"They should've been waiting here for us." Cyrus' eyes wander the area around the sewer grate leading out of the Imperial City as Aleyna dismounts, her boots hitting the packed dirt surrounding the stone platform the grate rests on.
Aleyna takes a knee her brow furrowed as she examines the dirt around her pivoting and circling on her back foot before rising, dusting off her fingerless gloved hands and approaching the sewer grate. Wrapping her fingers around the bars she gives it a yank, then another.
"Still locked. They haven't made it out yet."
"Captain Renault has the key, we'll have to wait." Cyrus says as he steps onto the stone platform beside her.
"No need."
Aleyna kneels with the lock at eye level as she pulls a pick tucked into her hair behind her left ear. She inserts the pick and slides a small knife from the lip of her boot, inserting it into the lock. She raises the tumblers and twists, the rusty lock opening with an audible snap swinging the man sized grate open with a loud creak. They all peer into the dark tunnel.
"Achille will come with you, you'll need a guide."
"Wait here, that's an order." She rises to her feet brushing the rust from her fingers as she ducks into the sewer pipe.
The sewers were dark, disused, this particular section of the sewer was closed solely for an escape route out of the city for the Emporer. Aleyna steps out of the pipe and straightens up in the large room just beyond. She shrugs her pack from her shoulders and kneels as she undoes the tie and flips open the top flap.
Rummaging around until she finds a small torch. She looks down at her palm and closes her eyes trying to focus until her palm ignites with flames, she holds the torch over her palm until the flammable wax around the top ignites filling the room with light as she slings the pack back onto her shoulders.
Her eyes wander the dank stone walls as rats scurry away in the torch light, taking the first left she crosses a small rope bridge leading to a door. She remembers the first time she was brought down here, if it was possible it smelled worse back then.
Renault and the other Blades had commandeered this section of sewer for the Emporer's secure escape. She had tagged along, as a favor to the Emporer offering her expertise where she could, making a mental map of the way that she now had to rely on in reverse.
Aleyna looks down at the complex spin lock on the simple wooden door, something she had suggested to them almost three years ago now.
"Knew this would come back to haunt me. Ok, come on." She spins the locks one complete turn and bites her lower lip.
"Three times to the right." She spins the lock around until she hears it click.
"One to the left." Another click.
"And two right." The last tumbler drops with a loud clang as the locking bar behind the door snaps open.
The tension releases from the spring operated bar that secures the door to the frame. She pulls on the handle and the door swings open easily, Aleyna steps in pulling it shut behind her. She drops the torch at her feet and climbs the ladder leading up into the tunnels beneath the Imperial Prison and the Emporer.
Her pack falls onto the ground ahead of her as she hauls herself out of the port hole and drops over the edge brushing herself off as she slings her pack back around her shoulders.
She pulls open the door to the hidden grate and closes it behind her, she steps into the stone tunnel she hadn't seen since there were a hundred stone masons down here building it.
They do good work, she nods appreciatively as she walks down the well lit tunnel toward a room with an iron gate barring her passage through, she walks under the stone archway as she approaches it, voices growing louder.
"My lord, my only job now is to get you to safety."
"Baurus, it is all right to let yourself feel, Captain Renault was a dear friend of mine as well."
"Of course sire, let's just keep moving please before they catch up to us." Aleyna raps on the gate with her armored fist, Baurus turning and drawing his blade.
"You want to put the sword down and open this thing?" She asks as Baurus exhales a sigh of relief.
"Aleyna. Thank the gods, I thought Cyrus wouldn't make it in time. Glenroy, open this thing." The other Knight removes a ring of keys from his belt and unlocks the gate, the Emporer coming down the stairs as she steps through.
"Aleyna." He says a smile coming across the old Emporer's worry lined face, Aleyna kneels bowing her head.
"My Lord." He comes up to her and rests his hand on her shoulder.
"Rise, rise please my child it is so good to see you." He pulls the woman into a hug, exhaling in her soft hair relieved to see the closest thing he had ever had to a daughter.
Aleyna had deep devotion and loyalty to the Emporer, orphaned when she was young the good King took her in gave her skills and purpose, she owed him everything her life included.
"Your grace I'm so sorry about your sons, if I had known.."
"I know child, I know."
"I swear on my life, they will be avenged."
"I'm afraid vengeance will have to wait Aleyna, I asked you here for a very specific reason. Excuse us?" He nods to the Knights as he rests his hand at the small of her back and leads her into a small room just off of the main chamber.
"My Lord?" She asks, the Emporer's face grows troubled as he sits on a small stone alcove.
