A/N: Hello again, everyone, and welcome to chapter twenty one of this rewrite! Thank you to EricLightscythe and Kako Koritsi for reviewing last time; words cannot describe how much I appreciate you guys! :) I'm sorry for the wait on this chapter; I just finished up my undergraduate degree, and my schedule was a bit busy for a while. Also, this chapter ended up more than doubling from its original length, which did not make things go any faster. The biggest changes I made here were adding actual setting descriptions for the "Affairs of a Wizard" quest and adding a lot of development to the Matthias part of "Next of Kin." I do apologize for the awkward, unwieldy length of this, but I just couldn't find a good place to cut this chapter into two pieces, so I left it intact. If its length causes anyone any problems, please let me know, and I'll give splitting it up another try.
Also, if you haven't already, you should totally go check out Kako Koritsi's Oblivion stuff. It's pretty awesome.
And, potential minor spoiler, so if you're new to this and wish to remain unspoiled, you might want to scroll down past the linebreak, but it's probably worth mentioning that this is not a fix-it fic. Things do deviate a bit from canon from this point forward, but their ending remains the same.
As always, any and all feedback you may have for me is more than welcome and greatly appreciated. Good or bad, nothing makes me happier than knowing what you guys think of my work. :)
Aside from Shadowmere going after my hair again, I made it to Leafrot Cave without much trouble. Once I got there, I left Shadowmere tucked out of sight behind a clump of trees, opened its battered, wooden door, and slipped inside. The door opened into a pitch-dark hallway, lit only by the faint slivers of light that managed to peek through the cracks in the wood. The stone walls of the cramped tunnel around me were cold, but dry, and the wind filled it with an eerie whistling sound every time it blew against the door behind me. Ahead of me in the darkness, I could just make out the glow of a torch. I halfway considered lighting one of my own, so I didn't risk bumping into anything nasty in the dark, but settled for walking slowly and keeping my hand on the wall for balance, instead. I didn't need anyone, or anything, to notice me unless it was absolutely necessary. One step at a time, I felt my way through the darkness until I came to a small, dimly-lit room. I stopped just outside the doorway, and had a look inside. A cluttered desk with a hollowed-out section of wall behind it and crooked shelves of magic supplies and jars of organs and random bits of flesh, which had no business being outside the bodies they'd used to belong to, filled most of its floor space. If the scattered papers and dog-eared books covering the desk were anything to go by, it probably served as Celedaen's workspace, though he seemed to have wandered into a different part of his cave for the time being.
Just as I began to take my first step into the room, I saw something shimmer out of the corner of my eye. I froze, and turned my head toward it to find a cloaked, transparent figure hovering by a tunnel leading deeper into the cave. It looked like it hadn't noticed me yet, at least. Hopefully I could keep it that way until I'd weakened it a little, or kill it, if I was lucky. I had a fairly clear shot from where I stood, so I readied my bow and nocked a silver-tipped arrow onto its string. I took a deep breath to steady myself, took aim at the widest part of its torso, then drew the arrow back and let it fly. The cloaked creature shrieked as the arrow lodged itself in its back, then oozed its way through the creature's transparent body and fell to the floor with a clatter. It whirled around, its eyes glowing with fury out of the dark space beneath its hood as it tried to figure out where the arrow had come from.
Before I could ready my next shot, the creature let out a piercing screech that froze my blood in my veins. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get a single part of me to move. I watched in horror as it glided its way across the room, like it knew exactly where I'd hidden myself in the shadows of the doorway. It came to a stop right in front of me, so close I could feel the chill of its ghostly breath on my face.
Just as it raised its arm to slash at me with its long, wickedly-curved claws, I managed to force myself to move again, and ducked under its arm just in time to keep from getting my throat sliced open. I dashed past it into the room, looking around for something, anything, I could use to fight it off. Both the dagger I'd received from Lucien when he recruited me and the dagger Vicente had given me as a bonus for killing Baenlin would pass right through its ethereal body, and the only silver weapons I had on me were arrows, which I couldn't do much more than poke it with.
As the creature floated closer to me, I saw my chance at fighting it off glinting in the torchlight. A silver dagger lay on a stone shelf behind the desk, and I had it in my hand a heartbeat later. I twisted around and stabbed it through the creature's chest with a tearing sound as the dagger cut through its papery robes and lodged itself in its gooey center. I cried out in pain as it clawed desperately at my arms in an attempt to make me let go of the blade, or yank the blade out of the bubbling ectoplasm surrounding it.
