As I walked out of Riften an hour later and met up with Omazirr at the same spot we disbanded from, I felt doltish. Nobody attacked me, Delvin wasn't the Guildmaster of the Thieves' Guild so he couldn't make people attack me, and I got a lot of helpful information.

Omazirr was leaning against a tree, watching me very closely as I walked toward him. I had the cowl on again and the hood up as he stared at me. He was looking at every little movement I made. When I was less than an arm's length away from him, he reached out, ripped my cowl off and shoved my hood down, making me gasp and stumble backwards.. At first I thought the sudden gestures and movements were attempts of him trying to hurt me, but by the time I gasped and started to back away he'd managed to wrap his arm around my waist and jerk me toward him so our chests and somewhat our abdomens were pressed together.

He stared down into my eyes with a gleam of anger and I felt my ears shrink down against my head, showing my fear. His eyes were sternly locked on mine, searching my eyes for something, but what?
With his free hand, he pulled my robes open and pushed the sleeves off of my arms. The next movement he made pulled the robe completely off without letting go of me as he pulled the robe away and held it off to the side of me, eventually tossing it over Spark's back and he started to look over my body, covered now only by a sleeveless black shirt and very tight leggings that were colored red and black.

My heart was pounding, my thoughts racing again like they'd already done so many times since I came to Skyrim. I kept thinking now about how Omazirr was going to hurt me and beat me down or something of the sorts.

It took me so long before I was able to find my voice, and even then I was afraid he was overreact and strike me.

"What are you-"

He interrupted me with a loud growl in his voice, "What'd they do to you?" he practically exclaimed.
Confusion filled my eyes and my heart beat faster, "What? Who? What are you talking about?"
"Did they hurt you?"

"I- no!" I jerked out of his arms and quickly pulled my robe back on while he watched me with that still-stern look. "They gave me the information I needed, Omazirr. That's all! If I were hurt, you'd know!"

I disliked, highly, being in awkward situations like that, so to avoid it any further I jumped up on Spark's back, pulled in the reins and started off past the road leading directly to the gates of Riften. I kept my tail curled close to me and on the other side of Spark's body so the guards couldn't see it, as well as my hood up and face looking away so they couldn't see that I was a Khajiit.

I heard the sound of hooves not far behind me and knew that Omazirr was just a while away.
About half an hour later, a big wooden house came in to view and I could see only a few guards surrounding it, but there had to be more inside. The house was rather big, definitely had at least two floors, probably had a basement and a circular building behind it that looked like a watchtower. It wasn't that big and nobody was on it anyways.

I hopped off of Spark and set her harness around a branch of a nearby sapling. Moments later, Omazirr came to a stop and stayed up on his horse.

"Am I coming in with you?" he asked.

"No," I told him. "I can handle it myself." I didn't want to talk any longer. He made me feel as though I was completely unable to handle myself, as though I'd never fought before or seen death and he treated like a little kid who couldn't stomach the sight or smell of blood and gore. I hated the way he embraced me just a little bit ago, making me feel like I walked out of Riften as though I wore a bloodbath on my fur and clothes. I started to walk away from him. The way he treated me made me so upset that I started to walk away without even taking the time to devise a plan like I had wanted to. I was going to walk right in to this situation like a blind mouse, and honestly, I wasn't going to act surprised if I got my head lopped off because of it.

"Ajivha," Omazirr said my name firmly. It stopped me in my tracks, but I had a hard time looking back at him.

"What?" I spat the question out at him with my back still turned to him.

He sighed, "Be careful."

I rolled my eyes and started to make my way around to the back of the house. There was a thin lining of trees around the property that would do more than enough to keep me from being seen, but I was still nervous. I had my bow and arrows on me, but for up-close combat, it wouldn't do me any good. I recently acquired an axe from the Thieves' Guild, Mercer Frey telling me that if I was going to get up in a guard's face, I'd better have more than just an arrow to slice his throat with.

I had the dagger in a pocket of my robe, ready as ready to grab it if a guard came out of nowhere, but the axe was equipped to my back and I had to do my best to keep my senses alive. If somebody were to try and sneak up on me, I'd prefer to be prepared to grab it and swing.

My preferred weapon was a bow and arrow, merely because it allowed me to kill from a distance and (more or less) also gave me more of a chance to get away unscathed.

I almost stopped dead in my tracks when a thought occurred to me.

Hey tidbit, I told myself. Magic!

I almost slapped myself, forgetting that I had a wide variety of spells to choose from that I could use on these guards, but would I ever really use them? Did I even remember a lot of them?

"Hey cat," I heard somebody whisper. "Turn around."

I spun around quickly to fine a guard behind me, his sword equipped and ready to swing at me.
I scrambled backwards and fumbled for axe, but the guard jumped toward me and I didn't have the time or the muscle grip to grab such a heavy weapon. I muttered profanities and grabbed my dagger. I had just enough time to duck as the guard's sword came swinging towards me.

Before he could swing it back the other way, I hurled myself at him and leaped on him so both of us tumbled to the ground, my body over him as I straddled him at the waist. A stray branch on the ground knocked his helmet off and his sword landed a few inches away from his hands, just mercilessly out of his reach.

I was surprised, and almost joyful. If this guard was so weak, how difficult could it be to take on the other ones?

Then my happiness was desecrated.

