A/N: I'm sorry I'm late with this! I shouldn't have said I would post by last Friday, I have no idea why I thought I could pump out more than twenty pages in four days. So this is the first one, and Chapter 27 will be posted a bit later today while I do some last-minute editing.

Ulrich Bienne belongs to SirronRocks, also known as Josh. (Ulrich's - and Jon Battle-Born's - mention of warrior poets always makes me think of Cpl. Person's line in Generation Kill: "As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, the day that does not require an AK is a good one." Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

Chapter 26

Aldric entered the Silent City from the north with the Tower of Mzark hazily lit like a distant beacon behind him. The massive walls all around the city prevented him from knowing anything about what they would all face within. Walking in blind, willingly, was something he had almost never done.

The smell of death and decay rode the breeze from inside, something even Twigs had noticed. Coming into the walled city knowing they were outnumbered and facing that scent was not something that pleased his wolf.

The Silent City had clearly once been a grand and impressive place—and, like every creation the Dwemer had left behind, it had slowly sunk into ruin and disrepair over the hundreds and thousands of years that had passed. Some doorways into the towers around him had been caved in with rock and rubble, and dirt and plant life had begun to quietly infiltrate the city.

He passed into the structure, walking very slowly and calmly with both hands clearly exposed. High above him, pathways had been constructed on nearly every wall. Falmer had patrolled them once, guarding the home they had taken over, but now they were empty.

And Aldric could see what had happened to the creatures that had lived there. A pile of bodies had been unceremoniously dumped in a corner of the complex not far from him. Falmer, along with a dozen or more of their human slaves, were heaped in a pile of tangled limbs.

His gorge rose when the scent reached him. Blood mingled with the pungent odor of excrement swept past him, and he turned his head away. Some of the bodies had been brutally torn apart, their bellies slit open in wide flaps to let bluish-black entrails spill out over the ground.

Aldric stopped where he was, unwilling to go any further from the wall close behind him. The orb above him was blinding, lighting up the city square like high noon. Somewhere further in, he could hear the low murmur of male voices.

He didn't have to wait long before someone came into view. A man in brown leather strode across the square, his gait comfortable and easy like someone at the marketplace in Whiterun. Aldric wondered if he would have to call out to him, when suddenly the man caught sight of him.

Frozen, the other man stared at him for a long moment. Aldric spread his hands out from himself, keeping them low and well away from the hilt of his greatsword. The man approached with his own weapon drawn, a plain steel one-handed axe.

When he got close enough, Aldric was surprised to recognize him. Thin and shaved bald, with a long, jagged scar running across his face, he was the man he'd put down with an empty glass bottle at Breezehome.

"You have a new scar now," Aldric observed.

The man's hand rose halfway to the mark on the side of his head before he could stop himself. His face flushed. "You are a stupid one," he breathed. "You brought that little squirrel of a boy with you, didn't you?"

Aldric kept his voice even as he answered. "His name is Twigs."

"And your team?"

"They're waiting beyond the city, further into the cavern." It wasn't a lie, though it was a stretch. Twigs and the rest of them weren't far behind him, on the grand set of stairs leading up to the Silent City.

The man looked past him and then back at him. "Now then, Aldric, why don't you tell me what you're doing here?"

Aldric noticed he hadn't loosened his grip on the axe. At this distance, a fast lunge would put him close enough to do some damage before Aldric's greatsword could clear its sheath. "You know my name, and I don't know yours. That's not very polite of you."

The other man sneered. "You don't need my name."

Movement registered to Aldric's left, and he could see without directly looking that the walkways above him were slowly filling with more men. At least three or four of them had crossed out onto the path nearest him.

"His name is Geirulf," a new voice said, belonging to a figure quickly approaching from behind the man with the scar. "And his axe will be buried in your chest if you don't answer his question."

Aldric didn't need to be told who the person addressing him was. "Sergius."

The explorer was of average height and build, light-skinned with close-cut dark golden hair, and nothing about his body or the scuffed leather he wore was impressive. Intimidation was very rarely about how tall or muscled one was, though—and Aldric could see right away that Sergius' authority and threat came from his eyes.

They were a pale color; green or maybe blue; and they were hard and flat and lifeless under fair, colorless brows. The stare that came from his face was unlike any other Aldric had ever seen from man or mer. It was a cold serpentine cruelty that looked out from behind Sergius' eyes.

