Imsin was seven years old when she realized that she wasn't like other girls.
Most children have vivid imaginations, and all dream. So when she tried to tell her parents about her dreams in her childhood, they initially ignored her. It was nothing unusual. They neglected her as did her siblings, egalitarian in their detachment. They had assumed that as she grew older her mind would be more grounded, but instead her mind became more vivid and fanciful.
She was not deterred, and would eagerly tell her family of her dreams every morning. Visions of vast steel and bronze whale-ships, filled with ghosts desperate but unable to be forgotten, swimming across the seas and the stars. Stories of shimmering amber cities stretching across a vast wheel, megalopolises that once were, and would be again. And a tale of men dressed in red, slinking their way in (against the rules!) from a time-outside-of-time. They brought her painted shells, dolls with moving eyes, and sweets that tasted of lilac and lavender. All offered for what the men called a pittance: just one small favor when she came of age. She was too smart to accept that deal, though, and she ran from them before they could burn her alive in rage.
But that one was too much for her father. He was a cold man, lacking anything resembling poetry in his heart. He smacked Imsin firmly across the face, and she crashed mere inches from the hearth. If she had time to tell such idiot stories, he told her, she surely had time to cut firewood as she had been told. She ran away, crying. Her mother, a gentle soul but bound to the old man's tyranny all the same, said nothing as she rubbed salt on Insim's split lip. Silence was the point. As she had learned this lesson, so would the child.
And learn the lesson Imsin did, at least in the waking world. She became as the old man wanted her to be, frigid like a true Nord. She was stoic in the face of terror, be it of the world or his own. But try as he might, he could never own her nights.
Her dreams were first an escape, a warm and vivid contrast to the grayness of the waking world. But something had changed about it, something she could intuit though not describe. As a girl, she enjoyed it, but in adolescence she needed it. Temptation took the place of wonder. A child can make no distinction between the mischievous and the dangerous, or the curious and the weird; an adult can, and must.
As she grew, the dangers did as well.
The sound of scuttling in the dark, always behind her, just outside her field of vision. Something gargantuan, churning and writhing behind the clouds. Reappearing sigils and glyphs, each one making a bit sense at each glance, their meaning branding doom on her mind. It could be exhilarating. It would kill her, she knew.
This liminal dance would only stop once she met the Knife-Smile Man, and put into practice all of his lessons. And she had been good about heeding them for a long time indeed. But now as her dreams began to overwhelm her again, it became harder and harder to do maintain that rigor... Or perhaps it was growing harder and harder because she had failed to maintain it in the first place. She couldn't remember.
But what she did know is that had she been more disciplined, she certainly would not have found herself in this situation.
She stood, somehow, above the water. Gray skies, gray seas. Any color had been washed away, off to another world, leaving this one stark and empty. Or empty on the surface of the waters, at least. But under—that was never, ever empty.
There! Rising from the ocean, perhaps a man. No, that was a strained comparison. She knew in her heart it was no man, couldn't be a man, but she hadn't the vocabulary to describe it as what it truly was. His form bled steadily outwards, a black mottled carapace-silhouette layered o'er the vast ocean, the sea-foam withering and decaying at his touch. And as he rose fully erect, his layers began to quiver and tremble. He began to shed himself, the sheets of his form catching into the wind, rising and diving like an enraged flock. And those glimpses of his core behind the chaos.
Then, the layers stopped abruptly, now floating in a sudden anticipation. They turned sharply and began rushing toward her, speeding closer and closer and closer. She put her arms before herself in a desperate attempt to avoid their embrace. Too fast, too—
Imsin took in a rasping gasp. She was on the deck of the ship, before a deep, hazy ocean filled only with black granite stones. A clear ribbon of the far horizon was touched by the last indigo of a waning twilight. To her side was the Dunmeri ship captain.
Another waking dream.
