I don't know what's weirder. That literally everyone in the Legion has to wear those leather skirts, or that they have them in Mohamara's size.
Chapter 25:Fool me Once
The carriage stopped at the base of the hill up to Solitude's gates. Or rather, where the gates had been. When Mohamara had left, they were just starting to get wood and iron replacements into position until new metal doors could be manufactured. He'd made the trip up to the city enough times to do it blindly, so once he'd wished the carriage driver a good day, Mohamara was trotting up the hill without a care in the world.
And then he ran into someone.
"Oh, sorry, didn't see you there," the tojay started, then jumped high to hopefully land beyond them and keep going on his way. However, whoever he'd run into was a bit miffed as they grabbed him by the ankle as he lept over them. This left the Khajiit hanging upside down, where his focus was on keeping his robes from getting in his face due to gravity. "Hey, what gives?"
"You are cordially invited," a female High Elf's voice said in a perfectly polite tone, "to the Thalmor Embassy."
Right away, Mohamara started to thrash about while the, presumed, Thalmor and her escorts started back down the road.
"There is no need to be so excited, First Emissary Elenwen has been looking forward to talking with you for so long, she won't care overmuch that you are… fresh from work."
"I am a citizen of the Tamrielic Empire," Mohamara said as he tried to think of ways to get out of the vice grip holding him up that didn't involve attacking Thalmor officers. The embassy had filed a complaint about Yagraz assaulting one of their Justicars, but it was excused due to the Potema situation going on at the time. But Elisif had to assure the Thalmor that their operatives were clear to act within the confines of the White-Gold Concordat in Haafingar without fear of reprisal. "I am a member of the Jarl's court, not a worshipper of Talos, you have no legal right to hold me against my will."
"Oh dear, I'm dreadfully sorry." The Thalmor didn't sound sorry at all, she sounded like she was enjoying having the cat flail around in a panic. "You aren't under arrest, my friend. But we have to insist you come with us to talk business. Did you not receive the First Emissary's letter?"
"I've been in Hjaalmarch for days, there was a crisis-your courier was probably attacked by the enemy." The Khajiit gave up trying to fight for freedom and keep gravity from resulting in a wardrobe malfunction. "Can you at least hold me some different way? The blood is starting to rush to my head."
"Well, if you insist." The Thalmor snapped her fingers, and Mohamara found an armored gauntlet grab him by the scruff of his neck, then lift him upward while his leg was released. Because Mohamara had been consistently losing weight since arriving in the Fourth Era, they could have just carried him around like that.
Instead, they affixed a clamp to his scruff and carried him around like a sack of potatoes thrown over the shoulder of one of his captors. "I will get my vengeance upon you for this," Mohamara swore in the loudest tone he could manage while scruffed, a whisper.
"That's not even the first time I've heard that today, so you're welcome to try, Fool."
Mohamara passed the time by whistling, which he knew viscerally annoyed the Thalmor effectively kidnapping him by the way they audibly ground their teeth and twitched when he went into particularly shrill notes.
While scruffed, there wasn't much he could do to escape but pray to Meridia for help in his mind. However, once he was free he'd have to try and escape. There wasn't much he could do while blind.
Unless of course, he could fix the blindness. Being scruffed didn't mess with his magical abilities, just forced his body to go limp, so he began to feel around for sympathetic bonds. It was pretty easy to find the ones that connected his eyes to his brain, they coiled around the optic nerves. Since it was the eyes themselves that were damaged, he'd just need to find something else that he could 'see'.
Those garnets on his court robes would be perfect if he had thought to get them. As would the lens on his slate, in his backpack, where it couldn't see anything. So he took the most unpleasant, and most viable option at the moment, and linked himself to the eyes of one of his captors.
The golden-armored soldier recoiled and rubbed at his eyes as if sand had gotten in them. His pace slowed considerably before the stinging pain faded and he could catch up to the Justicar and her other escort.
