The Lamb, the Dragon, the Raven

by falhautalle

Summary:

“How could the mouth of such a mighty God be fanged? Was it meant to be that way? Auri-El had His warmth but the sun did also burn.”

Anuriel’s mortal mind and dragon soul have never known peace. She’s anything but unassuming, although she’s unknowingly been in hiding her entire life. While the poverty-ridden Falmer villages left grasp at straws to survive, the Chantry sits in its extravagance holding a dark secret: their beloved Arch-Curate–their mortal connection to divinity–is the bloodied hand of an ancient evil seeking to enact eternal darkness in Tamriel. Unbeknownst to Anuriel, she is the final piece of a prophecy forged by scorn and treachery.

The lamb escapes the slaughter, only to run into the cage of hallowed destiny. Anuriel flees the malevolent Arch-Curate, Alduin returns.
!REWRITE IN PROGRESS!

Notes:

I’m still working on the story. Promise. New chapters will be posted to a separate work when I complete a few. :)

28/9 lol im still writing this follow my tumblr (@falhautalle) for updates and proof of life

Chapter 1: i

13 Last Seed, Middas

Falkreath Hold, Skyrim

Anuriel was dead the moment they set her loose. She had become an unwilling pawn in a game where the chase was the thrill. Three months she had spent looking over her shoulder and sleeping in the dirt. Her body carried the marks of that journey. Her only connection to the life she was familiar with was the dress her mother had fussed over now hanging from her sick body as if she wasn’t even wearing it. It had been blue once.

The wide, burning plains of Skyrim had sprouted into the dense forests she wandered through an innumerable amount of days ago. They were lush and loud with life that paid no mind to her. Time was something unmeaning and convoluted. Every day was the same. She woke with an incurably aching body and–recently–the claws of a headache spearing her temples. Was it strength or foolishness that lended energy to her body broken from the wandering? 

It was hot. Salt she couldn’t afford to lose wrenched from her skin in fat drops of sweat. Her dessicated mouth didn’t wipe the sweat away when it slid between the cracks in her lips with a sting. When she crossed a stream she wasn’t sure if her imagination was conjuring it out of desire or if the trickle of water was tied to reality. She fell at the stream like an animal, her hands digging in between the rocks for what little water flowed.

It was real. Cool and a little earthy. She ended up sinking her face in the water, burning with embarrassment. Even if another soul hadn’t spied her, the Gods were laughing at her. As she felt the mud in her teeth she wondered if her life would always be this way now. Was it even worth it to continue on? She would never know freedom.

There was still mud caked on the back of her teeth. It made her empty stomach churn. Grit and sand rolled on the back of her tongue. Dry heaving in the grass only made it worse. Every retch made her head pound. The heaving strained tears from her eyes. With her head pointed towards the rich green canopy above she thought she might die right there–a wounded animal with her face in the mud.

Sun squeezed through the gaps in the trees like rain on leaves. She gripped the tiny amulet at her chest until its points dug into her palm. She begged Auri-El for peace. 

The point of an arrow nicked her ear. It mocked her as it buried into the mud beside her not a hand’s length away. She writhed away from the stream with a heart pounding so loud she felt the convulsions in her throat. The brush betrayed nothing of who had shot the arrow.

“Finish what you started.” Anuriel’s voice had gone unused for far too long. There was a disconnect between the pitiful, hoarse cry that she spat out and the voice she’d once commanded. How humiliating it was to be reduced to the groveling, starved mess the wilds had made her. The woods gave no answer.

“I’m through with your games. If I’m to die you will not take my dignity. Face me you cowards.” She was nauseatingly afraid as she righted herself with excruciating effort. Her stubborn pride would not allow her to be cut down like a pest. She would face the Arch-Curate’s minions with the dregs of strength still sunken and festering in her.

From the green came not a uniformed Deacon but a mer tall and strange. Her skin was unlike anything Anuriel had seen: yellow as saffron petals. She was certainly not with the Chantry but in her hands was a long bow.

“Hmph. If I wanted you dead that arrow wouldn’t have missed. Could you be a little quieter? You’ve done scared off all the game.” The stranger closed in with more scrutiny than Anuriel was comfortable with.

“You’re awfully pale, aren’t you? Got a weird accent too. You look like the sky just shat you out.” The stranger seemed amused with her vulgarity. Her observations edging closer to the truth discomfited Anuriel. The history of her people was a stake in their collective heart that bled its misery into every aspect of their lives. Only the village is safe. Do not trust outsiders . The very first things Anuriel had learned were how to pray and that the world was looking to kill her.

“Come on, I know you can speak. What are you doing out here?” The stranger pressed further and Anuriel realized this wouldn’t be a situation she could run from.

“By Auri-El you’re curious. Would you allow me a second to think?” Anuriel scrambled for a story. A lie. It was too bad she was a terrible liar. She knew nothing of this world and had nothing to base a lie off of.

“I mean, you’re on our property right now so I think you owe me an answer.” Time was slipping away quickly as sand through fingers. This stranger’s patience appeared sparse as-is and only waned the longer Anuriel choked on her words racking her brain for an excuse.

“I come from the North. I…I’m escaping false conviction. I wasn’t aware this was your property; I’m not familiar with this land.” If Anuriel sweetened the lie with a little truth maybe the stranger would bite. Anuriel would consider getting through the encounter without an arrow piercing her throat a success.

“Must be pretty far up there to be as pale as you are. Anyway, how’s your ear? Looks like you’re bleeding a bit. Didn’t mean to hurt you I just wanted to get your attention.” The stranger’s hand raised to examine the shallow slit in Anuriel’s ear that gently pulsed with a trickle of blood. Anuriel stepped away from her reach.

“You shot me! You couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to ‘get my attention’ than shooting at me?” Anuriel found it far less humorous than the mer in front of her did. The stranger stifled a laugh.

“I’m sorry. Let me take care of it. I’m Silaenya, by the way.” Silaenya pressed her fingers to the small cut. Anuriel jumped. The skittishness she’d developed had leaked into her subconscious. Silaenya didn’t seem like a threat but her proximity stirred a primal fear that she couldn’t control.

The pads of Silaenya’s fingers were calloused and warm. Whatever she’d done to Anuriel felt midway between a pinch and a tickle as the delicate skin mended itself. Silaenya’s thumb skimmed Anuriel’s scarred ear. A shoddily made notch had ripped apart the cartilage.

“Hm. I can’t get this one but maybe my mom can. We didn’t really get off on the right foot but you look like you could use some food. How long have you been out here?” Silaenya shouldered her bow with a little more emphasis than was necessary, tilting her head as an unsaid invitation. I’m not a threat. Come with me. Anuriel had little choice, but the prospect of actual food and a real shelter spurred her decision to join Silaenya. She could hide. Silaenya wasn’t Falmer and knew nothing of the actual threat stalking Anuriel. If only for a few hours, this opportunity could be a cloak.

“Since Second Seed, I believe. I’m not sure how much time has passed.” Anuriel had no way to know the passage of time. She’d avoided towns, campfires, and any signs of life. Witnesses would only be a trail to follow.

“Second Seed? It’s Last Seed now, so that’s…three months. Have you really been running for three months? Geez, what kind of crime did they try to pin on you? Nevermind. I feel like you’re not a crazy murderer so I’d rather not know.” 

Anuriel was relieved Silaenya had already turned to continue towards her home. Otherwise, she would have seen on Anuriel’s face how uncomfortably close–yet again–she’d been to the truth. 

She had taken a life. Two lives. A sin worth her own life. In truth, her punishment was her continued survival. Every night she endured was a new torment as the grief and the shame resurfaced. She had struck the Arch-Curate, too. Not only was it a grave mistake but surely a blow to his magnanimous ego that she’d suffer for once he had her in his grasp again. The clash with Arch-Curate Vyrthur had been only the second time she spoke in that other tongue.

She’d never told anyone about the thunder in her chest. The Voice that could make and unmake things. By using Auri-El’s gift against His mortal emissary, Anuriel had unleashed this misfortune upon herself. 

She hadn’t known how to react, though. Vyrthur was not as he seemed. An inexplicable darkness had colored his eyes. He had said so himself she was to be a piece of a heretical plan she would have no part of. When he’d attempted to force her hand of course she’d act like a cornered animal thrashing and bearing her only weapon.

Silaenya paused before a modest garden. Anuriel had seldom tasted vegetables as vivid as those ripening before them. Their village was so isolated that when the meager supply that could survive the frigid journey arrived in their kitchen it consisted of mostly grains. Vegetables were expensive, and Anuriel’s mother needed the coin for her alchemical ingredients. Anuriel–in an attempt at friendliness–complimented her garden. Silaenya said it wasn’t anything special.

“I meant to get your name earlier but I wanted to make sure your ear was good and I guess I got distracted. What’s your name?”

Anuriel hesitated. She needed these people to be safe. She didn’t want to give up her last shred of defense. Once they had her name she was at their mercy. They were witnesses. It was worse to leave the question unanswered, though. If she was to find shelter here she knew she’d have to bend to their rules.

“Anuriel.”

She took her amulet in her hand as she sent a pleading prayer to Auri-El. Silaenya’s home was upon them, and her life rode on the kindness she might find inside.

Notes:

thank you for reading. I was playing dawnguard and went down a rabbit hole researching falmer and here we are. I hope y'all enjoy this story as much as I enjoy writing it. hope to see you later.

Chapter 2: Before

The first knock was gentle. Hesitant. Her knees were numb and the incense tickled her throat. Frankincense, for the night terrors had crept in again and when she woke with a scream her hands would be darkened in blood and she knew her sins had mustered enough strength to lunge at her. Frankincense because the smoke would rise rod-straight towards the heavens and she knew this meant that Auri-El preferred the scent. The Gods had their preferences, and Auri-El had to prefer the expensive things. Of course the Sun God would favor the flashy, the extravagant.

With the night terrors came her mother, who would slip in and whisper Virtues or pray. Sometimes she’d press her thumb—and with it a smudge of birch and patchouli—feather-light on her daughter's forehead. She would pretend to sleep and her mother would pretend that she hadn’t prayed for the malicious spirits to leave her body the night before.

The knock returned, urgent and bordering aggressive. Anuriel bowed her head and wished for the knocking to disappear. Nothing pleasant could come from a visitor in the night. Her stomach turned, her heartbeat would pound in her throat. This scene had already played out before, a vision that ended in darkness and began with a knock. She already knew her mother would open the door and lower her voice, although the man who would appear spoke with a calculated cadence. He wanted the girl hiding behind prayer and secrecy to hear that he was there for her. Her mother would appear in her daughter’s doorframe, her eyes doleful and her words dipped in shame. 

The pieces fell in front of her. With the tremble in her mother’s lips and how her hand was so heavy and lifeless as she gave Anuriel to the stranger she knew her mother had sent for the two men hovering in their home. They wore the consummate uniform of the Chantry. They were unnaturally still, only their eyes moving as she stood before them. Their chests didn’t appear to rise and fall. Every part of her fought silently against the events unfolding. It was too late to pull her mother aside and plead her case. With the nightmares came a vision, something that washed up on the shore of unconsciousness. This moment was one she could pick out of the often confusing whirl of scenes. The Deacons restrained her without a sound. Like claws, their vise grips dug into the bare flesh of her upper arms. She wore only her nightclothes: a sleeveless top and loose shorts. They had been her brother’s once, but as the winters turned he sprouted taller than she and she would scoop up his ill-fitting clothes. When she would weave through the market with her hair pulled back and her clothes draped over curves until she spoke she could be anyone else.

She would smile and let her gaze linger on the women with their bread and their flowers or oils. She’d let her mind wander and she’d dream of priesthood and a lover she could hold. She’d think of her brother and his promise of knighthood in the Temple. The envy she felt when he’d received an endorsement for the Order drove her to tears. She’d later wail into her mother’s chest as the unfairness of it hit her like an avalanche, burying her in the knowledge that her future was set. She would gaze out as he bounded towards freedom while her mother called her in for another alchemy lesson.

She knew these Deacons would deliver her to the Arch-Curate. It should have been an honor. The highest honor of any was the privilege of entering the Chantry for an audience with the Arch-Curate. Her brother would likely only set foot in the holy place once for his graduation to Knight and even then she was unsure he would even speak to the Arch-Curate himself. Most Falmer prayed at night for the strength to make the pilgrimage that would allow them an audience with him. Here she was, being collected in the middle of the night by uniformed Chantry workers, no doubt for an appearance in front of him. There was nothing but dread in her heart. She racked her mind desperate for any way to stall their departure. This must have been how criminals were disposed of. They would be there one day and gone the next. Divine judgement passed when Auri-El’s back was turned to his children.

“Could I at least put shoes on? Or dress more…appropriately for the journey?” she was trying to appeal to the haughtiness of the Arch-Curate who was never seen without his elaborate robes or the diamond-crusted Sun Crown. While the pilgrims that made the journey to the Chantry would be starving, humble messes, she thought that maybe her own appearance would seem uncouth to the Deacons. Five minutes. The words were not an offer but an order. They made her mother tail her into the space that had once been shared by her and her brother. There had been a sister, too, once. The blood and the nightmares belonged to the spirit of her sister who in Limbo would become the conductor of the choir of whispers that encircled her and would prod so violently. Anuriel’s cowardice kept her silent on that matter.

Her brother now spent more time than not out with his squire friends. As he grew and the hours of his training prolonged he returned one day to collect his things, announcing his new station at the Citadel. The few times he’d return home his skin would reek of sweat and liquor, but his glassy eyes and lopsided smile were so young. He was not yet a man, but not her little brother who would chase her in the woods with his gap-tooth yell and bruises on his legs. He had been a little better about his sporadic appearances, now coming back once or twice a week to envelope their tired mother in a bear hug and stash more liquor in their room. 

She’d swiped more than a few bottles for herself, slipping away from their home to meander the same path through the woods around the village. It would have been more than easy to follow her tracks but her mother never went after her, although she was sure her mother knew of her absence. Sometimes the drink would embolden her and she’d return to the clearing where her life had been cleaved into a before and an after. When her head was heavy and her steps plagued with mild vertigo she’d go home and pray. Often she’d spill her guts behind their house, trying to keep her eyes open because closing them made the nausea worse.

“Mother…why?” her thoughts threatened to break the surface and spill from her tongue. Her mother’s betrayal, the dread, and Anuriel’s guilt.

“I prayed for your salvation, child. I know the darkness you harbor pains you. Do you think I don’t hurt seeing my daughter in such torment? You thrash in your sleep, you slip out at night and return drunk and sick. These demons whispering in your ear, I fear they’re tearing you away from our Lord and his light. This is a blessing, my child, to speak to the Arch-Curate.” 

Her mother was so wrong. 

“Mother, I'm fine. I still walk in Auri-El’s light. You can’t let me go with them! You told me to tell no one what I was but you know and you have to trust me; I feel so uneasy about this.” 

Her mother recoiled, and for the first time in years fury would darken her eyes. The last time she’d looked like this the guards had found her eldest daughter’s body in the snow. 

“How dare you? To suggest the Temple wouldn’t know what’s right for you... I’ve petitioned for months to grant you an audience. I am your mother and you will make yourself presentable and go with them.”

Her mother seethed, a hiss through her teeth the end of their tense exchange. Anuriel ended up in a heavy, plain skirt and scratchy blue blouse to her intense displeasure. She bit her tongue yet again as humiliation burned in her face, directing her energy to lacing her boots. The red hot anger birthed from the shame and humiliation drew tears from her eyes. A fucking skirt, she fumed. 

The outfit didn’t hurt as much as her mother’s dismissal.

They said nothing to each other as the Deacons reclaimed Anuriel, their strange magic carrying them instantly to the courtyard of the great Chantry of Auri-El. She would die this day.

Chapter 3: ii

Even in sleep, her eyes were bruised and her body restless. There was never a night she could remember having good sleep. Her dreams were often violent and from a time before anything of Nirn that still survived. The ecstasy of a non-existence and the terrifying abyss of that same prospect. Connection to one great Soul that flowed as the blood of their spirits. There had been no need for sight or knowledge, emotion or worship, for everything that could be known was already known. They venerated Daedra because their forms were nothing and everything and they were perfection, so they sought to shatter it. It felt like being too drunk, closing your eyes and spinning endlessly until darkness took you. It was euphoria until it wasn’t and then they cut their chests open to form mountains and rivers, to capture the essence of being and make it finite. 

