Author's Note: This is the sequal to Dragonheart. It takes place about two years after Dragonheart, though. Take note of that.

Last Seed 27, 3E433

If there was one thing that Nhiilaa couldn't stand about the Imperial Prison, it was that accursed Dunmer, Valen Dreth. She'd been there all of an hour and the fetcher was already ranting about how she was going to die in here, Nord, die! See, this was why no one liked Dunmer: they were all rabidly psychotic. Every single one of them. She wanted to strangle him, but that of course would be frowned upon, considering the charges she was now subject to. Honestly, if the guard had one of those little Bosmer following them around, they would slap them too. They were lucky that she just didn't toss the little fetcher off of Dive Rock, but she really didn't want to deal with the Uderfyke matron, the local legend. Not that she believed in that kind of thing, but after what happened in Solstheim, she didn't want to take the chance.

But now she was stuck here, under the charges of assault and battery. It was a three day sentence maximum due to her history in the City as someone of lawfulness, but it was going to be a long three days with that cretin Dreth in the cell across from her. If they hadn't slit his throat to stop his raving, there was absolutely no chance of them slitting hers. In the past hour, she'd thrown her cup and her jug of water at him, and luckily both hit him squarely in the face, but even that hadn't stopped the jabbering for more than five minutes.

By Azura, by Azura, by Azura! It's the Grand Champion! I can't believe it's you! Standing here, next to me! God's blood, now the bugger's ramblings echoed in her head over and over again. Surely she would go mad by the end of three days. Honestly, she hadn't regretted the hitting. Or the attempts to choke the fetcher. Always with the following her around, offering to give her backrubs and what not. He had followed her all the way to Skyrim with her father for an entire year, by Ysmir! Most of the time she had instructed him to stay in the basement, which amazingly he did, but once or twice he escaped and followed her around and blathered inanely to her relatives about how amazing her fight with the Gray Prince was. Auntie Inga had a fit when she heard about how Nhiilaa'd been 'skewered through the chest' and insisted that Nhiilaa would just have to stay in bed until she could get Uncle Eifid to pick up some special herbs to take care of the scar. Apparently merely sitting up would irreparably damage her internal organs, despite that she'd been walking and running and fighting just fine before that. On the way home, Ingar had muttered something about Inga being lucky that she was his sister or he might've killed her himself, though it was probably more of that Inga had scolded him and placed the blame on him than her incarceration of his daughter.

Right now, Nhiilaa counted her lucky stars that Ingar didn't know about her imprisonment. He might've broken into the jail just to beat the living daylights out of her, that's how angry he would be if he ever, ever found out. It was a good thing that she didn't really plan on telling Ingar about this little incident and that there was no one else that she knew who would even be able to tell him.

Counting the stones of the ceiling of her cell grew boring, and she grew parched. 'Well now I wish I hadn't thrown it at the idiot,' she thought dejectedly. Heavy footsteps interrupted her thoughts, and she sat up at her little table. An old man asked something about dead sons, a woman answered. An angry woman. An angry Breton woman. Now Nhiilaa could see that it was the worst kind of angry Breton woman: an angry Breton woman wearing a sword at her belt and followed by two guards and the Emperor.

Something about that seemed odd to Nhiilaa. First of all, who'd ever heard of a female guard? Well, that one Draconis guard down in Leyawiin, but didn't she get murdered a while back? There was an article in the Black Horse Courier about the entire family getting murdered and how someone somewhere suspected the Dark Brotherhood. Because of course every serial killing was because of the Dark Brotherhood. And secondly, what the hell was the Emperor doing in the Imperial prisons? The Imperial prisons weren't exactly pleasant, let alone sanitary, so it couldn't have been for the beauteous landscapes and amazing architecture. Nor could he really have wanted to visit Dreth all that badly. Nhiilaa doubted whether Dreth's own mother wanted to visit him in a hole like this. The Dunmer snickered and cooed, "They're coming for you, Nord. You're going to die." She responded with a glare, but grew more worried as the quartet stopped in front of her cell. The woman looked extremely angry and she passed a glare back at one of the two guards flanking her sides, a Redguard.

"Baurus! What's this prisoner doing in here?!" she snapped.

"The usual mix-up at the watch, it's--" he stuttered, but fell short from another glare back at him.

