Chapter 6.2 - Travels and Exoticism

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Sigrid was sat under the piece of cloth she had tired up between two bushes and that she used as a makeshift tent. A soft breeze was ruffling the tall grass of the Elsweyrian plains and the cries of the nocturnal predators on the hunt were rising in the air. But the Breton was impervious to beauty of the landscape around her. Hands jointed in front of her as if praying, her eyes were closed and she seemed very concentrated.

It had been three days since she had left Leyawin, and the goodbye with her fellow travellers of the Black Pea had not been exactly… heartbreaking. All of them – apart from the Thelas – had seemed more than relieved to see her go. But before she had left, Captain Maubrey had taken her aside to have a few words with her.

“I may just be a seaman to you, Miss Doe, but I am not completely stupid.” he had told her suddenly. “If you are just a lady travelling to find a remedy for your dying father, I am Chancellor Ocato.”

“Oh, are you?”

Sigrid’s had tried to hide her nervousness behind sarcasm, but despite her efforts she could not ignore the heavy weight of worry on her chest.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for.” the Captain had carried on. “But you should seriously be a bit more prudent. Elsweyr has never been a safe place and it is even worst at the moment...”

“Why do you care?” she had replied, staring persistently at Maubrey. “I had the feeling you did not really have much affection for me…”

“I don’t know. I just felt it was my duty to warn you...”

Sigrid had shrugged, a bitter expression on her face.

“It doesn’t really matter anymore now. I have lost everything I had during the storms, and without my books, there is nothing I can do.”

There had been a pause during which both had looked at the sailors who were unloading the Black Pea. Endras the Bosmer bard had been making a fuss because the wood of his precious harp had been scratched during the transport, and Sigrid had had to resist the urge to pulverise him on the spot.

“Well, if you need advice, there a place where you could try to go…” Maubrey had ventured finally and Sigrid had looked at him with hopeful eyes. “Have you heard of the Oracle of Corinth? Well, it is not a ‘big’ oracle, more like a local one but who knows? It may be able to help you…”

Sigrid’s hopeful look immediately vanished and she had had to make great effort not to burst out laughing.

“The Oracle of Corinth? The one which announced that the Imperial City would be destroyed by the Daedras in a vengeful rain of custard pies (2)?”

“The Imperial City had been destroyed by Merhunes Dagon…” the Captain had replied in a soft voice, ignoring Sigrid’s annoyed roll of the eyes. “And the Oracle may not be good at great predictions, but the Khajiits have always trust it to give them advice about every-day life.”

Sigrid still had difficulty to understand why she decided to follow Maubrey’s advice. Well, the answer should probably be found in the fact that she could not come back to Cyrodiil now. And by the way, would she be ever able to? Nothing was awaiting her there, apart from the Dark Brotherhood - and a furious Lucien Lachance... But if her plan of bringing back Martin to life succeeded, things would be far more different...

Oh, what a pleasure it would be to see Lachance’s expression when he would find himself facing once more the one he had disdainfully nicknamed “Prince Charming”! Yes… Martin would become Emperor, she would be his Empress, and no one would ever be able to manipulate her or to dare to tell her what she has to do, especially not this arrogant and detestable jerk of Lucien Lachance of Dark Brotherhood... Bwahahahaha…!

But for the moment, such happy end seemed to be very far away, and Sigrid had been very annoyed to learn the frontiers with Elsweyr were closed. Despite her attempts at bribing the Legionnaires at the customs post, they had refused to let her pass, arguing that all diplomatic relations with Elsweyr were broken since some kind of war lord had ruthlessly destroyed several Imperial garrisons. And as it never rained but it poured, she had not been able to find a proper guide who accepted to show her the way to Corinth – apparently, the roads were not safe enough for anyone to risk their neck, even for a substantial amount of Septims.

As a result, Sigrid had found herself forced to resort to the “services” of a bunch of smugglers more interested in her cleavage and in the content of her purse than into taking her in one piece to Corinth…

And this is how she ended up in the middle of the savannah of Elsweyr, with a group of travelling companions who looked as confused as she did, once more engrossed in the memories contained in the datadice, letting her brains getting invaded with those alien thoughts.

The datadice had become some kind of drug. Every time Sigrid was feeling ill, tired, despaired or simply bored, she was seeking refuge in recollections which were not hers but which allowed her to forget about her own problems. And apparently, she was not the only one to be in trouble...

