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aladaylessecondblog · 7 months ago

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Faal Hah Wuld, pt. 16

Sadrith,

We found the brush. It's yours when you next visit.

-Vex

----

Dear Sadrith,

I hope this letter finds you well. I write to you now from Solstheim, where I have now been living. I had thought I might continue to travel with the khajiit, but it seems my age is catching up with me. After solving a particularly unsettling situation in Raven Rock, I found myself gifted with a home, and it is here I have settled. Settled, me! It is a ridiculous idea, really, to think that after a lifetime of roving, both with the Urshilaku and the khajiit, I am finally inclined to stay in one place.

Yet here I am. The letter you provided was quite handy when I encountered a brother of that Mallory fellow you spoke of, as it turns out his brother is the town blacksmith, and he showed me how to put up one of those marks your guild is so fond of. So everyone knows I'm not to be stolen from. The guild takes care of their own, he says.

I know you don't do well with long passages so I will end this letter as I always do. Remember that you brought me hope as you brought it to all of Skyrim.

- your loving mother

----------------------

Sadrith gave a slight smile as she looked over the second letter the courier had delivered, and tucked it away with some of the others from her mother. Whenever she was having a particularly bad day she would reread some of them, and...it would help. Sometimes if the day was especially bad it wouldn't be much, but a little spot of light was better than none when her mind darkened.

"What's this about a brush?"

She had been so focused on reading the letters that she'd hardly noticed Torovan as he slipped up behind her.

"None of your--" she tucked away the first letter as Torovan sat down next to her, "Has anyone ever told you that it's rude to look over another person's private letters?"

"My apologies for wanting to know if you were looking over anything more you might have fond on those...golden bandits we encountered."

Sadrith took a deep breath. "Just...don't sneak up on me like that. And it's...a delicate letter. From someone I'd not like you to yap about. Oddly enough, it's from someone a lot like you."

"And how might that be, exactly?" Torovan took a sip from the mug she ordered for him and gave a brief wince.

"Stick up her ass. S'pose she's got a reason for it, though, so I imagine you do too." She shrugged, and went on nibbling at the meal before her. Her appetite was deader than dead, but she was forcing food down knowing they'd have to go through Helgen and the mountains...if she didn't eat, there'd probably be hell to pay later.

And she could not show weakness to this one-eyed mer. Whatever reason he might have for acting the way he did.

"Sadrith!"

"Ugh," Torovan said under his breath, "Do you know everyone in this forsaken village?"

"As a matter of fact I do." She gave him a brief smile, which seemed to surprise him. She looked off to the side to see Camilla, emerging from the room that had once led to Delphine's secret staircase. "Camilla! I've heard congratulations are in order."

"Oh...yes." For a moment her face shifted about. "Well, after seeing the games Sven and Faendal were playing, I realized...I wanted someone unlikely to do that."

"Orgnar is a man of few words, but all of them are straight-forward. You couldn't have chosen better. Orgnar, you happy?" she looked to the bartender.

"Happy as a man ought to be when he's married," the man replied, without looking up from the glass he was cleaning. There was a slight mote of emotion--small, but there. He was happy, despite not showing it very well.

"I'm glad to hear it. Perhaps you'd like a wedding gift?"

"You're spending money here, that's all the gift I need."

"Fair enough." Sadrith gave a little laugh.

Torovan sat beside her a little while longer as Camilla chattered about how things were going. How Orgnar had built a basement and how being allowed to actually DO things to help out had been wonderful. Sadrith struggled to pay attention to it but she nodded, and smiled, and retained enough to make small remarks now and then. On the whole, when Camilla left to head to get some salmon from the river, she seemed quite pleased with the conversation.

"She seems happier now. You're lucky, Orgnar."

"Sure am."

Sadrith went back to trying to eat. Torovan said something about going to pick over the meager offerings at Lucan's shop, and after denying her saying she'd go with him, he waved off her concern and left.

Something else is going on here, it must be. He doesn't seem to need or want me taking him to Riften. Why am I here?