Some of the taunting glee had left Geirulf's face at Sergius' appearance. "He says his team is waiting beyond the city."

"We'll find them," Sergius said.

He spoke well, smooth and calm, with a pleasant voice. It was his secure, emotionless tone that chilled Aldric. "I'm not here to muscle you out, Sergius."

"No, you aren't," the Imperial agreed. "I have fifteen—well, fourteen, as of this morning—men with me. And I don't bother with hiring little mages or healers or archers. Every man here is very good at the only thing I require them to be: killing."

"I don't doubt you," Aldric replied. He didn't. "How long have you been here?"

"A week, give or take a day or two." Sergius waved a hand. "We arrived well before you did, something I'm certain of."

"Given the time it took you to make your way through Mzinchaleft," Aldric told him casually, "and travel to the city, you did arrive first."

The skin around Sergius' eyes tightened only briefly at the knowledge that Aldric was aware of which ruin they'd come through. "Then you know we've won."

He let his gaze travel upward to the orb. Looking at it head on, he had to fight the urge to shade his eyes. "I don't think that's true. I think you've been here for a week and you've made no progress at all."

"It did take some time to clear the vermin from the city." The man waved his hand toward the massacre nearby. "And after all that, I had one of my crew escort some wounded back to the surface. My attention has been divided until recently."

Bluffing out of that monstrous face was still bluffing. "I have a proposal for you."

Sergius bared his teeth in an impression of a smile. "I'm not interested in hearing it."

"Fine." Aldric lowered his hands back to his sides again. Geirulf's axe twitched. "Then I'll gather my team and leave for the surface."

"That would be most wise of you, Aldric."

"But if we stay, and help you figure out what the orb is, then we'll split the pay."

Geirulf frowned, puzzled, like Aldric had just offered to marry him. "Why would you do that?"

"Half of fifty thousand septims is still a lot of money, Geirulf," he said dryly.

"Yes it is." Sergius smiled again, wider this time. "But you see, I've been paid half already, before I even set foot inside this place. Even if I fail my contract, I go home rich."

Aldric wondered at the kind of bargain the man must have driven with Augustus. "You've been paid half," he guessed. "Not your men. Not Geirulf."

"That's right."

He finally let himself look up and around him at the people gathered on the pathways, to his side and across the pavilion. "I'm not usually a betting man, but I'd be willing to wager some gold on the fact that these men would like a fighting chance at theirs. You're at least halfway intelligent, so I'd also bet that you can grasp the same thing Augustus did: two teams means you're twice as likely to succeed."

Sergius followed his gaze around them, and the set of his mouth told Aldric that he was angry. The men on his team, the ones who were so good at killing, had heard his words about losing their pay—and the ones on the walkway that had drawn their bows were lowering them now.

The man looked back at Aldric, his cold eyes fixing on him. "I think I'll take my chances alone, if it's all the same to you."

"And if you fail?" Aldric asked him. "Will you divide that twenty-five thousand fourteen ways?"

Sergius didn't have to speak to say no.

"You only benefit from this," Aldric said. "Halving my pay will double yours, and make your job that much easier. It's simple. Who wouldn't say yes to those terms?"

"It's not the gold he cares about this time," a voice called behind Aldric. "He wants the glory."

Aldric closed his eyes, annoyed, as footsteps behind him drew closer.

Twigs stopped beside him, glaring at Sergius. "For once you're ignoring the wealth, aren't you?"

Sergius looked him up and down. "Well. It's been a few years since I've seen you. It's remarkable the way sometimes even the most promising children fail to improve as they grow. You're older, but might be even stupider than you were when you were nineteen, which is fascinating."

Geirulf's grin tugged at the scar on his face. Aldric got the feeling he didn't do it a lot.

Twigs ignored them and spoke to Aldric. "He wants the credit for discovering what the orb is, what it means. Scholars all across Tamriel haven't been able to figure it out. Sergius wants his name to be the one in the books when they write about who discovered it."

"It'd be a nice little prize, yes," Sergius acknowledged.

"No one here cares about who gets credited," Aldric interjected. But even as he said that, something on Twigs' face told him that wasn't true.

