Hank

Attack of the Gif

GUILD NEWS // Issue #1, June 2018

hows my fam doin?

nadie asks how mahz is doin, just where mahz is :(

@Mahz

I'll do you one better: why is Mahz?

Mass Effect: Sinless

Kyo Zhang

Name: Kyo Zhang.
Species: Human.
Gender: Male.
Age: 32.

Homeworld: Shanxi.

Appearance:

Picture

A very typical human of Asian descent, Kyo stands at 5’8” and has an athletic build that seems to be made specifically for speed and dexterity. His skin is light and almost Caucasian in complexion but its slight hue makes his race unmistakable when combined with the rest of his features. His body appears to be in good shape for a mercenary; he has only a few scars, none major, and Kyo’s smooth skin, trimmed nails and immaculately groomed body hair indicate his vanity and the pride he takes in his appearance.

Kyo’s face has an almost permanently austere look to it, even when he is amused or delighted, owing to the raptorian arch of his brow, the lines beneath his eyes and the way his lips naturally purse together. His eyes are narrow, sharp and as black as his hair, giving them an inscrutable and keen quality at all times. Speaking of his hair, Kyo wears it in a simple style, longer on top of his head and trimmed shorter on the sides, that he sweeps back out of his face. It has a healthy sheen and lustre to it and appears to be just as well cared for as the rest of his body. There are no visible scars or blemishes on his face, leaving the overall impression of Kyo that of a meticulous and capable professional that does not take unnecessary risks or put himself in harm’s way all that often.

His movement and speech would support that notion. Kyo is inherently graceful and agile, carrying himself with the deliberation and restraint of a gymnast -- or a killer. He speaks in short, clipped tones and with as few words as possible to get his point across, but that does not mean he is averse to talking. His flexibility and core strength allow him to sit in strange, seemingly uncomfortable positions that are perfectly manageable for him and Kyo likes to seat himself on top of something, be it a table, a closet or a support beam, to gain the high ground in conversation.

His casual clothes are simple and comfortable, mostly harem pants and plain t-shirts, making them equally suitable for relaxation and exercise. Kyo’s battledress, however, is a stylish ensemble of black leather trimmed with yellow that he wears over the ceramic plating of his combat hardsuit. The inside of the popped collar of his jacket and the embroidered sash he wears diagonally across his chest are decorated in gold thread over a soft yellow background. His helmet is matte black and features a single narrow and horizontal yellow visor that is reminiscent of the helmets worn by the participants of Earth’s Urban Combat Championship League. Unlike the bulky suits of armor worn by Soldiers, Kyo’s gear is lightweight and flexible enough for him to wear it practically every time he leaves his quarters or has to be seen in public. This is by design; the look is part of his trademark.

Biography: Born on Shanxi five years before the First Contact War with the turians, Kyo was the only child of a very typical pair of colonists; his father Yaoru and his mother Sakura. Yaoru worked in construction and Sakura as a nurse in one of the colony’s health clinics. They were already in their late thirties when they finally managed to conceive a child and Kyo was hailed as a blessing and a miracle. He was doted upon by his entire family and never wanted for anything. The colony was prosperous and it looked like humanity’s dreams amongst the stars were going to be realized without much trouble.

Until the turians arrived, of course. Shanxi was besieged and the Zhang family found themselves having to seek refuge in the bomb shelters amidst the turian fleet leveling entire city blocks just to kill single squads of Marines. Kyo’s uncle, Shinto, took up arms against the turian invaders and participated in the guerilla war against the turians on the ground. He was not an Alliance Marine and operated as a rogue element. He was the older brother of Yaoru and carried a legacy with him that could be traced back to the family’s distant origins in Asia on Earth. The discovery of the Prothean technology on Mars and the Mass Relay inside Chaurus suddenly propelled humanity into the stars but it also prompted a wave of retrospection among colonists, learning about and identifying with their Earthly heritage before departing for worlds unknown. Simply put Shinto had become a trained warrior in the ancient Oriental style, his skills with the blade enhanced with modern technology that rendered him invisible and gave his swords tremendous killing power. He stalked the battlefields of Shanxi as a lone wolf, anathema to the disciplined and organized way that the turians waged warfare, striking from the shadows at officers and snipers before slipping away and living to fight another day. He continued this practice even when General Williams surrendered and despite the turians’ best efforts, Shinto was never caught. His distinctive appearance, characterized by an ochre sash around his torso, was passed on to turian command by the few witnesses that Shinto left behind and he became known as the Yellow Death among the occupying force -- a much hated and reviled foe.

In the final days of the turian occupation an orbital strike destroyed the shelter where Kyo’s grandparents sought refuge and they were among the dead. Enraged, Shinto visited Yaoru, Sakura and Kyo and told them that he intended to fight the turians until his death and that he would likely never see them again. Yaoru, unwilling to lose another family member to the aliens, managed to talk him out of it -- but only barely. Shinto stayed with them, buried his gear to hide all incriminating evidence of his activity as the Yellow Death, and quietly fumed.

Life went back to normal as well as it possibly could once the Council intervened and brokered peace between the humans and the turians. Shinto was never able to let go of his anger, something that Yaoru saw, and as Kyo grew older his father told him not to listen too closely to his uncle. Yaoru thought that Shinto’s ideas and emotions were dangerous and he did not want his son to get mixed up in that. Kyo, however, grew up to see Shinto as a war hero and he was swiftly imprinted with an undying fascination for his uncle’s exploits. Yaoru tried to hide them from Kyo, but he learned the truth from others -- among them his mother, Sakura, who secretly admired Shinto for his actions and his ferocity and resented the turians deeply for the death of Kyo’s grandparents.

Inevitably, as Kyo grew older, he found himself seeking out his uncle despite his father’s warnings and asked to be told about Shinto’s experience in the First Contact War… and, while his heart raced with the audacity of his request, to be taught the same skills. Shinto rebuked him, hot anger flashing in his eyes, saying that the boy had no business asking such questions and should focus on his academic education instead to become a doctor like Yaoru wanted. Kyo insisted, emboldened by the refusal, saying that Shinto had no right to withhold the skills inspired by their heritage -- his heritage, too. Shinto remained silent for a minute before he began to laugh. Kyo was right.

And so it was to be. Yaoru was kept in the dark with Sakura’s aid while Kyo and Shinto retrieved his hidden blades from their underground stash and found a place to practice in a disused storage hangar. Kyo’s studies were to be equal parts martial and technological in nature, as the modern shinobi of the 22nd century had to incorporate bleeding edge developments into their arsenal to be successful. But Shinto introduced an unexpected third element into the curriculum: philosophy. His wrath against the turians had almost made him forget the most important parts of his teachings, Shinto told Kyo, and he had been close to losing his way. It was essential that Kyo was never to make the same mistake, or the combat skills that Shinto was to teach him would surely only lead him to death and ruin. Kyo struggled with this part. He failed to see the importance of long and boring hours of meditation and he did not grasp the meaning behind Shinto’s insistence on the strength of balance and tranquility. Was violence and combat not the domain of the incensed and the furious, Kyo thought? Discipline was important, yes, but as a tool to focus such emotions, not to negate them. No, Shinto said, time and time again. A killer was at his most dangerous when he felt nothing at all.

Yaoru was disappointed that his son did not pursue the opportunity to become a doctor and instead wasted his time studying hydroponics and horticulture. It was an easy enough education for Kyo to be able to dedicate several hours every week to training with Shinto. Many years passed this way. His busy schedule left Kyo little time for friends or romance and he was always considered a bit of an outsider by his peers, and aloof too, as if he knew something that they didn’t and it made him better. Shinto tried to get rid of this slight arrogant streak but he failed and was eventually forced to accept that that was how Kyo was. The boy was simply determined to be devoid of humility.

Kyo became a man, graduated from his class (with mediocre grades, but Sakura was swayed to forge a diploma with distinction) and when he was 20 years old, Shinto abruptly said that he was ready. Kyo naturally and easily gave himself over to meditation, voluntarily spending an hour each day before bed perched on the roof of his family’s hab, looking out over Shanxi and thinking about nothing at all. His skills with the monomolecular blades were such that he could consistently beat his uncle in a duel. And last but not least, he became capable enough with the omni-tool that his tinkering had resulted in an even stronger Tech Shield than the ability Shinto possessed. But a student does not become a real shinobi until his skills are put to the test.

At the end of a serious ritual that involved a lot of incense and meditation, Shinto handed over all of his gear to Kyo and informed him of a “job opening” with a local real estate development corporation that sought to increase its influence over Shanxi. Evidently, Kyo’s uncle was well-connected. Shinto guided Kyo remotely as he entered the world of corporate espionage, breaking into dark offices after hours to hack server farms and virtual private networks to scour them for dirt on the corporation’s competitors. The turf war of Shanxi, hitherto unknown to Kyo, was a fierce competition waged out of the public eye as multiple entities had sought to capitalize on the rebuilding efforts that were necessary after the First Contact War and still continued into the year of 2172. Shinto seemed unduly interested in this corporate kerfuffle, Kyo thought, but he could not deny the sizable paychecks he received for each successful operation. His swords remained sheathed as Shinto reminded him that lethal force was inelegant when it was unnecessary and Kyo avoided the security guards and the local police forces instead. They were innocent bystanders.

Matters escalated quickly and suddenly when Shinto gave Kyo a small device with instructions to place it within the walls of his client corporation’s head office. Kyo had gained the trust of the director with his exemplary results and was free to come and go as he pleased -- which he did often enough for briefing and debriefing. Shinto explained that he had discovered a pattern in the information Kyo retrieved but refused to explain the details until he had received confirmation from the corporation’s own data bank. Kyo, trusting his uncle, complied. Shinto called him a day later, clearly furious, and relayed a series of discoveries to Kyo -- the corporation’s director had been acting as a proxy for turian interests that sought to undermine the human rebuilding effort on Shanxi, seemingly out of spite. Shinto demanded that Kyo wet his blades for the first time and ordered the director’s death. Simmering resentment against the turians for what they had done to Shanxi drove Kyo to obey without question and he struck against the unsuspecting director the very next night in his own office. Kyo stabbed him through the heart from behind before quickly wiping the security camera footage and vanishing in thin air, only to disappear without a trace.

The murder made headlines and the corporation’s various competitors were accused, as news of the data breaches they had suffered leaked to the press and a motive for a retaliatory strike seemed evident. Kyo followed the news closely, dismayed to see that the assassination of the director had essentially achieved the alleged goal of the turians and created discord within Shanxi’s communities. The cogs in his head began to turn and Kyo set his sights on Shinto himself, convinced that there was something his uncle wasn’t telling him. The student turned his master’s own skills against him by tracking down his uncle’s hideout when Kyo knew that Shinto was meeting friends at the bar. He broke into his personal computer and discovered a very ugly truth: there had never been any turian interests. The assassination of the director had simply been another contract and Shinto had reaped the rewards in Kyo’s name without ever putting himself in danger. Clearly, Shinto lied about having almost lost his way and Kyo struggled to keep his fury from overcoming him. Every emotion that raged in his heart told him to kill his uncle in the name of revenge, and paradoxically everything that Shinto had taught him told Kyo to keep his cool and deal with this matter calmly and professionally. Kyo settled for downloading all the evidence to his omni-tool for the time being and after two days filled with meditation and reflection, Kyo knew what he wanted to do.

Using the information he had recovered from Shinto’s computer, he outed him as the mastermind behind the director’s assassination while keeping himself anonymous by sending carefully curated versions of the files to the colony’s security forces via dead drop courier delivery. He almost threw away the armor and its distinctive yellow sash that Shinto had given him, but Kyo had to admit that, once his anger had subsided, he admired Shinto’s audacity and he decided to keep it as a reminder to respect the threat that others could pose. In a way, he felt that he had earned the right to take up the mantle of the Yellow Death after outwitting his uncle and seeing him sentenced to life in prison. But he was definitely determined never to be controlled like that again. Kyo kissed his family farewell, claiming that he was leaving to pursue a career in horticulture on the colonies of the Attican Traverse, and set off for the stars of the Terminus Systems instead. He knew he had the skills and the guts to carve out a niche for himself as a freelancing thief, assassin and stealth warrior. And so he did.

