Chapter 15: Hardest Fought Battles

"I didn't sell you out." The Breton choked out as Ria was turning to leave, and she froze in her tracks. She'd spent most of the journey to Windhelm agonizing over what he'd said after returning to the stables from Dragonbridge. He hadn't been forthcoming with details, and she hadn't asked for any, and it'd left her unsure of where she now stood with the Empire- and whether or not they were only keeping her around to be used as a weapon, to be disposed of when the crisis was over.

But if the only one who knew about her past was Dorrien, she still had a chance at settling down, alive and whole, when things went back to normal.

"I didn't get the chance." His voice was raspy and painfully slow. "After today, I don't know if I will."

Don't toy with me. Ria thought hopefully, but didn't say.

"Stop babbling, Dorrien. This isn't politics." Came out instead.

Tristan made a wheezing sound that might have been a sigh. "What I'm trying to say is… Although it's objectively unwise… The Empire won't learn of your past… With the Brotherhood, I mean…"

He suddenly slumped forward, face-planting onto the floor. After a moment's hesitation, Ria knelt down to check his pulse. When she found one, she looked around, sighed, and dragged the Breton several yards to the wall, where she propped him up.

Ria adjusted her grey cloak, drew her daggers, and headed for the streets. She heard what remained of the battle the minute she stepped into the courtyard, and glimpsed it through the doorway; the Windhelm guards were where she'd left them, their numbers amplified by the surviving citizens who'd rallied around them. They were making a noble stand against the last of the Void creatures, but were taking heavy losses.

Ria hesitated, eyes darting from one skirmish to the next. Assassins weren't soldiers, and open combat was not the Imperial's specialty. Draugr, staggered out in, at most, trios, had been able to wound her in Hag's End. It was one of the reasons why she had been loathe to go through the front gates when she and Tristan had arrived at Windhelm.

Unless she fancied being the only person left alive in Windhelm, though, there was little alternative. She swallowed her instinct of self-preservation and went to work, cutting her way through the creatures.

There were perhaps twenty of them left, ranging from the forms of animals to humanoids the size of Orcs. Ria plunged through the thickest part of the battle, and gained most of their attention with every step. An unexplainable feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that it wasn't just because she was killing them; no, something in their murderous red eyes gave her the feeling that she was being deliberately targeted. It didn't surprise her, but it sent chills up her spine, and spurred her on.

Ria and the citizens of Windhelm gained ground, pushing into tighter quarters and intensifying the fighting. The half-Imperial was panting for breath as she moved; she had never had to fight this hard, for training or otherwise. She was using everything she knew just to stay alive, and it wasn't enough to make it out unharmed. As the tide turned against the Void creatures, the assassin was running on nothing but adrenaline. Blades cut through cloak, leather, and flesh, and three blows to the chest cracked and broke ribs. When there were no more black forms surrounding her, she slowed to a halt, swaying on her feet.

She gazed around at what she could see of the city. The dead outnumbered the living by a staggering number, and the wounded were adding to that gap every second that passed. The half-Imperial didn't know how Ulfric would be able to look at this and say that he didn't need help. It didn't matter how many families Ria had gotten out; the population of the city still had to be a fraction of whatever it'd been. They wouldn't be able to hold Ysgramor's City against a bandit raid, let alone a third attack from the Brotherhood's army.

"Commander!" she shouted, catching his attention easily; aside from the wind and the moans of the wounded, no one was talking. The commander limped towards her, and she met him halfway, grimacing. When they were close enough to talk normally, she said, "I'll be in the Palace. Send me a alchemist, and I'll see what we can do about your High King."

The Nord nodded. "I'll send Ingrid up when I can spare her."

Ria returned the nod, and turned to stagger through snow, ash, and blood towards the Palace of the Kings.


As she leant on the balcony railing, Ria watched the moon on its journey through the night sky. It calmed her, brought her back to the Khajiit folk-stories her father would tell her. The moons were important to her father's culture, to the point that the phases of them at the time of a cub's birth determined it's breed. Tonight, Secunda- Jone, as her father's heritage named it- took its journey alone, as it had on the night of her birth. It struck her as oddly symbolic.

Thought swirled around her head. For the first time in a long time, she finally had a moment to evaluate recents events. Things were happening too fast for her to process; it seemed that yesterday she had been sparring with Jared, joking with Lucian, enjoying the company of the other assassins in general. And then, in the span of a millisecond, she'd lost it all.

