As soon as the heavy wooden door to the Ratway Vaults shut behind her, Siri could tell something was wrong.

The door swung shut on its creaky hinges with a dull thud, followed by the sound of the metal door latch falling back into place. The sounds, eerie as they were, sent a shiver up her spine, and she hoped that the sound wasn't a portent of bad things to come. Almost immediately, however, she knew her hope had been in vain.

An unsettling silence hung on the air, and she cast a glance at Beirir, whose eyes told her he was having the same thought she was.

Tread lightly. Danger is afoot.

Brother and sister skirted the two-story drop in the center of the dimly-lit room, following the stone path around to a narrow tunnel across the way.

Unexpectedly the silence was shattered as Siri and Beirir reached the hallway. The harsh voice of a Thalmor wizard, echoing off the cold stones, tore through the dank dungeon, startling Siri badly and causing her to step back toward the precipice behind her.

"There she is! The Dragonborn! Seize her!"

Two Thalmor soldiers appeared out of the gloom and lunged at her; only through sheer luck did she manage to throw herself out of the way.

Reappearing out of nowhere (Siri supposed he had turned himself invisible at the Altmer's initial shout), Beirir gave a light push to one of the soldiers, who was precariously balanced at ledge-side after losing Siri. The unforunate Altmer gave a short, sharp utterance of unpleasant surprise as he fell; his cry, however, was cut short as he hit the stones far below with a sickening crunch of bone and armor that reverberated off the vaulted ceiling.

The second soldier had not rushed forward as recklessly as his compatriot and had already turned, throwing himself at the small Nord woman who was sprawled on her back on the flagstones.

Siri saw the elf coming and turned herself slightly, pulling her dagger from its sheathe on her hip and kicking the Altmer's feet out from under him. He fell forward, a look of shock on his face, and landed heavily upon Siri—and her dagger. Quickly Siri shoved him off her; the tall Thalmor lay clutching the knife in his gut and screaming in pain, desperately trying to right himself. Pulling out her axe, Siri finished the elf—mercifully—with a single blow, then retrieved her befouled dagger from his still-bleeding corpse.

Beirir, meanwhile, had decided to play with his new quarry, the Thalmor wizard. Dodging the elf's firebolt attacks, the Nord vanished once more. The wizard laughed.

"You think your little invisibility stunt will save you from me?" he jeered. "I am a top-ranking Thalmor official, an Altmer. We are superior mages; you poor Nords can only pray to your false god to have a hope of harnessing the magicks of Mundus as we can—a simple detect life spell—"

A moment later he fell heavily to the floor, throat slashed, blood running freely, as the lanky Nord reappeared behind him, dagger crimsoned in victory.

"Oh yes," Beirir said. "Quite superior."

As they pressed on through the Vaults, Siri was horrified by the gory trail the Thalmor had left: here and there lay the bodies of various lowlifes and vagrants, left to die in pools of their own blood; the stench of charred flesh, courtesy of the wizard's destruction magic, blended with the metallic bite of blood and the other rank smells of death to hang nauseatingly upon the already heavy, stagnant air. It looked to Siri as though the entire population of the Ratway had been destroyed; even Beirir, who traded in death, had to avert his gaze from the innocents who had been murdered by the Thalmor without a second thought.

Onward they went, deeper into the maze of identical stone corridors, past the corpses of Riften's ill and insane, the desperate and destitute. Silence hung between the siblings like a veil: neither dared speak; it seemed somehow disrespectful to the fallen. Every time she passed another body, Siri would recite in her mind a short prayer to the Nine that the deceased might find peace in Aetherius.

Finally—not soon enough, she thought—Siri and her brother reached a section of the Warrens that, it seemed, the Thalmor agents had not yet reached. She found the audible ramblings of the few somewhat deranged inhabitants of this area oddly comforting after the ominous silence that had covered the rest of the Ratway like a funereal shroud.

Up a flight of stairs she went; doing an about-face at the top landing, she saw what was surely her destination: a heavily-reinforced door with a sliding panel in the front, just like the one Ra'Zha had described to her in the Flagon. She approached it quickly, praying to Talos that she was not too late.

