DF: I'm back! I honestly underestimated how long it would take me to finish editing this chapter, so it is a little late. But it looks like the next chapter should be on schedule despite it being a little longer than this one. Enjoy!

Chapter 11

It took a while longer for Lyz to calm down. She had stopped gagging, but her heart was still beating a little faster than normal. In the end, Bran had led her back to Candlehearth Inn to take a break. They had eaten a late lunch together in silence. Her hands shook as she ate, and her eyes had a faraway look as if she were remembering a horrible memory. Even after their meal, Lyz appeared mildly disturbed by what they had discovered. Despite the fact that she still looked a little sick, she had insisted that they report their findings to the steward immediately. Bran had simply raised an eyebrow at her but chose to accompany her to the jarl's castle.

They found the steward inside the jarl's castle. The steward looked at them in surprise when they walked in.

"That was quick. Did you find anything?"

"Yes, actually," Lyz responded in a deceptively level voice. "But first, can you tell me anything about this?"

Lyz handed him one of the fliers.

Steward Jorleif looked over the flier and groaned. "You've been talking to Viola Giordano, haven't you? She has been posting those ridiculous fliers all over the city, and someone keeps taking them down. Ask her about it if you want an earful."

"What about this amulet?"

"I've never seen anything like it. I would take this to Calixto at the House of Curiosities. The man likes to collect trinkets such as these. He might know something about it. Might even give you a bit of gold for it."

Lyz's eyes glittered. "In that case, I better get going."

Lyz practically skipped out of the castle. She was making a beeline for the market when Bran blocked her path. The wolf gave her an accusatory glare and snatched the amulet out of her hand.

"What the - what did I do this time?"

Bran shook his head and jerked his head at her coin purse.

Lyz's eyes widened in disbelief. "Me? Sell a piece of evidence in exchange for riches? I would never."

Bran growled at her. Oh, no you don't.

"Okay. Maybe I was thinking that, but I was going to ask him to tell us what it is first. It's not like we will need the amulet anymore once we get that information."

Bran narrowed his eyes at her, then whirled around and marched off with the amulet still in his mouth.

"Wait! Where are you going?"

"We are finding Viola Giordano before you have a chance to disappear with our evidence," Bran wanted to say. But since wolf vocal cords aren't equipped for speech, he simply sniffed and kept walking. Lyz hurried after him, looking down at the amulet worriedly as if she thought that he was about to swallow it. He might have to, with how coin-hungry the woman was. He slapped away her hand when she tried to grab the amulet.

They wandered around Windhelm while they - well, Bran really - searched for Viola. Their search led them to a darker part of the city. This region appeared to be the slums. Old buildings were crowded too closely together. Unlike the stone buildings in the rest of Windhelm, many of the houses were composed of whatever cheap material was available to the inhabitants. Bran saw many buildings that were built from old wood. Bran dreaded the thought of what would happen if a fire broke out.

Dark-skinned elves with fire-red eyes meandered down the narrow streets. Some of them glanced at Lyz's face and darted into the alleyways. Others glared after her and whispered cruel things outside of earshot. Bran studied and watched them carefully. However, none of them appeared to match Viola's description. At least until they heard shouting further down the road. They quickened their pace to catch up with the source of the din.

Towards the end of the slum was a tan-skinned woman with gray hair. She was human, unlike the elves who called this district their homes, and wore clothes that could have placed her as either upper or middle-class. Her gray hair hung to her shoulders and she had applied what appeared to be dark eye shadow on her face.

The woman stood in the middle of the road and squawked at random passersby about the "dreaded Butcher." Lyz gave the woman a funny look and pinched her nose.

"That must be Viola. Great."

Bran shook the amulet at her, then jerked his head towards Viola. Lyz let out an exasperated sigh and walked towards Viola.

"Excuse me," Lyz said with Bran's encouragement. "Do you happen to be Viola?"

"Be on the lookout," the woman said, ignoring Lyz's question. "The Butcher could be around any corner!"