Sergius didn't miss it, either. "I think our little friend here cares very much about who gets the credit," he said. "Don't you, Fuldarr?"

Twigs shook his head. "I'm an explorer, Sergius. I only care about finding what I'm after, and the adventure along the way."

Sergius gave a low laugh. "I almost believe that, you know. Those are Háls' words, aren't they? I can hear your father through you."

Aldric sensed Twigs' pulse climbing.

"And what did he learn, in the end?" Sergius cocked his head a little. "Hmm? He drowned an old, foolish man in a forgotten cave that no one's ever heard of. What would he say if he could see you now, Fuldarr? What has become of his legacy? You're nobody. You're worthless. You couldn't even hold onto a rope to save his life."

When the seconds ticked past and it became clear Twigs had nothing to say to that, Sergius continued.

"Did Augustus tell you that you were his second choice?" he asked. At Twigs' continuing silence, he chuckled. "Of course not. You see, when he hired me, he tried to get me to take you along. He was so insistent on it. I told him that you were one of the most useless apprentices I'd ever tried to train—that you were like a dog that just… didn't get it." Sergius shook his head in distaste. "It didn't surprise me when I learned that he'd decided to take pity on you and give you a contract. I told him it would be a shameful waste of gold, but you know how some people are. They just cannot resist taking in a stray." And then he laughed.

Aldric glanced over at Twigs. His eyes were wide and staring, and they held a pain so naked that it was difficult to look at. It was obvious that Twigs believed, in the deepest part of himself, that everything Sergius had just said about him was true.

The leftover tension from the confrontation Aldric had had with Twigs immediately disappeared. Suddenly, watching Sergius laugh, he found himself gripped with a surprising level of protective fury. If he struck fast enough, he was halfway sure the man's mouth would still smile while his head rolled across the ground.

Aldric raised his voice over Sergius' laughter. "I'll put my entire cut on the line."

The man stopped abruptly. "Excuse me?"

He looked back at him calmly. "You heard what I said. You let us stay, and I'll give you my cut. All of it."

Sergius looked him up and down. "And if you find the solution first, I'm left with nothing, I take it? That's not a very tempting proposal."

"No." Aldric shook his head. "You can keep my money even if you lose. That's an extra fifty thousand septims to divide amongst your men without having to give up any of that advance pay you took."

The shadow of a line appeared between Sergius' brows. "Then what are you to gain by winning?"

Aldric looked over at Twigs. "Fuldarr takes the credit for figuring out the orb. Every fucking bit of it."

Twigs turned his head in shock to meet his eyes.

All eyes were on Sergius. Even Geirulf watched him. All four of them, standing there surrounded by mercenaries, knew that for Sergius to turn down the offer would mean unsavory things for him down the road if they couldn't unlock the secrets the Silent City offered.

Sergius was smart, and had sensed the shift in atmosphere. "It seems I don't have much of a choice, doesn't it?" he hissed.

Aldric held out his hand to the other man, unable to hold back a smile. "Then I offer you luck, Sergius. You might need it. You of all people should know how stubborn he is." He cocked his head toward Twigs. "Once he sets his mind to something, he gets it."

Sergius looked down at his hand in disgust before walking back the way he'd come with Geirulf.

"That is sickening," Tinúviel announced upon seeing the pile of bodies.

Lyssa gasped. "Where did they come from?"

Aldric didn't glance behind him at the corpses. "Many Falmer lived here. This was called the Silent City partly because of the absence of Dwemer, and partly because of the Falmer."

The archer couldn't seem to tear her eyes away. "But… there are people in there. Men and women."

Aldric noticed that even Brynjolf was studying the gruesome display. "The Falmer had slaves, human slaves. I'm not sure how that happened."

"Perhaps they sought the creatures out," Kaspar suggested.

Tinúviel frowned. "Came to Blackreach looking for them, you mean? Wanting to serve them?"

The scout nodded.

"That's insane."

"I do not pretend to understand the mind." Kaspar shrugged. "But the Falmer are strange and fascinating. Sometimes people become obsessed with things they do not understand."

"Renrij," Raj muttered, shaking his head. "Vala vasa, an sri jo'tenurr."

"Mercenaries, captured by dark magic," Khal clarified.

Tinúviel pointed at him in agreement and looked at Aldric.