"Esbern?" she called, knocking sharply on the door.

The panel slid to one side and a pair of eyes appeared in the opening.

"There's no one here by that name," came a gruff voice.

Siri rejoiced inwardly. He was okay! She had beaten the Thalmor to him after all!

"Esbern, please," she said. "I'm a friend. I'm here to help you." A derisive snort was the answer she received, the eyes glaring at her through the small opening not softening at all.

"I don't know who you're referring to, but it isn't me. I'm not Esbern. Now leave me alone!" The small panel shut forcefully, echoing the ire that had risen in the old man's voice.

"Esbern, wait!" Siri called. "Delphine sent me! She told me to ask you where you were on the 30th of Frostfall!"

Silence on the other side of the door. It lasted so long Siri almost wondered whether Esbern had suddenly dropped dead. At length he reopened the sliding panel.

"How…?"

"Delphine is alive, Esbern, and she sent me to fetch you. My name is Siri, sir, and…" here she hesitated briefly, "I'm Dragonborn."

Abruptly the sliding panel slid shut again, but this time Siri could hear Esbern's voice as he…what was he doing?

A few moments later, Siri realized: locks!

"Just a second…this one always sticks…"

It was almost comical how many locks the man had on the door; in fact, out of the corner of her eye, Siri thought she saw Beirir stifling silent giggles. She couldn't begrudge the man his security, though, given who was hunting for him. After what seemed an eternity, the heavy door jolted open and swung inward.

"Come in," said the elderly Nord, gesturing for Siri and her brother to move quickly. He shut the door behind them, throwing a couple locks back into place before rounding on Siri. "So," he said, a hint of awe in his voice, "you're…can it really be true? Dragonborn?"

"Yes," replied Siri, "at least, according to Delphine…" And the guards in Whiterun…and the Greybeards…and any time a dragon dies anywhere near me…

Esbern seemed ecstatic. "Then," he cried, "there…there is hope! The gods have not abandoned us! We must…" here his speech tapered off, and the man—surprisingly sprightly for a 70-something-year old living in a sewer—began hurrying about the small (yet surprisingly cozily furnished) room, grabbing books and stacks of papers, throwing food and supplies into a travel sack. "We must go, quickly. Now. You must take me to Delphine. We have much to discuss."

While the old Nord was packing, Siri walked around the room, picking up anything else that she thought Esbern might want to take. There were so many books—Siri grabbed copies of The Dragon Break and The Rise and Fall of the Blades, as well as a couple others that sounded like they might contain useful information: The Dragon War, Children of the Sky, and Fire and Darkness. She also picked up the spare Septims littering the ground by Esbern's bookshelf and a silver jeweled necklace buried under a heap of scrap parchment.

Once Esbern had packed the last of his books and notes, he, Siri, and Beirir set out from his tiny room.

"There! There he is! Get them!"

Another Thalmor wizard and two more soldiers had apparently found their way to this deepest section of the Warrens. Siri drew her axe, and Beirir his dagger; as her brother vanished into thin air, Siri turned back to Esbern, only to find that the man had conjured up a towering frost atronach. She hastily stepped out of its way, feeling the cold emanating from its icy body as it made a beeline for the wizard.

The larger of the two soldiers, meanwhile, charged at Siri, his elven war-axe glinting in the light of the wizard's firebolts. He had clearly decided that despite her strange-looking armor—almost dragonlike in its appearance—this small Nord woman should be an easy opponent for him to best.

Siri, seeing the hulking Altmer, crouched down as though preparing to fight; when he drew near enough, however, she ducked down further and launched herself forward at his shins. Taken by surprise, the Altmer tripped unceremoniously over the Dragonborn, tumbling head-over-heels to a clattering halt on the grimy stones, completely disoriented.

Siri was still dimly aware of her surroundings: Beirir had slit the other Thalmor soldier's throat, stealthily sneaking up on her and catching her unaware, while the Thalmor wizard had succumbed to Esbern's destruction magic and a nasty gore-wound from the frost Atronach's wickedly pointed arms. Her focus, however, rested upon her quarry—her prey—who was struggling to his feet.