Amidst a long career of odd jobs and missions completed comfortably on the fringe of galactic society and out of the public eye, the first most notable event was Kyo’s involvement in the Skyllian Blitz and its aftermath. He was still not an Alliance soldier and certainly had no intentions of signing up, but human colonists paid well for ragtag teams of mercenaries to act as their defense force against rogue pirates and slavers while the Alliance Navy was focused on fighting the bulk of the batarian forces elsewhere. This was Kyo’s first taste of real combat instead of corporate espionage. The initial shock of the brutality and sensory overload (war was loud) wore off as Kyo learned to put his specific set of skills to use on the battlefield. He was, more so than any other member of his team, uniquely suited to hunting down and taking out important threats like snipers and combat engineers that operated at the fringes of the combat zone or just behind the heat of the firefight itself. He had no qualms with killing batarians, vorcha and other alien species and found a grim satisfaction in knowing that he was now truly following in Shinto’s footsteps as the Yellow Death. It was during this time that Kyo modified his twinned pair of monomolecular swords to carry a potent electrical current to replicate the effects of Disruptor ammunition, allowing him to slice through personal shields while the singularly sharp edge of the blades themselves sank deep within the weak points of his enemy’s armor. It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, however; Kyo was wounded during his fourth proper firefight when he unexpectedly found himself bested in melee combat by a batarian with an overcharged omni-blade and Kyo had to be rescued by his allies. Where Shinto had consistently failed, Kyo now finally learned a lesson in humility and his cockiness was taken down a notch.

After the Blitz was well and truly over and the Alliance Navy had finished its retribution against the batarians, Kyo continued to operate in relative obscurity, avoiding allegiance with any of the major criminal syndicates while working for them and many other clients. If he had a reputation, it was one of true neutrality, discretion and effectiveness. He mostly took jobs that allowed him to work alone, from the shadows, but he found himself as part of a fireteam every so often -- there was no escaping that part of the job. Truthfully, he didn’t mind. Life was good and Kyo picked up the habit of sending a portion of his earned credits back home to his parents on Shanxi, who had adopted an orphan after Kyo left the nest and could definitely use the extra money. Like so many other freelance mercs, his base of operations became Omega but Kyo ranged widely throughout the galaxy, even dipping into Citadel space for clandestine operations on occasion. However, it seemed his luck was not meant to last forever...

Psychological Profile: While Kyo is stubborn and hot-blooded by nature, he has learned to overcome these traits through the power of meditation and philosophy, tempering the flare of his personality with an innering ability to keep his cool in stressful situations and his mind clear when it would otherwise be plagued by anger or doubt. Despite the betrayal Kyo suffered at his hands later in life, his uncle Shinto was a defining part of his formative years and the lessons he taught Kyo have become an integral part of who he is today. He seeks comfort and wisdom within the ancient teachings of eastern philosophers from Earth and lives his life according their tenets, just like his uncle taught him. However, Shinto also affected him negatively. Kyo is slow to trust and values his freedom and personal agency so highly that he has never stuck with a single employer, benefactor or romantic interest since leaving Shanxi, nor does he have many friends. He finds solace and satisfaction in his work and continues to hone his skills -- there is not much else he knows how to do.

In interpersonal relations, Kyo is both polite and reserved. He is quick to judge others for displays of excess and lack of restraint but he appreciates people who know what they’re about and can keep their head in the game when it matters. He has a soft spot for asari after a few flings, whereas his deep-seated racism against turians, and more recently batarians, has a habit of slipping through his mask of etiquette and good manners. If and when Kyo does warm up to someone, he is a dependable ally but it remains very difficult to get him to open up about himself. He loves having long, deep and meaningful conversations with the people that he likes about their beliefs, motivations and inner struggles, and he is very good at listening or giving sage advice, but he carefully avoids conversations about his own past with practically everybody -- it takes a lot of trust for him to delve into that. Kyo believes that telling people about his homeworld, his family or the way Shinto manipulated him gives them power over him and that thought is too frightening to entertain.

He shows affection or interest with small, attentive gestures and non-verbal communication since he is not much of a smooth talker. In fact, when he has to speak quickly due to circumstances or is involved in a group conversation, Kyo is quietly flustered and uncomfortable. This forces him to be curt and direct and he becomes oblivous to the subtleties of what other people are saying or the immediate impact of his words. When he has time to think about what to say and he feels relaxed, Kyo often speaks in metaphors and riddles that are open to interpretation and are designed to help his conversational partner with their own problems. He is perceptive and empathic, but not at a moment's notice.

He believes strongly in the virtues of inner balance and tranquility and will, whenever necessary, retreat within himself to straighten out that which is crooked before re-emerging, steadfast and whole. Kyo is not strongly affected by trauma or feelings of pain and regret for this reason, moving on quickly from losses, though he does sometimes cringe at himself (hours after the fact) when he realizes that he said the wrong thing. It could be argued that he does not properly process the things that happen to him and instead buries them so deep that they effectively disappear, which could be tied to his extreme reluctance to talk about his past. An asari psychologist that Kyo briefly dated suggested that he might be on the autistic spectrum and that he is compensating for his emotionally stunted development with wisdom from the philosophers of ages past. The truth could be somewhere in the middle, but who knows?

Class: Infiltrator.

Abilities:

• Tactical Cloak
• Tech Armor
• Incinerate
• Electric Slash

Equipment:

• Two monomolecular blades, matte black and slightly curved, fitted with power-cells that generate a strong electrical current along the edge and the tip of the blades that replicates the effect of Disruptor ammunition.
• M-6 Carnifex fitted with a pistol scope.
• Modified suit of Light Mercenary Armor with a custom helmet worn beneath a leather ensemble, with the emphasis on mobility and shields.

Strengths:

• Focus and stability are the name of the game for Kyo and it is borderline impossible to get him to flinch. When he has set his sights on something (or someone), he does not waver until the task is done.
• His skills in the martial and blade-dancing arts make him a dextrous and agile fighter, even in a suit of light armor, and Kyo is a vicious nightmare in melee combat.
• Years of corporate espionage, theft and assassinations have made him a skilled hacker of security systems, locks, computers and everything in-between.

Weaknesses:

• Kyo’s personality does not lend itself well for diplomacy or charm and he should not be relied on to squeeze information out of someone gently or to haggle for a better price -- unless he has hours of time at his disposal.
• While perceptive and intelligent, the above weakness comes back to bite him in the ass in another way sometimes, as Kyo can be blindsided by people that are socially conniving and elegant with words. Kyo has to concentrate and think hard about what he's being told to avoid oblivously missing the point or saying the wrong thing. This is why he prefers to say as little as possible when he isn't in a comfortable situation.
• He does not get along with turians, batarians or vorcha. Bad blood. It is beyond his own skill at detachment from earthly woes to let that go and it can affect his decision-making in the field.
• Kyo considers ranged combat to be unsightly, inelegant and ultimately unreliable, and is significantly less useful in a fight if he cannot get in range to use his swords. He’s a decent shot with his Carnifex but that’s about it. The man lives and dies by the sword. Literally.

Misc:

• Unlike most other mercenaries, Kyo lives a frugal lifestyle and instead invests his extra credits (after regular expenses and sending money back home) in a diversified stock portfolio. He can be regularly found musing over the extranet stock market during any downtime.

Mass Effect: Sinless

I've got a turian soldier demolitions expert who has a grenade launcher, heavy pistol, and a shotgun with explosive rounds plus a bunch of explosive-based powers. He also is horribly prejudiced against humans, quarians, batarians, and krogan.

Kyo carefully picks locks. Ardan negates the entire door.

@Dervish

They clash in basically every way possible and I love it already.

Mass Effect: Sinless

My CS is currently under construction and will be delivered ASAP. For people currently mulling over their character's traits, here's mine: Kyo Zhang, human Infiltrator, wields monomolecular blades instead of a sniper rifle. Emphasis on Tactical Cloak, Tech Armor and heavy melee damage. Proficient hacker of security systems, computers, door locks, etc. Essentially Kai Leng if he wasn't obnoxious.

(I was unaware of Kai Leng's existence when I came up with Kyo because I never got around to playing through ME3. I should really fix that...)

The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep

A SHADOW FALLS

14th of Midyear, 4E208
Governor’s Palace, Gilane, Hammerfell
_{One of @Father Hank and @Dervish’s finest creations}

The palace was under attack.

Kzindhra had hastily slipped into his armor and grabbed his rifle as soon as the news and the call to arms had come, but he had the misfortune of having been relieving himself when it did. As such, the young Dwemer guard was the last out the door and found himself alone in the spacious corridors of the palace, following the noise of the marching ahead of him, just out of sight around the next corner. He thought he could hear sounds of combat too, from further away -- it sounded like magic, or Daedra. Kzindhra muttered a curse under his breath. Perhaps it was just his imagination. They had all been nervous ever since the terrorists had ramped up their activity and he had been privately anxious about a counter-attack on the palace ever since their leader, the Khajiit, had been arrested and contained within. Now it seemed that the time had come.

It worried him, gnawing away at his confidence. Kzindhra had to admit to himself that he had never been very courageous. Brave enough to be a guard in what was supposed to be a peaceful occupation… but this? He had friends out there; now, by the gate, but also previously on the streets. Some of them were already dead. He remembered when he got the news that Mzalk had died when a prison transport had been attacked. Stabbed right through the neck with a spear, apparently. He never stood a chance. He cursed again, purposefully this time -- cursing the insurgents and the terrorists who simply couldn’t accept that the Dwemer had returned and who refused to learn how to co-exist. It didn’t have to be like this. It simply didn’t have to be like this.

Behind him, something appeared to materialize out of thin air.

Everything went white as his head was grabbed from behind and smashed against the wall. Kzindhra instinctively reached for the sword at his belt, his eyes screwed up and his jaw hanging slack, trying to speak, to yell, to raise the alarm. “Wha--” he managed before his legs gave away beneath him and he slid down against the wall. Or he would have, if it weren’t for something, someone, holding him in place, pinning him against the bronze surface with great strength.

“No, no--”

Blinding pain rang through his skull again, and again, and he tried to regain his footing but his polished boots slipped uselessly on the floor. He felt something hot and wet running down the back of his neck and his hands reached out to defend himself, grasping at his assailant, feeling only leather and steel. His eyes finally cooperated and he saw a swimming vision through the pain, the silhouette of the enemy: a man, cloaked and armored.

Dressed entirely in black.

The man’s mailed fist rammed into Kzindhra’s face. He felt and heard his nose break and his lips split and he immediately tasted blood. He was reeling, everything was spinning, and his arms spasmed with the concussion of the blow. “Pleath, no,” he whimpered through broken teeth, gagging on the blood, eyes screwed up.

He couldn’t see but through the ringing in his hears he heard the familiar metal rasp of a weapon being slid out of its sheath. It was over. They were already inside. Rourken had to--

The dagger slit his throat. The agony was overwhelming. Kzindhra’s mind seized up as he felt the blood gushing out of him, cascading over his chest and his arms. He tried to speak, to breathe, raw instinct fighting against the inevitable, but he couldn’t. Everything was spinning so fast, coming from so far away, and he felt so cold…

Kzindhra slid down against the wall, leaving a trail of blood, and collapsed onto his side. His limbs twitched with his dying throes but after a few seconds he went still, the only sound that remained being the blood dripping on the floor.

Gregor Sibassius towered over him and looked down on him with nothing but contempt. His eyes were two black pits of coal, his baleful gaze being the only visible part of his features; the rest of his face was hidden behind his scarf, the hood of his cloak was up and every other inch of him was covered in armor and clothing. He sheathed his dagger and slowly reached up with his right hand to pull his claymore from his back and prepared a spell in his left hand. Gregor let the cerulean magic swirl between his fingers for a second, admiring its intensity, before it reached out like a chain and hooked itself in Kzindhra’s chest, lifting the dead Dwemer to his feet, a puppet on its strings. The strength of death animated his limbs and he pulled the sword from its sheath without difficulty now, looking ahead with vacant, glowing eyes. His slit throat did not seem to bother him anymore.

“One,” Gregor said.

The two of them set off down the empty corridor together with purposeful strides. Gregor remembered the general direction of the throne room from his last visit with Raelynn and Daro’Vasora, but the specifics escaped him now. He glanced at Kzindhra’s walking corpse and briefly lamented the fact that he could not ask him the way; zombies retained the skills and abilities they had possessed in life and they took mental orders without hesitation, but there was no way to communicate a question like that to him, or for him to answer. However, he did remember the balcony that looked out over Gilane, which meant that the throne room wasn’t on the ground floor. Finding one of the machine-operated lifts was a priority.

