[b]Yelond Cave, Outside Bravil[/b]

Dar-zel watched him from the water, brave he was, for a Bosmer, but that would not save him. He came like all the others, full of hope, dreaming of glory. He cut his way through her skeletons as if they were some epic foe. They were only bait. She watched him as he knelt beside a chest, taking, temporarily, the pretties Dar-zel had placed there herself. Like a child eating away at a trail of sweet rolls, stumbling further and further into the dark, ignorant of the witch whose home stood at the end. As he progressed he met the necromancer's more sturdy creations, not the deadly spawn of the Soul Cairn itself, but still formidable, headless zombies and skeletal guardians. The wood elf tired himself hacking away at bones and rotting flesh. By the time he encountered the wraiths, both he and the watcher in the water knew it was over. The adventurer crept back from the shrieking spirit before turning to flee with his loot and life intact. Instead of seeing the familiar passage leading up from darkness to light, however, he saw a lean shadow blocking the way and felt a blinding pain slip through the leather folds of his armor.

The stranger caught him almost gently as he fell, cradling the elf's quivering body atop the damp stone. Her eyes, yellow and glowing, hovered overhead like Nirn's twin moons at harvest season. "The word for it in your tongue escapes me mer," a gentle hiss emerged from the cowl. "Men call it a kidney, a funny thing, like a bean full of," she wet her lips, "blood... If you stab the bean, the pain, she is so great few can move." The eyes were joined by a wraith who swirled overhead like mist. Dar-zel shooed it away with a claw before her gaze returned to the Bosmer hero. "Can you feel it? Your life's sap is leaving you, landstrider. Normally Dar-zel would take her fill and use your husk, but I find myself in need of... skilled labor." She placed her snout close to the dying elf and inhaled deeply. "You know Bravil well, do you not, it's corners, it's rooves, its filthy back alleys. You smell of it. Are you a sneak who thought to become an honest sword?" She did not wait for his answer but instead raised her scaled wrist to his lips, a single claw poised near the artery. "I happen to need a scoundrel, one who knows that wretched city. If you can be that scoundrel, you will continue to live... after a fashion. If not well... I a can always use a fresh corpse." The argonian grinned toothily, "you do not need to speak, I know it's hard. I might have sunk the blade deeper than I intended. If you want my gift simply," she touched his lips, "open." 

A moment later, the answer she expected came and she slashed her wrist. Below the torrent of blood a new spawn of the daedra Molag Bal, a new servant of the Soul Cairn, shuddered into unlife.