[i]Dear Father,

I find myself in Wayrest now, and what a pitiful slum it has become. I am ashamed to confess to have found safest lodgings in the upstairs room of a brothel. 

My journey here was immemorable, I have found myself the observer of a curious company of mercenaries, managed by a Nord gentleman whom I know only as Gustav. How it is that he has come to manage such a group of individuals remains to be seen. There is no order to be found, and from the little I have observed so far, a worryingly high turnover of underlings. It seems that this Gustav can be trusted only so far as he can be thrown. Judging by his stature, likely not far. 

The exploits of his company are about the only entertainment I will allow myself to enjoy. I remain ever vigilant, as always, of that which would threaten us.

I hope to return to our home soon, but who knows where the winds of change will carry me.

Yours,[/i]

[hr]

A backwashed current of people was huddling over the bent and broken spine of Wayrest, feet dragging over the cobblestoned vertebrae. A stark and cold relentlessness in dismal gray light.

Relyssa watched the seemingly endless string of poverty trailing though the maze of the city — from checkpoint to checkpoint as they hurried before curfew. Parasitical. 

Her impenetrable gaze pointed down from behind the smudged and grime-slicked glass of her window. She was witness to the hunched and somehow sharp shape of a man in torn hempen clothing as he broke free from the sorrowed march to hock his phlegm to the ground, into a puddle of excrement and water and dirt that sloshed around in a dip in the path. Relyssa pictured the spittle falling in its viscous entirety to land with a dense splash into the putrid wastewater of Gustav’s sewer. 

The mournful disease of defeat had filtered into the ground. Entrenched itself there and formed with what had been, then it drained into the soil that the plants took their life from. No wonder the colours of the flowers were so muted here, so pale, so diluted. Vibrancy had been stolen from them and in its place was simple uniformity. 

The Breton could barely hear the sound of the streets at all. Either side of her was the music of lovemaking, only it was off-key. The womanly chirps of pleasure were sensationally fake, and the men were too involved in having their egos [i](amongst other things)[/i] stroked that they didn’t seem to realise. Power was power, and in the rooms they held the power. Cradling women in the iron grip of their lust and impetuous desire. A septim or two from their purse to feel like Gods for a mere few minutes. The crescendo was so dissatisfying and shallow that it nauseated her. There was no intimacy to be found in transaction. For why did women choose to make these men feel so special? 

[i]They did not deserve it.[/i]

Would Alim be trading a coin of his own this evening for the fleeting shadow of power to fill him? No, she thought, a finger stroking the brass of her goblet. He’d be where he was supposed to be. The exit point of the sewer. 

When it came time for the silence between clients, Relyssa closed the curtain of her room, sipping from the glass of wine she’d found herself. A surprisingly deep red that, at room temperature, perfumed the air around her and pushed back the scent of sex as long as she held it in close proximity to her nose. As long as she held the taste in her mouth, the rising tide of impecuniousness could be held back by the smokescreen of her own opulence. 

Behind closed doors, she let her anger and her true simmering rage seep out. It was the sight of her bare finger that made her so indignant. A persuasive word had not been enough — the emerald fastened in the centre of a custom-made gold band had been the next best thing. 

Where gold bought men their feeling of power, it simply kept perversion from her door. Had she not have had the emerald, would she have been the woman on her back? Crying to the Divines in praise of a man for his less than mediocre performance?

She remembered his face— the guard, she remembered the foul words that he had so boldly whispered in her ear, his breath thick with ale that was fighting against his extreme halitosis. His teeth were black and rotted in the back of his mouth, his slack-jawed laugh had said as much. Relyssa assumed that sickness had taken him. How could it not in this city of depraved indulgence? 

Not today, and most likely not tomorrow either... But she would get her ring back. She’d seize her power back from him, one way or another. It would be her grip, and her desire that would win over. Relyssa was judicious in her pursuit for revenge — even revenge as petty as this.

And so the tired song began its encore.