Silaenya had mentioned her inability to remain still in sleep, concern wrapped in a joke: “You’re going to walk straight into a hunter’s arrow one night if you’re not careful.”

Her mother would proffer little vials of paralysis draughts smelling like sharp liquor and wet grass, or give her a heady glass of dark wine tainted with sleeping tree sap. The restraint of her body made things worse, as if caught in a net between the air of being awake and the sun-hot sea of sleep. She’d be a beached fish thrashing in her own mind because her body wouldn’t move. They believed the solutions to be successful because she no longer screamed or stumbled through the house but the truth was she was far from “fixed”. She took to the sap, though, because it would quiet her reactive nature in her waking hours. The anger and the discord were shrouded in a strange and heavy numbness. Vasha–Silaenya’s mother–would attempt alterations to the sap, expressing apprehension for the substance and Anuriel’s prolonged use of it. 

It’s addictive, isn't it? A fragrant potpourri of unidentifiable parts coated her hands. She toiled over a shallow, plate-sized mortar. She’d been trying to wean Anuriel off the substance after Anuriel had divulged her reliance on it. The drug would tingle–a forewarning in the back of her skull where her spine met her head–and then it would unfurl like cotton pressed in the palm before puffing up.

She had never before been as intoxicated as the sap made her. Not even with the few sips of skooma she’d had once–the bottle hot and sweating from its residency in an old friend’s waistband. There had been three of them that day. I found something , that particular friend had whispered with a grin that ate at the doubt Anuriel felt when the bottle was in front of her. They shared tentative sips of the sickly sweet narcotic, although before long the trio found everything wildly funny and words eventually were unable to bounce from the tips of their leaden tongues. They’d passed out in a stable, the bottle empty and a harrowing headache ready to greet them when the stable boy found the three comatose teenagers. She had been fifteen then, and her brother had recently become a squire. She thought the act of rebellion meant something back then, feeling as if she’d shed a layer of innocence when she shambled home with a half-grimace of triumph. It meant little but the beginning of her proclivity for getting high–drink or whatever it may have been.

The goal had always been to suffocate the irascibility. Her friends seemed fine with the lot in life they occupied. Anuriel felt their divine misfortune was unfair. They all grew up with the same stories, they all knew the land they now hid away from used to be theirs. Retribution had never been granted, for the accursed Dwemer had vanished from their heretical halls. The Nords made themselves martyrs of a false narrative; a history written by fanatics. All but forgotten were the once-glorious children of the snow. 

A lie was crafted at Anuriel’s insistence. Many wouldn’t believe an in-the-flesh Falmer existed anyway, so they played into that disbelief with a tawdry story. Any passerby that might see you must think you’re one of us. We’re to be family friends of your parents’ that took your care on after their passing. Your mother was an Altmer, your father was a Nord–that should at least dissolve some of the questions someone might have of your skin .

The thought of being of Nord heritage was an affront to the history of her people, and something she would turn her nose at. The Nords spent nearly 400 years slaughtering them for sport, the original “cause” forgotten for the comfort of having something to hate. Vasha had said it was the most convincing of explanations for her coloring. Even the palest of Altmer would be tan next to her. She said little of Nord culture: “they drink, they fight, they drink and fight.” 

Anuriel enjoyed the stories Vasha would recount. She spoke fondly of the culture she’d been removed from although she strayed away from any explanation of how she found herself in the humid, deeply forested bowels of Skyrim. The structure and the trepidation of sin, everything steeped in spiritual tenets–it felt kin to her own culture. When the hurt of exile lessened she’d share her own tales of home. There was a profound pride she spoke with when she spoke of her home. 

Compared to the opulence Vasha spoke of, Anuriel’s life was one of plebeian comfort. They worshipped their Gods and made offerings of blood or incense, for they couldn’t afford the finer things. Anuriel had been wholly satisfied by this existence, unaware that there were people who wove gold in their hair, wove gold into the very fabric of their clothes. Vasha said Alinor was a city of marble and opalescence, so polished it hurt the unaccustomed eye. Anuriel thought it sounded too perfect.

Vasha abandoned the concoction when a rapt knock at the door pulled the two from light conversation. The seconds it took Vasha to attend to the knock were drawn out in paralysingly slow moments. In the time it took for another even stranger mer to enter the home Anuriel’s heart was in her throat and her breath suspended in her chest. It could have been Deacons with their hollow stares and lifeless movements, or maybe it would have been a Knight fed tales of righteousness and wielding a zeal for justice. She was a criminal, after all, but if her crime was mercy was it wrong? She hadn’t been given the chance to explain.

The mer that came into the home she mistook for a child. His hair was russet, his skin was unlike the Altmeri gold tone that Vasha and Silaenya shared. The bow upon his back nearly rested on the floor, which Anuriel found amusing and mildly bewildering. If not for the sinewy definition of his arms she wouldn’t have thought him able to even draw the bow.

His voice was anything but childlike and his greeting warm as he shut the door behind them. He looked upon Vasha as Anuriel would a sunrise. Reverence and doting. They were obviously lovers. Her theory was confirmed when Vasha bent nearly fully at the hip to kiss him. There were a few whispered words and a bout of soft half-laughter they shared. Anuriel was stupefied.

Silaenya, having heard the closing door, bounded into the room. Her eyes lit up. She called the man Dad, nearly falling to her knees to wrap her arms around him. There had been the nagging question of the whereabouts of her father answered. She wasn’t bold or close enough to ask Silaenya the question, but the times they’d spoken briefly of their families during the hot hours they spent doing yard work or laundry Silaenya had never seemed upset about her father.

He had eyes like clouds humming with thunder–a bruised grey that promised a squall. His pupils being dull-pointed, star like masses felt like an omen. Maybe Auri-El still had a gentle hand on her back. Maybe she was supposed to be in this home, watching this tender reunion. She hadn’t yet realized until the entire family was together that Vasha and Silaenya shared his charged grey eyes.

 

*****

 

When she woke the silence was eerie. Too loud. Silaenya’s rhythmic breathing was absent. Vasha and her lover who had spent the late hours of the evening loudly and jovially, growing closer and slightly incoherent as they fell deeper in an expensive-looking wine he’d brought back, were either comatose in their room or absent from the house.

The air was bereft of life. A house shared was steeped in the familiar hum of energy that the primal corner of a spirit could recognize as life. She had that pit in her stomach that told her brain we’re alone. She moved through the house with her sleep-heavy eyes, limbs clipping doorways and hips brushing furniture. Her eyes adjusted to take in the darkness and she couldn't make out Vasha, her lover, or Silaenya.

She pressed through the kitchen, ordinary shapes becoming something menacing in the dark. The moonlight barely cast enough light for her to make her way forward. She had a gnawing fear raising chills on her arms. Her neck, although obscured by her mussed hair, felt bare. Exposed.

She was seventeen again with a spinning world and heavy feet, a door closed not-so-softly trying to evade her sleeping mother.

It felt wrong to enter Vasha’s bedroom, but their absence from the home thus far was disquieting. In the empty room with the covers strewn about and the drawers half-open it was as if they’d left in a hurry. 

The way her blood went cold was like falling through ice. Fear that was almost tangible enough to reach out for her. Had Vyrthur come to collect his prey?

No, for it didn’t make sense that Silaenya, Vasha, and her husband–Tharwyl would be gone. If they’d come to claim Anuriel they wouldn’t have left her sleeping to instead abduct the family. As she reasoned herself out of the growing panic she called out for them. She was not defenseless. If they came she would muster the voice from the depths she hid it in. She still remembered the way the halls of the holy place bowed to her will, columns with canyons of cracks swaying as she spoke. Her chest was empty, afterwards, tongue still buzzing with the syllables. She could not wield Syrabane’s gift in her hands, but her father had given her something much stronger.

The entrance door was shut, and nothing aside from Vasha’s room was out of order. Wherever they were, there wasn’t a struggle to get them there.

You escaped them once , she self-soothed, untangling her hair with her fingers before reaching for the doorknob.

It was loud outside and not reassuringly so. The frogs and crickets carried on, an owl would taunt her as she surveyed their yard. The humble garden had quickly begun to display the fruits of Anuriel and Silaenya’s toiling. Sila had said Sun’s Height was the best time to plant the majority of vegetables they’d use. The month was aptly named, for the sun burned hot and long. In the weeks she’d been with them her arms had become toned, her hands blistered. The work was just strenuous enough that after dinner she’d often fall into a light sleep to wake before anyone and stare at the curtains and how they’d sway in the summer breeze. The sap would help her sleep, but it wouldn’t keep her that way. At first she’d thought she was alone in those early hours that would drag endlessly but Sila’s eyes had met hers a few times in the sparse moonlight. The air would be charged with unsaid things until one of them turned and the words would die in pre-existence. 

Masser and Secunda were suspended above her so full their light was spilling upon the yard. Everything was silver, the verdant trees almost navy. There was a gentle breeze that wrapped itself around her and danced through her hair. Perhaps it was because she was coming out of the muddle of sleep, but the fear subsided. They were obviously a hunting family. Sila and Tharwyl both carried bows. She’d even met Sila during a hunt gone awry. Reasonably they could have just gone hunting with the full moons and the close of the month upon them. Nearly every meal they’d eaten had protein of some kind, and Sila had a surprisingly voracious appetite. Vasha had prepared the last of the elk Sila had felled when they first met earlier that day. 

Anuriel sat with herself for a while, letting the crickets and the wind carry her into a doze. Whether she’d been unconscious for minutes or an hour she didn’t know but she woke to a flock of birds shooting into the sky. Barking rolled through the trees and hit the yard, and she stood in an instant–a quick shot of adrenaline. The forest quieted for only a moment before a wail broke through the trees. Not a wail, but a howl. 

Wolves.

Chapter 4: iii

Her thumb met the scratches that peppered the wood. Memories carved in each imperfection that dipped with the subtle strokes she made.

“Children usually start out with the staff, but if you’re telling the truth–and my mom thinks you are–then this is really your only option. You don’t have to tap into any magic yourself because it’s all stored in the staff.” Silaenya spoke in a way that would have been condescending to an observer but Anuriel learned that was just how she spoke. A little self-deprecation, a little arrogance at times, and a thin veneer of sarcasm like dew on a leaf.

“How’s it stored in the staff?” Anuriel was genuinely curious about the object in her hand. It was taller than Tharwyl (although that wasn’t a very impressive feat) and curved and knotted in places that suggested the staff had once been part of a great tree. It was thick as her forearm with crystalline shards set into the wood. The shards shifted colors with every tilt of the staff as if they were diamonds.

“A skilled enchanter can turn any old stick into a staff with soul gems. Soul gems are basically crystals imbued with a life force. The bigger the game, the bigger the soul. Did you know it’s a pretty hefty crime to soul trap a person?”

Vasha appeared in the yard, her dress askew and a bucket sloshing water down her back. She threw the water in a great arc over the crops with a huff. She usually had Silaenya or Anuriel water the crops, but Silaenya had the bright idea to introduce Anuriel to staves. Her mother only relented after Sila spent the majority of their breakfast nagging her.

“Child, you’re not quizzing her on the history of soul gems. Just show her how to use the damn thing.” 

Sila’s lips pursed, although she turned from her mother to make the face. Sila may have been grown but she still feared her mother. Anuriel and Sila shared the moment with a grin before Sila took the staff from Anuriel.

“There’s a right way and a wrong way to hold a staff. You always want the marked end pointed at your target. Fancier staves have a gem set in large prongs, but this one has more character,” Sila bent to trace the carvings on the tip of the staff. They were simple arrow tips pointed towards the ground. Her hair had yet to be pulled back so it fell between the two. It was the color of unrefined cherry wood in the morning sun, deeper grains of sun-darkened strands buried within. Their proximity made Anuriel hyper-aware of the distance no longer between them. Sila’s hair would tickle Anuriel’s nose which caused her to over-correct. She was falling from the log before she could rebalance. The ground was soft yet the impact sent a sliver of pain arcing through her elbow. Silaenya’s hand was soft too as she pulled Anuriel back onto the log. 

She tucked her hair behind her ears tapered sharply and slightly away from her head. Her helix pulled inwards in the center, much like Anuriel’s, although Anuriel’s ears were barely taller and came closer towards her head. Towards the sky. Sila’s smile was worn onto her face although it had rarely left since the night her and her family had been gone.

The day would dawn and they all came into the house; the energy they still carried palpable even from the room Sila and Anuriel shared. They all sounded almost giddy . Anuriel went to greet them, her suspicions confirmed. If they’d been hunting all night how were they still so full of energy? The trip was stranger when she learned they’d returned with no game. They were all in good spirits–a countenance they still kept although as the days slid by they would grow restless and somewhat testy again. The yard work returned to normal, Vasha kept tinkering with recipes to aid Anuriel’s chronic insomnia, and Tharwyl would rise early to hunt. They’d run into each other a few times in passing. He would be shouldering his bow and counting arrows, she’d be wearily rubbing her eyes watching the sky lighten from an armchair by the window. Either he or Vasha noticed her habit, for one day a blanket appeared in the chair that she’d come to favor. 

She’d never seen a mer like him and there were many questions she’d wanted to ask but she didn’t want to offend him. She was so far removed from this culture and socializing with anyone but her own people that there was still etiquette she was learning.

“Using a staff is pretty easy. You point, flick, and put intention into it. This one is a lightning one, but it’s pretty old. Shoots sparks back at you if you’re not careful.”

Sila moved to where she’d fashioned a crude target out of a lidless barrel and shoddy paint. A large “X” was squat in the center. Make sure you’re watching me , she looked back only once before flipping the staff–in a rather showy fashion–before aiming the tip at the target. As soon as she’d righted the staff in her grip a single precise bolt struck the barrel. Dead center. The lightning was a pale wine color, like a stained tablecloth. The entire display lasted less than a minute, but the way she commanded the raw energy and made it dangerous was intimidating. Enthralling. 

Anuriel had never seen a woman wield magic as these women did. Vasha held an impressive flame to Anuriel’s own mother’s alchemical skill. (Anuriel’s mother was often lauded as their village’s most skilled healer.) Silaenya wielded elements like they were already a part of her body invisible and waiting for her order to spring from her hands. She wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of either woman’s wrath.

They’d trade places, and Anuriel would rest her hand in the warm spot Sila’s hand had just been. The entire staff buzzed low and unapparent, yet she felt the way the atoms would excite; she just didn’t have the words to express it. With no ostentatious display she extended her arm as enthusiastically as she could but instead of a thin, devastating blast of energy the forewarned sparks backfired. The shocks pricked Anuriel’s hand to travel up her arm. The pain was like her nerves were being tickled with needles. It was pure reflex how quickly she dropped the staff to cradle her dominant arm with a groan.

Silaenya first laughed, then took Anuriel’s arm in her hands to inspect it as a mother would scoop their wailing child up from a tumble.

“You’re alright. Told you the thing backfires. They wouldn’t give these things to kids if they could kill you.” she handed the staff back to Anuriel, who accepted it gingerly. The uncomfortable shock was still fresh on her mind. 

She grew a little more confident with the motion of using the staff, but rarely did she call forth anything but a sputter of disappointment. Silaenya never grew angry with her even as the shadows grew short and the sun hung above them.  She’d offer a short critique and let Anuriel try again. Fortunately she hadn’t electrocuted herself for at least the past hour. Unfortunately she hadn’t come close to hitting the target.

Silaenya shifted to her side, a beam of sunlight leaking through a canopy of trees. Instead of taking the staff she slid her hand over Anuriel’s. Sweat gathered in the lines of her palm. Anuriel didn’t pull away.

“You have to feel the energy. Let it flow from the staff to you.”

That was the hum that made the wood seem alive like there was a lake gently undulating beneath the hard outer shell. She was sure this was magic, but unlike the violent excitement Silaenya drew from the staff Anuriel’s attempts had been more akin to an exasperated huff. If the staff could talk she was sure it would complain of exhaustion.

Sila’s fingers fit between hers as a lock to a key so they could both grip the staff. She’s just trying to help , Anuriel was embarrassed by her quickened heart and jumbled mind.

