Cearbhail:

So, new chapter. It gets pretty good, I will say that much.

[Huir]

Dear Primrose,

Where to start? Well, I traveled up to Chorrol to look for Rena. The cottage was more or less untouched, but I didn't find her anywhere nearby. I didn't see any signs of foul play or any signs of her corpse. That does not mean she isn't already dead, but I retain hope, as should you. What I did find was a note inside the cottage saying about an invitation to join a resistance group in the Imperial City. I shall travel there to see if she has joined the resistance group there. I've met them before, so I won't be a stranger. But…I was with the group for at least a day or two. I joined up with the battlemages to help drag the civilians to Black Marsh, which you were there for that. And both of us didn't see Rena in the group of civilians, but then again, if she volunteered, she wouldn't retreat with the civilians, she'd stay to make sure the job was finished. She was just that kind of person, after all.

At any rate, I sure hope you are doing all right. I miss you already, and I hope that when this war is over, the two of us can at least go back to being a family. I guess I already missed that ship, though. I mean, you are a full adult now, and you have that Khajiit boy that you're dating. No reason to have your old man around, huh? I'll always be there for you, if you need me that is. I will write you another letter once I find Rena, which I will not end until I find some proof of either her life, or her death. I hope to see you soon…

Your loving dad,

Huir

…

I sealed the letter and looked up to the sky. I blew out a loud whistle, throwing in my Animal Summoning call while doing so. Within a second, an eagle trilled as he flew over to me. His heavy wings almost blew me off my branch as he slowed his approach, landing beside me on my branch. I showed my letter to the eagle, saying, "I need you to deliver this to my daughter."

The eagle nodded to me. "What does she look like?" His voice projected into my head. I placed my hand upon the eagle's head and used my Illusion magic to transplant everything I knew about Primrose into his head. When the image faded from my own memory, I took my hand off the eagle. The eagle nodded his understanding to me as he lightly bit the letter. "Where is she?"

"That's the hard part." I said to the eagle. "Last I heard, somewhere in Summerset Isles. I think near Alinor."

"Will she feed me when I deliver this?"

I nodded. "She's a gentle soul; loves animals. She will make sure to treat you well once you arrive." The eagle nodded and pushed off the branch. With a muffled trill, he took off towards the sky, heading straight for Summerset Isles.

I stood up from my branch and looked towards the Imperial City. I could see smoke and fire already spreading across the town. I could hear distant screaming and explosions. There was already a battle going on inside. Just my luck. Of course, I would do whatever I needed to if it meant finding Rena.

I let the air take me as I let myself fall from the branch. I soared through the sky for a second before reaching out for a branch before hitting the ground. The branch seemed to move with me, slowing me down even more. I touched the ground gently, which surprised me. I intended on using the branch as a snapback to help me decrease my fall distance, but the branch seemed to move for me. I looked up at the tree to see it starting to move. Ok…moving trees. Ok, whatever. I nodded to the tree as I slid my green hood over my head. "Thank you, tree. As you were." It sounded so awkward to me but…eh, I've lived through stranger stuff.

I started to walk away when I heard, "You're welcome." It sounded like the wind whistling through the leaves spoke to me. I turned around to look at the trees. They continued to stand there, and once again I tapped my hood in respect to the trees before rushing to the bridge leading to the Imperial City.

The bridge looked like it had better days. There were holes all through the thing, and I had to carefully step over some fallen parts of the bridge. There was one entire section just gone, which seemed to be replaced with some flimsy boards of wood. Good thing I'm an agile light-as-a-leaf Bosmer. I ran across that board of wood like I wasn't even real. Once I cleared the nearly crumbling bridge, I found myself at the brinks of the battlefield. Tents that looked Breton in design with circular interconnected lines making intricate patterns over a green background dotted the area around the gate opening to the town.