Gregor’s path led him away from the outer walls of the palace and towards its core. The party’s plan was clearly working; he did not encounter another living soul for minutes, the only sounds being the heavy footfalls of Gregor’s and Kzindhra’s boots and the distant noise of battle. It was impossible to tell where exactly it was coming from or to divine how the battle was going. The palace was large and many of its wings had purposes unto themselves. Casting glances at the half-open doors he passed as he walked Gregor figured that he was moving through an administrative section, judging by the desks with inkwells and quills apparently abandoned in all haste. Perhaps the scribes had been evacuated when the attack began. As the minutes passed he began to feel unease and the diffuse lighting of the blue lamps with their indeterminate power source that were so typical of Dwemeri architecture took on an ominous quality. He had expected more resistance. The lack of foes made his path easier so far but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was only going to make things harder for him later on. Life had a way of equalizing such things, he found.

However, when he rounded another corner Gregor rather abruptly came face to face with three Dwemer and, absurdly, he was almost relieved. Whether they had been guarding something or were on their way elsewhere Gregor couldn’t tell in the split second before they reached for their weapons but they were clearly more surprised to see him than he was to see them, and he reacted faster. Two of the Dwemer raised their rifles at him but Gregor had already mentally directed Kzindhra to block their line of sight with his body. The painfully loud discharge of the weapons being fired echoed through the hallway and Kzindhra convulsed with the impacts of the bullets. Knowing that their mysterious ranged weapons could not fire in rapid succession, Gregor, safe and sound after being shielded by his zombie, drew upon his magicka and a shimmering purple oval appeared in the midst of the three Dwemer guards before he dashed out from behind his elven meat-shield.

The Wrathman, its immense strength further fortified by the conjuration potion that Raelynn had made for Gregor, struck down one of the very alarmed Dwemer with a single swing of its massive battleaxe, caving in her chestplate and sending a guttural spray arcing through the hallway. Her rifle clattered to the floor and she was thrown back by the force of the blow, smacking against the wall with a sickening crunch. The other two Dwemer backed away, fear poisoning their minds and slowing their reactions, and Gregor fell upon them, giving them no time to recover. One of them only managed to tear his eyes off the hulking Wrathman just in time to see the flash of Gregor’s claymore before it buried itself in his neck. Lightning sizzled and sparked and the spasming Dwemer fell backwards almost comically after Gregor pulled his sword free, the current of electricity coursing through his body keeping his limbs as stiff as a board. Blood gushed out of the grievous wound at alarming speed and he stared up at the ceiling wide-eyed and uncomprehending as he died.

That only left one Dwemer standing. His eyes flitted furtively from Gregor, to the Wrathman, to his dead comrades and back again, fury and terror writ upon his face in equal measure. “Monster!” he yelled, voice close to breaking, echoing the word that the Redguard woman who poisoned Gregor had thrown in his face a week before. The Pale Reaper did not mind. He was a monster, he knew that, and he relished in the fact. He wanted the Dwemer to fear him and revile him. He was their reaper now The Dwemer dropped his rifle and drew his sword from its scabbard. It seemed that he had found his courage and wanted a worthy death. Gregor laughed as the Wrathman bore down on the last Dwemer and necromantic magic sprang to life in his palm again, two tendrils of pale blue light raising the slain guards back up. They drew their melee weapons too and the Dwemer cursed bitterly in his native tongue. He tried to make a mad dash for Gregor but the Wrathman intervened, forcing him back with a wide swing of its axe, and that is when his erstwhile companions tore into him with their blades, their faces devoid of any expression of sympathy or regret -- there was only compliance. He screamed as he died. It was unimaginably cruel but Gregor’s wrath was implacable and he felt his blood sing in his veins at the sight. Another flash of magic brought the third Dwemer to Gregor’s side as well and he looked behind him to see Kzindhra climbing back to his feet, two fresh bullet holes in his cuirass but otherwise seemingly unfazed. He was more resilient in undeath than he had ever been in life.

“Four.”

He came upon a lift soon enough, not far beyond the site of his little skirmish, and stared at the handle that operated the machinery. He remembered seeing it before and he nodded to himself when he remembered that the lift would travel to a specific floor depending on how far the lever was cranked. He waited until his grotesque entourage had joined him on the platform before he grabbed the handle and pulled, trying out a floor at random. The lift went up smoothly, the sound of the machinery drowning out the constant din of fighting coming from elsewhere inside the palace, and Gregor used the time to take a deep breath and calibrate. It would do him no good to get ahead of himself. His magicka reserves were still sufficient, also enhanced by Raelynn’s potions, and he hadn’t been injured yet. He was sharp, focused, and ruthless and looked down at his free hand to see what his fingers were perfectly still. Behind his scarf, Gregor allowed himself a small smile. Rourken had no idea what was coming for her.

The lift slowed to a halt when it reached the desired floor. Three Redguard servants had been waiting for it, apparently, anxiety on their faces. Gregor watched their mouths fall open in horror as the lamp on the wall sprang to life, casting its glow on him, the undead elves with him, and the hulking shape of the Wrathman. They were young, barely adults, and screamed while they turned around to run back the way they came, down the long and straight corridor. They would undoubtedly raise the alarm and inform the guards, or the Ministry of Order, that he was already inside the palace. Gregor could not allow that to happen.

Three of the Dwemer next to him raised their rifles.

The report was deafening. Gregor winced and cast a sidelong glance at the long weapons, annoyed. He stepped out of the lift and into the corridor, his cloak billowing behind him. The zombies followed suit, marching lock-step with their master, and reloaded their rifles simultaneously. Gregor stepped over the corpses of the three slain servants, making sure to avoid the blood pooling around them, and it was almost an afterthought when he flicked his hand in their direction, illuminating the corridor with the ghostly glow of black magic. The resurrected servants, the bright blue light in their eyes contrasting starkly with their dark skin, hurried to catch up with Gregor and his soldiers and the Imperial directed them to walk in front of him. They had no weapons with them; even in death, they were expendable.

“Seven.”

A few more empty twists and turns brought him to a wider, open space where two rows of desks were neatly arranged in order. It reminded him of the rooms he had seen earlier in the administrative wing. Far more important than the interior design of the room, however, was the fact that there were about a dozen people there, clustered together beyond the desks. There were Dwemer but also foreigners; not servants, though. Ministry agents. Gregor saw that some of them were already wounded. Someone had been here before him or they had taken refuge here after being attacked elsewhere. Some of the people looked up and yelled in alarm. Too late. Too slow.

More bodies were cut down by another salvo of gunfire. The three servants dashed forwards, their faces rabid, and the undead Dwemer shouldered their rifles, unsheathed their blades and followed in their footsteps, bearing down on the survivors with deadly intent. They pushed aside the desks in their path; inkwells fell and shattered on the floor, spilling their black contents like pools of blood. Gregor ordered the Wrathman ahead as well and only then did he follow. Now was not the time for unnecessary risks. The servants practically leapt at the Ministry agents that took up weapons to defend the wounded and tore at them with tooth and nail, gouging out eyes and digging deep into exposed throats. A chaotic melee ensued, the Dwemer yelling in gut-wrenching disbelief as their own kin laid into them with their swords and other people screaming in pain and horror as the servants forced them to the ground, attacking like a pack of dogs.

“Retreat! Run!” one of them bellowed and made for the exit on the far end of the offices after the Wrathman joined the fray -- they realised it was hopeless. The others, those that were still alive and that could still run, joined him and they quickly disappeared from sight, slamming the door behind them. Gregor bit his lip and cursed. There was no stopping them now. The fact that he had found wounded people this deep into the palace suggested that the party’s assault was well and truly underway now, however, and if he was fast it wouldn’t make a difference that they escaped. Gregor assessed the damage; four of the twelve people he had found here had died, their causes of death a mixture of gunshots, stab wounds and far more gruesome injuries inflicted by the servants. Even without weapons, his zombies were dangerous. Two of them had been defeated, now nothing more than piles of dust on the floor, and Kzindhra appeared to have finally expired as well. No matter. Gregor was about to replenish their numbers by raising the dead scattered about the room before he noticed another person, propped up against a door that led to a private office. It was a Dwemer, a man, but not armored like the guards. He was very seriously injured but not by the hands of Gregor’s minions and, remarkably, still alive.

Kerztar looked at Gregor with an indeterminate expression, his face too bruised and bloodied to move or speak, but the Imperial could see hatred in the Dwemer’s eyes. He approached and knelt down next to him, who lifted a weak hand to do… what, exactly? Defend himself? Attack Gregor? The major’s strength was gone and Gregor batted the hand aside, almost amused.

“You look important,” Gregor said softly, cupping Kerztar’s face in his hand. “That is bad news for you. Well, you know what they say, tall trees catch a lot of wind…” His voice trailed off as he reached for his dagger. Kerztar shivered at Gregor’s touch. The elf had already suffered. Gregor would make it swift.

A fell wind passed through the room as he stabbed Kerztar in the heart and trapped his soul.

The Ministry office was a hub of sorts, with multiple corridors leading away from it, and Gregor found a map of the palace pinned to the wall after a quick look around. An X was painted on it with ink to indicate where he was and the rest of the palace’s wings and rooms were helpfully labeled. The palace was a winding, almost labyrinthine structure; it did not surprise Gregor that the Ministry agents got lost often enough to warrant such a map. His index finger traced along the map as he read, searching for the words ‘Governor’ or ‘Rourken’, and Gregor caught himself mouthing along in all his urgency. He was reminded of that fateful night in Falkreath, years ago, that he had spent pouring over the tomes and volumes of the dark arts he had betrayed Hannibal for, searching for anything useful, anything to justify the murder of a man who had considered Gregor his friend and ally. Gregor blinked and pushed the memory aside.

His heart skipped a beat. “There you are,” he whispered when he found the words at last. Governor’s office. All around him corpses climbed to their feet, the air thick with magic and Gregor’s eyes flashed crimson with hunger. He was close.

“Ready or not, here I come…”

---

Razlinc Rourken’s office was subjected to an influx of officers and staff bringing information on the attack on the palace, the insurgents making a bold move against the stronghold where an infiltration team had unlocked the Eastern gate, allowing a sizable strike force within after a distraction team had drawn the attention of the palace guards from the West, splitting the attention of her forces and resulting in considerable loss. She grit her teeth as the latest reports came in; enemies were within the palace itself, the second lines of defense had fallen.

It was such poor timing, it couldn’t have been a coincidence that she had sent a Ministry of Order team to strike at the Three Crowns Hotel the same day the insurgents had opted to strike at the palace; she had long known about the Hotel as a staging area for the enemy, but she had not considered that it was deliberately being used as a sacrifice to draw her forces out so they could have a shot at taking the main prize of the city. It also did not help that a sizable insurgent cell had struck an arms depot before the attack on the palace and had armed themselves with her people’s weapons and armour. Even the Centurions that guarded the palace grounds were being dispatched at an alarming rate, their presence as a force multiplier being negated by a prepared and determined foe.

Razlinc would have to see to matters personally, before the day was through, she was sure of it.

A sudden thunder of blows against the office’s doors shook the concentration of the governor and her two officers, who drew their swords and shared a look. No reports had suggested that the enemy had breached this far into the palace, and they should have heard something approaching. An unsettling mood filled the air, and they prepared for what came next.

The door burst open and a ghastly wave of Dwemeri troops and servants poured through the door, their bodies marred with wounds and their faces contorted in the permanent throes of death. Razlinc scowled; necromancy. The depths the insurgents would comb for their twisted and cruel mission never ceased to amaze her, but this was an abomination even by the standards she’d grown far too accustomed to. The undead filled out a formation, and her officers charged at the ranks to cut them down, believing themselves to be superior to shambling corpses.

“Stop!” she shouted, and her words fell on deaf ears as the creatures who used to be people she knew by name, their hopes and dreams, everything they were perverted into some cruel cause. Her fists clenched in anger, and her fury seemed to radiate across her person as she watched her officers cut down by bodies that still retained most of their skill in life.

An unshaven face appeared in the crowd that made her heart falter; Kerztar stood amongst the undead, staring at her with a blank expression, the Mer he was ripped from him and his corpse puppeted for someone’s sick and twisted amusement. Tears welled in her eyes as she clenched her fist, a cold hatred gripping her heart and she scanned the familiar faces for one she did not recognize.

