Lorag nodded to Gallus. "Yeah, makes sense. Vile's crafty. Probably wants to pit as many people against us as possible. Not really that hard, seeing as how most of Tamriel already sees us as monsters. I guess it's just a matter of motivatin' them to get off their lazy backsides and start actually doin' something about us."

Ahnasha had at first been inclined to agree with Gallus, but as she turned the pages to see more and more records, she was becoming both increasingly skeptical, and concerned. "No, no you don't understand. This isn't...this isn't just a few ferals. This is...there are records here going back months. And it looks like it goes back a lot further still. Over the last few months, they have turned and released [i]hundreds[/i] of lycans out into the wild. A few would make sense to sow some discord, but hundreds, maybe thousands depending on how long it's been happening? We would be picking up a good portion of these lycans; they would just be feeding the size of our army. It...it doesn't make any sense. 

Kaleeth stepped into the cage on the other side of the Khajiit, then carefully rolled her over onto her back after she gave no response to janius. The other soldiers started breaking into the other cages as well, but in all cases, the prisoners were just as unresponsive. There was absolutely no sign of injury on any of them; no bruises, lacerations, or recent scars. They were all breathing normally, and other than being unconscious, were in perfect health. However, no amount of shaking or shouting was going to wake them. It was possible that they were being kept unconscious through magical or alchemical means. 

---

With Spellbreaker protecting him, Do’rhajul started with a shield charge to close the distance between them, to which Meesei reacted in her usual manner. With a quick bolt escape, she teleported herself off to his side. Having never seen the technique before, even the General was momentarily confused, giving Meesei the time to hit him in the side with quite a potent lightning bolt. The involuntary spasms of his muscles caused Do’rhajul to collapse to the ground immediately and cringe with pain. However, even through it all, he was fast enough to bring the nigh unbreakable ward of Spellbreaker around to protect himself from Meesei’s following stream of lightning. 

Seeing as her magic was not making any progress, Meesei rushed forward with her axe, turning it around to make use of the spike on the back of the head. He was attempting to recover and had made it back up to his knees, though even then, he still matched Meesei’s height. She tried to bring the axe down onto his head before he was ready, but even being off-balance was not enough to prevent himself from bringing up his shield to guard himself. His counterattack was rapid, as he slashed his blade straight towards her neck. Fortunately, Meesei was able to jump back and angle herself enough that his blade deflected off of the shield spell that encased her body.

Meesei backed far enough away to get out of his range, while the General made his way back to his feet. She hoped to catch him off guard by bolting straight through him, but to her surprise, Spellbreaker’s ward stopped her entirely. Normally, a ward would absorb the electrical energy, but she would still pass through. In this case, however, she was stopped and knocked straight onto her back in front of him. It was, perhaps, surprising to him, but not in the way she hoped. Do’rhajul attempted capitalize on the situation with a thrust straight through her heart, but Meesei managed to save herself by bolting once more. This time, she went through his feet, which his ward was not protecting. He was actually stunned this time, so she scrambled to her feet and made another swing for his head. Unfortunately, he was quick enough to bring up his arm to protect it. The spike on her axe hit his forearm directly, and sounded like it may have done some damage through his armor, but it was certainly no lethal blow. 

Meesei was knocked back quite forcefully by a bash from the General’s shield. Luckily, it took him too long to get to his feet for him to be able to follow through in time. Seeing as the more direct attacks were not working, she adopted a strategy much like the one she had taken to fight Harriet years prior. She bolted around, keeping her distance and attempting to get spells around his ward. No matter how quickly he could react, he could not move faster than her. Unfortunately, even if he could not attack her, his defense was nigh unbreakable. No matter where she moved, he could always bring up his ward to defend. Every lightning bolt she fired drained some of her magicka, while doing nothing at all to him. Unlike Harriet’s ring, Spellbreaker showed no signs at all of weakening, so she could not simply outlast him. She had to find some way to give herself the advantage. 

Breaking from her pattern, Meesei suddenly turned and let loose two streams of ice on the ground behind her, then quickly bolted to the other side of it. Particularly in armor, even the most experienced of warriors could not simply rush straight across a sheet of ice. Do’rhajul would have to either slow down, or go around the ice. In either case, it would give Meesei enough time to complete her transformation. 

Do’rhajul opted to run around the path of ice, and Meesei finished her transformation just as he was starting his swing. She jumped back to evade, then immediately rushed forward to try her hand at overpowering him. In her werewolf form, she was indeed stronger than he, but the difference was not as severe as she would have liked. He was a Cathay-raht werewolf, so while he could not match an alpha werewolf like her without transforming, his strength could still challenge hers enough that he could stand his ground. 

Meesei first attempted to rip the shield out of his hand to rid him of his greatest asset. She pulled him straight towards her, and nearly brought him off of his feet, but his grip held, and she had given him ample opportunity to retaliate. She was not able to move quickly enough to evade entirely, so he slashed her across the right side of her chest. It was too shallow to be lethal, but deep enough that the gash would cause enough bleeding to worry about it. But, in the short term, she just had to focus on ignoring the pain and continuing the fight. Even if she could not absolutely overpower him, he no longer had any physical advantage over her. 

