Disclaimer: Odly enough, I still don't own Oblivion or any related things. Bethesda does. Strange, isn't it?

Author's Note: Thank you all for the nice reviews, I hope you like this part as well.

In my opinion, stopping when an arrow hits you is the most stupid thing you could possibly do. That way, only more arrows will hit you. Instead, I changed my direction and ran to a fallen tree behind which I could find cover. Two more arrows got fired at me, but missed.

As I vanished behind the tree, I thought about the situation. The arrows had come from behind. This could have meant that someone was following me, or that someone was already waiting and shot only after I passed by. Carefully, I removed the arrow that hit me. I was lucky because it only stuck in my clothes, not in my flesh.

I lied flat for a few moments. When I looked up again, another arrow flew unnervingly close past my face. But this time I could see the archer, who was sitting up in a tree. I quickly ran around in a zig-zag course and tried to hide in the woods. Then, I slowly approached his tree. He had not seen me yet. As it turned out, it was a young Bosmer woman who was far to well dressed to be a bandit. Somehow, I had the impression that I had already seen her, but I could not really place her face at the moment. I drew my sword and, with a jump, cut into the branch she was sitting on. The branch cracked and she fell down. I quickly held my sword to her throat and kicked her bow, which she had lost, away. She had no other arms for close quarters, which proved that she was likely no expert.

"Now, darling, what was that about?"

"Killing you, of course, butthead."

I could see that she was frightened, but still, she managed to be cheeky.

"You won't believe it but I knew that already, thank you very much. Who sent you?"

"Me? Sent? Nobody sent me."

"Of course, and nobody killed the emperor." I said, casually shifting my sword a little closer to her throat.

She remained silent.

"I really don't want to do this. You know, threatening girls like you. I always wanted to be a lumberjack" I continued, tickling her with the sword.

"Oh, spare me the same old song. Kill me or don't, but don't expect me to talk" she managed to say. Her behavior did not match her attitude, as she was shaking with fear now. She tried to roll over to escape, but I stepped on her arm, so she couldn't move.

"All right", she said, "come closer, I don't want to say it out loud."

"Babe, I know better than to 'come closer' to someone who wanted to kill me. Now, do you have anything to say or not?"

To my surprise, she screamed "No!" and kicked me between the legs. This was slightly distracting, so she managed to escape. I tried to follow her, but was seriously hindered by the pain. When I finally realized that I had no chance of catching her, I sat down and waited for a few minutes before I went back to Skingrad. Nobody tried to attack me again. I went to my rented bed and had a very uneasy sleep that night.

---

The next morning, I started asking whether someone had seen my attacker. Of course, she was not stupid enough to show her face in Skingrad, so I did not find her. Several people had seen several young Bosmer women at several seperate occasions, but none of their descriptions fit mine. The watch captain only told me that I had probably encountered a bandit, told me to stay on the roads and started whining about the lack of personnel he had to deal with crime in the woods.

On the road, I met the guy who had talked with me yesterday. He considered me a buddy of his now and insisted on buying me a drink. While we were sitting in the bar, he had nothing new to add to his story, but still told it again as if it was new. I listened politely and asked him whether he had seen any unusual activity around Mme Dupont's house. Of course, he had not, which he told me in great detail. When he was finished, I was close to sleeping. Then, something hit me.

"Excuse me, did you say that she only gets food for two people delivered to her house? Not much more?" I wondered.

"Yes, she's quite stingy."

I did not tell him, but it struck me that she had probably quite a lot of people working for her goal. If they were working in the underground, there had to be some way to keep them fed. Apparently, that was not through the tunnel to Mme Duponts house. The entry had to be somewhere else.

My mind drifted again, to the sniper that tried to get me. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. This was not the first time I had been attacked on a mission, but it was quite early for that. As far as I knew, I hadn't found out anything interesting yet, but I've already managed to annoy someone enough that he or she wanted to see me dead.

It was very unlikely that my few questions really caused this trouble. More likely, someone thought I had seen something I should not have seen. Now I needed to make sure that I actually saw it. I kept on wondering what it was that I should not have seen. Finally, I remembered where I had seen the young girl that tried to shoot me before. She was among the priests I had seen in Kvatch that morning.

I returned to Kvatch, carefully, and made sure that nobody saw or followed me. This time around, I did not care for the ruins and the body parts. I had a mission and a sense of urgency, and nothing would stop me right now.