"Both of those theories sound likely to me," he said, kneeling on the ground to secure his pack. "Don't dwell on it. There's nothing we can do about it now, and if we work fast, we won't have to be around it for long."

Sergius had gathered more of his team and was stationed on the opposite side of the square. While his men were talking, he stood motionless on the outskirts of his group and watched Aldric, taking in Twigs and the others.

Yousef rounded the corner and made his way toward Aldric with another person in tow. The thief's right eye was bruised a deep purple, nearly forced shut by the swelling.

"Was that your reward for making it back to the city?" Aldric asked him.

Yousef nodded. "I never got the chance to make for the surface with my friend. Sergius thought I'd deserted him for you. Geirulf wanted him to kill me."

That didn't surprise him. "And why didn't they?"

"Because none of the rest of them can pick a lock worth a damn, and Yousef has come in very handy for that," said the man behind the thief, stepping around him to come closer.

Aldric blinked up at him and rose from the ground. "Ulrich Bienne, you are one of the last people I would have expected to find here."

The man flashed a handsome smile. "Why? Have you not heard of the famous warrior poets of Skyrim?"

Yousef, along with Brynjolf and Tinúviel, frowned. "You know each other?"

Tall and blond, with leaf-green eyes that were almost always smiling, Ulrich was the only soldier Aldric had ever met that could sing and play a lute as well as he could swing a sword.

Ulrich was also the only half-Altmer person, man or woman, he'd ever met, which was something he kept to himself. Ironically, he'd also been part of the Stormcloaks for years. The bard was the kind of person that never did what was predictable, and seemed to enjoy smashing expectations into dust.

The more he thought about it, the less surprised he was to find Ulrich in Blackreach.

"Met at the Bard's College in Solitude," Aldric told Yousef. "A long time ago. I'd just come to Skyrim."

A look of pure delight rolled over Tinúviel's face. "You were a bard?"

Aldric rolled his eyes. "I was passing through, looking for any kind of work I could find. The College gave easy jobs and paid well."

"He could've been one." Ulrich's eyes gleamed with mischief. "One night we found out that he'll sing if you give him enough spiced wine. Not a bad voice at all. Vingalmo would've taken him in a second."

"Now that is something I think I would like to see," said Kaspar.

Brynjolf laughed. "Aye."

Aldric quickly changed the subject. "Why did Sergius take you? You're not the same breed of sellsword that he seems partial to."

Ulrich shrugged. "I was visiting the College. He came poking around, asking if he could borrow a bard that could write down everything that happened here. No one else wanted to do it, so I volunteered. I'm always up for a good adventure."

Twigs' words about Sergius wanting his name written in books about Blackreach came back to him. "That's humble." Sergius was still staring at them. "I don't think both of you should be over here with us."

Ulrich looked over his shoulder before Aldric could stop him. "I'm not afraid of him."

"I didn't say you should be, but you're still part of his team, and you should work with him."

"Why?" Yousef looked offended. "Why not stay with you?"

"Because," Aldric said, "I told Sergius we'd split our earnings with his team if he allowed us to enter the city, no matter who figures this out first."

"I'll gladly take half if it means we can get away from that brute," Ulrich stated.

"I understand, but doing that right now might cause problems. If you—"

"Augustus won't pay the two of you if you join us," Twigs interrupted.

Everyone looked over to him. "What?" Yousef asked.

Twigs was staring off into the distance, sitting cross-legged on the ground. "He won't pay the two of you. You were hired to the other team. There are two separate contracts." His voice was monotone.

Ulrich looked like he might have something to say about that, but Aldric shook his head. "You can leave with us, if you'd like. But for now, just head back over to him."

The two men reluctantly turned and began to cross the pavilion to where Sergius and the rest of his men were gathered. Aldric watched them go, and then sat down next to Twigs. One by one, everyone else began to find a spot on the ground, until they were all sitting in a circle around Twigs, looking at him like attentive ducklings.

Twigs looked up at Aldric, his eyes dull. "We're not going to be able to do this. When Sergius feels pressured, he doesn't hold anything back. He'll blow that orb from the cave ceiling if he wants to."

"What does Sergius know about the orb?" Lyssa asked. "Did he say?"

"No," Aldric told her. "He didn't share information."

Twigs gave a dark smirk. "He doesn't know anything about it."

