Key

Italic writing = Third person not in the book

Normal writing = Dareio's perspective written in the book

CAPITAL LETTERS = "Anonymous Dunmer's" perspective written in the book

Once again, thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoy!

Chapter 2

So, after that magnificent cliff-hanger, many would have probably expected me to go into a mad dash and give aimless chase to find this assassin to revenge my recently deceased boss. Well, everyone who thinks that is about to happen is wrong. I apologize, but if you remember, I wasn't exactly in a sober state. By the time I had gotten out of my seat, the hall was practically empty, except from the echoes of hundreds of footsteps and shouts. Glancing over to the body of my old boss, I squinted through drunken blurs and made out the reflection of light against steel, then focused a bit harder. A throwing knife, buried in the right side of his neck. After some strenuous arithmetic work, I figured that, if the knife was came in from his right, the assassin would have been on his right, and with me facing him that would mean…

"To the left!" I remember exclaiming triumphantly, before taking an immediate left, only to bump my thigh into the table. After a quick yelp and couple of rubbings over the affected area, I made my way around the tables and to the left side of the hall, entering through a door dedicated to the catering staff. After stumbling through a somewhat narrow corridor, I entered a kitchen area, a dozen or so eyes turning onto me. Every person in the room, all checking through the cupboards and storage rooms for the assassin, froze at the sight of me, with expressions that suggested they were expecting me to beat them or something. Instead, I smiled languidly, before glancing over to the surface closest to me, where a knife-stand filled with kitchen knives sat. I'm not sure what drove me to take one, but I decided to, perhaps relating my mind back to the throwing knife earlier and recalling how cool it would be to make a shot like that. In fact, I think my drunken self was planning to replicate that on the assassin, through an entanglement of stupid reasons, one of which was envy. Taking the knife certainly made some of the staff jolt, but I just tucked it in my belt and blundered straight through the room, and out a back door.

Now at the side of the hall where only supply carts and horses went, I was actually, without meaning to, in the prime location in finding the assassin. However, my internally exaggerated excitement of becoming a hero among peers was soon dampened when I spotted the shadows of two detachments leaving this side of the building, having scanned the perimeter (I assumed). However, it was not yet completely crushed; people just don't disappear into thin air, this assassin had to be around somewhere. I unsheathed the kitchen knife from my belt, momentarily notified myself how disappointing a sound it made, then stepped out into the night, looking around a few storage crates. The more I did it, the tenser I felt, and the tenser I felt, the more my suspicion rose that I was next on that assassin's hit-list. As a Thalmor, we were considered the top predators of Tamriel; a powerful, organised force to be reckoned with and afraid of. One of the only weaknesses we had was that we knew this, and were arrogant and too prideful to show fear or vulnerability in ourselves. Perhaps, in that case, it was in this time that I separated from that force, as I went from predator to prey and looked up in fear some other force from above was about to consume me whole.

PREDATORS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO LOOK UP.

It all happened too quickly for me to fully register, but it all fell into place. From above my head, a shadowy figure fell, the sounds of light fabrics billowing up in sudden windfall reaching my ears, and, before the second was up, I had a knife to a throat, and a tanto-knife contacting the inside hollow of my hip. There was a taut silence between us, where I took a moment to take in the appearance of the intruder. He was masked, with wreathes of scarves about his neck and over his mouth. In the little light I had, his hair was black and his eyes reflected the light in an almost opalescent manner, though I couldn't make out a colour. The skin around his eyes was dark, and his facial structure was clearly elven in its angles, which concluded that the mer in front of me was a Dunmer.

As paranoid and slightly tipsy as I was, the pressure of upholding a silence just got too much. "Good evening," I half-slurred, half-squeaked, a tone of voice that I sincerely suggest you never try to make, especially when threatened by a knife to the crotch NEAR THE CROTCH, YOU IDIOT ok, near the crotch, whatever.

His voice was another giveaway to his race, if one could even call it a voice: it was more of a guttural growl originating from the volcano-land of Vvardenfell. "Make a move, and I'll slice your femoral artery."

"Make a move and I'll-" I started my threat, then took a moment to clear my throat, then continued. "I'll slice your throat."

Even with my knife to his neck, the Dunmer looked wholly unconvinced. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Fine."

"Alright."

There was another silence, but this time it felt more like a lull. I had read many fictional stories of adventure, and quite a few included nerve-straining stand-offs, so the one I was in now felt much like a disappointment. This mer in front of me had just killed one of the highest ranking officers in the corps; why was this not more exciting?

"What are you waiting for, then?" I blurted out, the suspense getting too much to bear, and perhaps to induce some sort of excitement to feed my subconscious disappointment.

"What?" He asked, something I took as an insult due to the fact that this was supposed to be tense, and he sounded calmer than an old lady knitting.

"Why are you hesitating?" I asked with more urgency, which was an attempt at sounding threatening but instead just sounding more scared.