“Show yourself, creature. You desecrate the bodies and souls of good Mer, how do you manage to stand with the weight of your blasphemy? Have you no damned sense of decency within your rotten heart?” she challenged, stepping forward defiantly. The undead made no movement towards her; their master willed it so.

The formation of undead parted and two figures emerged from within; first the Wrathman, its horrible bone battleaxe, splattered with gore, in its hands, and then Gregor, the widowmaker in black. Blood dripped from his weapon too, running along the rippled edges of his claymore down to the tip of the blade, suspended an inch above the floor. His dark eyes studied Rourken intently from beneath the shade of his hood but due to the dim lighting in the room and the black scarf that covered the rest of his face he might as well have been a faceless wraith, as far as Rourken could see.

“I stand in good company,” Gregor said and his outstretched arms gestured towards the army of the dead behind him. “You stand alone.” He lowered his arms and gripped the hilt of his claymore tightly, feeling the reassuring weight of his beloved weapon. He would kill Rourken with it. “Do you wish to trade more petty insults or are you ready to be harvested? If you do not struggle I shall make it painless.”

“This shall not go as you desire, creature.” Razlinc cautioned, ushering her attendant behind her. “You stand before the matriarch of Clan Rourken; you already were dead when you entered my domain.” she challenged, approaching defiantly. “You do not scare me. I pity you. A man so weak he cannot do the job without puppeting corpses who belonged to those who were better than him in every metric. I see a ghoul, a charlatan, and a fool who dedicated his life to dark masters that control his every step. I will send you to them.”

Gregor laughed. “If that is all you see... then I have nothing to worry about.” Magic was in his hand in a flash and he flung a soultrap spell at Rourken while he simultaneously gave the command to his minions to attack. They ran forward, passing Gregor on either side, aiming to swarm the governor and overwhelm her before she had a chance to react. The Imperial raised his claymore into an upright position and widened his pose. The time had come. He dashed after his zombies, ready to slash his blade downward into a killing blow once he got in range.

Suddenly, a build up of electrical energy surged around the Dwemer Governor’s hands and shot out at the undead swarming her, the chain lightning unleashing in a deafening boom that filled the amphitheatre-like room; the bodies closest to her all but incinerated from the conducted electricity, amplified by their armour and the weapons in their hands and from hardened alloy shells a blizzard of dust and ash bellowed out across the room; her eyes locked with Kerztar and with a snarl, Razlinc bellowed out defiantly as she sought to free her former lover from his brief foray as Gregor’s plaything. The intensity of the lighting was as such that when Kerztar was engulfed by the blue electrical arcs, nothing remained where he had once stood. There would be time to mourn, but it was not now. This was about revenge.

In all his days, never had Gregor seen such a display. If he had not been so intent on his desire to bisect Rourken from shoulder to hip he surely would have stopped in his tracks, slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the sight of the Dwemer governess’ overwhelmingly powerful Destruction magic. But he was, so he didn’t. He couldn’t afford to. The second she used to destroy Kerztar was the opening Gregor needed and he swung his claymore down with all the strength he could muster, further propelled forward by the momentum of his dash. The force of the blow was such that the blade’s enchantment crackled to life even before the steel of his blade tasted Rourken’s flesh and a second flash of lightning illuminated the chamber. The claymore arced down in a wicked slash and slammed into Rourken’s shoulder.

A deep, ringing sound reverberated through the room. Gregor’s sword was brought to a sudden halt by a luminescent barrier around Rourken’s skin, reducing what should have been a killing strike so savage that she would have been split in twain to nothing more than a shallow cut. Electricity spiderwebbed uselessly across Rourken’s upper torso, seeking purchase on her skin and finding nothing but magical defenses. The kinetic energy dispersed into Gregor’s arms and he was almost forced to let go of his blade, gritting his teeth in pain. How could this be? For the first time since he had set foot in the palace, his confidence left him. He knew what was coming next. In the split second he had before Rourken would undoubtedly disintegrate him, he raised his hand and summoned a hasty ward spell.

An electrically shrouded fist shot forward, smashing into the ward, and like a storm manifesting in the body of the elf, a thunderous volley of discharge was released from both of Razlinc’s hands, the exertion causing her to scream out, whether in pain or anger was less clear than the blinding flashes of destruction magic that flung Gregor back into a pillar, slumping him against it. The legion of his undead servants were eradicated, and nothing stood between him and the governor, who bore down upon him with a cold fury. “You took him from me. It’s a shame that you only have your life to give, as worthless and withered as it is.” She raised her hand towards him. There was no expression on her face except for a simmering resolve. “Die alone and forgotten.”

“But he’s not alone.”

A sharp and resonant voice rang out amongst the quieting chaos as the battle was seemingly reaching it’s brutal climax. As the flashes of magical energy withered down and the last crumbs of rubble hit the floor with the smouldering clouds of ethereal ash - there was one woman who stood in the eye of the storm.

A single long, thick braid of ash blonde hair was hanging from the crown of her head, so bleached from the Hammerfell sun that it appeared almost silver in the otherworldly luminescence of the room. Her eyes were hardened - the colour somewhere between the steel of a sword and the blue of oceans and outlined with dramatic charcoal. There was a dewy glow on her skin as the magicka contained within her potion wore off and left her dead centre between her fallen paramour, and Governor Razlinc Rourken.

Dressed in white, she wore a light chain armour fashioned into scales across her shoulders in a bronze shade - so delicate it was that it would barely be functional against anything the Dwemer had in her arsenal against them if what Raelynn Hawkford had witnessed from the shadows under the guise of her invisibility, was to tell her. Rourken was perhaps a Master Sorceress and she and Gregor were outmatched physically, and still she was not about to let another finger be laid against him.

Rourken was shielded, but that would not stop Raelynn from making sure she had her full attention. He needs time she thought to herself, as she unrolled a scroll that had been gripped in one hand and read out the phrasing with such an unwavering intensity that she surprised even herself. She did not aim for Rourken, no. The single bolt of lightning was fired up to the ceiling - to a chandelier that was central in the room - made up of Dwemeri alloys and crystalline glass shards. How beautiful it must be illuminated. She imagined how painstaking and agonising it would be for a servant to light each candle. Agony that would immediately be erased at the scintillating beauty that would come from it.

The bolt tore through the alloy with such a ringing ferocity and a cacophonous blare of vibration that shattered every piece of crystal. Glass rained down over the room like a spray of diamonds.

“He has me.”

All eyes were on her now, and she had but one card left to save them both.

“You.” Razlinc observed, her posture unyielding to the display of power that caused glass flakes to rain down like a mist. The young Breton woman she’d tried to bring into the fold, much like Daro'Vasora, stood proudly and defiantly before her, the burnt embers of a used magical scroll scattering before her. “You could have helped me change this world into something better for all people, to free it from this war and the suffering it has inflicted. Your insights could have saved thousands.”

Her outstretched hand still remained fixed on where Gregor was; Raelynn's abdomen was in the way. “Your infatuation with this creature will only lead you down a road of darkness there is no return from. Step aside.”

Raelynn's nostrils flared in the face of Rourken, she was terrified to her very core and yet she knew that she needed to be in this spot. If she moved even an inch Rourken would take Gregor from her. She was spewing words like bile and the Breton's lips curled in response, through gritted teeth she uttered towards the Dwemer before her. “I will not move.”

Raelynn had watched the whole thing from the shadows. Every death and reanimation was seared into her brain now and etched over her very soul, they were proving to be an unexpected weight on her conscience. The image of the Wrathman tearing down the inhabitants of the palace would haunt her for a long time... But that Wrathman was on her side. Gregor was on her side. He was a walking nightmare and yet he was all that had kept her safe in Gilane, he was her Knight, and now she had to be his if they were to escape with their lives from this formidable opponent - a nightmare in her own right.

The Governor's eyes met Raelynn's, her gaze not unkindly. “What could a necromancer possibly offer you? You are someone born to wealth, status, privilege; your father spoke highly of you, your potential, your intellect.” she paused, letting the words hang for a moment. “You, Raelynn Hawkford, have everything to offer the world whereas Gregor only knows how to take and consume, corrupting all he touches and destroying countless lives in his wake.” her face hardened as she stared towards the Imperial, electricity still arcing between her fingers. “We are surrounded by the ashes of people who were just like you.” the emphasis of the last word might as well have been a guillotine slamming down onto the block.

The Governor was as masterful in her speech as she was in battle technique, and she was so elegantly squeezing and pinching at a nerve inside Raelynn that it prompted an uncharacteristic rebuke, “shut up! Shut up!” She spat as her lips trembled and her fingers twitched.

She began to take slow steps back, to close the gap between herself and Gregor. A hand emerging from behind her back with another scroll balled tightly between her shaking fingers. “You sanctimonious bitch...” Her eyes darted to view Rourken’s fingers and the tiny tendrils of electricity that danced over her knuckles and twisted around each finger delicately. A complete contrast of what that power was able to do. She had such a control over it and had discipline in spades. “You have no idea what it feels like to be corrupted… Believe me, it wasn’t Gregor who forced me to the shadows that you speak of.”

Hearing his name being spoken brought him back to reality after Rourken’s lightning bolt had temporarily thrown him out of it. Gregor got to his feet, his breathing hard and ragged, and blinked ferociously while shaking his head. The last vestiges of his ward spell and the magic resistance that his ring was enchanted with had protected him from the worst of it, otherwise there would not have been much left of him. The shock magic had seized up his muscles and prevented his claymore from flying out of his hands. He grabbed the hilt of the weapon tightly but the same comfort it had given him before was gone. It could not help him against Rourken. The only thing that could save him now was the woman standing between him and the Dwemer arch-sorceress.

It was time to play the last card, instinct told her the conversation with the Governor was over now, she would not hold her attack any longer. Raelynn tore open the scroll and once again spoke with such a crisp clarity - summoning forth the spell from the parchment.

“This world has no place for you…” she said, as cold as the Ice Storm that formed around her, cold wisps of frost magicka swirled around her hands and blew a frigid wind into the air before forming into a tornado of ice around her entire body, drawing the heat from the atmosphere and leaving only a bitter chill in the room.

She took two more steps back, and with a flourish of her hands she set the Ice Storm on it’s way towards Rourken. “Time to go my love,” she said to Gregor, her eyes locked onto the Storm - hypnotised by the twisting force of nature she had unleashed as it danced through the room to its target.

Razlinc’s hands engulfed in flames as the ice spell began to coalesce around Raelynn, and when the spell was unleashed, she managed to stand her ground and hold off the frigid blast in the nick of time; a pillar of flame emitted from her palms, greeting the ice in a violent interaction. Immediately, steam filled the room as the fire evaporated the ice, making visibility near impossible. When the scroll’s effects had ended, Razlinc felt exhausted; she’d burnt through a not inconsiderable amount of her reserve, but she still had enough to finish the job.

Electricity began to crackle around her hand again and she shot it out towards where she thought Gregor still remained, a deadly bolt of lightning to remove a great evil from this world once and for all.

It hit naught but stone. Gregor had only nodded when Raelynn told him it was time to go and the pair of them had made for the exit as soon as the thick blanket of steam shrouded them from sight. Gregor took point, sidestepping the wooden debris from when his undead minions had burst through the door, a hard expression on his face that did not betray the hurricane of emotions that raged in his heart -- fury, disappointment, fear, shame, gratitude. He grit his teeth, trying to ignore his feelings and to focus on the here and now. Keeping his sword at the ready in one hand as they ran, Gregor’s other hand reached for the potions at his waist, trembling fingers fumbling briefly before finding purchase. He uncorked and threw back two potions; one for his magicka and the other for his health. After that, he resummoned the Wrathman. It had been useless against Rourken but it would help protect them against any other resistance that they might encounter on their way out. The storm of magic in the governor’s office had been so loud that Gregor did not doubt that reinforcements were on the way.

He looked behind him briefly to lock eyes with Raelynn. “Thank you,” he said with a pained voice.

If it were not for soaring levels of adrenaline, Raelynn would have found it hard to keep up with him. She was not the athletic type, but now - something had taken over her and as they ran through the empty halls, she didn't register anything other than the need to get out of there. If she stopped for even a second, the adrenaline would run dry and she would feel her legs give way under her and the realisation of what she had just done, what they had done would hit her.

