Hi guys! This is a continuation of Saber x Vorstag. If you're new here, I strongly, strongly suggest reading their first story "Someone I'm Not" and if you like that come back here. If you've already read that one, thanks for coming back and continuing the sotry with me! This one is going to be a little fluffier, a littler darker, and fast paced! Enjoy and leave comments with any ideas you have! (Sorry this chapters short, I promise the others will be longer!)

Silus was an idiot. As I shoved him down the winding stairs that led to the shrine (making sure of course he landed unharmed in a soft pile of snow) I again wondered why we had gone to such great lengths to save him. Like we had agreed, Vorstag and I traveled as far from Markarth as possible, landing ourselves in the cold little town of Dawnstar. I shivered with disgust at the memory of my first encounter with the snow. The Reach had been so warm. Up here there was nothing but ice and the thick-headed Nords who called it home. There we met Silus, the Dawnstar museum curator, who had been so eager to fix some Daedric relic with the power of the Daedric prince Mehrune Dagon. He wasn't a cultist, he assured us. It was all in the name of history. That dagger was supposed to go in one of his displays.

Vorstag convinced me that we should help him in effort to save the curator's life. He said the man didn't know what he was getting himself into. I then promptly told him we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. But, nonetheless, we went on this epic quest to find the dagger's missing pieces and then followed the history fanatic to Mehrune's shrine where the evil prince would hopefully help us re-forge the ancient dagger. Dagon was more than willing to help, so long as we killed Silus. Being the Daedric hunters we were, we quickly refused. That's when the two dremora appeared.

Silus cries loudly as he falls, but is soon muffled as he plunges into the deep white. After a moment I see him splutter up, white dust flying, grasping at himself in a manic attempt to make sure he's still alive and in one piece.

"Stay. Down. There." I shout to him. He nods vigorously and withdraws back into the snow. I whirl around ready to face the dremoras.

"KILL HIM, OR I WILL CRUSH YOU." Dagon's deep, throaty voice growls from the shrines statue, a twenty foot tall carved orc that lounges in the mountains peak as if it were a throne. The stony face seems both amused and enraged. I begin to think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

"How about not?" Vorstag shouts in his heavy accent at the statue, pulling his ebony sword from its sheath. Ebony has been his favorite ever since he got that mail cuirass. The dark armor style suited him, making up for his nordic blondness.

"YOU THINK TO BETRAY MEHRUNE DAGON? SUFFER!"

With the dremora now fully materialized, Vorstag runs at the nearest, slicing in a diagonal motion that digs perfectly into the exposed side of its neck. The demon hisses in pain and recoils, pulling out its own two-handed weapon. Though we are more experienced, these things are still hard to kill.

As Vorstag duels the two-handed, I turn to the other one holding an enchanted mace. It seems proud as it bares it teeth at me and begins to charge.

"Fancy the arcane?" I say with a wicked grin. "Me too." Then my hands burst into flames.

XXX

"That went well." Vorstag says as he hefts the armor off of the dead dremora. Though we are disgusted by them, daedric equipment fetches a pretty high price on the black market.

We stand inside a little treasure room hidden behind a a secret door at the base of Dagon's statue. There were two more dremora mages inside, but we caught them off-guard so we defeated them pretty easily. Dagon hadn't said anything since we denounced his command, and I was sure it would stay that way. Though the Daedra hate being told no, they can't help but admire strong warriors. But I was still a little worried about Silus.

After the demons were killed, he came sniveling up the mountain and refused to leave our side. The whole ordeal had shaken him up pretty good, probably scarring him for life. I guess he wasn't used to dark deities clamoring for his head. He stood by us now in the treasure room, clutching the dagger pieces in shaky hands.

"Take it all," he whimpers, "take it all, then let's get back to Dawnstar." The room was full of gold, gems, and other priceless objects. I'm pretty sure that Vorstag wasn't planning on sharing with the imperial, but his offer definitely made things less complicated.

"Be happy you're alive, Silus." Vorstag says as he hefts the bag full of treasure onto his back. "Another group might not have been so compassionate. How about we don't play with daedric artifacts in the future, okay?"

"I—I can never repay you for what you have done! You saved my life and my work!" He sobs, choking on the words. "I have money and—the dagger—,"

"Keep it." I say, holding my hands up. He flinches as if I was going to blast him with more flames. I uneasily drop them back to my side. "We want nothing to do with those ancient deadric relics, and I already got myself a dagger." I pat the husk on my side, its empty gem thirsting for another soul it will never have. Utterly useless, besides stabbing people in the back, but I can't bear myself to part with it. "But I suggest not trying to piece it back together again."

"I won't, I promise." He says vehemently, and I believe him. "It'll do just as good in my collection in pieces as it would as a whole." He pauses and looks down at the rusty pieces clenched in his hands. "Can we go back now, please?"

XXX

"What was that, our fifth quest?"

"Fourth," Vorstag says with a merry grunt as we trudged through the snow. "Clavicus Vile and his dog do not count."

"But it was a talking dog!" I protest, jogging with high knees to keep up with him. I can feel the freeze through my layers of armor leather and fur insolation. "And I'm still mad you wouldn't let me keep him!"

"That mutt wouldn't shut up." He growls, giving me a hand as we ascend a steep hill. "And the Daedra wanted us to kill it, so if it'd stayed I might have just done that. You don't want me conforming to their demands now, do you?"

"You are so melodramatic." I huff as he drops me onto the level ground. We stop for a moment at the top of the hill. Snow falls down slowly all around us and it's completely silent, save our heavy panting. "We need to sell all this shit." I breathe, adjusting my own bulging sack. "It's weighing us down."

"Yeah, no use being winded at the start of an attack." He says, taking deep breaths of his own. I nod in agreement. Walking through the woods in Skyrim was no better than entering a cave. Bandits, frostbite spiders, trolls, vampires, old ladies who are part of a secret coven and have trap doors in their shanties. You could run into anything out here.

"But we want to get the best deal possible for our goods." He adds slowly. "There's a path at the bottom of this hill, and a little ways more is Windhelm. Once there we can take a carriage back to Markarth."

"Vorstag." I say sternly, glaring at his slightly nervous face.

"Saber," he complains, shifting his gear uncomfortably. "We need to sell this stuff to a fence. You want to get ripped off by price slashing merchants? I know I don't."

"There are other fences besides Endon, Vorstag." I say angrily, crossing my arms.

"And I'd be happy to do business with them if you could tell me who and where they are."

"You're impossible." I turn away in frustration and trudge heavily down the hill.

Suddenly my foot hits an ice patch and my feet slide from under me. I feel Vorstag's arms grab hold of my flailing elbows, but the hold is awkward and it causes him to fall as well. We tumble down the rest of the hill, grunting with each impact and spluttering as we try to breathe through the snow.

Finally the hill levels out and I come to a stop. I lie still for a moment and groan as I try to lift myself up. I'm battered, bruised, and freezing. I begin to feel bad for pushing Silus.

I crane my neck from where I lay, searching for Vorstag. He's easy to spot against the white snow, like a black ink stain on white parchment. I notice that our treasure bags ripped open as we fell, scattering the contents all along the hill, slowly disappearing in drifting snow.

"You all right?" Vorstag calls after a moment.

"I fucking hate this place."

"There's no snow in Markarth." I know he's goading me, but there's a hint of hope in his voice. I sigh and heave myself up.

He sits up from his heap and watches me walk back to the hill, fire igniting in my hands. "What are you doing?" He asks wearily, looking around for a possible threat.

"No point in going back to Markarth if we've nothing to sell." I can just feel his triumphant smile as I cast flames, melting the snow to retrieve our loot.