This time, her host was a pedestrian. An angry pedestrian, by the look and the sound of it… He was walking with his fists in his pocket, jostling passers-by without a word of excuse and forcing his way through the busy alleys of what looked like a market.

“J’Ghasta, do this!’, ‘J’Ghasta, do that’…” mumbled in Sigrid’s ears the very familiar voice of J’Ghasta. The Khajiit was kicking angrily from time to time in a stone which stood on his way, shooting angry looks to the content of the markets stalls which were flashing by his eyes. “‘J’Ghasta, why don’t you go buying me some special wax for the wood of my harp why we sort out important stuffs…?’ This ‘servant’ thing is just a disguise… I’m not her maid, damnit! And where the Oblivion am I supposed to find that fucking wax? It’s a country market, for Sith… the Gods’ sake! Not the Imperial City!”

While the Khajiit was continuing his progression, Sigrid’s mind got partly invaded by her host’s angry thoughts. From what she could gather, the little group of assassins has finally reached the town of Howldeath. Rivanone and Vicente had left to present their respects to their hosts, a ceremony from which J’Ghasta, as a servant, was not invited – to his greatest displeasure.

As a result, the Kahjiit had expressed his disappointment about missing a reception with plenty to eat and drink in very colourful terms, which earned him a good kick in the ass by Master Rivanone and a stupid “mission” which consisted to find an article which probably did not exist in a hole like Howldeath.

Well, J’Ghasta admitted he was a bit unfair concerning the town. Howldeath was not as dead as he imagined first, and actually, the place was currently rather animated. Undoubtedly, the presence of an eminent group of powerful persons tended to attract curious people wanting to tell their grand-children “I-was-there”, and, of course, given those people needed to eat, sleep and be entertained, all the merchants and public entertainers of the regions had rolled up on the double, seduced by the possibility to make a lot of money in a short period of time. This probably explained why Howldeath now looked like a gigantic kermis in which J’Ghasta was pacing up and down like a caged Khajiit.

After having searched all over the market three times for the wax, J’Ghasta decided he had enough, that Master Rivanone could go to Oblivion with her stupid harp and that he would spend the rest of the day in a quiet place where he could sulk to his heart’s content.

Obviously, such a spot was not easy to find in a busy market, and J’Ghasta was about to leave the place when something – or someone – started pulling his tail…

Hissing in annoyance, the Khajiit turned around to see who was thick enough to risk his or her life by doing such a stupid thing…

It was a boy. A very young boy, who, in Sigrid’s opinion, was no more than seven year-old and was wearing clothes which had seen better days but nevertheless were of good fabric. He was carrying a bag full of fresh fruits, meat, and - oddly enough - books.

“What do you want, squirt?” J’Ghasta asked the child in a very unpleasant manner, baring his teeth at him hoping to see him to decamp quickly.

But the kid did not chicken out and continued to glare at the Khajiit with his big hazel-gold eyes.

“Are you a lion?” he finally asked.

The inappropriateness of the question completely took J’Ghasta aback.

“A… a what?” he stammered.

The child had an impatient sigh.

“A li-on.” he articulated loudly as if J’Ghasta was both deaf and stupid. He then started ruffling in his bag before retrieving a book he opened and gave to the Khajiit. “Like this one.”

Slowly recovering from his surprise, J’Ghasta took the book the little boy was handing him and look at it. It was one of those books for children, always stuffed with very colourful and cute illustrations. This particular one was apparently about teaching kids their alphabet by using an animal as a reference for each letter, like “B” for “Bear”, “D” for “Deer” - and, of course, “L” for “Lion”.

“Because you really look like a lion, you know.” the boy continued. “With the mane, the tail and the other stuffs…”

Deciding not to question the kid furthermore about what he meant by “the other stuffs”, J’Ghasta eyed critically at the illustration, which, to his greatest displeasure was indeed sharing some common points with his own appearance…

“For your information, smart ass,” J’Ghasta answered stiffly, shutting the book a bit more violently than necessary and throwing it back in the child’s arms, “I am a Khajiit, and I have nothing to do with… lions’!” He then made a pause and frowned. The boy was looking at him warily. “Well, this is not entirely accurate… Let’s say Khajiit are seventy per cent human and thirty per cent big cat – or ‘lion’. Happy?”