I gritted my teeth and dragged the dagger down and through the creature's body, until it eventually ripped itself free through the creature's right side. It let out one last shriek before crumpling to the ground in a pile of tattered rags and ectoplasm mixed with drops of my blood. I staggered past the puddle to Celdaen's desk, shuffling through the mess of papers and magic supplies on top of it in search of something I could use to stop, or at least slow, the blood flowing out of the gashes in my arms. I found some strips of cloth that looked, and smelled, clean enough, and sat down on the floor to peel off what was left of my shrouded leather vambraces and tend my wounds.
The gashes weren't very deep, but I had a lot of them, and I used most of the cloth just sopping up my blood. Once my arms were mostly blue again, I rubbed enough healing potions on them to close the biggest tears in my skin and wrapped the last of the cloth strips around them, just in case I did something that tore them back open. I just left the remains of my vambraces in my pack; they wouldn't have done me any good in their shredded state, anyway. With that taken care of, I went back to the desk in search of anything that might help me kill Celedaen without needing to get into any more direct fights.
After spending more time than I'd have liked to shuffling through the mess of papers and dusty old books I'd made on the desk in my search for bandages, I found a promising, leather-bound journal with "The Path of Transcendence" carved into its cover. A quick glance at its first page made it clear enough that Celedaen had written it, though I had a hard time making sense of anything he'd written. The whole thing was written in the kind of words rich people used when they wanted to sound smart, and he had a real problem with taking ten words to say things that should've only taken one. My not knowing a damned thing about necromancy probably didn't help things, either. It made my head swim, but I read the journal all the way through, and its last entry gave me an idea. If I understood him right, he'd put his soul into an hourglass, called the Sands of Resolve, that he had to carry with him everywhere so he didn't die before he'd finished transforming himself into a lich. As long as he hadn't finished his transformation, it seemed like I could kill him by just stealing the hourglass out of whatever pocket he'd stashed it in, no muss, no fuss. I just had to find him, first.
I didn't lose any time having a look down the tunnel Celedaen's cloaked… thing had been guarding. It looked empty enough, from what I could see, but after a few feet it twisted into an inky darkness that could've hidden just about anything. I felt my way down the tunnel the same way I'd done with the first one, until my hand hit a stone wall with a splintery wooden door in it.
The section of Leafrot Cave the door opened into had dim, greenish orbs of light attached to its walls at regular intervals which, though they didn't do much to alleviate the cave's damp, eerie feeling, at least gave me a way to see where I was going. They also gave me a nice view of the skeletons and zombies Celedaen had decided to fill the rest of his necromancer hidey-hole with. Luckily for me, they were simple enough to sneak past, and I wouldn't have needed anything special to fight them off with if they had noticed me. Celedaen must have trusted the cloaked ghost guarding his workroom to dispose of any unwelcome guests.
I found Celedaen in a small room, kneeling on a cushion before an altar made of candles and human bones. He'd closed his eyes in some kind of trance or prayer that must have been part of his transformation ritual. I didn't have any trouble getting close to him, and a bulge in one of his pockets gave me a pretty good idea where he'd stashed the Sands of Resolve. All I needed to do was kneel down behind him and slip a hand into his pocket, like I was working the Waterfront again and needed to snatch a coinpurse if I didn't want to starve, then grab hold of the hourglass and yank it out of his pocket. As soon as I'd pulled the last corner of its base free of his pocket, he fell to the floor like a dropped ragdoll, his empty eyes staring up at the ceiling. He didn't even make a noise, first. I smashed the hourglass against a wall, just to be safe, and got the same quiet, empty result. Nothing exploded, no lost souls flew screaming out of the glass; a trickle of purple sand just fell onto the floor, mixing in with the cave dirt.
I crept back the way I'd come, quiet as a skeever, until I realized I needn't have bothered. Every one of Celedaen's undead servants I passed had fallen to the floor, either in a pile of bones or gooey, rotted flesh that couldn't have done anything worse than stink up my boots if I stepped in them. It looked like Celedaen's magic had died with him. Even his magic lights had started to dim, and I half-ran out of the cave from that point on so I didn't risk getting lost in the dark. Anything valuable he might've had stashed away could stay there and rot, for all I cared; it couldn't have been anything worth stumbling over bones in pitch-darkness or falling into putrid zombie guts for.
