I want to take a moment to thank my dear friend, whose OC Astarill is finally formally introduced in this chapter! They'd prefer not to be named, but they know who they are and, I hope, how much they mean to me. Dust's story isn't just here, online - it's between me and my friend with their own character, for all those years we've had so much fun roleplaying and goofing off together. Thank you, so much.
I entered the guild the next evening, unable to stand the stifling atmosphere of my home that seemed still to echo with the events of the day before. In the guild, at least, maybe I could concentrate. I gave Luke a farewell pat on the head – he whined mournfully, but I could just picture the guild head's face at the sight of him – and headed off, books in tow. Finally, some peace and quiet, a chance to refocus.
Or so I thought.
"Then it isn't safe, is it?" Orintur's voice rose, sharp and nasally in irritation. I quietly closed the door behind me, head tilting to better catch the discussion upstairs. "I refuse to let her go. Besides, do you really trust that he's any better than they are?"
He? I dared to peek around the balustrade, catching sight of those in the library – Deetsan, arms crossed and head shaking, Orintur protectively standing by Eilonwy who shied behind him, and a stranger. No, not a stranger – the Altmer that had helped me before, had gotten down my book.
"I am entirely capable of going alone." The other Altmer gave Orintur a brief glance, jaw set.
"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you? A chance to talk in private with all your necromancer friends!"
A necromancer? That peaked my interest. He didn't particularly look like one – of course, neither had Bolor.
He scoffed and rolled his eyes as Orintur glared, Deetsan giving a throaty sigh.
"Enough. Astarill, I cannot allow you to go alone. The flora in nature is mostly unknown to us, save that it is dangerous and poisonous. You'll need an alchemist's guidance to deal with it."
The Altmer – Astarill – shook his head with a grumble I barely heard. "I'm not an idiot. I can handle poisonous flora."
Deetsan ignored him, however, her gaze moving smoothly to Orintur and Eilonwy. "And given the necromancers that call the cavern home, I cannot allow Eilonwy to go unescorted."
"Then let me take her."
"You have many skills, Magician, but cavern delving is not one of them."
The whole scenario – each unwilling to work with each other, yet unable to do without. It reminded me of a riddle, something about a fox, a chicken, a dog and a boat, all trying to get across. I stifled a laugh – but not well enough. Deetsan turned and raised a ridged brow, catching me red-cheeked and wide-eyed as I tried to appear innocent.
"Ah, the new member. Dust, isn't it? The alchemist – " Her eyes narrowed, then a little smile slithered across her features. She gestured me closer to join the conversation, turning back to the rest.
"It seems I've found a solution. Dust is a fine alchemist in her own right, and I'm certain she has no trouble in navigating the dangers of such work with a little assistance. Isn't that right?"
"Er – yes. Yes, of course!" I didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into but from the look on Deetsan's face, I knew what she wanted me to say. "I'll do it. Um, whatever 'it' is…?"
"I'll fill you in. Orintur, Eilonwy, you are both free to go." The former scoffed and lead away the latter as she bowed her reddened face low, apparently embarrassed at having been in this argument in the first place.
"Now, then…" Deetsan clasped her hands together, glancing from me to the Altmer and back. "Dust, Astarill, Astarill, Dust. Now that we're all friends, here is what you must do."
The expedition was laid out in detail – we would venture to a cavern, some three hours walk South towards the Valus Mountains. Along the foot of the mountains we'd find the cavern, where a small group of necromancers had made their home. Preying on local hunters, unearthing nearby graves, they needed to be 'dealt with.' That would be the Altmer's role.
I bit my tongue. Bolor. He had likely fled again farther North, maybe as far as Skyrim or High Rock. Brief fears of finding him, having to hurt him soothed – I wouldn't see him again. He'd said so himself. And as for dealing with them, they'd earned their fates, hadn't they? Kidnappers, grave robbers, defilers and murderers…
… But then, who was I to judge?
Now the guild head outlined my own task - finding, harvesting and examining the unusual venomous flora. I interrupted then, curious.
"Wait – is it poisonous, or venomous?"
Deetsan blinked at me. "Pardon?"