He was probably nothing more than a boy; a young man in his twenties with barely a muscular build. For the love of Boethiah! He had no muscles at all! He was like a twig, probably much less that one-twenty in his weight. He had a head of thick brown hair and frightened green eyes. He was a Nord, with soft spots of red in his hair.

"Please," he whispered. "Please don't kill me! Please, I-I'll tell you whatever you want to know!"

Weak. Weakness was held in the boys' eyes. But could I afford to let him live? He may be weak, but he has to be dedicated to his duty enough to go back and tell the other guards about me if I let him go.

I knew I should have taken the time to interrogate him, but I heard voices getting eerily close to the treeline and the boy opened his mouth as though to scream for help so I had no time. Within a array of seconds, my dagger was sticking out of the boy's throat and blood was splattered on my face. His eyes were left wide and his face quickly drained of any color it once had.

The guards still grew closer so I ripped my dagger out of his throat and then I saw his boots- they muffled all sounds which explained why I didn't hear him coming. I pulled them off of him and while staying close to the ground, I pushed his body under a small bush of thickets, changed from my drab brown boots into what once was his and I ran off, surprised at how much quieter I was as I ran over short tree branches and silently crunched leaves under my feet.

Less than five minutes later I came to be in a position behind the house and I could see a back door that would lead right in to the house. There were no guards in my way so I went for it.

So far, heading in without a plan was actually doing me good. That kid didn't kill me which was a good sign, right? So luck was currently on my side.

With this thought in mind, I darted to the door, the wind pushing my hood down and my hands flying up to bring it back up.

As I came to the door, I took a quick deep breath and muttered, Please, Boethiah, please! Help me here. Keep me safe and guide me through this home in one piece!

When I pushed open the front door, it took every ounce of my will not to cry out at the sudden fist that was charging at my face. I ducked and sprawled my leg out towards the guard, kicking him sharply and making him fall backwards. He didn't completely fall down, instead he only landed on his tush.
The commotion made three other guards come in to the room, whcih I assumed was supposed to be a really nice kitchen, and suddenly I was outnumbered four-to-one. More profanities scrambled through my head, but this time I actually had enough time to grab the axe from my back and swing it in front of me. I didn't have the best grip on it and I didn't hit any of the guards, but a few of them got solid hits on me.

I stumbled backwards, pains hooting throughout the left side of my face, and when I recovered seconds later, the smell of burning flesh flooded my nose and my eyes shot open. My first thought was that I was on fire, but when I looked, the guards were! Their bodied burned so intensely that before they could scream, they were burned to ashes and when I turned around, Omazirr was at the door with a flame encasing his hand.

In the few moments of peace that we had, he quickly stepped toward me and took my chin into his grasp. I was holding the axe in my right hand and my left hand was trying to hold the side of my face, but Omazirr made me take my hand down and the flames in his hand turned to a purple glow and the next thing I knew there was a relieved feeling flooding through the side of my face.

He kissed my forehead, a friendly I'm sorry for earlier behavior and nodded toward the hallway, silently telling me that we should move on.

I nodded in agreement and we started to walk forward. I questioned if I really forgave Omazirr. Did I? I mean, I never liked being treated like a child . . .

The house was decorated by really expensive-looking pictures, statues and statuettes. The furniture looked fragile, as though if you sat on it, you'd be on the floor the next second.

The hallway was clear, the front room was clear, but the second floor was full of guards at every turn. There was rooms pretty much everywhere which bothered me. I felt like if we didn't check every room, we'd get bombarded by more guards on our way back through the house.

The whole way through the house, Omazirr had my back and saved my head a few times. I also had my small share of saving him, but after clearing the top level of the house, we couldn't explain our predicament.

"There has to be a basement," I said softly to Omazirr. We stood in the final room down a long hallway that had all of the doors open. The only occupants were dead bodies now.

"Yes," he agreed. "But where?"

"Has to be one on the first floor."

We made our way back down to the first floor and started our search. We moved and pulled rugs, tried removing the heads of the statues to look for buttons, slid the paintings back and forth, and even walked up to a bookcase and started tilting books forward and removing them but nothing happened.
We shared a look of annoyance and my mind was struggling on what to do next.

"Maybe the man isn't here?" Omazirr offered.

"No," I declined. My tail shook behind me, rattling my annoyance. "There wouldn't be so many guards if this were an empty house. There's something we're missing."

My eyes started to dart around the wall, and then they crossed over the bookshelf.

"Help me move this," I said, walking up to the bookshelf and trying to nudge it. With all of the books it was difficult for me, but once Omazirr was helping me, it slid right out of place, revealing a staircase that led down to a lower level.

Omazirr chuckled, "The one thing we didn't think to try."

I shushed him and readied my axe and he readied himself, too. We walked down the staircase and came face to face with more guards charging at us. How much money did the man have to buy so many guards?

I took heads off, Omazirr did the same and applied his magic to our situation. The moment was a blur, but I found myself face-to-face with a startled man. You could see the stress in his face, the face of an old Nord. Short blond hair, full beard, scared eyes. He matched the description Mercer gave me.

"Who- who are you?" he cried, standing behind a table a good ten feet away from us.

I sheathed my axe and equipped my bow and drew an arrow.

I smiled at the man, "The Thieves' Guild sent us."

I wanted to go as soon as possible, to return to the Sanctuary, so I waited for no reply and let the arrow fly through his skull.