Disclaimer: Under the moon-and-star, this isn't mine.

A/N: Lots of gore in this chapter.

The Dunmer's eyes had widened in surprise as Rock's blade sheered towards his throat, but the Daedric bodyguards, cloaked and empowered by the wizard's spells, stepped forward to the defence of their captor. Rock screeched in pain as a clannfear clamped its beak around his calf, and barely dodged the blow of the Dremora Lord's battleaxe. He tumbled to the ground, landing awkwardly, and stabbed out at the invisible Daedra that still clung to him. The clannfear vanished with a screech and a hiss of light.

Rock staggered to his feet, raised his shield, and leapt again. Jyrosh just stood with arms folded, watching as Rock tussled with invisible creatures far more powerful than he could handle.

"This isn't like your normal assignment, is it, son of Mephala?" The Dunmer laughed pitilessly as Rock staggered back, thwarted once again. "You're so used to fighting flesh and blood you have no defence against the blood of the Princes."

Rock did not even deign to answer. He slashed and stabbed at the air, blocking as best he could with his shield. He heard another clannfear die, heard a scamp screech in pain, heard the two Dremora lords discussing who would feast on his marrow first even as they converged on him. Rock knew he was outmatched. These Daedra were too powerful. He was going to die.

But he'd not die without taking the wizard with him. For Destrina's sake.

He heard the clank of armour, and sidestepped as one of the Dremora lords came too close. Daedra or not, the creature still died - it moaned and vanished in a cloud of foul-smelling powder. The second - taking advantage of a momentary flicker in Rock's awareness - brought his mace down hard. Shockwaves shuddered up and down Rock's arm, and his flimsy shield shattered. Rock fell to the stone floor, landing in the dust of the dead Dremora and snarling in defiance.

"A pity," the wizard said nonchalantly, "That such a strong creature has to be killed. You would have made a fine addition to my menagerie, lizard."

In the dust of the dead Daedra lay its weapon, forgotten when the creature had returned to its realm. A dagger, curved and dangerous. A Daedric dagger. Rock picked it up in his shield arm. Strangely, with a weapon in both hands, he felt much more at ease.

Just as Destrina had said he would.

He kicked up with his wounded leg, catching the looming Daedra in its genitals. It may have been invisible, but it had its weak points like any other creature. With both blades, Rock stabbed and sliced and cut until his foe disintegrated before him. It seemed ironic that the Dremora should be slain by a Daedric weapon.

Rock turned slowly, favouring his leg and wincing from his wounds, and faced the wizard. "In deh name," he panted, twirling both daggers and advancing slowly, "Of deh Morag Tong, I execute you."

The wizard smirked, and waved a hand. Rock could not dodge this spell; his crippled leg slowed him. The spell held him in place, freezing him with the angered expression and the blades readied. He was paralysed. Unable to move. Unable to do anything but watch as the wizard Jyrosh Telvannus advanced upon him.

"You're pathetic," the Dunmer told him, face to face and sneering in delight. "You think you scare me with that name? Just because you claim that name doesn't give you any authority to kill me." Jyrosh smirked. "I know how the Morag Tong works, lizard. You need a writ to kill me before you can claim Morag Tong justice. You ca't touch me. You'd be a murderer. And you'd be expelled from your guild. I'm no fool. But you are." The wizard folded his arms in his sleeves and stepped back. "And fools," Jyrosh's eyes were wide with mania, "Die!" He raised his hands high and started chanting. The smell of magic began to waft through the air.

Rock felt panic course through his veins. He knew this spell. He'd seen it before. He and his comrades had slaughtered the guards and made it to the entrance of the cave. They'd tasted the night air, they'd seen freedom. But they hadn't seen the wizard on the ridge. But he'd seen them.

A few shouted words passed the slaver's lips, and fire had come down from the sky and consumed all of the slaves. Rock alone had survived - a small hollow between two rocks caught him as he tripped and shielded him from the blast, and from the eyes of the trackers afterwards. He hadn't been able to move for days. His skin and flesh was ravaged, and took months to heal.

His friends, though… were reduced to nothing but charcoal and shadows on the earth in the mere blinking of an eye.

Rock felt the paralyse spell ending, but it wouldn't be soon enough. This wizard was going to kill him. And the Argonian knew that he would not be able to escape. He was trapped; he was doomed.

"Augmani mentus damanaskaaAAAAHHHH!" The Dunmer's chanting turned to a scream that turned Rock's blood to ice. He realised the paralyse spell was over, and that he was in no danger of immolation, but he could not move. He merely stood, rooted, and stared at the golden blade that pierced the wizard's stomach.

The blade that was followed by a hand. Then an arm. The wizard screamed again, but short, as though the shock was all but preventing him from understanding what was happening to him. The Mad Elf giggled, then cackled. It was her arm protruding from the Dunmer's stomach, coated in his blood and pieces of his flesh. She twirled the blade in her bloody hand, and stabbed back towards the wizard. Jyrosh screamed as it sliced across his face; the tip of his nose flew away. The Mad Elf laughed again, then withdrew her arm from the wizard's stomach. But she held the blade cross-ways to the wound. Blood and organs spilled out of the gaping hole she'd made.