“Oh.” The kid sounded a bit disappointed. “So, you don’t eat people then.”

J’Ghasta rolled his eyes, his usually sharp tongue nailed to his palate due to so much ingeniousness.

“You see, Big Tommy told me you were a domesticated lion which did eat people.” the boy explained in a very serious and concerned tone. “And that I had to ask you or else I was a coward. And Big Tommy says he doesn’t like coward and beat them up. But I am not a coward and don’t like to be beaten up anyway… Still, you said you were partly lion, so, I guess Big Tommy was not entirely wrong about you being a kind of domestic one eating people…” He stopped and looked at J’Ghasta with a mix of horror and fascination in the eyes. “Are you going to eat me?”

J’Ghasta did not reply immediately as he was glaring at the kid with his mouth open. The child’s self-assurance as well as his way to talk nineteen to the dozens and his trend to jump from a subject to another ready had completely annihilated the Khajiit’s wittiness and ability to reply something like “yes, I am going to eat you, if it is only the way to make you shut your mouth”.

“No, I’m not going to eat you…” he sighed, his shoulders lowering in a weary move instead.

Once again, disappointment painted on the boy’s face, but he nevertheless continued to glare at J’Ghasta in silence as if he could not resolve himself to leave.

“Are you going to stay all day here looking at me? Am I really the first Khajiit you have ever seen?”

The child nodded, and J’Ghasta frowned. Now he noticed how the people passing by them were glaring curiously at him, as if they had never seen someone like him before. For J’Ghasta, who, as an assassin, used to evolve in a very cosmopolitan environment, this was a rather original situation...

“There are absolutely no folks like you here.” the boy explained. “The people here are mainly Imperials and Argonians. And there are also a few of those filthy Ashborns…”

The loath put by the kid in the two last words surprised and almost shocked J’Ghasta.

“Master Rivanone was right…” he thought as the boy continued to rant and rave about the Dark Elves. “Hatred between the Imperials and the Dunmer is quite deep-rooted here. If even the children are hardened xenophobic, now we’re going to see some fun during the negotiations…”

“Yeah, yeah, right, OK, I got it!” J’Ghasta said aloud once he esteemed to know enough about the presumed Dunmer’ inerrant treacherous nature and pathological lack of hygiene. “Tell me… You know the village quite well, don’t you?”

“I was born here!” the boy said proudly.

“Cool. So do you know where I could find some wax? It is for my master’s harp… She is a bard you see, and she… - why are you looking at me like that again?!”

“Your master is Lady Rivanone? Trencavel the Bard? You are with Trencavel the Bard?!”

“No, Trencavel the Plum Pudding.” J’Ghasta replied sarcastically. “Of course, the bard! Who else?!”

“You are her apprentice?”

The boy’s jaw dropped.

“Yeah. No… I mean… Yeah, I am J’Ghasta, Lady Rivanone’s personal servant, you see.” the Khajiit replied, deeply annoyed by the kid’s stunned expression. “And what’s the problem? Don’t I look good enough to you to be her apprentice?”

The boy opened his mouth to reply but this the moment someone chose to blow in an Oliphant to indicate Lord Saevus, the ruler of the town, was holding a reception in Howldeath Castle.

“Huh-ho, I have to go or I will be in trouble... Cheers, Mister J’Ghasta Khajiit!”

And he turned quickly on his heels, leaving J’Ghasta completely flabbergasted.

“Hey! My name is J’Ghasta, not ‘J’Ghasta Khajiit’!” the latter shouted in his back after having recovered from his surprise. “And you did not give me your name!”

The boy stopped and turned around.

“I’m Lucien Lachance! See you!” he replied with a big smile on his face before disappearing in the forest of legs of the numerous strollers.

As soon as the boy departed from J’Ghasta’s sight, Sigrid’s view started to blur and she found herself sitting on the Elsweyrian ground again. She blinked several times as her numb senses slowly came back to normal.

“J’Ghasta and Lucien’s first meeting!” Clairvoix burst out laughing. “Gosh, this is a collector…!”

Sigrid did not reply and just stayed there, looking at nothing, a weird look on her face.