She sighed softly. All her life, she'd had a family around her, and now she didn't, and she hated how alone she felt. Hated how she missed her parents and her aunt and uncle and Jared and Lucian to the point that it made her chest ache. Hated how the guilt of having slain her Brother and Sister only put her further from everything she knew. She supposed it was a fitting feeling, given the state of the city below her.

Ria heard footsteps behind her and tensed but didn't turn. Someone stepped up next to her, and she glanced over to find the former Whiterun guard captain next to her. He looked exhausted after a day of battle, but Ria could find no pity for him. Not after what his subordinated had done a decade ago.

"I had a feeling I'd find you out here, Imperial." Ria nodded silently, and the commander continued. "There's a man down stairs asking after you. Didn't much like the look of him, but he said he was a friend."

If she was tense before, her spine was wooden now; any friends she'd had were probably plotting to kill her by now.

"Send him up."

When said friend came upon the balcony, they found Ria leaning against the railing, facing the door, bow drawn and aimed.

"On edge, Verres?"

Ria lowered the bow. "You would be too, Caius." The young Imperial soldier stepped onto the balcony, and Ria slung the bow over her back.

"I've seen the bodies. Our agents prevented what they could in the Grey Quarter and on the docks, but they weren't of much help here." There was silence for a long moment. "Rumor has it that you and Dorrien were quite proficient."

"We both nearly died."

"You signed up for this, Verres." The other Imperial said coldly.

"What do you want, Caius? What's so important that you came all this way?"

"We have a new assignment." Ria waited for the words 'for you', but they didn't come.

"We?"

"You, Dorrien, myself, and a few others."

Ria shoved off the railing, more violently than she meant to. "I'm done working with Tristan."

"Only when I say you are." Caius snapped back, arms crossing over his chest. A second later, when she had suppressed the urge to strangle him for speaking to her as only Alistair and Lucian had ever had the right to, she leaned back against the rail.

"What's our mission?" She asked tightly.

"Riverwood has gone silent, and trade and travel through the town has cut off. We can only assume that it met the same fate as Whiterun."

From his understanding expression, Caius took the sudden grimness on Ria's face to be a reaction to the 'new' information. She pushed memories from her mind; if there was ever a night to try to forget, it was the one at Riverwood.

"What are we doing there? Surely you can't expect four of us to take back the town."

"No, of course not." Caius said. "While you and Dorrien were in Morthal, we sent our fastest scout to consult with the Restoration masters of Winterhold. He's retrieving an expert and the proper equipment, and we are to escort them to Riverwood and aid them in the capture of one of the creatures, so that it may be studied."

"Sorry, I must have heard wrong. Did you say we were going to capture one of them?"

Caius glared openly at her. "Do you have a problem with that, Verres?"

"Where do I begin?" The statement was half outrage and half sarcasm.

"Save it. This is our assignment, whether you like it or not." There was something bitter in his tone, and Ria shot him a sideways glance.

"You're not happy about it either." She realized aloud.

"Orders are orders." He said with finality.

After a moment's silence, Ria asked, "When do we leave?"

"We have two days before the scout and the Restoration master arrive. Then we set out."

"With Dorrien."

Caius gave her a long, hard look. "Tristan Dorrien has proved to be as much, if not more of an asset than you. Whatever is between you two, I expect it to be resolved." Ria crossed her arms over her chest, and the other Imperial added, "And that's an order."

When Ria didn't reply, Caius stalked off. "Bother and befuddle." she sighed under her breath. No another phrase seemed to fit the situation quite so well.


Dorrien woke from unconsciousness the next day, and Caius informed him of his new mission almost immediately. For the most part, Ria avoided the Breton; no matter how much she disliked it, she had to find a way for the two of them to be civil to each other- both because of Caius's orders and their mutual job- and being around him wouldn't help the process.

So she filled the two day waiting period with thinking and remedial tasks. The first day, she set about dying her Brotherhood armor. The red and black leathers were easily recognized, and she had already run the risk of her grey cloak slipping off and revealing an assassin's armor for too long. Ria borrowed ingredients from Ingrid and foraged for what she didn't have, mixing them together to create a grey dye as her mother had shown her.

