PART 1: FALLEN ANGEL

"You're sure this is the place?" Lydia whispered to the woman next her from darkness of the tree line. Before her was a shanty building out in the deep forest, crudely built from scrap lumber. The central door, by contrast, was iron-banded, and hewn from solid oak. Two large men in iron armor flanked each side of it, hands resting on their axe hilts.

"Count on it," Vex replied from the shadows. "Maul really went out on a limb for you. Believe me, if Maven had any idea I knew of this place, the Guild would be would be looking for my replacement. His too." She ran a hand through her blonde ponytail in thought. "Just remember, I was never here, okay?"

"Of course," Lydia said. "I owe you one for this. Several, in fact." Next to Uthgerd, Mjoll the Lioness nodded in Vex's direction. Lydia knew the warrioress had no love for the Thieves Guild, but this was a matter that transcended even that.

"Give 'em one for me in there," Vex said as she faded further back into the darkness and was gone. Lydia turned her gaze towards the door and the objective that lay behind it. She motioned for the others to gather in to hear her voice. She looked around at the women surrounding her; she could not ask for a more solid team to accomplish this dire errand.

There was Uthgerd the Unbroken, strong as the mountains, hard and cold as the fjords themselves; Mjoll the Lioness, master adventuress and worthy wielder of mighty Grimsever; Aella the Huntress, lethal and cunning as she was wild; Serana, once of the night blood, but now human once more; Rayya, the red storm, swift and unforgiving as the desert winds; and Karliah, the Dunmer Nightingale whose violet eyes shone through her dark mask and hood.

Each of them had the the power and tenacity to turn the tide of even the most dire battle, and now they were brought together tonight for a single purpose.

Lydia looked at each of them in turn. "You each know the score, and what it means if we fail. Let's try to do this quietly. Barring that, move fast, strike hard, but spare lives if you can. We don't stop until…" Her voice trailed off, and she could see the unspoken question upon their faces.

"What we…find in there will determine our endgame, but either way…this den burns tonight." With how many still inside, remains to be seen, Lydia thought to herself. "Karliah, Aella…those sentries are yours."

Behind the slight berm at the treeline, the women took their positions. Aella unslung her dragonbone bow, while Karliah nocked a daedric arrow in the Nightingale bow. The rest drew their weapons and waited like runners at their start, read to move. Lydia readied Judgement, her glass battle-axe. It was too large to wield well in close those confines, but she was used to using it as more of a spear, or a pike, which would suffice for her purposes.

The archers drew their bowstrings taut. "I call this one the 'town guard,'" Aella whispered to Karliah a second before she let fly. The dragonbone arrow flew straight and true, directly into the bouncer on the right's left knee. He yelped, but the sound was muted as the powerful sleeping drug filled his veins and he slumped over. The other bouncer saw the dark metal arrow from Karliah's shot quiver into the wood of the doorframe by his head. It seemed a miss at first, until he put a hand to his neck and speckle of blood from the tiniest of grazing cuts stained his fingers. The drug took him, too, and in the span of three heartbeats, both men lay still on the ground.

"Move in," Lydia said and they all slid from cover. Karliah was there first, lockpicks already probing the front door's workings. Her hands were swift and sure, and there came an audible click from the door frame. Her hooded head turned and nodded to the rest of them.

They went in low and quiet. Even Mjoll and Uthgerd were adept at treading quietly in their metal plate armor. Rayya took the lead, with Aella behind her. Few could dispatch a foe faster than those two. In a tight, quiet line, the warriors negotiated the steps down and the long stone corridor that lay beyond like a parade of ghosts.

The corridor took a sharp turn up ahead. Karliah detached from the column and went to the fore, a tiny mirror on a wand in her hand. A quick glance in it, and she held up four fingers, then three followed by a fist. Lydia interpreted it as: Four targets, total. Three are hardened.

Almost certainly this was the 'service' counter, likely behind an enclosed room behind a cage. Also a place where armed guards would likely station themselves. They looked to her for orders. With her eyes, Lydia selected Rayya, the two archers, and Serana to answer the question, one for each. She held Uthgerd and Mjoll back as rearguard. Should reinforcements arrive behind them, they would be hard pressed to get past those two.

Everyone held their breath as the chosen four sprang into action. Muted cries followed, then the sound of distinctive 'ting-ting' sound of Rayya's twin scimitars, Bloodscythe and Soulrender, being lightly struck together as an all-clear.

Lydia looked around the corner and found the scene not unlike what she imagined. The caged office set against the back wall and the wire was fringed with hoarfrost. Three heavies lay sprawled on the floor. Not one of them had even drawn a blade.