The sun had set when I reached the outside world again, so I decided to stay the night in Bravil before going to Chorrol and picking up my next contract. I got a room, along with a few more healing potions and some proper bandages, at the Lonely Suitor Lodge, and I gave my arms a rinse in my washbasin and gave them a good re-bandaging before going to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, the gashes my run-in with Celedaen's spectral guardian had left me with had faded to a series of faint, pinkish-white lines. On my way out of the inn, I bought a few apples from the publican for my breakfast, and offered one to Shadowmere in an effort to keep her away from my hair when I reached the stables. She snatched it out of my hand, her teeth snapping through it less than a hair's breadth away from my fingers, and I could've sworn they tapered off into sharp points instead of staying nice and flat, like a horse's teeth should have. Still, sharp teeth or not, she seemed to appreciate the gesture. I actually managed to get myself comfortable in her saddle before she went charging off toward Chorrol, and she settled for a pace that didn't feel like it was meant to scare me off, even if she still ran faster than any other horse I'd seen.
The dead drop orders Lucien had hidden among the roots of Chorrol's great oak tree contained instructions to track down and kill the five members of the Draconis family for my next contract, as well as five hundred septims and a small parcel wrapped in brown cloth. Assassinations weren't easy work, but I couldn't complain about the pay. I opened it to find a new pair of shrouded vambraces, and a note saying the Listener had said I'd need them. I didn't have the first idea how the Listener, whoever they were, could possibly have known that, or gotten in touch with Lucien in time for him to put them in with the rest of my payment, but I wasn't about to look that gift horse in the mouth. New armor was new armor, and I doubted I could have gotten my shredded vambraces repaired into anything useable if I'd wanted to.
The contract wasn't anything out of the ordinary for me until I reached County Bruma. When I reached the farm that should've been Applewatch, and saw an old woman tending to a small patch of vegetables with gentle, patient hands, I wondered if I'd read my directions wrong. I'd known Perennia Draconis wasn't a young woman, given that she had four grown children, but I hadn't expected her to look like someone's sweet little grandmother. As I dismounted and took a few steps toward her yard, she stood, eyes wide as she gasped and clutched at her chest. Then she took a good look at me, laughed a little to herself, and gave me a friendly wave with a dirt-stained hand. Everything about her was just so... normal, compared to all my other contracts; I'd have a harder time carrying this one out than I'd thought.
"Oh! Hello, there. I'm sorry about all that. You startled me; I thought you might have been a bandit, or one of those awful daedra, at first. My nerves get rattled rather easily these days, I'm afraid. Living alone will do that to you. Now, is there something I can help you with?" she asked.
"Um, yes… I'm looking for your children," I replied. As soon as I'd said it, I realized how strange it must have sounded, but I could think up an excuse later, if I needed to. Maybe a dead relative, or the Countess taking a census – something like that.
"My children? Whatever for… oh! Oh, dear, excuse an old woman's stupidity! You're here to pick up my gift list. And a whole day earlier than expected, too! Using your gift service is the smartest thing I've ever done. My children are spread all across Cyrodiil, and it's so hard to shop for them all. So, here's the list of all my precious little ones, though I dare say they're not so little anymore!" She laughed, and handed me a slip of paper. "They grow up so fast, I swear! You'll notice that the list gives each child's location and some suggestions for gifts. Oh, and here's the gold I'm supposed to give you; you'll get the rest once you've completed the job. Now please go. Those children are so dear to me, and I'd really like you to get them something special. Thanks again!" And with that, Perennia pushed a bag of septims into my hands and went back to her yardwork.
I put the slip of paper and coin purse into one of Shadowmere's saddlebags, then just stood and watched her for a moment, turning my dagger over in my hands. I halfway considered leaving her alive, and coming back once I'd finished with her children, before realizing that I'd only make her suffer more, that way. No parent wanted to outlive their children, and if she lived long enough for her real gift service to show up, she'd have the guards after me in no time. Unless I wanted to toss the entire contract out the window, I needed to kill her right then. I sighed, shook my head to clear it of my unease at murdering a defenseless old woman in cold blood, then crept up behind her and cut her throat in a quick, clean slice. Before she could hit the ground, or I could see the growing puddle of blood beneath her, I turned and walked back to where I'd left Shadowmere. If I never laid eyes on the results of my work, I could pretend it had never happened, and her ghost wouldn't haunt my dreams that night.