"The flowers. Does consuming it or touching it bring about the effects, or does the flower itself seek to attack with a venom it holds, like a snake? There's a key difference - " I shrank somewhat at the look she gave me, brow ridge lowered. Astarill tilted his head as I spoke, eyes still narrowed, but thankfully fixed on Deetsan. "… Between them. Um."
"I – " She made a little rasp in her throat, shaking her head. "… That's for you to find out, isn't it. I don't know if there's a connection to the necromancers inside, but if – when you find the flora, you will return with samples. I expect you both to strike out tomorrow morning."
The next morning, so soon?
… Lucien would be furious.
I set my jaw. Good.
I needed this. If I ever truly wanted to find my way to the Isles, I might need the resources the guild could offer. Books, fellow academics, answers to riddles. Possibilities. That meant doing as I was tasked.
Besides, it offered a chance to be who I was before all of this, before the Brotherhood. An alchemist, a scholar, a part of something bigger than myself instead of always being an outsider. Working again, participating again – the thought felt good. As, admittedly, did the thought of spiting him.
I nodded as Deetsan surveyed me, caution in her gaze, then sighed and turned away.
Once she was out of earshot I turned to my new partner in crime, looking him up and down. I hadn't gotten a good look before now, not really. Funny – where most Altmer I knew like Orintur were all sleek lines, he was squares and triangles. Gravely serious, the brows over heavyset olive eyes. I met his gaze and flushed as he narrowed his eyes in return, pulling a face at my staring.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I don't – I don't mean to stare, it's just – " I stumbled over my words, cheeks hot. "I – I wanted to make sure I recognized you." Not entirely false. "I wanted to thank you for the other day, when you helped me get that book off the shelf."
He stared for a long moment, silent, then his features went lax as he straightened. "… You're welcome."
So this was to be my introduction to working for the guild? He seemed like a barrel of laughs. Still, he had helped me, even without being asked. I straightened myself, slapping a smile back on. "So! You're the, ah, resident expert on necromancy?"
He looked – uncomfortable wasn't quite the word, but tense. Was I forcing him into conversation? Dammit, I was trying to be friendly and just making myself look a fool. "Yes."
"So..." After a moment of scrounging for something to say I relented, turning the topic to business. "Um. Maybe we should – sit and plan for a bit?" I managed to keep that smile on, shrugging a shoulder. "Maybe you've got some tips on dealing with them?"
I breathed a sigh of relief when he nodded, gesturing for me to follow and turning to lead the way. To my surprise, we didn't head up to the guild's small library – instead out the front doors, onto the busy midday street. I struggled to keep up with his stride through the stream of people, my satchel of books bundled up against my chest. It seems I wouldn't be getting my reading done today, after all.
"Where are we headed?"
"The Newlands Lodge. I have a room."
"Oh! Certainly." That made sense. Those times when Bolor would bounce ideas off me, even ones based more in restoration than necromancy, we did it discreetly. Besides, I didn't want to end up in the middle of an encounter with Astarill and Orintur like poor Eilonwy had.
But what if he was right to be worried for her? What if he was protecting her? 'All your necromancer friends…'
I stared at his back for a long moment as he strode ahead. He did seem withdrawn, reserved, but that was hardly a crime. And besides, Deetsan seemed to point to him more as an eliminator of necromancers, rather than one himself. Does it take one to kill one?
"Duuusty!"
Oh, no. I froze there, dread sinking into my gut as my new cohort turned with a raised brow. Antoinetta sashayed over, dressed in day clothes, beaming wide.
"I haven't seen you in ages! Been busy with your nose in books, huh?" A grin and a wink. Did she – did she not know? I couldn't read her, couldn't wrap my head around her cheerful manner as she sidled up and eyed Astarill with a painted smirk. "Who's your friend?"
"He's – "
"You know where to find me." Curtly he spoke, then turned on his heel and left. Dammit. I went to give a glare to Antoinetta –
And met her own, surprisingly vicious. Oh.
She does know.