“You must’ve been a teacher in another life.” Anuriel meant it when she said it. The only other person she’d learned under was her mother. Her mother was gentle when she was younger, but as Anuriel grew her mother’s impatience did too. She’d overheat the alembic and all the pruning, measuring, and grinding that went into the solution would spoil– a foul odor would be the only thing she produced and it would seep into the walls and stay there for days. Her mother would give her a rag and a bucket of snowmelt and order her to recite psalms or Virtues while she scrubbed walls. She’d go to bed with The Alchemical Fundaments on the lips of aggressors swirling in her dreams.

“Well, I don’t want to see you dead–I’d lose my helper. My mom likes you too.”

It was an honor that she’d garnered the favor of Vasha. She’d never felt antagonized by any of them, but her respect for the stately woman made the statement meaningful. She would admit to no one but herself that her space in Silaenya’s mind roused a selfish joy. She would teach her to fight because Anuriel meant something to her. These guarded people had let her into their life, and for the first time in that short while she’d been away from home she would feel her teeth against her lips when her face broke into a crooked grin.

“You’ve been so kind. I didn’t think I’d survive that day we met. I still wonder why you’d show mercy to a criminal.”

Sila dismissed her question, squeezing Anuriel’s hand to guide them back to the task before them and wordlessly terminate the conversation. The warmth of the moment was swept away as clouds carried on a breeze would dull sunlight. The chill of embarrassment and the heat in her face were at uncomfortable odds with each other. This rarely present side of Sila reminded her of the first night she’d been there and the warning her mother had laid before her. They were both dangerous in their own right, and silence was infinitely worse than words. What terrified her was the mystery and the feeling that these women were far more ruthless than they seemed.

“The target, Anuriel.” Sila rarely used her full name anymore and it held every bit of warning as when her own mother would speak it. She was in her head too much. Sila’s hand became a claw and she knew this wasn’t going to work. Whatever skill was required to wield the staff she obviously lacked.

Anuriel couldn’t feel the hum anymore. Her own thoughts engulfed everything else. The voice in her dreams had grown eyes that burned so greatly with hatred that when she woke the heat of them wouldn’t leave. She hadn’t seen the eyes since she was a child, and their return could not mean anything pleasant. What petrified her was the realization that those eyes were her own. They shared the same color, but they belonged to a great shadow in the shape of a dragon.

A child no taller than her mother’s knees she was when she vividly recounted the malevolent shadow that taunted her in her sleep to her mother. A Prelate had been summoned. Unlike the village priests, the Prelate was impersonal and all ceremony. His eyes were tired and his hands were cold. This wouldn’t be the last time they’d visit Anuriel, but the first time was still so vivid in her mind. Am I in trouble? She clutched a well-loved toy, kept her eyes on the ground. That was her first introduction to shame. Her own mother in the front room telling the Prelate she feared Daedra were corrupting her daughter. She didn’t understand what her mother meant until years later. It broke her heart all over again.

“Sila I can’t do this!” she ripped her hand from the staff, trying to sever the simmering tension that had built in the silence. At their feet the staff became a line in the sand. There was anger in her eyes, dark as a choppy sea frenetic before a storm. The silence and the glowering were the mounting energy before the downpour.

“It’s always about you. I’m trying to help you–we’re trying to help you but you can’t even see that..” Silaenya paused only to draw in a sharp breath before kicking the staff aside to advance on Anuriel. She was in arm’s reach, sweat in her temples and collecting on her neck.

“Your head’s so far up your ass you think everyone’s out to get you. The world doesn’t revolve around you, you naive ass.”

Anuriel had spent her entire life with this anger she held. She taught herself to bury it, to pray for deliverance from the curse she had surely been born with. Perhaps it wasn’t something to cure. Her fist met Silaenya’s cheek before the thought even formed. The sound of bone and skin in a savage marriage was unlike anything she’d heard before–almost as resounding as a slap yet something more muffled and precise. It felt good to hold that power in her hand. To succumb to the rage after a lifetime of tongue-biting and tight smiles.

“Fuck you.”

Silaenya said nothing, striking Anuriel in the chest. Her ass stung when she hit the ground, and what was left of her ire dissipated as she looked up at Silaenya, that scalding shame returning. She was pitiful then, nothing but a child throwing a tantrum. A choked sob ate her apology. 

Silaenya had already bolted for the forest, the treeline devouring her.

Chapter 5: The Beginning

Hi mah wah hin paar, zu’u fen wah nii. You fall to your desire, I will see to it .

The sky darkened with time’s march. Like ants to sugar, the village thawed with the charge in the air. Rain was an omen heeded by repentance. Auri-El’s tears, the priests would call it.

The discordance invaded her head. So many voices. Fear, vexation, even indignation. The church was congested, for everything had stopped when the bells rang. Families with children wholly unaware of why their parents spoke in hushed tones with furrowed brows, forge-workers with hands still hot who smelled of salt and ash, women with aprons on or herbs in their pockets–the entire village flocked to the church like crows on a clothesline.

Anuriel was well into her fourteenth year–too old to carry her stuffed dragon toy in her arms into this dark and agitated space. How she missed the scruffy thing, though, as she skulked in the darkness behind a pillar etched with holy scenes. If she wasn’t perceived maybe the truth with its hooks in her heart wouldn’t be brought to light.

The church smelled of rotting wood and a cramped library. Dank handfuls of dirt and yellowed pages. The candlelight did little when the throng of bodies threw shadows like mountains over a valley.

The priests failed to shepherd the attention of the village. Fractured voices pulled in a myriad of directions. 

Laloria…nagaialekynd va mora…

A dead child in the forest. Her mother’s grief had become a public affair. A piteous thing that hung over the people and yielded many a stranger in their home offering sympathetic platitudes that only made her mother’s frown deepen. Her mother moved through the house as if it had no physical bearing on her, as if she was a specter observing what had once been of her life. She touched little, ate nothing. She would pace and her swollen eyes would not cry, for every tear had been pulled from her already. There had been no lessons since the guards came into their life and tore her mother’s heart apart. 

In the damp darkness of the church she was thin and hunched, her hands reaching for Anuriel. Her brother had arrived the night before with a Knight escort. He was still young enough he had to be helped down from the saddle. He collided with their mother with confused tears. There had been so much weeping.

The Knight offered condolences, a palm instinctively sitting on the hilt of a fine sword of moonstone, veins of citrine running through the blade. He was well-meaning, but she glowered as he mounted the horse with a promise to collect her brother at the dawn of the new week. Envy boiled in her chest. The Knight would know nothing of the darkness that grew to taint their home. Her mother’s staggered breathing pressing against every corner and shadow, her brother with his arms around her collapsed in a desolate heap on the floor. Anuriel cried too, but not only under the weight of grief.

Her mother’s fingers dug into Anuriel’s shoulder then. Her two remaining children were her anchors to the present. Her calloused fingertips found the space beneath Anuriel’s collarbone and squeezed.

“ Meldingua, abagaiavoy! ” The priest extended his arms. Crowd control. The place quieted with much resistance. More than a few glances were cast at the three withdrawn in shadows. This didn’t look good for the young squire, the alchemist and grieving mother, or her strange daughter. The trio was already a scrutinized group. The woman’s husband passed when the children were young, and priests came and went from their home to attend to the woman’s daughter. A few people had even seen a Prelate . Twice. Even with the staggeringly recent loss of Anuriel’s older sister, there were mer who suspected the family brought more trouble than they were worth.

“Our Gods are here . Look around you–you see because Anu gave us Auri-El, who gave Mundus linearity. With the birth of time, he made light so that our ancestors could know their forms. We suffer on Nirn so that all our pain will be shed in the Aurbis when our time to be with Him comes. These times are troubling, but the pain we endure is only a lesson–not a punishment.”

That particular sentiment lodged in Anuriel’s heart like a piece of glass between her arteries. Something sharp she could feel when she moved, uncomfortable under the weight of her mother’s hand and the gazes of those who had watched her sprout into the mercurial adolescent she was. Was it truly a lesson when she couldn’t recount a night of restful sleep? When immoral voices taunted her as she found herself drifting into the void of restless nothing? Was her wrath a lesson? The regret surely was.

Born under a void sky with empty moons, Anuriel’s life had been predicted to be tumultuous. 

She could vividly remember the hands gnarled from a lifetime of holding quills and turning the stars into something simple and understandable to the common mind. She’ll have to learn to walk in the light . Her mother had spent a month’s wages on the star chart and subsequent analysis from an educated mer who seemed as if he’d stepped out of a time preceding anything she’d known. The time afterwards her mother spent buried in recipes and drowning in her thoughts. 

A lesson, not a punishment.

 

*****

 

Her feet stung. Nobody chased her–her brother had left for a life she’d never know and her mother ushered her towards a future she didn’t want. The pines were sentries breaking their vow to laugh at her as she flew through the trees with her lungs burning in the early wrath of Sun’s Dawn. Frost and snow, her eyelids heavy with dew and the rooftops sagging with ice spikes. She didn’t play, but she ran because nothing else would quell her energy.

A girl not yet a woman would find herself among those trees. Someone that only Anuriel could see yet the young woman didn’t know. Birds laughed.

Amnayen. Her sister. Her mouth caught in a laugh and her breasts bare in the dusk. Anuriel tore her eyes away, embarrassed by seeing her elder sister in such a state. A man pale as they were with a wide grin and long arms would take her, the two melding as the sun drowned.

Anuriel was mortified yet paralyzed, a sick sense of concern keeping her rooted in her spot. Although the snow was nothing on her bare feet, the knowledge was enough to burn her. Was her sister a woman? Was this man her lover?

The mortar and pestle would become hers if Amnayen was to take a lover, for their mother’s lessons would transfer to the younger daughter. Would they marry in the church–her sister in a draping gown her mother would fuss over–would they elope as they did now?

 

There was no elopement as the man kissed her neck with more than fervency. Blood would run from the wound in her neck, the man snarling instead of smiling.

Nu metane an oeon . We found the wrong one.

Amnayen was already comatose before Anuriel found shelter behind a tree. The men lifted their heads, foul mouths seeking the truth. They had not wanted Amnayen, but Anuriel. The child, fourteen with her round face and wide eyes. Anuriel with her angst and her torrents. She was to become something greater than her childish mind could comprehend.

She didn’t run, she only waited for the dark man to recoup with his brethren, listening to their tangent as her sister’s blood stained the ground. She was dying. Gasping, making noises Anuriel had never heard as if she was a felled animal crying for relief. The men seemed to take some sick pleasure from the show.

Her sister. She will surely come to her aid.

Amnayen, the firstborn of Malenya, bled before her sister. Anuriel tasted the salt of her palm as she quelled a scream. These men could not know she was here, for Malavnenya could not lose both daughters on that foul eve. They were lofty next to Anuriel’s adolescence. She couldn’t fell them. 

She couldn’t let her sister perish to these men with their fangs and their tittering plans. Vampires? 

There had been many services before this, priests calling upon their Gods with trepidation as many a young woman became nothing but a cautionary tale before their eyes. Nothing but a name with a story instead of a beating heart with a life drawn in breath and hopes.

Priests begged Auri-El for absolution while mothers held mewling newborn daughters in their arms with a steel grasp. Would this sinister darkness find their own daughters? It had found Amnayen that eve, her nakedness something perverse in the snow.

Please, father. Save her. My sister . 

Her heart would swell in fear as the night swallowed the clearing. Anuriel couldn’t fix this, but she begged her Gods for the answer. 

A rock, a dagger. 

Her sister with a naked throat pouring blood and skulls so hardy becoming macerated in blood. 

Covered in her sin, she stumbled through the forest. A little girl. A liar. A sinner.

Would forgiveness be enough?

Notes:

I spent a lot of time frankensteining Ayelidoon and Falmeris languages together lol

Chapter 6: iv

Her feet ached, but her mind was empty. Every breath she drew burned, but she swung the staff with a vigor that she’d never been allowed for anything. Was this how her brother felt in the Citadel? Nothing but a target in front of her and an imagined threat spurring her erratic movement. She moved without precision and her harsh swings made her shoulder throb.

This was everything she had wanted that morning her brother had left with his boyish prattle about the Order. Long after he’d left that excitement had left her sapped and bitter. It was such immature jealousy.

The staff sang the same tune from earlier but she was unable to reach out and harness the magicka just underneath the surface. She felt it, though, and she also felt the bubbling frustration that came with her shortcoming. She had been given a goal and if anything she was determined to be good at something . She had never held a candle to Amnayen’s alchemical skill–she was only ever good at praying and swimming in vague visions and nightmares. Just her luck that, as a woman, she’d never be able to be in the clergy. None of that mattered now because she’d never return to that life. Her destiny was her own and it terrified her. At least back home something was expected of her.

She’d been so caught up in this life she’d been scooped up into that she could think about all the regrets she harbored but there as she did something so alien to her she wondered if her mother grieved for her and if her brother would lower his head with tear-soaked eyes and hold their mother as he did when Amnayen passed. Was she missed? She’d always felt inadequate compared to her siblings and a burden to her mother. After all, it wasn’t her brother Alatar who had Prelates at their door in broad daylight, or Amnayen squabbling with their mother because she didn’t want to learn about the medicinal uses of a snowberry.

Would they gather in the dark, musty village church and call for mercy upon Malenya’s unfortunate heart because she had lost another child? Would the Temple cover it up? Did her mother think she was still alive? Anuriel hoped so, because for all their arguing she still profoundly loved her mother and the thought of her as nothing but a ghost swept up in grief again shredded her heart. She hated that she had been such a nuisance to her.

Something meshed in that moment between her clammy palm and the staff. A prickle that felt like the coolest icicle stinging in her hand. Her flesh and the wood weren’t two separate forces fighting to be free of one another but an entity that moved as one. The feeling overwhelmed all thought and her very movements as she involuntarily cast the staff aside. All that energy ruptured instead from her palm in a wild burst of lightning that cracked against the barrel and painted the night with a bramble of searing pale light. The light snuffed almost as soon as it appeared, but she had done it. Anuriel fell to her knees in incredulity, stuffing the still-warm back of her hand in her mouth to stifle her joyous scream. She did it.

“What the fuck. Anuriel! ” Silaenya had been there, whatever tension left dissipated as Anuriel flew into Sila’s arms. They were lean and warm and sticky with sweat and Anuriel didn’t want to leave her embrace. When she moved their foreheads were nearly flush and she longed for the distance between them to be naught but she didn’t know how to breach that invisible wall that kept her from it.

Tharwyll cleared his throat, his hair undone and wild and his silver eyes singing with something savage. Silaenya’s eyes held the same charge. 

With great effort Anuriel pulled herself away from Sila. Tharwyll excused himself and the night opened up again, the two of them following the softly closing door behind him. Alone there was an avalanche of words rumbling on her tongue trying to burst forth. She started with an apology.

“Are you alright? I feel so awful for how I acted. Let me see,” Silaenya’s face was unblemished by the earlier impact. Where Anuriel’s fist had ruptured the friction that mounted in the yard earlier there wasn’t even a bruise. Just as she’d waved a hand over her scrape from the hunting trip, she’d likely brushed her thumb over a tender, flowering bruise. Perhaps she damned Anuriel as she did it. She would have deserved it.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. And you’re fine. I was wrong to say those things I did, it’s just that you work yourself in circles trying to justify this self-hatred that just eats at you. I don’t think until just now I’ve ever seen you really smile. I get that you miss your home and whatever you did obviously hurts you but you’re free . You’re here and my parents like you and I like you and you need to realize that you can’t live in your past. Just look. You’re here .”

The crickets and the frogs were so loud. The sound rattled in her skull and buzzed in her ears. It was like her own singing blood had been poured unto the world to manifest the cacophony of nature. Traces of magic still lingered in the space between her breaths and in the winding veins on her hands and up her arms. She had called to the stars and they finally answered. Siphoning from Aetherius hadn’t left her drained as she’d expected. Instead the subtle throb that burrowed between the chords and sinew of her muscles unfamiliar with the exertion of training had lessened significantly as if she’d sunk beneath the surface of a cool pond. Maybe it was just the adrenaline of the moment, but she felt so present. 