The first part of the process was spreading the thick liquid to cover every spot of red, and overlap onto the black. That in itself took several applications of the homemade dye, with an hour or so in between each to dry. When everything red- which was quite a bit- was now grey, along with a few random splashes of the color across big areas of ebony, she experimented with ingredients until she had a black paint. Then she reversed the last step and broke up any area of grey she deemed too large with splashes of black; when she was done, the leather armor was a dappled grey-and-black combination. It would break up her shape in darkness and, hopefully, look like it had been designed that pattern.

By the time her armor was done, she'd had the time to review everything she knew about Tristan. Maven Black-Briar had done something to him to warrant an assassination attempt; he was a good man, judging by his determination to help with the crisis of the Void creatures; he disliked the Brotherhood, either on basic moral principle or because of personal reasons.

Her progress was slower than she liked. For one, she was still mad at him for throwing her into open combat, especially the particular battle he did. She had betrayed the Dark Brotherhood, and the ride from Dragon Bridge to Windhelm had given her plenty of time to infer that the already-imposing Void creatures would be gunning for her specifically.

Then there was the fact that she couldn't think of Dorrien for very long without seeing Cirion dying in her arms, and Tristan, cold-eyed and stoic, refusing to help. That in itself created a puzzle: if Dorrien was the good man she sensed he was, why had he been so callous that night in Morthal? It wasn't just that he'd let Cirion die; it was that he watched her watch him die, and still wouldn't assist. Ria had a theory as to why, but it didn't make much sense compared to what she knew. After all, hate was a personal thing, and what had the Brotherhood ever done to him?

Ria was ashamed of how long it took her to put the pieces together.

It was the second day of the wait when it clicked. When it did, she was helping the Argonian dockworkers load supplies onto a pair of ships packed with fleeing people. The Argonians had taken only a few casualties during the invasion by escaping into the water, and she was thinking about how ironic it was that the lizard-men now made up a good chunk of Windhelm's population when it hit her: Tristan's revenge attempt on Black-Briar, his apparent hatred of the Brotherhood, the fact that Maven had been one of Alistair's biggest customers. It stopped her in her tracks.

The Brotherhood had killed someone Tristan loved.

It made sense, and it changed everything.

She thought back, seeing the reasons behind actions. He had trailed her from Ivarstead to Rorikstead, hoping he would get the chance to learn the Brotherhood's location. He had refused to help Cirion for the same reason Ria would have refused to help any of Nelkir's friends. He had a strong and mutual dislike for her because she was in league with the people who had taken someone from him.

A spark of guilt shot through her. She hated Tristan for his actions and his enactions, but she would have done the same thing, been just as suspicious and judgmental and infuriating if their situations were reversed. In fact, Dorrien was downright civil compared to what she would've been.

After a decade of killing people, Ria should've been used to feeling like the bad guy, but it still bothered her. Especially now, when she was realizing just how unfair her own judgments and dislike of Dorrien had been; especially since, despite everything, he still hadn't told Rikke of her past.

Ria spent the rest of the day brooding over the fact that she was in the wrong, and needed to be the one to try and smooth things over. She didn't want to- her mind couldn't seem to remind her of that fact often enough- but she had to. It was necessary, and it was the right thing to do. She and hers had wronged him just as much, and probably more, than he'd wronged her.

Caius's scout arrived just before sundown, with the Restoration expert and a backpack of equipment in tow. Caius introduced them to her; the scout was a Bosmer who opted not to give his name, and the mage was a Breton in his twenties named Corvan Marence. The latter pulled a thickly-corded net and iron shackles from the backpack, excitedly explaining that he'd enchanted them to fortify a person's life-energy, and that the demons' weakness to Restoration magic should give the items a subduing effect. He was obviously quite proud of having thought of it, and that boyish energy reminded Ria instantly of Cicero.

"We leave at first light." Caius said as they were leaving. "Get some rest. We aren't stopping until we near Riverwood."

But rest wasn't on the plan for the night. After an afternoon of thought, Ria had a bit of an idea of what to say to Dorrien, and she intended to say it privacy- ergo, before they left. So when Caius, the Bosmer archer, and Covan left the balcony where they'd found her, she sought out Tristan's room.

The door wasn't completely shut when she arrived, and Ria nudged it open and stepped inside. Tristan was standing next to the bed opposite her, packing things into a bag someone had loaned him.

"We need to talk." She said. The Breton jumped nearly out of his skin.

"Perhaps you've heard of this thing called knocking?" he asked sarcastically, body tense. Ria arched an eyebrow; it took him a second to realize that, with what she'd done for a living, one would quickly fall out of the aforementioned habit. "What about?"