"How can you be sure of that?"

"Because he never thinks he has to know anything about what he's after," Twigs said simply. "Any time anything has ever stood in his way—a puzzle, a trap—he just destroys it. He's never had to think before."

Aldric liked the sound of that. "Then we have something he doesn't have."

Twigs frowned. "What?"

Gently, Aldric pulled the worn journal out of the other man's lap and held it up to him. "Research."

For the twelfth time, Lyssa took aim with her bow and then released. The arrow shot straight to the orb, and then clinked against the ornate iron bars it was caged in. She hadn't yet managed to strike the object itself, only the bars.

"Again," Aldric said. "Keep going until you hit it."

With a nod, she drew another arrow from her quiver and nocked it.

So far, they were the only ones in the center of the square. Sergius and his team were still on their side of the plaza, silently observing Aldric and his team. Arms crossed, watching Lyssa shoot, Aldric felt his wolf beginning to stir, eager to fight against him the same way it had before.

Desperate for a distraction, he turned to Twigs. "Tell me about your father."

Blinking in surprise, he looked over at him. "Why?"

"I want to hear what he was really like. Not what that horse's ass had to say about him."

Twigs glanced over at Sergius for a brief second. "Sergius was right about his age. He was old when he died… maybe too old to be climbing around in caves with me," he admitted. "He married my mother when he was almost fifty. Other children always thought he was my grandfather."

Aldric chuckled even as he felt sweat break out on his forehead. Not now. "Why so late in life?"

Twigs shrugged. "I asked him that a few times when I was older. He never told me, but once my mother said he hadn't had a good life before he met her."

"She changed that for him?"

"My mother is a lot like my sister," Twigs said. "They're fixers. They always seem to know exactly what to do, exactly what to say. I think that's what my father needed."

"Was he good to you?"

A quiet moment passed. "Yes. He was a great father. My mother said he was a hothead when they met, had absolutely no patience, but that he changed when my sister and I were born. He taught me all he knew about caves, tombs, everything else. To everyone else he seemed hard, but to us… he was always kind."

One of Lyssa's arrows landed on the ground only a few paces from them, rolling to a stop. Aldric stared at it, trying hard to concentrate and control his beast.

"What was your father like?" Twigs asked him.

"I never met him," he said.

"Oh." Twigs rubbed the back of his neck. "Did he die, or…?"

"I have no idea. He took off when my mother became pregnant with me," Aldric told him.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

Another moment passed. Lyssa stopped for a few seconds and rotated her shoulder and neck.

"I wanted to say," Twigs said suddenly, "that I'm sorry for… how I acted when you returned. I thought you were dead, and right before you showed up Tinúviel and I—"

"Kaspar told me." Aldric glanced at him. "It's not your fault, Twigs. Something isn't right with me, with my wolf."

Twigs looked curious. "What do you mean?"

Aldric was about to answer when Tinúviel let out a long, ragged growl of irritation. "This isn't working! She's hit the orb at least four times, I can see sparks when she does it!"

He straightened in surprise. "Why didn't you say anything, Lyssa?"

"I was attempting to hit the same spot many times to see if that would do anything."

Aldric motioned for Raj, who was waiting nearby. The dark Khajiit stepped up, looking eager. Flames gathered in his cupped palm, and a second later a massive burst of fire rolled forth, ripping through the air toward the sphere. Aldric felt a lick of heat slap against his face.

The fireball exploded into the cage, sparks showering down on them like raindrops caught on fire. The men on Sergius' team all whooped and hollered, some swearing, at the display. The orb rocked, swaying back and forth on its tether in a painfully long moment.

Nothing happened.

Tinúviel bent and seized a rock the size of her fist, lobbing it with an enraged yell at the orb. It sailed halfway there and landed harmlessly on the ground far from them. "I hate this thing!"

Aldric almost laughed, but he caught sight of Sergius' face.

"We have already done everything you've tried today, Aldric," the man called from his side of the square.

He turned to Twigs. "Read over your notes again. We must be missing something."

Brynjolf had drawn up beside them, looking tired. "But maybe we aren't, lad." He smoothed a hand over his scratchy beginnings of a beard. "So much about the Dwemer was lost when their cities started to crumble. We may never know what the orb does. Shor's bones, they may not have known what it does."

