Keolah headed out of Windhelm come morning, alone. She was a little nervous about heading out on her own. Silly, really, since few people had ever wanted to hang around her for long, but she'd already grown to appreciate the presence of Ralof and Lydia. After all, they were great for carrying heavy things. Oh, and the company wasn't bad, either.

She crossed the bridge leading away from Windhelm and glanced about the frozen landscape, pulling her furs closer around her shoulders. She had a quest to perform. Now, which way was north? She thought it was north, anyway.

Setting off across the brown landscape, she hummed tunelessly to herself. As she traveled, she harvested every interesting alchemical ingredient she came across along the way. And very, very carefully avoided a giant and some mammoths. A horrible mental image of being knocked into the sky by a giant's club kept her from wanting to get close.

A screech split the air, and Keolah looked to the sky in alarm. The silhouette of a dragon circled overhead.

"Oh, Talos," Keolah muttered.

Panicking a little, she started flicking lightning bolts into the general direction of the huge scaly winged lizard, but it was too far away to hit. Her heart pounded, terrified of wanting to face such a creature by herself. This was it, she thought. The legendary Dragonborn, struck down by the second dragon she encountered. The first time was obviously just a fluke. The random Nord guards must have done all the real work, and she just hadn't noticed. She obviously wasn't the hero they were looking for.

The dragon flew on, completely failing to even notice her on the ground below, and vanished behind the trees.

Keolah stared off at where it had gone for a long moment as she calmed herself slowly. Perhaps it was just as well. After settling her nerves and replenishing her magicka, she moved on.

She had to imagine that, by this point, she was already hopelessly lost, and had no idea if she was even going in the right direction. There was a hot spring. Which one was it on her map? She had no idea. She could hardly make sense of this thing on the best of days.

An Imperial patrol passed by with a captured Stormcloak soldier. What were they doing this far into Stormcloak territory? She attempted to free the Stormcloak, killed the Imperial soldiers but didn't manage to save the soldier. "Well, that could have gone better," she muttered, then stripped their armor and sold it to a passing Khajiit caravan, who looked the other way. And then one of the Khajiit asked her to retrieve an amulet stolen by bandits. She promised she'd keep an eye out for it, even as she knew she would not only completely forget about it, but probably be unable to find this particular trade caravan again anyway.

There were so many side paths leading off of the main road that Keolah just knew she was going to get lost, especially as she doubted the road would lead to the island she was looking for. One path marked by archways had stairs winding up to a place that looked dwarven. Having no desire to go poking around Dwemer ruins at the moment, she left it alone for now.

A trail led up into snow-covered slopes. As she reached the top of a cliff, it occurred to her, if she were trying to reach an island in the ocean, shouldn't she be going downhill? Well, no matter. She'd figure out where she was eventually.

Night was falling as she came upon a watchtower, with a crackling fire burning outside. Maybe this would be a good place to hole up for the night, especially as it was beginning to rain now. However, as Keolah approached the place to investigate, she discovered that all the guards at the tower were dead. That was never a good sign. There weren't any bandits or anything in sight, however.

Still, it was warm and dry, and she wanted to get out of the rain. Much as she hated sleeping someplace where people had died, she didn't really have much choice. She placed a fire rune over the doorway, ate some dinner, and curled up in her furs on the lower level to rest.

Come morning, it was still raining. Keolah grumbled at that, but at least it was light out again, and nothing had bothered her in the night.

Further down the road, maybe a few minutes walk from the tower, she came upon a small village as the rain started to taper off finally. Keolah stared at the place in annoyance. If she'd just kept going a little bit further last night, she could have slept in an actual bed! Admittedly, they'd probably have wanted her to pay for it, too.

Well, the coin part could be remedied. She hauled the equipment up from the guards at the tower and shoved it off on the blacksmith. "Are you aware that the people at that tower over there are dead?"

"Bah, it would figure, on top of everything else," the smith said. "As if we haven't had enough go wrong around here as it is. I hope you haven't come here looking for work in the mine."

Keolah stared at him oddly. "Do I look like a miner to you?"

"Suppose not, though you never can tell," the blacksmith said. "The mine's full of spiders! I hope they don't come out and eat us!"

"Spiders?" Keolah said. "Is that all?"

"Well, if you think you can take care of them, feel free. I'll have something for your pockets if you can manage it. Just be careful in there."