She shoved a flyer into Lyz's hand. The flyer had a rather melodramatic description of the Butcher along with a terrible sketch of what could have been either a human or a pig.

"Yep," Lyz muttered. "You must be the one. I saw one of your flyers earlier today. What can you tell me about this 'Butcher?'"

Viola's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, and words spilled from her mouth in an endless stream. "I've been following him for months." Viola paused. "Well, not actually following. Trying to find him. The guards won't help. The people won't help. I'm the only one who is taking this seriously."

"If it's any help, I found this journal in the Butcher's hideout."

Lyz held up the journal. Viola's eyes rose and she snatched the journal out of Lyz's hand. She rifled through the pages, humming and tsking as she read the pages.

"It's Wuunferth," Viola concluded. "I had always suspected him. There had been rumors swirling about him for years. But he's dangerous, I tell you! I wouldn't approach him. They call him 'the Unliving' for a reason. Take this information straight to the steward. He will know what to do."

Viola paused and she looked towards Bran with an odd look. "Say, that dog of yours looks a bit wild. Where did you get him?"

"'The Unliving,' you say?" Lyz said quietly, paying Viola's question no heed. She reached forward and grabbed the journal out of Viola's hands. "Thank you for your aid. You will be remembered for your aid later."

Lyz stormed off, ignoring Viola's shocked cries. Bran hurried after him.

Bran let out a sigh of relief as they put distance between themselves and Viola. The old busybody was beginning to see through his pack magic, and she came too close to realizing that he wasn't just Lyz's pet. Granted, his pack magic wasn't as strong in this world as it had been back home, but he hadn't expected a random old lady to break the Look-Not-At-Me trick so easily. Bran huffed. That nosy lady needed to mind her own busy before she got Bran in trouble.

"Damn necromancers," Lyz hissed, stomping down the road. "They'll take all the good things in life and twist them into something awful."

Sounded like she was speaking from personal experience, Bran thought. He moved close to her and placed his nose on her hand. In an instant, Lyz froze and looked down at her hand. Her eyes met Bran's and she - looked away and kept walking. Bran stared at the woman. From one moment to the next, she could go from being warm to cold. Close to distant. Open to closed. Bran hadn't yet figured out a pattern in the woman's behavior and figured that it would be a while more before he did. But for a second, it felt as if he had almost gotten somewhere.

Lyz stomped all the way to the jarl's castle and barged in. One of the guards stationed beside the door stumbled aside as she blazed through the door and stared after her in shock. Bran had assumed that she was going to speak to the steward. But instead, she took a sharp turn and headed down one of the hallways. Bran looked warily at the guard before proceeding, but the man had simply resumed his position beside the door. He must have recognized Lyz from the last couple of visits and decided she wasn't a threat.

Lyz led him all the way into a chamber where a robed man stood bent over a table with strange blue symbols engraved onto its surface. As Bran watched, a pink crystal placed on the table appeared to dissolve and caused the symbols to light up with magic.

The man turned around when Lyz entered. He was an elderly man who wore robes that marked him as the court wizard. Bran didn't know much about court wizards, but what little he had heard made it sound like a highly sought out position that many mages aspired towards. Wuunferth, for all of his prestige and importance, looked rather unamused. The mage sighed and set down the piece of armor he had been working on.

"Whatever you've heard I can do is probably true," he said preemptively as if he was expecting business.

"Is that so?" Lyz said accusingly. "Because I've heard that you, Wuunferth the Unliving, practice necromancy."

The man gaped at her. "I beg your pardon? Necromancy?! I am a member of the College of Winterhold, in good standing with the new Archmage. The College has not allowed necromancy for hundreds of years!"

Wuunferth was so angry that spittle frothed at the corner of his mouth. Bran got in-between Lyz and the court wizard, ready to defend her if needed. He took in a breath to growl at the court wizard and paused.

Lyz lifted her chin and looked down at him. "Then what is this journal?" She tossed the worn book at him. "We found your amulet too." She gestured at the amulet Bran still held.