Twigs was frowning, flipping back and forth through the pages of his journal. "Augustus was able to get his hands on some of Thelwe Gelein's private notes, pages from something he never got to publish that had been recovered and preserved by his relatives." He paused, looking up at Brynjolf and Aldric. "He was the one who wrote the Dwemer Inquiries series."

"I know who he is, Twigs."

"Right. Ah… here. In one text, Gelein mentions that besides referring to the orb as something important, the only other word he could translate was 'summon.'" Twigs looked up again.

Brynjolf squinted. "So… you summon the orb."

"Maybe? I don't know, the writings weren't very clear..."

"Do you know any of the dwarven language? Perhaps if you were to…"

Aldric slowly tuned them out, staring upward at the sphere. Almost directly beneath it, he could make out thin, spindly etchings all over the brilliant surface. He kept expecting to feel heat bathing him, like the sun, but the air around him was as cool as the rest of Blackreach.

"The orb summons something," Aldric said, interrupting Brynjolf and Twigs.

They turned to look at him in unison. "Come again?" Twigs asked.

"That orb will summon something," he repeated. "That is what it does."

Mouth slack, Twigs craned his neck and looked up at it. "I think you might be right about that."

Sometime during the conversation, Tinúviel had appeared. "But we're still no closer to discovering how to make it summon something."

"And I don't think we should do that, even if we do figure it out," Aldric added.

She nodded vehemently. "I fully agree with you."

"Why not?" Twigs protested. "If we could just—"

"Twigs, you have no idea what that thing could call," Aldric snapped. "It could be anything. It could be a small army of Centurions, or it could wake every single living creature inside of Blackreach and bring them here. It could be something we've never even dreamed of. Don't forget that the entire race of dwarves disappeared and nobody really knows why."

"Do you really think all of us together couldn't handle whatever that thing calls?"

Aldric turned to see Sergius standing behind him. "I am not that arrogant. The Dwemer had access to things that powerful mages and scholars are still trying to understand, thousands of years later."

"I find myself beginning to care about caution less and less," Sergius said, sounding bored. "I've been in this business for more than half my life and I have never faced something that couldn't be put down with brute force."

Silently, Aldric's wolf growled. "When you get reckless, you get hurt."

Sergius looked at Twigs. "What was it Augustus said, Fuldarr? The orb was a source of power. Now that we know the orb itself is merely a signal, whatever it speaks to must be the source of power."

Twigs' mouth was a tight line. "I suppose."

"You see?" Sergius gave another of his lizard smiles. "Anything I've ever been hired to track down that has been called 'powerful' has always been merely expensive or rare. You would think that 'power' could mean many different things, but usually it just means 'money.'"

"There are a lot of things wrong with what you just said," Aldric began, pinching the bridge of his nose, "the first of which is that you're forgetting to consider the mindset of the Dwemer. Many things inside Blackreach are powerful, yes, but dangerous and unexplained."

"Like the Tower of Mzark," Twigs put in.

Sergius snorted. "The Tower of Mzark. I've been inside, I've examined that thing, and it does nothing. It wouldn't budge. A pretty, but useless, machine."

"That's because it already did what it was designed for." Aldric spoke through gritted teeth before he could think better of it.

Sergius' brows raised. "And how would you know that?"

He pushed his hair out of his face with both hands. "Forget I said anything."

"Blackreach has been rumored to hold many incredible things." The Imperial's gaze flicked up to the orb. "All but extinct creatures, rare and deadly plants, fantastic wealth… even Elder Scrolls."

"Really?" Tinúviel said, sounding skeptical. "Here?"

Aldric could feel Sergius' gaze, intense on him. "Yousef mentioned that he knew you'd been to Blackreach before."

Brynjolf stood a little straighter.

Aldric could feel the pressure building around them, like something tangible he could almost touch. His wolf tensed within him.

Sergius took a step closer, his eyes locked on Aldric. "You know what the machine does in the Tower, don't you? You know what it was designed for."

Even Twigs was looking at him.

"What did it give you?" Sergius pressed, moving closer. "That jade receptacle. What did it hold? What could a machine of that vast size and power have been guarding, Aldric?"

He clenched his jaw.

Sergius was just about close enough to touch him. His voice was low, almost hushed. "Was it an Elder Scroll?"

