Avielle Fradaun was not having a good week.

For starters, her first task in the Arcane University could hardly have been considered a success. She'd been looking forward to joining the University for years, expressly because it was said to be so much better-organized and calm than the 'fringe' of the scattered guildhalls across Cyrodiil. Undertaking every guildhall's accumulated problems and being sent all over the province was by no means enjoyable, but she bore it while clinging to the hope that once she was done with it, she was done with it, and she'd be able to settle down in the University to simply learn.

But apparently, even the Imperial City's haven for mages was not free of strife.

She'd gone done to Wellspring Cave fully charged and whistling, thinking optimistically about how from here on it would be a clear path forward. No more errant tasks and grunt work – she was through with marching through marauder-infested halls and retrieving unnaturally heavy signet rings from wells containing dead Associates. She could sit down to study and practice, and maybe she'd try to make her fortune with that adventuring business when she was much, much more experienced. Honestly, why anyone would willingly walk into a crumbling ruin filled with people intent on killing you was beyond her.

She'd come back from Wellspring Cave with considerably less magicka and much less whistling, realizing that after all her toil, she'd simply stepped into yet another Guildhall with its own set of issues... and that if past experience was worth anything, the newbies always ended up shouldering the fieldwork.

Avielle was not familiar with enchantment, so she'd shouldered off the ornately carved stick that was her only reward for battling through a group of murderous necromancers to Delmar, the man in charge of the Chironasium. He seemed a nice enough man, but her mood had not been very charitable at the time; she'd have to apologize later for her snappishness. She'd been delighted to find that she could attain a free staff of paralysis – she was fairly skilled in alteration, restoration, and destruction, but all illusion magic besides the simplest charm spells eluded her. And being able to freeze enemies long enough to pepper them with fire and lightning would make any sticky situation she got into much easier.

She had not been so delighted to hear that it would take a whole week to enchant, so she'd gone back to her favorite town to wait, trying not to acknowledge the sinking realization that being a mage was not a free ride once you'd climbed up the ladder to the University. Of course, Raminus had acted completely shocked at the fact that Eletta and Zahrasha were dead at the hands of necromancers. It would be just like her luck to have all the problems begin just as she arrived.

A week off in Skingrad could calm anyone's nerves. Usually.

Then Glarthir went and tried to kill her.

She'd been attempting to gently coax him out of his paranoia for a while now – Skingrad was a town she spent plenty of time in. She knew its shopkeepers, its citizens, its beggars... and then there was the Wood Elf eccentric. She'd taken pity upon the paranoid resident quickly after meeting him, but after realizing that no amount of her frail calm spells could settle him down, she'd actually went through the trouble to watch all of the 'spies' that he'd marked out to assure him that none of them were actually after him. To think that Bernadette Peneles was a spy, that sweet girl... if anything, his wild accusations had somehow made him seem less dangerous.

It had never even occurred to her that she was gravitating towards the suspect list.

The complete spontaneity of the attack had stunned her. She was not a stranger to combat, but even now, in her confused state, some part of her mind was realizing that she might have to rethink her usual tactics. She'd always scoffed at weapons, considering them barbaric and beneath her – but it was all too clear now that her age old tactic of 'don't let them close in on you' could fail before she even realized she was in combat. Whenever she found herself facing angry beasts or undead, she would throw spells at them – first a slow but potent spell she'd learned from her mother that gradually damaged one's speed until they could barely walk, and then repeated elemental bolts until whatever was pursuing her either gave up or perished. When facing people, she usually tossed the speed-diminishing spell at them and then ran away. Killing was not something she was comfortable with.

Anyone who relied on that sort of evasive strategy couldn't afford to be surprised.