I walked around the small collection of tents, but I didn't find anyone inside them. As I got closer to the gate, the tents started getting taller. A couple of them were medical tents. I knew because the first thing I heard as I approached one was, "I need a cold compress…and a steak!" It was a very familiar voice. It was her! I rushed to the tent, throwing the flap open. And there she was. She had long braided bright green hair, just like her daughter. She had golden-brown eyes that were focused on the bowl in her hands. She was crushing some herbs into some sort of elixir in her bowl. "Look, I need a potion soon, or this guy will bleed out." She yelled to the back of the tent as she started dipping her hands into the paste. She dabbed it on the injured guy's face, trying to seal the open wound that surrounded his eye.

I waited there for a second while Rena did her thing. Primrose definitely picked up her skill set from her mother. Rena was a healer, an herbalist to be specific. We actually met after I had become the Glass Arrow. I was fighting some bandits, and I took a few arrows. No, no. This is no sappy story where the girl finds a bleeding man in the woods, rehabilitates him, and they fell in love. No, it's entirely different. Ok, so… I took a few arrows. Not in the body. No, I'm too good for that. I took the arrows from their quivers and you know…shanked them with their own arrows. But, I had some arrows that I didn't need, so I thought I'd sell them. I went to the marketplace, traded them in for like…ten gold coins? Yeah, something like that.

But anyway, I was hungry, and even though people seem to think that 100 gold is enough to retire on, a meal costs about…what? Um…6 gold? How can anyone retire on that? How is that rich? Anyway, I was hungry and bought myself some lunch. And that's when I started choking. And no, she didn't even know me yet, so some Redguard helped me out. He saved my life. Anyway, as I was about to leave town, I heard a small laugh. I turned around and saw this green-haired beauty as she plucked this four leaf clover right next to the fountain. She caught my eye. When she saw me looking at her, she smiled and waved, but then turned around and dashed away.

For the next few weeks, I spent more time around Chorrol, hoping to see her. We flirted, had some conversations about stuff. To be honest, Rena and I barely knew each other before we…um…well… it led to Primrose, isn't that enough I need to say? But anyway, she wanted me to stay with her, and I accepted. For six years, we were happy. But one day, stuff happened. There were these guys in red robes walking around Chorrol. They proclaimed the end was nigh and all that, but they were seeking to save our world. I was an optimist, so I joined. I had a daughter to look out for, so I thought it would be worth it in the long end. I had a hearty goodbye with both Rena and Primrose. I told them I'd stop by whenever I got the chance. I never got the chance.

I spent three years in the Mythic Dawn as a scout. I went out and helped find important sites for some ritual stuff. It didn't take long to find out I was getting into a Daedric cult, but at the time I didn't care. I had seen stuff while I was in that told me I needed to stay, if not only so that I could help protect whoever might get in the Dawn's path. People seemed antsy, and to be honest, I thought for half a second that I was running with a rogue cult hell-bent on overthrowing the current regime. That bothered me, so I stayed so that I could be there when this cult needed to go down. I did make some friends, though. And that's what led me to being in the Battle of Bruma. I didn't want to be there, but I had friends I needed to protect, needed to get out. Once again…the Blades didn't care who or who not fought in the battle, only who wore red robes.

Seeing Rena now…it opened up all sorts of wounds I thought I healed up. She didn't focus on me at all in the ten or so seconds I stood in the doorway looking at her. When I closed the tent flap behind me, she finally glanced up at me for a second before looking back down at the patient. She started to say something to him but then dropped her bowl and turned to face me with a fury. "Huir?" She squeaked as she looked over at me. She became a living statue for a few seconds before tears started falling down her eyes. She charged right into my chest, hugging me close to her as she started crying. "I thought I'd never see you again."

I nodded as I hugged her close to me. It felt nice to feel her against me, her warmth, everything. "I never intended on being gone this long. I…I was in the Mythic Dawn."

"What?" She looked up at me. "The…?" She pushed away from me. "Was that what was so important that you had to leave? That cult that almost killed us all?"

I nodded. "Once I found out what I'd gotten into, I had to stay to get everyone that was good out. My superiors threw me into the battle of Bruma. I was captured and thrown into the Blades secret fortress prison. They let me go when the Aedra attacked. Now I'm serving the battlemages. Well, until I ran into Primrose."