Rourken's words ran through her head on a spiteful loop - and as she looked at Gregor she felt them. She had seen everything now, all of his power. It was real.

They couldn't stop moving, but she knew that if they could she would show him in so many ways how appreciative she was of him, of what he'd done, of the power he'd displayed. Of everything. There was so much longing in her now for him, a deliberate defiance of the Governor's words, of her father's words, of everyone. She settled for taking his hand in her own, and running at his side, a smirk briefly tugging at her lips.

---

Fresh guards had taken up position in the study, some were trying to figure out the best way to handle respectful handling of the ash piles that had once been friends and colleagues that had had their lives destroyed in an instant from the necromancer. Razlinc knelt before the pile of ash that had once been Kerztar, tears streaming down her face. She had wanted to give chase, to finish off Gregor before he could inflict more horrors upon her people and the world at large, but she had no strength left; she was out of practice and left weakened from the exertion and the capacity of her skill with her spells. Her fingers traced along the edges of the ash, gently pushing it into a pile, trying to imagine her lover’s face but being unable to see more than the ghoul that had been forced against her, a monster with the face of someone she loved.

Gregor must pay for his crimes, and if Raelynn wasn’t willing to see the danger he posed to her and everyone, she could join him in whatever pit of Oblivion called for his name.

A blanket was placed around her shoulders, her attendant having survived the skirmish, doubtless grateful for the governor risking her life for him. He did not speak; nothing he could say would make anything right or better, he knew. Instead he waited, a reassuring presence amongst the destruction and death.

“I need you to find me whatever officer has seniority that has survived so far.” Razlinc replied calmly, mustering what authority was still afforded to her. “It is time to accelerate our Assassin Centurion program’s timeline. They are to be deployed immediately; there must be no survivors.”

The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep

The Hand of Mauloch

13th of Midyear, 4E208
Somewhere outside of Gilane, Hammerfell
_{@Leidenschaft and @Father Hank made this}

It took only three strikes, quick attacks in rapid succession, before Maulakanth had disarmed the Dunmer he was sparring with yet again. He hadn’t even meant to do it this time, but the Dunmer had simply dropped his blade and hissed with pain as he clutched his hand. The Orsimer’s strength was too much, and his bastard swords were too heavy. “That’s enough,” the Dunmer snapped, a mixture of resentment and humiliation in his crimson eyes. Towering over him, the hulking shape of Maulakanth shifted slightly as he laughed in return; a low, thrumming reverberation in his chest, nothing more.

They were in the space of the sanctuary that had been designated as the practice room, though it was hard to guess what the Dark Brotherhood had used it for. The Dunmer -- he had not bothered to remember his name -- retreated back to the common area and Maulakanth watched him go, his deep-set amber eyes fixed on his back, idly wondering where he would strike if he wanted to break the Dunmer’s spine most effectively. He shook his massive, tusked head and placed his twinned orichalcum blades on the table unexpectedly gingerly for such an enormous beast-mer. He looked up again when the door opened and another, different elf stepped into the room. Maulakanth straightened to his full height and nodded; it was the closest he would ever get to giving a salute.

He said nothing, his face set in the same scowl that seemed to be permanently fixed there, and merely looked at Kerztar expectantly. The Dwemer may have regarded the huge Orsimer without a change of expression, but he never got used to the vast sight of him. “I’ve need of you.”

As much as Maulakanth's sizable tusks would allow, he smiled. He lifted a glass vial from a holster at his waist, uncorked it and downed the contents in one go, tilting his head back to do so. Whatever it was, it seemed to do the trick as he rolled his shoulders and grunted in approval, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

“I'm ready,” Maulakanth said. His voice sounded like a cave bear trying to talk.

“With Zaveed indisposed and Sevari’s arrest, we’ve scoured intelligence from them both on the whereabouts of Poncy Man’s Insurgency.” Kerztar spoke, “We finally have enough evidence to take a step further. We need you to head a sizable detachment of soldiers in conducting a raid on the Three Crowns Hotel.”

“I don’t think I need to remind you that this isn’t Al-Aqqiya. The ghost town might stand as a reminder of why you shouldn’t finance insurgent smuggling operations but, well,” Kerztar shook his head, “The collateral damage was a travesty. Something of that caliber can not be as readily covered up when it takes place in such a metropolitan area. I’m sure there’ll be enough fools willing to stand and fight to please you.”

“Right,” the Orsimer growled. Al-Aqqiya had been the mission that had given him his fearsome reputation throughout northern Hammerfell but its outcome had been… divisive. He still disagreed with his detractors but he was done making a fuss about that. “What's the objective? Capture, dispersion, intimidation?” While he talked, he started walking around the room, clenching and unclenching his fists and twisting his neck this way and that. The contents of the vial had been potent, that was much was evident. He suddenly turned his sights back to Kerztar and laughed again. “I heard something else regarding Zaveed’s indisposition, by the way. Was it the games he played with the girl? I bet it was,” Maulakanth continued and forcefully cracked his knuckles. “Coward.”

“The task at hand, Maulakanth.” Kerztar sighed, “He’s a good officer, good at what he does, just too loose. You’re good at what you do, let us focus on that. In a days time, we will have elements from the Redguard city watch and our military, as well as Ministry Agents from other teams staging a full lockdown of the city blocks around the Hotel.”

“You’ll be the first in, leading a team through the front door while the other Ministry agents enter through different entryways.” Kerztar smirked then, a little hubris of his own, “I heavily lobbied for you as the vanguard over Kagrenn’s or Krinnec’s teams. I’m sure you remember them from Al-Aqqiya. Wholly too savage for my tastes but Krinnec was always a bastard that had the tactical and strategic prowess of a rhino.”

Maulakanth found himself nodding along with everything that Kerztar said. “Oh, I remember,” he grunted and scratched his chin. “It will be Al-Aqqiya all over again if those things are set loose. No, you came to the right Orc,” he added and slammed a clenched fist to his chest, which looked, for all the world to see, to be even larger than usual, like a preening rooster. It seemed that Kerztar’s flattery had struck the right chord with the immense Orsimer. He had already forgotten all about Zaveed. “Quick, decisive, clean. Scare them into submission, kill the ones that resist, forge a path for the, uh… Ministry Agents. That sound about right?” he asked, grinning.

Kerztar nodded, “Violence of action, we put down a few of them quickly and with extreme prejudice, the rest will be too stunned to do anything before we’ve got them in shackles.”

After thinking about that for a few seconds, Maulakanth picked his blades back up and tested their weight. They were long, heavy swords, slightly curved in the way that Orsimer smiths prefer, but extraordinarily thick, even by their standards. Maulakanth could drive the orichalcum tip straight through steel plate and out the other end, he knew. “The thing about fanatics,” he said at length, “is that they’re fanatical. They might fight to the death. I know you want to avoid another massacre but they might force our hand just to make you look bad.” The Orc looked up from his weapons and one might say that his brutish features even managed to look inquisitive. “Have you thought about that?”

“Intelligence on the hotel’s staff puts them mostly at auxiliary staffing and a few guards. The rest are foreigners.” Kerztar said, “It’ll be a short fight, brutal and short. Be ready, we leave at first light.”

The Orsimer broke out into a tusky grin as soon as Kerztar uttered the word ‘foreigners’. That was good -- he tired of killing Redguards only. He was aching for a new challenge. “I was born ready,” he growled and gave the Dwemer another curt nod.

The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep

Morning, 13th of Midyear, 4E208
Gilane, Hammerfell

Raelynn and Gregor had walked to the markets together, arm-in-arm, in warm and pleasant silence, probably both reflecting on the night before -- Gregor had, at least. Ever since they had reunited they had made up for lost time with enthusiasm and been intimate with each other as much as they could. Now, however, both of them had different errands to run and the couple had split with a kiss and a wave upon reaching the first of the stalls of Gilane’s lively bazaar. The paranoid part of Gregor felt comforted by the fact that Rhoka, Raelynn’s attentive handmaiden, would accompany her while she was out and about today, but he also had to wonder how much use the Redguard woman would be if Zaveed came for Raelynn again. That said, she had assured him that she felt that the Khajiit bastard had been dealt with and that something told her he would not come after her again. Looking deep in her eyes, Gregor had elected to believe her.

The first order of business on Gregor’s list was to let a smith take a look at his steel claymore and his silver longsword. He carried his own whetstones, of course, but it wasn’t the same as professional with real tools, and it had been a while since Gregor had taken the time to have his gear properly cared for. In that time, he had fought several intense battles, with the last against Zaveed certainly not being the least, and Gregor could see the scars of that encounter on the edges of his blades just as well as on his own skin. Coincidence brought him to the same smithy that Daro’Vasora and Shakti had visited a fortnight ago and the same swarthy Redguard that had greeted them that day was there to greet Gregor now. She saw him approaching when she looked out of her shop and into the streets and already whistled appreciatively at the sight of Gregor’s claymore, which he held in his hands, before he even stepped across the precipice of the smithy.

“Now that’s what I call a weapon,” she said with a grin as Gregor walked up to the counter and put the blade down for her to inspect. “Not a lot of those around. Cyrodiilic, early Fourth Era design, a bright steel alloy -- flexible, right?”

Gregor nodded. “Yes. The smith told me that the edges of the blade are rippled to allow it to bend instead of breaking. That was… ten years ago, now. It’s been through hell and back with me,” he said and smiled as the woman picked up the massive claymore effortlessly and held it up to her face. She was stronger than she looked.

“I can see that,” she said and tutted at the sight of the nicks and cuts in the steel. “Want me to give her the love she deserves?”

“Yes,” he said gratefully and removed his silver longsword’s sheath from his belt before placing that on the counter as well. “And this one too, please. They’re both enchanted, by the way.” Gregor knew enough about smithing from his time as a jewelsmith in Bravil to know that such things mattered. Special tools and care needed to be used to maintain and sharpen enchanted weaponry.

The Redguard nodded and took both swords to her workstation. “They’ll be ready in an hour.”

Next on Gregor’s list was the barber. He maintained his beard himself but he did not feel comfortable cutting his own hair. He wasn’t looking for a radical change; just an inch or two off the end to get rid of split hairs and dead ends. Nobody in the party had ever seen him with is hair down, not even Raelynn, but Gregor’s hair was long enough to reach his shoulders if he didn’t have it tied in his signature ronin’s knot. He took a deep breath and was suddenly struck by the sheer mundanity of his day so far; breakfast in bed, a bath, an early morning stroll to the markets and some errands. It was a stark contrast to the events of the past three weeks, most of which had been a seemingly never-ending rollercoaster of life-threatening situations and high-strung emotions, but the reprieve was welcome. He enjoyed the warm sunlight on his skin, the hubbub and buzz of the citizens and the smells of street food that wafted by. Not even the sight of the Dwemer guard patrols could undo his good mood.

That said, he felt somewhat naked without his swords (he kept his dagger in one of his leather boot, but it wasn’t the same) and his heart skipped a beat when he saw a Khajiit arguing with one of the local merchants, but after a second his brain caught up to what he was seeing -- reddish fur with stripes. Not Zaveed. He sighed. He wished there was some way he could meet Zaveed again in a controlled environment and make sure, face-to-face, that what Raelynn thought about him was true. Then he would be able to let it go. Fat chance of that ever happening, however, and Gregor pushed the thought out of his mind to resume his leisurely pace towards the barber. Children were playing on the streets, adults were shopping or talking animatedly to one another and hawkers came up to him to advertise their wares. He was a foreigner and foreigners often had money, of course, but it wasn’t difficult for Gregor to convince them that he wasn’t interested; his white shirt and tan breeches were still crinkly and a little messy after having spent so much time on the floors of the Hawkford residence following Raelynn’s repeated and forceful efforts to get him undressed. Gregor did not look like a wealthy man today.

It was quite busy at the barber’s; many Redguard men were seated to have their birds trimmed or their wiry, unruly hair dealt with. The barbers themselves matched their clientele -- except one, that caught Gregor’s eye immediately, something that was reciprocated. A male Bosmer jumped up from his seat at the back of the barbershop and approached Gregor with vigor, his expression changing from boredom to something approaching excitement in less than a few seconds.

“My good sir,” the Bosmer began and welcomed Gregor with a bow. “Can I interest you in a haircut? Or does the beard require trimming?” The elf had long, flowing hair not dissimilar from Gregor’s own and he smiled to himself as he realized why the mer-barber had been so excited to see him.