A resounding clash of metal echoed off the vaulted ceiling: Siri struck her adversary hard on his armored side, her Daedric war-axe doing nasty damage to the elf's cuirass and, she judged by his pained cry and sudden doubling-over, possibly fracturing some of his ribs. Taking advantage of the moment, Siri kicked him over ferociously, laying him out once more on the stones of the sewer floor.

This time the Altmer made no move to rise. Instead he lay there, casting about for his axe while still clutching his injured side. Siri stood, watching, suddenly unwilling to land the killing blow on an individual who could not defend himself properly. She relaxed out of her battle-stance, contemplating the elf, who was clearly no longer a threat. What to do?

The elf, for his part, seemed taken aback by the small Nord's restraint. Grunting, he hauled himself up onto one elbow.

"Aren't…you going to…kill me?" he asked haltingly, wincing with the exertion and the pain of drawing breath. Siri looked down at him.

"Well, you can't fight back," she said, "and I am not a murderer…unlike you."

She expected some sort of derisive comment, mocking her as weak or soft, but it never came. Instead, the elf pulled off his ornate golden helmet, revealing his long, black hair and the lines of his high cheekbones, and sank back to the ground.

Siri was surprised. Never before had she come across a Thalmor agent who hadn't mocked her until the moment she killed them.

"What are you going to do with him?" Beirir asked, his voice startling Siri out of the fog of her thoughts.

"I'm not sure," she replied. "But…I really don't think he's going to go running back to the Thalmor. They would probably just kill him for failing to bring us in. And even if he does go back to them, so what? What's he going to say? He doesn't know where we're bound or what we're doing."

Siri looked back down at the elf. He was beginning to pale, and his eyes were shut. His breathing seemed increasingly labored. With a sigh, she knelt down at his side.

"What's your name?" she asked.

The Altmer turned his head slightly, opening his eyes, brow furrowed in a quizzical expression. "Aranath," he managed at last.

"Aranath," said Siri, "take this." She had produced from her bag a healing potion—one of the strongest money could buy—and handed it to him.

The elf looked at her, brow furrowed.

"Why…why are you…?"

"Look," she replied bluntly, "I don't know what your Thalmor superiors have told you about us Nords, but we're not a bunch of ignorant savages, and I for one will not just sit idly by and watch someone succumb to wounds if I can help them. I am not," she added, "a cold-blooded murderer."

Images flashed before her eyes—the Imperial captain, breathing her last in Helgen keep, blood pouring from the wound Siri had given her.

Not usually…

Gazing pensively at the Nord woman, Aranath accepted the large bottle, gulping down the burning, bitter potion. Almost instantly he felt bone knit, flesh heal; the tenderness in his side vanished. All that remained of his wound was the massive dent left in his armor by Siri's axe. Sitting up, he pulled off the destroyed chest piece. He reached for his axe; Beirir jerked forward, and for a moment Siri was concerned, but then the Altmer surprised her by holding it out to her, his head bowed.

"Thank you," he said. "I owe you my life…and an apology."

Siri stood dumbfounded, receiving the axe without even realizing that she had. Aranath pushed himself up off the ground and stood before her.

"You have shown me today that not all Nords are what the Dominion would have us believe," he said. "So allow me to do the same for you. I am in your debt, and offer myself into your service, if you will accept."

Siri glanced uncertainly at Beirir, who simply shrugged. Turning back to the elf, Siri hesitated, looking down at the war-axe in her hands for a few moments before placing it back in Aranath's hands.

"Thank you," she said, "but you needn't."

A flicker of amusement crossed the elf's face as he accepted his axe back from her. "Very well," he said. "But should you ever require anything, I am at your service."

A long pause ensued. It was Beirir who finally broke the silence.

"What will you do now?" he asked. Aranath turned, fixing his amber eyes on Siri's brother.

"I can't say I really know," the Altmer admitted. "I suppose I shall have to find somewhere to lie low for a while and plan my next moves." Beirir grinned.

"I know just the place!"