For a split second, Aldric thought he might lose the battle of wills with his wolf and snarl instead of speak. "Back away."

Sergius began to walk backward. "I'll return to my team, for now. And I'll keep watching you, Aldric. I think you might have a secret or two that I would very much like to learn."

He turned to Brynjolf once the man had gone far enough. "We need to figure this out, or we need to leave. Quickly."

Brynjolf nodded, still watching the Imperial. "I don't like the way he's behaving. He's too smart."

Aldric crossed his arms while Twigs started the process of scouring his notes again. The younger man was muttering to himself, forefinger flying over each line of scribbled ink.

"I can't…" Twigs shook his head. "I can't find anything else here, Aldric. I'm sorry. The most useful piece of information I could find was Gelein's copy of what he was able to translate concerning the orb. It just mentions the orb, and power, and the word 'summon.'"

Tinúviel sighed. "Maybe we should just leave, then. That man is getting more and more nasty the longer we're here."

"Is that everything, Twigs?" Aldric asked.

"Yes."

"Every single thing you could possibly tell me from that journal?" he stressed. "Even things you might think aren't important to me?"

"Yes! Well, except for this. I noticed it about an hour ago, but I'm probably wrong." At Aldric's stare, Twigs bent his head over his notes again. "All right, well… it's just that I think it's possible that Gelein mistranslated the word he thought was 'power.' In Dwemeri, these two words are very similar, and it's easy to see how he might've—"

"Twigs, Twigs," Aldric stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "What is the word you think he got wrong?"

"Force." Twigs' soft brown eyes met his. "I think the original inscription might have said 'force' instead of 'power.'"

"Orb. Force. Summon." Tinúviel said out loud. "I don't understand. By all means, striking that thing should have worked. We've done everything—Sergius has done everything—we possibly could have to rattle it."

"Short of an army and its resources, yes," Twigs agreed.

"Then what more can we do?" she demanded. "What could we possibly do that could hit it with enough force to get it to work?"

Brynjolf slowly turned to face Aldric. Very few times in his life had Aldric ever been able to understand exactly what another person was trying to say to him using just a look on their face, but it was happening then.

Aldric concentrated hard on ignoring him.

Twigs had closed the little book in his hand. "I don't know," he said, shoulders slumping. "I told you, I'm probably wrong. Gelein was a master scholar, and I'm just a cave-crawler."

Brynjolf cleared his throat.

"But if you are right, then the Dwemer must have known what could unlock this thing, something powerful enough," Tinúviel countered.

Brynjolf's elbow nudged his side, hard.

Aldric finally turned to him, glaring. "Don't," he warned.

"Don't what?" Twigs looked up.

"I think Aldric might have a solution," Brynjolf told him, a grin creeping across his face.

Tinúviel looked confused. "You do?"

Aldric wanted to scream. "Even if I did, there's still the problem of what this thing summons."

Twigs still looked unconvinced. "I still want to find out. I don't like Sergius, and I don't respect him, but he has a point. Whatever it is has got to be worth it. Was…" he trailed off for a second before gathering his courage. "Was he right? Did you find an Elder Scroll in the Tower of Mzark?"

Aldric didn't answer.

"You did," Twigs breathed. Then his eyes opened wide. "You did."

Tinúviel's jaw dropped. "That oaf was right?"

"Ysmir's beard!" Twigs exclaimed. "That oaf was right!"

"Aldric, there could be another one here, another Elder Scroll." Tinúviel looked like she wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him.

"Something might be inside of it, after all," Twigs speculated excitedly. "Please, Aldric, I'm begging you, if you know how to get it to work…"

Brynjolf tilted his head in a playful shrug. "Might not be a bad idea."

Aldric bowed his head, his hand bunching into fists, fighting to swallow his frustration, and his wolf chose that moment to make its bid for freedom. A ripple vibrated down his spine, from the base of his skull to his tailbone, the very beginning of his change.

His head jerked up and he stepped back from everyone. Looking up at the orb, Aldric channeled every bit of the anger and rage and fear that he was feeling at that moment. He reached deep inside of him for the power that he had not called on in so long, and he opened his mouth.

