I stayed in Whiterun with the Companions for a week and three days, not once bringing up the topic of the Thieves Guild or the Dark Brotherhood, constantly biting my tongue whenever I thought of the name "Mithra". I had gone outside the gates with Farkas in the evenings to catch Luna Moths and Vilkas had given me some Chaurus eggs. I had purchased the Taproot and Canis root from Arcadia and I managed to get some petty soul gems from Belethor in the General Goods store. I still had to get two Briar Hearts and Jarrin Root and I had no idea how I was going to get either without making some trips, one I knew no one would allow me to speak of.

I caught Farkas and Vilkas talking in Vilkas' room during the evening and I joined them, at first staying rather silent, not doing much to participate in conversation. They both began to quiet then, Vilkas first and then Farkas caught on.

'I suppose you're going to ask now, seeing as you haven't all week,' Vilkas said grumpily. He closed the door and stood in the centre of the room with his arms folded across his chest. I sat in the same chair from last week and Farkas sat at the foot of the bed.

'I need Wolfsbane from Neloth in Solstheim. He's not going to give it to me unless I have what he asked for. I still need Briar Hearts and I need Jarrin Root. The only thing I know about Jarrin Root is that I can get it from someone in Riften,' I said with a sigh.

'The Dark Brotherhood has no dealings with the Companions. But from what we've heard we have a connection if you will. Arnbjorn was in the Companions years ago. Farkas and I were young at the time, fifteen years or so. He was part of the Circle at the time, but his methods of dealing with things were unorthodox to say the least. He was asked to leave. He had no honour in how he fought and he was not cut out for our line of work. Not long after he was removed from the Companions we heard news of him joining the Brotherhood. I don't know if he's still alive but if he is he's not going to be very kind towards any Companion or any associates. The Dark Brotherhood doesn't help people, they assassinate people and get paid for it,' Vilkas said with a shake of his head.

'And the Thieves Guild?' I asked.

'The Thieves Guild is the main reason Riften is so economically corrupt. You can pay the guards off if you have the right amount of gold and if you know the right people,' Vilkas scoffed.

'Well, I need to get to know the right people. What do you know about Mithra?'

'I don't know anything about Mithra. But I do know that the Dark Brotherhood murdered Vittoria Vici at her own wedding in Solitude and then walked right out without being seen. Shot her dead as she stood addressing her guests. Today. Luna, the Brotherhood is rising to become what they once were. You can't go asking around for these people,' Vilkas warned.

'At her own wedding? That's disturbing,' I said, looking horrified at the ground.

'And you want to go asking for a favour?'

'Look, I don't know what she has to do with the Brotherhood, but I know she's supposed to be head of the Thieves Guild. I don't have much to be stolen from me in the first place,' I said sternly. 'I need what they have, if they even have it. And I will get it, even if I have to go to Riften on my own.'

'How about we work on the Briar Hearts first and then we'll deal with the, uh, other thing,' Farkas suggested.

'Where are we going to find those?' I asked, looking from one twin to the other.

'The Reach,' Vilkas said.

'Markarth?' I asked.

'Yes. That's in the Reach,' Vilkas said dryly. 'The land is filled with Forsworn. If you know where to look, you'll find a Briar Heart.'

'What exactly is a Briar Heart?' I asked shyly.

'They're Forsworn men that had their warrior heart cut out and it was replaced with a Briar Heart. I don't know where they get the damn things to replace the heart, so the only chance we have of getting one is by killing one. They're very strong and very dangerous. Forsworn aren't just found on their own. They're like wolves, they stay in packs and you should always remember that when in that area. I'd recommend getting a better bow than whatever you have by the way. And get some strong arrows that won't snap if the wind gets too strong,' Vilkas said.

'Who are we going with?' I asked.

'The three of us should be able to handle it,' he replied. I paused for a moment and looked from one twin to the other.

'We won't have to kill anyone, will we?' I asked with my voice shaking.

'You will if you want this Briar Heart,' Vilkas said under his breath.

'Luna can't come,' Farkas said.

'Why not?' I asked. Vilkas looked up at his brother.

'Have you seen her trying to hold a sword? -Sorry Luna,' Farkas said, turning to me with sympathetic eyes.

'Have you seen her with a bow?' Vilkas retorted quickly, standing up and folding his arms across his chest. Farkas thought for a moment, ready to make an argument but he couldn't quite seem to find anything.

'I'll be fine Farkas,' I assured him, although I was sure I could do with some assurance that I would in fact be fine.

