Tried my luck with a Thalmor chapter. Elenwen might seem be a bit OC but there wasn't a whole lot to go on so I decided to spice things a bit up, Hopefully for the better.

I will go a bit more into 'the Thalmor perspective' in a later chapter, but I've realized that I really like writing from the 'bad' guys perspective.

Lot's of wacky sentences and spelling errors ahead, you've been warned.

Warning There is a light torture scene in this one.

Answer to the riddle is Darkness.

Chapter 11: The Ambassador


Elenwen sat cross-legged on an upholstered wooden chair with soft dark blue padding and intricate carvings of waves and birds along the armrests and back.

The wall featured arching columns of obsidian coloured stone that reached all the way to the curved roof with large white-grey painted bricks in between. Unfortunately the building was old and the paint had fallen off in places, small flakes of white leaving cold grey stone behind. The few paintings present on the walls looked more like cheap copies than original artwork. It was a sorry sight, even the architecture was primitive. It could have been better she knew, any building from the Summerset isles would've been a joy for the eyes compared to this bleak and god forsaken country. But they had not deemed it necessary to provide the funds for anything more than a bare minimum when it came to the embassy, Skyrim had simply not been worth it at the time, but things had changed, some for the better some for the worse. The civil war was convenient in a lot of ways, it gave them the opportunity to affect the next ruler of the land while at the same time draining valuable resources from the empire in the war effort. The downside was that the whole place was even more of a mess than before. The weather was terrible, the architecture was boring and the people were dimwitted Talos worshippers. But, she told herself, the key to success was to find a stable footing in all the chaos and work with the mess that she had been put in charge of. No easy task.

The candle flickered, casting shadows across her dark grey robes. She looked down as she opened another envelope with a quick swipe of her letter opener, she couldn't keep the bored expression from her face. It was from some minor noble family Solitude, the masons. No noteworthy wealth or strong connections. Despite that they were always looking to improve relations even though they were mostly useless. She didn't really want to read and respond to the letters but it was not often they met a noble house, even if only a small one that was willing to so openly work with them. She put the cut envelope on the small table beside her and turned to look at the letter.

Said letter was suddenly pulled from her hand by a little figure who quickly darted away as Elenwen tried to grab it. When she saw who it was the frustration and anger was replaced with mild annoyance and playfulness.

It was her daughter Valerie, who had for one reason or another decided that she had been working long enough.

Elenwen did her best to put on a stern and disappointed expression, one she liked to think she had mastered a long time ago with the countless fools she had to endure the presence off in the court.

It had the effect she had been hoping for, her daughter's playful face turned into one of doubt and worry.

Now was the time to strike

"How many times have I told you…"

"This calls for tickling!"

She jumped from her seat, Valerie gave a girly scream as she ran through the room arms flailing wildly above her head. Elenwen heard another pair of feet, probably her other child Brego, she wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing had been his idea. He had a talent for talking already and he was only 12 years old, two years older than his sister who was the very essence of an innocent little girl. Completely ignorant of the political drama and the brutality of the world lurking just outside the gates of the embassy. Elenwen rounded a table only a few steps behind Valerie, whose little feet were running as fast as they could. They passed a doorway into the living room, Valerie ran past another table and moved to run around a couch, perfect. Elenwen moved forward and grabbed Valerie around her waist, lifted her up, swung her around and dropped her on the couch. Before tickling her just about everywhere. Valerie laughed and kicked, trying and failing to wrestle herself from Elenwen's grip.

"Hahaha- I, haha- can't breathe, hahaha-" Elenwen continued for a few more seconds before giving up her relentless tickling,

"I give up, I give up!" said Valerie, breathless.

She spotted Bregos head poking around the corner as if to see if it was safe to come out yet. She was just about to walk over to him when the door opened, revealing an elf in full armor. He looked around the scene with a slight smile on his face, that quickly turned serious when he turned to address Elenwen.

He quickly cleared his throat before speaking "He's ready to talk" was all he said.

Of all the times the fool could have decided to break he chose now? She hid a sigh.

It was the prisoner, Aldor. They had been fairly lucky, one of their informants had come to them with some interesting information regarding the location of one of the last blade members, they hadn't actually known of his existence before the tip but the source had been reliable in the past and so she decided that it couldn't hurt to try. They knew where he and his family lived so lying would be detrimental, she made sure he knew of the consequences of a false tip before she sent word for Rulindil to start the operation. It took them some time to find the blade member, he was hiding among the locals in a small town called Rorikstead, seemingly just another peasant in the crowd.

But they had found him.

