Wherever the Cold Wind Blows
It had gone on for too long. Alves Uvenim had for weeks been discreetly meeting with all manners of intrepid sellswords passing through Leyawiin, desperately trying to get someone to accept her job. They all seemed interested at first, no doubt allured by the prospect of doing some under the table work for a shady dark elf sorceress. Cyrodiilics seemed to believe such scenarios ended with fantastical rewards of magical boons and torrid one night stands with their employers. Such a strange people.
But sure enough the moment she uttered the word "Daedra" a wall would drop down between her whomever she was trying to recruit. In Morrowind that would be a draw, an indication of great rewards indeed. But these imperials were skittish regarding all things Daedric, especially since the destruction of Kvatch.
Ridiculous rumors were flying about too; the impossible stories of large, stable portals to Oblivion popping up in the wilderness had even the Fighters Guild wary of venturing into the swamps, not that she could have gone to them anyway. People were on edge enough as it is, and Alves shuddered to think what would happen if she approached a law-abiding agency like the Fighters Guild in regards to breaking a curse put on Rosentia when she bought a Daedric staff from some vagabond mercenary. They'd immediately report to the count the situation, and after that it'd only be a matter of time before the poor girl ended up in the dungeons. Or, worse yet, the victim of a mob of cats and lizards incensed by stories of the wealthy imperial girl trafficking with Daedra.
She'd even sunk to considering approaching the Blackwood Company. They were known for their willingness to accept absolutely any kind of job, and all her contacts spoke highly of them, but in the end common sense won out over desperation. That gang of Beastfolk would be more likely to steal the artifact for themselves, or blackmail Rosentia and Alves into poverty or worse.
Eventually, she had no choice. Rosentia was beginning to crack under the pressure, and Alves simply could not wait any longer. She would handle the matter herself.
In had taken time for Alves to adjust when she first arrived in Cyrodiil. The people were all so strange compared to what she'd been used to in Morrowind. It was like being in one of the big imperial mining towns, only without the miners and twice the imperials, all fat and happy and safe behind the massive walls that ringed every city.
It had been a little off putting, honestly. Even in Cheydinhal, a city populated largely by fellow Dunmer, she felt like the outsider. Most all her colleagues and acquaintances in the city had been the sons and daughters of immigrants from mainland Morrowind, raised so thoroughly in the tradition of the imperial heartland that the ways of their parents were long since forgotten. Outlanders in every sense of the word.
Or at least they would have been Outlanders had she still been in Vvardenfell. Here, in this foreign land far from the great island, she was the Outlander. They'd treated her as a curiosity at first, a transfer from some far away provincial backwater chapter of the mages guild who thought it appropriate to attend guild meetings armed and armored.
She'd adapted though, as she always did, and slowly but surely adopted the customs and mannerisms of the imperial province, wearing them like clothing. An Outlander among Outlanders was just another face in the street.
She never felt at home though, not until she'd been transferred again, this time to the far southern city of Leyawiin. Here she found that same unease, that same suggestion that at any moment something are someone might creep out of the shadows behind your that had pervaded her early years living along the Bitter Coast. Even the abundance of cats and lizards couldn't deter her. They'd been prevalent even along the coast back home, especially since the death of the Tribunal and the outlawing of slavery. It had only added to her sense of familiarity.
She'd noticed Rosentia Gallenus almost immediately. Unlike Alves herself, who by now was thoroughly acclimatized to the mannerisms and accents of the imperial province, Rosentia stuck out like a sore thumb. She was a wealthy, well-bred imperial lady living in a city filled primarily with cats, lizards and elves, many of them immigrants from Black Marsh and Elsewyr. To Alves great surprise however the little imperial woman seemed to revel in her difference, making no attempts to fit it with her acquaintances.
She'd been drinking in some cat Inn when she first saw her. A lovely imperial wearing a fine black and burgundy dress playing cards of all things with a group of lizardmen laborers, laughing and cursing and seemingly right at home among her unusual company. It had been intriguing.