“We absolutely must continue to explore this datadice.” the sword carried on. “If there are more embarrassing souvenirs like that in it, we could definitely blackmail Lucien and J’Ghasta when we will be back and… Sigrid? Are you all right? You look strange…”

The girl shook her head as if she was trying to get rid of some kind of annoying thoughts.

“Yes, yes, I’m all right… It’s just…” She stopped and glared at the little dice in the palm of her hand. “Why do you think Vicente kept the datadice all those years?”

The question took Clairvoix aback.

“Well… Maybe he was nostalgic and he wanted to keep a few, ‘living memories’ of the good days with Rivanone…”

“Hmmm… Maybe...”

Sigrid did not seem very convinced, but her mind was already focused on another problem. It was hard to admit, but the memory of Lucien’s bright smile to J’Ghasta had somewhat shocked her.

She passed her hands over her face and sighed. The image of the young naive boy the assassin seemed to be as a kid was clashing hard with the one of the sarcastic and cruel bastard Sigrid had learnt to know.

“He was a cute and nice little boy when he was young... So what?” she thought with bitter irony. “What did you imagine, you little idiot? All little boys are cute and nice first. That’s what little boys are for...! But your experience proves that cute and nice little boys grow up and become ruthless assassins...”

But the worst thing was not to imagine Lucien could have been something more human and likable than what he had become... No, the worst was how easily such an idea had suddenly woken up feelings she had buried deeply after she decided Martin was the man she loved with... Feelings which she thought were definitely dead after what Lucien did to her...

Sigrid chased the thoughts by shaking her head again. She was feeling exasperated toward the kind of compassion she was feeling for herself. She had no time for that, as there were other matters which required her immediate attention. Like that strange impression of being observed constantly. And maybe it was not an impression…

“You’re becoming a bit paranoid, aren’t you?” Clairvoix asked again, having read her mind once more.

“No, I am not.” Sigrid replied firmly. “There is something wrong, I know it.”

The girl let her glance ran along the tents. Despite the late hour, the camp was still animated. Some of the travellers had set up fires and were chatting around them - definitely not a wise ting to do when you were trying to stay unnoticed. Sigrid would have expected the smugglers to react at this lack of discretion, but it did not seem to bother them much. To the contrary, they had set up their own little camp a little apart from the travellers’ and were currently laughing loudly.

“Don’t you think it is a bit strange there is no one to guard our camp?” Sigrid whispered, chewing the nail of her thumb.

“To guard it against what?”

“Well, I don’t know. From some king of… guards? Official ones, I mean. After all, we are not supposed to be here, so should not there be some kind of lookout posts or something…?”

“Isn’t a good lookout post supposed to be unnoticed? Then it is normal we can’t see them…”

Sigrid had an annoyed sigh.

“Clairvoix, can’t you feel there is something weird here?”

“Actually, I can.” the sword admitted reluctantly. “But it has more to do with magic than the lack of guards… Do you remember all those dimensional gates we saw during the storm?”

Sigrid had an awful grin.

“Hard to forget them…”

“As I said, they were a manifestation of an already existing magic field, the hex you launched on Captain Jack Barrow only triggering their physical materialisation...”

“You already tell me that.” Sigrid interrupted impatiently. “But you did not mention what king of magic you were talking about.”

The silence observed by Clairvoix confirmed the girl’s worst fear.

“Daedric magic… Oh no, don’t tell me we are doing to deal with a Daedra Prince on the loose again...!” she whined, taking her head in her hands and shaking it in disbelief.

“Well, you can have Daedric magic without having a Daedra invading Mundus, you know. “ Clairvoix observed. “And there is not only I can feel something else…” The sword made a pause to prolong the suspense, but the annoyed look he got from Sigrid finally convinced him to go straight to the point. “Something far less sophisticated but as powerful...”

At the words, Sigrid’s heartbeat accelerated a bit.

“Foodoo?” she asked in a whisper.

“Maybe, maybe not…” the sword replied cautiously. “I am not very familiar with this kind of magic, but it is close to the description Scribonius gave us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?!” Sigrid exclaimed, sounding both irritated and hurt. “I thought you were supposed to help me, not to hide things from me!”

Clairvoix did not reply immediately, trying to sort out whether or not it should tell Sigrid the truth...

When Clairvoix was still Aymard Clairvaux’ soul and living as a parasite on Sigrid’s, it had learned to know the girl very well. There were no aspects of her personality she could hide from it. It knew her most secret desires and fears – and, to its greatest shame now it thought of it, it had used and abused of its influence over the girl to manipulate her, its own survival being at stake. But now...