"It doesn't matter whose fault it is, Baurus, just get the damned gate open!"

"Yes'sir." The Redguard, Baurus, fumbled for a moment with the keys. "Today, Baurus," the woman muttered, irritated. A moment later, and the bolt slid home, the gate opened with a loud squeak which hurt Nhiilaa's ears. Her hopes of premature escape were dashed as the gate was slammed shut behind the other guard, a quiet Imperial, with a sickening clunk.

"You… I've seen you," a voice interrupted her plot of escape. It was the Emperor Uriel Septim VII. Panic blossomed in the pit of her stomach as she managed an awkward curtsey. Suddenly she couldn't control her mouth.

"With all do respect, your Grace, but perhaps it's because I've fought in the Arena?" she mumbled to her feet, hoping that she wouldn't be heard. Apparently she wasn't, because he just continued, "Then the gods were right, this is the day." Was it just her, or did the Emperor sound… sad? She risked interrupting him, "Sire… what's going on?" The old man smiled at her wearily.

"Assassins have killed my three sons, and I'm afraid I'm next. My Blades are leading me out of the City, and out escape route seems to be right through your cell. Perhaps the Nine have placed you here on purpose. Either way, today we both walk the path which has been laid down for us." She was about to ask what the hell he meant when the Breton guard pressed a brick on the wall into the brickwork, and to her surprise, a passageway to the sub-terrain appeared. 'Well that's convenient,' she thought with a smirk. She allowed for the rest of the company to enter the tunnel first and quickly followed at Baurus' heels, to his extreme annoyance. The last thing that they needed on this mission was some snotty, probably teenaged, prat following them around. That was practically begging to be assassinated, in his book.

They company walked in silence, the only sounds came from the heavy clunk of the guards' boots and the muffled footsteps of Nhiilaa's sandals and the Emperor's slippers. Every time Nhiilaa attempted to ask a question, the Imperial guard would through an angry glare back at her, so she'd just given up talking.

A scraping of metal caught her attention. It sounded like… several people shuffling about in heavy armor, but it wasn't the sound of the armor that she'd become accustomed to. "I—" she started to say that she heard someone coming, but was immediately cut off by Glenroy's stare. Involuntarily, her cheeks puffed out in irritation as she placed her hands on her hips.

"I don't like the sound of that," Baurus muttered in the captain's ear. She nodded in agreement but said, "We have to keep moving. Stay on your toes, men." Nhiilaa noted that she was excluded from the warning and fell back even more. The Breton woman drew her blade, a fine katana, from her belt and carried on cautiously. Without warning, the metal scraping drew closer, and several people in daedric armor materialized in a puff of red smoke in a passageway near the ceiling. The assassins dropped down and began their assault. The Breton woman went down first as a mace collided with her exposed face, and she hit a column with a sickening thud and fell to the ground. "The captain's down! Prisoner, protect the Emperor!" Baurus, or was it Glenroy, shouted. Instinctively, Nhiilaa rushed forward and snatched up the fallen captain's sword. The blade was lighter than her own blade, Arpenalatta, and that hindered her swings for a moment before she became familiar with this lighter sword. One assassin fell to her blade; the other two were killed by Glenroy and Baurus.

Dirt settled before anyone spoke. "It's over, sir," Baurus called to the Emperor, who had stayed back from the fray away in the corridor.

"And what of Captain Renault?" his Highness asked, concern in his voice.

"She's… she's dead, sire." Glenroy stepped forward. "In any case, we have to keep moving. I'll take point." Another key was produced, and Baurus unlocked a heavy iron gate. Nhiilaa moved to follow them as they stepped through, but Glenroy pushed her out of the way and locked the gate behind them. "You stay here. You're a liability right now," he sneered.

"Oh thanks," she muttered to herself as the door behind the gate slammed shut behind them. Hopelessly, she took a good look around the room, which appeared to be a dead end. Her only option, it seemed, was to go back to her cell and wait for the end of her sentence. That seemed like a terrible idea, actually. Surely one of the guards had noticed that Dreth was yelling something about the stupid burly Nord getting out and how it was so unfair that he had to stay here. Just another example of Dunmeri prejudice. Her sentence would be increased to something more like a month for attempting to escape from prison, Dreth would taunt her for her attempts, and worst of all her father would probably find out and come to the City just to kill her. Things went from bad to worse as she heard scratching behind her back. Her face paled as she turned around and saw a pair of particularly filthy rats attempted to burrow through a crumbling wall.