“It’s the way I left that really eats at me. I left my mother and brother and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back and I miss them. A lot. Being here made me realize how small my life was but it was so easy to go through the motions, you know?”

Malenya’s lessons, the crowded church and a priest’s zealous sermons, a candlelit shrine and aching knees. She missed the snow and the evergreens encased in frost. She worshipped, got drunk, complained, and fucked up potions until occasionally she’d get one just right and her mother’s shoulders would un-tense.

Perhaps it was the haze that she’d sunk into with the sedatives and as her head finally breached the surface in her sobriety she realized that time would–and had–passed. Nothing would be as it was, but that was what made the memories precious. That was what made the present so important.

“Well, don’t lose hope. Life has a funny way of happening–I’m sure you’ll see them again. But yeah I get that we get into our routines and things get so simple. Before you showed up shit was pretty boring here.” 

The garden was alive with the sway of wind that rustled branches and stalks. A manifestation of that elusive time that fell like sand through their fingers. Roots had grown strong and buds produced ripening fruits. Silaenya and Anuriel had spent weeks now toiling, pruning, and fitting conversation into the space between the comfortable silence and the birdsong. Sila had called Anuriel her chore buddy once when they’d stumbled from the pond groggy with sleep and clutching buckets. Anuriel’s had a hole that time, the trickle of water unnoticed until they’d gone to water the garden and Anuriel flung an empty bucket over the crude fence. They’d laughed so hard it woke Sila’s parents.

Sila thought it boring, but Anuriel realized she’d had so much peace in the lazy, winding days that slid into weeks. Sure, the insomnia and nightmares would plague her but they always had. It was a fact of life. She frequently thought of home and her newfound aimlessness but Silaenya was right. She was safe and no Deacon or Knight had come. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact number of days she’d been gone but the longer she went on the feeling of immediacy and danger started to dwindle.

“Good job, by the way. I knew you’d do it sooner or later. We are mer after all; magic is kind of our thing.” 

Whatever enmity that was left dissipated as Sila clapped Anuriel’s shoulder in a way that reminded her of her brother. A cuff that wasn’t meant to be aggressive. Sila told her to stay put, the house swallowing her. Once again alone, Anuriel was relieved more than anything that they’d talked things out. 

Sila returned to press an empty glass in Anuriel’s hand. She produced a bottle of wine that tasted as strong as it smelled. My mom won’t miss this one; she’d poured them both generous glasses and laid the bottle between them. Something about the warmth in her hands that had briefly been in Anuriel’s, or their short embrace earlier, or maybe it was now as they shared the rich and slightly sour wine Anuriel’s mind raced. It was too soon, though. They’d just reforged an unsteady camaraderie. Anuriel didn’t want to destroy that with her own lonesome desire.

Sila spoke first.

“We’ve been meaning to go to this little village Falkreath. It’s not far from here, but my dad needs to sell off some pelts and I think my mom needs to grab a few things. Did you want to go with us?”

Anuriel had to admit she was curious. She’d never been to a village aside from her own, and the thought of stepping into a foreign world scared her but it also thrilled her. The only issue was that of her . Was Vasha right? Would there even be a chance she’d be mistaken for an Altmer?

“That sounds nice. I’ve never been to another village, but…what about me? Even your mother said I’m far paler than any Altmer could be. Nords and Falmer haven’t really gotten along.”

Sila emptied her glass, dragging her thumb over the drops trying to fall from the corner of her lips. She poured herself another glass, refilling Anuriel’s without a word. Anuriel had barely touched the wine. She was used to the sting of liquor–something to throw back quickly and feel even quicker. Something to draw warmth from their cores in the harsh, frigid corners they hid in. Growing up she didn’t drink to sit and chat, she drank to get drunk or warm her blood. She had never before had wine. She thought it too sour, like a big pot of spoiled fruit had been boiled and cooled, then siphoned into a cup. Maybe that was how they made it. Anuriel would have to ask.

“Come on, Anuriel. The Nords are too worried about themselves right now to care about a few mer passing through a little village. Even you. My mom’s story should hold up and maybe even get you some sympathy. But have you seriously never left your village…wherever that is?”

Anuriel took a tentative sip while Sila took a great one. Rivulets of dark wine dripped on Sila’s old tunic. She didn’t notice until she wedged the cup between her thighs and saw the blooming stains. Anuriel noticed her movements were looser, her body had a new sway that followed every action. Her gaze seemed softer, her eyes tame and a little glassy.

“I never left. They told us that it was dangerous down here. That the Nords would kill us on sight. I hope that’s not true, but I’m glad I ran into you instead of one of them. They made the danger seem much more imminent than it is, I guess.”

Virtues, sermons, and the Nords’ hatred of them had been the first things a child would know. Please our Lord, for if we pray and we offer enough, maybe one day He might think us worthy of forgiveness and lift our people to our once-glorious state. They were told their very existence was bound to sin, for the treachery of Lorkhan had trapped them in this world with all the evil of Mundus. Only by wading through the suffering to still walk as Auri-El did in the light, maybe one day He would grant them absolution from the curse of mortal existence.

“Damn. That doesn’t sound like any way to live. Or any loving God. It sounds kind of like your leaders wanted to keep you afraid…and compliant.”

Anuriel hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Silaenya responded. Or maybe she had, but the babbling had flowed so naturally it felt like thought.

“I just never thought about it like that. I mean, I always thought I was cursed either way. I’ve always had my night episodes that you see. My mother called more than a few times on the priests and that’s what I heard them say–“

“–that you were cursed for existing? By Auri-El, I’d be moody as you are too.”

That elicited a small laugh from Anuriel, who had finally drained her glass. It seemed such a simple and rude worldview coming from Silaenya. With every breath she could still taste the wine that seemed to linger in the back of her throat. She asked for another glass that Sila would gladly provide. The bottle was nearer empty than full. She wondered how long they’d been sitting against the great, dry-rotted log in the yard. Long enough that her spine protested every shift in movement.

“Be glad you’re drinking my cheap bottle.”

Vasha materialized in the night quicker than a summer storm darkening the skies, dumping rain, and vanishing. Barefoot and in loose, simple clothes this version of her was alien. Still, she was elegant even in plainclothes and a sleep-swollen face.

Sila with her simpering smirk tucked the bottle closer to her thigh. Vasha obviously wasn’t angry, this was just her version of banter. The noble-raised Altmer woman had a tongue as sharp as slaughterfish teeth. It only made Anuriel thirst for more tales of what it had been like to be a part of such a complicated life.

“Anuriel, I’ve asked my daughter to invite you on our little excursion. Would you join us? If not I’d let you watch the house, we figured you’d want to get away from here for once.”

The anticipation returned with the mention of the journey. She’d seen the same faces since she stumbled from her mother’s arms into consciousness. The same buildings and the same routine. What would Falkreath be like?

“Yes, Sila told me. I’d like to go.” It felt like she’d signed an important contract and now the ink had stained her fingers. She was really going to see the world. Her acceptance felt like a leap into something great and terrifying.

“We leave in the morning. Silaenya, I need to speak with you.”

Anuriel had little choice but to follow Sila and her mother into the house. She drained her cup with a pucker and shook it out. The bottle was on the counter when she closed the door behind her, the symphony of night cut off like a conductor had quieted the music. She left her cup next to Sila’s, everything passing by pleasantly vivid and quick. The two glasses had caught up to her. She knew she’d sleep soundlessly when she did finally fall in her bed. Nosiness gnawed at her. She wanted to know what Vasha had taken Sila for, but she treaded for their bedroom out of respect.

She would not sleep until the night had grown wan and her buzz had faded. They were leaving for Falkreath in a few hours and that was all she could think about.

Chapter 7: v

My father was a soldier–a Nord. I never met him; he died when I was young. My mother was an Altmer (“high elf, they call them.” Anuriel didn’t understand how you could get elf from mer, but Vasha only said the humans had a strange language) and was trying to escape the Thalmor with me. My aunt says they didn’t like how outspoken she was for the Empire, but I don’t remember my mother either.

It was a salad of words that had no meaning to Anuriel. She knew little of the Thalmor aside from the fact that Vasha had a visible disdain for them, and they were a political group of Altmer set on enforcing their severe views on Altmer and all others alike.

When they’d crested the gentle hills that morning, thatch roofs and guards exhausted from their patrols crawling like ants through the veins of beaten dirt roads revealed itself like a lovely diorama. It was so charming it drew from Anuriel the breath in her lungs. This was a Nord village. The similarities between this modest village and her own were staggering. The dirt roads, the love in the signage and the homes unassuming yet uniquely belonging to someone. She’d passed a porch where handmade clay pots with all the dimples and wear of something amateur held flowers with burning orange and yellow petals peaking out of a bramble of nightshade. A blacksmith had already begun toiling at what she thought in passing was an axe with a nasty cleave from bit to cheek. They had been wholly unconcerned thus far with Anuriel, Silaenya tailing behind her a shadow and a chaperone. 

They had made their way through the dense forest surrounding their family home the morning before. The trees had been dripping in the gold of early morning and the birdsong had echoed all the way up to the heavens. There was a buoyancy to the steps they took and in the choppy conversation they made. The brush was untamed and would have been impassable to anyone but someone who had already traversed the area. Branches with serrated leaves and thorns left their mark on Anuriel’s unprepared and bare arms. They had been spit out from the forest onto a narrow, shoddily cobbled road. Whether the path had been strategic or it was dumb luck, they caught a fork in the road where a roadsign sat between the tines. Falkreath. There had been another town inscribed on a second, askew slat: Riverwood . As they made for Falkreath she wondered if she’d ever get to see the other town. What would it be like?

The cobbled road ran straight through the town like a river cleaving the homes and the shops. There was little that was distinguishable between a shop and a home. Silaenya would point out a shop and bring to attention a painted sign.

They use scales for their general shops, I think that was a mortar and pestle for the alchemist’s?

The blacksmith was unmarked by anything but the forge. As Anuriel and Silaenya made another lazy circle through the village, a voice cut through the tangle of Anuriel’s thoughts. It wasn’t Sila’s blithe commentary, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck perk.

“You need some work done? I’ve seen you circle back around a few times now. Maybe you’re interested in a blade?” 

Anuriel gingerly made for the patio. On a table, a few completed weapons had been laid for display. Their blades shone as pearls did, no imperfections but the slight natural striations of the metal. Her eyes fell on a dagger. The hilt had been engraved with a simple yet clever iteration of a nightshade flower.

“You like that one? The flower was my idea. Ironic that so much death could haunt the part of Skyrim where the flower of death grows abundant. Or maybe the flower follows the dying.”

She was struck by the thoughtful nature of the question. This was the first Nord she’d talked to. His accent was foreign to her, but he belonged to this place her ancestors had once called home. There was an echo of despondency in that thought as her gaze flickered from the dagger to the man. Would he kill her if he knew what she was like his ancestors had mindlessly slaughtered hers?

She bit her tongue. There was so much to say, but Sila’s presence was the strong arms anchoring her body to the cliff’s edge. She’d almost betrayed herself with her dangerous curiosity. Almost let it slip this was only the third weapon she’d ever held, and that never before had she seen a spread of blades before her just there . Vasha had said life was harsh and brief in Skyrim, and in Anuriel’s journey from the Chantry to their home she’d gathered as much. She’d never ran as much as she did in those weeks, retreating to whatever cave or shadows would hide her. She’d scrounge food from hollowed out camps or old forts. When she finally hit the wild forests of southern Skyrim that was the first time she’d let herself take a full, unburdened breath. She would be able to disappear there.

“It is beautiful. Simple but beautiful. The blade is so sharp, how do you do that?”

It was a safe question. Like an animal taking timid steps toward an offering of food left out, Anuriel got a little closer to the table.

“Well, if you come a little closer you can see the grindstone. There’s a pedal that turns the wheel. We keep a pail of water near to wet it. Takes a little practice to get the blade evenly sharp but I like to think my work speaks for itself.”

Anuriel moved past the table–her last threshold of safety. There was little but air now between this Nord and his weapons and her. She would have probably tripped over the table before she’d be able to grab a weapon and fight back. Only once had she stuck a blade in skin. It didn’t give easily, and there was so much blood. She fought to strangle the memories before they resurfaced fully.

“You’re the blacksmith?” He seemed proud of his work, and Anuriel had never spoken much to their own village smith. He was always carried away with his work or later his children. Despite their village being disconcertingly small, he would always grumble about work to be done in the lull before a church service. Anuriel couldn’t fathom there was actually much work to be done aside from mending and making horseshoes and sharpening kitchen knives.

“Not yet. I’m just the apprentice. Didn’t really feel like dying for a war I don’t believe in but my father was pushing me to do something . If I’m being honest I’d rather go study at the College but, well, I didn’t want to see the look on his face when his son decided to up and study magic.”

The information was a shovel to the face, a sudden slap that left her speechless. There was a war? Who was even fighting? Then there was the way he said magic, like it was a dead rat he was throwing from the kitchen into the yard. She didn’t know what to say. Anything she could have said would have given her away. If she’d truly lived not in the isolation of her village but down here with Vasha, Tharwyl, and Silaenya then she should have known these things. There was so much she wanted to ask Sila.

“You’re doing a fine job with your work. Perhaps you’ll see the College one day.”

She had no idea what she was saying, or if this Nord was just baiting her with false information to sniff out her facade. Had she given herself away already?

“I could dream. You’re an elf–maybe you could teach me a few things?”

She felt Sila’s presence more than anything when she pressed closer. Sila tapped her fingers on Anuriel’s and took the reins of the conversation.

“We’re just passing through. We aren’t in need of your services but have a fine day.”

They were back on the street before Anuriel could look back, Sila’s grasp on her wrist almost possessive. A little too tight.

“What was that for?” Anuriel felt she was handling the conversation well enough. She hadn’t hated it, because even though he was a Nord he seemed wholly different from the stories she’d grown up hearing. He hadn’t lunged at her viciously or hurt her, he'd just had a simple conversation with her. It still ached seeing these people live so freely on a land taken by force and built by blood while her people hid in ramshackle shells of their former majesty; she had no words for the maelstrom of feelings but she knew it was unfair. More than unfair, but that was all she could think in that moment.

The Nords’ genocide against the Falmer had long since passed, but none of these people human or mer knew that it was still a fact of life Anuriel had to face. It was a reality that manifested in her very upbringing. They had been written out of their own history.

“Anuriel. Gods, you’re so naive. I thought his sheep eyes were going to burn a hole in you.”

Anuriel didn’t know what she meant. She kept silent as they turned back for the homes. The path had become nothing but a thin dirt strip overtaken by scratchy grass. In a clearing worn stones peaked from the grass like logs in shallow water. As they made their way down the path numerous stones revealed themselves. A graveyard. The man had been right. The further they went, the land dipped to reveal more grave markers–an astounding number. Anuriel knew death was certain, but it was still unsettling when they came to a halt beneath a great tree close to the graves.

“You need to be careful. I get you’re curious but… fuck . You just looked like a deer in torchlight back there. There’s so much you don’t know–“

“Then tell me!” Anuriel hadn’t meant for her voice to raise, but she felt she was being treated as a child. Taken aside to be scolded. And the way Silaenya had gripped her wrist to drag her away like she was her mother.

Sila’s hand had found her wrist again. This time she wasn’t aggressive. They said nothing. Sila had a funny way of looking at her that would wipe her brain of its current though. Sila was right there, her lips so close and Anuriel’s spine to the tree. What a strange place to have a first kiss.

A kiss that wouldn’t come. Vasha and her husband had made their way down the path. Vasha had a small sack in her hand. A shame, because Anuriel was hoping to see the alchemist’s with her, but the bounty in her hand meant she must have been. Sila let go of Anuriel, but by the look they shared her parents had already seen them.

Tharwyl suggested they eat at the Inn. His pelts were clean and they fetched him a large pouch of coins he held up proudly. With all her swirling feelings, Anuriel once again tailed the family with much to say and the opportunity stolen.

 

*****

 

Something was wrong. The falling sun cast shadows that became fingers grabbing at the family. Sila hadn’t spoken since they left Falkreath, and Vasha and Tharwyl carried themselves more tensely than Anuriel ever saw them. It was like their limbs were tied to strings, some amateur moving them stiffly. It was such a tone shift from their jovial dinner in the noisy inn.