Ria scanned the room; other than the bed and a nightstand next to it, the only furnishings were a wardrobe and a chair near the door. She eased forward, taking measured steps and staying against the left-hand wall. Tristan backed toward the right hand wall, hands coming part-way up. She didn't blame him; he was alone with an assassin.

She reached the nightstand, slipped both daggers from their sheathes, and set them on the wooden surface. Then she crossed back to the door, pulling the chair a few feet closer to the bed. By the time she looked back at Dorrien, he had relaxed somewhat; he still looked wary, though now also curious. Ria settled in the chair, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, and after a minute Tristan sat on the edge of the bed.

"It's seems we're stuck working together for at least a few days. So I'm going to explain some things, and hopefully by the end of it we'll come to some sort of.. understanding."

Tristan's reply was calm, matter-of-fact. "If you think you're-"

"What? That I'm going to what?" Ria snapped. "Manipulate you, talk my way into your good graces? Does that sound like a viable plan to you?" She remember that she was supposed to be mending fences, and deflated somewhat. "Look, I get it. You don't trust me. I haven't given you much reason to. So I'm going to say my piece, and then I'm going to go."

The Breton looked at her for a long moment, and nodded. "Ok then. Talk."

Ria looked down at her hands, and then back up. "I don't know what you think of me, but I have a good idea. So let me set something straight: I never wanted to join the Brotherhood. When I was a kid... I wanted to be a hunter. I was handy with a bow, knew all the game trails. When we got the offer to join, I tried to convince myself it was close enough to the same thing. It's not. Hunting doesn't keep you from sleeping at night."

The admission hung in the air. "We?" Tristan asked slowly.

"Jared and I. He was my best friend. My brother, really. We grew up together, our parents died together, and we hunted Nelkir down and then got the offer together." Ria looked down, swallowed hard. Lucian hadn't gotten that story out of her until two years ago, and Tristan was learning after less than… what, a month? Two? But withholding information wasn't going to help her case, so she continued. "He died. Right before my imprisonment in Solitude, actually."

Tristan's face was appropriately grim, but something flickered across it, like he'd just found a missing puzzle piece, or answered some question. "I'm sorry."

"Spare me. I doubt you're sad an assassin died. Got what he deserved, right?" She let out a small huff of amusement. "Maybe what I deserve, but not him. He was better than either of us. Braver, and selfless. He hated every second of every contract. You wanna know why we still did it? Because we didn't have any other choice."

Tristan shook his head. "There's always a choice."

Ria smiled coldly. "Hold on to that kind of thinking, Tristan. You're going to need that kind of optimism… Look, I'm not going to try and defend our decision. You don't understand what it was like." There was a second of silence. She had the sneaking suspicion she wasn't getting anywhere. "But I never wanted to hurt anyone."

It was the wrong thing to say. Tristan's jaw tightened, and anger sparked in his eyes. "Even if you didn't want to, you did. You killed people. You took them from their families."

"You don't think I know that?" She needed to stop snapping at him, but it was going to be a hard battle. "I can't undo anything I've done, and I have to live with that. You said it yourself; all I can do is try to seek redemption."

"All I've seen you seek is your own survival."

Frustration got the better of her- mostly because he was right- and Ria's hand slammed down onto the arm of her chair. "You know what?!" She was nearly shouting, and she lowered her voice. "I'll take most of the responsibility for the fact that we don't get along, but it's time you cut me some gods-damned slack. I gave up everything when I left the Brotherhood. I could have sat back and helped this whole crisis along. I could have lived the rest of my life with someone I care about, someone I could have loved. Do you understand me? I walked away from a happy life because I couldn't do what they wanted me to. Because the price of my happy life wasn't worth it. So maybe, just maybe, you should give me some credit."

Ria didn't succeed in her effort to refrain from shouting, and by the time she was done, she was angry enough that her heartbeat had spiked. Tristan said nothing, and when she got her breathing back under control, she said lowly, "I'm sorry I haven't done what you would've. But the world's coming to an end, my family is going to hunt me down, and I'm terrified, and I don't know what else to do. I just want out. Away from all this."

Tristan looked away, seeming to think for a long moment. Seconds ticked by before he replied.