I read over her gift list on my way back to the Silver Road. As misguided – and overpriced, for the hundred septim budget she'd given me – as a lot of it seemed, I felt tears welling up in my eyes at all the care Perennia had put into it. What kind of monster would have wanted someone like her dead, I didn't know, but I hoped they had a damned good reason for it. But my job was killing people, not questioning orders, and if I hadn't quit over the Purification, I wasn't going to quit for some family I didn't even know. I'd come too far to give up, now.
First, I stopped by Muck Valley Cavern, where Sibylla Draconis lived. I could smell the horde of animals the gift list had said that she kept there from outside, and when I pried its battered door open just a crack, I could make out several sleeping wolves curled up around a half-naked woman in the gloom. Her lack of any sort of armor would have made her easy to pick off with an arrow, if my shot hadn't missed her, smacked into a wall, and let everything in the cave know I was there. In a heartbeat, she'd leapt to her feet, a rusty mace clutched in both hands, and charged me. I slammed the door shut to try and buy myself some time to make a new plan, but she just smashed right through it, followed her pack of wolves and several rats. I barely managed to climb a tree before they'd all caught up to me.
In the end, Shadowmere bailed me out of that one by giving Sibylla a good trampling. With their leader dead, her animals scattered and ran off into the forest, leaving me with a clear patch of grass to hop down onto. If Shadowmere had anything against helping me with my contract, she didn't show any signs of it I could see, and once I'd convinced her to quit stomping on Sibylla's corpse, we were on our way to the Imperial City and Matthias Draconis.
He ended up giving me a lot more trouble than his sister. After spending the better part of a week following him around the city, trying to catch him alone where no one else could see him, I hadn't come a step closer to finishing his part of the contract than when I'd started. Even when he went home at night, he had a housemate who slept right by the stairs. The housemate was a light sleeper, too; I'd tried breaking into the house at night, once, and he'd woken at just the sound of my lockpick in the door. Aside from Matthias, the only person who'd gotten into the house was a prostitute – a pretty, red-haired Dunmer girl – he'd bought for a couple hours on his way home from the Bloated Float one night.
Which, after a bit of thought, gave me the best idea I'd had all week. If he'd taken her home with him, I didn't see any reason he wouldn't be interested in broadening his horizons a bit, and I didn't look too far off from what he liked for him to give me a try. Not that I planned to let things get that far, if I managed to catch his eye – I didn't much like the thought of anyone but Lucien seeing me naked in the state I'd gotten myself stuck in – but I'd had worse. Even if things did go that far, it wasn't like I had to worry about getting pregnant. I had nothing to lose.
The next day, I bought myself a dress that was just revealing enough without showing my scars, and dug out my old cosmetics from the drawer I'd stashed them in back when I'd first left the city with the Amulet of Kings. A bit of kohl around my eyes and powder to make my skin look less chapped and uneven from spending so much time out in the weather, and I looked like my old self again. After I'd untied my hair, letting it fall down around my shoulders, and given it a good brushing, I went looking for Matthias' girl, hoping she'd have some idea how I could get his attention. I didn't have the time to pick a spot on one of the streets he used and wait Divines knew how long for him to notice me the normal way, and if I went after him without him approaching me, first, he'd probably think I was working with the city guard and avoid me like the plague.
I found her in the same spot as the night before. Slipping back into the acts I'd used to put on came easier than I'd expected, and I didn't have any trouble scrunching my face into a worried look as I scurried past the Bloated Float to her side.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but do you know Matthias Draconis?" I asked.
She raised an eyebrow and looked me over for a moment, then shrugged and replied, "I see him almost every Fredas; why d'you ask?"
"There's, um..." I turned my eyes downward, forcing a blush onto my face as I rested a hand on my belly. "Something I need to talk to him about."
"Oh." She gave me a bit of a smile and put a hand on my shoulder. "I'm sure you'll catch up to him, eventually. Don't you worry, love."