Rock staggered back and fell to the floor, sickened and horrified by what he was seeing.

Mad-Elf didn't notice. She was too busy ripping the Telvanni sorcerer to pieces, one agonising piece at a time. She dislocated his arms at the shoulders, and broke both kneecaps with her bare hands, making sure he could not escape. Then she squatted, perched on his open ribcage, toes dug into his organs, and clawed away his skin, carving with her blade and her fingernails as the man screamed and moaned underneath her. There was blood everywhere, over the both of them and the stone ground beneath them. Skin, organs, tendons, muscle, veins, everything was slowly stripped from the Dunmer, and all while he was still alive and breathing to see it done. It was savage, and brutal. Yet while she moved quickly, her movements were methodical, as though she were recording everything in her mind for posterity. As though this were nothing more than a scientific experiment.

Rock crawled away backwards, dragging his wounded leg behind him, the daggers still clutched in his hands. This was beyond inhuman. Even the most savage of Argonian tribes back home did no such thing. But revenge killings were to match the torture or insult. Mad-Elf would soon not have enough of a man to torture.

The Dunmer rolled his head towards Rock, eyes wide and staring. "Kill me," he burbled, the sound coming from what was left of his torn-open throat rather than his mouth. "Please…" But Rock-In-The-River could barely even move. He could only watch as the tortured Argonian-in-the-form-of-a-Bosmer finished her grim business.

Jyrosh was not dead when the Mad-Elf suddenly gave a keening cry and toppled sideways, falling to the ground. She looked up at Rock, her diseased eyes leaking the poison that was killing her, and cried out again. She was pleading for something. Help? Aid? Acknowledgment that her suffering was avenged?

Death?

She coughed blood, blood and phlegm and bile and something that looked like a piece of her lung. On shaky arms, she hauled herself upright, and pressed her lips to the mutilated face of the wizard. The kiss turned savage as she started chewing off his tongue.

Shouts came from further down. Rock turned his head lightly, and saw a platoon of Ordinators charging towards them on this side of the canal. And, on the other, a silent but grim handful of Morag Tong agents. Surrounded. Rock closed his eyes, calculating his chances, then hauled himself to his feet.

"Better hurry," he told Mad-Elf, "They're coming for you."

She grinned, her lips bloodstained with the kisses she'd given to the dying Dunmer. But the grin was strained, pained, and soon disappeared as the Mad-Elf slumped over the still-living body of Jyrosh, who by now looked more like a slaughterhouse carcass than a man. And yet he still lived.

Rock glanced both ways again. Not long now. He licked his lips and prepared to fight. But he glanced briefly over the canal, looking to find Destrina's floating and charred corpse in the water, as if to give himself something to defend.

It was gone. She was gone. But there, in the distance, Rock could see a shape in the water, making slow progress to the south. To where the ship was beached on that distant sandbar. He smiled a little, to himself. Destrina lived, and was going to wait for him in the only place that she knew to be safe in this damned city.

A pity he would not live to reach her.

A keen made him turn back. And he saw her die. Mad-Elf died. It was not a quiet, dignified death that she would have deserved, after all those days and nights of torture. Instead, her skin rippled and tore at every pore, spilling liquefied bones and muscle, black bile and fouled blood. Her eyes melted, pouring out of her skull; her flesh and skin bubbled as though eaten by a corrosive poison. She screamed, and her scream stilled every single one of the approaching guards and assassins in their tracks.

She melting away while still alive, still able to feel pain while her body disintegrated around her. Rock hobbled forward and jammed his rusty iron dagger through her eye socket, and the scream died quickly. It was a small mercy, to kill her before she was to be tortured one last time. Rock imagined her to grin at him, one last time, before she dissolved into a pool of organic liquid, little more than a puddle of ooze around the wizard's corpse.

The wizard. Rock refocused his gaze, and saw with perverse pride that Mad-Elf had killed Jyrosh with her own death. She'd a hand stuck down his gagging throat, and, when she'd liquefied, he had drowned on her hand. Fitting.

"Argonian! Halt, in the name of the Three!"

"Vivec shall have his justice!"

"You die, lizard!"

"Traitor to the Webspinner!"

Rock grimaced. No time for heroics now. He was outnumbered, outmatched, and he doubted anyone would give him time to explain his actions or what had transpired here. Yet what chance did he have? Only a prayer would decide whether he lived or died this day. Still holding his Daedric dagger tight in one claw, with two groups bearing down on him, Rock threw his head back to the sky and keened in the tongue of his fathers and mothers and all the scales who ever walked the Marsh.

"Azura, Queen of the Night Sky, I beg you! Hide me from their sight! Cover me in Moonshadow!"