He was clearly an enemy of the Thalmor, as was Sigurd...so there was no purpose in having her along. Unless it was simply to have someone else to watch his back. But in that case, why not simply hire any random mercenary? There would be plenty of them who would be happy to take a few hundred gold to make the trip. Perhaps they wanted to make contact with the Thieves Guild and saw her as the in...or...

As no answer revealed itself, and the matter wasn't especially pressing to her mind, she eventually drifted back to forcing herself to eat the meal she'd already paid for.

She managed to get down the rest of the salmon, and sat sipping at a mug of ale, still thinking over Vex's letter. The brush. Finally. After months of searching and paying for information and shelling out damn near the entire fortune she'd amassed from the scales and bones of dragons--the brush was hers.

"Strongest you have."

The voice was all khajiiti accents, and sounded off so suddenly beside her that she nearly dropped her drink. The khajiit--a calico dotted here and there with dark spots, clad in a black robe that seemed to shimmer with stars -- took a seat beside her and gestured to Orgnar.

A lone cat that isn't M'aiq...?

"That'll be the argonian bloodwine. Expensive."

Some gold was produced. Orgnar took it and got out the large aqua bottle, then poured a small glass.

"That's always a good choice," Sadrith said, raising her mug slightly. "Useful for breathing underwater..."

"Not that I need such things." The khajiit finished the glass, and poured himself another. He turned to her, and gave a toothy grin. "Perhaps you'd like to share in it?"

Something about him felt...off. But that was a feeling she had fairly often, so she brushed it aside.

"Ah, no, I don't want to take something so expensive," she waved absently, "You've paid some pretty coin for that..."

There was a feeling that she'd missed something. Forgotten something, and she hated that she couldn't figure out what in oblivion it was.

"And it's rude to refuse a gift."

"You're right," she replied, and slid her mug over. "Not too much, though, I've got to get on the road soon."

And, she added mentally, for the skooma to actually work, I need to be sober. Trying to drink while taking skooma never ended well; she seemed to get drunk faster and stay drunk longer.

She shut her eyes momentarily, and found herself taking in a sharp breath when upon opening them she saw the hands holding the bottle of bloodwine were covered in black fur instead of the mottled color they had been before.

"The scent is a bit strong," the khajiit said, "Perhaps I should have let it breathe for longer."

"It's fine." Sadrith gulped hard, and forced herself to look up at his face. It was dark too, just like the hands...paws...she'd just looked at.

Gods, not again. This isn't supposed to happen unless I take too much. It's fine. It's fine, it's only his fur color. It's FINE.

Deep breath. It didn't help. It never did.

"And what brings you to Riverwood?" she asked, in a vain attempt to stave off her sudden bout of nerves. "It's not often one meets a khajiit that's not part of a caravan."

"A job," he replied, gesturing after slowly draining another glass of the bloodwine. "There's someone I mean to keep an eye on...track."

"Sounds a hazardous job. I hope your quarry's not hard to track." Perhaps this was the one Sigurd had warned of? Maybe it wasn't only the Thalmor he'd been worried about.

"On the contrary, my quarry is quite easy to track."

A blink. Now he was no longer a khajiit, despite the persistence of the accent, but now an Altmer. Yet the robe remained the same, distracting in its dark way, glittering here, darkening there...

"...so obvious, a child could do it."

"Oh? Then why have you not yet caught them? Assuming you wish to, I mean. It's not really my business, I'm sorry, but you've piqued my curiosity."

Keep it together, keep it together

"I take no offense." Another grin. "In fact, I should be glad of your help."

For a brief second Sadrith swore his teeth were longer. She shoved the thought back. This was a skooma hallucination, nothing more.

Act as though nothing is wrong. You can do this, Sadrith. You must. If Torovan returns and you're still in this state--

"You are the dragonborn after all, as much set to wandering as any caravan of khajiit."

White fur, black spots. The fear was peaking and she reached for the bottle.

"How can I help you, then?"

The khajiit took the bottle from her, and poured her out a bit more bloodwine.

"Tell me how I might deal with someone on the run, once they are caught? I never fail to catch my prey. Either I find them sooner due to a combination of skill and luck, or later, when they become aware I am following..."