There was no problem finding the place where the priests were, now deserted. It was a small field close to the eastern city wall. Most likely a house had stood here before the attacks, because I could still make out some fundaments. Some wall remnants cut off a small piece of the place. Upon closer inspection, those were not actual ruins. While the stones were old, someone had put them together only recently, and it lacked the dust in the corners that the actual ruins had. The wall protected some smaller area, which was full of what was apparently meant to be debris.

Someone had tried to wipe footsteps away, but done a rather bad job of it. Whoever entered here last was probably in a hurry and forgot about the usual security procedures. I would not be surprised if my new girlfriend happened to be the one. Not very wise. Still, it took me some time to find the trapdoor that was carefully hidden. The lock proved too strong and difficult for me to break or pick, but at least I knew that I was going in the right direction now. As this was the public access to whatever was below, and probably also to the tunnel, I decided to wait somewhere hidden and see what happened there.

It was not really difficult to find a place where I could hide safely and still had a great view, and I had brought a bottle of water and some food. The lack of toilets proved to be more of a challenge, but I hope you understand if I do not go into this topic in greater detail.

The night was long, uneventful and boring. I could not afford to let anything slip past me while I slept, so I had to stay awake all the time. I saw a couple who were in love and decided this was a good place to be undisturbed, but decided that it was too scary for them once they had spent five minutes looking for a nice place. Several animals showed up, but none remained longer than necessary in the city. A bunch of bandits came, stayed for a short while and left in a hurry again. None of this was my concern.

About two hours after midnight, I heard a muffled sound from underground. Shortly later, a group of three people, clad in black, came out of the trapdoor. They looked like they were sent to kill anyone who might have witnessed their apparent accident, but they seemed to think that nobody was around at this time of the night and did not bother to do a thorough check. In fact, they talked so loudly amongst themselves that I could overhear parts of their conversation.

The largest one, who had a male voice, cursed and said, "Why do these stupid mages always have to make so much noise? I've seen enough of the process to know that sound is not part of it."

"I'm more wondering why they have to do all their stuff at night. It's not like there are many people here during the day, and I'd love to see the sun for a change. It's not like we have vampires in our team." This one sounded like my attacker.

"Sure, we all have seen how effective you are during the day, haven't we?" a third, male, voice asked, apparently referring to my encounter with her.

"Oh, she sure has a point. Do you think she'd be any better at night?" the first guy asked.

I considered this unfair. Sure, she did not hit me, then lost track of me and ended up cornered by me, so she was anything but a professional. But still, she had left quite an impression on me with her flight. On the other hand, that impression was certainly not my most happy one, so I decided to remain quiet and not correct them. They bickered for a few more moments, then returned to their underground lab.

In my head, a plan started to form, and after I was confident that they were gone, I started to put that plan in action.

---

The next interesting event occured close to morning, when it started to slowly get less dark. I was trying to fend off the sleep that was slowly trying to get me, but it was a battle that I was about to loose when I finally saw someone approaching the trapdoor. The priests that I had seen the day earlier returned, but this time, they looked far less spiritual. They did some quick checks around the place, set up one of them as guard and then started normal discussions. I was not able to make out any details, but they did apparently not like their job very much and wondered about the risk now that someone had apparently found out about their operation. Two of them were carrying what looked like a portable altar.

When they finally arrived at the place where I had seen them the other day, none of them bothered to pray. Instead, they secretly went around the wall and took their altar with them. Someone opened the trapdoor from inside, and the pseudo-priests opened a hidden door in their altar. A few baskets full of what seemed like food and water were given to the one in the trapdoor. In return, a bunch of empty baskets as well as some papers were handed back. The whole exchange took less than five minutes. When they locked the door again, nobody took any care whether the lock had really worked. So far, my plan was working well.

The priests lingered around for half an hour more, probably to make sure that they did not return too early to arise suspicion. When they finally left, they took great care of making sure that their door was well hidden. Of course, that did not help them at all, but they did not know yet that I knew about their hideout. I was quite sure that at the first possibility, they would hide somewhere in the woods and change in more usual clothing, then go at different times back to their hometowns.

I waited for about ten minutes after they were gone. Then, I carefully approached the trapdoor. The lock was open. That came as no surprise to me, because I had manipulated it before. I was quite proud of the trick, which made sure that a lock, once opened, could not be closed again. You have to forgive that I will not tell you my secret here, but it involves small iron stripes and about half of all the spells I know. Slowly, I turned the handle, opened the door and entered. I was inside.