Then thinks for a moment. And then slaps a hand over her face, ears flat and low at the sides of her head. “The colours of Hlaalu and Telvanni. Thank you for not letting me make that blunder.”

The tailor gives her a relieved look. “Were there more time, I’d gladly re-hem this for you, but as it stands...” She pushes a folded, asymmetrical mantle across the counter. “I think that out of what little I still have on offer, this will pair best with your armour, once I change out the lacing for you. See how it falls on you—there is a standing mirror in the fitting room.”

“I’ll... rely on your opinion, if that’s okay.”

In the end, she concedes to the tailor’s advice: the shoulder-cape streaks down to her elbow on the left side, leaving her arm free to manoeuvre and coming just short of snagging on the sparkblade’s pommel at her hip. On the right, the fabric barely covers her collarbone, and its edges come to meet in a row of five eyelets on each side. A length of spirally-woven rope laced through them like a bootstrap closes the mantle around her shoulders—a rope dyed into a beautiful, saturated blue, which Kireni admits regretfully won’t suit the occasion or the Redoran leanings towards pious austerity in what’s considered proper. And while Kireni expects the tailor to replace it with one of the last white ribbons she can see on the wall past the counter, instead the woman gives her a thoughtful look and threads the eyelets with a vivid red cord capped with terminals of polished copper, and ties off the excess length into a deeply elaborate, decorative flat knot.

It’s not quite noon yet, Kireni finds once she thanks, pays, and leaves. The ash storm is only a memory, knocked down from storefront-sign posts and swept off of cobbles and rooftops alike. It’s not quite noon yet—but close enough that finding something else to do until noon runs the risk of being late, and what would I even do, I don’t drink on weekdays, and so Kireni heads for the temple after all. She finds Lady Morvayn already there, wearing a stark white shawl of lattice-like, almost filigree lacework, the threads gathered here and there with spherical beads carved out of bleached bone or chitin at a glance. Busy as she is speaking with the priest from yesterday, she doesn’t turn at Kireni’s too-early approach; but the servant at her side does, and steps away with a deferential murmur, to beeline for Kireni and pull her aside. She’s dressed simpler than her lady—our lady, I should start thinking about her as, I suppose—but to match, wrapped into a tasselled white scarf that loops and drapes all across her upper chest, and her face bears a thick vertical stripe of white wood-ash, broad enough to run over half of each eye and completely cover the chin.

“You came. Comb your hair from your forehead.”

“Oh—” Kireni unties her hair, quickly as she can, and runs her fingers through it to tousle it up enough to hold together, so that any wayward locks can no longer wisp around her face. Then reties the ponytail, and tucks what little doesn’t agree with the effort behind her ears. “Better?”

“Better,” the servant tells her with feeling.

Kireni breathes out. “How do I look?”

The servant gives her a thoroughly critical up-and-down, the way Kireni always looks at the distant stranger in the mirror, and pauses for a moment to weigh her words before she answers. “Far from wealthy... but not mismatched, and not inappropriate.” Then, her eyes flick to Kireni’s right shoulder. “The red was a very good choice.”

Before Kireni can ask why, Lady Morvayn joins them—her face marked in the same way as that of her maid’s—and Kireni bows low in greeting, thankful for the cut of her little mourning cape, for how it remains snug around her shoulders.

“It’s good of you to arrive early.” The lady’s eyes linger over the knotted red cord at Kireni’s shoulder, too, and the corners of her lips quirk up, just slightly: a pleased little smile, if only for a moment, amid the surrounding sorrow. “Come.”

“I’m very sorry to start asking about what must be considered obvious already,” Kireni murmurs as she follows the two at each side of her towards the priest, his own face bearing only a thinner, horizontal stripe of white across the forehead, above his eyebrows. “But why are some gathered here marked differently than others?”