"And begin to panic? They get more dangerous that way. I should know, with all the bandits I've collected bounties on. Got a few scars from...from cornering them."

"Yet you always come out the victor." Again that toothy grin that unsettled her. "The magnificent dragonborn...bandit killer, dragonslayer, feller of foes from Markarth to Windhelm. A bloody force that Boethiah herself would be proud of."

"Because I am here, and they are not." Sadrith thought of the book regarding the summoning of Boethiah, desperate to think of anything but the chaos unfolding before her. "I would prefer to avoid killing if possible, but...some people make it necessary."

"You see it as a duty, then. Perhaps the Dark Brotherhood would suit you."

"I hardly think a group of assassins know much about duty. Devotion to sending people to the void by bloody murder, maybe."

Another glass.

"And I eliminated them. I don't care for Sithis and his ilk."

Sadrith blinked, and the khajiit's fur changed again, back to the black.

"No, clearly not, if you so eagerly move to commit such a feat. But I am curious...do you have no fear of death? Most would balk at the danger."

"Danger is in my blood." She laughed nervously, trying desperately to shake off the rising anxiety. "I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of not living."

It's only your mind playing tricks on you. That's it. That's all. He's a normal man and you're just seeing things.

"Everyone is afraid of death. Everyone wants to go in their bed, at a great age, surely you are no different."

Why do you CARE?

It didn't matter. There was nothing outside her head that scared her more than what was inside, anyway.

Blink. Tan fur, white hands. Paws.

What is HAPPENING? Has Shegg--Sheogorath come to claim my mind?

"Excuse the dark and dreary talk," the khajiit finally said, "I've taken so many bounties my mind thinks mainly in metaphors of death...however chaotic they might seem to those with a heroic bent, like yourself. But tell me...I am curious, I ask this question of everyone. How do you imagine you will die?"

"In glorious battle defending someone, or something, I imagine," Sadrith replied easily. "I spend a lot of time adventuring...so it only makes sense it should be how I leave the world."

"A woman of Shor's own heart."

Orgnar dropped something, and as he muttered bent over to clean it up. Sadrith finished what remained of her drink, and took another deep breath.

"Dragonborn!"

Torovan's voice rang out suddenly from the doorway. Sadrith looked back, and waved him over, turned--

--and dropped her own mug.

The seat beside her was empty. The only hint that anyone had been there was the cup beside her own, and the half-drunk bottle of argonian bloodwine. She handed the mug back to Orgnar and muttered some excuse of needing to get moving.

I was seeing things. Hearing things. That's it. That's all. I just--don't remember ordering the wine. I must have done that myself, and just...I just forgot. ...keep it together, keep it together!

"If you're sufficiently pickled, we should get a move on."

"Right. Right, yes." Sadrith was for once glad of Torovan's stern orders; they simplified things quite a bit. She gathered her things and headed for the door with him.

"I hope you've not made yourself unfit for travel."

"Some ale and not even half a bottle of bloodwine won't do much to me," she replied, and glanced here and there as they went outside, wondering if the hallucinations would stop with that khajiit. "Your concern is...is touching, of course."

Sadrith saw nothing more, though she was still looking for anything out of the ordinary.

She forced a smile for him. Not until they passed through Riverwood's back gate, on the road to Helgen, did he speak again.

"Tell me," he said, "How is it you are so undaunted by insults or slights against your character? Where is the desire to defend your honor?"

"I grew up in a khajiit caravan. The petty things you throw at me don't compare to the things I was called as a child. Or the things I've heard from Thalmor."

The gentle sound of the running river near them soothed her mind just slightly, and she tried to focus it to further ease her unsteady mind. But Torovan spoke again, breaking her fragile concentration.

"Do you often provoke them, then? No...no, don't bother answering that question. Perhaps what I should ask is what you've done to earn their ire."

Sadrith latched onto the topic eagerly. A distraction, that was what she needed. Something to put the khajiit from her mind--a strategy she often employed in distressing circumstances like these. "Are you sure you want to hear? Will you insult me over that also? If you do...I beg you to do better at it."