"You're right. I don't give you any credit, and I know that I haven't made it easy for you even when you've tried. You walked away from your family in the Brotherhood... I lost mine to them. You know, I remember my mother screaming at me to run, and after a few years I got tired of running... " He paused for a moment. So it was his parents, she thought, struck by the irony. A pair of orphans should have been able to understand eachother better. "I know what you can do in terms of skill, Ria, I saw it firsthand in Windhelm. I respect you, but whether or not I trust you, well... that's still a matter of debate."

Ria smiled thinly. This was a bit of progress, after all.

"I think I can live with that."


The group left at dawn. With no living horses to be found in the city, they were on foot, and Caius set a grueling pace. His route took them to Ivarstead; they arrived not long after dark, and the Imperial was handed the reins of a horse harnessed to a vendor's cart. From there, they navigated through the mountains around Helgen to approach Riverwood from the south. She knew the area well, and stopped the group when they reached Embershard Mine around midnight. It hadn't been an active mining site since a group of bandits had taken it over three years ago, and the bandits were long gone, allowing them to rest for a few minutes.

That next move was to scout ahead, which they did in two pairs. Ria and the Bosmer went first, watched for an hour, and returned again. When Caius and Tristan left and then returned from their own survey of the town's defenses, they had a good idea of the Void creatures' sentry pattern. Then came the plan. Caius and Tristan would provide a distraction; Ria and the Bosmer were the only ones quiet enough to do what had to be done, and so had the hard part. Covan would be waiting with the net and the horse-drawn cart.

They had to work quickly. Dawn was approaching, and the cover of darkness was one of the few advantages Ria and the Bosmer had. So as the stars were beginning to disappear, Ria found herself waist-deep in freezing water, huddled against one of the support pillars of the bridge that led out from Riverwood. Overhead, over the gentle rush of the water, Ria heard the footsteps of a Void-creature echoing off the stone. Her heartbeat picked up; any second now…

Then, from the other end of town, there was the whoosh of flames, and she was in motion instantly, straightening and reaching up to grab onto the outside of the bottom arch of the structure, heaving herself up and scaling the side. In the span of a few heartbeats, she slipped over the railing and onto the bridge.

The humanoid Void-creature was facing away, looking toward the burning house on the opposite edge of town. Slowly and silently, Ria drew a thick length of wood from a sling across her back. It was as big around as her arm, and she still broke it across the demon's head; she would learn later that she shattered it's jaw, preventing the demon from shrieking. The near-horizontal swing drove it sideways, and Ria dropped the stump of wood and lunged forward, barreling into the already off-balance creature and sending them both over the rail and into the water.

The river swallowed them both, the gentle current carrying them along. She opened her eyes, and could make out the shape of the creature next to her; it was either unable to swim properly or weakened by the blow, and she locked her arms around it's neck in a sleeper hold. She didn't know if she could cut off its air supply, but she used the position to control its movements as best she could.

As the current sped up, it thrashed wildly, and she held on with all her strength. The creature twisted, flailed it's bladed arms wildly, and blood filled the water; Ria didn't even feel the blow land. The current picked up again, and her lungs began to scream for air.

Then there were hands on her arms and grabbing ahold of armor, and the Bosmer was there, pulling her from the river. The minute she was on solid ground, he moved on to haul a thrashing Void-creature out by the foot. Ria climbed to her feet and helped to subdue the creature; while the the Bosmer practically laid across one arm, trying not to be bucked off as he fumbled with the enchanted manacles, Ria held the ebony creature down as best she could, sitting on her knees on it's other wrist and leaning her weight on her hands on it's chest.

The Bosmer had just clapped the manacle on the creature's wrist when Caius and Tristan, out of breathe and wet from wading the river, arrived. With the help of the two men, they were more or less able to flip the creature over and pin it down; with a bit of fighting, the Restoration-enchanted shackle was closed around the demon's other wrist, locking it's hands behind it's back. Then Covan and the horse were there, drawn by the commotion, and the net was thrown over the still-thrashing creature. When it'd thoroughly tangled itself, the five of them heaved it up and threw it into the cart.

Ria was exhausted, and pain was beginning to lance through her hip where she'd been cut, but there was no time to rest; capturing the creature had already taken too long, and it's companions might have noticed. The group began to run, traveling south at first and following the river. The secluded forests of Falkreath would hide them well, and allow for a few days of rest. She should have been relieved; she was heading to the Hold that had seen some of her happiest memories.

It had never felt less like home.