Sadri hadn’t been able to sleep, ever since the first assault by the Kamal. He wouldn’t admit it – he himself did not accept it, he wasn’t aware of it, even – but he was too nervous to sleep. The city was blockaded, and even though he had survived the first assault, he had no idea if he would survive the next. He did not even know if they would attack again. They could just use some Akaviri magic mumbo-jumbo to hurl the damn city into Masser or Secunda from their weird ships. The ships made echoes in Sadri’s mind – back when he was with that digger group, disassembling Dwemer remains, one cog at a time, he had stumbled across similar things. They weren’t ships, of course. Some weird shit like huge, conical drills, attached to chassis that bore chimneys not unlike the ones that were on the ironclads waiting across the river.

The moons were still radiating blood still over the night sky, a sight that reminded Sadri of the tales about the Daedric Lord of the Hunt. Combined with the howling from outside the city walls, it made quite a foreboding atmosphere. Perhaps the Hunter was watching his most dangerous game fight these exotic creatures. Perhaps he was amongst them, partaking in the fight, even. For all Sadri knew, Hircine liked to have a physical presence in his machinations, and Sadri thought that the Kamal assault could be intriguing for the Hunter. Or maybe the theorist inside him was further fueled by the flin. Sadri preferred to consume his flin for special occasions, thanks to its rarity in Skyrim. But the East Empire Company had a monopoly on flin trade, and he believed that he could buy some from them if he managed to run out. And survive. Maybe that last one was more important. 

Sadri eyed the Kamal ships further. He felt a glint in his eyes as he viewed them – they were cold, lifeless, and industrial. A sign of impending doom maybe, but that did not take away from his admiration, his awe. Few on Tamriel could say that they had faced the Kamal and their machinations. Few could say that they had seen them, even. Deep down, Sadri felt elation rise from the puddle of flin in his stomach. The cutting snow, the waters, the ice, the mantlet he was leaning on, and the cobblestones underneath his feet – they would remember. The bleak, white nightmare in front of him somehow suddenly felt welcoming. They had seen the men and mer before. They remembered. These men, mer and beasts here, defending this city for various reasons, they would all be remembered. Maybe it was coping – maybe it was the flin, but for once, what he was doing felt meaningful. He, like everyone here, was making history.

‘’[i]Anu’s sake, I’m waxing poetic again.[/i]’’ He shook his head in disapproval. 

‘’What’re you up to, Dunmer?’’

A rather young lad in a mail hauberk leaned on the mantlet, next to Sadri. With the plain mail, cropped hair and the scar on his forehead, he looked like a member of the Imperial Legion more than anything. His pale skin and blonde hair implied to Nordic ancestry, however.

‘’Not much. Watching the ships.’’ 

‘’Yeah, haven’t seen anything like them in my life.’’ 

The lad paused after the remark.

‘’You sure this place isn’t dangerous? Everyone’s on the walls.’’

Sadri shrugged with his absent hand. ‘’They’ll have to come down when they attack again. If I’m going to die, I want to die with a good view.’’

The lad paused for a moment again. 

‘’I’m Cilo, Cilo Livius. I’m with the East Empire Company.’’

‘’Sadri Beleth. Came here with the Mercenary Company.’’

‘’Oh, you’re one of those guys! I think it was one of you guys that figured out the thing with the salts.’’ 

‘’His name’s Jorwen. Pretty strong fighter. Smart too.’’

‘’I see,’’ Cilo seemed nervous. He was probably trying to strike up some conversation to distract his mind. ‘’So, is it true that these things are really from Akavir?’’ 

‘’They say so, I mean, shit, that ship’s moving.’’ 

Sadri immediately got onto his feet to confirm his sighting. After a second or two, he decided that yes, the ships were on the move again. The distant churning of infernal mechanisms inside the ships played a rather ominous tune accentuated with huffing smoke from the chimneys. Movement started on the walls and on the docks, and the defenders began brandishing weapons once again. Sadri went behind the makeshift barricade and crouched behind it, and pulled his sword out of its scabbard, just in case. Cilo, on the other hand, ran back to where he had come from. Sadri watched as he ran away – he wanted to shout after him, but for some reason, didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he thought one man wasn’t going to save him from death.

Either way, Sadri figured the only reasonable thing to do at this point was to watch. He was already at position, and couldn’t think of anything else to do than wait for the snow demons to set foot on the docks again. 

Suddenly, Sadri was startled by someone shouting his name. Turning back, he saw Cilo alongside a few others, similarly armed. ‘’Had to get some reinforcements, you know.’’ Sadri smiled. ‘’We ready for this?’’ The fighters brandished their weapons, and one of them snapped her fingers to set a spark of flame in the air. ‘’I’m ready,’’ Cilo said as he pulled out his sword. As one of them advised another to open the salt crate, a bright flash of magicka momentarily blinded Sadri. He opened his eyes back to see two giant, humanoid bodies of frost tread upon the docks. And upon seeing the giants, Sadri promptly dropped the idea of making history, and began to think that the smartest course of action would be to fucking leg it. But being a mer with a sense of shame, he realized he’d have to wait a few moments to ‘[i]disappear in the chaos[/i]’, a much more preferable alternative than ‘[i]pussying out[/i]’. So he just bid his time.

