[h3]A Farewell to Facades - Sometime Before the Investigation.[/h3]

[hr]

Raelyn, in the dead of night, burst into Solveigs bedchambers. Her eyes were lost in shadow, and blood dripped from a split lip. She stood in the doorway, leaning against it as if in delirium. 

She said through heavy, panting breaths, "I..." she coughed, spitting a globule of blood and saliva onto the floor. "I need your help."

The knife in Solveig's outstretched hand drooped a bit, seeing the threat of a cave troll gnashing and snarling at her was only Raelyn once the veil of her dreams had fallen away. The feeling of being tired still weighed heavy on her bones though, and it was for this reason that she frowned in annoyance, especially so as Raelyn got her bloody spittle near where she slept. "If you aren't being chased by bandits wanting to rape your corpse, then this is no emergency worthy of waking me."

She curled tighter under her blanket, waiting for Raelyn to inevitably continue speaking instead of respecting her right to sleep.

Raelyn stumbled forward, falling down onto the edge of Solveigs bed, "The Argonians, they robbed me. I managed to get away before they did the second part of your colorful statement, but I can't just..." she breathed in deep, "I can't let them get away with it. It's a sentimental item."

Solveig sat up on her arse, rubbing the sleep from her eyes before slowly getting up. Her knees and back popped and creaked in protest as she rolled her shoulders. Donning her mail and bear's head helm, and grasping up her seax, shield and spear, she stepped outside of her tent. A lungful of the cold, salty air did nothing to wake her. "Where are they?" She asked after the Argonians that she was going to maim or kill as if they were but dropped coin. "And what is it that they took that you just can't bear to forget and move on?"

Raelyn followed after hastily, cringing at the pain still flooding the back of her head, "My lute and a talisman given to me by my brother, Articus. They're currently in their off-site camp, if I had to guess." She added, quickly, "It sounds stupid when said out loud, but believe me, I need both back." She said, even more rapidly, "Look, I will do [i]anything[/i] if you help me with this." 

"And what favors could you possibly fulfill for me that would make risking my life worth it?" She said, although she remained walking towards the Argonian Camp, nonetheless.

"Your father." she said, with a firmness in her voice that was uncommon to her native flouncy tone, "I [i]will[/i] find him for you."

Solveig stopped in her tracks, ceasing all movement down to her breathing. She turned around, revealing a face devoid of all humor. Through frowning lips came a dry and humorless lone bark of a laugh. "And [i]how?[/i]" Her eyes narrowed to slits.

Raelyn deftly pulled back her left sleeve, revealing that in the inner lining was a a symbol of a diamond, with three spikes crossing an eye, over a red background. "I will send a letter to this organization. Within two days, maybe less if anyone is nearby, several agents of this organization will begin asking questions. These questions will lead to leads. The final and most important question will lead directly to your father. They will kill anything that gets between them and him. He will appear at your place of residence, be it at sea or land, haggard, but alive."

"You?" She took a step back, looking Raelyn head to toe and back again, "You? A spy?" She didn't expect her to be a spy, but wasn't that the point? The uncharacteristic firmness in Raelyn's voice told her there were no lies in her words. They were perhaps the truest she'd ever heard, it felt. "What..." She trailed off, weighing time in jail or death against seeing her father alive, or at all, "...What would you have me do to these Argonians?"

She re-adjusted her sleeves, thus hiding the symbol of the Penitus Oculatus."Whatever comes naturally. The important thing is that lute and that talisman are back in my hands." She cracked her knuckles, "Make sure I don't get stabbed in the back, if you will."

"A Shield-Sister is good for that." Solveig nodded. They came upon the Argonian Camp and Solveig stopped at its edges. Four of what she assumed were youths were huddled around a fire, drinking and rifling through purses and packs they'd no doubt stolen. Among that camp, among some other group of youths, were Raelyn's things. "You can ask them if you want. I'll be there to bleed them."

Raelyn nodded, mentally preparing a character in her mind. She imagined a woman, begging, pleading with the men who had robbed her. She considered the kinds of poses the woman might perform. What would she feel? Desperation. She slackened her shoulders and forced herself to cry a tear by thinking of her brother.

She approached the hooligans who had robbed her, timidly. She spoke in a soft voice, "Sirs." One of the Argonians shot up, glaring at Raelyn. "What do you want wench?" 