"After everything." All charm and sweetness had evaporated from her, pale brows low, eyes narrowed. Her voice shook, tight and quiet. "I – I just… I knew you didn't like it, but I thought…"
"What? That I'd do it for you? For him? He did." I spat back without thinking, holding my books against me like a shield. Something to cling to, dig my fingers white-knuckled against. She has no right to judge me, no right to –
Gods dammit all, those blue eyes were teary. I sighed and relented, shoulders slumping. Anger now turned to shame, guilt at her confusion, her hurt. Did she feel rejected, too? "… I'm sorry, Netta. You know I'm still – it's not like I'm leaving. I can't. I just… I couldn't do what he wanted, either. What you wanted."
A long sigh. The anger that had curled and contorted her pretty features left her, lips turning in a moue. "… I know. I just – it's gonna change everything, you know? Not how it's done, but how it feels."
She was right. I was still a servant, a slave, a tool, but now destined to never be more. There wouldn't be a second chance, no changing what I'd done. No one to bargain on my behalf. My mother was gone. And Lucien…
No. Don't think about him. Not now. I swallowed hard, blinked back tears and turned my head to hide them from Antoinetta. "… I've – I've got to go. I've got work to do."
"Dusty…"
"I will come see you, okay? I will. Or you can visit me in the shop, whenever you want. We can bake together again." I managed a smile, strained as it felt. Painted on. I remembered the doll Nura had given me, the one Sheogorath had held, her dotted eyes and little red mouth. "But I really do have to go."
I didn't wait for her response. I couldn't. It was too hard to think about, too much to shoulder right now. No, better to meet with my colleague and focus on the task at hand. Steeling myself I made way for the Newlands Lodge, and somehow resisted the urge to look back at her in the crowd.
I'd never been inside this place before, and apparently for good reason. It was dim, smoky almost to the point of offence, a persistent tickle in the back of my throat here. Not bad enough to be a stink – rather clean at a glance, actually – but the scent of alcohol and old wood and sourness hung. Quiet, though, with only a few scattered patrons. A familiar face, mercifully focused on his drink – one of the Orum Gang from that night at the Riverview. The sight brought another in mind, that frothing mouth, eyes rolling, his head in my hands as I watched him…
Not that, either. Focus. Come on.
I screwed up my courage and approached the Dunmer tending the counter. She looked overworked – deep lines drawn into an otherwise young face, pinched lips, the hair she kept up in a bun coming frazzled and loose. A rag thrown down on the counter in front of me as she eyed me up and down. "Haven't seen you here before. What's your pleasure, then?"
"I'm – I'm actually looking for someone. Astarill – an Altmer, tall, fair haired? He said he has a room here, and he's expecting me…"
"Oh?" Her thin brows rose high, a smirk curling before it vanished just as quickly. "Well, piss-skin's up on the second floor, first door on your left."
Rude. I kept from making a face until my back was turned and I was headed up rickety stairs. A deep breath as I stood before the door, then knocked.
It didn't take long. He opened and gestured me inside the sparse room. A stool with a small lectern, a long, narrow bed by the shuttered window. Impersonal – it could belong to the room of any traveler. He gestured for me to sit on the stool as he took the bed.
"You don't have a place in town?"
A beat. "No." He paused for a moment again, first looking down at his folded hands, then back up under lowered brows to me. I pushed back discomfort, anxiety. I'd worked with colleagues like this before, after all. Many of us 'mage types' were secluded, awkward around others. Easier to find answers in books, static and factual, than in everchanging, untrustworthy people.
"Constructs – skeletons and zombies, walking dead are as I imagine you know, immune to poisons by nature." I did well know and nodded. How could you poison something without a bloodstream, a heartbeat? "Stabbing won't damage it either, lacking the vital organs a living being has."
It felt almost like he was reading to me from a book. For a moment I felt younger, back at the university, listening to one of Bolor's lectures in the hall, notes on my lap. A breath. His gaze had drifted somewhere over my shoulder. Had I done the same at those few guest lessons I'd given, so long ago?
"Should you have spells to deter them or interfere with the weave that sustains them – or better, that allows you to overtake and control them – those would be effective. Failing that, they can be taken apart like any living being based on their structure, by severing tendons or bludgeoning them apart in the case of skeletons - "
"I have a spell for that!" I straightened up, then shrank again as he seemed to blink out of the reverie teaching brought, staring expressionlessly at me now. A sheepish smile as I felt myself turning pink. "Well – sort of."