Through his eyes, Mohamara could see that they were about to turn onto the road that led up Mount Kilkreath. It was… bizarre seeing through the High Elf's eyes-colors did not seem the same. Blues and greens were dulled compared to what Mohamara remembered, while yellows, whites, and oranges were far more noticeable.
'Okay, step one of escape plan done. Learn the location.' Mohamara's plans went on in his head around desperate prayers for help.
Step two was to figure out the bonds linking the instinctive limpness in his limbs to a patch of loose skin on the back of his neck and work around them. This proved difficult, as he could not tell the bonds apart easily. Modifying the self was the single most difficult thing to do in Mysticism, because of how easily it could backfire.
Which Mohamara found out the hard way when he tugged on a sympathetic bond connecting the nerves in his neck to his spine and developed a stabbing pain in his chest instantly, which grew into a burning pain after a few seconds. What he didn't know was that he had accidentally stopped his heart from beating with the blunder.
Meanwhile, in the mind of a Madman, Meridia was packing up to leave for her Colored Rooms when she felt a disturbance. She accessed the beacon and found several archived prayers from her boy and an emergency notification that his heart had stopped beating seconds before. "Sheogorath," she shouted out into the misty air.
"What!" Was the Mad God's reply.
"I blame you for this." She deduced that all the stress from Sheogorath's activities had damaged the boy's heart muscle, to the point of failure. So she reached through the beacon, through his amulet, and into his chest to burn away the old heart and replace it with a brand new one. She'd have to talk to her Knight about that too.
"I don't know what you're blaming me for, but I probably did it at some point!"
Back on the slopes of Mount Kilkreath, Mohamara had found it difficult to breathe for a good long while. Combined with his limp limbs, he seriously thought he was going to die on some High Elf's shoulder. But suddenly, his heart started beating again, and he found he could breathe easier.
The tojay weakly coughed as his lungs were able to take in the missing air, which caused the Thalmor to glance back at him.
"Fortunately for you, you won't be here long enough for the thin air to do you ill," she commented, smug in both tone and expression.
"This is kidnapping," the Khajiit whisper-yelled. "Violating the White-Gold Concordat."
"You know, you keep talking and all I hear out of your mouth is 'please make me into a towel, Zenolene.' Perhaps you'd be best served by being quiet."
His only way out, Mohamara decided, was to bolt as soon as the clamp was off. The literal second it was released, he needed to be running. Through his captor's eyes, he saw the relatively flat surface of Mount Kilkreath's top come into view, and on it stood a both well placed and horribly placed building.
It was a compound built in the style of Solitude, with a two-floored main building within a fenced in territory, and a smaller building standing among a snowy garden. The compound was well-placed in that it was directly above Solitude. If the Thalmor ever needed a vector to attack the city, they had it in this building.
But it was horribly placed in a way that Mohamara decided to comment on. "You know, if Mount Kilkreath ever erupts, your embassy is kinda fucked twelve ways to Sundas."
"Don't be ridiculous," the Thalmor Justicar, Zenolene, scoffed. "This mountain has been dormant since the First Era. Barring the recent earthquake, there has been no volcanic activity for almost a thousand years. And even if it were, the Dominion can slave even mountains to our needs."
"Wow, all that talking and you didn't in any way refute the idea that if it does erupt you're hosed."
The Justicar whirled on Mohamara, which was weird to watch from the perspective of his impromptu mount, and glowered. "Wait, how can you tell where we are? You're blind."
Mohamara saw a hoodless Thalmor woman standing just in the doorway to the main building. High Elf eyes were good for seeing long distance clearly, almost as much as tojay eyes. Perhaps that was why they favored archery? "Walk down from Solitude for like, half an hour then go upward and walk on snow. Hmm, wherever could you be? Oh, it's so incredibly likely that we're at fucking Fort Hraggstad."
Zenolene yanked on Mohamara's ears and covered her hands with a layer of frost to make it hurt from two sources. "Mind your tongue, or being made into a towel will be a kindness compared to what I-"
"Zenolene," the Thalmor woman at the door spoke. She didn't raise her voice or change her expression from bored disinterest, but there was a weight to her voice that froze the Justicar and her escorts mid-step. "Are you assaulting my guest?"