"Primrose?" She screamed to me, pulling me close to her. "Is she ok? Where is she?"

"She's ok. She's a healer in the battlemages, led by Hans Battle-Born. Last I heard, they were heading to Summerset Isles for a top secret mission I can't talk about."

Rena collapsed onto her knees, grabbing her head. "I swear…I didn't know I was going to find out both of here were ok…I had given up my hope of seeing either of you ever again."

"That's why I'm here." I reached down to take her hand. I helped pull her to her feet. "I'm going to reunite us."

"I can't go." She implied as she looked back at the wounded soldier. "As you can see, I'm on duty. I'm healing wounded soldiers. If you want, we can go after this battle is over. But until then, I'm staying here."

I nodded to her. "Ok then. How about the Glass Arrow just joins the fight? I'm sure I can wipe the Aedra off the map."

She tilted her head to the side. "Aedra? We're not fighting Aedra. We're fighting the Dominion. They have taken over this town and killed our leaders…we're taking it back."

I nodded. Ok, that was a little harder. Dominion weren't dumb blind angels but…wait. What were they again? Some sort of Altmer organization? That sounded right. Should still be easy. "Sounds easy enough for me." I kissed her on the lips, which turned into a make-out session. Which also led to us crashing into a large healing table. Rena rushed as she clearing off a table for us to lie down. She grabbed me and threw me onto the table, climbing over top of me as she started kissing me again. And that led to something else entirely.

…

A whopping four minutes later, I was dressed into my leather pants and ready to fight. Rena was still lying down on the table, breathing heavily as she stared up at the ceiling. "Wow, I missed that." She looked at me and then noticed that the wounded man on the table next to us and probably half the staff of the medical tent was looking at us. She blushed as she looked away. "I need to shots of whiskey, pronto." That was enough to get some people moving around. She looked over at me, smiling. "Go get 'em, Glass Arrow."

I pulled my hood over my eyes, nodding to her. "I always do." I rushed out of the tent and charged for the gate. I was welcomed by a sight I'd never seen before. Nothing. No battle, nothing. I looked around for some indication of a battle, which I saw a lot of that. Blood, severed limbs, discarded candy wrappers, stuff like that. I used my keen ability to track things and started leading myself towards where the battle should have been. It was helpful to see a squad of warrior rushing down towards the medical tent with some wounded mages in their arms. I traveled the way they came from.

It didn't take long to hear the cries of war again. Well, that and the explosions of magicka roaring in the open streets. I could see people dressed in all sorts of armor hiding behind their shields as the black leather coated Altmer that were more than likely the Dominion hammered anyone nearby with large explosive fire and Frost spells. That's just not fair, I say. I had to even out the odds.

I pulled out my glass bow and reached for one of my hollowed-out glass arrows. It was filled with an airborne version of nightshade. It would stop the hearts of anyone that breathed it, but it dispersed quickly. It would only work on small group. Luckily, I saw a group of three Altmer standing around everyone. I pulled the arrow back and arched my bow back enough that my arrow would fall right into their little hiding spot. They had a small Shield raised around them, but I saw an opening in the top. I sure hoped this worked. I let the arrow fly.

I looked up at the arrow and realized I had a few seconds before it even began falling. I jogged to catch up with the fighters and mages that filled the streets. There was an older Dunmer, one that I met earlier, hiding behind a building with an even older woman. She looked so tired that I swore she wanted nothing more than to rest than be out here fighting. I ran over to them, nodding to the older woman as she watched me approach. "Modryn." She pulled on his sleeve. "There is a Bosmer wearing dramatic clothing walking over to us. Is he one of the Dominion's?"

Modryn looked over at me, squinting for a second. "No, I don't think so. He looks like that Bosmer that helped us earlier."

"I am." I said to him. "And I'm here to do three things: find my wife, have sex with her, and kick some Dominion ass. I already did two of those things, so… now I just need to kick some ass."

Modryn nodded. "Well, we could use some help. These mages have us pinned. If we can't get past them, we can't take the fight to the White-Gold Tower."

I nodded. "Just give it three more seconds."