'That makes me feel better,' he muttered, sitting down in the corner on a chair and slumping in his seat.

'I have a question,' I said after a few moments of silence. Vilkas said nothing but I thought I caught him rolling his eyes. 'If you know that that werewolf, who used to be in the Companions, is now in the Dark Brotherhood, why hasn't he been arrested?'

'The Brotherhood might be illegal, but that doesn't mean people in power don't use it,' Vilkas scoffed.

'Are you telling me the Jarls hire them?'

'Not quite the Jarls. But people who run the show behind the Jarls would. Keep their job secure and whatnot,' he said as if he were bored of my questions now. He probably was.

'So people know who they are?'

'Of course. But no one is stupid enough to go looking for the Brotherhood without wanting to hire them,' he chuckled.

'Wow, I feel really safe in Skyrim knowing everything is running smoothly,' I said with wide eyes. Vilkas chuckled a little. It was strange to see him laughing at something, even if it was only a small smile and a half a laugh.

'Before I go to bed, I was wondering if you would help me with one more thing. I promise I won't ask for anything anymore,' I said before muttering, 'well at least for a week.'

'Go on,' Vilkas said dryly.

'I need books for the College. They were taken by some student and now they're in Fellglow Keep. They're very important and I need them back.'

'We'll get them tomorrow. After that we'll make our way to The Reach,' Vilkas said, 'Now go to bed.'

Farkas and I left Vilkas' room, Farkas retreating to his room as I headed to bed with the other Companions, sleeping in the same bed as I had before I left for the College. It was strange to be back here.

-x-

My eyes opened slightly, not enough for me to see, but enough to recognise a figure standing over me. I opened them a sliver more and saw Vilkas standing holding a bow in his hand with the same grumpy look on his face.

'Wake up,' he said sternly.

'I'm up,' I muttered.

'Then get out of bed,' he said, tossing the bow on top of me lightly and dropping a quiver full of steel arrows beside my bed. 'We're leaving soon.'

He left the room and I wiped my eyes and looked around, noting that all the Companions were up with their beds made. I lifted the bow up and crawled out of the bed, wishing I could have just gotten a little more time. I fixed my robes on myself and threw the quiver over my head and onto my back and held the bow in my hand. I trudged sleepily up the stairs and into the hall and made my way over to Vilkas and Farkas, dragging my feet across the floor.

'You look great,' Vilkas said sarcastically. I frowned and patted my hair down in areas and wiped my face once.

'Oh because you look fantastic all the time,' I retorted, still grooming my hair so it looked somewhat decent.

-x-

Fellglow Keep was just North of Whiterun and a little to the East. It was a large ruin that was guarded by a Flame Atronach and two mages. I began to panic as I had never come into contact with a Flame Atronach, or any kind of Atronach for that matter.

'Calm down,' Vilkas ordered as we sat behind a boulder to keep out of sight from our foes.

'I am calm,' I said nervously, fiddling with the bow in my hands. My legs were shaking and my eyes were jutting back and forth from Fellglow to Vilkas.

'Luna, relax, you'll be fine,' Farkas said reassuring me.

'What if I die? What if we all die? Oh Mara, we're all going to die,' I said in a panic. Vilkas clamped his hand over my mouth harshly and shushed me.

'You will die if you keep going on the way you are. You have to calm down. Just think of it as hunting for food,' he said.

'That's fine and all, but usually my food doesn't fight back,' I said as he took has hand away from my mouth.

'You're going to sneak around the side and get atop of a pillar and stay hidden and start shooting arrows. Farkas and I will charge them from here. All you have to do is stay hidden and shoot what you can. We'll take care of the rest,' Vilkas said. I got the feeling he was sending me away and I couldn't say I didn't blame him.

I nodded and began to make my way around to the back of the ruin, always crouching low trying to stay in the shadows, which was hard to do seeing as it was a bright and wonderful day… I crept up around the left of the Keep and onto a pillar that had been knocked over. I lay flat on my stomach and began taking deep breaths to calm myself.

'They're just game,' I whispered to myself. I watched as Farkas and Vilkas also crept up to the Keep and moved through the arch. The Flame Atronach began tossing careless fireballs in their direction and the two began to dodge and run around as the mages began shouting at each other and casting spells towards them.

