Diana: Thanks for the review. Yup, you're right. In the words of Commentaholic: 'Seridur! Leader of the Order of the Virtuous Blood, creeper Altmer, and closet sparkly vampire.' - This quote contains some grammar adjustment courtesy of the hideous Grammer Nazi (deliberate misspelling) quoting it, but it's close enough :D ~ARTY~

A little snippet for Commentaholic to prove my affiliation with the Ancient Language: Ach neo eitha orono ie wilae yauna onr lifa - If Idari was in Alagaesia she would surely say this XD

And some more Ancient Language for everyone else - and Commentaholic of course: Atra gülai un ilian tauthr ono un atra ono waíse sköliro frá rauthr. Because, unlike Eragon, I can get the blessing right...

Sé mor'ranr ono finna un sé onr sverdar sitja hvass! (BTW, if you're planning on entering this into a translator you won't find it, however the closest you'll get is if you go from Icelandic to English)

Chapter 25

It was with the utmost shock that Raminus Polus found himself once more greeting an Altmeri vampire that he had sworn he would next see once he had been cured of his unusual disease. What surprised the Master Wizard still further was that he spoke with the Warlock in broad daylight and in clear view of the apprentices and magisters hurrying to and fro from their lessons on the arcane arts. He knew enough about the nature of vampires too to know exactly why the mage before him was not being affected by the sun's rays, but he dismissed this morbid thought quickly before greeting the Altmer as he always greated a fellow mage.

"Well met, Warlock," he said with a forced smile that appeared genuine to even those who knew him best and a slight polite incline of his Imperial head. "What brings you back to the University at this time?"

The High Elf did not speak for a moment and looked about shiftily like he had something sinister to hide even though he had approached Polus in an open, communal area. "The cure must be bought before it can be made," he said eventually, his voice low and indistinct. Raminus noted on a slightly happier note that he appeared to have found a way of controlling the vampiric hissing that had forced its way into his voice before. "The price is ten empty Grand Soul Gems."

Grand Soul Gems were difficult to come by, and almost indispensible to the budding mage when they were filled with the soul of some creature or other, usually a summoned daedra was prefered by most. The University, of course, owned several Grand Soul Gems, and most Mages Guild chapters owned at least one too, but they were not to be simply given to a witch on whichever whim she wished to claim ownership of at that precise moment.

"We cannot provide you with ten..." the Imperial replied gently. After his years of admitting new apprentices to the Arcane University, one would expect that he would find it easy to turn people away without what they had arrived for, but the job simply never got any easier and he had merely learnt to live with the responsibility as though it were just another useless part of his life. There was a pause before he added: "However I think the Arch Mage will allow the sanctioning of two to aid an important guild member such as yourself. He shall be glad to know that you have made progress towards a cure; your absense has been noted by many of the other mages about the place.

"Two?" the Warlock repeated with a nod to indicate his understanding and acceptance, though Raminus was sure that he could detect an undertone of disappointment in his words. "That is a gracious offer -" Once again the Imperial found it hard to believe that the Altmer was speaking for any reason other than the sake of politeness. "- I thank you for your kindness and understanding. I hope to be returning to the University soon. Have there been any more assaults by the necromancer cult in my absense?"

The Master Wizard smiled. "Once again I shall inform you that your loyalty to our guild is duly noted, however there is nothing that you would be able to do in your current state even if there had been attacks by necromancers. There have only been minor threats since your departure and some of our newest additions to the University have been dispatched to take care of them. Nothing for someone of your rank at all, Warlock. I wish you luck in your search and may all your efforts bear sweet fruit in their own good time - you cannot rush an alchemist even if you wish to."

