A/N: My apologies to everyone for the hiatus. Finals took precedence over fanfic. I'm (mostly) back now, though I still have a lot going on so updates will likely be as erratic as my schedule is right now. Thank you for everyone still reading! I appreciate it a lot.

Blue Road, Cyrodiil

Nils was heading east along the Blue Road from the Imperial City towards Cheydinhal. The path seemed to divert in strange zig-zagging directions, and there were several forks and detours that he did not remember being there before. He had seen the same decrepit tree three times already and realized he must be going in circles. Even the signs were wrong. A wooden sign had an arrow pointing towards Cheydinhal, and another sign a few paces ahead directed him in the opposite way.

Eventually, he came across a mudcrab underneath one of these signs. The mudcrab was wise, and understood that he was lost because he was coming from a different point in time-space.

"You are guided by the lost objects of your memories, are you not?"

Nils looked down, and on the path he spotted a quill pen and a small well of blue ink. The inkwell had been a gift from his friend Octavia before she moved to the Imperial City, but he had hardly used it because he preferred black ink. He picked these items up and followed along the path. Continuing, Nils came across his old spyglass, a silver comb belonging to his sister, his mother's ebony dagger, and his father's old lute, the one that belonged to his father before him, a bard of local renown. Nils sometimes played the lute in his spare time, though he never sang. Yet now, when he tried to strum a few chords, the strings screeched with horrifying dissonance.

"Perhaps it is out of tune," squeaked the Mudcrab, skittering into his line of sight. "But you are nearly there! Do not stop now!"

Nils' pockets soon filled with trinkets, and his arms were full of the more unwieldy items, for he had picked up everything he saw on the path. Each piece filled him with warm memories of his family, his friends, and his hometown, and he grew more and more eager to return. The path ended at the start of the vertical face of a cliff, one that he knew he was expected to climb. Though there was a rope ladder that led straight up, he would have to drop the items he was carrying and empty his pockets of the extra weight to be able to ascend.

"Does this lead to Cheydinhal?" he asked.

"It leads you to your destiny. Perhaps Cheydinhal is part of it, perhaps not," answered the Mudcrab in its reedy voice.

Nils was confused.

"Did you not mean for me to collect these items?" he asked. These items were precious to him and the people he loved. "How can I carry them if I must climb the ladder?"

"How can you face your purpose if you are over-encumbered with memories? You can hardly remember their faces, yet you cling to these trinkets as if they will allow you to return to your old life."

"I don't understand." Nils looked down at himself. He was wearing the uniform of Cheydinhal's city guard. This was his life.

"Then you are not yet ready to see the truth, my unwitting star-envoy."

There was only one being he knew who continuously used such bizarre epithets to refer to him instead of his name...

"Azura?"

The Mudcrab transformed into a beautiful, tall woman with ebony skin. The cosmos ebbed and flowed within the folds of her robe.

Azura smiled at Nils.

"Had you forgotten me so easily?" she asked in a mirthfully coquettish voice, placing a sculpted ebon hand over her chest as if he had deeply offended her. The void in her eyes seemed to be able to bore into his soul. He felt exposed, but he had difficulty turning away from her.

Nils felt a pain in his shoulder. He backed away from Azura, her presence becoming overwhelming. Everything went dark again.

Tel Aruhn, Apothecary Areleth.

Nils' eyelids felt as though they were sewn shut. Had Azura truly visited him in his dream, or was she merely another fragment of his subconscious mind?

He inhaled through his nose, noting the mix of aromas that surrounded him. Bittergreen petals, dried mushrooms, Sload soap, shalk resin... he heard a liquid boiling somewhere close. He was at an apothecary. What had happened?

The Dwemer ruins. The ash-creature. Yes. He killed it. He killed it and survived. Zaryth prevented him from falling to sudden death. He remembered biting his tongue to stay awake as he made the excruciating ascent back up the shaft, nearly passing out several times if it weren't for the healing potions Zaryth had given him. He wasn't certain what happened when they reached the surface, but he must have fallen unconscious before they made it back to Tel Aruhn.

When he finally managed to open his eyes, he saw Alma standing over him, a neutral expression on her face. His vision cleared and he could make out in the background a sour-looking Dunmer wearing blue and yellow robes pacing the circular room. The boiling sound came from his alchemy station, where a fire was lit on the small stove to heat the mixture in a glass retort.

Alma's hands sparked with the soft glow of restoration magic as she guided the spell towards his wound. It felt warm, and his nerve endings tingled for a long moment afterward. Still, it eased the pain in his body immensely.

"Ah, you are awake, sera. Good. It is a rather unpleasant business to be forced to extract payment from a corpse."

Nils all but ignored the voice of the apothecary as Alma helped him into a seated position.

The apothecary walked over to his station, still focused on that bubbling solution in the retort.

"Ash salts and scrib jelly. B'vek, it looks like she was right. Who would have known?" he murmured to himself, putting on a pair of thick gloves as he poured the substance into several narrow glass vials. Wordlessly, he handed one of the vials to Nils. It resembled tree sap in both its dark brown color and viscous consistency.