And so they struck during the dark hours of the night and whisked him away. In and out before anyone knew what was going on. When they made their subsequent examination of the house they had found several books and notes that confirmed what the informant had said as well as a small improvised shrine to talos which gave them a convenient excuse to be searching the house. Not that they needed one, they had the law on their side if any local complications were to arise, not to mention that the imperials wouldn't want to risk hurting their already fragile political standing over a small arrest of some insignificant 'peasant' in a dead end town like Rorikstead.

Elenwen turned her attention back to Valerie.

"Do you have to go now?" Said Valerie with big doe-like eyes.

Elenwen smiled as she ran a hand through her daughter's long smooth hair.

"I am afraid so dear, Why don't you go play with you brother while I'm gone?"

Valerie reluctantly nodded.

"It won't be long, I promise" She gave her a farewell kiss on her forehead before getting up and following the soldier out the door.

She silently followed him down a flight of stairs and then another until they reached the basement where he unlocked the door to the interrogation chambers. While some would call it barbaric or inhuman it was impossible to deny the effectiveness of such methods. And while many of the humans were hesitant to seek use of such methods she cared little for what they deemed 'humane'. She cared for effectiveness and results. She had been tasked with handling the situation in Skyrim and handle it she would.

She rightened herself a bit and held her head high as she walked down the wooden stairs. The smell was...less than pleasant in the dungeon, luckily she rarely had to get down there, unless of course an important prisoner was ready to talk. She much preferred to be present for the final interrogations of captured prisoners. That way she was sure to be present when they spilled all their little secrets without having to spend her precious time motivating them to speak.

As she got closer to the prison cell she got a good view of the man.

He was fairly young, much younger than she would have guessed. They must be recruiting, she concluded before a question popped into her head. How do you recruit people for a top secret organisation of dragon killers in a world without dragons while remaining undetected by everyone? A mystery to be sure, but one she could ponder some other time. Other than that he was thin, had short blond hair, was malnourished and covered in bruises and cuts.

Looking at him she almost felt sorry for him, but then she reminded herself that he was a blade member and a Talos worshipper, he deserved everything he got and more. She steeled herself and put on an emotionless mask.

"I hear you have something to say?"

The man was on his knees, both arms chained to the wall.

"I...The one i talked to…" He paused and swallowed audibly before pausing.

"Yes?"

"Her name is Delphine, a nord-" His talk was broken by violent coughing that resulted in a few drops of blood flying from his mouth. She waited for him to finish, apparently he had taken quite a beating before talking, he must be stronger than he looked.

"But i don't know where she is" He finished in a raspy voice

"You work for her but you don't know where she is?" She said with a hint of skepticism. But in reality she believed him, the blades were very few and quite paranoid. It made sense that not knowing each other's location would be just another safety precaution in case one were to be caught.

Their war with the blades had been a long and bloody one. One that started before Elenwen was born. It was a group of elite warriors with a spy network as extensive as the Dominion, something that in itself made them a threat to their operations. They had, all the way back to the first era took it upon themselves to protect the Cyridillian emperors and when that bloodline ended they decided to take up the mantle of dragon hunters, a job they performed so well that they at some point ran out of dragons to kill.

The real issue was that prior to the purge in the great war they had made the Thalmor's lives a living hell. The elves basically had to declare a crusade against them to have any real effect of wiping them out. Their small group guerrilla tactics proved to be remarkably effective when they had infiltrated every part of the government and operated above the law. The Thalmor leadership was under a constant and imminent fear of being assassinated out of nowhere, because the Blades had the resources to make something like that happen, given enough time. But then came the fourth era.

4E year 171 to be precise.

The empire was faced with an ultimatum consisting of the following.

A large tribute of gold would be paid to the Aldmeri Dominion, the Empire would give a large portion of southern Hammerfell to the Dominion, the worship of Talos would be banned from the empire, and the Blades would be forced to disband. This was the original demand of the Thalmor prior to the Great War, which was of cause rejected by Titus Mede II. When he rejected the ultimatum they flushed out every known blade member, executed them and presented their heads to Titus Mede II, an effective way to both remove one of your opponents strongest cards and declaring war on them in one single action. The war from there went as well as one would expect, 4 years after it had begun the empire was battered and broken and signed the treaty without any further fuss. The prisoner speaking pulled her back to the present.

"We only met a few times, always in remote locations, she made sure i didn't even know what part of the road she arrived from"

"And yet you decided to follow her blindly" She said, poking him while watching carefully for a reaction.

"I follow them because it's the right thing to do!" She smiled, it was almost too easy sometimes.