"Why are you?"

This made me laugh a lot more than I should have. I would blame it on the drink if telling this story to someone's face, but, I must confess, I think it was my way of converting how scared I was externally. "You just killed my boss, sir," I replied, sounding cheerful due to the giggles. "I'd think anybody would be rather pleased if that happened to them."

The Dunmer didn't seem to see the humour in it. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"No! Though, I am also quite intoxicated."

The Dunmer groaned in response, though didn't dare to take his eyes off of me; I was still a threat, no matter how mild.

It was at this moment that I both conceived and hatched my master plan. "I have a proposition to make," I stated, leaning forward and lowering my voice as if I was sharing some great secret, though having to support myself on a storage crate with my spare hand to stop myself toppling over from drink-induced disorientation.

"We both kill each other?" He growled back, cringing a bit at how close I was getting.

"Well, either that, or," I started again, breaking to giggle as I fancied myself as a fictional top spy about to pull off some mind-shattering verbal ballet to stun the Dunmer. "Or, you get me off of this island and we both escape." Again, I was drunk. For one, the only mind-shattering element of my proposition was how stupid it was. For another, this is where the thoroughness of my master plan came to an end; the only thing I had planned were the words I just spoke.

The assassin picked up on this too, the expression in his eyes finally breaking from the stoic neutrality, now showing clear disbelief. "Now, you've got to be fucking kidding me."

"I really am not!" I replied in protest, my mental barriers sodden with alcohol to the point where they've temporarily wilted and are just letting all my thoughts tumble out my mouth. "They just announced that there is a war between us and the Empire, which means I get filtered into the reserves and sent off to fight. I'm an alchemist, not a soldier! I don't want to fight in a bleeding war and get myself killed-!"

With a grunt from him, a gloved hand was suddenly pressed up against my mouth, leather palm to my lips. "Keep it down or something else will kill both of us." He advised. At first I thought it was my enthusiastic nods, but it turned out his arm was shaking on its own accord. "I'll get us out of here, but you have to trust me to get this to work, starting with getting that knife out of my face."

Many would not have, but in my senseless state, I lowered the kitchen knife. Similarly, he brought back the tanto from NEAR my crotch and lowered his hand from my mouth, tucking that arm up like a bird with a crippled wing. Before I could ask about it though, he sheathed his tanto and gripped my wrist, before starting a quick run towards the corner of the building, sticking close to the wall and keeping his posture crouched up for stealth. I followed suit, though I was a fair bit lankier and more stumbling than him, so I probably looked a bit stupider. HE DID. Right. Anyway, we got to the corner of the hall, which he carefully peaked around, only to jolt back behind the wall.

"Shit." He hissed as he furrowed his brow in thought.

"What is it?"

"Guards, thirty or so, all along the wall. We're not going to get passed this way without pulling off something ridiculous."

To this I smirked. He must have thought I was a completely useless idiot at this point, due to the incredulous look he threw me, but this was actually a time in which I was about to make use of myself. Since he was too busy thinking, he didn't seem to notice me slip my wrist out of his grasp and lean closer to him. "Let's do something ridiculous then," I murmured gleefully, before grabbing his wrist and dashing out from cover.

I could tell he was about to shout at me for being, as suspected, a complete idiot. I WAS GOING TO KNIFE HIM IN THE BACK. But as he raised his free hand to arm himself or otherwise grab me, he noticed that he was, in fact, invisible. And looking to my back, I was invisible too. He looked behind him, the breath he drew to berate me held. Not one of the soldiers had noticed as we pattered across the grand front gardens of the hall, dashing through the night. I remember the experience, to me, was completely mesmeric. Running past swirls and blurs of darkened colour, I was like a child running through the household garden, escaping into an imaginary fairy-tale that would not reveal its conclusion until due time. If I had been sober, I would not have gone through with this at all; how stupid it is to run from a life I knew into an unknown. Intrepid, perhaps, but I was still a coward due to the reasons why I ran. As I vaulted a low wall with the assassin behind me, I considered what I had become in the mere minutes after the fateful throw of a knife. I was an audacious coward, acting on impulses, yet so scared of planned prospects of death that I'd rather run hand-in-hand with the assassin that killed my boss than commit myself to possible death in the war. Dying in a war was certainly more honourable than dying due to abandoning post, but, since my new company was an assassin, my drunk self didn't think it mattered at all.

I don't exactly remember the route we took to get there, due to mental haziness, but by the time the spell wore off we were at the docks, crouched behind some crates that were being loaded into a sloop ship. In the dark, it was hard to make out what was what, but the assassin managed to pry open one of the bigger boxes with his tanto and shove us both in. If I actually remembered any of the obvious tension that we underwent being carried onto the boat, I would put it in now, but all I really recall is having my face squished into the hollow of the Dunmer's shoulder as we did our best to stay still, replicating cargo headed to an unknown location.