Meesei gave a feint, then dashed to the right and feinted once more. She needed to get him to swing so that she could get a chance to attack. Immediately after the second feint failed, she swiped at his legs, which finally prompted a reaction from him. He swung towards her arm, which she was actually able to evade, then rush straight at him. Instead of pulling on his shield, she swiped it to the side, then tried to bite down on his neck. She managed to latch down on his shoulder, and attempted to reposition to get at his throat, but the delay was enough that she felt another sharp pain of his blade sliding down her back. He bashed the side of her head with his shield, then managed to pull himself away from her. 

Again, Meesei had another injury, and was bleeding more heavily, but she had to keep up the pressure on him. She tried targeting his sword arm on the recovery from one of his swings, but ended up with another gash across her thigh. She tried disarming him of his blade, but ended up with her palm slashed open. She tried injuring his leg to get him to the ground and give herself the advantage, but narrowly escaped death with a thin slash directly across her throat from the very tip of his blade. She did wound him with a few cuts where her claws managed to find their mark, likely gave him a lot of bruising, and perhaps even fractured a bone or two with the sheer force of her strikes. Unfortunately, all of her attacks were met with an even greater injury on herself. She simply could not stop his blade, and her wounds were causing her to lose blood. Her attempts at fighting him with magic before had not worked, but what she was doing now was slowly killing her. 

Once she had the opportunity, Meesei simply shoved Do’rhajul’s shield to stagger him back, then sprinted across the chamber much faster than he could possibly move. It gave her the time she needed to transform back into her Argonian form, but only just. He was upon her as soon as she had regained control of her body, and she only barely managed to bolt away. Her body was covered in her own blood from the wounds that were steadily weakening her. She was in a worse position to fight him than she had been when she started, and he was now going on the offensive against her. She could bolt outside of his range, but no destruction spell she could cast was working against his ward. 

Meesei bolted around Do’rhajul, trying everything she could think of. She tried casting at his feet, but he was quick with his shield. She froze parts of the floor in an attempt to throw him off balance, but he was good at avoiding the ice, and she could not freeze the entire chamber. Even when he was forced onto the ice, he simply moved slowly and kept his shield up to defend until he could move once more. Meesei simply did not know how to fight against an unbreakable ward. 

Charging a lightning spell in one hand, Meesei tried to bolt behind Do’rhajul, then cast her spell behind her in the hopes of hitting him before he could react. She would not have time to aim as she had been, so she had to bolt closer to give her spell a better chance of hitting. While the spell did indeed hit him, it came at a heavy price. Even as the lightning was jolting through his body, he spun around and smashed Meesei directly with his shield. It threw her back onto a table pushed up against a wall behind her, and his blade was not far behind. Her lightning bolt had disrupted him enough that his aim was not perfect, but he still managed to thrust his sword straight through her left forearm. It cut through her muscles, shattered the bone, and left her arm pinned to the table underneath. She could not stop herself from letting out a scream of pain, though it was interrupted when he smashed his shield into her body hard enough to break the table in half underneath her, as well as cracking several of her ribs. 

Do’rhajul had lost his grip on his sword when he forced Meesei through the table, so she tried to reach over to pull the silver blade out of her arm. However, she was stopped by another surge of pain when the General stomped with all of his might onto her right leg, snapping her femur in two. He grabbed his sword and pulled it [i]slowly[/i] out of her arm, exacerbating all of the pain she was already feeling. Her body was broken beyond any reasonable hope of physical resistance, and Do’rhajul was poised to execute her right there, but Meesei was not yet dead, so she was not going to stop fighting to survive. 

Letting loose a sudden burst of energy, Meesei telekinetically grabbed one of the halves of the table beside her and sent it flying with impressive force straight at the General’s head. Even he was not prepared for Meesei’s continued resistance, and this time, he was hit straight off of his feet. If she were in any condition whatsoever to continue the fight, she might have been able to take advantage of it, but her only option now was to escape. Taking the precious few seconds she had, Meesei scanned around the room until she spotted the door from which she had entered. Gritting her teeth in pain, she bolted halfway across the chamber, and ended up rolling upon landing to further stress her already-broken bones. She cried out again, her body feeling like it was burning from head to toe. Most of her wounds were silver, and even those that were not involved shattered bones stabbing into her flesh. Nevertheless, she lifted up her eyes to the door and bolted again, this time ending up in the hallway beyond. 

Meesei had made it out of the chamber, but that would not stop Do’rhajul from simply following her as soon as she could stand. She had to block the way behind her. Rolling onto her back, she used her uninjured hand to charge a frost storm spell, which she cast upon the ceiling just above the door. It coated the ceiling in ice as the cold seeped into the stone. It caused the stone to become more brittle, so when she followed through with a quite forceful explosive fireball, it rapidly heated and weakened the stones enough that they came crashing down below and sealed off the doorway. Do’rhajul still might have been able to follow, but it would give her time. Though, Meesei was not certain of how much time she even had left. She basked her body in a wave of her own healing magic, but even she could not repair her crippled body. So many of her wounds were silver, and she had already lost so much blood already. The best she could do was to halfway numb her excruciating pain, and to slow her continuing rate of blood loss. With her uninjured arm, she managed to bring herself up to a sitting position, then conjured a bound spear that she used for support to help her drag herself slowly up to her feet. As long as she remained conscious, she could use it as a staff to help her trudge on forward in the hopes of somehow escaping, or at least finding one of her allies. Even with the attention of healers, however, she knew there was a possibility she would not survive this.