"That's just it, though." I chewed my lower lip, and rubbed a handful of my skirt between my fingers. "I've tried catching up with him, before, but he just pretends I don't exist unless he comes to me first, and I can't afford to wait too long, in case... you know. Do you think... Do you think, maybe, I could meet him here, next Fredas, instead of you? He might be willing to talk to me, then..."
"I don't know... He pays real well, and I need the coin right now; I'm savin' up for some things."
"I'll pay you." I dug the coin purse Perennia had given me out of my pocket. By rights, I should've offered her a lot more, seeing as I'd be taking a lot more than one night of business away from her in the long run, but I didn't want her to get suspicious of me. "I've got around a hundred septims in here, if that's enough. I know it's not much, but it's all I've got saved right now."
"This is real important to you, ain't it?"
"I-it is. I don't want to... you know, if I don't have to. If I can just get him to listen to me, I'm sure come around to the idea!"
"I dunno if he will. You might be better off keeping that, for whatever you end up doing with that problem of yours."
"But I've got to at least try, don't I? Please, you're my last hope..." I made my eyes as big as I could, and tried and failed to make myself cry a little. Tears had never come easy to me.
"All right, then. But don't say I didn't warn you." She took the coin purse, and tucked it away in her bodice. "I'd stay quiet about things if he's drunk, though. You know how mean he can get."
"O-of course! Thank you!" I smiled, genuinely; that had gone better than I expected.
"Don't mention it. You get back to your own corner, now; don't want it to look like I'm not taking customers." She frowned, then reached out and tucked a stray strand of my hair back into place. "Also, I know the 'Champion of Cyrodiil' look sells right now, but I'd rethink that hair dye, if I were you. You look a bit unnatural."
"Um, thanks. Will do," I replied, and started making my way back home. Comments on my hair aside, I'd gotten everything I came for.
I spent the next several days at home, mostly, waiting for Fredas to roll around again. I didn't want to risk making Matthias paranoid, or change his schedule, by killing another one of his siblings, and beyond that I didn't have many other places to go. When my wait finally came to an end, I found myself almost looking forward to lying my way into bed with him; at least it gave me something to do. I took a bit more care with my dress and make-up the second time I put them on, hoping Matthias wouldn't care that I wasn't who he'd be expecting if I made myself look like an appealing enough substitute, and tucked my dagger into my sleeve instead of wearing it on my belt so I wouldn't look armed. If he decided he didn't like what he saw, I'd have wasted all that time for nothing.
I didn't see Matthias' usual girl anywhere near the Bloated Float when I got there, and me standing in her place caught Matthias' attention well enough when he left the inn that night. He gave me a confused, almost angry look at first, but I managed to smooth things over well enough by telling him that she'd gotten sick and let me take her place until she got better. A flutter of my eyelashes later, he put his arm around my waist and walked me back to his house. His housemate raised an eyebrow at me, but didn't say anything, and I covered my sigh of relief with a cough when Matthias shut and latched his thick, wooden bedroom door behind us. I wouldn't have to worry about making too much noise, at least.
The pieces of his armor made a dull, thumping sound as I unfastened them and let them fall to the floor, and when he distracted himself with untying the laces on my bodice, I knew I'd found my best shot at killing him without a struggle. I wrapped my arms around his neck, so I could get my dagger out of my sleeve without him seeing, and to keep my dress from sliding off my shoulders and taking the dagger with it on its way to the floor. I pulled him in for a kiss as he finished with my bodice lacings, to hold him steady, then plunged it into the side of his neck, yanked it back out, and stepped out of his gushing blood's splash range as he fell to his knees, clutching at the wound. I expected him to cry out, or at least try to grab hold of me, but he just sat there, giving me a confused, almost sad look as he bled out. The look didn't fade after he breathed his last, ragged breath, and the sickly, pale color his face had taken on after losing so much blood made his blank stare downright unsettling. I shuddered; I couldn't have gotten any enjoyment out of that if I'd wanted to.
For the next few minutes, I stayed in Matthias' room, trying to avoid making eye contact with his corpse. Every now and again, I thumped on his bedposts and cried out his name, or whatever else popped into my head, to make things convincing for his housemate if he was listening in. Once I felt like things had gone on for about as long as they had any right to, I tousled my hair, smeared my makeup a bit, and laced my dress back up just enough to keep things from falling out on my walk home before letting myself out of Matthias' room. I made sure to shut the door behind me, then walked down his stairs and out the front door. His housemate didn't even bother to give me a second look.