"Oh of course there are rats. Filthy, disease ridden rats. There's always rats!" she cried, and a second later the rats burst through the wall and rushed to her. Of course they wanted to eat her. With a scream, she swung her sword and caught the first one in the side. It fell to the ground dead, but the other rat still persevered in its charge. Again, she swung her sword, and this time buried the blade in the rat's belly.

--

There were only two things that Nhiilaa really feared: goblins and rats. Not zombies. She'd feared goblins ever since she was a child in Skyrim and her mother would threaten her with tales of how children would get snatched up by goblins if they disobeyed their mothers, and ever since Azzan and her dear cousin had locked her in that crazy Dunmer's basement she panicked every time she was near a rat. Whenever she begged Ingar to take her with him on one of his expeditions into some ruin somewhere, he would insist that there were child-eating zombies and that he didn't want to get eaten. Ingar had just told her that for the umpteenth time before he'd left and Nhiilaa was rather angry. With a scowl embedded onto her face, she followed her mother around the house and complained.

"I'm not afraid of any stinkin' zombies. They're just corpses. I'd hit 'em with a flash of my knife and BAM! They'd fall over dead!" she whined, mock-stabbing Hjotra's legs as if they were a pair of zombies. Hjotra sighed in frustration; it'd been cute the first time Nhiilaa had done it, but it was getting old, and she was getting in the way. More than once Hjotra had almost spilled a pot of hot water on the girl's head because she'd gotten underfoot. In trying to protect her daughter, Hjotra dove for the pot and accidentally burned her fingers. Now her hands were covered in bandages so that the burns wouldn't get infected.

"Enough, Nhiilaa. Zombies are more dangerous than you think," her mother had told her.

"No! Momma, I could take 'em! Really, I could!" she jeered as she hopped around. One of Hjotra's feet had gotten caught on the child, and she'd fallen to her knees, almost breaking a ceramic urn that Ingar had brought from Skyrim containing his mother's ashes. "Nhiilaa!" she chastised as she rose to her feet. "You think zombies aren't so scary? Let's test that!" And with that, her mother cast a spell of conjuration, and a red and yellow puff of smoke materialized into the form of one of the undead. It stank to high heaven and bits of its flesh sprinkled to the floor with every movement it took. Nhiilaa let out a high pitched scream as she ran outside into the daylight. The undead cocked its head to the side in confusion as it let out a gurgle from its throat. A moment later and it disappeared the same way it had appeared. Hjotra stood at the doorway and hugged her daughter as Nhiilaa tackled her and hid in the folds of her skirt from the now-gone zombie.

"Now do you see why you can't go with Papa?" Hjotra asked. A fervent nod followed along with panicked whimpering. Now the poor girl feared three things: goblins, rats, and zombies.

--

Especially zombies. Of course there had to be a zombie. What good was a creepy tunnel without a zombie surrounded by rats? Now she understood why there were so many damn skeletons around: because the zombie went and killed them all. Probably ate their innards with its grubby teeth and groaned in undead-happiness. And of course, she did the most heroic thing she could think of.

She hid in an alcove and let the zombie and the rats kill each other. The zombie was, obviously, winning. If she hadn't been petrified in fear, she probably would have entered the fray and hit the zombie while it was distracted, but she was petrified in fear, clutching onto the shoddy bow she'd found a while back for dear life. The sounds of battle fell silent and were instead replaced by the heavy footsteps of the undead roaming toward her hiding place. 'Please don't let it find me, please don't let it find me, please don't let it find me,' she pleaded to whichever one of the Nordic gods were listening. Apparently, they heard her, because the zombie just plodded on its course and ignored her.