Curiosity, as it is wont to do, got the better of Alves, who soon found herself joining on the weekend card games. It wasn't long before she found herself in Rosentia's rather spacious home, continuing games left off in the inn and, after a few days of that, playing a different kind of game in her bedroom.
She could honestly say she'd never met anyone quite like Rosentia. The girl was too soft and sweet to last long on the Bitter Coast of Vvardenfell, but too unstable and capricious to live in a proper imperial city without trouble. She was like a glass-child, dancing merrily atop a tall thin wall, forever in danger of making a single misstep and tumbling down, shattering herself into a million pieces. Leyawiin, it would seem, suited the both of them quite well.
Until some damnable sellsword fooled her sweet, gullible Rosentia into buying a cursed staff. When Alves dropped by her house later on that evening and saw four large scamps surrounding Rosentia she'd panicked, loosing lightning at all four and charring a good half of Rosentia sitting room furniture.
To her horror the scamps merely reappeared out of thin air. Rosentia, already harried by the presence of the scamps and unwilling to see anymore of her house damaged by Alves' vain attempts to destroy the scamps, explained they'd appeared due to her enunciation of some Daedric writing found on the side of a staff she'd purchased.
She then practically burst into tears. Clinging to Alves' she explained that they'd chewed through the legs on most of her chairs, relieved themselves all over her floor and, worst of all, were in the process of devouring a good chunk of her wardrobe.
Eventually Alves was able to extract herself from the distraught imperial, though only after enough stroking, petting and whispered reassurances to initiate the slow, emotional kind of lovemaking Alves was growing to enjoy. Shame then that the four staring Daedra had been there. Something of a mood killer, as it turns out.
So Alves left the Rosentia residence not only without getting laid, her original intention on stopping by, but with the added task of finding out exactly what manner of curse had inflicted her lover and how it could be broken.
Her early years in Morrowind left Alves more familiar with the Daedra than she'd like to admit, given current events. Thanks to that experience however she felt fairly certain that the staff would likely end up being related to one of the less harmfully malicious Lords, such as Sanguine or Sheogorath. That knowledge, as well as the vast collection of tomes on the subject kept by Dagail ensured that within about three weeks she was able to pinpoint both the nature of the curse and, more importantly, how to break it.
The Staff of the Everscamp was, unsurprisingly, was one of the many frustratingly ridiculously artifacts related to the Daedric Lord of Madness Sheogorath. In addition to summoning four unaggressive and undying scamps, the staff also appeared to inflict a slowing effect upon the wielder. Wonderful.
Alves eventually determined that there were two ways to relieve Rosentia of the curse. Have someone else willingly and deliberately accept the staff from her, in which case the curse would transfer over to the new recipient, or place the staff at a shrine to the Madgod himself.
Daedra worship, while frowned upon heavily in Cyrodiil, had found its way into the imperial province in large part due to immigration from Morrowind. Alves still had contacts among such individuals from her early days in Cheydinhal and, thanks to a certain court wizard from that very city, knew that the nearby Darkfathom Cave was the site of a long abandoned shrine to Sheogorath.
With this in mind Alves decided the best course of action would be to have some strong, gullible, well paid mercenary ferry the staff over to the likely empty cave and break the curse once and for all.
She never imagined she'd end up having to deal with the matter herself, but here she was, pulling out the old arms and amour she'd so long ago stashed within the bowels of the Leyawiin Mages Guild. The chitin plates felt as smooth as ever, light and sturdy and so unlike anything found in Cyrodiil. The Imperials preferred dry, dead armors. Chitin, even her old dusty set, always felt alive to the touch, as though the layers of insect shell and mushroom resin still held some small sliver of life.
Hiding her armor under a long red-velvet dress Alves left to convince Rosentia to go along with the revised plan.
Rosentia was quite dissatisfied with the revised plan. She, even more so than the superstitious sellswords, had been gripped by the recent scare in regards to Daedra. Alves supposed that, in her case, it was somewhat more understandable considering she'd been locked away in her house under an actual Daedric curse for the better part of the month.
Still, one would think she'd intended to do battle with Sheogorath himself the way the girl had carried on. She'd capitulated eventually though, surrendering the staff over to Alves. That the imperial hadn't tried to turn the situation into something from one of her books, the dashing Dunmer rogue making off the innocents girls treasure and, later on, her virtue scared Alves more so than any Daedric curse.
