I'll be skipping between multiple POVs in this story. If you really really despise a character (apart from the main one, obviously, because she's here to stay) then let me know and I'll review limiting their involvement. No promises, of course. This is set after the main questline.
The gate guard leered at Lydia as she stood waiting for the city gates to creak open. His drowsy gaze traced the length of her lithe form and a smile slobbered across his slack face. Mercifully, he seemed to recall in that vague way idiots do the last time he'd made a pass at a woman trying to enter the city. It had taken ten minutes of pleading from Lydia before her Thane had grudgingly cast a healing spell on him, making sure to leave an ache that would plague him for at least a few days.
Later, as they sat in a prison cell together, Lydia trying to negotiate their release with an Imperial Soldier lounging around in the grimy circle of light that seeped in through the roof, her mistress had laughed until the guard captain rammed the hilt of his sword against the bars, muting her to a satisfied smirk. "The High Council has agreed that you were provoked," he'd snarled, "But mark my words – if you touch one of my men ever again, I'll have you on the block." She'd only smiled, full of bravado that never seemed to flee her weathered cheeks, however many friends she managed to lose.
Lydia threw her shoulder against the gate as it began to edge open and slipped through, emerging onto cobbles warm from the sun. Solitude was one of the few places in Skyrim that experienced anything approaching pleasant weather, which was probably why her mistress had chosen to settle here, in the gloomy halls of Proudspire Manor.
Having grown up traipsing through the rugged plains of Whiterun Hold, the beauty of Solitude always struck Lydia when her mistress would drag her in groaning about arrows and new drawstrings. It was nothing compared to the vast chasms of Blackreach, nor the soaring heights of Daedric shrines, with their malevolent faces carved into the highest peaks of Skyrim. It couldn't compare to standing on the Throat of the World, or shivering in the halls of High Hrothgar, but it was still beautiful, still more than Lydia ever thought she'd see.
Vendors called out to her as she trudged along past Castle Dour, cursing the damp folds of her armour as the sun beat down on her, but she ignored them, keeping her blue-eyed, taunt Nord gaze fixed on the path ahead. Proudspire Manor sat wedged against the Bard's College, mouldering in the careless antics of her mistress. Lydia didn't doubt that she'd have some amount of trouble getting inside, for her mistress often holed herself up in the basement dabbling in strange alchemical experiments, and when she did so unwanted visitors would be met with a creative and deadly range of traps, wards and soul gem onslaughts. Still, Lydia wasn't housecarl to the greatest (and maddest) woman in Skyrim without reason, and so with grim determination she mounted the steps leading to a stately front door, and took a deep breath before tapping out three booming knocks.
What happened next was not surprising. Lydia launched herself backwards as a stream of fire engulfed the air several feet in front of the door, the result of a fire ward set onto the intricate iron decorations. Sighing, Lydia maneuvered to her feet under the not inconsiderable weight of her armour, and prepared for literal hell.
Malsar stood, poised in thoughtful contemplation, over a seething vat of some blackish liquid that glinted poisonously in the lamplight. Her slender fingers extended to her right, plucking from the shelf a bright flower, which she then proceeded to grind, along with several other alchemical ingredients, into an earthen mortar.
In the light her red eyes glinted and the pointy angles of her face threw strange shadows onto the stone walls. She wore lightweight leather armour, a remnant from her days in the Thieves Guild of Riften, riddled with hidden pockets and pouches and straps where daggers might be hidden. They hung a little loosely on her frame, and the sunken hollows of her cheeks stood further testament to her malnourishment. It was a habit, she suspected somewhere in her voluminous mind, of the childhood she'd spent on the streets of some far-off elven city, before great whorls of ash reduced it to as much rubble and charred bone. She ate little and sparingly, hoarding food as though it weren't a commodity in her economic state.
Lydia was trampling around somewhere above, doing battle with her pet draugr. Malsar smirked at the thought of that hardy Nord being pursued through dusty rooms by some half-rotted corpse. It wouldn't be long before she arrived down, scowling, but not angry enough to do anything more than chastise Malsar. Lydia was fonder of her than any other being in the world, which struck Malsar as a little strange, seeing as she was frequently rude and always dismissive of her housecarl. It wasn't exactly deliberate; Malsar simply didn't like other people, regardless of how much they seemed to like her. Recalling that fiasco with Brynjolf, she shivered, returning her attention to her experiment and crushing the mixture with renewed vigour.
It was just forming into a nice, gloopy paste when Lydia came skulking along the corridor, boasting a small cut on her cheek. Malsar smirked, and was confused to see a flash of fondness in Lydia's eyes as opposed to the resentment generally directed at such demonstrations. She dropped the pestle as Lydia approached, turning to regard her in exasperation, "What do you want now?"
Her comment evoked a flash of hurt in Lydia's eyes, and, noting this; Malsar grudgingly morphed her pout into a grin and embraced her housecarl. "I missed you," she lied, pulling away. Lydia seemed mollified, but insisted on stripping out of her armour before uttering a word. Malsar wondered if she should offer to draw Lydia a bath, since she smelled like a mixture of dragon piss and burnt animal fat, but recalled Lydia's preference to conduct such business in her own time.
Lydia settled her ponging form on a barrel and began telling Malsar about all the letters of invitation she'd received from the College of Winterhold on account of her boundless magical talents. Malsar waved her hopeful tone away, "I despise those pompous intellectuals," making sure to lace the last word with sarcasm. Over several years, Malsar had mastered the tones of speaking used by most sentient beings on the planet, and integrated it into her own flat tones. Travellers she met had often been unnerved by her emotionless delivery, so it saved time to sound as normal people do.
Malsar met every single proposition of adventure from Lydia with staunch refusal, aching to return to her experiment. Eventually Lydia's stream of quests and locations of interest abated, and Malsar's gaze began to drift back toward her work, but Lydia cleared her throat pointedly and made a show of reluctantly taking a sheet of notepaper out of the lining of one boot. Wordlessly, she passed it to Malsar, who squinted at the curling scrawl.
She skimmed the messy scrawl, handwritten, the last of roughly two hundred such notices, judging by the angles, the cheapness of the ink, blah, blah.
Malsar laughed, tossing the letter into Lydia's hands, "What drivel," she scoffed, "Vampire hunters? Vampires are irritating, yes, but they're hardly 'a threat to the dawn'." Malsar turned back to her experiment, picking up the pestle with every appearance of becoming blind to the world at large once again.
"Funny," Lydia said, her voice barely audible, watching with great amusement as Malsar's ears perked, "I suppose I must have imagined the blood sucking fiends who charged into Whiterun last week. They killed one of the Grey-Manes, you know." Malsar didn't betray the slightest hint of dismay at this news as she turned to regard Lydia speculatively, despite the fact that she'd sprung a Grey-Mane child from a Thalmor prison not seven months ago.
Her elfish features betrayed interest, an expression she hadn't worn for many months. Slowly, she set down the pestle and rested against the rim of the alchemy table, "Riften?" she asked with every attempt at her customary nonchalance. Malsar felt her heart shift from its sluggish rhythm to a pounding that made her limbs tingle.
Lydia nodded, grinning.
Malsar moved her tongue over her teeth, "Good," she said finally, "I have to pick up a few things." She proffered her calloused hand to Lydia in an almost ritualistic fashion, accepting her housecarl's pinching grip with a smirk, eyes bright.
She let her head fall backwards, staring up at the scorch stains on the ceiling. Her breath rose in a fog as she spoke, "I have been searching for tests subjects for my…erm… breakthrough in pyrotechnics."
Lydia smiled, "Well, I'm sure they won't mind."
Comments and constructive criticism are appreciated.