They’d left too late. Tharwyl had said such with resignation coloring his voice. Anuriel was halfway into a tankard of sweet, smooth mead that she’d left unfinished on their table in their rush to leave. Sila had already grown nearly mute, and she was almost pouring sweat. Had it been the food? Was she sick? Anuriel didn’t feel whatever she was feeling.

She was worried for Sila, who had slowly begun to trail behind. Asking if she was alright was useless–it was obvious she wasn’t. Her parents noticed, and in a gesture that turned Anuriel’s stomach they each took an arm in their hands and started guiding her forward. They’d barely made it halfway. Anuriel’s worry sat fizzing on her tongue until it bubbled up.

“Vasha? Is she…”

Vasha kept her eyes steeled ahead, jaw set like her daughter’s.

“Keep going, child. Walk.”

There was something they weren’t telling her. Vasha and Tharwyl could have had an entire conversation just in the looks they shared. Sila nearly limped forward. It couldn’t have been the ankle she’d sprained misjudging a fall when they’d circled around what Tharwyl had said was a camp of bandits. They’d promptly stopped when she’d hissed and cradled her ankle, falling to sit on a rock while mother and daughter worked on the sprain. 

Anuriel had never seen a bandit but with the way they gave the camp a wide berth she assumed they weren’t pleasant. Anuriel was the only one unarmed. Tharwyl had his bow, Vasha was no doubt versed in magic for even though she seemed unarmed she carried herself like danger wasn’t a factor to her, and Silaenya had her magic.

The detours they took left them walking long through the night, Anuriel’s eyes burning with sleeplessness by the time the sun and the light returned. That night she’d volunteered to take watch for the others while they slept, pacing and letting her mind eat itself. She didn’t know how they’d so easily fallen asleep in their bedrolls under the cool shade of a towering pine. She’d only slept out of absolute necessity when she’d been in the wilds like this, often going until she couldn’t.

The air was agitated, and Anuriel hated it. She hated that she knew whatever truth they were concealing from her they didn’t trust in her enough to divulge it. More than anything, it was daunting. She pressed on for the path through the woods, unsure if her memory served her correctly. Was the path a little further down? They weren’t at the fork in the road or the signs yet. She backtracked apprehensively, head tilting to take in the last rays of squandering sunlight. The sun had waned so quickly by the time she looked up again the trees were nothing but void teeth swallowing her. Vasha, Tharwyl, and Silaenya were no longer behind her. Everything had become sallow and tenebrous. Her head swiveled so quickly her neck complained, that hard pit of fear in her stomach felt like she’d swallowed ice.

She could taste her own fear when she called for her missing companions, afraid to speak above a whisper. She was cursing herself for her terrible sense of direction, and before she knew it she was cursing them for losing her.

Damn it, why do they always fucking disappear? Do they even realize I haven’t lived here my whole fucking life and I don’t know where I’m going?

Her call was unanswered. She wanted to scream, to tear at her hair in frustration. Her fists clenched and unclenched until her wrists were sore. Was this a trap? If they’d set her up…Auri-El would have to deliver them from her wrath and her Voice. It was the only weapon she had. As she thought of mustering up the Voice from the depth of her throat she almost salivated. She wanted a reason to shatter the ground and feel that rush again. There were no priests here to plant their hands on her head and pray for her deliverance. No one would be able to look at her as if she was an evil thing to be tamed and caged.

This newfound hubris left her trampling through the dark, the words already clouding her thought. Fus Ro Dah . Force, balance, push. Their bodies would break against the trees before they’d even be able to draw their weapons.

There were hands on her arms before she could realize what she’d found. The salt of skin smothered her lips when a palm struck her mouth. She didn’t know who it was, only that they were much stronger than she was. Vythur had found her. 

She bit as hard as she could, but the hand was clamped in place. She wrestled as violently as she could but just as they’d taken her that night their arms were claws she was futile against.

Silaenya’s skin was bare, her clothes discarded in the grass like trash. She was only covered in a strip of cloth tight against her breasts and a pair of shorts not unlike those Anuriel would steal from her brother. In the dark, her golden skin was sickly. Her spine split the smooth plane of her back to the dip where her shorts would begin and the flesh of her hips rounded. She crawled, her face contorted and her hair untamed. The sounds pouring from her were halfway between a cry and a groan.

“Do not speak.” Vasha’s voice was a blade at her throat, a shiver down her spine. She spoke so low Anuriel felt the vibration against her ear. She could barely move her head, only squirm against the pressure. This was Vasha ? She was unnaturally strong, her grip so tight Anuriel’s arm was already numb.

Anuriel was still gasping with the surge of adrenaline even though her fear had subsided slightly knowing Vythur hadn’t found her yet. What had they done to Silaenya? She was in such pain, groveling in the grass.

Anuriel was forced into the brush as Silaenya went silent. Secunda shed its light on the break in the trees. There was no sound save for what came from Silaenya. Not her but her body. A sound like sun-dried branches snapping. Popping. There was skin one moment and thick, sandy fur the next. A wolf’s ears and a narrow muzzle with a sharp, obsidian nose. Silaenya was gone. In her place, a new creature. 

Like the animal she’s become, she lowered her limbs to the ground. Her head rose as she scented the air. Silver eyes aflame with hunger met Anuriel’s. 

This was what they were hiding.

Chapter 8: vi

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

Silaenya clung to the shadows broad as the night was long. That night was branded hot and clear in Anuriel’s mind. Every time she looked at Sila she saw the wolf. The silver eyes that held the woman she knew entrapped in that bestial form and the cold, wet nose that had brushed her hand. She had darted into the darkness soon after, an arrow flying silent and deadly. The walk to their home was quiet as a funeral procession. Vasha’s scathing voice haunted her.

“How would I have told you? I didn’t want to be like ‘hey, by the way, I’m a werewolf.’ You were so jumpy when we took you in I thought you’d run away in the middle of the night. I just didn’t know how to tell you. Honestly, I thought you knew already.”

The thought that Sila didn’t want to lose her touched her. Warmed her a little, even though it was already muggy and stale outside.

“How would I have known? Before that night I didn’t even know werewolves existed. I was afraid for you. I thought you had been hurt .”

Anuriel remembered Sila hunched and groaning on the ground, her fingers tearing at the grass. The dirt that would gather under her fingernails and the way her very bones had submitted to the wolf.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better it doesn’t actually hurt when I turn. My first one was the only painful one. It only hurts when I suppress it–which I’d been doing since we’d left for Falkreath. I’m sorry, by the way, for grabbing you like that. The closer the turning gets the easier I get…I don’t know…irritated? You really should have seen your face. I was just worried because you looked so in over your head.”

Sila returned the morning after her turning with a wild joy in her eyes and rust-colored fingernails. She’d taken Anuriel into their shared bedroom, taken Anuriel’s hands in hers, and apologized. The summery heat of Last Seed was embedded in her skin. So warm in Anuriel’s cool hands. The energy in the home was no longer taut with secrets. Vasha had sat her down after their dinner, opened a sea-glass-colored bottle of wine, and told her everything. She, too, had apologized for how she’d handled Anuriel.

She felt foolish as all the clues were laid before her. Silver eyes. The “hunting”. That night they seemed to disappear all together. When all had been revealed, it was as if the veil had been torn away. They kept their act up no more. They seemed much more comfortable. They nudged each other and butted limbs. They’d use their bodies instead of their words to speak in a language Anuriel didn’t understand.

“Were you born a werewolf?”

Silaenya was young. She couldn’t have been much older than Anuriel, although her face was already thin and angular as most Altmers were. Anuriel couldn’t imagine growing up needing to become the beast Silaenya had, not with her nightmares or her volatile moods. She couldn’t imagine having those claws and teeth and being able to use them. She knew then that day they’d fought Sila had turned. That was why she’d run for the trees like her feet were on fire. Maybe they were not as dissimilar as Anuriel originally thought.

“Yes. My mom told you about us–my dad was the first. He turned my mom before she knew she was having me. I mean, I didn’t come out with fur or a tail but they knew pretty quickly I was like them.”

They used the ambience of the forest to their advantage, Anuriel watching how Silaenya crept through the brush silently. She tailed Silaenya as best she could. Even with those weeks she’d spent in the wild she couldn’t compare to Sila’s movements. She was a predator that knew what she was doing.

In the interim of conversation Anuriel thought again of her home. Had she still been in her village her and her mother would have long since eaten dinner. Her mother would retire into her own sparsely furnished room with little sound. She’d be alone again with the crude shrine in her bedroom glaring at her and the loose floorboard with her brother’s stash of liquor whispering. If she knocked herself into a stupor she wouldn’t see that knife at her sister’s throat or the broken faces around her. She wanted her mother to speak to her. To look at her as if she was anything but a weight she’d been made to carry. She didn’t deserve it but she wanted it. Anuriel knew she was selfish. 

Alatar came home so infrequently it felt like he too had been taken from their lives. He was in the strange space between Squire and Knighthood, his armor already fitted for him and his hair short and neat. He wouldn’t get his weapon until he graduated, but he had told them he knew he’d be a swordsman. I’m alright with a bow, but our lance’s Sentinel told me I’d be a fine swordsman . Her mother had looked at him with a smile that carved into Anuriel’s heart. Why was she good at nothing?

With Anuriel no longer there did he return home more?

Her eyes had grown misty. Everything was a blur she had to blink away, shutting her eyes and shutting away those memories. She wasn’t home anymore but with every breath she took the memories were a tumor of a reminder.

“We’re almost there. See the smoke? Hold up.”

Sila’s arm made a barrier stopping Anuriel in her tracks. The amber glow of the fire below threw light far into the trees and stained the ground. The stars gathered the weak plume of smoke emanating from the fire. Anuriel finally made out the bodies sluggish in their arrogance and comfort. Five.

The staff was quiet now, but her body remembered the channeling and all the energy knocking around her bones and racing through her muscles. Sila and her had trained again the night before until she felt depleted and they went inside drenched in sweat with the echoes of aching limbs stiffly puppeteering their movements. Those echoes would become cries only silenced after Sila and Anuriel begged Vasha for healing tinctures when they’d woken and shuffled into the kitchen. They needed to be ready for what they were going to do. What stared them down now.

It was Sila’s idea. She’d laid the plans before them as they paused their training to take a breath. The bandits they’d spent an extra day avoiding on the trip to Falkreath had slowly spilled out into the woods too close to their home for comfort. Like the fire they sat around now their presence was an inferno inching too close, the smoke smothering their house. I can smell them. Dad can smell them when he goes to hunt in the morning. If we just take this camp out maybe they’ll get the message and we won’t have to sleep with one eye open .

“You ready?” 

At length they’d talked about it, but Anuriel felt sick at the thought of taking another life. Taking lives. Silaenya had tried to reason with her. She’d said if they didn’t take them out the bandits would take them out in the middle of the night. She told Anuriel bandits were fucking ruthless and they didn’t have a problem taking lives for some mead and coin.

Anuriel prayed. She already lived a life of sin. Would Auri-El understand? Would he ever forgive her? She hadn’t made offerings since she’d left her home. She barely prayed anymore. She felt a guilt so oppressive she couldn’t take a full breath. She was afraid He would think she was losing her trust in Him.

She wasn’t ready but she nodded. They pushed towards the camp and Anuriel reached out for the spark she’d become familiar with. The gash in the stars she dug her fingers into that made her blood trill with an energy ancient and entropic when she touched it. The original rush when the energy manifested as something dangerous was potent as adrenaline but she couldn’t tap into magic for longer than a few minutes at a time before it dissipated and she was left drained. Those few moments of focus she’d have to use wisely.

The staff was the backup. Anuriel was able to channel magic in her hands but it was the weaker option and this was life or death. She needed a backup.

They were close enough that the bandits’ voices crept up on them wan but there. They spoke of cruelty and counted money. There were two of them engrossed in a card game. She shuffled the staff into her non-dominant hand and readied her first strike with the other one.

Father, forgive me .

Lightning ruptured from her palm and found a man rubbing a cloth across a blade. In the firelight his face twisted. From his throat, a painful groan rose. She nearly ran when he fell, scrambling for the blade that had been in his hand moments before. It was a good strike but she couldn’t help but remember these were people.

Anuriel readied another strike but Silaenya was quicker. Her bow was drawn and released before Anuriel could point her hand. The tip of the arrow pierced his throat and blood flowed from the puncture like a slashed waterskin. The shot hadn’t killed him but he was sluggish and already slumped over by the time his fingers weakly grasped his blade. Anuriel tossed another lightning strike at his back and he finally collapsed–his face soaking in dirt and blood.

“Nice shot.” Anuriel was impressed if not intimidated by the woman beside her who hadn’t hit an elk right when they met. Maybe it had just been a bad shot because the one she had just taken was perfect and even Anuriel knew skill like that couldn’t be developed in a month.

“The same to you.”

They had little time for banter. Bandits slithered from corners and shadows like a snake after a rat. The five had easily become ten. They hurled taunts in Anuriel and Silaenya’s direction. Although the sparse cover of trees still cloaked them their vantage wouldn’t last forever.

Anuriel flung more lightning from her hands, trying to conjure that focus from last night into her strikes. Her lightning was still weak and evasive. She needed to become nothing but the conduit that intercepted the energy invisible but so tangible if only she felt it and focused on it.

Silaenya had little trouble with her weapon. Her hands and fingers were calloused in just the right spots. She fired without thought, the arrows finding gaps in armor or exposed skin. She’d ready a new arrow, draw, and fire in what looked like a single motion. Two bandits had already fallen to her.

Anuriel felt the gash before she heard the heavy footsteps in the grass. The blade sunk into her skin and she was in the Chantry again on her knees with a hoarse throat and scalding wounds. The pain bubbled into a shriek that spilled out and exposed their position. Her assailant left her disoriented and frenzied. She scampered backwards with her heart thundering so violently she felt it in her mouth. It made her spit taste thin and metallic.

Her focus had been shattered; all her thought was on the weeping slash on her arm. She clamped her hand over it but there was so much blood. It had run down her arm and gathered in the creases of her fingers. It dripped in the grass. The palm she’d slapped over the wound was stained and sticky with blood.

Please, Auri-El. I’m sorry. Don’t let this be the end .

The woman who’d attacked her had a gaunt face obscured in shadow aside from the glint of bared teeth. Anuriel saw her own blood coloring the tip of her shortsword like a quill dipped in ink. The woman swung the sword again. She didn’t have the discipline of a trained soldier but the feral disposition of someone fighting for their life. There was no honor here–only one who would live and one who wouldn’t.

“Stupid knife-ear don’t even have a weapon. You don’t belong here.”

If there was a time for her rage it was then. The woman’s insults rang as clear as a bell in her head. Anuriel had clawed her way out of the valley of death. Had been sentenced to a fate worse than death; and still she breathed. It ripped her out of the fear. She bowed up to the woman, reaching with her scarred arm for that hateful voice. The lightning leapt from Anuriel’s fingers to the woman’s arm, crawling from her shoulder up her neck. The sword dropped like a weight. Her body followed afterward.

“You cunt. This land is mine.” 

Anuriel’s foot connected with the woman’s forehead. Her head snapped back so viciously Anuriel thought her head was going to roll off. Every bone in her neck was exposed now. Anuriel lunged for the sword. The hilt was still warm from the woman’s palm.

She was holding a sword. A symbol of power she’d coveted. She was so far removed from the girl she once was. She never thought she’d have such power in her hands. She wasn’t thinking of the fact she was taking a life. ‘ You don’t belong here .’ She had every fucking right to be there.

“Fuck you.” She raked the tip of the blade against the woman’s throat, separating the skin and exposing bone. She was choking on her own blood. 

That feeling of metal grinding against bone and sliding through skin was too similar to that night and her sister when everything fell apart and she became something unforgivable. 

Not now. Please. She’s already dead. She's gone . 

“Ami I’m sorry!”

Her sister was on the ground. The snow–so blue in the moonlight–was tainted with blood black in the absence of sunlight. Her hands were covered in it. Her hair and mouth smelled like copper. Her sister didn’t move.

Ami? She knew her sister wasn’t ever getting up again. Amnayen’s eyes pooled with tears she’d never shed. The man who’d sunk his teeth into her sister's neck was gone, but four punctures in her neck trickled threads of blood that met in her hair.