"We have a witness in the cage," Serana said to Lydia in a voice like dark silk. "I'm sure she'll be eager to speak with you."

Lydia found the young Altmer woman on the floor of her office, shivering, her arms and legs encased in ice. The Housecarl knelt beside the elf and lifted her ebony visor, fixing the elf with a gaze as frosty as the ice itself.

"You know what I've come for," Lydia said. "Your next words will determine much of the rest of your life."

"D-d-down, the sec-cond corridor, th-th-third door on the left. P-please! I just w-work here," the woman said, shivering both from the ice and the fear.

"A wise decision," Lydia said, plunging the poison needle into the woman's flesh. "Sleep now."

Lydia motioned their way forward, and took the lead this time, creeping down to the second intersection. Now, she passed rooms separated from the hallway by dirty curtains. Candlelight came from behind many of them, along with sounds of those within – pleasured or pained, it was difficult to tell. These she ignored, for now. Dreams and dreamers came here to die, and her heart ached with the possibilities.

But she couldn't afford to make trouble for herself. Not yet.

Back to the wall, Lydia came to the crux of the second passing. Using the blade of her axe, she imitated Karliah's trick to see around the corner. Somewhere down the corridor, a muscular orc in a soiled loincloth parted the curtains of one chamber and shambled into another. Here, the place began to reek of stale bodies, night soil, and alcohol. This wing was for the heaviest of heavy users, and Lydia's face drew downward in a frown, lips forming a hard line across her face.

Closer she crept towards the third curtain, where the elf had indicated, a line of silent comrades at her back. All in one motion, Lydia stood, seized the curtain and threw it back while blocking the entrance. The smell nearly knocked her down, but the sight before her boiled her blood instantly. A skinny Breton man, also in his loincloth looked up at her from the corner. Even through his addled senses, he felt Lydia's menace and the green crystal blade that came to bear in her hands.

In the center of the room lay a woman on a crude mat, surrounded by empty mead and skooma bottles. She lay on her side, naked and dirty, dark hair matted to her head. The slight reddish tinge to her skin had gone sallow and was smeared with all manner of things that each burned in Lydia's mind like red-hot pokers.

She went to the woman and knelt by her side. The woman's sides move in and out like a bellows. She was still breathing! Thank the Nine for that, Lydia thought. As for the rest, only time would tell.

Lydia heard Karliah gasp behind her. The others had entered and seen the state of things. There on the floor, vulnerable as a newborn babe, lay the slayer of Alduin, Harkon, and Miraak - the savior of Tamriel.

The Dragonborn.

"Numidia," she said. "It's me. It's Lydia. Speak to me, my Ysmir, speak."

The Dragonborn stirred, mumbled something incoherent, and then began to cry, drawing her knees to her breasts and making a ball of herself.

Lydia felt an involuntary tremor go through her, and stifled a rising cry in her throat. She wanted them dead. Everyone in this den of lost souls, everyone associated with its existence – dead before her, punished, judged. The burning in her mind became an inferno. But then she felt a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"Peace, sister," Aella said. "She lives still. The world rejoices."

Lydia didn't feel like rejoicing and shrugged away from Aella as she stood, rounding on her, but Aella stood her ground against the much larger woman, holding her gaze.

"Don't think I don't want blood to run like rivers for this outrage," Aella said, green eyes flashing like emeralds. "I would tear their throats out by the score if I thought it would help her." Aella cast a pitying look on the Breton in the corner. "But these people, they are the victims here."

"Get them all out, then," Lydia said, and then looked to Serana who had a hand to her mouth in shock. "Burn it down, all of it. Have your Atronachs collapse the tunnels. Leaving nothing for them to take back." Serana nodded.

Just then Uthgerd appeared at the doorway. "Lydia, we found a rat trying to escape. You should come." The Nord's eyes took in the room, and her face hardened at the sight, but otherwise remained a tight, grim mask.

Lydia turned to Karliah. "Stay with her…please." She hadn't meant to snap it as an order, but seeing her like that had shaken Lydia, more than she wanted to admit.

"Of course," Karliah replied in her smoky contralto. The Nightingale removed her own cape and wrapped it around the Dragonborn as Lydia left the room. The fresher air was almost dizzying in the hallway. Aella and Rayya went room to room, rooting people from their nests. Uthgerd took her to back to the counter, and the young woman on her knees with Grimsever's tip hovering near her throat.

She was raven-haired, much like her mother, with many of the same features. Half-dressed in her quilted jacket and dress, only a white chemise lay beneath. The woman's breath came fast, rising and falling quickly in her chest, and the look in her eyes seemed almost like a wild animal as they darted around the room.