I could almost hear Bolor's voice in my head, encouraging me, helping me explain. "It's – it's possible, using restoration magic, to hinder a skeleton's movement. You've heard of how some necromancers use healing to try and reinforce flesh and bone even on undead tissue, yes?"
A nod and I continued, hands balled into fists in my lap. Alchemy was and always would be my first love, but restoration was exciting, too – especially to off-kilter issues like this. It had been so exciting to discover this, to practice the technique with Bolor all those years ago. "Well, I learned to abuse that. I've – I've never tried it with a hostile construct, admittedly, but..." On Bolor's summons, letting me test. Before Traven came into power and the craft was banned. Before…
A moment of nostalgia, bitter-sweet. I dismissed it with a shake of my head. "Anyway. Using healing, I can cause the bone to overgrow around the joints. It takes a lot of effort – exhausting, really, but it isn't especially difficult." My smile returned. "Not as temperamental as living bone, I think. I can render them immobile or even topple them if I focus on the talocrural articulation."
"The ankles," he muttered under his breath, gaze only the drifting back to my own. "Where did you learn that?"
"An old friend, in the university." I saw no point in lying, but that didn't mean I'd give all the details. I hoped the blush on my cheeks had faded by now. "He was a necromancer, before it was outlawed by the guild." And after, but that I kept to myself.
Both brows rose at once. "And he stayed on? Not many did." A low scoff as he shook his head, the tail of his white-blond hair falling over a shoulder. "A lot of knowledge was lost, then."
"It was. I don't agree with all of necromancy, of course – graverobbing and all that – but the advances in restoration he made…" I'd been so in awe of him then. Even now, how could I dismiss his work? It was good, even in spite of what he'd done, what had made me recoil from him.
"Will now be discredited and forgotten. Lost like all their work."
Confiscated and burned. I could picture it behind my eyes, the flicker of the flames that had swallowed Bolor's work he'd left behind after he fled. Fled when I'd found out about his creation, when he sent the Brotherhood after me. Memories flooded in, some old, some fresh enough to sting like a papercut – those pained living eyes in a dead hull, Lucien's blade at my neck and hiss in my ear, Bolor freeing me, giving me the chance to fight Bellamont for our lives…
You're shedding that. Leaving it all behind. That's why you're doing this, remember? To build something for yourself. Making the best of it.
Silence fell between us for a moment. Part of me didn't want to leave it here, because it would mean returning home to be alone with my thoughts. Still, I knew I ought to let my colleague get some rest, and do the same myself. "I suppose I'll meet you at the South Gate, tomorrow morning?"
He nodded, shifting his shoulders. "Tomorrow, then, at dawn." I gathered myself up and left him then, back into the city that was now beginning to wind down as evening fell, as I mulled on the job ahead.
A cave with necromancers…
I could handle it. I wouldn't have been sent if it was really beyond my abilities, would I? And besides, I wanted to go. Even if it delayed my research for a day or two, if I had to close my shop for a while, it would be worth it. Just to show Lucien I didn't need him to try and plan my life out for me, to scorn the choices I made. To do something because I wanted to, not because there was the threat of a blade unseen at my back.
Besides, this mysterious plant, whatever it was – I was excited to find it. Deetsan's description had been unhelpful at best and confusing at worst, but to discover a new strain, or something entirely new…
Wasn't this the reason I went to the University in the first place, so long ago? To pursue that passion. Where I'd been before everything I'd known had changed. My experiments, like the warm balm, my project to create clean water – I felt a tingle down the back of my neck, remembering the samples I'd taken home from the ruin. I knew how much all this meant to me – and just how far I'd go for it remained to be seen. What I'd be willing to sacrifice to chase it.
A reminder at the door when it was Luke who greeted me, tail wagging, ears perked, red eyes wide with excitement. Damn dog, came the fond thought. Somehow, since the ruin, I'd come to appreciate the mutt.
After all, he represented the one thing the Brotherhood gave me that hadn't now turned bitter. Loyalty. Perhaps love. From a mother who couldn't give it in life, almost an apology now.
Sunrise, then. For now I scrounged up supper – throwing the piteously whining hound some scraps, unable to resist – and read as I ate, diving back into the worlds of Oblivion.