Her arm was mostly healed now, at least, her magic having done its work, but minutes ago it had been cleaved almost to the bone. The awful, visceral feeling of something tearing into your flesh... she'd received plenty of fire and frost burns in her time, but in retrospect, her natural resistance to magicka had taken off the edge to every last one of them; some of the more serious injuries she'd received probably could have killed her had she been any other race. And while archers were more tricky to deal with, she did know one particular spell that could ward off arrows, although it was difficult to maintain for long. Where physical wounds were concerned, she hadn't actually received much more than a scratch or scrape for a few years, and had been horrified to realize that the pain was all she could focus on in her panic. Even a minor healing spell had fizzled out at her fingertips. If she'd had a dagger, she could have used it to defend herself, but as things had been, she could only look up and think sweetMaraI'mgoingtodie.

If it hadn't been for that stranger, she would have. And that was a scary thought.

Where had that man come from? If she didn't know any better, she'd guess that he'd slid off the Chapel roof, but nobody could withstand that kind of fall without at least breaking their leg. Black and green... the swish of a cloak – who was he, anyways, wearing a cloak – and the flash of a blade carved from green glass... One stroke and the Elf she'd worked so hard to soothe was on his knees, blood pouring from his mouth like an overturned bucket of rainwater.

He'd been so... unaffected. He'd practically sliced somebody in half, and then turned away to leave without a word. She'd been forced to kill in some of the more heated situations she'd gotten into, but once her head had cleared, the reality of what she'd done usually froze her for a while, that she'd actually claimed somebody else's life. It seemed so wrong, so hard to wrap your head around... and he'd just walked off with only a backwards glance and a single word.

"Nobody." I am nobody.

His hood had covered all of his features, but that one word had revealed a velvety High Rock accent, even thicker than her own. He was definitely a Breton, then, and tall... but there was nothing else, nothing as he'd taken one step forward and – without a single arcane word or gesture – cloaked himself in the darkness.

It was some form of invisibility, and a powerful spell, at that – but it couldn't have been a spell for him to cast it without any prompt. She knew that she could occasionally muster up a powerful shield spell that she could cast as such, but that was a well-known ability that all Bretons had.

Part of her wondered if it had all even happened. A hooded stranger appearing from nowhere to save her life, then vanishing as suddenly as he'd came... perhaps she'd taken a spell to the head too hard.

The clatter of footsteps snapped her out of her daze – the guards were finally coming. She looked up, squinting to make them out in the darkness. One of them was Dion, the captain, judging from his unusually dark complexion, while the other was one of the lower-ranked guards she'd seen patrolling the town.

It then occurred to her that it did not necessarily look good to be the only one present at a crime scene, much less so one involving Glarthir. Dion had known that she'd been involved with the town eccentric for as long as she'd been working with him, and that made her a suspect to begin with.

What have I gotten myself into...?

Dion took one look at the dead Wood Elf and fixed Avielle with a glare that could burn holes through ebony. "Stay where you are!" he barked.

As if she was in any position to flee, half-crouched and half on her knees.

"What is this? I told you to come to me if anything happened with Glarthir. Regardless of how crazy he was, this is still murder!"

"Sir, if I may...?" The other guard spoke, seeming somewhat nervous at contradicting his superior.

"What is it?" Dion snapped, not taking his eyes off Avielle.

"Sir, there's no way she could have done this," the other guard said cautiously. "This was done by a skilled swordsman, and she's unarmed."

"There's an axe on the ground right there."

"This was done by a sword," the guard protested, kneeling down to get a closer look at Glarthir's mortal wound. "Look at this cut; it's wider than the axe, and a much cleaner sweep besides. That thing is pretty rusty; it wouldn't slice so neatly. Besides, just look at her. Can you see her even being able to lift a weapon like that?" He gestured to the battleaxe at Glarthir's side. "It looks to me like he attacked her first."

While it was said in her defense, the remark still stung somehow. Avielle bit her lip, but decided that in the situation, it was best not to speak until spoken to.

Dion mulled it over for a second. "Is this what happened?"

Avielle opened her mouth to explain, but she was cut off before she could utter a single syllable.

"Dion, sir!" Another guard raced towards the captain, his helmet slightly ajar. As he approached, Avielle noticed that he looked young and panicked; his helmet was ajar, and beads of sweat shone on his face.