"I would be pleased to hear it, actually. They have not made themselves popular, and it is always good to hear of such people being...taken down a peg."

"You? Enjoying humiliating one of them? I'm surprised you wouldn't simply leave that sort of thing to the Archmage. The nords have more of a cause to hate the Thalmor than we do."

"The enemies of my friend are my enemies also," Torovan stated evenly. "His devotion to my welfare is such that it could be no other way. I would not be standing here before you if he hadn't taken such pains to save my life."

She thought again of Lydia.

"And how do I know that you are not some part of a Thalmor plot, hmm?" She then realized her error late, and quickly tried to correct herself, cover it up, with, "The letter we picked off that group seems a point in your favor, of course. But you did say I shouldn't trust you, and I hesitate to do it anyway. Tall, dark, brooding - you are the sort of man I read of in novels, who usually has some danger attached to him."

"Brooding!" Torovan laughed. "Now you have gone too far. I do not brood. Will you answer my question or no? What have you done to upset the Thalmor, besides that business with the embassy?"

"I broke a nord out of one of their fortresses," she replied, "His mother asked I look into his disappearance...and some clues lead me to a fortress in the Northwest."

"Ah, so Sigurd has YOU to blame for their increasing presence in the Sea of Ghosts."

"For WHAT?" Sadrith burst out. "Are the Thalmor skulking around Winterhold? If he needs them cleared out, I could do it as easily as I did at the fortress."

"All of them on your own?"

"If need be."

"You are every bit as foolish as Sigurd once was. He too is eager to take command and right the wrongs and ills he sees before him. Do you think it your responsibility as he does, or do you simply like the glory?"

"Both," Sadrith replied. "To see a smile, or relief, on a face and know I was the reason for it - that is what I want to see when I enter a village, or one of the cities here."

"You could settle right now and be satisfied with all you've done...and still see those looks when you receive visitors." Torovan went on in the same vein, but she tuned most of it out. "You killed the World-Eater, and need do nothing more."

"If I don't, then who will?" Sadrith shrugged. "I'm not made to be idle...stay in one place. I get an itch under my skin to move if I try. Natural, considering I grew up in a caravan with a mother who herself hailed from an ashlander tribe. Wandering is in my blood."

"Indeed it is."

They were silent until reaching the Guardian Stones.

"You clearly do not need me," she said suddenly, stopping to look at the Thief stone, "And I know you won't tell me the reason for my being here...but I know there must be something else."

"The reason is that my friend is overprotective of me, and wants me looked after more than I feel is necessary. With the dragons about, he wanted extra caution taken."

"You do not mean me harm, do you?"

"Of course not."

She stared a little while. The anxiety was finally receding but all she could think was--the hallucination of the khajiit was so contained within the Sleeping Giant and nothing else outside it had been seen, perhaps it was merely having met Delphine there that kicked it off? The unpleasant memory of that woman, maybe, that stirred her skooma-addled mind into a frenzy without her even realizing it? At times her body seemed wholly disconnected from her mind, and where she felt no inward worry her body would refuse to believe the fact and feel its effects anyway. But she hadn't felt any such thing in the inn...no nausea in her stomach or ache of the head, nothing of the sort.

What then had caused the hallucination? She wasn't worried, truly, she merely wanted to understand. To prevent it happening again.

"If you meant me harm, you would have done it already, with all the chances you've had. You could've drained me dry and left me in the Barrow and no one would have been the wiser. Hungry as you were..."

That reminded her of something else. Another subject to stop herself thinking overmuch on the hallucination.

"I'm curious," she said, "I've never had the...appetites that those like you have. Never had to tell the difference between difference kinds of blood...what makes mine any different than the regular? Is it more filling?"

"In a way," Torovan replied, as she turned and lead him further up the path. "I cannot strike the feeling from my mind that I have tasted it somewhere before."

His tone here made her wish she could see his face.

"Unless you have preyed on me in the night some time ago, I doubt it. Not that I would say no to your bowing over me as you did before."

"I say again: you trust too easily. You seem aware of the danger I pose and yet you flaunt it as a less experienced mercenary would. Do you think yourself safe from harm?"