"Right," Keolah said, not feeling the least bit threatened by a few spiders.

She headed off, then proceeded to spend the next hour or two wandering the nearby countryside and attempting to fine the mine in question, only to return to the village and discover that the entrance was right behind the smithy. Feeling quite silly, she headed inside. After casually incinerating every oversized creepy-crawly in the mine, Keolah returned to the blacksmith.

"Thank the Divines, you're back!" the smith said. "I was starting to wonder if you'd been killed."

Keolah snorted softly. "No, your mine is clear. I just got a little lost along the way."

The blacksmith looked at her strangely. "But... the mine is right there. How could you..."

"Don't. Ask." Keolah smirked.

"Alright, alright. Here's fair payment for your work. Now, we can put Shor's Stone back on the map, thanks to you."

"Speaking of maps," Keolah said, bringing out hers. "Could you put Shor's Stone on my map? If that's the name of this village, at any rate. I'm a little lost, I'm afraid."

"Certainly," the blacksmith said, reaching over to point out the location of the village. A fair ways south of Windhelm.

"Oh dear, I think I've been going in the wrong direction," Keolah said, peering at the map for a long moment before putting it away.

No matter. All she had to do was backtrack a bit, head back the way she came from. Now, which way was that? She struck off away from Shor's Stone. And then promptly got distracted by picking flowers and electrocuting the local wildlife, drawing her away from the road again.

Thoroughly lost, she eventually found her way back to the road, although she wasn't sure which direction she should be going in. Picking one at random, it wasn't long before she came upon what appeared to be a good-sized city. Well, this wasn't what she was looking for, but she wasn't going to complain. She was getting a little tired of wandering around in the wilderness as it was.

"Hold there, traveler," the guard at the gate said. "Before you can enter Riften, you must pay the visitor's tax."

"None of the other cities I've been to had a visitor's tax," Keolah said.

"Well, Riften is different. That's the way we do things around here."

"Can I get a Dragonborn discount?" Keolah asked.

"No," the guard replied firmly.

"Oh, hmm, how about..." Keolah waved her hand. "I don't need to pay the visitor's tax."

The guard stared at her like she was insane.

Keolah waved her hand again. "I've already paid the visitor's tax?"

"You know, trying to use mind control powers would work better if you actually had mind control powers," the guard pointed out.

"Drat," Keolah said. "Alright, how about the magic word. Please?"

"Just pay the tax already, Elf," the guard said in exasperation.

"I don't need to pay the visitor's tax!" Keolah insisted. "I'm the Dragonborn!"

"You're the Dragonborn," the guard said dubiously. "Uh-huh, sure."

"FUS!" Keolah shouted.

The guard staggered for a moment. "Alright, so maybe you are the Dragonborn..."

"Yes, I'm the Dragonborn!" Keolah said. "You definitely want me to be hanging around your city. I mean, if a dragon comes and attacks while I happen to be here, I can kill it! Maybe. Probably."

The guard looked at her dubiously. "You're not exactly inspiring confidence here. But fine. You can go on in. If the jarl thought I were trying to keep out the Dragonborn..."

"Thanks!" Keolah said, brightening immediately, and headed inside.

She hardly got far past the gates before hearing whispers about the Thieves Guild in Riften. And something about them being in good with somebody who may or may not be important. Black-Briar? Wasn't that some kind of mead, or something?

"You there, stranger," a man leaning casually against a post addressed her. "You in Riften looking for trouble?"

"Well, no, I'm not really looking for trouble, but it usually winds up finding me anyway," Keolah said. "Or at least, I wind up accidentally stumbling into it somehow."

"Just watch yourself. The Black-Briars don't need anyone sticking their noses where it doesn't belong."

"Don't worry, if I stick my nose somewhere, I'll probably be sticking the rest of me there too," Keolah said. "Fingers, toes, ears, firebolts... So, what, are you some sort of lookout, watching for random travelers to wander into the city?"

"I watch the streets. If you need any dirt on anything, I can let you know about it, for a price."

Keolah brushed self-consciously at her clothes. "I think I've got plenty of dirt on me to begin with."

The man looked at her strangely. "I'm not sure if we're speaking the same language here, or if you're just dense."

"Of course we're speaking the same language," Keolah said. "If we weren't, we wouldn't be able to understand one another."

"I... oh, never mind. Just, never mind." He turned and walked away.