Mohamara couldn't help but smirk while the Justicar forced herself to release his ears and step away. "No, First Emissary." The High Elf through which Mohamara watched the scene glanced at the Justicar, who was clearly forcing herself not to scowl. "Just… trying to impress upon it the importance of etiquette while in your exalted company."
"It? Really?" Mohamara feigned a pout.
"Commendable," the First Emissary said, before gesturing the Justicar's escort to come forward. "But not what your duties entailed. Do as you are told in the future."
The High Elf carrying Mohamara approached the First Emissary and was followed after her into the building. It looked almost as if it had originally been a Solitude property, the decor so reminiscent of the bard's college.
"I'm sorry that such measures were necessary to arrange this meeting, Mr. Ahramani."
It chilled Mohamara to the bone that she knew his last name, and he recommitted to bolting as soon as the clamp was removed.
"But our business is rather pressing, and you are surprisingly difficult to get ahold of. First an errand to Whiterun, and then Morthal. If we had waited any longer, I daresay where you would have gone."
"I am a citizen of the Tamrielic Empire," Mohamara whispered as loud as he could given the situation. "Seizing me like this is when I am not a Talos worshipper is a violation-"
"Actually, I think you will find that I'm well within my rights under article five of the White-Gold Concordat, as this matter affects the safety of the Embassy itself. Ah, here we go." The First Emissary briskly opened a door to a lavish office and ushered the armored High Elf inside.
Mohamara's bond with the man's eyes frayed and broke after the High Elf deposited him in a chair and walked away. It seemed that visual bonds required proximity to work, but it had been Mohamara's first such artificial bond, perhaps practice would work it out.
He realized as nothing seemed to happen for a long time, that to be paralyzed like this without the ability to see or to realistically call for help was terrifying. Almost as terrifying as having Sheogorath trying to crush him to death. Almost as terrifying as whales.
"I'm tempted to let you stay like this throughout our meeting," the First Emissary said with just an edge of malice to her voice. She had been able to silently move around to sit behind the desk. Her chair hadn't even made a sound when she sat down. "At least until we have your signature, anyway. Because I know the second that clamp comes off, you're going to foolishly attempt escape."
"Wouldn't you, in my position?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. I'm not in your situation so I can't truly say how I would react." The only noise she made to convey movement was the creak of her leather gloves. "Just as I'm sure you would have a different response to my situation. Context is everything, Mr. Ahramani."
"I don't think we've been officially introduced, First Emissary…?"
"Elenwen, First Emissary of the Thalmor in Skyrim, Ambassador to the Aldmeri Dominion. And you are Mohamara Ahramani, Fool of Solitude, among other… interesting things."
"I'm sure none of them are interesting enough to warrant this level of… coercion for a meeting."
"Normally, I would agree, but you've put me in an uncomfortable situation."
"Is it because I'm cute? I've been told I'm cute."
Though he couldn't see it, Elenwen glared at her open door where several of her female employes had come by to stop and stare into her office at the tojay. They were fortunate that Elenwen refused to break her routine to reprimand them, as they went and brought many other staffers to look at the most adorable Khajiit most had ever seen.
"I'm afraid that it's something else entirely, Mr. Ahramani. You recently purchased Mount Kilkreath from the Jarl of Solitude. My embassy rests atop Mount Kilkreath. While the land was unclaimed Haafingar territory, my personnel could come and go as they wished. But due to your purchase, you own the roads we make use of to resupply this facility and fulfill our obligations per the White-Gold Concordat. Technically speaking, my people cannot leave this facility without trespassing on your property."
"If I give you permission to come and go on the roads will you let me go?"
One of the staffers now loitering outside Elenwen's office was her head torturer. He eyed the Khajiit with a… disturbing expression, even for Elenwen's tastes. "You think you're a prisoner?"