The quiet of Blackreach was shattered as his Thu'um rent the air. The ancient words were lost in the deafening crack of thunder as the force of his Shout slammed into the orb. The iron cage around it shuddered, and the dust of a thousand years of stillness began to rain down over them.

Aldric lowered his head, blinking. It had been years since he'd Shouted, and he'd almost forgotten the way it felt to unleash the Thu'um. Momentarily stunned into submission, his wolf faded.

Every single pair of eyes was trained on him. Brynjolf and Kaspar were the only ones that didn't sport looks of utter shock, terror, wonder, or disbelief. Everyone was frozen, rooted to where they stood, as if any kind of sudden movement might prompt him to do it again.

Sergius was the first to recover. He started to walk to Aldric, eyes dark in that expressionless face, when something happened.

The orb above them flashed, a brief second of brightness, and Aldric felt a push of energy from it that punched into him and crawled around his spine. He had never felt anything like it, but somehow it seemed familiar.

High above them, a deep tone rang out, like an impossibly large gong had been struck. It echoed out again and again through the cavern before fading into silence once again.

It had worked. The orb was summoning something.

Still motionless, every gaze moved from Aldric to the space around them. Each entrance to the Silent City somehow seemed much more ominous than before. As the silence stretched on, so did the tension; what would come out of the darkness for them?

And then he heard it. It was unmistakable. Wind billowed in steady, impossibly huge gusts as the flap of enormous wings rode the air toward them. The blood drained from Aldric's face seconds before a furious roar erupted from the shadows.

He looked up in time to see the dark outline of the beast glide over the city, coasting on wide-spread wings as its head tilted down to observe all of them. It challenged them again, bellowing even louder than his Shout as it circled.

He was handsome. His scales gleamed bronze, washed to a rosy glow by the light of the orb. Darker patterns splashed across his wings, and Aldric could tell by the tattered edges of them and the curve of his horns that he was very, very old.

"DRAGON!" screamed one of the men to Aldric's right.

The man's fearful alarm served to jerk the others out of their stupor, and voices began to rise on both sides. Some of the men broke and ran, sprinting out of the city. Some of them moved toward Aldric, looking expectantly at him. He could pick out the high pitch of Tinúviel, who was fighting to make her way toward Aldric through the people that were swarming around her.

"Get the woman!" Sergius could be heard yelling over the noise as he furiously began to gather his belongings.

"No one's been able to get close to her!" Geirulf yelled back, his axe once more in his hand. "She took Sakir's ear yesterday when he—"

"I don't care!" Sergius snarled, shoving the man. "Find that bitch and her bow now!"

"Aldric!" Tinúviel was suddenly there in front of him, Brynjolf and Kaspar not far behind. Twigs stood well away from them, gaping up at the beast circling overhead. "What do we do?"

"There she is!" Geirulf pointed behind Sergius.

Distracted, Aldric looked behind Tinúviel to see who Geirulf was pointing at. Across the square, a figure had exited the doors of the tower that lead to the platforms far above them. He was about to answer Tinúviel when he saw that the person was ignoring Geirulf and Sergius entirely, walking straight to them.

She was thirty feet from him when he stopped breathing.

His ears were still ringing from the force of his Shout, and he wondered if he was hallucinating. He remembered the way he had been so sure that she was in Blackreach, after Yousef had found him, and then how he had realized how stupid it was to think that.

She moved closer to him, slower now. Her face was hidden by the same kind of masked hood she'd worn when he had seen her for the first time—but those eyes, the color of Dwemer ingots, were as unmistakable as the sound of the dragon's wings.

He was back in Falkreath, watching her glare at him possessively, standing over the elk her arrow had taken down before his.

"I've been tracking this bull since damn near the Jerall Mountains."

And then he was back in Riften, in Honeyside, in bed with her. Sleepy and naked and lying on his side to face her, he held her close, so close. The black silk of her hair fell over his arm. Her lips moved against his throat as she whispered to him.

"You feel like home to me."

Years of rehearsing what he would say to her if he ever saw her again were failing him. Not a damn word came out of his mouth.

Another burst of light flared across her face, and fire reflected in her eyes, and she finally tore her gaze from his to look up. Distantly, Aldric could feel the ground under his boots shaking, and men were screaming around him, but he couldn't move.

Rory pulled down the mask over her face and yelled at him. "Kill the dragon, you idiot!"