Keolah shrugged and continued on into the city. The place was made up of the usual dull brown wooden buildings, with bridges leading over canals that wound through the city. Peering down into one, she didn't think that the water looked especially like something she'd want to swim in.

As she reached the marketplace, a Nord man approached her and said quietly, "You've never done an honest day's work in your life for all that coin you're carrying, have you, lass?"

Keolah blinked at him, and self-consciously gripped her money pouch. "Define 'honest'."

The Nord chuckled. "You and I have different definitions of 'honest' than most people, I think. I can tell." He introduced himself, "The name's Brynjolf, lass."

"I'm Keolah. And how can you possibly know how much money I'm carrying?" Keolah said. "Do you have some spell that tells you what someone is carrying or something?"

"It's all about sizing up your mark, lass," Brynjolf said. "What they're wearing, how they walk. It can give away more than you might realize."

"And what else have you realized about me?" Keolah wondered.

"That you act oblivious, like you're not paying attention to what's going on around you, but you're really paying attention to every little detail. But you might get distracted and miss something important."

"Well... maybe," Keolah admitted, shifting a bit.

"Now, how would you like to make a little more wealth, hmm?"

"Always," Keolah replied. "What do you want me to do?"

"There's what I like to hear," Brynjolf said. "I'm going to cause a distraction. While people aren't looking, I need you to break into Madesi's strongbox under his market stall and steal his silver ring. Then, you plant that ring on Brand-Shei to frame him for the theft. Got that?"

"Wait a minute," Keolah said.

"What, got a problem with breaking the law, lass?" Brynjolf said with a smirk.

"No, no," Keolah said. "I was just going to ask, which stall is Madesi's, and who is Brand-Shei? You people really need to start wearing nametags or something. I'd look awfully silly if I broke into the wrong lockbox and then planted evidence on the wrong guy."

Brynjolf laughed lightly at that. "I see your point, lass." He covertly indicated her targets. "Think you can handle this, eh?"

"Sure," Keolah said. "Just one more question. How good of a distraction will this be?"

"It'll be good enough if you don't do anything stupid," Brynjolf said.

"Okay, so blowing up the stall is out of the question."

Brynjolf looked at her as though reconsidering his proposition. "Just pick the lock with your lockpicks. No blowing anything up."

"Right. Lockpicks," Keolah said, nodding nervously. "Alright, let's do this, then."

There was a time when she might have been more hesitant to break the law, but in Skyrim, she found that she didn't care all that much. She was more concerned with getting caught, and even then, well, jail cells were more comfortable than some of the places she'd slept.

As Brynjolf distracted the crowd in the marketplace with whatever snake oil he was peddling, Keolah snuck over to the stall he'd pointed her to. She was getting better at picking locks, and this one didn't seem too hard. Especially considering that the stall door appeared to be made of wicker or something. Carefully, she worked at the lock. There! Got it open! She wasn't a complete failure at this line of work after all!

As she reached in to open up the strongbox, a finger tapped her on the shoulder. Keolah turned around slowly to look up at one of the local guards.

"It's time to face the jarl's justice, thief," the guard said.

So much for not failing at this. Keolah sighed. "Alright, what's the bounty?"

"Five septims."

"Is that it?" Keolah said, straightening and pulling out her money pouch.

"You hadn't actually stolen anything yet," the guard said. "Do you really want to pay more?"

"No, no," Keolah said. "Here." She shoved the handful of coins at him.

The crowd around Brynjolf started to dissipate as he smoothly aborted his distraction upon seeing her speaking with the guard. She headed over toward him.

"You got pinched, huh," Brynjolf said. "Maybe I expected too much of you."

"Hey, I actually got the lock open without blowing anything up!" Keolah said. "That's something, isn't it?"

"Lass, that lock was so easy..." Brynjolf smirked and shook his head. "Well, never mind. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Everything's been going poorly for us lately, and this is no different."

"You owe me five septims," Keolah said, putting her hands on her hips.

"You're going to argue over five septims? If you'd done better, we could have both stood to make a lot of money."

"I can totally do better," Keolah insisted. "Just give me a chance. You'll see!"

"That was a chance," Brynjolf said. "But you do have that spark I'm looking for. There's still plenty of gold for the taking, if you can handle it. Head down into the Ratway and meet me in the Ragged Flagon tavern, and we'll talk more, alright?"