Despite the fact Clairvoix remained somewhat connected to Sigrid’s mind, the two were not as intimate as they used to be. Now, entire section of the girl’ soul remained hermetically closed to it, and if initially Clairvoix had thought it was a normal consequence of their physical separation, it had realised not long ago it could not access some of the girl’s thoughts anymore simply because she was preventing it to.

First, Clairvoix had not mind – after all, it was normal for her to have her little secrets. But what was starting to worry it was the nature of those secrets…

When Sigrid attacked Barrow and turned him into a toad, Clairvoix had felt something in the girl’s soul. Something it had never seen there before, something dark and particularly unpleasant but remained perfectly abstruse to Clairvoix… And it was because of that “something” the sword chose to lie.

“I did not say anything because I was not – and still am – not entirely sure of what we are currently facing. And to be honest, if it is actually Foodoo, I find that quite worrying...”

“Worrying? But it would be wonderful! It would mean Foodoo is not a legend and that there are still people able to practise it!”

“Oh yes, wonderful, indeed!” the sword replied, starting to glow purple to express sarcasm. “And doesn’t your incredibly developed paranoid side find it weird? Here is a kind of magic people have not heard of in centuries, and pof! Just when we are looking for it, here it comes!”

“Coincidence?” the girl ventured.

“Maybe, but I would not bet on it... Sadly, I have noticed that coincidences turned to be not that coincidental when you were around...” Clairvoix replied softly. “One thing is sure though: there are things with great magic powers at work here, and whatever they are, I hope they will be kindly oriented toward us, because we won’t have the power to face it if it is not the case.”

There was a long pause during which Sigrid assimilated the information, while in the air was resounding the song of the locusts.

“Ah, and those stupid locusts!” Sigrid suddenly shouted. “They get on my nerves with their ‘crrr! crrr! cr…!”

The girl had not finished her sentence something long, sticky and violet flashed passed her head several times, and each time, the intensity of the locusts’ song decreased. The girl turned around to face the toad which was chewing happily something. Several pairs of legs were getting out of his mouth, twitching helplessly. Sigrid winced.

“Er… Thank you, Toad.”

“Burp!” the latter replied. He then gulped the still-convulsing content of his mouth, yawned and fell asleep again.

“You should imitate Toad, Sigrid.” Clairvoix said. “You need to recover, and brooding over your problems won’t help much. With a good night sleep, everything will look better, believe me.”

Sigrid admitted the sword was right and tried to install herself as best as she could on the rocky ground, wrapped up in her travelling cloak. She was about to fell asleep, rocked by the soft snoring of Toad, when another regular sound, like someone walking in the tall grass, captured her attention.

“Clairvoix…” she started in a low voice as her eyes opened brusquely.

“I heard. There is something on the left…”

Sigrid moved her head slowly in that direction, trying to discern the source of the noise in the dark. She spotted it. It was standing in the tall grass, a few feet from her tent. It had stopped moving and was apparently making no effort to hide.

With an impressive leap for a pregnant woman toward the shadow, she took Clairvoix out of its scabbard and… found herself facing an elderly and happily grinning Khajiit. Sigrid sighed in relief as she recognised him.

He was one of the voyagers, a Khajiit so old he looked like as if he was about to crumble into dust. He had joined the group of travellers along with a very young female Khajiit and a baby. Sigrid remembered them well because the old man had this strange habit of keeping looking around for bits of wood to use as staff. Earlier today, he had shown interest in Sigrid and had tried to approach the girl, but his attempts had been systematically thwarted by the young female, who had finally resolved herself to drag him away – not without shooting Sigrid a very dark glance.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Sigrid asked him angrily as she put Clairvoix back into its sheath. “You are trying to get killed or what?”

“Asante sana, squashed banana!” the old Khajiit replied, singing and beating the ground with his staff. “Wewe nugu mimi apana!”

Sigrid blinked.

“Okaaaaay… Do you have any idea of what it means?” she whispered to Clairvoix from the corner of her mouth.

“Er, well… I think it has something to with bananas which had been mashed, er…”

“No, kidding? I was asking about the rest!”

“Seriously, I have no clue… Hey, what does he do now?”