“Anuriel. Hey. Anuriel. Look at me.”

There was no Amnayen. There was a woman with an arrow fit into the slash Anuriel had made. There was a sword in the grass. Silaenya’s hand was on her cheek. Silaenya was so blurry.

“Sit down, please. This is a pretty deep cut.” Silaenya guided her to the ground. Anuriel had forgotten about her own wounds. The gash was hot and thrummed with a sting of pain that would rise with her shallow breaths. Sila’s fingers worked around the cut and Anuriel allowed herself to weep. Her shoulders heaved with the outpour. She couldn’t have made it easy for Sila to heal her. 

She cried for her sister. She cried for her mother she’d let down since she came into the world. Her mother who she looked in the eyes every day with everything she had done just beneath her skin and blazing in her mind. She never told her the truth. Anuriel just wanted her mother to hold on to her even if it was a lie. She cried because she missed her home and her silly younger brother who was now grown and someone she didn’t know.

“Why are you crying?” Silaenya had soaked a rag in one of the bandit’s unfinished cups of mead. It was warm as the night was and the sweet smell made Anuriel sick. Silaenya was gentle with her strokes, the wet rag making a dull slap each time she lifted it. Her eyes were downcast, her lashes full and the sharp slope of her cheekbones gathering firelight. She noticed Anuriel’s eyes on her.

“Sorry. Couldn’t find any water. You might smell like you fell in a cask but it’ll do for now. We can stop by the pond by the house and you can get cleaned off.”

She was almost motherly now with her soft grasp and slow moves but she had been deadly just a few minutes before. Anuriel had felled two bandits. Silaenya killed eight.

The aftermath of the fight left the camp in disorder. Cards splayed like flower petals on the ground, mugs and cups with their contents spilled kicked around. Weapons were littered around the campsite, quivers spilled and blades with no owners. The fire was dying. The embers were red as a summer sunset.

“My sister. Sila, don’t hate me please.”

The sky flickered with the beginnings of a late Last Seed squall. Lightning dancing so far above them. In her village they believed it was Auri-El’s warning. Great branches of deadly light flickering above them–a reminder of who was sovereign and who lived below. Thunder grumbled from afar like a great beast yawning.

“What about your sister?” Sila tossed the rag into the camp below. Anuriel’s arm was still smeared in blood. It colored her chalky skin rusty. Blood and mead hit her nose

“I killed her.” Such ugly words in her mouth, reducing a life to three words. Reducing the most grave of sins and haunting of actions to three words. All of the air in her lungs was gone. Silaenya didn’t speak. She didn’t move.

“They were turning her into a vampire. I didn’t want her to suffer that curse. I didn’t want to do it. Please believe me Silaenya. I live with repentance every moment I breathe. I hate what I am and what I’ve done.” Anuriel rambled with ragged breath and tears still seeping from her eyes. Her face ached from its sorrowful contortion. Her jaw felt rigid and a headache was blooming.

Silaenya’s jaw ticked. She chewed on her lip, her eyes set on the ground. She was still silent, and that terrified Anuriel. She deserved the judgement but she just wanted someone to still love her. She couldn’t bear Silaenya hating her.

“You don’t cry like that unless you’re sorry. You were screaming her name. You do it in your sleep sometimes too. I don’t…I just. Fuck. I don’t know what to say. You tried to save her–in a twisted way. I can’t understand how you feel but you tried to do what you thought was right.” Silaenya stretched across the space in between the two. She planted her lips on Anuriel’s forehead where her hair met her skin. Anuriel felt the warmth and the wetness for only a second and she begged for it not to end even though the words didn’t come out.

The rain finally came, light as a feather. It was a mist coating their skin and dripping from tree leaves. The thunder grew louder.

“Let’s go home.”

They stood and Anuriel reached for Silaenya’s hand. She wrapped her fingers tentatively around Silaenya’s. Their fingers slotted together and Anuriel left her mark in the smear of blood that nestled in the creases of Sila’s hands. It felt significant to Anuriel. She stained those she loved. Anyone she let in would be marked by her existence. Her mother and her grief. Her brother losing his eldest sister and throwing himself into training, avoiding the spaces where he once had a family. Silaenya unable to sleep because Anuriel never could. The rain would slip between their hands and cleanse her sullied skin.

She led Silaenya down into the camp, still clinging on to her. The first bandit they’d killed was unmoving and long gone. His blade was still beside him. If she was going to live in this world she couldn’t be afraid of herself. She needed protection.

She grabbed the dagger.

They were drenched when the house began peaking through the trees. The rain had tapered, but not before a deluge that pelted their skin and made their clothes heavy. They’d have to hang them as soon as they took them off. Their hands remained joined the entire walk home. 

The house was dark aside from a lantern lit and placed on the kitchen counter. Silaenya snuffed the candle, her steps exaggerated and light. The floor creaked in places. 

“They’re close, love. You smelled them on her in Falkreath.”

Vasha’s voice was muted behind the closed door. Anuriel couldn’t hear unless she tilted her head and strained her ears. She tried to be discreet but Sila noticed. She grabbed Anuriel’s hand to lead her to their room. Anuriel wanted to protest. She felt she needed to know what they were keeping from her.

With their backs turned the voices were even lower. Barely a whisper.

“Damn bloodsuckers. I’m just worried they’ll swarm the house. You know they have their covens .”

Tharwyl sounded bitter as he hissed out his words. She’d rarely heard such emotion in his voice. He was usually quite placid and enveloped in a project of his. He seemed shy. Anuriel couldn’t hide her pounding pulse from Silaenya. Vampires? In Falkreath? It had to be Vyrthur and his Deacons. They’d come for her as she knew they would. She was so stupid to go hunt bandits in the middle of the woods in the night if they were lurking so close.

They hadn’t reached the door before Vasha spoke behind them.

“Where have you two been? Silaenya–your father would not sleep when we found you missing. And…Anuriel?” She took Anuriel’s bloodstained arm in her hands. She flicked her wrist to summon a small lick of flame. She ran the light down Anuriel’s arm. In the dark of the woods she hadn't noticed but her clothes were soaked in blood. That was why it still caught in her nose so strongly. Vasha sucked her breath in, her eyes widened. 

“You’re what we smelled when you two showed up. By the Gods, you’re a walking beacon. Silaenya you will not do this again. You could’ve gotten yourselves killed.”

Silaenya threw her arms up, a sharp huff shooting out of her mouth. 

“Mom! I just wanted to help. Anuriel needs to know how to defend herself. We can't stay here in this house forever.”

Vasha inhaled. When her chest had fully expanded, she paused and recoiled. There was anger in her face etched into the space between her brows and burning in her eyes. Anuriel backed away, afraid Vasha would unleash her ire on her. She was back in her own home for a second, her mother flinging a wet rag at her. Her voice raised and ricocheted from the walls.

“Bandits. Really? She’s not ready, Silaenya. There are dangers far greater than bandits in these woods. You can’t be sneaking off in the night to try your hand at being a hero.”

Silaenya scoffed. Anuriel realized they truly hadn’t thought it through. Silaenya was confident in her abilities. She’d dragged Anuriel with her because she was maybe a little too confident, even if she was trying to help. She’d been shortsighted. Anuriel had been training for less than a week. Sila had been so persuasive, though. She’d made it seem like it was an easy-in-easy-out thing. It could have been, if the five hadn’t become ten. If Anuriel had been able to control herself.

“There were vampires in Falkreath, weren’t there?” Anuriel had to know. The thought was a caged bird knocking around in her mind. She wouldn’t let them hurt this family. She wouldn’t let herself be the reason she ruined something else again. She didn’t want to think about what they’d do to her when they found her. Vasha’s face was usually unreadable but in that moment with the lantern relit and her face aglow she cycled through something like pity and something like surprise. 

“Anuriel. You shouldn’t worry about such things. You’re safe here. You two need to get to sleep. The garden will only be viable for about another month and a half, we need you two working on it.” Vasha shut down any more attempts at conversation, returning to her room with no sound.

Anuriel had to leave. She could feel terror in her throat and pinching at her heart. She was chained to the seconds and minutes as they dragged her along. In her mind there were few things left aside from the reality that was rushing towards her like water from a broken dam. They would finish what they started. Her treachery and fleeing would only make it worse. She bided her time, biting her cheek and glaring at the shadows that held Silaenya’s body with wide eyes burning in exhaustion. She couldn’t submit to her exhaustion. She would wait until Silaenya’s breathing finally became sedate and her limbs didn’t move. 

She slinked over to where the dagger was–a glimmer that caught the moonlight. She rifled through their shared dresser, wincing when it would creak as she fished inside for a change of outfit. Anything but the blood-soaked clothes. She stuffed them under her tunic frantically, closing the drawer gradually and noiselessly as she could. She prayed for silence. She prayed for the call of an owl or an animal to hide the clicking of a shutting door.

She ran.

Notes:

this is my first combat scene I’ve done in YEARS so I hope y’all enjoyed

Chapter 9: There Must Be An Ending

There he was. 

His cassock was the color of fresh snow. Shards of glimmering scarlet diamond were set into the breast of the fabric like Auri-El Himself had shed His blood onto the Arch-Curate. He was striking in the ethereal light of the Inner Chantry. The pale ambience was blue as sunlight falling through the cracks of a glacier. Vyrthur’s face was cold and sharp–cut from unmelting ice.

“Bring her.” His voice was as stony as his face when it rolled through the massive hall. He enunciated nothing. He didn’t drag his words, nor did he pause. He didn’t have to, for his word was law and no one would betray their Arch-Curate.

The Deacons were silent as they had been since they arrived at the Chantry. They moved Anuriel along in a soundless march, missing no count. Their feet fell in sync as if their bodies were tethered.

The great Chantry which the clergy side of the Temple was named after was astounding. Intimidating. They crossed a bridge of milky, almost faultless marble. The only imperfections were those of age. The marble was still impeccably kept and polished to a shine. Had they arrived during the day, the gleaming material would have made her eyes burn.

A waterfall tumbled down a cliff to her left. A wide, shallow river ran beneath the bridge and gathered into a lake where the mountains met the ground. The roar of water was much louder than she thought it would be. If the Deacons were to speak they’d have to shout. A mist of water coated her face and gathered in her hair like droplets on a web. The building itself burst from the mountain as if it had been carved by the Aedra with their hands. It was a sliver of pure light thrown to Nirn and shaped into the temple before her.

The Chantry was older than dozens of generations of Anuriel’s family. It was older than the men that now claimed their homeland. No Falmer alive could tell you when it had been constructed. Their march slowed to a crawl when they’d come upon the base of a magnificent statue taller than any building from her village–at least four times taller–and it didn’t even touch the top of the gentle curve of stairs that led up the temple’s doors. 

Auri-El. In His right hand was a bow. His bow. The weapon that had buried Lorkhan’s heart in the ground. His left arm was tucked close to his body with his elbow bent and his palm upturned as if he was cupping the heavens. The symbol of the sun rested on his palm. Its likeness was in every home, every shop, and etched into the windows of their churches. A wyvern at His feet curled around a basin glowing cerulean, its wings draped over the edges of the basin.

They intended to humiliate her. They wanted her to look and to fear. She had sinned so gravely she wouldn’t know Auri-El or his light again. Her death wouldn’t be ascendence but an eternal continuation of suffering. She’d heard the stories her friend would whisper. Recountings of bodies and the bones in the bottom of the gorge. She hadn’t seen such things yet but the Deacons gave her little room for exploration . She could only move her head. Everything else was under their control.

She tried to keep her face stoic. She didn’t want these mer to see her shame or her terror. She only wished she had told her mother the truth.

Do not speak unless His Holiness addresses you . The Deacon had jerked her to him to spit the order out. 

“I know what you are, bastard child. What you have done.” It was uncanny how little expression was on the Arch-Curate’s face. He was still as a statue, his arms repose at his side. Only his eyes studied her. His gaze was so hollow and lifeless. His presence was smothering as smoke she couldn’t expel. The room felt wrong .

“Leave us.” The Arch-Curate dismissed the Deacons. Without a word they unclenched Anuriel and made for the doors with their steps still unfaltering. When the massive doors had been shut the Arch-Curate made his way from the balcony he’d been rooted to. He moved like his feet didn’t have to touch the ground.

This was the highest honor a devoted mer could hope to achieve but it didn’t feel like she was standing in divine presence. She knew what he would do to her and it was all she could think about. She would disappear as all criminals did.

There were not many people aside from the clergy who had ever been this close to him and Anuriel knew that. The Deacons–and even their village priests–were his eyes. He had not been seen away from the Chantry ever to Anuriel’s knowledge. His duties were unknown to the common mer. Despite that fact, she didn’t know how he could have known about Amnayen. There had been no witnesses that night. None alive . Did he know about the vampires that had mercilessly attacked her sister? Did he know they’d tossed her to the ground like trash, whimpering and clutching the marks on her neck? 

“You’ve no idea how long I’ve waited for you . Anuriel. Such an unremarkable life you’ve lived, hm? Well, save for Amnayen. Yes, I know of that. Little escapes me, child.” His hand came to rest on her face, his finger sitting where her jaw met her ear. She hadn’t been held in such a way in a long time. Her mother had done the same to her when the nightmares started and she was nothing but a small child trying to make sense of why her own head was trying to frighten her. It should have been an endearing gesture. This was not. He lifted her chin with his icy hand, her heart in her throat.

He was so near now. His lips, pale as the pink leeching into a blooming rose, didn’t frown or smile. He was ageless with his curtain of impeccably-groomed hair falling just beneath his chest. He was frightening and beautiful in the way a great predator was after a kill. As the Arch-Curate’s eyes bored into hers she thought the color was striking. Familiar. A little orange, a little pink. The color of the sky as the sun woke from its slumber.

“You are a piece of a plan far grander than you can imagine. You acted exactly as we suspected you would when your dear sister fell to my pawns. And the visits by Prelates? Dear child, no one but you could afford one of the Prelates’ time. That was…calculated. I had to make sure it was you. The little girl with the nightmares. Your mother feared you were corrupted.” He smiled then, a close-lipped grin that resembled a grimace more than anything. He chuckled as if it was an inside joke.

“It was you! You’re working with vampires? You sick con. That was my sister. You’re heartless, you fucking–”

He clamped his hand around her neck, digging into the bones in her throat. She choked on the end of her words. His thumb found her pounding pulse. His strength surprised her. Scared her.

“Yes. Be afraid, little lamb. If you speak out of turn again I’m afraid I’ll do more than silence your infernal whining. You’ve proved to be a problem. A problem I intend on correcting.” When he laughed she saw the truth. The teeth so sharp and unnatural. 

“Working with? Hmph. I am older than any of the mudholes you call villages. I am a vampire. ”

“What…do you want?” Anuriel had trouble squeezing words out as his thumb dug deeper. He only laughed more when she squirmed. She gasped for shallow, useless breaths. She couldn’t breathe.

How could the mouth of such a mighty God be fanged? Was it meant to be that way? Auri-El had His warmth but the sun did also burn. He had been a warrior once–a king. His likeness before the Chantry was the reminder that he had been capable of terrifying violence. He had loosed an arrow so ruthlessly into his enemy’s heart that it was lodged into the world as a forever reminder. Then, there were the dragons. As integral to time as Auri-El was. They were ancient and thought of as a story from old times. A tale to keep children from wandering too far into the woods. The stories of cruelty and how they spoke ice and fire and made those who walked below worship them.  The Arch-Curate was a vampire . A predator of similar nature so far removed from humanity they sought to dominate. 

The Arch-Curate’s revelation ripped from her body everything she thought she knew about their Auri-El. What did this mean?

“I can’t expect a child to understand the divine. Oh, but you will suffer the fate you so desperately defended your sister from. You are nothing but a means to an end. A sacrifice. Your life has been mine since the day you were born.” He clutched the root of her hair, baring her neck so forcefully it made her ache. She couldn’t see his mouth or his teeth, but she felt them like little thorns scraping against her skin. His lips grazed the wide open stretch of skin at her neck where her veins sang to him with her heart’s erratic song. He was taunting her. 