"My time on this world is at an end Aleyna, my sons are dead and I am next."
"Sire, as long as I draw breath nothing will happen to you. You made sure of that." She sits down next to him as he smiles warmly putting his arm around her.
"I had you join the Legion because you needed discipline, not so you could learn twenty ways to kill a man with your bare hands."
"Thirty one, actually." She smiles as she bumps her shoulder against his and he manages a small chuckle. His eyes roll up to the ceiling as he sighs, folding his hands in his lap.
"I know you've never been one for religion Aleyna, but I've tried to live always serving the Nines. Charting my course by the cycle of the heavens and now they show me that my time has come."
"My lord?"
"You cannot escape fate Aleyna, I have lived well and my ghost will rest easy. Men are but flesh and blood they know their doom comes but not the hour, I'm blessed to know when mine has arrived. I will face my appointed time with honor, and then fall."
"Such is the way of Emporers and men, so shall it be with me." The Emporer reaches up, unclasping the Amulet of Kings from around his neck, he takes Aleyna's hands and gently rests the large sparkling amulet in them. The large gem in the center glows and within it, it almost seems as if liquid spins and turns.
"Take this to Jauffre, tell him the Prince of Destruction awakens born anew in fire and blood. These cutthroats are but his mortal pawns." Sounds of fighting erupt from outside the small chamber as Aleyna looks down at the amulet then back up into the Emporer's faded blue eyes. He rests his hand on her cheek.
"You will never know just how much you meant to me child. Tell Jauffre there is another heir, a secret son I hid from all eyes, find him, rescue him and help him quell this darkness that befalls Tamriel. Consider these my final orders." A hidden stone passage way opens up in front of them a man in dark armor stepping out of it, his face hidden by a hood as he looks at them both.
Aleyna rises to her feet drawing her Elven sword. The man charges her as she parries his swing and kicks him backwards away from the Emporer. He charges her again as she thrusts with her blade and misses stepping into his instep, deflecting his blade down and past her thigh, she twists in place.
Throwing her right elbow over her shoulder jamming it into his jaw, at the same time sweeping his leg out from under him she spins flipping the grip on her blade, the assassin falling back to the ground. She falls to one knee driving the blade down and through his chest.
Aleyna tosses the hair back from her eyes and she looks up just as an assassin from a second hidden stone passageway thrusts his blade into the Emporer.
"No!" She doesn't even realize she's doing it but as the words leave her mouth she's already drawn the silver dagger from the sheath belted mid way down her thigh and is extending her arm to throw.
She releases and the dagger spins through the air catching the assassin in the temple burying itself into his skull almost to the hilt. She pulls her sword from the other killer's chest and skids on her armored knees across the stone floor, coming to the Emporer's side.
Cradling him in her arms, she looks up leveling her sword as Baurus runs into the room, tears welling up in her green eyes she lets her sword clatter to the ground.
"I'm so sorry." She manages, her voice cracking.
"The Amulet?" The Emporer asks his voice weak as blood flows from the wound in his chest, Aleyna sniffs wiping her eyes with her sleeve she nods.
"I have it."
"Save this world from the darkness, Aleyna. It was always going to be you it was written in the stars, my beautiful warrior, the oncoming storm." The light fades from his wise blue eyes as tears fall from her cheeks, Aleyna reaches up and closes them with two fingers.
"By the Gods." Baurus says as he looks down at Aleyna as she slowly rests the Emporer onto the cold stone floor. Aleyna looks up at him and shakes her head.
Her eyes snap over to the assassin she drove her blade into, who groans still clinging to life. Aleyna sniffs and wipes her eyes as she gets up and walks over. She grabs ahold of the man by his chestplate hauling him to his feet she slams him into the wall, a dark look clouding her pretty face as she grits her teeth and growls.
"Who sent you?" The man's eyes roll back and Aleyna shakes him.
"Who sent you?!" The man's life leaves him as she pulls him a few inches forward and shoves him back into the wall, cursing, before she lets his corpse fall back to the ground. Aleyna picks up her pack and her sword sheathing it as she stops taking one last look at the Emporer.
"No one touches him."
"Of course ma'am." She exits the tunnels walking past the bodies of the assassins Baurus and Glenroy killed, ducking through the iron gate and back towards the sewer.
"Where's the Emporer?" Cyrus asks as Aleyna breaks daylight brushing past him without a word as she mounts her stallion. She looks at Cyrus for a moment before she turns the horse in place and digs her heels in, snapping the reigns.
"Hyah!"