“Hairline-to-chin is for principal mourners. Those who lost members of their families in the attack on my home. Temple-to-temple is for guests who have not, but stand in attendance as a sign of respect for those who are to arrive before their ancestors today, and for we who are to see them off.” Lady Morvayn takes Kireni’s chin in three fingers, and when she tugs, Kireni leans forward to allow the motion—and goes very still when she sees the priest hold out a tiny cup of pigment along with the wider bowl of fine ashes, only for the lady to dab the pad of her thumb in the paint and draw a line of vivid, bright red down the centre of Kireni’s forehead, onto the bridge of her nose. “And you, young Kireni, are the one whose deed unbound rage from the thoughts of the living and the dead.” Two sweeps of white across her forehead follow, framing the avenger’s mark in the one for courtesy, before Lady Morvayn cleans her fingers into a handkerchief. “Remain close at my side. This way you will avoid being ambushed with questions you are not prepared to answer.”

“Ah– yes, sera. If there is anything you might need me to do—”

Lady Morvayn near-smiles again. “You shall know.” Then, she turns to the servant beside them, and lays a hand on her arm. “I won’t stand unattended. Be with your uncle today.”

The servant’s mask of composure cracks under the ash, and she bows quickly to hide it. “Thank you, mistress.”

And then all Kireni has the presence of mind to do is make sure she has her good arm to Lady Morvayn’s side, rather than the one that aches idly still, as the sun climbs into the zenith and more white-clad Dunmer begin to arrive: merchants and craftsmen who largely only offer bows to the lady from a distance before they queue up to priests carrying bowls of ash, retainers and nobles of the House who delay proceeding into temple chambers before they’ve had the chance to express their sympathies and their own grief for the death of Remas Morvayn. One in particular whose manner, heartfelt within the confines of severe Redoran dignity, makes Kireni think that he and the lady have to be friends; words chosen with more care than a rote platitude would require, a cordial double-handshake that he and the lady maintain for a notable moment. Another in particular whose manner stands in devastating contrast, marching into the temple as if he were marching to war, flanked with a pair of retainers armed to the teeth where others often came with their spouses or heirs, clad in a full suit of ebony plate polished into abyssal black and a resplendent, billowing cloak, blinding silver-and-white; without even a look spared for another white-shawled commoner with the misfortune to stand in the way, he bludgeons ahead to a priest with the sheer force of his presence, and paints his forehead in ashes side-to-side with such surety as if he did such a thing daily. The streak of red on Kireni’s face draws his eyes as it draws all others—but only his eyes, when she can’t help but duck her head and shrink away, turn from a burning calculation to unsubtle contempt. Two other nobles meander through the gathered crowd so as to never end up near him, Kireni notices: the friendly lord from before, and another whose face slams into barely contained fury at the sight of him, but who takes a moment to compose himself before approaching Lady Morvayn with condolences. The air in the temple begins to grow stale and vaporous, from the sheer number of throats exhaling within its walls, then thick with incense and sermon and hymn; and from perspective, all Kireni can recall of the service is disconnected impressions. The moment when the late Lord Morvayn’s urn was set out, and the lady listed on her feet hard enough that Kireni looped an arm under hers without thinking, and tried to offer to help her sit down in a murmur, until Lady Morvayn lifted a hand at her to stop, breathing heavily even as she clung to Kireni’s arm still. The servant crying into the shoulder of the man-at-arms from yesterday, who Kireni only recognized by the cuirass, his shield-arm a vice around his niece’s shoulders until it was unclear which of them was keeping the other upright, ash carved onto their faces and tears carving clean tracks in the ash. The manifold whispers from every side, eyes of townsfolk and eyes of nobility all darting towards her, thoughtful, judging, curious, and Kireni herself little but a cushion for the pins of their staring.

Something she could not truly term a wake follows: the House’s nobility and many of the commoner mourners with vertical ash-marks settling down at low tables, set only with small cups for aged sujamma and with the tricoloured treats on skewers that Kireni is relieved to recognize her own fresh familiarity with. The lesson of each isn’t spoken aloud this time, however, as if it was too obvious for everyone in attendance to be tarnished with needless repetition—and when Kireni notices that Lady Morvayn’s hands still shake on her skewers, she pours a cup for the lady first and only then for herself, earning a grateful squeeze on her fingers under the table. Each time when one of the townsfolk mourners finishes, a murmur of Almsivi is offered with a reverent bow of their head, before they leave; and once many of them do, once the Council of House Redoran and their immediate personal entourages are almost the only ones still present, then follows the formal opening and reading of Remas Morvayn’s last will. Almost all he could boast of in life passed down to his wife; mentions of distant relatives, of modest holdings in Necrom and Blacklight, of a portion to be donated to the Temple; then the list of retainers and household servants by name and that which is to pass unto each for their faithful, often lifelong service—most of whom lay dead at their lord’s side. Kireni catches the lady’s eye, and follows the unspoken direction to refill her cup without surprise.