“Haircut, yes, please. Just an inch off the edges. Split ends and so on,” Gregor said and moved towards the empty chair he was being directed towards. “Let me guess, Wood Elf; you don’t get to cut a lot of hair here, do you?”

The Bosmer sighed, a sound filled with exasperation, and nodded. “A man with hair like yours, that is what I am used to, not these… tough and rugged bird’s nests the Redguards have,” the Bosmer said in a low voice as he leaned in to fasten the barber cape around Gregor’s neck. “I I was just passing through, truth be told, when everything happened, you know what I mean, and the travel ban kept me here and, well, I ran out of money.” He spoke quickly and emphatically and wasted no time in moistening Gregor’s hair.

“Tell you what,” Gregor replied, still smiling. “If you let me enjoy my haircut in peace, I’ll give you a few extra septims.” He could tell that the Bosmer was the type to talk his client’s ear off and it was worth a few coins to Gregor to avoid that.

“Certainly, sir.”

Gregor closed his eyes and made himself comfortable in the chair. The sensation of the Bosmer’s fingers on his scalp was enjoyable and Gregor idly wondered if everyone secretly enjoyed having their hair cut for that reason, or whether that was just him. He knew he liked it even more when it was Raelynn that ran her fingers through his hair, and he then spent a few minutes wondering what she was doing now, how much of her shopping list she’d already managed to procure. He had seen the list; it was long. The ingredients that she needed were manifold. To sit with his eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the city and the conversations of the other patrons around him, reminded him of long, lazy afternoons he would spend relaxing on the massive branch of an oak tree, that stood close by his home in Bravil, in a bid to avoid his chores. The branch was shielded from sight by lower-hanging branches and the tree’s copious canopy and as far as Gregor knew, his parents never did figure out where he spent all those hours. The memory made him smile. It was a thought he hadn’t had in a long time, but Gregor realised that there were a lot of good memories for him to reflect on. The first twenty-eight years of his life had been wonderful, carefree and wholesome. It had been all the more cruel that his father should have met such an unworthy end and left that same curse to his children and Gregor had spent the past ten years thinking as little as possible about the years that came before… but in the end, he thought, that did nothing to diminish the happiness he had been lucky to have. Whether it was his near-death experience or the sheer joy that his relationship with Raelynn brought him that prompted such thinking he did not know. Either way, it was comforting.

He had lived a good life and if he succeeded, he would be able to go back to it. Or something like it, anyway. Gregor knew that Briar would not be waiting for him and that it would be hard for his family to accept him back into their lives after so many years, even if he did manage to save them from the family curse, but Gregor could feel, deep down, that he could have such happiness again with Raelynn, at least. One day, they would have their own home and an oak tree for him to sit beneath on a warm summer’s day.

Was she even the domestic type? The question jolted through him so suddenly that it almost made him open his eyes and he chuckled softly at his own expense. Any day in which that was the most burning question on his mind was a good day. He thought about it for a second and decided that yes, she probably was, and had been before she had left her home in High Rock for a taste of adventure.

Gregor paid the Bosmer his regular fee plus a few extra coins, as promised, after the elf had finished cutting Gregor’s hair. He swept it back and tied it up in its usual style and it looked no shorter that way, but Gregor could feel that it was healthier now. He still had some time left to kill before the smith would be done with his weapons so Gregor found a nice place to sit in the shade and procured a kebab for himself to eat. He savored the juicy meat and the tasty spices and watched the people go by. It was a stark contrast to how he had turned their heads just a few days before when he was on his way to confront Raelynn at the Hawkford residence; now their eyes seemed to drift over him without really seeing him. He was just another man having lunch and staying out of the sun. Nobody special.

The smith, too, received a tip, and she inclined her head gracefully in appreciation of Gregor’s generosity. He inspected his weapons carefully before he fastened them to his person once again but he saw no flaws with the woman’s work and Gregor made sure to compliment her on her skills before he left. There was one last errand he needed to run. His black battledress had been significantly damaged during his fight with Zaveed, so Rhoka had delivered them to a tailor yesterday to have them mended and now it was time to pick them up. Gregor was anxious to have his clothes back. For some reason, he did not feel like he was complete without being in possession of all of his gear, even if he wasn’t wearing it all the time. His mind wandered while his feet took him through the streets, stopping every so often to remember the directions Rhoka had given him, and he felt like he was coming to an inevitable conclusion. If he was going to have the life he dreamed of with Raelynn, he had to do two things: complete his quest and continue the fight against the Dwemer until they were no longer a threat to his existence. Both were considerable challenges and one was measurably more difficult than the other, but… there was a way to combine both goals into a single objective.

The thread the tailor had used to sow the rips and tears shut was the exact right shade of black to fade nigh-seamlessly into the textile of his clothes and once again Gregor found himself impressed with the handiwork of Gilane’s craftsmen. His gold pouch was much lighter than at the start of the day, but his weapons were sharp, his clothes were mended and his appearance was well-groomed. Satisfied, Gregor set off back to the Hawkford residence. In the distance, looming above the roofs of the residences and shops of the citizenry, the Governor’s palace lay shimmering in the sunlight, its silhouette distorted and shifting in the midday heat. Gregor found that his eyes were drawn to it while he walked. A small smile tugged at his lips.

He was going to kill Governor Rourken.

The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep

No Country for Old Men

_{by @Father Hank and the ever talented @Leidenschaft}

Afternoon, 10th of Midyear, 4E208
The Haunted Tide Inn, Gilane, Hammerfell

After having slept for what felt like an age or more, Gregor awoke to an existence of misery and pain. He stared at himself in in the mirror after he got out of bed, eyes tracing the prominent and fresh scars that now disfigured his upper body, and he sighed. Every fiber of his being still hurt from the ravaging poison that had coursed through his veins. He looked down at his hands and saw that his fingers trembled incessantly -- not enough to inhibit his functioning, and when he focused real hard he could keep his hand still, but the sight still filled him with dread. He had always been able to rely on his body. Closer to forty than he was to twenty, he knew that it wouldn’t last forever, but to see himself so suddenly and severely degrade…

He needed Raelynn. No, he thought and his knuckles went white as he clenched his fists. The anger, disappointment, hurt and confusion were still fresh. He took a deep breath and put her out of his mind. But the pile of armor and blood-soaked clothes next to the bed and the large, black pool of dried-up blood -- his blood -- in the middle of the room stared him in the face. He would have to clean everything soon, but not now. Right now, he couldn’t do much of anything. He needed a drink.

Gregor dressed himself in his Hammerfell linens and made his way downstairs, to the inn’s common room. His movements were slow and stiff and he supported himself wherever he could, holding on the railing like an old man. It was enough to make him grimace. He wasn’t familiar with poisons and their effects. There was no way for him to know if things would even improve. The thought was too much to bear. Drink, you fool. Stop thinking. He took a seat at the bar and the innkeeper, a stoic and discrete older Redguard, looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“What happened to you?” he asked while he cleaned a glass.

“Got into a fight,” Gregor grumbled. He pointed at a bottle of Stros M’Kai rum behind the innkeeper. “Give me two shots of that.”

The innkeeper acquiesced and poured him his drinks. “Did you win?”

Gregor was silent for a few seconds as he downed the first of the two shots, but he nodded to himself afterwards. “Yes.”

The door opened and three figures hung at the threshold. A curious looking woman with wavy auburn hair behind two men. A Reachman in Dwemer cloth with an Ohmes-Raht at least a head taller than him making him strain under the weight of him. “We should get a room.” The Reachman said, voice hushed. “Get you into bed-“

“Get me a godsdamned drink. I’ll put up for the room while I’m there.” The Ohmes-Raht rumbled, and Gregor could feel eyes on him, “Latro, stay with Janelle.”

“Okay.” Latro said, letting Sevari go and disappearing with the woman.

With a series of pained breaths and snuffed grunts, the Ohmes-Raht brought his dragging feet to the bar, falling onto a stool. “Colovian Whiskey.”

“The embargoes already took-“

“Then what do you have?” The Ohmes-Raht growled, and gestured to Gregor, “Give me what he has.”

“Alright.” The Innkeeper poured out another shot glass for the Khajiit, who downed it immediately, glass clacking on the bar top as he set it down.

Finally, the Khajiit spoke to Gregor, not turning to him, “Those scars look fresh.”

The Imperial hadn’t turned to look when the door opened, his empty gaze fixed on the now equally empty shot glasses in front of him, and did not see Latro or Aries at all. By the time of Sevari’s arrival a few barstools over, they had already disappeared upstairs. When he did glance sideways at the newcomer it took him a few seconds to process what he was looking at. A tall, humanoid male of indeterminate race (how strange), obviously recently injured. Not a native to these lands. Part of Gregor wanted to be left alone but another part of him welcomed the distraction.

He caught the innkeeper’s eye and motioned for a refill. Alcohol had never been much of a companion to Gregor, who usually preferred to stay sharp and knew that his tolerance for it wasn’t particularly high. The two shots of the powerful rum he’d had were already hitting him and he blinked slowly, letting the feeling wash over him. It was exactly what he wanted.

“I fought the devil and I won,” Gregor said and stared at the swirling liquid that the innkeeper poured in his glass. “But he left his mark.” He lifted his glass Sevari’s direction and gave him a curt nod. “You don’t look so great either.”

Sevari gave a snort at the man’s poetics. For a second, he forgot himself. Forgot why he was at the bar in the first place, then the recognition came back to him. The news about his brother missing. Whoever had taken or killed Zaveed would not have gotten him easily. He remembered the party, watching Raelynn always on the arm of one man and only one man.

Him. It only made sense. It had to make sense. Because if it didn’t, If this wasn’t the man who killed Zaveed then he could just add his name to the list of lost brothers he’d have to avenge someday, but probably never will.

“Another.” He called to the innkeeper, having his glass refilled but refraining from it. “The devil swings axes now?”

Nonsense to anybody else, but he carefully watched the man to see if it was just that to him. He was in no shape to fight, at all. But any kind of reaction to the phrase, any at all, could bring him peace knowing he could cross one more name off of his list of men to put in the dirt.

Gregor blinked slowly and fidgeted with his shot glass. Inside his chest, his heartbeat spiked. He frowned, mind racing, and looked down at the scar across his collarbone that was left bare by the undone buttons of his shirt. “You can tell? Just like that?” he asked, voice as steady as he could make it. When he looked down at his glass, he saw that his fingers weren’t trembling anymore. He bought himself some time by downing the shot. Stupid, he thought to himself, furious at his own mistake, admitting things like this to strangers. Whoever this man was, he knew. He knew.

“Well, doesn’t matter,” he added and looked away. “I won but didn’t get to finish the job. Bastard had help. He’ll get to swing his axes another day.” Gregor took a slow, deep breath, trying to stay calm, and gestured for the bartender to give him another shot. Zaveed was still alive, that much was true, even if he vehemently disagreed with the way his survival had come about. Perhaps it would save him now.

Sevari only shut his eyes and sighed, finally moving in no amount of hurry to pick up the glass in his thick fingers and throw it back, setting the empty glass on the bar top. If it had brought him peace knowing he was sitting next to the man that had made Zaveed disappear wherever the fuck he was, he didn’t feel it all too greatly. “Mm.” He grunted at first, then lifted his glass to the innkeep, who filled it again. “Feuds and vengeance are a fool’s business, friend. Like a river dammed, it only finds a way to flow into another just like it, and on, and on.”

“You either realize that revenge isn’t for the dead, only you.” He paused, letting go a drawn out rattling cough that screwed his eyes shut before taking in a breath and continuing, “Or someone comes knocking on your door looking for the same. You should be careful who’s on the other side of your door… friend.”

Gregor, sensing that the immediate danger had passed, dared to meet Sevari’s eyes again. “Is that what happened to you?” he asked and raised an eyebrow. He was eager to steer the conversation away from what happened between him and Zaveed. There were still too many options, too many possibilities, as to who this stranger next to him was, and Gregor was swiftly getting too inebriated to consider them properly. The best he could do now was to survive this bizarre chance encounter and figure it out later.

Sevari sniffled, wiping at his wet lip and looking sidelong at the man beside him. He took his moment, let the gaze carry on until he felt it right. Willing himself to feel hatred, to feel righteous indignation. To reach for the dagger at his side. Then he shrugged, “Doesn’t matter now too much, I guess.” He turned back to his glass to find it full again, “You go looking for the bad in men and you always find it. Sometimes it finds you. Looks to me like it found us both pretty good.”