I pulled an arrow back and held my breath and carefully studied the Atronach that hovered in a gust of flames, throwing fire at my friends. I released and hit the Atronach in the chest, staggering her to the side. She looked up in my direction and I scrambled for another arrow in a panic, I had never really been caught by my own prey, and they certainly didn't attack back, they generally just fled.

'Shit,' I muttered as she mustered up a fireball in her hand and flung it in my direction. I rolled to the side to avoid it, dropping my bow in a clumsy mess. It fell down onto the ground and I jumped down off the stone pillar to grab it. I felt the heat burning across my face as another bolt swooped past me. I looked up to see she was gliding towards me quickly. I didn't have enough time to grab my bow and pull an arrow so I held up my hands to shield my face from the fire and screamed, casting a blast of frost from my hands. I could feel the cold on my fingers as it gushed toward the Atronach. The icy blast came as a shock to it and made it stagger backwards. I conjured up another long stream of the frost and the Atronach fell to the ground with frost coating it.

'Luna! Run!' both Vilkas and Farkas screamed at me. I scrambled around the pillar I had lay on and ducked at the blast of fire filled the air where I had been standing. I gasped in panic, my heart racing, a knot in my chest. I felt some heaviness on my chest as I tried to breathe. Finally I caught my breath and relaxed against the pillar. I grabbed my bow and poked my head around to see the twins moving towards me, the two with blood splatters on their faces. Not much, just some little speckles, but still enough to make me feel sick.

'Are they-?'

'They're dead,' Vilkas said. 'Come on, I'm guessing they're not the only ones here.'

'Where do we go now?' asked Farkas.

'There are steps over there, the door is open from what I saw,' Vilkas replied. Farkas and I nodded and the three of us walked over to the staircase that spiralled down slightly into the ground. I hid behind Farkas to stop myself from seeing the bodies of the two mages and vomiting. Ever since seeing someone getting their head chopped off at Helgen I had a fear, for lack of better word, of the blood and the bodies. I could feel the warm blood off the chopping block on my face and I quickly brushed it off.

Vilkas climbed down the steps first and Farkas and I followed. We tried to stay as quiet as possible, which seemed hard for the two brothers to do seeing as they were weighed with armour and weapons, whereas I was used to keeping noise to a minimum from my hunting experience. Although they were particularly skilled in combat, I didn't think the whole sneaking thing was their strong point.

We moved down the stairs and walked through the dungeons. Water covered some of the floor and came up to my knees, but seeing as I was small it bothered me the most. There was a patch of dry floor and then before us was a large pool of water and a staircase leading up.

'Shush,' I said quietly, grabbing Vilkas' arm before he could walk into the water and create more noise. He looked back at me with furred eyebrows and Farkas peered around from behind me. 'There's someone there,' I whispered. I could hear shuffling and movement, someone flicking through the pages of a book and something else shuffling around on the floor.

I took a deep breath and drew an arrow; I stood quietly into the water and moved silently towards the staircase. I kept low in the water so it came up to my waist. I gritted my teeth as the cold attacked my legs. I stood onto the first dry step of the stairs and saw two Frostbite Spiders pacing around. My heart skipped a few beats and I thought I was going to pass out. I readied myself and glanced down at Vilkas and Farkas, I nodded at them and turned back to look at the spiders who couldn't see me in the shadows and because of how low down on the stairs I was.

I released the arrows and pierced the closest spider somewhere in its horribly hairy body. The two of them saw me and began charging at me. I pulled the next arrow as quickly as I could and released into the spider again and shot it in the face. The mage turned around and hurried over but the spider had me first. It hissed and spat at me and I stumbled backward against the wall as the poison hit my skin and burned. Farkas and Vilkas ran up the stairs and with one mighty swoop and a yell Farkas took out the spider, leaving it crushed on the floor.

'Farkas look out!' I yelled as a mage shot an ice blast towards him. It knocked him backwards and immediately I jumped to my feet and sent an arrow flying at him. It hit him square in the chest and he curled over, clutching his chest in agony. I sent another and I hit him at the side of his head and he collapsed to the cold floor with a thud.

I panted heavily and I felt suddenly dizzy. I put my knees on the steps and gathered myself for a moment. I had just killed a person. A human.

'Luna? Are you okay?' Farkas asked gently, putting his hand on my shoulder.

'I think I'm going to get sick,' I muttered.

'Are you sure you want to do this?' Farkas asked. I looked up and nodded even though I really didn't.

