The lively trio was walking around another of the commercial district's packed boulevards.

"Hey, Wys," Azuyia tapped him on the shoulder, stopping as they were passing a long warehouse with a press of people talking vibrantly outside, most all of them with tankards and bottles in their hands, "what're those?"

"What," he stopped and scanned the crowd. Denthryd stood behind them. "Which do you mean," he laughed.

"No ... the statue-looking things. On either side of that door there." She pointed at two forged steel armatures attached to the building that curved upwards into a basket sconce, each holding a globe of milky glass with a curious figurine sitting on top. She wove through the edge of the crowd towards the door to the long building. Standing there almost pressed to the wall, they looked at one of the sculptures. It was exceedingly fine steel, the streamlined sconces. One usually saw cast iron lanterns hanging outside buildings, the grade that blacksmiths could turn out as fast as the ore could be smelted, and perhaps small braziers with fires if the area were clear enough to set them well away from the buildings. They looked weapons-grade, the curves of the sconce they stood under worked to the smoothness of a sword blade. It was more the strange glass globe that had caught her attention, the distinctive metal figurine posed on top of it most of all.

"What is this, Wystan," she asked, craning her neck to see as much of the sconce's surfaces as possible amidst a continuous jostling towards the door of the establishment.

"That," he nodded, "means this place probably hasn't changed hands any time recently." The glass globe flickered a bit even in the daylight. Strange, she thought, it has no openings. Sitting atop the globe in a joyous pose, right hand extended outward and upward, the other clasping knee where she sat crosslegged with calves draped over the globe's surface facing the street, was the stylized image of a female elf tinted seafoam green.

"Does this," she pointed at the figure, "mean something? What's this building's business, anyhow?"

"Oh, that," Wystan explained, "no, that's only the mark of past times. You won't find many of those left out in the open any more, not those. Saw one in the corner of an antiquities dealer in Imperial City on one of those trips we took. Asked her what it was 'cause that one, too, sat there and flickered, and much brighter if it's sitting in half darkness. It's just art decoration that was major popular over eighty years ago."

"So they imagined elves sitting atop the world," she laughed.

"Oh I dunno, Zu," he shrugged, "those, hmm. Seeing those outside of a building, you're looking at what a lot of the city may have looked like during those times."

"How do you mean," Denthryd asked.

"Here, let's," he pushed back out and away from the wall, "see what's inside," he almost yelled. The street was as loud as it was packed. They got behind Denthryd, who most easily parted the last few steps to the door, and stopped when a gruff Nord man in iron breastplate asked for five septims. Wystan looked at them with a huge smile. "Its ... a ... mead hall," he said, turning to the man and paying, heading in without them.

Five septims, Denthryd thought to himself, to walk in to a barrelhouse. Uuuhhhkayy.

Having found three spots at the far end of one continuous table, they sat for a while taking in the scene.

Azuyia spoke up first. "So Wys," she downed the last of the preposterous tankard and said, "what's the story with all the old ... stuff? And what about those sculptures outside?"

"Those," he answered distractedly, eyes on an Imperial woman with shimmering magenta paint around her eyes walking by, getting his chin turned back in Azuyia's direction. "Hey, what?" He shifted his head to the side momentarily at her, continued, "The style is from the era of a jarl well before the ... cataclysm."

The other two stared at him on hearing this word, the unelaborated reference novices learned for the beginning of the schism with magic in Skyrim. Almost an entire hold, the one around the College, had drowned in a monstrous wave of some origin not related to them as of yet. Winterhold still stood on a promontory hundreds of feet above the sea with most of its original walkway and arch intact. The hold proper, though, had been decimated. Most of the population, certainly those nearest the inlet, had been lost forever and the noble house rebuilt on a paltry scale. Word spread across the country over the next generation, and Nords came to distrust anything with magicka, even blame it for their timeless problems to the point of scapegoating. The craft survived, though its organization had to remain in hierophant seclusion there on the one frozen rock looking out over the sea. From hearing Raynu tell the story in their study hall this past year, the distance didn't bother College masters one bit. They liked their quietude. It's more the going out into the world, apprentices, she had told them, that's going to test your ability to fit in. Don't expect free rounds like a legionnaire from a famous company.

"Is it magicka?" Denthryd broke their silence amongst the carousing and music.

"Yes. See the glint of light inside the glass sphere on it?"

"I did," Azuyia nodded.

"Well the story I got from the dealer in Cyrodiil that time, she told me that before ... current times there had been a jarl, right here no doubt, who had been quite the opposite of what we're used to. He had actively encouraged magic, all forms. Wanted the hold to attract visitors to rival Imperial City itself. They actually had a college, no, more like a guild here inside the city walls. Mages came from the entire continent to schmooze."

"Wow, different times."

"Yep. That glow you saw? That's a wisp cast into the glass and sealed there."

Denthryd and Azuyia's mouths dropped in unison.

"You're kidding! They ... " the Bosmer leaned her body across the table at him, indicating him to do the same, pulling Denthryd by the shoulder, "they decorated their buildings with the dead?!"

"Dunno, sis," Wystan leaned back and looked over at the lines for drinks way across the hall. "It was definitely a freer time than these," he chucked his thumb over his shoulder, "sour years. They lit up the city with wisps. In coming years that kind of art got ripped down, disappeared from streets. Dibella knows what happened when someone busted open one of the spheres," he shivered slightly. "She told me the one in her shop was likely the only I'd ever see, and she was right up until now. She also said some cryptic stuff about the end of magic in this city. I don't think we'll find the guild house or any markers where it used to be, guys. And I wouldn't ask." With that, he got up and walked over to the lines up to the barrels.

Azuyia and Denthryd sat there, side by side, taking this one in and continuing to watch the crowd.