It was odd. He felt no aggression, just a conversation. Perhaps it was the fact he’d almost died so recently, but he felt no need nor energy to go looking for another fight after the last one. “The devil. We’ve all got one.”

Gregor laughed and then immediately winced, finding cause to regret his mirth in the pain that stabbed into his chest. “Yeah, pretty good,” he echoed and rubbed his neck. He still wasn’t sure what to make of the stranger sitting next to him but something told Gregor that they weren’t going to fight, no matter what was said. He frowned. It was like… an armistice. Just two old, broken soldiers reminiscing on a war in which they had been enemies. They were both too tired to reach for their blades now. Gregor knew it. Sevari knew it.

He opened his mouth to speak, unsure. It took a few seconds for him to find his voice. “I wanted to teach him that, sometimes, he should be afraid of what lurks behind the door he comes knocking on.” He sighed and shook his head. There was no need to explain. The other man would understand what Gregor was talking about. “Does that make sense? I’m not sure it does anymore, or if it was worth it. Maybe you’re right,” he mumbled.

“Tell me about your devil,” he said before Sevari could answer him, once again changing the subject.

Sevari considered that for a moment. He knew that if he died back there in the carriage, in the street, in the old man’s house he’d murdered with the faulty, shit reasoning of defense. If he’d died on the way to the safehouse, in Aries’ arms as she tried to save him, it all would be deserved. Sevari knew Zaveed now realized the same thing. Maybe he thought he did, at first, in whatever musings he had up until now. But now he really knew, dead or not, and if he didn’t… Sevari didn’t want to think on that.

He thought about how many doors he’d knocked on, how many times he’d taught the same lesson to the ones knocking that Gregor did to Zaveed. But accepting that? Zaveed was family. Nobody would ever hurt his family while he was helpless to watch again. But as he looked at Gregor, forlorn and ragged just as he was now. He knew it wouldn’t bring him any more towards closure than the last twenty years did. When Gregor asked about his devil, he sighed.

“It was a very, very long time ago.” He said, “A boy watched his father die. Watched his mother die. Years later, he saw his brothers dead even though he now had the strength in himself to stop it from happening, if only he’d been there.”

“I have many devils, with many names.” Sevari said, face hanging in agonizing reverie, “The boy he knew as a child is all grown, and now he’s one of them. Wreaking his havoc on people who don’t deserve it. Ironic, I thought I had the strength to stop it from happening again. I let another of my brothers die and now some stranger fills his boots. If only I’d been there, a long, long time ago.”

Sevari chuckled, a bitter, humorless huff from his nostrils. Not even the smile lasted, “He had it coming.” Sevari said then, voice grim and low, “We both know it. I’m tired of knocking on doors in the name of other people, but I’d do it for him.”

He looked at Gregor. Of a sudden, he saw little difference between them in this moment. Two men who’d been scarred all to hell for quests of vengeance. Maybe that’s what they could be. Just two men at a bar and that’s it. But whatever evils and thistle ran across Sevari’s soul couldn’t let him. “I’d do it for him.” His voice gravelly and he let out another grating cough, “Just… not now.”

Silence stretched on between them as Gregor processed what Sevari had said. There was no doubt in his mind anymore; the man that was referred to as ‘another of my brothers’ was Zaveed. Sevari’s confession painted him in a new light. He knew all too well how extreme circumstances, suffering and loss could drive a man to ferociously protect what little he has that remains. Even if Raelynn hurt someone, Gregor would have her back. But that was a big if. The situation wasn't comparable. Gregor had defended both Raelynn's life and honour and his own when he fought Zaveed. She had been innocent and he had been monstrous. If Sevari were to kill Gregor in turn for what he did to Zaveed… for the sake of a cruel torturer and murderer? There was no honour in that.

“You shouldn't,” Gregor said sternly. “He's not worth it. Whatever man you knew in his place when you were younger, there's naught but a shadow of him left. Don't risk your life for vengeance in his name. Not now, not ever. It's a fool's business, remember? I fought him because he was a threat.” Gregor pushed the shot glasses in front of him away. He'd had enough. His head was as heavy as his heart.

An idea came to him. It was a gamble but he couldn't shake the feeling that this stranger knew much more about him and the others than he let on. “Raelynn saved his life,” Gregor said softly. Now it was his turn to observe Sevari intently to see how he would react.

Sevari froze just before the glass touched his lips. He carefully set it back down. Had he heard right? Raelynn? Saved his brother’s life? The life of the man who did everything in his power to break her? To break Gregor? To break Latro’s little family up to pieces and blow the dust to the winds? If she did that, maybe he did break something in her head, he mused. Or maybe she was just so much better than the two men at the bar discussing the possibility of killing each other when they were healthy again. “Huh.” Sevari pushed the shot glass away from him in turn. “Fool’s business. I guess I won’t have to be a fool one last time after all.”

He smiled, albeit a hint of sadness in the corners of it, weighing it down. He slapped some septims on the counter, “Two rooms, please.” Before he stood with some effort. He looked back to Gregor and sighed, “For what it’s worth… I’m sorry. For everything he did to her.”

He looked Gregor over, shorter than him, but thick despite his sickly appearance he had about him. A warrior. A fighter. A killer, just like himself. That, the two could understand of each other, even if Gregor couldn’t understand why he’d avenge the name of a murderous, whoring pirate. But now, they were just two men at a bar. That’s it. “Farewell.”

“Wait,” Gregor said and raised his hand. “One last question. Do you work with a Redguard woman that wields a spear and wears a snakeskin cloak?”

“No.” Sevari said. “Is that all?”

The Imperial did not show the surprise he felt. Who the hell had the woman been that had intervened and stopped him from killing Zaveed for good? “Yes, that’s all. Farewell.”

After watching him leave, Gregor thought back to the rest of their conversation. He had wanted the man to say something about Raelynn, about what she’d done -- to condemn her, call her a fool, anything at all. But he hadn’t. Gregor had seen in his reaction that he had been surprised but not confused. He frowned and rapped his fingers on the bar. Still, his gamble had paid off. The news of Raelynn’s mercy had placated Sevari in a way, whatever his position might be, and that was worthwhile. If Gregor’s reprisal against Zaveed would now no longer draw the ire from a man that called himself his brother… they did not need more enemies actively hunting them right now.

For a split second, he considered that Raelynn might have been right. Then his bitterness returned. Gregor stared at the empty shot glasses he’d pushed away and looked up to find the innkeeper giving him an inscrutable glance. “Water?” the Redguard asked, prescient, and Gregor nodded.

A realization struck him. Two rooms. Who else was here?

The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep

Requiem

_{a Father Storm production}

Evening, 9th of Midyear, 4E208
The Haunted Tide Inn, Gilane, Hammerfell

The pain was overwhelming. It had spread from his shoulder to the rest of his body at frightening speed and Gregor could feel his muscles locking up as the poison carried out its unholy purpose. He had dismounted from his great black steed to ransack an alchemist’s shop, scaring the proprietor away with his blood-soaked claymore, the deranged expression on his face and the foam clinging to his lips, taking what anti-venom he could before hoisting himself back in the saddle and speeding away. The undead horse was fast enough to outrun the city guard that were trying to catch up to him and he made it to the inn where he and Raelynn had made their home undetected. After the horse sensed that it was no longer needed, it simply vanished into a swirling mass of swiftly dissipating magic and left no trace behind of its existence. Under ordinary circumstances Gregor would have been amazed by its sudden appearance and disappearance, a power evidently gifted to him by the Ideal Master that had accepted Nblec’s soul, but he was far too busy trying to stay alive. He’d stumbled into their room, wide-eyed and calling out Raelynn’s name with a voice that refused to cooperate, only to find it empty.

She wasn’t there.

Mortal terror clutched at his heart with ice-cold talons. Gregor uncorked the anti-venom with trembling, stiff fingers and threw it back, coughing and gasping as his constricted throat almost couldn’t swallow the foul-tasting brew. His legs gave out beneath him and he fell to his hands and knees when searing, immediate jabs of agony roared through his collarbone, arms and sides. Horrified, Gregor felt a hot wetness on him and watched as blood began dripping onto the wooden floor. His wounds had reopened. Everything he had done to patch himself up after Zaveed had tore into him was being undone by the Redguard woman’s poison. “Gods, no,” Gregor stammered and rolled onto his back, clutching his wounds with his hands and summoning all the Restoration magic he knew. The panic and the pain made it impossible to think and Gregor could only send a raw, unsophisticated stream of healing magic into his body in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding.

Where was she?

Gregor writhed and coiled on the floor, punching his chest with the claw-shape of his contorted fist, trying to keep his heart beating rhythmically -- every faltering flutter sent another spasm through his body, as if the very core of his being was fighting against an enemy to stay alive. His vision went dark and his limbs went cold and he could no longer feel his heart beating.

He was dying.

The forest loomed above him, trees towering even higher than before, the canopy overhead not even visible in the almost total darkness that reigned. Gregor immediately reached for his claymore this time, knowing what to expect, and he did not flinch when he heard the monster’s roar in the distance. He blinked, trying to remember how he got here, and came up short. He only knew that he was going to have to fight for his life now and that he could not allow himself to be scared. He stood his ground, blade at the ready, and followed the noise of the trees being knocked over and the vicious snorts and bellows of the beast as it circled him at a distance, hidden behind the dense woods. It knew where he was. Gregor could feel it. Slowly but surely, it came closer, and Gregor could barely make out trees being splintered some sixty feet away from him. He took a deep breath and steadied himself, but something was wrong. He felt… weak. Why?

Sudden and unexpected silence fell over the woods. It was as if the beast had vanished in the midst of its approach. Gregor could only hear his own breathing and watched it steam in the air in front of him. The absolute lack of sound was just as deafening as any noise could be and Gregor felt it pressing against his ears like a thick blanket. When he swallowed, it was almost unbearably loud.

“Gregor,” he heard behind him, the voice low and heaving.

He whirled around and saw it -- truly saw it, properly, for the first time, and almost dropped his sword. It was immense, like a mammoth, and shaped like one too: quadrupedal, with massive front legs that ended in cloven hooves, and black fur clung to its skeletal shape. But Gregor’s eyes were drawn to its head, or what existed in place of it, and he found himself staring at two pale eyes in a pit of impenetrable darkness. Two arms with horrifyingly long, black hands, the ones that had grabbed him before, hung on either side of the monster’s baleful gaze, like a twisted, hellish interpretation of a centaur. Above it, like a crown, was the splayed form of a decapitated human torso, antlers growing from where its hands should be. It was the single most horrible thing Gregor had ever seen.

Before he could even react, the beast had closed the distance and grabbed his head with its hands, lifting him from the ground to come face-to-face with its eyes -- infinite and lifeless, just two points of eternal light that stared at him with all the indifference of death itself. The antler-torso loomed above him. It had no mouth and yet it spoke again.

“No,” it whimpered. Gregor knew that voice -- he’d known all along, he just hadn’t realized it.
“Don’t. Please.”

It was the voice of Hannibal. When Gregor looked up, his own claymore pierced the torso’s chest, just like it had done when he had betrayed and murdered the Vigilant in cold blood. Was that what this thing was? His own guilt come back to haunt him? He wanted to cry, to surrender and give in, whatever it took for this to simply be over… but he couldn’t. The Pale Reaper did not allow it. He would not yield and he would not die.

Just like before, Gregor’s silver longsword sprang from its sheath with a musical rasp and cut deep into the monster’s flesh. The quailing voice of Hannibal was drowned out by the beast’s screams, like a dying horse, and Gregor could smell the rancid miasma of rot and decay. It dropped him to the forest floor and he hit the ground running, immediately setting off in a random direction into the forest. He did not know why, but he felt like there was a purpose to his own movements now, and he felt confident that he was running towards something, instead of merely running away. The beast followed and Gregor could hear its anger in its accusatory shrieks and the violence with which it threw down the trees in its path.