"What?" He asked me. I pointed out to the three Dominion mages. He looked out just in time to see my arrow fall right in the middle of all three of them. With the raised Shields around them, when the glass arrow shattered, the gas rolled over them with no place to go. The Dominion mages started choking pretty quickly and they dropped their Shields. Sure, they might survive being gassed, but right now they were defenseless.

Modryn looked surprised, but then screamed, "Now!" The fighters peeled into the fray, running over the collapsing mages and running them through like they were nothing. Modryn and the older woman took off running after their troops. I followed behind them. "Great start, now we just have to make it into the tower and we'll be set."

We raced through the streets, running up to the next gate, which was closed. We tried to push it open, but it wouldn't budge. I'm guessing it was locked behind it to keep us from getting in. Modryn cursed and brought out a crystal ball. "Julanza, Yuvenni. We're stuck in the Market District. Where are you two?"

"Sorry." I heard Julanza's voice. "We're in the Arena District…actually we're in the Arena… and we're being attacked by shadow masters. Once we beat them, we'll come help you."

Modryn sighed, nodding. "Roger. Keep me informed. Need any assistance?"

"No!" He said, as if in too much of a rush. "Too dangerous. Riviella is not to be trifled with. I will deal with her; you just concentrate on getting inside the Tower."

"Ok, got it." He lowered the globe from his eyes. "Well…what are we going to do?" He looked to me for a suggestion. "You got anything?"

"I do." I heard a familiar voice call from behind us. I turned around to see a whole army of the same dressed Altmer woman forming a line behind us. They were that evil necromancer woman we fought in Cheydinhal. "You can die. It would make my lovely Councilor Fiirnar so happy. And…after our little spat, he needs some good news. A reason to love me again."

Modryn looked confused. "When did she get here?"

I looked at him. "She's a necromancer. She comes and goes as she pleases."

The older woman covered her mouth in a horrified silent scream. "A necromancer, here?"

The necromancer looked at the old woman. "I'm everywhere… even…" Just then, I heard a gurgled sound as the old woman spat up blood. She fell to her knees, clutching at the knife in her stomach. I snapped my head around to see another necromancer that looked just like the others standing right behind where the older woman was.

"Vilena!" Modryn screamed as he turned to face the necromancer. With a slash, he cleared her head off her shoulder. The body melted into some dark waxy stuff and vanished just as quickly as it popped up. The necromancers behind us all started laughing. They started walking towards us, all laughing as they did so.

"I am the mighty Nrillia." They all spoke as one. "There is not one person living that can stand against us."

Modryn screamed as he pulled out his mace. "Fighters Guild! Our Guildmaster has just fallen! Fight with all your hearts as one!" The Fighters all screamed as they charged the necromancers with everything they had. And right as they charged into the Nrillias, the Nrillias started moving more like shades than any human. They flew up into the air, each one blasting their own version of magicka down onto the Fighters. One Nrillia actually levitated a Fighter into the air and pulled his organs out through his mouth while holding him up in the air. Honestly, it was a fast massacre.

It took maybe a few seconds before the Mages from what was left of the Mages Guild to run up to join us. They started blasting magicka at the Nrillias, which turned into a massive Fire vs Frost battle, mostly. It was around this time that Modryn and what was left of the Fighters Guild scrambled over to me. Modryn hugged his broken arm as he collapsed next to me on a wall. He held his arm there as he glared at me. "Have any bright ideas?"

I shook my head. "I've seen her fight before. It would be a waste of arrows to even try to put her down. She'll just pop up again. But…it would buy us time. Get to the Tower…finish our mission, I guess. I could hold them off while you run for it."

Modryn nodded. "That would be very noble of you." He nodded to some of the fighters left: a Redguard woman and a shorter green-scaled Argonian. "Branwen, Saliith. Are you two willing to stay back here to help our Bosmer friend?"

The Redguard girl nodded. "Sure thing, boss."

Modryn nodded and pushed off the wall. "The rest of you are on me." He turned and charged down an alleyway. He was met a second later with an explosion from inside the alleyway. He had his shield up fast enough to block most of the rubble away.