The man looked befuddled. "My... what? I don't have a journal. And this is not my amulet."

"Enough," Lyz growled darkly. "I have had enough of you necromancers for the last time."

Lyz's magic began to fill the room. It crackled against her skin and bounced across the floor as it formed into a bolt of lightning between her fingers. Wuunferth hissed in annoyance and began prepping his magic to meet hers.

Wait no, Bran said mentally. He needed to stop them. He whirled around and before Lyz could launch her spell, he tackled her to the ground. The bolt of lightning she had been preparing shot out of her hand, bounced off the ceiling and exploded against the table behind Wuunferth. The lightning bolt must not have reacted well with the magic stored inside the enchanting table because the table exploded with a loud boom.

Wuunferth held up his ward with one hand while he aimed his other hand at Lyz, but Bran halted the attack by standing over Lyz and giving the court wizard a violent, hungry look. The mage immediately took his eyes off of Lyz and focused on Bran instead.

The room fell silent.

Lyz looked up at him in shock which quickly morphed into a look of betrayal. She opened her mouth to speak, but Bran interrupted her by dropping the amulet straight into her mouth. She gagged in surprise and coughed out the amulet. Bran looked at Wuunferth, then shook his head at Lyz. She stared into his eyes and tried to understand what he was trying to tell her. Her eyes widened.

"It's not him."

Bran whimpered in apology and stepped off her. He turned back to Wuunferth and gave a low growl when he took a step towards Lyz as she was getting up.

"You need to get yourself and your mutt under control," the court mage snarled.

Lyz shot him a look before lowering her eyes towards Bran. "I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted. For now." Wuunferth wrongly assumed the apology was meant for him. He looked down at the amulet held in Lyz's hand. "That is the Necromancer's Amulet, of legend."

"The Necromancer's Amulet?" Lyz queried. "I've heard of it. I thought it was destroyed a long time ago."

Wuunferth nodded. "You are half-right. That one is not the original. It is a knock-off that simply mimics the original, though it still bears enough power to be dangerous in the wrong hands. That means that necromancy is at the heart of this mess."

Lyz was silent for a moment. "I found a hidden chamber inside one of the abandoned houses in the Valunstrad district. It looked like the Butcher had been collecting body parts from the women they killed. Do you think they were planning to use the amulet for some kind of ritual?"

"Undoubtedly. The amulet would have powered their spell and allowed them to perform a ritual that would normally require multiple necromancers, or at least a larger sacrifice. I imagine that now that they have lost possession of the amulet, they are going to be pretty bent on getting it back." The court wizard blinked at Lyz. "By the way, how did you find this secret chamber to begin with? I thought that house had been off-limits since the previous owner died."

"I have my ways," Lyz answered vaguely. "What matters is that we know where the Butcher's secret hideout is, but we still don't know who the Butcher is."

That was true. Bran had considered laying a trap for the Butcher inside the abandoned house, but then they would have to fight the Butcher on their own turf without knowing in advance who they were and what they were capable of. If the wrong person happened to walk into the house while they waited, things could end disastrously. They had already wrongly accused one person. He didn't want to repeat that mistake again.

Wuunferth narrowed his eyes at Lyz. "I'm glad that your ways have brought you some success, as questionable as they are. The information that you have is useful but isn't quite enough to tell us who our serial killer is."

Lyz grunted. "So, what do we do now? I have the amulet, but I still don't know who it belongs to. I could try asking some of the merchants in Windhelm if they recognize the amulet. But knowing what it is now, I'm not sure if I want to risk it."

Wuunferth tapped his chin. "No. That won't be necessary. I've been noting a pattern in the killings. Now that we know that they are tied to a necromantic ritual, I think I know when the next killing might occur." Wuunferth thought for a moment. "You have the killer's amulet. And I assume that amulet is important to whatever ritual he has planned. He will want it back. We can use that against him. But we will need a few things first."

Lyz smiled wickedly as she listened carefully to Wuunferth's plan.