"Thank you Master Wizard Polus. Your words are appreciated. As soon as I have the Soul Gems I'm afraid I must set off, as much as I would like to stay. I have many more gems to find and only a limited time in which to do so. I am also mildly wary of spending too much time in the sun at the moment, for obvious reasons, however I must spend my every possible moment to enjoy the civilization that abandoned me on that fateful day. I look forward to the day when I shall merely be a mage again; that day shall prove a happy occasion."

xxx

The Oblivion gate was a little way outside of Cheydinhal and so far no action appeared to have occured nearby save the odd sentient daedra chancing a step into Cyrodiil or a tree nearby bursting into flames due to the heat being radiated from the collosal structure nearby.

The Count's son, Farwil Indarys, stood on the walls of his city, gauntleted hands resting on the stones, to take in the sight before he and his knights assaulted the gate. It was something that he had always dreamt of, particularly after an amusing session in a tavern somewhere before heading off to bed. His medallion denoting his knighthood swung from his neck in plain sight, his signet ring denoting his kinship adourned a finger of his right hand, his dark hair swayed in the warm breeze caused by the Oblivion gate and his eyes burned like the hell he saw below. He had on his armour, plates of metal that he had nagged his father into providing for him; it gleamed from the polish that the servants had applied to it in its two years sitting on a shelf in Castle Cheydinhal. The Knights of the Thorn had not yet seen action since their foundation in 3E431, but Farwil was determined that today they would prove to the guards that they were more than a glorified club. Today they would show their fighting skills for the world to see; after today they would not be ridiculed any longer.

He turned at the sound of his knights calling his name. There were five of his comrades on the ground beneath the wall, but admittably he only knew one of them by name - Bremman was the one who usually dealt with the newer recruits to the order. One of the Knights of the Thorn had already expressed his distaste at going into Oblivion and Farwil had granted him leave on the condition that he protected Cheydinhal from the daedra that left the fiery portal after they had gone, though he knew that the Breton would probably not do anything to protect the city without his watchful gaze to correct his mistakes for him.

The six of them made for an odd group; two Bretons, three Imperials and a Dunmer. The Bretons were young Fighters Guild drop-outs, Farwil knew that much - apparently they had some kind of argument with Burz gro-Khash about wages and duties. One of the Imperials was young and couldn't have been more than a teenager, another was older and an ex-Legion member who had been forced to drop out after starting a fight with a fellow officer. The last Imperial was Bremman Senyan, a good friend of Farwil's who had been on the Cheydinhal City Watch until he had left to take up his duties with the Knights of the Thorn, a gifted swordsman with a noble heart and a solid resolve. He would have followed Farwil all the way to the deepest plains of Oblivion and back.

Now he was going to.

The three Imperials dispatched the daedra outside the gate before the others had even caught up and the six of them stared up at the swirling maelstrom of fire before them, almost paralysed with awe at the sight of it up close. Farwil led them closer to the gate before them and with a final, resounding 'Huzzah!' the luckless six disappeared through it to almost certain doom.

xxx

A red sky in the morning is never a good sign, and a sky swirling with red tongues of flame is obviously to be considered even worse whether it be morning, noon or night. The sky had not been red last time he had been in this city, which was in fact less than a day earlier, but this time the skies over Cheydinhal burned with almost unprecedented rage.

Turner knew what it meant. It was not the first time, and neither would it be the last time, that he would see an Oblivion gate. He stopped a good distance from it and weighed up his options quickly; he could enter the gate, close it and play the hero, he could go into the city and fetch the soldiers to deal with it or he could merely ignore it altogether and continue onto the Mages Guild in search of Grand Soul Gems. Standing before it he could only really narrow it down to one entirely viable option, and that was before he saw a gaggle of people run haphazrdly towards the gate and heard their leader shout some obscenity before they all ventured into it as though they had any idea what they were letting themselves in for, which they obviously didn't.

The Argonian sighed heavily and his hand reached instinctively to the hilt of the daedric sword at his hip which was now at long last ceasing to be a burden for him to carry about before dismounting his black horse and tying the creature to a nearby tree in an attempt to prevent it running away or being mistaken for one of the other black horses in the Cheydinhal stables which seemed dangerously close to being incinerated itself anyway.