The Khajiit had started dancing around Sigrid, waving his arms and his staff in the air while jumping from one foot to another muttering his little song. The travellers sat around the fires had stopped their discussion and were now looking at them with great interest.

“Completely nuts…” Sigrid murmured as the Khajiit continued to fool around. “All right, granddad.” she added in a much louder voice, grabbing him by the arm. “Where is the rest of your family? You know, the young girl who is travelling with you - your daughter, granddaughter, wife or whatever…!”

The old cat grinned at her from what was left of his teeth, but did not reply. Sigrid winced in annoyance and grabbed him by the arm to force him to get up. But the Khajiit remained firmly sat on the ground.

“Come on, get up!” the girl exclaimed as she tried to pull him up again.

This time, the Khajiit moved, but not in the right direction... He brusquely bent forward and wrapped his arms around Sigrid’s legs, causing the latter to yell in horror and surprise.

“Aaaaah, you old…! Let me go!” she screamed hysterically, trying to kick the Khajiit away. But the latter giggled and buried his face in her underskirt.

“Hey! What are you doing to him!?” a protesting voice asked.

Sigrid stopped gesticulating and reported her attention from the old Khajiit to the new comer.

It was the young female travelling with the elderly Khajiit. Her eyes were moving from her companion to Sigrid and she looked particularly pissed off.

“Well, er...” the Breton started, trying to smile in a friendly way. “I can explain, er…”

“How dare you to touch him?!”

Sigrid opened and closed her mouth several without being able to formulate a word, so shocked and surprised she was by the Khajiit’s aggressiveness.

“Hey! I was just trying to take him back to you, all right?”

“Oh yeah? By kicking him in the head?”

While she spoke, the young female Khajiit had come closer to Sigrid, who could take a better look at her. She looked very young, probably around sixteen, but it was always hard to say with Khajiits. She looked extremely exhausted and tensed, and the deep dark blue circles under her eyes were bringing out her eyes red with tiredness. She was wearing a heavy bag which opened slightly, revealing the fluffy head of a baby.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeh!” he exclaimed, shooting Sigrid a bright smile and stretching his little and plump arms to touch her.

“Ah no, you! It is not the moment!” the female protested as she shut the bag. She then turned toward the old Khajiit, whose arms were still wrapped around Sigrid’s legs. “We must go now, ubaba.”

She tried nicely to make him let go Sigrid, but he clutched the girl’s legs more firmly instead.

“Amkana.” he said with a pout, pointing a bony forefinger on the Breton.

“What?” the female asked, blinking.

“What?” Sigrid repeated?

“What?!” Clairvoix echoed aloud, and Sigrid gave a sharp slap on the sword’s sheath, but it was too late. The young Khajiit was looking through narrowed eyes at Clairvoix.

“Who said that?”

“Said what?” Sigrid repeated rather stupidly.

“Don’t make fun of me…” the young Kahjiit growled. Her older companion had finally let Sigrid’s legs go and had installed himself a few feet away from the girls. Given his wide toothless smile, he was enjoying the show a lot.

“I am not making fun of you! And no one else said “what?”!” Sigrid protested in a tone she hoped convincing enough while moving the sword in her back to take it away from the teenager’s inquisitive glance. “Well, apart from me, of course…”

“I heard someone other than you speaking. And the voice was coming from your sword!”

“Are you implying I am walking around with a magic talking sword? How ridiculous, ahahah…!”

“Ahahah…” Clairvoix’s voice echoed mockingly in her head. “You are only making matters worst, Sigrid…”

“Shut up, you!”

Sigrid stopped her mental argument with the sword and clapped her hands on her mouth when she realised she had spoken aloud.

“Did you just tell me to shut up?!” the Kahjiit yelled, baring her teeth at the girl and drawing her claws in a silky sound.

“All right, let’s try to calm down a bit, shall we?” Sigrid said, withdrawing slowly and making appeasing moves with her hands.

“Just our luck!” Clairvoix exclaimed. “We bumped into a hothead!”

“Stop making silly remarks and help me to find a way to calm her down!”

“Just beat her hard on the head several times! That should do!”

Sigrid took Clairvoix out of its sheath, ready to fight. The young Khajiit bared her teeth at her, crouching…

And a burning arrow embedded itself in between the two antagonists.