"Well, your man in Markarth did try to kidnap me too. I never got his name, but he left bruises on my shoulder from where he attempted and failed to kidnap me." Mohamara was babbling, really. He couldn't panic in the usual way, being scruffed suppressed his heart rate too much. Thus, the tremendous amount of stress he felt combined with the inability to do anything but talk meant it became his outlet for relieving the stress.
"Ah, that reminds me. We have something of yours to return." Elenwen stood from her desk, silent as the grave due to her muffling of sound and walked authoritatively toward the crowd that had formed. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, they fled before her as she left. But when she was gone they took their places looking at the tojay.
"You think we can pet him before she gets back?"
"Not if we keep talking about it."
"I wouldn't mind getting my hands on those ears…."
"Okay you watch for her, while we all make a break for it. On three."
Mohamara heard their conversation and tried to prepare himself for the attack. But it was so much worse than he expected. Twenty or so High Elf blood purists rushed into the office to pet him, and squabble amongst themselves for the prime petting spots.
"Sometimes I hate being cute," he muttered.
"She's coming back!"
And as quickly as they had appeared, they bolted from the office. Moments later, Elenwen returned, though the blind Khajiit couldn't pick up on this. She casually laid a neatly folded and laundered red and white hooded robe on the cat's lap as she passed by him to her desk. "My 'man in Markarth' brought this to us when you escaped his… chat. It seemed appropriate enough a time to return it. Now, let's talk business, shall we?"
The agreement reached by the First Emissary and the Fool amounted to The Thalmor would have unrestricted access to the road up and down Mount Kilkreath, and retained the right to veto any construction that happened near the summit. And in return, Elenwen would clear up the 'tragic mistake' about Mohamara being a fugitive from the Dominion. If he'd really been born in Skyrim, he wasn't subject to Dominion authority, tojay or no.
Elenwen treated the situation like a purely business transaction, even though it was a purely word of mouth agreement. "I will be sending a document to Falk Firebeard for you to sign officiating this agreement," she had said as the clamp came off and Mohamara was allowed to walk out of her embassy. "But take heed-the next time the Thalmor send for you, you will come. Or we will have to do this again."
He was escorted as far as the main gate to the compound, and then shoved into the snow outside, to find his own way back down the mountain.
Walking down a mountain blind was not the most fun thing Mohamara had ever done. But he was able to follow the sympathetic bond between Elisif and the letter meant for her down the mountain and then in the general direction of Solitude. Of course, he had many instances of falling into deep snow, walking into a bush, or a black eagle daring to try and attack.
Haafingar was warmer than most parts of Skyrim, but when walking for an hour and a half in clothes soaked from melted snow, it was no surprise that Mohamara was causing locals to 'ooh' and 'aww' with his sneezes by the time he got back to Solitude. Once inside the city, his better than average hearing and memory of the city's layout was enough to get him to the Blue Palace.
The tojay ended up walking into furniture that he was certain was not there when he last was in the Palace, so he had a minor limp when he finally ascended the stairs to the throne room.
He'd entered in the middle of Thane Erikur, the greediest, laziest, most perverse sonuvabitch that Mohamara had ever met, and Melaran's former employer. Apparently, the Nord had just come back from negotiating a business deal with Falkreath for premium lumber for the reconstruction effort.
All fine and dandy, even if the man was unpleasant he was competent. Mohamara felt his way to the gallery pillars and leaned on one to start healing his bruised shins and knee. He stopped when he remembered: He could have linked his eyes to his slate and simply walked back to Solitude in a much more efficient manner.
"Is there a reason you look like you're drying off after a swim?" Falk was apparently sitting close to where Mohamara had entered the gallery and startled the cat.
"Just… just fell in some snow on the way here," the cat offered in lieu of explanation. "I got a letter from the new Jarl of Hjaalmarch for Elisif."
"Excuse me, I don't think I quite heard that right. New Jarl?"