He glanced about once more before dashing in the direction of the daedric creation himself, bow drawn in case he encountered some daedra from afar. Judging by the corpses on the ground the fools who had entered the gate had likely expected the stunted scamps they had just been fighting to be the only form of daedra they would meet. They were tragically mistaken; in a regular army the stunted scamps would be the equivalent of weak, untrained foot soldiers with substandard weaponry and no wish to be a part of this battle. Easy kills.

Outside the gates of Cheydinhal he could see a gang of guards amassing together to assault the daedra from the gate themselves, or to hold the gates of Cheydinhal if that failed. He knew they would not venture inside; they were on a payroll to protect and serve, not to put themselves deliberately into harms way and definitely not to go above and beyond the call of duty to leave Nirn and venture into Oblivion. From this distance he could not make out any of the guards individually, however he did make a note that Guard Captain Ulrich Leland - who would have been identifiable by the fact that he was the only Breton on the Cheydinhal Guard - was not present in any form. One of the other Guard Captains seemed to be commanding the group, though it was very obvious that none of them had any wish to be a part of this operation, except one of the guards who seemed to be rather more keen than the others.

He'll be the first to die then, Turner thought with a solemn sigh as he took out a scamp almost immediately as it emerged from the gate with a well placed arrow. He was almost too close to make the shot by now, but killing scamps was merely so easy that they could probably be shot with an arrow from only a foot away without the shooter being injured. Now he drew his sword and approached more slowly, aware that at any moment any manner of daedra could jump through the gate and tear him to shreds considering how light his armour was; his feet fell gently on the dry earth beneath the gate but any sound would have been drowned out by the roaring of the fire even if it was load enough to be heard.

"What am I letting myself in for this time?" he asked himself as he stepped through the sulphurous portal once again into the plains of Oblivion that were owned souly by Mehrunes Dagon: The Deadlands.

xxx

"Who do you suppose that strange figure that ran into the gate was then?" one guard asked another, nudging him in the ribs as they stood in a mock-up version of sentry duty in a half hearted attempt to protect their city

The other shrugged unhelpfully. "It wasn't a man or mer that's for sure," he said, speaking the obvious. "It had a tail."

"It was an Argonian," another added with an overzealous grin after eavesdropping on the conversation. He was a good fighter and had always felt that his skills had been wasted, so he saw today as the perfect opportunity to prove himself to his superiors - in particular Garrus Darelliun who seemed to be the only Guard Captain with enough common sense and battle experience to try to hold the gate. "I have a feeling I spoke with him yesterday. He reckons he'll be an unsung hero here, but I'm not sure."

"Well 'e sure ain't the 'Ero of Kvatch. We don't need no Argonian unsung 'eroes, we jus' need one female mer ta close tha' thing an' be done with i'," another eavesdropper spoke with an accent that he had clearly picked up from elsewhere in the province, though none of his comrades had yet to figure out precisely where that was.

The first guard smirked fiendishly and gestured for the others to draw nearer as he spoke. "I heard the Hero of Kvatch is a Dunmer riding on an otherworldly stallion with flaming red eyes and diamond tipped hooves. Apparently she can kill with a glance, make people obey her every command with some kind of mind control. I heard she can even murder someone by whistling at them. Her homeland got destroyed when the Ministry of Truth crashed into Vivec and now she's on a warpath and doesn't care who's in her way; she..."

"Is not superhuman," the over-enthusiatic one finished his sentence with a childish grin. "Killing someone with a glance? Otherworldly stallion? Mind control? Ridiculous. She's just good at fighting, that's all, and she might have an attitude problem, but I'm sure she isn't that bad. I'm sure you'd have an attitude problem if suddenly the world decided you were their only hope too!"