Few more pleasantries remain after the formalities are done with, although some of the nobility stop for a word with the priests or with each other. Another retainer, dusty from travel, bursts into the temple only to furiously castigate himself at Lady Morvayn’s feet for his absence in the lord’s hour of need, even when she reaches out to quell his explosive shame and remind him that he was away on the lord’s orders in the first place. Kireni lingers, unsure where her place falls now; the servant and the man-at-arms rejoin her with tear-thickened thanks once more for her presence today and her valorous deed the day prior, and gather around the lady with her. Only to be each sent home for the rest of the day, as it turns out—and a reminder for Kireni to return as soon as she is able, which she receives with another bow and an affirmation of that she will come within the next week.

Though the ceremony had started at noon, the sun hangs low over the horizon by the time it’s finally over. Unsure whether it’s only from exhaustion or also from the same old uncanny distance that makes her feel as if her own life is a book that she’s reading of someone else, Kireni returns to the Ald Skar, asks the publican for an evening meal and for them to wake her up before first light so she can catch her strider tomorrow, and almost responds with surprise when they return the heavy knapsack she had left with them in the morning. Ducks out into the washroom, and resigns the rest of her hours awake to the storybook hero-stranger in the mirror, as she can’t escape glancing into it over and over again, the red paint and white ashes clinging to her face far too stubbornly as she struggles to wash them off. With no recollection of what she eats, or who she speaks with, she falls into bed early, and finds herself subsumed into a monochrome facsimile of the Grazelands, stalks of wickwheat and striped guar-backs quelled into a field of lead-gray streaked with ashen-white, until the sleeping colossus of Mount Vvardenfell awakens to bellow up red, red, red louder than anything in existence, shaking the earth and sky. The rapping of knuckles on her room’s door doesn’t immediately register as its own sound; feeling vague and unrested, Kireni grunts herself awake and stumbles to open the door, only to find the publican as bleary-eyed as herself. Neither of them is coherent through Kireni’s purchase of some scuttle and a half-loaf of saltrice bread; and with a drowsy, half-articulated goodbye, she shambles along to the silt strider port at the edge of the city, with enough time to spare that she can tuck herself into a corner of the hollowed-out shell with the knapsack full of Taril’s gold snug against her chest.

This is Achest ! They are Sunny's 4th partner, and the last one to join the polycule. She is a transwoman that uses she/her and they/them. This is the first instance into what she looks like and I kinda stumped myself by wondering if I should make her old in this, like she possibly actually would be in this scenario, or if I make younger her to see what she looked like in her prime. As you can see, I went for the latter. The ghost of Sunny possessed me. I had to do it.

At some stage I'll probably actually introduce Misunmar and his partners properly but for now you get random little crumbs 🫶

progress pics below

progress pics first~!

desperately trying to remember wtf i said before i accidentally nerfed my *entire* little ramble...

*something something i think i said:*

My friends will tell you I'm insane the way I continue to torture myself with lace on my characters. But I just think its neat.. and I will do it again. This is a tumblr dot com user @ lilarus promise 👍

So, some lore:

Sirestia and Miraak are bound to each other, they complete one another. Where one is the embodiment of a dragon soul fitted into a mortal form (Miraak, as dragonborn), the other is made into a more draconic entity. Miraak is made as a fusion of two beings, powerful in their own rights, while Sirestia is becomes one after being another, being a shard of Alduin. They are opposites and equals.

They're so stupid.

They're so in love they can't communicate properly. And it takes so many tries and failures and restarts to get to a stage where it's finally harmonious. Don't look at the fact that they're thousands of years old. arguably the most powerful fucking creatures on nirn. and sometimes very prone to violence. they still ask "what are we 🥺👉👈🫣"