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

I hope you enjoy!

Chapter Three

I remember it being a nasty tumble out of the box, for a combination of reasons. Just before the Dunmer had finished prying the exit panel open with his tanto, the boat we had secretly boarded jolted on a particularly big wave, throwing us out of the box. This was then followed by being shoved to the side after having landed on top of the assassin, who, despite his outward grouchiness and grumbling, was quick to rise to his feet. I was less so, instead rolling onto my back and taking a few seconds to blink dozily as green streaks and luminescent circles flashed and receded as my eyes adjusted to the magelight that filled the room. My head was still light from intoxication, but it wasn't as if I drunk so much I couldn't coordinate myself, so after another second or so APPROXIMATELY THREE MINUTES alright, goodness, after three whole, painstaking, arduous, overdrawn minutes, I sat up and glanced around. We were in a storage section underneath the top deck that ran from bow to stern, though wooden crates were piled and strapped together, seeming to act as their own walls and barriers. The Dunmer was somewhat rushing from box to box, peeking into peepholes and gaps between the wooden slats of the boxes, trying to discern what was in them.

"What are you doing?" I asked, tone languid, as if looking at him doing what he was doing wasn't enough to tell me what he was doing.

He didn't look around to me, but his tone of voice seemed to suggest he wished I hadn't had spoken at all. "Trying to find out what kind of shit we've gotten ourselves into," he muttered, softly due to our current location.

I, however, was not so quiet, but I was lucky that the creaks of the boat masked the noise of our activity. "Given the fact that you've killed a Major-General of the Aldmeri Dominion, and are currently smuggling a deserting soldier, I'd say this shit is of the large, painful variety."

It was then he shot a glare around to me, and gave me one of many shocks in our acquaintanceship. No pupils met my line of vision, just two white disks set in dampened void, like two pearls half-sunken into black tar. As an Altmer brought up to believe in breeding superiorities and taught to conform to and accept a certain list of ideals that the Altmeri society expected one to possess, the sight of apparently blind eyes was quite appalling to me, at least at first. But my conscious occupation as an alchemist took precedence over my subconscious occupation of ranking myself above and below other people according to the guidelines, thus my disgust soon transformed to curiosity as signs of the cause of this "blindness" grew. This then, after a blooming realisation, blossomed into an almost self-satisfaction for finding the answer so soon, a smirk coming to my face as I wobbled to my feet and stumbled closer to him. Had I been completely sober, fear would have held me back, but in my tipsy state, I took him by the chin and tilted his head up. He grasped my wrist immediately to throw my grasp off of him, but by then I had already confirmed my suspicions.

"Injected optical isolator," I muttered, unable to stop my internal musings from pouring out of my mouth as I stared at the white discs that covered the true appearance of his eyes, tilting my head from different angles to get a good look. "But made from what ingredients, I wonder, and by who! Whoever performed this operation must have been very skilled, but however skilled they are, I bet this was damn painful-"

The assassin finally whacked my hand away from him. "Will you shut the fuck up and help me find out where we are? This isn't important."

"Oh, but it is!" I grinned, getting rather excited, given the situation. I am very invested in alchemy and the study of it, so to find such a rare operation success was very thrilling. "Why did you get this done to you? Do you pretend to be blind to fool people?"

He turned away to look into another box, kneeling to get to it. "Just shut up."

"Are you hiding from something? Or someone?" I continued to question, completely ignoring his instruction. "But one would think someone with strange eyes as that would be more noticeable, wouldn't they? You must have been so despera-!"

Immediately, he shot to his feet, scowling deeply. "Look, I just killed your damn boss and pulled your drunken ass from the ranks of that greedy, control-freak government that you were idiotic enough to work for. The least you can do is to stop using that insufferable voice of yours, and if you could help me find out where we are, that'd be fetching fantastic!"

My drink-induced smirk didn't fade. "But I already know where we are and where we're headed."

"WHAT." I WAS READY TO STRANGLE HIM.

There really wasn't a reason to strangle me; I was telling the truth. "This is a scout ship," I informed my Dunmeri friend, glancing around the ship's hold. "I've had experience in terms of stocking various potions for these operations. I suspect the crew of this ship is a detachment of Thalmor agents pretending to be a group of overseas merchants so they can go undercover and spy on the Empire's military movements in Cyrodiil."

I couldn't tell whether the assassin was surprised by the information or by my sudden intellect, or whether he was surprised at all, but after a second he gave nod of understanding and skimmed over a few crates to return to a specific one he'd passed earlier. "We can stock up on anything we need for our escape, then split ways when we're a safe distance from the scouts."