"Where's the Ratway?" Keolah asked.

"Under the city. I'm not going to hold your hand for you."

"But... I'll get lost," Keolah protested.

"If you can't even find it, maybe this isn't the sort of work for you," Brynjolf said.

Keolah snorted softly. "I'll find it. Just don't count me out if you don't see me there immediately. I'll find it sooner or later."

Brynjolf chuckled. "There's the spirit." He turned and headed off into a nearby building.

What was it with people expecting her to find places on her own? She hadn't even intended to come to Skyrim in the first place. If she couldn't find something as big as a country, how did they think she was going to find anything smaller? Well, no matter. She'd just have to scour every inch of the Ratway to find the place, if need be.

By the time she got down in the canals and found the entrance to the tunnels beneath the city, she realized that 'scour' was an apt word for it. Perhaps she should have expected the place to be filthy. She thought she should cleanse this whole place with fire.

There were voices ahead, echoing a little in the stone tunnels, and a light. Were they other members of the Thieves Guild, she wondered? She strode forward to be friendly and introduce herself.

"Hello!" Keolah said brightly. The two thugs proceeded to attempt to kill her. "Ack!" she said, scorching them with magic. "Was it something I said? Ow!"

She managed to defeat them, but was badly hurt in the process. Nothing a little healing magic couldn't solve. A good thing her magic fixed her clothing, too, or she'd have gone through at least a dozen outfits by now. But no matter how much of a beating she took, it always wound up good as new.

There, much better. All patched up again, Keolah strolled down the tunnel. Suddenly, the ground opened up beneath her, and she flailed about her arms to avoid falling. What was this? It looked like there was a bridge leading over a gap, but it was currently raised, and the mechanism was probably on the other side. How inconvenient. The drop didn't look too far, at least, and she saw no other way across, so she jumped down. Only after landing did she think that she probably should have checked to see if there was another way around first, and hoped that she could find a way back up again from here.

After almost getting skewered by a trapped door, setting the floor on fire, being gnawed on by skeevers, having her leg caught in two different bear traps, and then getting hit with a swinging log, Keolah came to a room with sunlight streaming in from above. There were some plants growing at the bottom of the shaft, and butterflies! She completely ignored the bloody axe in the middle of that.

Right. No getting distracted. Much. After catching the butterflies and picking the flowers, she focused and went to move on. Now which way had she come in, and which way was she supposed to go? Oh, bother.

After another couple turns and misturns, Keolah finally reached what she hoped was the tavern she was looking for. If it could be called such, at any rate. The place looked more like a cistern than anything else. Who would want to put a tavern in a sewer? Well, the Thieves Guild, apparently.

"You're all part of a dying breed!" someone was telling Brynjolf as she strode in.

"Yeah, they're dying if they're stupid enough to attack me," Keolah said. Bravado, really, since there were more people in this 'tavern' than she could readily take on by herself all at once.

"Ah, there you are, lass," Brynjolf said. "I was wondering if I'd ever see you again."

"It didn't take me that long to get here, did it?" Keolah said. "I only got a little lost along the way. Er, and only sprung most of the traps... I missed one of the bear traps, I think."

Brynjolf chuckled. "Well, you made it here in one piece, and that's what counts, I suppose."

"How'd you get here so fast, anyway?" Keolah asked. "Back door, I take it?"

"Of course," Brynjolf said. "And I'll show it to you once you do a little task for me."

"Another task? What this time?"

"I want you to take care of a few deadbeats who won't pay their debts."

"I'll get a cut for this, yes?" Keolah asked.

"Certainly," Brynjolf assured her. "We take care of our own."

"Alright, count me in, then. Who do you need me to shake down?"

"Their names are Keerava, Bersi Honey-Hand, and Haelga," Brynjolf said. "Just be sure not to kill them. It's bad for business."

"I always found it easiest to collect things from corpses," Keolah said with a shrug.

"Perhaps, but that's not how we do things around here," Brynjolf said, shaking his head. "We're not the Dark Brotherhood."

"Alright, alright. I'd feel bad about killing anyone that didn't deserve it, anyway. Or at least, trying to kill me. Or that annoyed me. Or in my way. Or that I was getting paid to kill. Or, um..."

Brynjolf was giving her a look.

"Right, no murder, got it," Keolah said. "I'll get right on that, then. As soon as I can find my way out of here again."