"We caught her trying to beat a hasty retreat," Mjoll said. "But she knew better than to argue with the two of us, or the points of our swords."

"Ingun," Lydia said with disdain. "Ingun Black-Briar. I suppose I should have known."

"Hello, L-lydia," the woman said.

"Have you any idea what you've done?"

This seemed to embolden Ingun. Her smile was filled with cruelty. "I helped her. She came to me, broken, despondent. She wanted her demons silenced, and I made sure they were." Ingun's smile became some ugly. "She's a creature of incredible hungers. Insatiable. Nether Man nor Mer could satisfy them fully. I even took a turn or six, and she was kind enough to return the favor, and then some."

"Do you want her to kill you, girl?" Uthgerd said to the prisoner as Lydia's face darkened.

"She wouldn't dare, she knows who I am, who my mother is. Killing me would be suicide for her, for all of you." Ingun looked Lydia directly in the face. "She wanted this, and somewhere deep down you it's true."

"By Shor, she's saved the world three times!" Mjoll exclaimed. "How could you treat her in such a fashion?"

"Yes, she saved us, and we're all so very thankful," Ingun said. "And now she deserves to rest, and to forget."

"And I suppose that she's made an excellent test subject as well," Lydia said. "All the while you made sure she could no longer be a threat to you, or your family."

"Two birds, one stone," Ingun replied. "She is remarkably resilient, such depths of tolerance and strength. I gave her enough double-distilled skooma to fell a mammoth, and still she wanted more, more, more. And there I was in a position to fulfill those cravings. All of them."

Lydia cuffed her across the face with her ebony gauntlet, not hard enough to break something, but enough for Ingun to realize she had crossed the line. The young woman swooned and spat out blood onto the floor. Her nose trickled crimson, but she began to laugh as she looked Lydia over.

"I just realized…you're wearing his armor, aren't you? The very one who drove her to my arms in the first place…uhhh—" Her voice cut off as Judgement's gleaming edge pressed under chin. The barest flick and Ingun's throat would open nearly from ear to ear.

Lydia knelt down. They were almost nose to nose now.

"I'll make this simple for you: Stay away from her. If I hear that you've started another place like this, or that you attempt to take retribution upon any of us, in any form" she leaned closer. "I will personally come and root you out of Mistveil Keep and end your miserable life in front of the entire court. And should your Mother try to stop me, the Rift will have need of a new Jarl." She lifted Judgement until the girl winced in pain.

"Do you understand me?"

She nodded, but Lydia persisted. "Say it."

"I-I understand," Ingun said.

"Mean it."

"I understand!" Ingun sputtered. "She really did come to me, I swear! I bear her no ill will, just the opposite, I—". Uthgerd nicked her with the blade and let the drug take her.

"I, for one, have had enough of her boasting. Let us be away with the Dragonborn and wash our hands of this foul place," Uthgerd said.

Lydia stood over the architect of the Dragonborn's many degradations, axe in hand, and for the space of a few heartbeats could not decide whether to let the Black-Briar live, despite her tacit implication that she would be spared.

This time it was Mjoll who touched her shoulder, not in restraint but in friendship. "We all owe the Dragonborn, but this must hardest of all on you. We all understand that. A grave injustice has been done to her. Let us help you bear the burden to set this right...sister."

At this, the tears came. All throughout this ordeal – the waiting, the finding, even the finding – she had never allowed herself the luxury of tears. Always, she had steeled herself, substituting her molten anger in place of the sadness waiting to engulf her. And now the deed was done, but the road to right this wrong was a long one, stretching out before her, near infinite in its scope. She allowed herself a generous half-minute to let the rains come, before she capped off her emotions again, and wiped them away with her ebony fingers.

With that, she went and relieved Karliah's watch, taking the Dragonborn in her arms. For a hero whose exploits were written in the stars, and would sung by the Bards for millennia, she was surprisingly light, almost weightless in Lydia's arms. Lydia took her from the accursed place and set her down in the grass under the stars, still wrapped in the Nightingale cloak of midnight.

Behind her, her allies herded or carried those from inside. Rayya gave the word, and jets of white fire sprang from Serana's palms, engulfing the ramshackle building. Stony figures burst out of the ground to either side of her, and then sank back into the earth. Minor rumbles shook the ground as they went to work. In short order, only a flaming crater remained as a testament that anything had been there at all.

Hold on, Lydia thought as she attached Jet, her warhorse, to the wooden litter that would bear the Dragonborn away. My thane, my hero…my love.