His nose pressed against the very spot his thumb had before as he went to sink his teeth into her. No . She wouldn’t be a part of whatever foul plan he had concocted. He wanted her power. The power she hadn’t even told her mother about. She called out in an ancient tongue that had been a part of her since she had come screaming and newborn into the world. That had to be it. He did not possess the dragon tongue, so he coveted Auri-El’s gift to her. He would steal it. 

The Arch-Curate was flung like a dish at a wall, his body thrown with the grand shockwave her voice had created. The massive, elaborate columns framing his throne had bowed like broken bones. The Arch-Curate staggered to his feet with the throne as his crutch. Blood leaked from his nose and colored his lips. 

“Stupid girl. You’ve only proved me right.”

The Deacons from earlier rushed in. They swarmed. A hand clapped over her mouth. A blade kissed her throat. The Arch-Curate limped to where they stood. Where Anuriel had been made to kneel. He waved his hand over his injuries and they undid themselves as he commanded. All that was left was his dark, rotting blood. He dragged his hand against his bloodied skin, only smearing the stain.

“Not yet. Brand the little traitor. Make her scream.”

He watched as the Deacons bound her mouth with thick cloth, tying the knot so tight it felt like her skill was being crushed. Surely they would kill her now. She would rather they end her life than make her into an unholy thing like them. She begged Auri-El for forgiveness. For mercy. For an end rather than undeath.

They cut into her sharply. The Deacon to her right produced a blade with serrated teeth that bit into her ear. He was not precise. He pinched the tip of her ear, sawing until the pain caught up to her. She wailed and he did nothing but stare. The Deacons pulled at her sleeve, exposing the ink on her arm.

“Oh. Trying to be a warrior, aren’t you? Jealous of Little Brother?”

She remembered well the pain of the needle as it dipped in ink and then into her skin. It didn’t hurt as much until they’d reached the delicate skin around her shoulder. She’d wanted it for Auri-El. For the dragons that flew around in her dreams. They meant something. It meant something. She always woke before she could find out.

The memory of her mother fuming and grabbing at her arm took her out of the pain of that moment. It was almost funny, now, how her mother had put her hands to her hair and become a person with emotions instead of a specter floating through lessons and looking through her. Her friend had spouted tales of ancient mages and specific conduits to Aetherius in the body while they sat for the tattoo. She thought it was a fantastical story he told to distract her from the needle piercing her skin. She’d never used magic before. Her mother had only focused their lessons on alchemy.

The Arch-Curate put his hand on her arm, hot as if embers had been dumped on her. She doubled over as light–fire–smoldered in his palm. The pain was greater than whatever they’d done to her ear now throbbing and mangled as blood ran down her face. She desperately wanted to crawl from her skin. To die and be removed from her body. She didn’t care where she went as long as it was not in that room with her vision ebbing and her body retching when waves of nausea crashed into her. 

The end did come when a Deacon smashed the hilt of a blade into a tender spot where her skull gave for the muscles in her neck. Anuriel had no time to mutter a final prayer. Her body lie before the Arch-Curate, who was not done with his lamb. The Lord of Domination would be pleased.

Notes:

oughgghghgh hahaha here's some more Anuriel lore. changed some stuff about the chantry. hope i didn’t assassinate vyrthur’s character.

Chapter 10: vii

23 Last Seed, Loredas

Rift Hold, Skyrim

It was as if nothing had changed. As if Silaenya and her family were a dream she had stumbled upon in the abyss of unconsciousness. An oasis in the void desert. She was back to what she had known ever since that night in the Chantry. Since they’d tossed her, broken and lost, into the night.

Her bloodied clothes were lying inside the bowels of a log dripping in the remnants of the storm from the night she’d left. She ached as she did in the beginning. Her legs cried for respite. Her mind missed the unworried days when she had floated through Silaenya’s home with little care but the shadows had always been chasing her. She was foolish to think Vyrthur would let a tangle of trees stop him.

The heat withdrew from the world gradually. She knew not where she was going, but the land shifted with each day she pressed on. The trees grew closer to the ground with dappled, pearly bark and canopies that blazed with tawny fire. Beneath her, a mosaic of leaves whispered with each step she took. The brush had yielded to open space. She was more visible, but her pursuers would be as well. The air felt less tainted when she remembered that. She looked around and things were beautiful. The world itself was showered in a faint golden light mirrored from the leaves and the short, brown grass.

A beaten path where grass had surrendered to the steps of animals and people unfolded before her. She treaded down the path without thought, disappearing in a cluster of trees with their flaming crowns. 

She carried with her the trophies of ill-gotten victories: a soft leather pouch swollen with coins tinkling as it slapped against her thigh, a hardened leather cuirass decorated with scars gathered from its previous wearer–she’d exasperatedly fought with until it laced around her ribs properly–and a pair of braies so loose she’d had to poke holes to string rope through and tighten. She’s taken the coins because she remembered Tharwyl setting a pile on the inn counter in Falkreath. She’d be able to eat, at least. A murmur of flowing water caught in her ear. She had been lost in her mind, unaware she’d intercepted the bank of a narrow river dancing around rocks.

There was smoke, and then thatch roofs amber in the light of the falling sun. Stone beneath her feet instead of packed dirt. There was life. She almost fell to her knees with relief. She could stop. If not for long, at least for the night. Surely there would be a forgotten corner behind a house that would hold her as she drifted between sleep and consciousness. If Auri-El willed it, perhaps there would be an inn. 

She fussed with the ties on the pouch, removing a coin. It was no larger than the space between her thumb tip and the fold where her knuckle was. One side was pressed with a faded silhouette of a man–only his sharp jaw and impressions of his head remained distinct. The other side was emblazoned with what she thought was a dragon. It almost made her smile. Auri-El was with her. There were words but they were scarcely legible: Empire. Law. Sacred. Akatosh . Akatosh? She flipped the coin back to the man. Was that Akatosh? Their king?

She gave the coin to the river, her thighs protesting when she knelt. She couldn’t offer much if she was to eat, but she was wracked with guilt when she thought of how long it had been since she left Auri-El an offering or even a prayer. On the water’s surface an imitation of her floated in shards when the light hit the water right. It could have been yesterday when the Deacons had ripped her from her stale but safe life. It had been three months. Her face remained unchanged. Her eyes were still tired and bruised, her hair had long since felt her mother’s precise fingers weaving through it but she could still remember. It was strange how vivid things could be and how time held little sway in the dominion of the mind. 

The inn was hot and loud. So many faces scanned and weapons noted. Too late did she realize she was surveying the inn as if it was a bandit camp: where are the threats and how can I get out? She didn’t pull herself out of the rigidity of her thinking. She allowed herself to sink into the change. The truth was that she was on the run–she couldn’t afford to be the naive alchemist’s daughter who was afraid of a blade. Vyrthur would not allow that.

She retired to her cramped room as quickly as the coin had been counted and laid on the counter and a key had been placed in her hand. It was smushed against the main inn area with the drum of the lively crowd beating against the wall. The hearth roared. The villagers drank, laughed, and sang with the lute that would occasionally rise like smoke above the voices. The serving girl had bare broad, freckled shoulders and flaxen hair. Anuriel was embarrassed at how her eyes lingered. She’d smiled and handed Anuriel the spoils her last bit of coin afforded her: a bottle of brandy and a loaf of bread with its warmth seeping into the pads of her fingers. 

She sipped on the bottle until the embers that dropped in her stomach with each swig were a blaze and the world was fast and bright. She was a spirit as she floated through the inn. A nobody. The thought brought her more comfort than these people could realize. She had been ushered into an empty chair surrounded by Nords and a mer that reminded her of Tharwyl. One Nord well into his drink talked of a war and dragons. He enunciated as if the language he spoke wasn’t his own, like his tongue was thick and foreign in his own mouth. Anuriel listened, clutching the neck of her bottle and running her eyes over the cracks in the stone at her feet. Much of what he said was unfamiliar to her but she held on to his every word as it whizzed past her. The word dragon kept returning. Circled in her mind like a predator pursuing prey.

The villagers trickled out as the night waned. Eventually, the ones she’d sat around stumbled out of the inn and into the dark. They left her with much to think about. She found herself outside the inn, leaning against the porch railing and chewing her lip. The moons were nearly brimming with light. Masser was catching up to her little sister. As Anuriel’s eyes filled with their light she thought of Silaenya. She would be lying to herself if she said the thought of the beast caught between woman and wolf didn’t intrigue her. To be capable of such power–to tear skin and feel bone against teeth–was intoxicating as it was terrifying. Did Silaenya feel ecstasy when she shed the rational part of her mind and exposed the thrashing primal core that saw things so plainly. An animal did not woe when its foes lay slain at its feet. There wasn’t guilt, only life and death. A part of Anuriel yearned for that detached perspective. She wished the blood on her hands didn’t keep her up at night.

She dreamt of the usual things that haunted her. Dragon scales dark and faultless as polished onyx, eyes that scorched like the sun. The dragon would speak, sometimes, and his voice would reverberate in her mind like a chair scraping against the ground. Sometimes the dragon would open his knife-sharp mouth and the dream would end there. That night there were vampires stalking the edges of her vision, searing fangs that melted flesh when they dug in. Laughter and her mother screaming in their kitchen.

She was damp with sweat, confused, and half-drunk when she tore the thin sheet off of her. She never dreamed when she drank. Her dreams had been fast and perplexing as life had become before she fell into bed. Her mouth was dry and her tongue stiff. The bread was missing uneven chunks and getting stale on the nightstand. The inn was absent of life even though the hearth still blazed.

A call came from the heavens as she dug beneath her bed for the cork to her bottle. The very ground her knees rested on shook. The bread bounced from the nightstand to plop on the floor. Through her locked door she heard a cantankerous song of metal against stone as mugs fell from their resting place on the counter and to the floor. The words were thunder as they rolled from the clouds down the mountain and through the village. Her heart battered in her chest so harshly she thought it would break through her ribs and spill out of her throat. She could feel every contraction. 

The call came and left so quickly that when the ground stopped shaking it was as if she had dreamt it, but startled voices and bare feet on stone told her it was real. She wished she had dreamt it. The villagers woken so abruptly didn’t know why the voices had raised or what they meant. They only felt the world shake and the fear of the unknown. She shouldn’t have stopped. This was only a beacon that would let her pursuers know exactly where she was. She didn’t understand how whoever the voices belonged to had found her. Who would even know that sacred language? It didn’t matter. Someone knew the secret she hid. They’d called out for her. Dovahkiin .

Notes:

if you're still here thank you

Chapter 11: viii

Anuriel did not feel free. There she sat on the crackling straw of the inn mattress picking at the old furs that had cradled her restless body as she wrestled sleep earlier that night. One single word had shattered the relative respite she’d found in that little village called Ivarstead. The only rewards she reaped from her stay were a hangover and a stiff back. She couldn’t ignore the paranoia that ate a hole in her stomach, either. She thought it pathetic that there was little mark she left in the cramped inn room and even more so how little her presence meant in the world. Stale bread, a dull dagger with the hilt wrapped in tattered cloth to remedy the raw blisters that marred her palm, a bottle of brandy that heralded a headache and a dry mouth, and the armor she hadn’t shed even to sleep. Three Septims were all that was left in her deflated coin pouch. When she rubbed the cloth between her fingers she could feel the impressions of all three coins. 

She was so damn foolish–spending all her coin on a bottle and throwing the rest at the serving girl with her full lips and her songs. She wasn’t particularly skilled with the lute but she was a pretty woman and Anuriel had gotten increasingly more drunk and less reserved. She’d laughed with the Nords, watched as they sang their folk songs and listened as they talked about their families, the war she still knew little about, and whatever else they spoke of. She couldn’t recall specifics aside from the dragons. Her ears had perked and the mention ripped her from daydreams she was running through; dreams of Sila and her smile, Sila and what Anuriel wanted her to do to her. For a few hours she’d forgotten about Vyrthur, Amnayen, and the fact she was actively fleeing. For a few hours she could be a strangely pale traveling Altmer stopping in for a drink and not a lamb running from wolves. 

As she sat there fussing over three Septims and her poor decisions the thought of home slapped her again. It crashed over her like a wave she couldn’t escape that would pull her under again and again. She was in this strange place trying to make sense of an even stranger reality. Never had she thought three months ago that here she would sit in a Nord village, looking up at the very mountains she used to perch from. She never thought she’d be cordial to the people she’d been told hated her very existence. Had her mother ever left the confines of their village? Would her brother ever get to see those great mountains that spit out the sun and rose to the heavens like great white teeth swallowing them? It was possible none of her people–save for those who had a hand in the imports that kept their isolated villages afloat–had seen this land in the way she did in millenia. She couldn’t help but feel anything but lucky, though. This wasn’t a frivolous day trip but fleeing for her life.

The world around her had changed the moment that call came and the villagers just waking up to that new world didn’t realize it. Dovahkiin . Someone else knew that old language. What perplexed her was how they knew of her . The Chantry was the last time she’d tore that thrashing voice from its depths. Was it an energy she unwittingly exuded? Something that could be felt like a shrill ringing in the ears in the absence of sound?

She wrapped the bread in cloth, tying a fat knot at the top before placing it in her small knapsack with the bottle and her empty coinpurse. The camp it had been scrounged from had been crawling with mages who threw their magic with malice and left her skin boiling with their sparks and flames. It was stupid luck she’d survived. It was even more wildly fortunate there had been old, brittle wheat in a healing tent. Anuriel had spent the better half of that evening crouched in the tent looking over her shoulder while grinding the wheat and blue flowers erupting from the ground in their late-summer swan song with a flat rock that slipped out of her hand more than it ground the ingredients. With no water source around the camp, she had to spit in the mixture and combine it in a chipped mug. Even though she’d just finished plunging her dagger into skin and trading lightning with the mages until they laid dead, spreading her amateur salve on the gashes and burns made her squirm.

She was reluctant to leave the inn. It was the safest she’d felt since leaving Silaenya’s house. She had slept under a real roof in a real bed. She’d had a meal and company that wasn’t trying to kill her. She knew it was unwise to stay now that she was exposed. If those voices had shaken the very foundation of the inn, there was no telling how far their thundering voices had rolled. With much protest she tidied the furs on the bed and went to return the key to the barkeep who had since woken and was preoccupied with reorganizing odd vegetables that had fallen in the quake.

“Heard those voices last night? Must’ve been the Greybeards…only Talos knows what they want.” The man’s voice dripped with apprehension. His face was tired and betrayed that she wasn’t the only one who had lost sleep over what he called the Greybeards. Anuriel kept silent because she wasn’t sure if these Greybeards were common knowledge or not. She’d breezed through the night with only a scarce few second glances and no questions. She didn’t want to shatter that illusion now by verbally mistepping.

“It sounded like thunder.” Anuriel strayed away from mentioning them. It was like Falkreath and the College she wasn’t sure was real. She didn’t want to talk herself into a trap–which was increasingly difficult the more time she spent around the Nords. Who was Talos? Why did these Greybeards possess the tongue she was sure only she was familiar with? She placed the worn key on the counter and went to leave with much reluctance. The barkeep went to hand it back to her before she’d walked away from the bar.

“Leaving already? Not sure if you were expecting a guest but your room’s been paid for.” He said it so casually, as if Anuriel should have known already. It set her heart to beating as she ran through everyone who could have potentially known about her.

“What?” She ran her thumb over the scratches and dings in the key anxiously. This could have been a trap. There was no one new in the inn, and she hadn’t heard anything all morning. 

“I think she went outside to wait for you. Lass was out of breath and looked like she’d been running all night.” The barkeep gestured for the front door, returning to his work without another word. She . Anuriel hoped it was who she thought it was when she hastened toward the door. It was a selfish desire, but there was so much unsaid. Her bag bounced against her spine. The newborn morning greeted her as she restrained herself from throwing open the door. Ashen clouds slid like melting butter through the sky. It would rain that day. The air held a damp charge that emanated the smell of wet grass and mud. 

To Anuriel’s side with her back to the porch railing Silaenya leaned. Arms crossed, hair frizzy, and eyes red and sullied by exhaustion. Anuriel threw her arms around Silaenya, burying her nose into Sila’s neck to hide her grin. She couldn’t believe it and she said so. She felt the deep reverberations of Sila’s heart; she let Sila slide her arms around her. Anuriel was just glad she wasn’t alone. There was familiarity now in a place bereft of it. She hadn’t wanted Sila to chase after her but she figured the wolf would go sniffing around regardless of what Anuriel wanted.