She headed out of the Ragged Flagon. It probably would have taken her less time to find the way out if she'd realized that it was right next to the top of that bridge she'd seen earlier. By the time she made it back outside again, the day was growing late. The sun cast patches of orange across the cloudy sky as it slowly sank below the horizon.

By that point, she realized that she couldn't remember the names of the people she was supposed to be collecting debts from. Maybe she should have had Brynjolf write down a list or something.

Heading into a nearby building, she decided to try a roundabout method of figuring this out. This looked to be an inn called the Bee and Barb, run by a pair of Argonians.

"I hear someone owes money to the Thieves Guild," Keolah said vaguely to the lizard sweeping the floor.

"You're from the Thieves Guild?" the Argonian said, freezing. "Look, please don't hurt Keerava. I told her it was a bad idea to hold out on your group."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone," Keolah assured him.

"Keerava's got family on a farm in Morrowind," the Argonian whispered. "Mention them to her, and she'll pay up. Just please don't harm anyone."

"Well, okay," Keolah said. If they were really going to make this job easier on her, she couldn't complain. She went over to the counter, assuming that Keerava was the one running the inn. "Keerava?" she asked to confirm.

"That's me," the Argonian woman said. "What can I get for you?"

"Your debt to the Thieves Guild," Keolah said.

"Your guild is falling apart, and I'm not paying you," Keerava said.

"No?" Keolah replied. "Well, if you don't have the money, maybe I should go bring some sweetrolls to that farm in Morrowind."

Keerava said in shock, "How did you- Never mind! Just take the money! Please don't hurt anyone!"

Keolah took the pouch of septims from the Argonian innkeeper. "Don't worry. Thank you for your patronage."

This next place appeared to be a pawnshop named the Pawned Prawn, and she went in to repeat her vague statement about someone owing money there.

"Oh, you're one of those lowlifes, are you? Well, I'm not going to pay. Your guild just doesn't have the teeth they used to have."

He must be another of her targets. Either that or he was just very eager to pay. Keolah strode over toward his counter. "You should probably just pay up, for your own sake."

"Or what?"

Keolah tried to lean back with faux nonchalance against the table against the wall, but slipped and inadvertently knocked an old pot to the floor, shattering it. "Oops."

"My Dwemer urn!" the man said in shock. "Fine! I'll pay, just please don't break anything else!"

Well, that was easy enough. Two down, one to go. So far so good. Not bad for not having any idea what she was doing. Keolah collected the money and headed on for the next building to try that again. This one was called Haelga's Bunkhouse. She repeated her spiel in there.

"I might as well just throw gold into the sewer. I'm not scared of you. I'm not paying you people anything."

"Please?" Keolah said.

The woman snorted. "You're really bad at this, aren't you. Look, I don't even have the money right now. Tell Brynjolf I can pay him next month, alright?"

"Oh," Keolah said.

She didn't want to go back to Brynjolf empty-handed, however, so she decided to poke around the place a bit more, maybe find something to bring him at least. Say, that was an awfully pretty statue of Dibella. She'd never seen one quite like that before. That would look lovely in her house. Well, once she got back to Whiterun and got the place fixed up, at any rate.

"Hey!" called the woman as Keolah headed for the door with the statue in hand. "What are you doing with Lady Dibella? Give that back! Please! It's the only thing of value I have left!"

Keolah sighed and went over to the counter and handed it to her, feeling bad about this. "Alright. Here you go."

"Look, I get the message. Here's your gold. I hope you choke on it!"

"I thought you said you didn't have the gold?" Keolah said, raising an eyebrow as she took the pouch, suddenly not feeling quite as bad.

"Just get out of here."

Keolah shrugged and left the building. Time to take the spoils back to Brynjolf. Or rather, time to spend the remainder of the evening lost in the Ratway again. She headed down, fell off the bridge, and managed to spring every trap she hadn't sprung the first time through, and even some that she had.

"You got the job done and you did it clean," Brynjolf said when she made it back to the Flagon and handed over the money. "I like that. I'm sure you'll fit in quite well around here."

"Right, that's great, can you show me to the back door now?" Keolah said with a smirk.

Brynjolf chuckled. "Follow me. It's right this way. Let me show you around and introduce you to our Guild Master."

"I hope you've got actual beds down here, too," Keolah said, yawning. "I'll meet him in the morning."