The guards were silenced suddenly as their captain walked past, a hand on the hilt of his sword and an almost pristine shield on his arm. Garrus looked at them critically before he spoke. "I have it on good authority that the Hero of Kvatch will be arriving here shortly to help us with our... problem. Please try to make this guard appear acceptable."

"But some Argonian's already gone inside, as have Indarys and his club members!" one of the guards moaned from the back of the cluster. "How many mortals can they send into Oblivion?"

Garrus shrugged. "The real question is probably just how many daedra can some out of Oblivion before we lose this city to them. From now on keep your mouths shut and your eyes open; I want to do this with minimal losses."

xxx

The Hero of Kvatch had been more than glad to see the soldiers bearing the insignia of County Skingrad riding past her in the opposite direction while on her way to Cheydinhal from Bruma. They hadn't seen her, not properly anyway; she had told Shadowmere to run as quickly as he could manage, and a horse like Shadowmere could manage some pretty amazing speeds when he put his mind to it. At the speed her horse managed to maintain she had reached the city in just over eight hours, which was usually unheard of when one had to travel from the Jerall Mountains, through the Great Forest, across the Heartlands and the Nibenay Basin until almost the foot of the Valus Mountains. She had stuck to the road to avoid distractions, and Shadowmere was either too fast or too menacing for highwaymen to even attempt their luck at taking on the Dunmer riding him; Idari Mortha had yet to figure out which it was.

Cheydinhal was one of the cities she had always felt most comfortable in. The count and the guards had been bribed enough to not ask questions about the mysterious people hanging about the abandoned house in black armour carrying rather vast arsenals of weaponry about with them; those who didn't need to know were simply taken care of efficiently if they began asking the wrong questions. Now that everyone in the Cheydinhal sanctuary was dead Idari began wondering whether or not she would be so free to move about the town, but she suspected that this matter was probably carried out by the Speaker assigned to each sanctuary rather than the members within, though she doubted Lucien would care anymore.

Any regular person might have been struck with fear at the sight of the towering wall of flames stretching into a reddened sky before them however the Hero of Kvatch merely dismounted her horse fluidly and drew her Akaviri katana from its sling over her shoulder - she was not nearly tall enough to wear it at her hip like the Blades did - and assessing the situation languidly. A group of Cheydinhal guards stood stationed outside the city walls, but all bar one seemed to be doing very little in the way of actually serving their city like they ought to be. She approached the gate at a relaxed pace after sternly telling her horse that he could join the battle if he wished as long as he did not run off, almost as if he could understand her; anybody else might have thought her crazy, but she knew full well that he understood. Besides, she could tell exactly where he would go if he got bored and strolled off; they were that close to Fort Farragut after all. She saw an arrow in the corpse of a scamp that she recognised immediately and frowned deeply; she had instructed him to find a cure, not to enter Oblivion, and in doing so he had delayed the rescue of her brother - because she still refused to believe that he might be dead - until he had actually got around to finding this witch. She prayed for his sake that he had at least had the common sense to make some effort towards this cure or she might just have to kill him for it.

Aside the scamp she only saw other smaller, stunted scamps that had been poorly butchered by an unskilled swordsman on the ground, and there was no doubt in her mind that this was the handiwork of the count's idiot son and his cronies. She might not have hated Farwil so much if it weren't for her enforced Telvanni heritage, but it seemed that he came from a prominant Redoran family and that his father had converted to House Hlaalu in order to get on better terms with King Helseth Hlaalu, something which had ultimately ended in him coming to rule over County Cheydinhal, and so Farwil Indarys was technically a member of both the enemy Great Houses on Vvardenfell and thus held no place in the female Telvanni's hardened heart. She then ran through the burning gate before she changed her mind about saving his life.