We continued through and took a turn left even though there was a path going straight, Vilkas led the way. Vilkas stopped and put his hand out to stop Farkas and I. I looked around him and saw a rune drawn on the floor in front of us. I looked ahead and saw a cell with a person inside and upon further inspection realized it was a vampire. She sat staring at us, not making a sound to give away our location, but neither to help us. She just stared, almost challenging us, waiting to see how we would go about this.

'Step lightly,' Vilkas hissed. We carefully stepped around the rune and turned the corner to see four cells altogether, each filled with a bored looking vampire. There was another mage sitting with his back toward us. Vilkas crept up behind him, but before he could reach him the mage turned and jumped out of his seat. He opened his mouth to call for help, but before he could I raised my hand in a panic and bolt of ice jutted out and went straight through his leg. He gasped in pain and clutched his leg, falling back towards the wall. Vilkas slit his throat with his sword and he gurgled as the blood came pouring out, silently screaming for help and for a moment I felt horrible.

'Open the cells!' hissed one of the vampires. I turned and looked at the four vampires. Vilkas scoffed.

'We didn't come all this way to get tricked into being lunch for some vampires,' he spat.

'Oh please, we don't dine on dogs,' one sneered at him.

'Give me a good reason to let you go then,' he snapped back at them.

'Trust me; we want the filth in the next room dead more than you.'

I wasn't sure whether they meant they wanted to kill them more than we did, or they wanted to kill them more than they wanted to kill us. Either way I was okay with letting them go. Farkas and I looked at Vilkas and I nodded and Farkas gave a short shrug to say "why not?"

Vilkas sighed heavily and turned to the lever beside the door and pulled it down. The vampires hissed with delight and slid across the room to the next door where they charged in and began attacking the mages in the next room. By the time we ran in they had them all dead on the ground, necks broken.

One of them snorted at the dead mages around the room before turning to us. 'We'd love to stay and chat, but we must be taking off now.' They casually walked out of the room as if nothing had happened, their heads held high and their noses pointed into the air.

'Did that just happen?' I asked quietly. Vilkas nodded.

There were tables and cages around the room. It was dimly lit and smelled of blood and a sticky dampness. There were vampires and Khajiits and Nords lying dead around the room, blood still dripping out of some of them; one or two cut open from their necks to their stomachs. I felt my stomach lurch a few times and I closed my eyes. We hurried along where we came to a room with a man standing in the centre of the room. His eyes lit up as he saw us and he pulled on a lever. Vilkas charged at him and engaged in combat.

I screeched as two wolves jumped out of a cell and pounced on Farkas and I. It knocked me to the floor and pushed my bow against its throat as it barked and snapped its teeth in my face. I could feel the heat from its stinking breath. I could feel the bow bending as it inched closer. With all my force I threw it off me and hit it with my bow. It snapped at me and I reached for an arrow when Farkas jumped in and sliced its shaggy head off. I sighed in relief before screeching again as a searing pain flooded through my leg. I could hear the growling behind me as I fell to the floor. Once again Farkas stepped in and took the beast out.

'Necromancer,' Vilkas said in a pant.

'You don't say,' I gasped in pain. I clutched my leg where the bite began to turn red hot. It was turning into a searing white hot pain. I howled in pain and squeezed the back of my leg.

'It's infected, we have to wrap it up,' Vilkas said.

'It's burning,' I said through gritted teeth.

Farkas held my hand I squeezed it and cried as the pain washed over my body. At first I thought they would think I was overreacting but I was relieved to find that Vilkas was gasping in horror at how deep the wound was. Oddly enough I was not relieved to find that it was such a deep wound. I was also not too thrilled about it being infected.

'I don't have anything for it,' Vilkas said sympathetically. He began to put pressure on the wound and I howled in pain.

'Hello?!' exclaimed a small voice. I was getting lightheaded. I could barely hear what was going on after that but I saw Vilkas hurry over to a cell on the far side of the room. I could hear the faint arguing of the twins, Farkas yelling and Vilkas yelling back, both in a panic. Then Vilkas pulled a lever in the middle of the room and the cell Vilkas had been at opened. A man in mage robes hurried over and held up his hand to my wound while Vilkas and Farkas kept a close eye on him, Vilkas ready to grab his blade.

I could just about hear the soft chime of the spell and then my wound felt much better. The white pain began to calm and the wound closed over. I could breathe again.

'Who are you?' Farkas asked defensively as Vilkas put his hand on his weapon, ready to draw on the man.

'My name is Orthorn,' he replied.

'You!' I hissed, glaring up at him.