I pouted immediately, leaning against a wooden column and observing him as he searched for supplies. "But I've barely gotten to know you."

"Good."

I huffed, pressing myself harder into the wood as the boat took a larger lean against a big wave. "Fine," I spoke after gathering my bearings from the wave. "I suppose I ought to get to know my rescuer now, while I have the chance. What's your name?"

It only took me a few seconds to realise he was not going to answer, consciously ignoring me as he inspected another crate.

"Well, my name's Dareio."

No response, but I was quite sure he retained the information. It was only now, though, that my mind was cast back to the shaking in his arm from when he covered my mouth earlier, for it was tucked up close to him as he tried to pry open a box one-handed. Of course, this spurred me to cross over to him, thankfully without stumbling over from the rocking of the ship.

"You're injured," I stated, plainly, a subconscious attempt to level with him in vocabulary.

"I'm fine." The expected response.

I tutted a few times, trying to reach to get a gentle hold of his arm to inspect it. "No, you are not, now don't make me-"

He suddenly winced at the contact of my hand, retreating from me immediately and hissing: "Don't fucking touch me!" It was now that I realised that, if I were to level with him in vocabulary, I would need to add a few curse words to my dictionary. "Now," the Dunmer added, rolling the shoulder of his unharmed arm, attempting to regain a bit of composure, "Do you mind?"

"Yes, actually, I do," I answered as I furrowed my brow slightly, somewhat troubled by how tender the pain in his arm must have been. It wasn't because I necessarily cared for his well-being, but it did seem that our chance of escape would have increased if the assassin had full use of both arms. "Ok, I won't touch you again, but at least let me heal it so you can use it properly when we abandon ship."

He held his anger for some time, probably fighting with stubbornness and pride internally, before moving back to where he was before and offering his arm forward, hesitantly due to mistrust.

"Roll your sleeve up," I instructed, simply enough. He complied, simply enough also, though it took a small amount of effort and wincing due to the fact that his sleeve was made from boiled leather. I had to squint a bit due to the darkness of his skin, but it wasn't too long until I identified bruises, clouding in purple and green around his elbow. "How, by the design of Magnus, did you manage to dislocate your elbow like that?"

The assassin scowled, not happy to hear he'd pulled his elbow. IT'S A CHILD'S INJURY. Oh, come now, you should be unhappy that it hurt, not because it wasn't an 'adult injury'. FUCK OFF, DON'T TELL ME WHEN I 'SHOULD BE UNHAPPY'. Alright, alright, goodness gracious! "It was your fault," he grumbled.

I protested: "Why is it my fault?"

"Before you came out, I thought all the troops had cleared off, so I started to scale down the wall to make my escape," he explained, slight irritation in what tone could be picked up through the Vvardenfell-growl, "I thought I was in the clear, and then you blunder out, so I had to stop myself before I landed and made myself seen. Grabbed the rope, pulled my elbow. If you weren't there, I could have landed and continued on my way."

I immediately argued back. "Now, just a minute, that clearly means it's your fault! You were stupid enough to stop yourself in such a sudden way. In fact, you're an assassin! You could have just landed me and knifed me in the-" I then halted, eyes going wide as I realised what I was saying. It was true; the assassin was right above me while I bumbled about below. He had the power (and probably the motivation, based on how he had treated me so far) to end my life in a flash, something I feared would happen in the newly-declared war. It could have been over for me in seconds! And all I did was stumble about, ignorant, dumbed, and arrogant.

"Back," the Dunmer finished the sentence for me. "Yeah, I know I could have."

"Well, why didn't you?"

My question seemingly startled the Dunmer, since he took a long pause before he answered. I was beginning to think I broke him. WHO ON NIRN QUESTIONS THEIR POTENTIAL KILLER AS TO WHY THEY DIDN'T KILL THEM? Me, apparently. Whatever questions were raised in the assassin's head, he shrugged them away and replied simply: "I try not to kill people who aren't contracts."

I smiled at that, genuinely made curious. "Aw, a compassionate assassin, are we?"

He grunted, making it appear as though he was disgusted with the suggestion. "I don't want to leave a fetching trail of dead bodies when I'm trying to escape; makes me easier to catch. Now, are you going to heal my arm or what?"

My smile didn't fade. In fact, it got wider, which might have freaked the Dunmer out a bit, but I didn't care. "Oh, you don't heal pulled elbows," I cooed, before placing one of my hands behind his elbow and grabbing his wrist with the other hand, and shifting the bone back into place with a shove, before slapping my hand over his mouth for him to yell into. Which he did, for a short burst, before he shouldered me away from him and quickly scooted away from me, cradling his arm.