Mohamara took off his backpack and fished around inside for the letter before handing it over. "Yeah, things went pear-shaped in Morthal."
First, Falk read the letter, and then he quickly stood and handed the letter off to Elisif when Erikur's pontificating was completed. "So," the young Jarl said with an air of regret. "Idgrod Ravencrone is dead. And Morthal was under siege by vampires. That are now also dead. But you completed the task asked of you, Fool, and are banished from Hjaalmarch for no less than one year's time."
"In my defense." Mohamara stepped out of the gallery pillars and pointed in his Jarl's direction. "I only did what Idgrod asked me to do."
"Yes, the letter mentions that as well. This is… I did not think things could get worse for us, after the dragon attack. But we nearly lost an entire Hold to the undead. We would have lost an entire Hold had I not sent you."
The Khajiit shrugged. "I only did a fancy ritual that backfired and helped kill two vampires."
"You also sacrificed your well-being and still did the task I asked of you. While it was a bittersweet outcome, I can't think of a better way to mark the end of your service as Fool of Solitude."
Ah, so he was going to be fired anyway. The tojay couldn't stop his ears, whiskers, and tail from drooping at the news. It has always been a temporary position, but it had been a job, at least.
"Oh, um. I didn't mean to-I'm sorry, that was poorly worded of me. Please stop looking so sad." Elisif stumbled over her words, presumably at how Mohamara looked. "I was actually going to lead into an offer to make you a Thane of my Hold. You do own a considerable amount of land now, and you've done me and my Hold repeated service."
"Oh. Um. That's… I don't know what to say." Mohamara was gobsmacked by the offer. Thanes were the highest level of nobility in a Hold, able to ignore some of the laws that bound the lesser nobility and commoners. In the event of a Jarl dying with no heirs, the new Jarl would be determined from among the Thanes.
"Ultimately, it doesn't matter." A gruff voice from the gallery, opposite where Mohamara had been, spoke out. General Tullius, the Military Governor of Skyrim, and commander of all Imperial forces. "Since you are no longer Fool of Solitude, I hereby conscript you into the Imperial Legion, Khajiit."
There was commotion from the gallery, with Elisif, Falk, and her Thanes crying different forms of outrage. Mohamara was certain that Erikur was only doing it because everyone else was.
"With enchanting talents like his, he'll be invaluable to resolving this war while resources are plenty, Elisif. And once he's served the Empire, he can return and be a petty noble in your court as much as you like."
"You could have informed me before this, General," Elisif hissed. She seemed just barely in control of her anger going from voice alone. "Instead you undermined my authority-in my Palace!"
"What was it you said when you sent an official complaint to the Emperor regarding mistakes made regarding your court? That you aren't obligated to inform me of your court appointments? Likewise, I'm not obligated to inform you of my conscriptions." There was a noticeable air of spite in the General's rebuttal to Elisif.
"I don't know how to feel over regional and Imperial governments arguing over who gets to boss me around and make fancy stuff for them," the cat commented while no one paid him any mind. "Should I be… flattered? Annoyed? Vindicated? Mostly, I think I want to take a nap." However, he gave the topic more thought and pointed dramatically in the General's direction. "Wait a minute, does this mean I have to wear those stupid leather skirts all your soldiers prance around in?"
"That is the uniform of the Imperial Legion. And yes, even conscripts like you are expected to-"
The moment Mohamara heard the word 'yes', he was running and jumped from the balcony of the throne room to the foyer below. Unfortunately, someone downstairs had the presence of mind to catch him around the chest and hold him arm's length away while the cat flailed about.
"Believe it or not, this isn't a rare thing with conscriptions," the man who had caught him spoke in a Falkreath-accented voice. "I'm Hadvar, and I'll be the Quaestor looking after you. Though I imagine the General is going to want to have words with you in a minute."
Mohamara eventually gave up on trying to get away and slumped in defeat. "I was just starting to get used to wearing trousers again…."
Cat who had no future and no career prospects is violently attacked by multiple career prospects. Results may shock you.