She had no idea how long she had been out. But it could not have been an extended period, as the shipmaster was halfway through a conversation. "... A month or two, perhaps. The winds are difficult to predict this far north. And, I mean no offense in this, the contracts the legion is offering really aren't competitive given the danger this route entails. I'm sure there are more daring captains who'd take the risk given a higher pay, but—Say, are you feeling alright?"
Imsin closed her eyes. She felt the phantom rustling of something on her skin, but when she opened her eyes she was alone with the shipmaster and the sea. "I'm not worried about supplies. Once the fort is established, the legion will need to send ships to bring any artifacts back to the mainland. We'll resupply then."
The shipmaster kept a skeptical glance Imsin's way for a moment, then looked back to where the sun had set. "Using fat Imperial frigates, no doubt. I'm sure that resupply scheme looks good on a bureaucrat's desk somewhere, but they don't recognize the danger. It's a gamble I couldn't imagine them taking if they knew these routes. The Sea of Ghosts is treacherous even for us Telvanni. A foreign ship with a inexperienced captain... They'd be lost to the fog."
The shipmaster was as right as she was wrong, Imsin thought. It was true that a supply ship would be as likely to arrive at the seafloor as it would Ald Redaynia. But if the bureaucrats had every scrap of information, from exactly how expensive the ships were and how likely the men were to die... They'd snap the offer up all the same. "We shall see."
No response, other than the clash of the waves and the groan of the ship. Fair enough. After all, they only would be able to see if they survived until that first resupply. There was no guarantee they would even get that far. Practically speaking, both of them stood a decent enough chance of dying before that day arrived. But enough of such indulgent thoughts. While Imsin knew that death trailed at her heels, she didn't have the liberty of cheap nihilism. She had her orders, and astonishingly, she still had her command.
And she had the song, too.
As long as she held those things, she would push ever forwards, ever onwards. Ahead of them, the mist was thinning. Ald Redaynia awaits.
Spymaster,
As you know, I cannot comment on most of this chapter without having every meaningful point censored off the dossier. The Penitus Oculatus have been unusually vigilant in their great mandate of hamstringing their fellow intelligence operatives, to the extent that my entire first report on this chapter was seized and apparently "burned in the dragonfires." I am certain that this phrasing was intended to sound serious and display a degree of philosopho-poetical inflexibility. But frankly, if this is a literal account as opposed to a empty boast, the very act of moving the report to the City would've created more of a window for risk than had the officer just stroll to their kitchen and toss it into an oven. It'd save on firewood, too.
What can we work with, then?
Given that the vessel is south of Ald Redaynia, we have a greater idea of where this scene could be taking place. Townway calls the approach "deep", but this is certainly a literary device, as the ship would be well above the continental shelf during this leg of the journey (especially compared to earlier chapters, had the ship had departed from Solsthiem as we believe). This choice throws other descriptions into suspect. For instance, are the conditions of the sea accurate, or also contrived? Was there truly light fog yet low cloud on the horizon? If it were accurate, we could start combing over every ship log we could find, that we could cross-reference weather reports to tease out a date. But I put little stock that it is historical, and cannot waste precious time on such an initiative.
Tonas (not directly named, mind you, which reaffirms my suspicions in Dossier IV) is confident that an Imperial relief effort towards Ald Redaynia would end in certain doom, a belief Townway implies Imsin shares. And he uses none of his authorial voice to dispute this is the case. Of course, the Sea of Ghosts is dangerous and any approach to the village hold a baseline level of risk, but a normalized index of major shipwreck incidents shows that, statistically speaking, it would be only marginally more dangerous than most Inner Sea routes. Then again, men and mer are rarely rational in assessing the relative risks of any activity. Imsin's unpatriotic view on the Imperial Legion's apathy is roughly in line with what we know of her politics, giving some support to the historicity of the conversation.
I know, I know. I'm obviously dancing around the aspects that truly matter here. Ideally, we can meet soon to discuss this person, in a more functional privacy. But given current affairs and the overall atmosphere in the City, I cannot say with confidence when that can be. Soon, I hope. Longer, I'd wager.
So until then, I remain your servant,
L. Cosades, 5 Heartfire, 4e 83.