xxx

This excursion into Oblivion had probably not been the best idea that Farwil Indarys had ever had in his lifetime. It was far from the glory-bringing moment that he had expected it to be and now he was bruised and battered, kept alive only by his faithful friends - who no doubt knew what the punishment would be if the Count found out that they had left his son for dead in Oblivion and scarpered - and a fair amount of running for his life. The ones who had not died already had made it into a system of caves and become separated by a raging clannfear and a larger scamp than they had been used to fighting outside Cheydinhal. Bremman alone stayed with him now as they listened to the tortured screams of one of the others mingled in with the sounds of tearing flesh and the ravenous snaps of the clannfear's powerful beak. The Imperial was badly wounded with a deep incision to his arm that was losing blood with every passing minute and what was no doubt a fractured collarbone from battling with a different clannfear in a smaller space than was physically possible using such a weapon. Farwil was not wounded severely, and most of the blood on his armour was not his but rather that of his fallen comrades one and all; his nose was broken and bleeding from accidentally taking an elbow to the face during a battle, but it was not the first time so he had learnt to live with it.

He looked at his friend with a heavy heart; he only knew spells that would heal his own injuries and even then they were not very efficient and would leave him with a wave of nausea rather inappropriate for battle. Though neither of them spoke the words they both knew that Bremman was doomed to die in this scorched wasteland, and Farwil was most likely to follow soon after. The Count's son had never seen fit to learn much magic; his father was House Hlaalu - and Great House full of merchants and traders - and he had been mollycoddled his entire life into thinking that he would never have need of the spells that he could have learnt. He knew how to heal himself after one too many run-ins with his father following street brawls in his teenage years, but his expertise mainly consisted of cuts and bruises. People didn't pick a fight with him in Cheydinhal, he picked fights with them, but now here, without his status to protect him from harm, he felt surprisingly vulnerable.

Bremman coughed with a nasty hack that made him sound as if he had been smoking raw moon sugar for years and began fiddling with the fastening of his left pauldron, which was smashed inwards and covered in flecks of dried blood; his left arm was useless now and hung limply at his side as they sat huddled on the charred ground awaiting the inevitable return of the daedra. Farwil loosened the fastenings for him once he saw his friend struggling and the Imperial shot his a grateful smile that almost turned into a grimace as he prized the useless piece of armour from his shoulder to reveal flesh blackened with bruises beneath.

Bremman sighed. "It was an honour to fight at your side, Sir Farwil," he said awkwardly between hacking coughs and shots of agony that were strong enough to make his whole body contort in pain.

"The honour is all mine Bremman," the Dunmer replied in a low voice. Inwardly he knew that this dire situation was all his fault and the turmoil he faced was just as - if not more so - excruciating as Bremman's injuries. "You are a good man, a true friend, and I couldn't have asked for a better person to go to their peril with me..."

The Imperial soldier forced a small but sincere smile. "Sir Farwil we must not begin this morbid talk off death. You and I both know that it is not over until it's over," he said, digging the tip of his iron sword in the ground beside him and using it as leverage to pull himself to his feet, swaying slightly as he did so. "We mustn't sit here and mope. Let's make sure we go out with a bang."

xxx

That's the third body, Turner thought as he stepped over the corpse of a young Breton who didn't appear to be older than twenty and was very obviously dead. How many went in here? Six?

He stood at the doorway to a network of caves with a burning wasteland stretching as far as the eye could see to his left and a bubbling pit of orange lava engulfing the view to his right, the Sigil Keep looming like an unwelcome visitor on the hazy horizon on the opposite shoreline. He did not wish to enter the caves considering the corpses that had been littered in the wide open spaces outdoors; it was all he could do to stop himself vomiting now. Instead he looked for a route over the top of the rock in which the door was imbedded and his golden eyes quickly settled on the section of the rock that seemed to have a shallow enough gradient for him to scramble up.