The next morning, once I'd gotten back into my armor and made myself look like as much of a man as I ever did, I picked up Shadowmere from the Imperial City stables and rode off to the Drunken Dragon Inn, owned by Andreas Draconis. I rented myself a room there, then snuck downstairs after nightfall and cut his throat in his sleep, like I was used to doing. It felt better than my last two kills, and I felt like I'd lifted a weight off my shoulders as I made my way to Leyawiin, and the last surviving member of the Draconis family, Caelia.
After a few days of watching her, it looked like she spent even less time alone and indoors than Matthias had. Even when she'd finished with her work as a guard for the day, she slept in the city watch barracks surrounded by at least one or two waking guards, and she didn't seem to share her brother's vices. As I lay awake in the room I'd rented at the Five Claws Lodge, eating an apple as I tried to decide whether or not I could catch her unawares while she was on patrol and make it out of the city without getting used for target practice by her coworkers, I remembered the poisoned apple I had tucked away in my pack. When I dug it out, it looked as fresh as it had over three weeks earlier; the poison must have done something to preserve it. If I played my cards right, I'd just found my murder weapon.
I spent the next day waiting for a chance to get close to Caelia. When she wandered into a good-sized crowd, I bumped into her, and swapped out the poisoned apple for her usual bunch of grapes while she was distracted. I lingered beneath an open window at the Three Sisters Inn when she stopped there for her lunch, and when the peaceful silence inside turned to screams, I knew my plan had worked. Before anyone else had a chance to notice the commotion, I left the city – careful to walk, not run – and steered Shadowmere toward Skingrad, where I was supposed to look for my next dead drop orders.
I found a bag of septims and a new set of orders telling me to assassinate a Bruma-dwelling Khajiit by the name of J'Ghasta inside a well in Skingrad's castle courtyard. That was all good and well, but I ended up paying more attention to a smaller slip of paper wedged into a tiny crack in the well's wooden cover. I might have missed it entirely if the wind hadn't picked up and sent it rustling as it almost flew free of its hiding place. I had to climb onto the well's edge and stretch my arm out as far as it could go to reach it, but I got it in the end, minus a chunk of one of its corners that tore off when I yanked it free. It had nothing on it aside from the words 'West Weald Inn, second floor, second room on the left' written in small, neat handwriting, but that was more than enough to get my heart beating faster, out of happiness and a bit of fear. The feelings didn't mix well.
My body had yet to right itself, which meant that my little problem didn't seem to be going away on its own. I'd have respected it for surviving everything I put myself through, if it hadn't been so damn inconvenient. Still, if it had made it this far, it just wouldn't have felt fair if I didn't at least give it a fighting chance at life. I didn't like being stuck with my bits switched, but knowing that it wouldn't last forever made it bearable, at least for the next several months. Lucien and I needed to have a talk.
I placed my reward for the Draconis contract into my pack and made my way to the inn. Just like the note had promised, I found the second door on the left of its second floor unlocked. I slipped inside, and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw Lucien sitting at a desk, waiting for me, instead of being invisible in a corner somewhere.
"I see you found my note." Lucien stood and took a few steps toward me, and with a flick of his wrist, the door locked itself behind me. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't come."
"I'm not the one who did everything short of casting an invisibility spell on that note to keep it hidden," I replied. "Why couldn't you have just put it with your orders?"
"Because," he purred, pressing himself against me. "You wouldn't have had to put in any extra effort of your 'bonus,' otherwise."
I sighed. As much as I wished I could let myself relax and press back against him like I usually did, I didn't know when I'd see Lucien again, and putting things off wouldn't make them any easier. "Much as I'd like to claim that bonus, there's something we need to talk about."
"If you're referring to your latest contract, then I've already told you all I know. You'll need to do the rest for yourself."
"No, the contract seems simple enough. An unarmed Khajiit can't be that bad compared to the necromancer you sent me after."
"Khajiit?" Lucien furrowed his brow. "You are supposed to be tracking down a Breton."
"No, he's a Khajiit." I dug out his latest orders and handed them to him. "It says so right here."
Lucien unrolled the parchment and read it over. As soon as he laid eyes on what was written on it, he went pale. "We need to go to Bruma. Now."