Another piped in, "I think it's the one we robbed."

Raelyn started sobbing, "I've come back because...that lute and talisman were given to me by me grandfather." she said, adopting an extremely rural accent, "And they hold sentimental value to me. I came here to buy them back." She produced a pouch of coin, worth about 150 septims. "I begged about and dug into my bread fund, but..." 

The closest Argonian snatched the pouch. He laughed, "Why, thanks for the coin miss. Why should we bother to give you your property?"

"Because, it'll be your head I'm wearing instead of this bear's." Solveig sauntered up, seemingly without a care and cast a glance across the gathering of lizards before her. She could see it in their eyes- or a lack of it. A lack of what she saw in Rorik Four-Faces, or Folki Pierce-Neck, as they stepped into the Circle with her. A will to see violence through to its ultimate end. "A fair exchange, ain't it? Coin for your things there."

The closest Argonian, apparently the lead by mob vote, hesitated, "I mean, I could..." another Argonian placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered something into his ear. "Right." the lead Argonian said. "Fuck it, take your things. They aren't worth shit anyways." he grabbed the lute and medallion from the fire and roughly chucked them to Raelyn, who by her credit acted like she was surprised by this action, barely catching them.

Raelyn said, "Thank you, I will pray to Stendarr of your fortunes!" 

She hurried off, looking over her shoulder as if nervous, followed by Solveig. Solveig could not help but to look back at the Argonians watching them leave. An odd and worrying pull to turn back around was shaken from her mind as she sped up her pace to catch back up with Raelyn. "So, this letter..." She shook her head, "Will it work? How does it work?"

Raelyns turned back to the serious demeanor of someone who dealt with issues that concerned her country said, "I will contact my commander, who will ask every investigator under his command to look for your father. He will ask other commanders to ask their investigators to look for your father. Eventually, I hope, one investigator will confirm his location. Then, a group of Inspectors, also known as Spectres, will search the likely area for him. Alive or dead." She looked to Solveig, frowning, "I'm sure he will be fine. The Armigers haven't killed their prisoners."

"It is not the Armigers I am worried about." Her tongue flicked across the notch in her lip, a constant and everlasting reminder of what the Kamal had almost done to her. She shook her head, "The ways of spies are beyond me. I will leave the uncovering of my father's fate to you. It's out of my hands."

After a time, letting the sound of their footsteps and her breathing fill the silence between them, Solveig spoke up, "Who are you? What are you?" She asked, "The bumbling bard getting drunk in the tavern, the bloodied woman in those Dwemer ruins... She is nowhere to be found in the eyes of who I'm with now."

Raelyn laughed, heartily and sincerely, "I'm both not and all of those things. It is easier to act with some truth to yourself. I was sincerely panicked about dying in the dwemer ruins. I was actually drunk in the tavern and my opinions on Gordos music were true. I am an Imperial citizen, loyal to the end." She frowned, looking Solveig in the eyes, "I act...less directed, than I am. I know what I want. I want the Empire to succeed. I want to help its citizens, even going against the White-Gold Concordat. I sincerely appreciate your help in the Dwemer ruins. I..." she frowned, "I don't know even if what I'm doing now is enough. You saved me from death. For that, I will do anything."

Solveig could not help but to look inquisitively at the Imperial woman before her. It was as if the bumbling damsel had melted away and been replaced by whoever this was overnight. To be honest, she was almost a little disappointed in the revelation Raelyn was not all she seemed. "I'd no idea there was so much to you." She let out an amused huff through her nostrils, "But that is the point of a spy, I'd think."

Raelyn walked over and threw an arm over Solveigs shoulder, "You know, I've taken to it that the point of a spy is to pierce, through wit and patience; lies and concealment. Why, I've heard it said..."

[hr]

"HEY." Doomfist, the massive 8 foot tall muscle orc shouted at the top of his lungs, towards the ceiling where he thought his Kamal captors were hiding. "LET ME OUT. I KNOW WHERE MEAT IS. I STASHED A WHOLE BOX OF MEAT UNDER A WILLOW TREE OUTSIDE OF WINDHELM."

