If you came out, you had it made, they said.
If you came out.
There were, perhaps, two score like her in all of Tamriel – those who had entered the gates and returned. Some called them heroes. Some called them scavengers. Most still referred to them as 'smoke-eyes' … for the habit they all had of blinking and rubbing their eyes as if the sparks and smoke of Oblivion still danced in their peripheral vision.
In a sort of unspoken agreement, smoke-eyes avoided one another. There was no gathering by the tavern fireplace to rehash adventures. None wanted to remember with forced joviality and ale. Illyn Samysia did all she could to forget but Oblivion entered your skin like campfire smoke sinks into clothing.
She sat in the shadows in Olav's Tap and Tack, watching a young couple cuddling over a pitcher of wine. The girl's golden hair flickered with red and orange from the fire. Illyn closed her eyes and wished she had some nighteye. She preferred the cool monotone of the potion's vision. After her second gate, she realized she could shield her mind from the red blood pulse of Oblivion with it. Even after, years after, her eyes held a certain pale luminescence – so very out of place in a Dunmer – from the build-up of the potion in her system.
She finished her bread and cheese – like so many smoke-eyes, she hadn't been able to touch meat since escaping that first gate – and watched the fire dance over the young lovers until, uncomfortable, they turned towards her gaze. Snarling at the happy couple, she downed her ale and stood up. Her eyes skittered away from the cheerful hearth, the flame, the smoke. Swearing, she braced herself against the swirl of wind and snow and stomped out into the night street.
A Dunmer in Bruma. Now, there was a cruel irony.
The cold and snow of the City of Talos leeched into her bones until sometimes she felt she'd shatter with the next step. Dunmer were not made for the cold, but still, she preferred it now. It was numbing. If distracted the mind. She could breathe. The last time she'd lit a fire in her home, she'd been jerked from her sleep, pale, shaking and sweating. The heat smothered her, invaded her lungs like lava until she choked on it.
As a child, she had delighted in flame, had played with it and made it dance between candles. She could still remember – although she tried desperately not to – the bubbling delight she had felt the very first time she had called the flame to her fingertips. As a young mercenary, her cohort had laughingly called her the camp cook for the delight she took in frying their adversaries. Now, there was no fire in her hearth.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes, gazed listlessly around her modest home. The silence echoed around her footsteps as she crossed to her bed and sat down. Reaching into a secret place she'd had built into the wall, she gently pulled out a small wooden cask. Even as her fingers touched the rough container, her skin began to vibrate and crawl. A low hissing rumble emanated from the box. It grew into a roar that filled her head when she lifted the lid.
Her cold face shone a sickly grey and she closed her eyes against the flickering light that flew from the open box. She forced her eyes open and stared bleakly at the six objects that spun wildly on their own accord – sigil stones. One for each gate she'd entered. One for each gate she'd escaped. Illyn had sold the piles of armour, the weapons, the magic she'd found in those hellish plains, but these stones she could not relinquish. She knew they could be turned into power in this land – or money – but she'd had enough of both.
These carried something more important. Proof. Proof that she was, in fact, still alive. Proof that each day of bone-cracking cold was the truth and not the fever, sweat and fetid breath of those lava pools that haunted her sleep. Proof that each visible puff of breath that escaped her lips meant that she'd escaped becoming a pod – bones ripped out, flesh turned in-side out – her lungs were where they belonged. Proof that the scorch and scald and terror that echoed in her skull had been real, and not some madness that chased her into the icy hills of Bruma. She was not mad. She was not.
It was some time before they found her.
It's not like she had friends who would have been concerned about her. Karinnarre at Novaroma had sent a lad around to the house to enquire about an unpaid bill, and the poor boy had run directly to the temple after seeing what had happened. Cirroc rushed back, but it was instantly evident that he could do no good here. He offered up a prayer to Talos and set about making arrangements.
She lay beside her bed, nearly naked, her body curled around a roughly hewn box. Six dull stones were scattered around her, like river pebbles from a child's game. It took three volunteers from the fighter's guild to straighten Illyn's frozen body. Cirroc shook his head in bewilderment and grief. The home was lavishly furnished and signs of wealth were everywhere. But no wood was stacked in the kitchen. In fact, every hearth was spotlessly clean, without a trace of ash, as if they'd never been used.