"I think what is outside is less frightening than what is inside." The words were out before she could stop them, and the hope she felt that he hadn't heard her properly was immediately dashed when he turned to face her. She hunted frantically for something to say and settled on, "Think what you will of me, but if I should set the safety of an entire province on your shoulders I'd wager your mind would not be as pleasant a place as before."

Torovan didn't seem to have a response.

"At any rate," she went on, "I prefer to think of more pleasant things, if I can. It keeps the mind busy, stops it from taking all the weight at once. Joy in little places - that helps me bend, rather than break."

"And here I thought you to be the sort of person information must be coaxed from," Torovan replied, "I see now I need not have worried. Information gushes from your mouth like a river. Reckless, talkative...it is a wonder you have maintained a reputation for discretion with qualities like these."

"Secret keeping is not my job, and there hasn't yet been something too important that I must keep quiet." Aside from Delphine and Esbern's locations, of course. "I leave that to others of the Guild."

"Suppose you came into information that would enable you to relieve Tamriel of some Thalmor? Would you share THAT?"

"If the one from whom I learned it desired me to. When I hear of Thalmor, however, I tend to..." She drifted off. "I have said enough."

"No, tell me," Torovan said, his voice suddenly sharp. "When you think of Thalmor, you do what?"

"Why should I, when you tell me nothing of yourself? Am I being judged, is that what this is? You want something more to..." She took a deep breath, and tried to calm herself down. Getting worked up could only end poorly. Maybe she'd see that khajiit again, or maybe as a treat a dragon that wasn't actually there. "Fine. When I hear of Thalmor...I get angry. A bully should be smacked down, and if no one else has the wherewithal or ability to do it, then..."

"Then it shall be you?"

"Then it shall be me." She gave a momentary grin, wider than her usual. "Not that I would say no to aid or guidance, but who would be willing to help me? Certainly not General Tullius or any of the Imperials."

Sadrith could not stop, could not make herself stop. Her mouth refused the very idea.

"Ulfric is being led by a leash he cannot even see, so he is no better. Not to mention the dislike his ilk have for mine. He would be the better choice for..."

And then just as suddenly it shifted, and she could find herself just as unwilling to speak. On a septim it pivoted, and she felt all the embarrassment of it.

"You've give this a lot of thought, haven't you? Perhaps the imperial dogs and Stormcloaks should let YOU figure this all out."

"I'm not a leader," Sadrith said, "That is the problem of this whole thing. I could sort it, but I don't want to be king or queen or anything like that. I don't wish to lead armies, perhaps a charge, but not the whole army. I'm more of a soldier than a general. A weapon to be turned against the one who needs reminding what happens when you poke sleeping dragons."

Oh, yes, how she would love to show the Thalmor that...

As they approached Helgen, her mind was alight with possibilities for scaring them--what good would it be to defeat them without some element of terror to make them regret all they'd done? All they were trying to do?

Torovan brought her back to reality.

"I see I shall have to get back out my larger fur robe," he said, grumbling at the cold around them as he stopped and reached into one of his bags. "I will be surprised if you can make it half the way across this accursed back way before you start ruing the day you took this job."

"Pay no attention to any grumbling. I complain, but I do what must be done anyway." Sadrith shrugged. "The issue will be seeing once we get farther up."

She took out her map, and pointed to a spot on it, which he leaned over to glance at.

"There's a cave called Haemar's Shame around this spot. We might not entirely NEED to stop for a night's rest there but it'll be a good spot to stop and warm up before we go on. Shake the chill out of our bones and all. I'll gather up some kindling as we go and we'll have ourselves a good little fire."

"And then?"

"We can make a quick stop at Ivarstead." Sadrith looked up then, towards the gates of Helgen.

"You picked a bad time to get lost, friend!"

"And a stop here to get you something to eat."

The gates swung open, and two bandits charged forward.

Torovan raised his hands, charged a fire spell, and gave a dark laugh that left her tingling.

Tall, dark, and deadly

She shoved the map in her pocket and readied her sword, eager now to blot out not fears of hallucination, but the mental image of the torso beneath Torovan's robes.

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