Whether or not it was because Gregor ran so fast or the beast had slowed down he did not know, but the noise of the monster’s pursuit diminished and Gregor came upon a house in the woods. He knew this house. It was his home. He fished his key out of his pocket and unlocked the front door, which swung open as smoothly as the last day Gregor remembered, and he slowly walked through the house. The painting over the mantlepiece that his mother had made, the figurines that Gregor and Briar had fashioned from walnuts and matchsticks standing in formation in the windowsill, the loose floorboard in the hall -- it was all so familiar, and yet so foreign, like he was visiting the home of a character he knew well from a book. He quietly climbed up the stairs to the second floor and pushed open the door to the master bedroom with a slight touch of his fingers. There she was, in the bed with the blue covers, her back turned to him, soundly asleep. It was a sight that he remembered well. A moment of clarity pierced the haze that clouded his mind and Gregor knew that this had been the last time he had seen Briar, the final moments before his departure.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, the pain in his chest too much to bear. He looked down and remembered that he was bleeding. When he looked back up, Briar’s sleeping form had burst into flames and the fire spread rapidly through the room, and Gregor watched in horror as his former life was reduced to ashes. He flew down the stairs and burst out of the house and back into the woods, escaping the unnatural wildfire with inches to spare, and turned back to look at the all-consuming inferno. He wept.

“Burn it all,” Hannibal said, like always. Gregor did not turn around. He could feel the monster’s presence behind him. It was like he could see it at the edge of his vision, despite the impossible angle, as if its shape bent light towards it.

“Curse you, Gregor!” it continued, taunting him with Hannibal’s last words, and Gregor could hear in the wheezing, hollow voice that it was laughing. “Curse your whole family!”

Gregor turned and leapt at the beast in a single, fluid motion and drove his sword into the darkness beneath its corpse-crown, right between the eyes.

“We are already cursed,” Gregor spat bitterly.

---

She had ran as fast as her feet could have carried her over the sands of Gilane, through each winding back alley, past every person that seemed to clutter up the walkways as they ambled through the evening - nothing life or death happening in their lives. They had the time to spare to look and ponder and mosey around. Raelynn Hawkford did not, and she sprinted like she never had in her life, her lack of athletic ability a detriment to her mission to return to her room at the Inn. Instinct, and connection to Gregor had told her that’s where he was.

Finally she came upon it, throwing open the door and alighting the stairs to their quiet place. She could already feel bitter chills emanating from it before she had even grown close to the door - it was a chill powerful enough to make the heat from running simmer down. It was a chill powerful enough to run like the blade of a knife up her spine to the nape of her neck - the hairs standing completely on end. She slowed as she approached, the handle of the door as cold as ice. She pulled away from it only for a second, before braving it once more, forcing open the door to see Gregor splayed out over the floor in the very centre, surrounded by a thick layer of frost and ice, wisps of dark magic swirling around his hands as if he was trying to pull himself back from his approaching death. If it had been cold outside - inside was far worse, in the eye of the hurricane she did not falter and rushed to his side. Her breath a mist against his face.

Her hands moved immediately to his chest, to the place where his heart was always
beating it’s slow, languid rhythm - and sometimes thundering against his rib cage. However right now, there was nothing but a faint, dying flutter. A whisper of life.

“No,” she said as she pressed both palms to his chest now, climbing astride him, no time to really focus on a precise pour of Magicka - he needed all that she had, and he needed it now. She closed her eyes tightly and felt the warmth of it in her hands, and with all of her concentration she shot it into his chest with force, she could sense what was going on inside of him. Blunt force wounds, slashes, hacks, broken bones... She felt her Magicka envelop his heart and contract and release, contract and release… until it flowed throughout his whole body. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that she did not have just Healing Hands, rather that her whole body was cascading golden light into him. “Wake up, wake up..” she pleaded, finally falling to his face, planting a golden kiss on his forehead. “Please don’t die… Please don’t die Gregor…”

---

He watched his mother rearrange the floral piece for what felt like minutes, shifting one particular white flower back and forth until it was right, just so, and no other way. Gregor laughed when she finally stopped and took a step back to observe her work, and she turned her head abruptly to look at him. Her long brown hair was slightly wavy, like perfectly draped curtains, and the dark makeup around her eyes made them glimmer like emeralds. “How long have you been there?” Gaia asked and put a hand to her heart, clearly startled, but she smiled as well.

“A while,” Gregor said and held up his hand, showing all five tiny fingers. “This long!”

“Five? You were there for… five?” she asked and laughed.

“Yes, five,” Gregor said in solemn agreement.

She approached and knelt down beside him. Her earrings were pretty, Gregor decided, and he reached out to touch them but she stopped him. “No, no, don’t touch that. Those are not for you,” she said, but her voice was kind and her smile did not waver. She kissed him on the forehead and cupped his chin with her hand.

“Now go on and play outside.”

---

The touch of her lips on his skin broke his dream and he awoke with a start, eyes rolling back into focus and his abused lungs gasping for air. Gregor looked frantically around the room, searching for his mother -- why did everything hurt, and why was he so old? It took him a few seconds for reality to come back to him and when it did, his gaze fell on Raelynn and he practically fell over himself with relief. “You’re here, you came, heavens above, you’re back,” he stammered and took another deep breath, a trembling smile tugging at his colorless lips. It was going to be alright now, he could feel it. His heart was beating with strength again, fueled by Raelynn’s overwhelming magic, and his wounds were slowly knitting back together -- but hesitantly so, as the poison still fought back. “I killed him,” he said, his voice hoarse and unsteady. “I found him and I killed him, but someone attacked me, a Redguard, and there was poison--” He fell silent as he ran out of air and he focused on his breathing instead. He had lost an immense amount of blood.

Of course it was a poison, only poison could burn through the flesh like this, through his wounds and hold them open. No mind, she was a skilled alchemist and she would find a formula to halt and undo it soon enough - but first priority was to get enough Magicka into him to keep him steady, to buy that time. “Shhh,” she whispered, her lips against his. They were cold but hers were golden, and she kissed him on his lips, her hands still working against the clock to put him back together. That was not the only issue, she cried against him when she realised that he believed Zaveed to be dead. “I looked for you,” she whispered again, choking back a sob. Her Magicka beginning to run dry. She did not stop, she would pass out before she stopped healing him now. “I couldn’t find you… I’m sorry.” She wouldn’t lie to him, he deserved more than that. She reached across the floor to pick up her own bag, a Magicka potion rolled out and she grabbed at it, drinking the contents desperately. A small top up of magical stamina, it would be enough tonight. “I found him… I knew you had fought…”

Raelynn spoke but her words did not make sense. “You found him?” Gregor asked, having recovered enough to try speaking again, but he took deep breaths in-between each sentence. “You saw his corpse, you mean? Tell me he is dead, please,” he groaned and grabbed at the hem of Raelynn’s clothes with his white-cold hands. Cracks began to spread through the ice that coated every surface in the room.

Even now his grip was powerful, she didn’t have the answer he wanted or needed to hear. Avoidance. “Shhh, Gregor please. We can talk about this later… You need to keep your strength.” She kissed him again, and stroked his cheek. Knowing that her answer was not good enough, knowing that he would work out what had happened. She lingered over the kiss - wondering already how quickly she could move away from him should he lash out. “Be still… Please?” Her tone was almost pathetic, the inflection of her words like that of a small child begging, her eyes were begging too as her lip shook.

“Raelynn,” Gregor began, lost for words as the truth dawned on him. A horrible, sinking feeling spread through his guts, almost as painful as his injuries and the poison, and he had to resist the urge to crawl away from her -- without her help, he would still surely perish, and yet he could not help but feel disgust and anger. When he spoke again, the tone of his voice matched the frigid temperature in the room. “What have you done?”

Everything had consequences. This was just one of them. She forced herself upright, her eyes closed as if to block out everything, her entire body shivering - from the cold, or fear - she wasn’t entirely sure. She exhaled and whimpered, unable to move her hands from him, not yet. She was growing ever more exhausted and light headed too, she hadn’t much left of herself to give him now. If she had slain Zaveed then Gregor would have taken her in his arms, but she would have been a shell of herself. And yet, she was a shell now, and he was turning on her. All that she could do was turn her head away as her face scrunched, fighting back the tears. Somewhere in it… She felt the simmering rage too. “I wasn’t strong enough to kill him,” She croaked, her voice broken. “Let me fix you, damn it. Let me fix you then we’ll talk.”

“Great gods of nowhere,” Gregor breathed. His arms went slack and fell by his side, limp and devoid of their strength, as Raelynn’s confession knocked the wind out of him. She’d had the opportunity to finish the job and she hadn’t. What’s worse, Gregor knew that he and his Wrathman had inflicted mortal injuries on the Khajiit. For him to live through them… he would have needed help. Her help. He closed his eyes and felt everything spinning around him; his exhaustion was too strong for him to feel anything else. His anger ebbed away and the void it left behind was filled with bitter disappointment. It had all been for nothing. His victory had been snatched away by the very woman he loved, the one person he thought he could well and truly trust.

When he opened his eyes again, tears welled in them and the look of hurt and betrayal on his face was unmistakable. “I thought we were a team,” he whispered, broken, and began to cry. It was too much. He was done and he no longer had the strength to keep himself in check. Like a bursting dam, the tears flowed freely and he sobbed silently, so hard he almost gagged and choked on it. Not even the pain could stop him. He could no longer see Raelynn through his blurred vision, and that was fine.

Everything had consequences, she reminded herself, her eyes glazing over as her own tears stopped. The sight of him crying should have broken her heart and unmade her right there, but she blanked it entirely and ignored his words. Part of her wanted to bite back at him with that rage that had been forming, that had been planted there by Zaveed himself when he thrust the nail through her and into a table. It had been there the whole time longing for a moment like this...

Not now. In this fugue state, all she could do was finish her work. Her hands began to move methodically over each wound and she was completely silent - even if he was not sobbing, and the room was free of noise he would not have even heard her breath. She moved quickly now, feeling from him that he could not stand her presence for a moment longer than was required to save his life. Switching herself off protected her. Like a woman possessed by something otherworldly, each finger worked precisely on his body, finally closing all of the wounds, each left a terrible scar behind, like a map that traced out every attack of the vicious fight to the death. Still swollen and red and like they might tear open again at any moment. Raw. The poison was at bay at last, but too late to have flushed it and saved Gregor’s skin from the scarring.

No apologies in the world would make him alright now. And in turn, no amount of comfort that he could give to her in her time of need was enough either. Killing Zaveed did nothing, saving Zaveed did nothing.

The temperature in the room returned to normal and the ice disappeared. It did not melt, and instead simply evaporated as the primal, unconscious magic from deep within Gregor that had conjured it in the first place ceased its spell. His life was no longer in danger. His wretched sobbing, too, diminished until it stopped, and he merely lay there in sullen silence, too empty to even lift a hand to dry his face with. He kept his gaze averted, his head turned away from her, and Gregor breathed. It was all he could do. It killed him to know that Zaveed was still drawing breath as well. Any sympathy he might have felt for Raelynn’s plight was drowned by the depth of his rancor.

“Please leave,” he said softly.

She did not need to be told twice. She rose to her feet, she should have staggered from the exhaustion and yet she found a strength somewhere to hold herself upright long enough to move through the room. Her hands picked up her journal, which had been by their bed. She picked up a necklace she had left on the table, some alchemy goods - dried flowers and the like that were sat in a pile on top of a dresser. She took every trace of herself from the room, piece by piece until she emptied her arms into her satchel. Saying nothing, making little sound, all spirit and Joie de Vivre void from her.

No amount of comfort or affirmation that anyone could give her would be enough. Hurting Zaveed had hurt her, allowing him to live had ruined everything. Nothing was fair and the only person who could fix this was Raelynn herself. Time and space for Raelynn and Gregor both. As she approached the door, something inside screamed at her to turn and give him one last look, and yet her head was stuck facing forwards, it would not budge to her will and desire. Not this time. She closed the door gently, and gracefully behind her.

There was only one place for her now, Daggerfall.

Minutes passed before Gregor moved. He hissed through gritted teeth as he pulled himself up and shambled towards his bed. He held himself upright with one hand, leaning on the bedpost, while the other undid the buttons and fastenings of his armor and clothes with trembling fingers. He let everything fall to the floor in a jumbled mess and slipped beneath the covers, groaning and grunting with pain and effort, until he was comfortable at last -- as comfortable as he could be, in a room that seemed so lifeless to him now that Raelynn had removed every piece of herself. He pulled the covers over his head and curled up, his arms wrapped around his shins, and let himself drift away into sleep. Anything was better than being awake.

That night he dreamed of loss and regret, but the monster of the dark forest haunted him no more.