"What is this?" he asked hesitantly, not in the habit of drinking potions before he knew of their contents. He thought it rather odd of the apothecary to simply hand him the vial without explaining anything about it, or even telling him to drink it. The alchemist rolled his eyes, as if it were a burden to have to explain himself.

"It will prevent the Blight infection from spreading throughout the rest of your body. Your... verbose... companion supplied a large enough sample for me. She claims that the only way to make a potion against the Blight is to combine ash salts which do not occur in nature, with common scrib jelly found in most kitchen larders. She claimed I should believe her because she is apprentice to Master Divayth Fyr. I was looking forward to decrying this arrogant child as a fraud until seeing the results of this mixture, for only one who works so closely with those suffering from Blight and Corprus diseases would know how to easily concoct such a thing. She told the truth. What a remarkable shame that Master Fyr has employed such a frivolous, infantile apprentice. It is painfully apparent that the sum of all her 'knowledge' merely consists of secondhand gleanings from one of the greatest living Telvanni Wizard-Lord's notes. Have you seen her ostentatious Khajiit servant? The audacity, to adorn him in extravagant colors and allow him to talk back to her like that... unheard of..."

He was just as long-winded as Zaryth. Nils tuned out the bitter ramblings of the apothecary and drank the elixir. It was still warm, and tasted a bit chalky, but it was surprisingly sweet. He remembered that Zaryth had ardently collected the remains of the Ash Ghoul he had killed, and the irony was not lost on him when he realized that the same thing that nearly wounded him had inadvertently become his cure. He was even more grateful to the eccentric Telvanni now than ever. The apothecary, however, seemed to have taken offense at the fact that a young apprentice barely out of adolescence knew something about alchemy that he didn't. It didn't help that Zaryth's pretentious attitude tended to clash with most people. Yet even judging by his brief interactions of the other members of House Telvanni he had already come across, such as this apothecary and his deflated ego, Nils was beginning to understand that Zaryth's casual contempt was her only way to survive in an unfriendly culture that encouraged competition and animosity.

The apothecary had gone back to his alchemy station, still muttering to himself about how apprentices needed to learn their place and respect their elders.

Nils looked up at Alma, who was sitting on a stool by his bedroll, idly turning the pages of a worn book on restoration magic. Despite how frigid she had been to him recently, here she was, tending to him. It could be because of her obligation as a priestess of the Tribunal, but the more he watched her, the more he caught her stealing anxious glances at him. There was something odd going on with her. Something troubling. He wished he could help her, but how could he help when she refused to speak to him?

"I know I saw you yesterday, but I feel we've been apart a long while. Are you feeling alright?" he asked the priestess, eyebrows knitting together in concern.

Alma held her thumb inside the book to keep her spot as she looked up at Nils. She was sitting closer than he realized, and the narrow pupils in her red eyes dilated slightly. She gave him that empty, almost condescending smile again. All healers seemed to know to use that one when dealing with the public. It was their way of not allowing their emotions to interfere with work. Nils sighed, laying his head back down on the bedroll.

"Where did J'zhirr and Zaryth go?" Nils asked, loud enough so that the apothecary could hear him.

"The apprentice and her servant? Do I look like I have the time to keep track of every self-important whelp that waltzes through my door? Luckily I did overhear a little bit of what they were saying, and I believe they went to that eyesore of an East Empire Company ship to discuss something clandestine with a Captain... some type of exotic bird... was it Raven? Lark?"

Nils wasn't sure what Zaryth and J'zhirr needed to discuss with Captain Lark. Surely Zaryth wasn't considering joining their crew? He could already imagine that thought inspiring an outburst about how shocking it was for him to even suggest that a Telvanni mage of her merit take part in such an unscrupulous operation.

Still, the pain in his shoulder had mostly subsided and he didn't feel all that ill (even if the apothecary assured him that he had contracted the Blight) and he pushed the covers off of him, using the surprisingly sturdy mushroom-walls as a support as he brought himself to his feet.

"Careful now," scolded the apothecary. "I've heard of complete recovery from the Blight. It is rare, but it has happened before. But even with potions, it ought to take a long time for all of the symptoms to disappear..."

"I feel fine," Nils assured him. Truly, he did. He felt a bit tired maybe, and his shoulder was still sore, but he felt altogether rather healthy, all things considered.

"Very well. I was about to suggest you not leave your bed for a week while you took daily doses of the antidote, but foolishness is not an ailment I am able to cure. Nature already appears to perform that task quite nicely."

The apothecary gathered the rest of the vials and placed them in a cloth bag for Nils. He didn't have enough money on his person to pay him for his assistance, but when he unwrapped the ghoul heart in front of the apothecary, the sour Dunmer let out a gasp of astonishment and snatched it away as a "suitable" alternative. It must have been a valuable reagent or something, for the apothecary immediately tucked it away in a drawer. Nils was about to ask how much the ghoul heart was really worth, as he was beginning to suspect it was quite a bit more than the services performed, but he didn't care anymore. The apothecary had just saved his life, and Nils valued that more than some shriveled grey heart that smelled of ash.