Zelzibel, a diminutive Bosmer in rags somehow worse for wear than Doomfists shit encrusted trousers, frantically added a human tooth to the mixture of piss, shit, one of her whole fingernails, and the hair of a wolf she had been brewing in her bucket toilet. She grinned, stirring the mixture with a tightly woven straw stick she'd made out of her own bed. "This!" she shouted. "Will allow me to break the bonds of the cell with my bare hands! You laughed, said I was crazy! But you'll see! You'll all see when I crawl out of here, shivving Kamal as I go! I will be the new Captain and I will sell you to all to the Dunmer!"

A guard's metal tankard slammed against the barred window of Doomfist and Zel's cell, "Would you two [i]shut the fuck up?[/i]" He said from behind the door, not showing his face lest he catch spit or shit, or piss in the eye like the last guard who decided to peek inside. "I've been posted here for the last six hours and have had to listen to you loud pieces of- shit!"

A scuffle was heard behind the door, with almost-childlike chuckles coming from a voice so deep it sounded disturbing. "Fuck! Fuck, shit, Gods! Gods! Guards! Guar-gurgh!"

The dreadful snapping of bones was heard with a wheezing. Then the guard's head appeared in the barred window of Zel and Doomfist's cell, before leaning back and seemingly slamming itself so hard into the bars it dented the metal with the sound of the wet cracking of Dunmer skull and a harsh, hacking, disturbed laugh. The eyes had bulged out of their sockets and the guard's jaw was slack in his mutilated face, tongue lolling about before the guard crumpled to the ground. The next thing to happen was for the sound of the door's locks disengaging and the door swinging open. A tower of a man almost comparable to Doomfist in heighth and breadth with a great red beard and tangled mess of crimson cascading from his head stood in the doorway.

He took a step forward, a smile almost as mad as Zel's upon his bleeding lips as he knelt in front of Doomfist, "Do they deem you dangerous, green-skin?"

Doomfist nodded happily, rising to his feet, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "THEY CAUGHT ME BECAUSE I WAS USING A NORD GUARD AS A BATTERING RAM TO BREAK INTO THE BEER CELLAR OF CANDLEHEARTH. THE MAN BROKE TOO EASILY, SO I HAD TO USE A TABLE INSTEAD."

Zel stopped prying the teeth out of a human skeleton in the cell to dive towards the dunmer Jorwen had so favorably dropped into their cell. She lifted it by the hair and used her other hand to tear out one eye, dropping it into her mixture bucket and then, after a moments thought, removed the other eye and added it to the mixture.

"S'pose I don't have to waste the breath asking you, 'uh?" Jorwen said, looking upon the rat-like woman squatting over a macabre task. He took in the orc one last time and nodded, "You'll do."

Doomfist's shackles fell away from his wrists before Zel's arms were yanked from her task by Jorwen's boulders called fists and her own binds were removed. "Get the hells up. We're killing our way out of here."

Zel quickly ran to the dead guard, grabbed his tankard, and dipped it into the horrible, ill-advised concoction she had made. She laughed madly, screaming incoherently in Bosmeris, then drank the mixture, drop for drop. For a moment, it seemed that her muscles were actually growing. This quickly changed however, when her muscles began rippling, blood pouring from her pores, then her eyes, then her mouth. Her hair grew longer, then, when the worse seemed to have ended, she fell to the floor, vomiting blood. A black gem rolled out of her sleeves, shortly pulsating a faint light.

Doomfist grimaced, "IS...IS SHE DEAD? FINALLY?"

"Of fucking course." Jorwen grimaced at Zel's lifeless body, "I free it and it kills itself."

Doomfist said, excitedly, "OH THANK TRINIMAC. I CAN FINALLY SLEEP WITH MY TROUSERS OFF. I CAN WRITE MY BALLAD, DOOMFIST IS GREAT IN PEACE. I CAN-"

Zels body twitched. 

Doomfist jerked back, screaming, "COVER YOUR EYES, SHE ALWAYS GOES FOR THE EYES!"

Zels body twitched again. Then, a white light entered her eyes for a moment and she spasmed. Her skin seemed to regain color, as if blood was being made at a rapid pace in her body. Her eyes opened, slowly. Then she shot onto all fours, growling. He growled first at Jorwen, then at Doomfist who was currently covering his eyes with his gigantic lion paw hands. Then she whimpered when Jorwen gave her a terrible look.

Zel sniffed at the air, her upper lip curling and letting go a growl before she sat back on her haunches and sprang from the room and down the halls. Jorwen watched her go, running his fingers through his beard, "What in all the hells..."