Her wits found her then, and she pulled a rusty arrow from the quiver she'd found with the bow. She really didn't want this damn thing following her around while she tried to find her way out. Killing it was her only option. Fear gripped her hands and caused them to shake as she knocked the arrow. Only recently had she taken up archery as a pastime, and her aim was actually rather terrible. Prayers for luck filled her head as she pulled the string back past her ear, and she aimed for the nape of its neck. As she loosed the arrow, she slammed her eyelids shut. A cry… well, more of a moan, of pain caused her to open her eyes. The zombie lay dead on the ground at her feet, its limbs still twitching with whatever foul magicks had brought it to life in the first place. She shuddered as she ran from the corpse, tears of panic stinging at her eyes.

--

Finally, she emerged from the caverns. She was a bit bruised, but other than that, no worse for wear physically. Mentally, that was another story, what with the zombie and the goblins. Oh, and the pit filled with rats. 'Who the hell keeps a pit full of rats?!' she thought angrily, shaking at the thought of her almost falling into it after she'd been shoved by a goblin.

It was the clashing of metals that attracted her attention from the rats to where she was going. She came to a ledge which provided a bird's eye view to the unfurling battle below. Apparently, despite the fact that they had left her by herself for fear that she would be the one to attract the assassins, the red robed assailants had still found them. 'Fancy that,' was all she could think of as she watched the two guards dispatch the would-be murderers of the Emperor. As she closed the gap, she could make out snippets of their conversation, "—should stay for help!" Glenroy's voice seemed a bit… panicked. "Hell, what makes you think help will arrive!" Baurus', on the other hand, was just flustered.

Nhiilaa let out a screech as she fell from the ledge. She'd attempted to climb down, but the shoddy iron gloves she had found decided to break midway, causing her to land harshly on her bottom. Metal greaves were not the most comfortable thing to fall onto, especially on a bunch of stones.

"Damn it all! It's her! There's no way she could have gotten out, she must be working with them! Kill her, Baurus," Glenroy snapped as they saw that it was her who'd fallen. Fear gripped her, and the thought crossed her mind that she'd really rather be sitting in the pit with rats and zombies than be here right now. A clear, ordering voice quelled her fears in an instant.

"No… she is not one of them. She must help us." The two guards cleared the way for the Emperor as he walked toward her. To her shock, he extended a hand out to her to help her to her feet, and she took it. Her armor squeaked as she stood, and she frowned at it. "They don't understand why I trust you. They've not seen what I have… Listen, you know the Nine?" Her heart fell. As a child, chapel priests in Bruma had chastised her family for their 'heathen gods', and in Anvil children of dutiful chapel goers were oft forbidden from associating with the family. Those families never really stayed in Anvil long, but prejudice was prejudice.

"Sire… your gods are not my own. I'm afraid that you've lost me before you've began."

"That doesn't matter now, child. You may not believe in the Divines, but they believe in you. And they have a plan. Today, we will walk the path that they've set for us, whether you believe it or not. You will come with us for a while," She sighed; at least he wasn't forbidding his dead children from fraternizing with her. "Here, child, lend an old man your arm," he motioned to his side, and immediately she went to him and held out her arm for him to rest on. He took it and continued talking, "I've served the Nine all my days, and I chart my course by the heavens. The skies are marked with numberless sparks, each a fire, and every one a sign. I know these stars very well, and have watched them for many years. I wonder...which sign marked your birth?" It was a question that she should have known very well, because her mother was interested in that sort of thing. Right now, though, her mind was drawing a blank as she tried to remember her star charts.

"… The Steed… I believe," she muttered as confidently as she could. The Emperor chuckled as her lack of knowing and said, "That sounds about right, child. What is your name, if I may?" His courtesy was actually rather unnerving to her. If she was in his place, she would have been swearing up a storm and shaming her ancestors by it. Instead of pointing this out, however, she managed to force out her speech, "Nhiilaa Ijorta, sire."

"Your accent… you are not from Cyrodiil, are you, Nhiilaa?"

"Not originally… I was born in Skyrim, but I've lived in Cyrodiil a good portion of my life. Sire, if I may… you said earlier that you've seen me in a dream. What… what was it of?" The old man's eyes stared off into the distance as he spoke, "I saw my death, child. Men know that they are going to die, but they don't know when. In this, I am blessed to know the hour." Sweat formed on her brow from the torchlight.

"Sire… if I may, where are we going?" To her surprise, Emperor Uriel stopped in his tracks and looked at her squarely in the eyes.

"I go now to my grave, dear child. A tongue shriller than all the music calls me."