"I thought you said you wouldn't fucking touch me again!" He snarled, testing out his now-fixed arm to see if he can move it.

"Well, I treated the injury, didn't I?" I replied, sensibly enough. "That's what you do with pulled elbows; you pop them back into place."

"You didn't have to do it all "SURPRISE" and shit! It fucking hurt!"

"If I told you I was about to do it, you wouldn't have let me do it," I reasoned, simply. "You told me not to touch you, after all."

The Dunmer stared at me for a few seconds, with an expression that seemed like a cross between disbelief and distaste, before he broke his stare and perked a little, hearing footsteps nearing that I was too unfocused to hear. He grabbed me, shoved me back in our original box, and jumped in after me, before closing up the box to make our hiding place look like normal cargo. We had to wait for a few minutes to pass for the two scout-soldiers that had entered to rifle through the boxes for some things and talk about stuff that I didn't really care enough to listen to, so I started thinking about what I was going to do once I was left on my own in Cyrodiil. I figured the people of Cyrodiil were going to be suspicious of Altmer, what with war being declared, so I considered travelling to Morrowind, or perhaps eastern Skyrim, and try and find a job. It wouldn't be too hard to create potions and sell them to people; I might have even been able to make potions that sped up the healing process and sell it to detachments of soldiers I pass. I wasn't going to join either side, of course; the whole point of me abandoning the Thalmor was to escape the war. But it was a thought… And with temple healers going off with the soldiers to serve as medical support, I could have even sold cures and antidotes to people who need them, perhaps. Before I could think into the details though, light flushed its way into the box as the Dunmer reopened the panel and sneaked out, checking around for any lingering officers silently, before coming back and crouching down to my height, since I was still lying in the box.

"We've got to prepare for our escape and survival once we get out," he told me, having now seemingly calmed down from having his arm fixed (YOU MEAN WRENCHED BACK INTO PLACE), before standing up and moving away, starting to pry open boxes to get things out.

Maybe this was aided by the fact that I was still under some amount of influence from the copious amounts of alcohol I had drunk at the party, but I found myself staying where I was, staring at the wooden slats above me. I was startled by his use of "we" and "our"; he seemed completely fixed in the fact that he did not want to relate to me one bit, yet he collected us together in pronouns.

He obviously didn't notice though, since he soon kicked the side of the crate lightly and insisted: "come on, you lazy fuck; we haven't much time."

I tilted my head to look at him, looking as if I was under the influence of some sort of hallucinogen, wide-eyed and thunderstruck. "You wanted to split ways once we got out, didn't you?"

The Dunmer was silent for a bit, looking aside to find the words to explain himself. It wasn't out of awkwardness or embarrassment that stopped him, it was literally because he could not pick the right words (at least, that is what he told me). After a short while, he turned away to one of the crates and started it pry it open with his tanto. "I was just thinking while those other guys were passing through."

"So was I, oddly enough," I commented in a genuine tone, before adding sarcastically, "comes with being a sentient mortal, I suppose."

He paused from his prying to shoot me a white glare, before turning back to his work. "You wouldn't have gotten off of that island without me," he started, the panel of the crate he trying to open coming off with a clunk, before he moved it aside and started to rifle through what looked like a crate of clothing. "But, as much as I hate to say it, I wouldn't have gotten off that island without you. If it weren't for the other, we'd both be dead; me from getting captured, and you from doing something stupid when you got sent out to war, I'd bet."

"Thanks."

He looked up from the crate, dropping out two leather satchels to his feet as he continued to talk, sternly. "Hear me out a second. The war's coming, and it's going to be a fucking shitstorm of a war, absolutely huge. While it might not benefit us psychologically, as a matter of survival it'd be better to stick together, cover each other's back. You get this, right?"

I considered what he was saying. While he was an unbelievable angry person, to the point of being irritating, and while I was a trained in destruction magic as well as restoration to defend myself, the assassin was right: it'd be much safer to travel in a two. "I think-" I started to speak in a gentle tone as I attempted to raise to his height to level myself with him, only to end up hitting my head with the top of the crate. I let out a grunt and rubbed my head, slightly embarrassed, but there wasn't really any reason to be embarrassed since the only witness present seemed to not react at all. Trying a second time, I crawled out of the crate before rising to my full height, starting my sentence over. "I think it'd be best if we did stay together, yes." I then smirked, feeling a bit smug, "So I was completely right when I protested against us splitting ways earlier."

The Dunmer rolled his eyes, the bent down, and picked up one of the satchels by his feet, lobbing it at me. "Let's get prepared."