"You will not leave." The Nrillias all looked at us as they continued their fight against the mages. With a flick of their wrists, the mages were suddenly pulled off their feet and into the air, where they slammed into the concrete with a bunch of sickening smacks and cracks. None of them tried to get up. I think they were all dead. I looked around to see even more Nrillias walking up through our escape alleyways to surround us.

I brought my bow up and reached for as many arrows as possible. I used my Alteration magicka to speed my body up as I loaded and fired my bow at every Nrillia I possibly could. Maybe within the range of a second, I had fired nearly 50 arrows into the horde of Nrillias. All of the arrows exploded, blasting the Altmers into little pieces. Not a single one remained. Was it really that easy?

I heard a laughter rip through the street; a laugh strong enough to push me down to my knees, and everyone else as well. "You think you can beat me so easily, little plaything?" I heard as the ground in front of us split open. Another Nrillia levitated out of the ground, looking at me with a hint of amusement on her face. "You did better than most, I will say that." She waved her hand and all of us were thrown off our feet and into the gate. The gate behind us yielded to Nrillia's power, throwing us inside the courtyard. I hit the ground pretty roughly.

My head rolled around me, but I managed to roll myself up onto my stomach. I found myself looking around the courtyard. I saw a bunch of elves wearing shiny armor, aiming bows at us. Around those shiny elves were elves wearing dark coats, much like the ones I killed earlier. And even around them were more Nrillias. They all looked down at us as they circled around. This was it…no walking away from this.

Modryn noticed it too. "Damn…" He muttered as he sat up, grabbing his head like it was killing him. Probably was, because I knew mine was splitting right now. "Stand up…hold your ground." He said what was left of the Fighters and the Mages. Maybe ten mages, twenty Fighters. We had enough to hold our ground if we came up with a decent strategy. How on nirn were we going to do that? I didn't have any arrows now.

"Bow!" The Nrillias screamed. And I felt that pressure pushing down on me again. My knees collapsed on me and everyone around me. The entire group of us kneeled down in pain, screaming in agony as we waited for all this to end. One of the Nrillias walked over to us. "You see…it is in your nature to bow to one who is stronger than you. You should have given up when you had the chance. But…how were you to know that you were in the presence of a God?"

"Are we now?" I heard someone ask. I managed to look up enough to see a woman wearing white robes with chainmail underneath standing on top of a roof leaning against a chimney smile as she looked down at us. She nodded to Nrillia, and then started messing around with her helmet in her hands. "So…which Divine supports you?"

Nrillia looked up at the woman. "I don't need the Divines. I'm my own God."

The woman tsked as she started to slide the helmet over her head. "That's so sad." She hopped from her rooftop, joining us on the ground. "Tell you what, you bow before one of the Divines, and I will let you walk. If not…well, we have a problem."

Nrillias all turned to face her. "Are you threatening me?"

She shook her head. "Not in the least. You see…Talos sent me here. He says it's time for war. As if I hadn't fought enough already, but no…I'm supposed to meet General Victorious and I'm to help him fight the Dwemer. Honestly, I was here to talk you into joining us, but Talos is telling me that it's pointless. You've made your decision, but that's where I disagree. I think you are still…more or less a good person. Mara seems to like you, so I should too."

"You're a priestess, aren't you?" Nrillia asked. She scoffed and looked away. "How about you bow to me?" She looked at the priestess, but nothing happened. The rest of the Nrillias all turned their attention to the woman, but she didn't budge.

She shrugged and reached for her sword. "I have already bowed to Nine, and I will not bow before anyone else." When she unsheathed her sword, eight more blurs of white started to appear around the rooftops that surrounded us. "Knights of the Nine!" The woman screamed, throwing her sword up to the sky where a beam of pure light descended upon it. "To war!"

Cearbhail:

Ok, so we've met Crassi's mother: Jesselle. Yup...she's the final character of the new series to follow the Changing Fates series. The Legends of Cyrodiil. I cannot wait until I can start it. Anyway, big fights on the way. Next chapter will go back to Vatu and Ja'Daan. It feels like so long ago, doesn't it?