Then, much to everyone’s amazement, one of the atronaches smashed the other in the face, eliciting a few remarks of excitement from amongst the group.  With the first strike, the giants began a rather noisy grapple, one that caused the vicinity to tremble with thunderous sounds of ice shattering ice. Cilo seemed rather amused by this, despite the rain of sharp ice shards erupting from the hits, and the impending attack by the Kamal. ‘’They should’ve stayed [i]frosty[/i], eh?’’ Cilo suggested. Sadri shook his head in disbelief.

Soon after the atronaches crushed each other to shards, the Kamal appeared out of the mist that was emanated by the crushed bodies of ice. In their jagged, heavy armor and weaponry, and with their ice magic, they were definitely fear-inducing, but Sadri had made them bleed in the recent past, with proper aid. After the spectacle, he felt roused. The giants were gone, so now, they had a chance. Likelihood of survival was slim nonetheless, but, being born under the sign of the Lord, Sadri was much more likely to walk through what would fell lesser mer. At least, that’s what he liked to believe. He braced for the incoming attack, and suddenly, he saw Smokey the Bear jump from behind him into the Kamal formation.

At first, Sadri thought that Forsworn magic was at work and that somewhere in the Reach somebody was real pissed off at the death of his or her pet, but soon he realized that the beast was more wolf than bear. And that’s when he realized there was a fucking werewolf on the docks. He was shocked – everyone was – and could only watch as the beast rampaged amongst the Kamals and eventually whimpered away from his direction, much to his relief. Suddenly, a lone figure, armed with an axe, let loose from amongst the defenders and rushed into the shattered group of Kamals. Sadri walked away from the mantlet, despite the arrow fire from the walls, to see the warrior’s charge, and was rather disheartened after seeing the fellow get shattered into pieces of tinted ice. Trying to look like the display didn’t get the better of him; he turned to the group as nonchalantly as possible. ‘’Anyone got a bottle of some sort? Fill it with the salts, empty it beforehand.’’

One of the members complied, and Sadri had Cilo hold onto the bottle of what was once mead, telling him to throw it when Sadri told him to do so. The Kamals were getting back into proper position again, and Sadri wished to strike before they managed to do so, mostly because Sadri didn’t think that he could go blade to blade with a giant saber of Akaviri metal. He hailed Cilo to follow him, and ran out from cover. With every closing step, the idea felt stupider and stupider. All he had was a sword, a good one, but in the end it was nothing but a sword – and the Kamals in front of him and Cilo could fill a mine with all the metal on them. But the arrow was let loose, and there was no going back now.

As the Kamal bellowed from behind its flat, lifeless mask, Sadri shouted for Cilo to throw the cocktail. The frost giant set its weapon arm back for an overhead swing, and as it was brought down with the force of a troll matron in rut, Sadri immediately flung himself backwards, managing to void the blade by a few inches. Right after the blade landed, so did Cilo’s cocktail, flat on the beast’s mask. It stood still for a moment, then started letting out screams that would haunt Sadri for a few weeks. Not letting the bloodcurdling sounds get to him, Sadri immediately dared to go in for an attack, but was stopped by another saber landing short of his head, on the painful Kamal’s shield. It appeared that the snow demon’s comrade was angry at the Dunmer’s attempt. Sadri fell flat on his buttocks from the sudden strike, and spontaneously decided to propel himself through the gap between the attacking Kamal’s legs by pushing himself off the stunned beast’s trunk-like leg.  Almost crushed by the beast’s shield in its attempt to stop the Dunmer from getting away, Sadri propelled himself back on his feet as fast as he could and stabbed the Kamal in the back of its neck, from a gap opened by the snow demon looking down on where it had landed its shield. The Kamal’s body suddenly went limp from the strike and fell backwards, nearly crushing Sadri under its sheer weight.

As the beast looked up at the crimson sky, unable to move, Sadri plunged his sword through the Kamal’s helmet’s visor, ending the beast’s life. Following the kill, the Dunmer raised his head to observe the battle – there were flames, ice, and blood everywhere, with bolts, arrows, pots of salt and flammables cracking themselves upon the Snow Demons or the ground. Moments later, one of the Kamal ships blew up in a magnificent display of arcane fireworks, igniting the red sky with magical energy. Caught unaware by the blast, Sadri waved for Cilo to get back behind the mantlet and frantically followed suit as drops of cold water, sent flying upwards with the explosion, rained onto the docks.