“I need to tell you something. Can we head to your room?” Silaenya’s voice rose barely above a whisper. She spoke into Anuriel’s hair, ending the question with a gentle, quick hovering of her lips in the same spot. They parted hesitantly and a little awkwardly. Anuriel was a bit embarrassed at how she’d missed her and the home she’d been welcomed into but with Silaenya in front of her now those feelings poured in like the rain that would later fall from the darkening clouds.

“I’m happy to see you, but how did your parents feel about you leaving?” Anuriel couldn’t forget the ire in Vasha’s warning after their impromptu bandit extermination excursion. She couldn't imagine they reacted well to Silaenya deciding to chase after her. Silaenya fell in behind Anuriel with a chuckle.

“I thought they were going to explode. I’ve never heard my mom scream like that. Be glad you weren’t there.” Silaenya was the one to shut the door behind them. In that silence Anuriel’s stomach churned with its emptiness and the mounting uneasiness of whatever Silaenya had to reveal. Silaenya sat, but not before relieving her back of a bag that was considerably heavier than Anuriel’s. Her bow leaned against the nightstand, accompanied by an expensive-looking shortsword sheathed in sturdy leather with a finely embellished hilt. Anuriel wondered where she’d gotten such a weapon. Was it Tharwyl’s blessing, or had she gotten lucky in a bandit camp?

“I don’t even know how to tell you this.” Sila was fidgety. She ran jittery fingers through her hair, bounced her knee as if whatever she needed to say was leaking into her movements. 

“I killed a dragon. When it died it…dissolved? I absorbed something from it. It was late last night. I was trying to find you and I went the wrong way, I guess. I ended up in Whiterun–this, uh, city north of Falkreath–right as the dragon was attacking.” She was still playing with her hair as she rambled. Her eyes bored into the wall opposite the bed. That silver storm still churned in her eyes, but the charge they held felt different. There was fear swimming beneath all that confusion. Anuriel joined Silaenya on the bed, peeling at her own cuticles to distract from their proximity.

“What happened after?” Anuriel knew little of slaying dragons. The thought that they inhabited the land still was thrilling as it was frightening. Pieces of Auri-El awoken and floating around on Nirn like dust in the air after wiping off an old book. It would be the closest to Him she’d get in this life. Would they speak to her? Would she finally have answers if she found one of those dragons?

“They had me go back to report to their Jarl. There was like ten guards and the Jarl’s personal body guard with me. The dragon attacked this tower outside the city. When I was going back that’s when that noise happened. When I got back they said I was being ‘summoned by the Greybeards’. Lucky that I found you here too.” Silaenya blithered about her travels and villages Anuriel had never heard of, a veneer of intricate detail trying to smother the fear.

Anuriel didn’t know what to say. These Greybeards had called upon Silaenya and not her. She’d spent the latter half of the night tossing in her bed planning an escape and wondering how she’d been found only for the entire thing to be about Silaenya.

“You’re scared.” Anuriel didn’t blame her. Maybe she was projecting. Once you’d been made aware that power was at the tip of your tongue, it would become a fly buzzing around you. No matter what else you focused on, in the back of your mind that knowledge would be there. Sila shrugged, picking at a thread on her pants.

“I just don’t know what to do. I didn’t mean to stumble into this mess. I go to find you, kill a dragon instead, and now I’ve got these supposedly really powerful strangers trying to talk to me. I thought dragons were a fucking myth !” Sila’s forehead butted against Anuriel’s shoulder frustratedly. A little groan preceded another rant about “this mess.”

“So this Jarl didn’t tell you why the Greybeards could possibly want to talk to you? Do you think they’re like us?” Anuriel didn’t realize until it was too late that she’d slipped up. It was a subconscious reach to make Silaenya feel comfortable. We’re in this together, we share something . She hadn’t meant for it to come out like that, though.

“What do you mean ‘like us’? Are you Dragonborn–why didn’t you tell me that?” Silaenya was looking at her head on. Nothing escaped those ears. There wasn’t anger in her eyes, just confusion. Brows knitted together, head tilted.

“I didn’t think it was important. Sila, I thought the dragons were long-gone just as you did.” Anuriel had also been afraid. She was afraid of the power she held. It was volatile and it ruined her as it ruined the world around her. When she spoke that tongue, chaos had always ensued after. The murder of her sister. Vyrthur and his unmaking of the life she knew. It was Auri-El’s way of telling her she hadn’t used it right. She feared if she told Silaenya, it would make everything all that more real.

“Anuriel are you fucking joking? I don’t–yes it’s important . Are you really Dragonborn? This is crazy. If you really have that power…we could change the world. It was like the ground itself shook when I shouted.” Silaenya’s head was already in the clouds, her newfound power inflating that natural confidence she carried. Anuriel knew well the power the Voice held. She didn’t want to change the world, she just wanted to live in it. She wanted to go home and bury her head in her blanket. Being a nobody would be a blessing in this world she feared she was destined to be anything but.

“I am what you call ‘Dragonborn.’ I’ve spoken the dragon tongue. I feel like I’ve known it since I was born.” Anuriel had peeled back a sliver of the thin skin on her cuticle. A rivulet of blood blossomed from the hangnail, so she raised her thumb to her lips to stop the blood.

“Well do you have any other secret powers you’re hiding from me? Anything useful they taught you in that village of yours?” Silaenya reclined, taking Anuriel’s pillow and stuffing it behind her head. Thunder–the natural kind–seeped through the roof drawn and low. 

“Not really. Truthfully, I thought I was cursed but you know that. I’m just an alchemist’s daughter with a dragon’s tongue and bad dreams. If you need a potion to ward off frostbite I’ve got you, though.” As most things in Anuriel’s life she wrote off this coincidence. If I don’t think about it I won’t have to worry about it . She didn’t want to face the music but the crescendo was becoming too loud to ignore. Two with dragon blood crossing paths. Auri-El with subtlety appearing in quiet moments when she wasn’t even searching for Him. The summoning. Every crumb led her down the perilous road of destiny. She prayed Silaenya wouldn’t do exactly what she did as the storm broke and the sky fell.

“That should be useful where we’re going. You’re coming with me to meet the Greybeards.”

Notes:

story summary has changed. making minor edits through chapters.

Chapter 12: ix

The stony facade of the monastery glared back at Anuriel whispering exhortations that left her glued to her spot. Silaenya, with her wind-beaten face and tossed hair, stood proud as they faced their decision. 

Silaenya looked every bit the determined hero. Something had changed in their trek up the mountain. Silaenya had huddled near their shoddy fire, knees pulled in and resolute eyes trained on the heavens. Ever since they’d begun their hike to the Greybeards she’d had a dopey grin plastered on her face that would wax and wane but never disappear. She’d settled into fate so easily. 

Secretly, the pangs of jealousy that plagued Anuriel when she looked at Silaenya would sully an otherwise quiet moment. Anuriel’s thoughts had become so loud and embarrassingly envious. Silaenya didn’t have the nightmares nipping at her subconscious like little fish bites, or the doom that enveloped her life. She had grown into a woman in the vibrant forests of southern Skyrim with parents that seemed to truly care for her and an assuredness her wolf blood lent her. Silaenya was confident. She was funny. She was beautiful and she wasn’t afraid to be a part of the world. She hadn’t been born to a dying people in squalor to a mother she did little but disappoint.

“What are we waiting for? It’s cold as fuck out here.” Silaenya hopped on the balls of her feet, her words punctuated by the chattering of teeth. Anuriel had been so in her head she hadn’t realized Silaenya might not be as acclimated to the frigid air as she. If Anuriel closed her eyes the ticking of falling snow and the deep rush of wind descending down the mountain took her home.

“I’m not sure I should be here.” Anuriel didn’t want to accept that she had a stake in this. She’d never seen a dragon. She didn’t want to be a hero. The wind was her only response for a short while. She stared at the monastery and realized that she would give anything to be scrubbing the chunky remains of a failed potion off of her kitchen walls. She would rather listen to her mother read a tome of alchemical recipes verbatim for an entire day than be here.

The snow crunched with Silaenya’s approach.

“So you come all this way and chicken out? We just spent three days getting up here and you’re gonna turn your back now? Anuriel I need you here. Why are you so damn afraid of yourself?” This was the first time the easy grin had been absent from Silaenya’s face since they’d left the inn. Anuriel wished she could make Silaenya see this wasn’t some little adventure away from mom and dad for a summer. Neither of them were equipped to deal with dragons. Silaenya had gotten lucky. She’d had a cadre of well-trained men with her.

This would not end well. The dragon dark as the void had made his resurgence in her nightmares the night before. Lir. Gahvon. Gein se hi fen dir . Anuriel had never been more sure of anything as she was sure they were weak in the shadow of whatever darkness stalked them. The voice had not warned but said ‘one of you will die.’ Whatever visited her in sleep had seldom been wrong. In trying to avoid his taunts she usually fell into his trap. 

“Is it so wrong I don’t find myself thrilled at the thought of running headfirst into a dragon? Of course I’m afraid. Something’s not right about this.” The initial joy and relief that had ensued with Silaenya’s return had rotted into fear and paranoia festering the longer Anuriel accompanied her.

“We’ve got bigger problems than you being afraid, Anuriel. Problems that fly and breathe fire. Let’s go.” Silaenya didn’t wait for Anuriel’s answer. Any protest that bubbled on Anuriel’s tongue died to Silaenya's back. Anuriel had made a grave mistake when she’d revealed they shared the dragon blood. It had unearthed a stubborn side of Silaenya that wouldn’t quit. She’d decided Anuriel would be a part of her story and Anuriel couldn’t write herself out of it.

The inside of the monastery was no warmer. The air was dry enough to chap lips. Narrow rays of sunlight squeezed through slits in the lofty ceiling. The wan glow of candlelight was the only other source of light. This place felt oppressive, not holy. It was possible Anuriel was biased–having walked the opulent halls of the Chantry–but the stone closing in and the lonely whistle of wind made her feel alone even as Silaenya stood next to her.

The steps echoed when they occurred, belonging to neither Silaenya or Anuriel.

“A Dragonborn appears, at this moment in the turning of an age.” The voice was unhurried and carried little expression, only knowing. The man now in front of them obviously held authority. Anuriel straightened her back, aware that this man’s eyes were on her . Dragonborn. It was strange to be recognized.

“We’re both Dragonborn.” Silaenya usurped the conversation. Anuriel couldn’t help the irritation that nagged her. Silaenya may have been who they were summoning, but this man had looked at her.

“We will see if both of you truly have the gift. Let us taste of your voice.” The man who’d approached them was the only one who spoke. There were three others standing sentry silently. They’d materialized almost supernaturally in the empty halls, although it was probably just Anuriel paying poor attention. They all wore–unsurprisingly–simple grey robes.

Silaenya inclined her head in an invitation to go first. Anuriel shook her head and stepped away from the men and Silaenya. Her reluctance was born of sheepishness as much as it was plain caution. She remembered what had happened when she used the Voice in the Chantry–the cracked columns slumping with the assault and the way she’d thrown the Arch-Curate like a child throws a toy. She would find every opportunity to shrug their attention away. She didn’t want them to insist. She loathed to think of what punishment Auri-El would sic upon her if her Voice harmed yet another.

Silaenya was proud of her ability. While Anuriel gradually slinked into the shadow closer to the aged bronze doors, Silaenya paraded her Voice around the various tests the men provided. They cast specters that Silaenya flung against the thick, square column in the center of the hall. 

Anuriel realized that Silaenya knew only one word. Fus . It was the infantile rumble of the earthquake the full incantation yielded. She spat the word out like embers popping from a fire: unstable and dangerous but short-lived. It made Anuriel feel worse. Why had she told Silaenya? Why did Anuriel know the words if this wasn’t her destiny to follow? It was Silaenya who had slain the dragon.

The Greybeards seemed satisfied with Silaenya’s display. They had bestowed their opinion, calling her Dragonborn. Anuriel knew she wouldn’t escape scrutiny now. Five pairs of eyes waited for Anuriel to break the silence. She tore at a strip of skin inside her lip she’d been worrying with her teeth. The smarting gave her no answers, only a faint coppery taint to her spit. Anuriel wasn’t one to swear often, but maybe Silaenya’s influence was beginning to permeate her. In simple terms: she was fucked . 

“She’s the one who killed the dragon. You summoned her. I’m just her companion.” Anuriel edged further away from the assault of perception. She didn’t want all these people looking at her. She could barely wield a dagger. How the hell had she ended up here?

“It is not my place to force your hand or your tongue. Caution is necessary with such power.” Arngeir was looking at Silaenya although his words were for Anuriel. Anuriel had noticed it too: the zealousness that had begun to permeate Silaenya. That morning she’d been on edge and more pushy than usual. Their legs and backs were crumbling under the weight of the days they’d spent climbing but Silaenya still insisted they push on. 

She could tell Silaenya was biting her tongue. Anuriel would deal with it later. While the monks ushered Silaenya towards another trial, Anuriel decided to duck out of the front door. She couldn’t run. She wouldn’t get very far with the only way down being a winding trail of ancient stairs that had taken them days to climb up. She sunk into the deposit of snow accumulating beneath the overhang in front of the door, wringing her hands in frustration. There had to be a way to graciously exit the situation without Silaenya just tracking her down again.

A coat black and meticulously fitted was the first thing she saw when she looked up. They had finally found her. Her tired body didn’t have the energy to scream or fight. She had spent months running. They had won the game. They freed her to exhaust her–like letting a dog run around to tire it out.

It wasn’t until she found the eyes of the stranger that their familiarity struck her. It wasn’t Vyrthur–obviously he wouldn’t put in the leg work to track her down himself–but a friend. A piece of her old life the wind had dragged across her feet.

“Suna?” She had been seventeen. He was the one with the stories. Little about him had changed: his hair was longer and he stood a little taller, but this was unmistakably her old friend. It was so jarring to see one of her people now. She jumped to her feet, hand on her shitty dagger and back to the wall. This was a distraction. What if they’d already gotten Sila and the Greybeards? Would they?

Anuriel wouldn’t find out. Suna tugged on her arm. It was clear he wasn’t using much effort–his feet were rooted. He wasn’t trying to hurt her, but she wrestled with him still.

“Anuriel. Listen . You can’t run. I mean, you can try but they’re already at the bottom of the mountain. You’re lucky. I begged them to be the one to get you. Please just let me be the one to bring you. He’s been watching your every move. If you run now it’s only going to be worse.” Suna’s voice was steeped in an urgency that made Anuriel realize they weren’t alone. Silaenya’s voice rose and fell. She was right there, but so oblivious. 

How could this be the answer to her prayers? She didn’t want to be a part of any of this. Silaenya and the dragons or Vyrthur and his plans. Did Auri-El hear her pleading at all? 

“You think I’m going to just come with you and be a part of the Arch-Curate’s plans? He’s going to kill me! If you were truly my friend you wouldn’t have a hand in this at all. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you.” 

Suna had–at one point–been her only friend. She was the weird child, and he had approached her before a service. She didn’t know how to talk to people, so he carried the conversation. Now here he was working with Vyrthur.

“I didn’t have a choice, my friend. I’m sorry. Neither do you.”

He descended upon her with supernatural strength. He was a vampire, just as Vyrthur was. It was Amnayen all over again. Her dagger buried itself in the snow. With it, a drop of blood.

Notes:

The first chapter has been completely rewritten.

I'm working on a complete rewrite for the story. I will be keeping the same update schedule, but the rewrite will probably take precedence over this version of the story. When all the new chapters are complete I'll update the story and let y'all know.

I won't post the rewrite until I've caught it up to this part in the story but I've actually planned out up to the part until vyrthur gets her so i'm gonna challenge myself to get all the new chapters rewritten before next week. Honestly if I don't update for a little over a week, I AM still working on the story but i'm just working on this new version.

Anuriel is still the MC and the plot still centers around the dawnguard DLC but I've integrated the whole alduin main quest a lot better AND there's a new side character I'm obsessed with so...sorry Silaenya haha.

Thank you for reading! <3