"Oh yes, the Thalmor are evil and Tallos is good, we've all heard the story." She said dismissively "Why don't we talk about Esben instead?"

The man somehow got even more pale than he was before.

"I...I" He stammered, clearly having been caught off guard.

"What, didn't expect us to know who he was? Oh you poor fool" She said, giving him no time to respond before continuing.

"Tell me Aldor, does it pain you to know how lonely you are?" She needed to push him while he was off balance.

"...what?" He said in a small voice.

Elenwen lifted one of her hands up, looking over her nails before citing the facts.

"No one is coming to free you, they recruited you and then, the moment problems started to arise they left you for dead instead of fighting for you. You've been her for three weeks you must've figured that out by now"

He looked at the ground, silent aside from his laboured breathing. Poor guy had problems facing reality it seemed, young and stupid. Like the rest of the human race.

"There's someone...a member of the thieves guild...But I don't know his name!"

"Give us something" said the torturer flatly beside her. Aldor remained silent. Breathing heavily while staring at the ground like it was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. She signalled for the torturer and handed him a sleek dark ebony dagger from her robes, making sure that Aldor saw it. The torturer gave himself good time to inspect the blade, feeling the edge before leveling a sinister smile at Aldor who was suddenly Wide eyed and panicked.

"So…" the torturer said with a mock thinking expression as he sat down in front of the prisoner "Where should we start? An eye or some fingers perhaps?"

"Don't you worry, what we don't get to do today we'll do tomorrow, or the day after that, we have all the time the world"

Elenwen marely stood with a side to the cell, pretending not to care in the slightest.

The torturer let the blade glide harmlessly over the bare chest of the prisoner.

His breath was quickening, his mind was probably going over horrible scenario after horrible scenario of what was going to happen. Hopefully she thought, after all nothing she could do would ever compare to the horrors of the human imagination.

The tortuere glided the blade up the man's throat and across his forehead before resting it beside his left eye.

"OKAY OKAY I'll tell you, please just stop!".

"I only know he's called Etienne and- and he was supposed to help Esben find a hiding spot somewhere I swear thatisaliIknow!" He said, now openly sobbing. The last few words were rushed out in a mess but she got the important parts.

The torturer smiled, handing the knife back to Elenwen.

"Your cooperation is much appreciated" He said while doing a mock bow before leaving Aldor in his cell. She walked over the another mage sitting by a tabe near the cell. His job was to write down any relevant information released by the captives. She put out her hand, a silent request. He nodded handing her the pages which she thoroughly read, this was too big a discovery for simple mistakes to happen. They may just have gotten the position of one of the blade's last archivists, something that played in well with the recent return of dragons as it was the archivist's job of keeping track of such things...if she had understood things correctly.

She handed the paper back to him "I want a copy in my office within the hour"

He made a slight bow before unfurling a clean piece of paper and starting to write off.

She only just started for the stairs when the door to the room was opened. In walked a tall figure, he wore the traditional robes required by one of his position. But his statue and attitude combined with a hawkish nose and piercing stare gave him a formidable presence. Sharp features and green eyes. A Thalmor inquisitor by the name of Rulindil, he was one of the older ones in the embassy, he had fought his way up the ranks, chosen for his skills both political and magical, he had a strength in him that many of the younger ones so sorely lacked. And she liked his determination.

But why was he here?

He walked down the stairs with confident steps, giving a slight bow before speaking.

"I've received news from Ancano"

Elenwen looked at him, a bit bemused.

"Don't you have people to deliver messages for you?"

His lips twitched into a small smile that disappeared as soon as it came.

"Oh I do, but this one is of a more...sensitive matter"

"You have my attention"

"You remember how Ancano mentioned the mages were planning an upcoming expedition in his previous report, yes?"

She merely nodded.

"Well, the expedition returned before time, windblown and out of breath before going straight to the Arch mage's quarters. Ancano managed to override his privacy spells and listen in on part of the conversation."

Rulindil handed her a letter from a pocket inside his robes. Clearly he wanted her to read Ancanos on words herself. She let her eyes travel down the paper before quickly folding the letter.

"Let's continue this at my office," She said, walking out. She would need her own collection of notes on the dragons to make a full assessment of the letter. They had painfully little she knew. But this was too much of a coincidence to not be related to the recent attack on Helgen. Which in itself was riddled with questions and coincidences. The dragon had appeared out of nowhere and interrupted Ulfric's execution in Helgen which, convenient as it was, must mean that whoever is behind the dragons also has some interest in the civil war continuing. Why else attack at that exact moment, right before his execution? And why Helgen of all places? There were more strategic targets that would exercise much less resistance than Helgen, supply caravans and cities that were reasonably unarmed but important centers for trade.