Oh well, he thought with a simple shrug. If I don't make it over first time then at least I can improve my efficiency at athletics.

xxx

This Oblivion world seemed simpler than some of the other that she had been in before; a path led to a cave led to a bridge led to the Sigil Keep, no jumping, Water Walking or levitation involved. She entered the caves without a thought for any alternate route. She had been in Oblivion worlds like this before and she knew by now that going through the caves was almost always the best option where staying alive was concerned. She stepped over the corpses without a second thought except that perhaps the Count's son was not yet one of them, and if she did notice the footprints left by a less than subtle Argonian at the base of the rockface then she didn't seem at all concerned by them.

By her standards the cave was almost empty; at the point where she dropped through a hole from the upper level to the lower level she had barely fought with a single daedra and had not even come across the bodies of the Dunmer she was searching for or any of the rest of his 'knights'. Idari had returned her katana to its position on her shoulder now that she was in the confined space of the caves in favour of a silver shortsword that she always carried in case of emergencies like being attacked by ghosts; anyone who knew anything knew that ghosts could only be damaged by silver or enchanted weapons, and silver was so much easier to come by these days. Immediately upon entering the lower level she was hit by the stench of dead things, though what things precisely she couldn't tell even if she'd wanted to; after stepping over the bloodied corpse of a clannfear runt followed by that of a regular clannfear, both with incisions in some various point of their flesh that had ultimately killed them, to reached the conclusion that at least one of the merry band of so-called heroes must still be alive.

She walked a little further into the cave complex and couldn't help but notice a trail of blood leading from a dented pauldron that had been disguarded on the ground further back. As she stepped around a corner she was immediately aware of an iron sword swinging in the direction of her head; she caught the blow on her own sword of course and managed with surprising ease to disarm her opponent in a single swing. Her attacker was an Imperial man with a gaping wound to his left arm and behind him stood a Dunmeri man with black hair and green skin; though she knew who at least of them was immediately they looked at her with a manner that almost made them appear horrorstruck.

"Who are you, stranger?" the Imperial man asked weakly, his voice gravelly and strained with pain.

Though Idari smiled beneath her hood, the darkness surrounding them made her gesture almost invisible. "I am the Hero of Kvatch," she said nonchalantly. "Indarys, you and I both know that you would have been long dead by now if it weren't for your little lackey here. He's clearly wounded so you mustn't rely on him so heavily."

Farwil scowled. "Sir Bremman is a fine example of everything we Knights of the Thorn stand for."

"Sure," Idari smirked, mumbling the words to a strong convalescence spell that she cast over the Imperial man and then a weaker one which landed on Farwil. "Coming in here with rank amateurs was foolish at best, fatal at worst. I've seen the corpses. One of them could have barely been fifteen years old..."

The Dunmer huffed indignantly. "All of my knights are selected carefully. Hundreds of applicants apply to join my brotherhood but only a few succeed in making it the final step. We only failed because one of our number chose to stay and defend Cheydinhal..."

"The wisest of you all then," the assassin replied condescendingly. "Now, we must keep moving before Dagon has a chance to send his army at us."

"Huzzah!" Farwil said enthusiastically with what was almost a smile. "Now the Knights of the Thorn shall go down in history as the saviours of Cheydinhal!"

xxx

Turner was debating the drop from the top of the rock that he had managed to climb onto when the door beneath him swung open and three figures stepped out. One he recognised instantly as Idari Mortha, assassin and part time saviour of Cyrodiil, and of the other two he assumed that the Dark Elven man was the supposed son of Count Andel Indarys. The Imperial was probably just a member of his club.

"Sister!" he called down to the Hero of Kvatch.

She looked up and saw him, her red eyes narrowly slightly. "What are you doing here, pondscum?" she asked him tersely. By now the others had taken notice of the other armoured person atop the rock who had called their Hero 'Sister'. They couldn't see any resemblance.

"Popped in for a pleasant stroll," Turner replied with a grin, jumping from the lowest point of the cliff that he could find and slipping to the floor on his landing, injuring nothing but his pride.