“Er… Do you have something to do with this?” the Khajiit asked, looking at the arrow as if she was hypnotised by it.

“Nope.” Sigrid replied, engrossed as well in the contemplation of the arrow.

There was a scream as another fire arrow landed on one tent - quickly followed by many others…

7777777777777777777

Thousand of miles away, a black cart pulled by two equally black horses was running at breakneck speed in the direction of the south of Cyrodiil. The wooden doors were engraved with a crest consisting in two crescent moons, one white and one red - a very well-known coat of arms, recognised all around Tamriel even by those who bunked off their heraldic classes…

“I still don’t get why you have accepted this mission in Elsweyr, my lord.” said Ontus Vanin to the silhouette sat on the seat in front of him. “You told me it was an extremely risky one and that Ocato gave it to us on purpose in order to keep us away from the Council of Elders, which is a bit contrary to our interests, isn’t it?”

Janus Hassildor, Count of Skingrad, Pair of the Empire and life member of the Council of Elders - which was quite a thing when you were a vampire - sighed and closed the book he was reading. Master Ontus Vanin was certainly a great mage, a true friend and a very courageous and clever man, but he was as dense as a wall of breezeblock when it came to politics.

“It is simple, Master Vanin.” the Count explained patiently for the tenth time. “We accepted this mission as emissaries because it was politically a wise move to make. The Council looks more like a battlefield than an assembly of well-mannered gentlemen at the moment, and given that we don’t aspire to an official position within the new organisation of the Empire the Chancellor is setting up – I mean, in addition of those we are already occupying in the Council – I thought it was compulsory for both of us to leave the place for a while as we may have ended up as collateral victims of the machinations weaved by some of our little comrades.”

“Ah. Right.”

Vanin looked rather disconcerted, and Hassildor sighed again. He was sure his companion was going to ask him the question again in half an hour.

“In addition, I also felt necessary to go away from Skingrad and Cyrodiil for a while,” Janus continued nevertheless, “given Father Jôme of the Order of the Nine was getting a bit too… inquisitive about my little person, certainly at the request of some of our friends from the Council…”

“Jôme…” Vanin growled. “This old scarecrow, who keeps trying to terrify the honest but credulous people of Cyrodiil by explaining the Oblivion crisis was due to the lack of faith of the Imperials in the Nine Divines …”

“Trying to terrify? He is quite successful, I am afraid… And his impassioned sermons make people following his example. Mortifications and abstinence are more or less becoming a new fashion, and it is amazing the number of gaunt-looking people you can see around these days...”

“Oh, really?” Vanin said with a big grin, patting merrily his huge belly.

Janus covered his mouth with his hand to hide the little smile which was stretching his lips, an habit often developed by vampires to hide the too obvious signs of their true nature.

“You lack of faith, and even, if I may say, ungodliness will certainly soon earn you the Wrath of the Gods, my dear Ontus.”

“I am afraid it has already be done, my lord.” the old mage replied with a huge grin. “Jôme excommunicated me last week, just after I yelled ‘bullshit!’ after his homily during the office in the Temple of the Two, do you remember?”

This time, the Count laughed openly.

“You are definitely not the kind of person one would associate with, Master Vanin!”

This time, it was the mage’s turn to smile.

“Indeed, my lord. But both of us are outcast – each of us for different reasons – and don’t they say ‘bird of a feather flock together?’”

Janus Hassildor could only nod his agreement. Him and Vanin were indeed pariahs, the latter because he was a complete iconoclast who tended to enjoy and appreciate rules and social conventions only to sit happily on them, while the Count was nothing less than a vampire – an affliction which forced him to live cloistered in the Castle of Skingrad and to be constantly on his guard to avoid leaks about his real nature.

More than one had been surprised by the friendship between two individuals of such dissimilar characters, the Count being rather… introverted while Vanin could not resist the urge to slap everybody in the back and to pay drinks all around. Even physically, they were both at one end of the spectrum, the mage with his good-tempered chubbiness and Hassildor’s with his literally cadaverous thinness.

But if the vampire and the mage sometimes did not share the same philosophy on life, they at least had one thing I common: their hatred of certain forms of human stupidity, fanaticism and intolerance arriving on top of the list.

“Well, at least, and in spite of all his faults,” the Count started with a mischievous expression on his face, “Jôme is never late for the church service and doesn’t knock down pregnant women…”

“Ah, please, stop making fun of me with that, my lord! I did not do it on purpose!” Vanin exclaimed, sounding really offended.