"Something to report?" Dion asked irritably, wondering what could be more important than a slaughtered citizen on his watch.

"Yes, s-" The guard stopped, noticing that the nearby Glarthir looked rather less alive than usual. Definitely a new guard, then, by the way he went white to the roots of his hair – spending time in the Imperial Legion meant you'd get to see your fair share of corpses. Finally managing to pry his eyes away from the bloodied Wood Elf, he bit his lip and straightened his posture into a more dignified manner. "Yes, sir. Lazare Milvan was just discovered dead in his house. Murdered, by the looks of it."

Dion rubbed his temple, suddenly very, very tired.

It was going to be a long night.

0o0o0

Nearly a day later, Vicente arrived back at the Sanctuary.

In a way, he could travel much faster than any of his Dark Siblings. He didn't ride – horses would panic if he tried to approach them – but he could outstrip all but the finest steeds on foot, and the action barely tired him at all. Still, he had his own impediments.

The night had not been young when he'd left Skingrad, and the distance from there to Cheydinhal could not be covered in three hours. Newer vampires could tolerate the sun if they kept themselves well-fed, but time eventually blurred the distinct separate stages of vampirism, leaving his abilities and appearance fairly static on the far end of the spectrum. Soon after feeding, his features would fill out slightly, but nowhere near the degree they had three hundred years ago, back when he was young and could still walk under the sun. Which he could not now – all the blood in the world would not make a difference to an old vampire in that matter, and he was no exception.

He'd waited out the day in one of the ruined forts that dotted Cyrodiil's landscape, casually decapitating the trio of bandits that were brilliant enough to target a vampire. One of them had been carrying a rather fancy Elven dagger that he might give to Ocheeva as a present later, if she could snap Antoinetta out of her garlic fetish.

It was perhaps one in the morning when Vicente inserted the key into the well and climbed back into the world he was much more acquainted with – and that was much more acquainted with him.

"Greetings, Brother." Teinaava was sitting at the table wedged in the far corner, looking up from one of the books Vicente had lent him. "Your contract went well, I trust?"

The vampire smiled, languidly tossing his hood back. "Yes, although it has been a while since I have tested my skills. I have to say, while I'm not familiar with the details of the contract, the target certainly deserved his death. When I tried to greet him, he..."

It was only a while later, with the Argonian once more engrossed in his book and Vicente standing at the heavy double doors to his quarters, that he realized that in his retelling of the kill, he'd completely failed to mention the other events that had transpired that night.

He placed a hand on the door, welcoming the familiar creak as it slowly swung open. Perhaps there really was no need, though. The lives of those unconnected to the Brotherhood had no value to his family. There were always the potential recruits, of course, but remembering the girl's complete lack of preparedness, the raw fear in her eyes – both of Glarthir, and him – he could not possibly see her ever being a part of the Brotherhood.

Her life can go on as it always had, he mused. Hopefully she'd learn something from it. Honestly, anyone who went around unarmed was just asking for somebody to attack them.

The vampire sat down on the stone slab he called a bed – really, though, he couldn't remember how he'd ever slept on a real bed. They were so... squishy. The give had made it feel like he was somehow drowning on land, not that breathing was a necessity of his and drowning was a possibility to begin with. But the solid stone block was much more comfortable on his back.

He set down his longsword and its scabbard next to his chest of belongings, where his enchanted claymore – finely wrought ebony – gleamed proudly from its stand. He preferred saving that for more difficult contracts, and he did not regret leaving it behind for this one. A conceited knight... and a raving lunatic... were hardly worth staining its blade. His thoughts started to wander again as he settled down into a comfortable position.

It was none of his concern, anyways. Her life had been a whim of his; he'd chosen to save it, and he had no ties to wherever it went from there.

That was what it meant to be a part of the Brotherhood, and Vicente Valtieri had no regrets.

He folded his arms across his chest and let sleep carry him off into his nightmares.