The realization that twice now the scamps had prevented her from getting laid made her all the more eager to put this nonsense to rest.
Alves assumed the actual walk to the swamp would be the most dangerous part of her endeavor. Blackwood was arguably the most inhospitable region of Cyrodiil, a deep and dark swamp stretching out from the border of Black Marsh. Dangerous fauna, combined with the frustrating Slow spell inflicted upon her by the staff, made for a potentially disastrous trek.
Potentially, but not certainly. She maintained a constant Chameleon spell as well as a fairly strong Detect Animal spell, insuring she could bypass the swamps less friendly denizens. The scamps were proving difficult however, requiring a constant spell of Invisibility to be maintained on each to avoid revealing her position, a state of affairs that served to rapidly consume her Magicka reserves.
Darkfathom cave was, thankfully, fairly close and once she reached the mouth of the cave she released all her spells with an audible sigh, visibly shaking from the strain of maintaining six separate enchantments at once.
Thankfully her Magicka pool, while not especially deep, refilled very rapidly and soon she was back to more or less working condition. She cast a mid-level light spell to illuminate her surroundings before striding into the mouth of the cave, expecting her task to be trivial from here on out.
Alves dove for cover behind a rock, sweat breaking out over her face as a wave of heat crashed against her cover, illuminating the cave with a hellish orange glow. Apparently, there were in fact Deadra inhabiting the abandoned cave.
Cursing her complacency Alves peeked over the side of the rock just in time to see a Flame Atronach incinerate another hapless Everscamp only for it reform a few seconds later. The scamps, ironically, had been her saving grace within the cave, providing a distraction for the hostile Daedra while Alves herself slipped past.
The Everscamps propensity for following her around however did, once or twice, lead to some uncomfortable situations. The Flame Atronach, for example, had been aiming the massive fireball at an Everscamp, not the invisible Dunmer mage behind it. Nonetheless, that fireball would have incinerated her had she not moved quickly enough.
Judging the size of the corridor exiting the Atronach chamber to be too narrow to prevent death via scamp directed fire Alves uncloaked and slowly crept up behind the infuriated Deadra, who was currently channeling a large stream of fire in an attempt to kill the immortal scamps.
Her flesh seared as she placed her palms against the fire Daedra's back. The pain ebbed away though as she channeled a powerful ice spell through her arms. Winters Grasp, arguably the most damaging spell in her repertoire, wracked the Atronach's body, causing it to shake and convulse as its flames flickered and died. Suddenly there was nothing left but a few scorched iron plates and a pile of fire salts.
A quick healing spell removed the burns on her palms and completely drained the rest of her Magicka reserves. She removed a nearly empty pink bottle and drained it, the potion in addition to her faster rate of recharge serving to replenish a fair chunk of her power instantly. It would still be a minute before she could cast any more offensive spells, but she'd at least be able to shield and cloak.
Cautiously she advanced deeper into the cave. Luckily, the next chamber was both the site of her objective and completely empty. Between two stone slabs inscribed with the Deadric rune for oblivion stood a comparatively modest statue of the Deadric lord of madness, presented here as a jaunty, well- dressed gentleman with a cane. Alves undid the straps keeping the accursed staff on her back and resisted the urge to just throw it in the idols face. Rather, she slowly placed it on a small altar in front of statue, and was immediately rewarding with the slow spell dissipating. The scamps too began to fade, becoming more and more transparent until suddenly they weren't there at all.
As she suspected, whatever magic kept so many Deadra bound to nirn broke along with the curse of the staff, leaving the cave completely empty on the return trip. Even the trip through the swamp was easier, her Detect Animal spell showing that there wasn't a single living thing anywhere in her vicinity. A little odd actually, she thought, but as relieved as she was she felt perfectly fine chalking it up to a lucky break.
The sun was setting, the air growing cold. Alves was betting, however, that a very grateful Rosentia would be more than happy to help warm her up.
As she walked out of the tree-line she was greeted by a city on fire.