“You should have seen your face… Very entertaining…” the Count carried on, sounding very amused. “You looked like you had killed someone.”

“It was almost as if I did!” Vanin, said, mortified. “I mean, she was pregnant! And the poor kid ran away before I had the time to check if she was really all right. I really wished I had the opportunity to see her again to excuse myself properly.”

“Hmm, who knows …? You might have the chance to bump into her again…”

Ontus looked surprised.

“I beg your pardon, my lord?”

The Count made a dismissive sign with his hand.

“Oh, nothing. Just forget about it.”

There was a pause, suddenly broken by a strange sound, like a “whiff!” and almost as simultaneously Ontus Vanin had a very bad fit of coughing. The Count glared at him and the old man turned a bit red in the face.

“May I ask you a rather personal question, Ontus?”

“Er… Of course, my lord!”

“Why do you keep going at Trencavel’s altar, putting flowers on it? You barely knew her after all…”

Ontus seemed almost relieved at the statement. Apparently, he was expecting a question of another nature…

“Well, quite a sad story that the one her life, hey?” he replied with a little shrug. “She got betrayed by those she trusted, saved the Empire, but at the cost of her own life and at the one of her love, Martin Septim… You can call me an awful romantic, but I feel like this deserves a little… gratitude.”

“I see.” Hassildor replied quite neutrally, carefully did not mentioning to Ontus he had personally and discreetly laid around the altar some of the biggest bouquets.

“And the same goes for your friend, Valtieri. He was a courageous man, risking his life to help Trencavel and such…” the mage continued with a sigh. “I pray for him as wall, and would put flowers on his tomb as well – if I knew where it was…”

“I am very touched, Ontus.” Hassildor said sincerely. “As for Vicente’s tomb, don’t worry. There are people to take care of it.”

The wheels of the cart suddenly bumped in a stone and there was that strange sound again, like a muffled bark. Vanin started to cough once more, and Janus rolled his eyes.

“Ontus… Why don’t you simply free him now? We are far from Skingrad now. It is not as if I could force him to go back…”

“I absolutely don’t understand what you mean, my lord, I…” Vanin said, his chubby face radiating innocence.

The cart went though a hole this time, shaking violently the two passengers and the luggage stored in the cabin above their head fall at their feet. The shock forced some of them to open, revealing the content of some of the suitcase...

“Furball, what a surprise!” the Count exclaimed sarcastically when he saw the head of his pet dog emerging from a pile of clothes. “I am glad I said I wanted you to stay at the Castle…”

“Whiff!” Furball barked.

“I… I don’t understand, my lord! I have no idea how he got into my suitcase…!”

“Ontus, your left eye twitches when you are lying.”

The mage blinked in panic, making Hassildor giggling as he picked up the little and happily-barking dog from the floor.

“You are a pathetic secretive and a bad liar, Master Vanin.” the Count carried on, stroking Furball while the latter drooled abundantly on his knees to express his pleasure. “So, what do you have to say for your defence?”

“Well… er…” babbled the mage. “Furball looked so sad when he realised we were leaving without him…I could not stand his poor puppy-dog eyes so I… I stuffed him in my suitcase.” he concluded miserably, turning as red as a tomato.

“Tss, tss, my poor Ontus… To think you were the one who did not want him to come with us first, saying it was a far too long and exhausting trip for such a little dog, and so on and so forth…Ah well, isn’t reverse psychology a wonderful thing, my dear Ontus?”

Ontus Vanin frowned so hard that wrinkles appeared on his usually smooth forehead.

“Hang on a minute, my lord… Are you insinuating you told me you finally did not want to take Furball along so I would disobey you and hide him in my luggage!?”

The Count beamed at the mage.

“You see, you are starting to get good at politics!”

(2) It was originally an idea from Sheogorath, the Mad God, but he was piped at the post by Merhunes Dagon and his gang of frustrated, embittered and dressed-in-burgundy-bathrobes degenerates who called themselves “Mythic Dawn” because it sounded so “cooooool” and fashionable.

Mankar Camoran, certainly one of the most brilliant mind which ever existed on Nirn, is still wondering what he smoked the day he decided to choose such a bunch of morons as minions.