Idari resisted a smirk. She wouldn't go as far as to say she'd missed the clumsy Argonian and all the antics that went with him, but it definitely felt reassuring to know that somebody she could at least trust to keep a secret had got her back, and that she didn't have to spend all the time alone with Farwil and his companion who had yet to say anything except a muttered 'thanks' upon being healed.

"You picked a perfect spot for a walk," she told him sarcastically as she watched him pull himself to his feet and brush himself off. "Tell me, from up there could you see the daedra on that bridge? The element of surprise could be useful here."

Turner took a moment to collect himself before speaking again. "There were about two dremora on there, what looked like a clannfear and a massive daedroth... Other than that, a fairly reasonable place for a spot of recreation."

"Well at least you have a sword this time..." Idari sighed, ignoring the terrified expressions of the 'knights' beside her. Turner just rolled his eyes.

Farwil at last ventured to speak. "Excuse me Argonian, but who in Oblivion are you?"

The Argonian opened his mouth as if to speak but was silenced as the Dunmer cut him off. "That's the Hero of Skingrad," she told them definitively. "You probably won't have heard of him yet, but I'm sure they'll stick him in the Courier one day." Turner smiled inwardly; that was probably the biggest compliment he was ever going to get from her. "Now pondscum, when we get onto that bridge I'm going to take out the dremora, and I want you to concentrate on the lesser daedra - I know you can cope with them. Farwil, try not to do anything stupid, and no yelling 'huzzah', because I will not be held responsible when all the daedra decide you make an easy target..."

"And what of me?" Bremman spoke up. Now that his left arm was fully healed, he had decided to make full use of it wherever possible.

The female assassin frowned. "What's your name, Imperial?"

"Bremman Senyan, miss," he replied politely.

"And can you wield a sword, Bremman Senyan? Basic guard training does not count. Have you have experience of fighting daedra like these before today? Your injuries in there were severe and you would have surely been dead by now if I had not healed you. Your instincts alone will not keep you alive out there with dremora running about, you have to know what you're doing. I shall task you with keeping Idarys alive and out of trouble."

"I do not require babysitting Dunmer!" the count's son objected indignantly. "I am perfectly capable of..."

"Falling off the bridge?" Idari suggested with a malicious smirk. "Best keep a look out Bremman. The Count will not be best pleased if we bring back his son's corpse. Right then, let's get moving."

Author Note: That was a long-ish chapter with a long-ish author note on the beginning. I hope y'all liked it. I gave up on the NaNoWriMo. I didn't have an idea, and I've already wasted five days writing this! I should probably get back to my original fiction, but writing for you guys makes the job so much more worthwhile.

First off, thanks. Last chapter was one of my more successful endeavours. It only received 4 reviews, sure, but 2 of those reviewers were entirely new! So y'know, two regulars and two new ones seems pretty acceptable to me :D My third regular who didn't review yet - you know who you are - don't worry about it. Any other chapter I might have been pissed off, but I'm in a good mood today so :P Thanks to DualKatanas, Commentaholic, ZWig and Diana - keep it up, ya?

Second off, I took a couple of liberties with the races of the Knights of the Thorn. Here's a quote from UESP for you: Amminus Gregory tells you that Farwil "entered the Oblivion Gate with six other men", but only Bremman and four bodies can be found. Eight Fallen Knights are defined in the CS, however. Thus, I made them up!

I shall end this stupid author's note by saying one thing: if you've alerted or favourited this story I would appreciate a review. If I've alerted or faved you and not reviewed then let me know! I probably just forgot! Also, and here's a newsflash for ya, I know who you are. I get emails too y'know? XD If you've reviewed already, you're a legend. Keep it up! Whoa, we're ALMOST there. Whoa, livin' on a prayer - these lyrics belong to Bon Jovi (apart from the word 'almost', that was me). 10 reviews to go and 8 chapters. I think I might just make it y'know XD

~ARTY~ Also, I would just like a put a little patent on this signature. It's MINE, got it? XD You know if this applies to you. (Just kidding, nick it if ya want, I don't care) :P