Ulfric's death would have dramatically increased the chance of an Imperial victory and thus harmed their overall position in Skyrim. A Stormcloak victory was also to be avoided, however, the best case scenario was the empire pouring money into an endless civil war. She was there during the dragon attack in Helgen, she had tried arguing with general talus who had proved painfully uncooperative, she had demanded that the prisoners be surrendered to her immediately, citing the White-Gold Concordat as reason should have been enough for the withered old general but no. Imperial might and personal justice was apparently deemed to be more important than the treaty. She had furiously vowed that the Emperor would hear of it, but when Udlfrick wasn't actually killed there wasn't much point in making a big fuss about it. He had gone against the treaty but the questions regarding the sudden presence of dragons was much more pressing. Perhaps they would deal with him later, for now a few lines were added to his dossier describing his lack of cooperation and suggestions about getting him replaced with more moldable alternatives, perhaps someone younger and more inexperienced.

But now, out of the blue came a letter from Ancano of all people describing how a group of mages from Winterhold encountered a dragon and a dragon priest only to have them escape to who knows where. Their current information on the dragons was mostly assumptions based on a small number of documented events like the one at Helgen and second or third hand accounts from people who may or may not have actually seen something. But this… this might have been their first actual lead to figure out who was behind the dragons.

"Rulindil, I want you to activate agents in every major city, make them report back any unusual activity. We'll need to know more about what's going on in that damned college as well"

Rulindil was silent for a while.

"Apologies for my forwardness ambassador, but are you sure we can trust Ancano with this assignment?"

She was about to retort and put him in his place for assuming he knew better than her...but then she realised that he was right Ancano was a power hungry fool, a bit too full of himself to see all the errors in his behavior, it was the reason he had been sent to the college of Winterhold instead of other more important political assignments. Assignments that require a certain amount of patience and finesse that he simply didn't possess. Replacing him now was out of the question, he might not have been good with politics but he certainly had his uses spying on people as he had proven time and time again. But Rulindil was right.

"No, no we cannot" she calmly said before continuing "We should dispatch a small squad to Winterhold, to keep an eye on him and assist wherever necessary, make them report back separately without his knowledge" That should ensure that there would be no information left out.

"And what of the mages who made the discovery? Should we bring them in for questioning?"

A good question, she couldn't see why not. One could only get so far on what Ancano might or might not have heard, he claimed to have found a way around the arch mage's privacy spells quickly but she suspected that he might have missed the first few minutes of the conversation. The arch mage was no fool, he was an elf like them, several hundred years old and plenty of experience in the field of magic. He may have lacked the resources and extensive training that they had but she was not about to underestimate him because of that.

"If the opportunity arises I think we should take it"

"But until then we should listen and observe"

She turned around to stare out the window at the snow storm raging outside When A thought suddenly struck her.

"What do you know about dragons?"

"Not much I'm afraid, my studies of the Merethic era are limited, but I'm sure I could find an expert, or make a request."

She merely nodded deep in thought. Her forces were limited but well trained, her resources were close to endless, if her request for more troops and weapons were deemed a 'valuable investment' by the hireups that was. She had been able to keep things in check for the most part, without issues. The Helgen incident being the only bump in the road. What really bothered her was how little she knew about the current situation. Dragons, not one, but two, and a priest. Out of nowhere, they didn't even continue the attacks, burned down Helgen and then disappeared without a trace. The worst part was that there was little she could do because she lacked the knowledge to take any sort of calculated decisions. She narrowed her eyes. While she had indeed been looking for a challenge to get her mind of the tedious civil war she had not expected it to be the giant fire breathing scaly kind of challenge.

No matter.

She would deal with it in one way or another. But first she needed information. She turned around to address Rulindil once again.

"We are going to need to act quickly, I will not be left behind. Whatever is brewing out there I want to know."

"Find me an expert, arrest them if you have to, I'll see to it that the archivist is taken in for questioning. We should have enough information to dig him out of whatever hole he has crawled into."

"Now, if that was all you will have to excuse me, I have letters to send, request to make and an arrest to take care of."

"Of course" he said, bowing slightly before leaving her quarters, closing the door behind him.

Hopefully the archivist would have some answers, if not they would have to rely on whatever experts they could acquire and perhaps some mages, first hand accounts would help a great deal, but they would have to be carefull. Unknown waters lied before them, and she would make sure they would be ready to handle whatever whent their way.


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Each morning I appear to lie at your feet, All day I will follow, no matter how fast you run.

Yet I nearly perish in the midday sun. What am I?