Icy raindrops hurtled from the skies, shattering into a thousand shards against Lysanor's iron helmet as she crept down the slick cobblestone path. She tightened her travel cloak around herself. The showers were an obvious prelude to the painful snowstorms of another harsh Skyrim winter, but she hardly even registered the cold or the dull ache settling deeply into her limbs. Instead, her eyes flickered over the dark, sunken walls of the mine and surrounding fort. In the pounding rain she could hardly see the mine itself, let alone any guards that might be perched on the walls. She crouched in the grass, squinting. The rain and fog refused to relent, though, so she straightened up and quietly crept toward the entrance of the mine.

Luckily, or maybe not, there weren't any guards outside the mine or even by its entrance. She paused outside the sunken, worn wooden door of the mine, adjusting her weapons. After a moment of consideration, she strapped her shield to her hip and pulled a second war axe from her hip. When she first returned to Jorrvaskr from Sovngarde, she'd given up dual-wielding weapons in favor of the more traditional sword-and-shield method favored by other members of the Circle. But she was battling alone again, she reasoned to herself, and she wasn't as worried about fighting like she had been taught as she was killing as many of the Silver Hand as quickly as possible. Mind made up, she tightened her grip on her axes and, with her shoulder, pushed open the door.

The second the door creaked shut behind her a sickly quiet settled over her, the pounding of the rain so dull it seemed like nothing more than a murmur in her head. She glanced around at the veins of metal running along the sharply sloped, tunnel-like hallway directly across her, at the wooden table and chairs in the other corner of the "room." Her breathing seemed far too loud in the small room. She took a few steps into the tunnel, her armor clanking conspicuously. Just as she had expected, there was a quiet rustling from inside the tunnel and the sound of voices. Footsteps quickly approached her, as did hovering globes of light that flickered around lanterns held aloft.

"Who's there?"

She stepped forward for their benefit. The voices grew louder, anxious. "Look at that armor—it's one of them!"

There was the loud scrape of metal as weapons were unsheathed and the lanterns were flung to the ground, leaving the tunnel illuminated by a faint, sickly glow. She braced herself and held her axes aloft. Her heart beat in time with the thundering of the bandits' footprints, quickening, so loud that she could feel it in her teeth—and then those glimmering silver weapons were upon her. She made quick work of them. Before she'd really had a chance to think about it, one Silver Hand was slumped motionless against the wall, a waterfall of blood gushed from what was left of another's throat and a third had his axe sticking out of his forehead. She braced her foot against the man's chest and yanked the axe with both hands. That couldn't be all there was. There had to be more of them. Hooking one of the cracked, abandoned lanterns in her belt, she straightened up and made her way down the hallway.

The tunnel led her downwards, deeper into the earth, branching out into alcoves littered with pickaxes and chunks of dirt-encrusted ore. She crept into each nook, pushing aside carts and tables and raising her lantern to check in corners. Nothing. She followed the steadily darkening tunnel into the earth. The path led her to the top of an immense clearing with rickety wooden stairs spiraling down into a gaping, blackened vertical drop. Putting aside one axe for a minute to hold up her lantern, she leaned in and glanced down into the hole. Light sank down into the blackness and she could sense movement at the bottom of the wooden steps. She crept down them, lantern clanking against her armored thigh. At the bottom, a large man with long hair and rusty metallic armor sat in a fragile-looking chair, a length of parchment clasped in his hands.

As she approached quietly, boots sinking into the loose dirt, he lifted his head without turning around. "Is that you, Geimund?" he said absently, his accent heavily Nordic. Lysanor slowly walked forward until she only stood a few feet from him.

"No."

The man stood with almost inhuman speed, whirling around and knocking the chair aside. The only sources of light in the cold darkness of the cavern, the mangled lantern at Lysanor's hip and another on a desk in front of the Silver Hand's chair, cast faint shadows over the man's immense bulk and worn, scarred face. His eyes fluttered over Lysanor's armor and realization smoothed his features for a moment before his lip curled in disgust.

"Animals," he said softly. "All of you. Nothing more than animals."

Gods, did she hate when the people she was supposed to be killing tried to talk to her. She didn't have time for this. He didn't make her wait much longer, though—almost as soon as the words had left his lips he was drawing his sword and reaching for the shield lying next to the desk. That was all she needed. She lunged, axes out and teeth bared. The clang! of her axe striking first his sword, then his shield, resounded in the empty chamber. She lashed out again, and again, struggling to get a blow at his uncovered throat. His sword caught her arm and blood spurted from the gash, followed by a flash of blinding agony. She flung her axe blindly into the man's gut, and, as he doubled over, swung both axes through his throat.

She wheezed painfully, sinking onto her haunches as the man collapsed to the floor. She glanced down. Her arm was gushing blood more than seemed reasonable. Dropping her axes, she groped weakly at her satchel for the rolls of bandages she'd picked up at Breezehome. The bleeding slowed, then finally oozed to a sticky stop as she wrapped the wound up. The burning pain, however, remained. Godforsaken silver.

Still slumped on the ground, clutching her arm, she glanced around the dark chamber. Aside from the desk, a few scattered chairs and the remains of a bonfire, there wasn't much of anything at all, let alone something living. Was that really all—four men? She pulled off her helmet and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. That couldn't be it.

But it was. Once she'd caught her breath and her arm seemed stable enough, she wandered through the whole place once more, checking every nook and cranny. It was empty but for the bodies of the men she had slaughtered. She leaned over the flimsy wooden railing of the stairs, giving one last look to the crumpled body of the man she assumed was the leader. Without another thought, she wiped her bloodied hands on her thighs and walked back up the dirt tunnel that had brought her into the mine.

Lysanor paused just inside of Jorrvaskr to collect herself on a gloomy evening several days later. As if the bandits in the mine weren't enough, she'd had to deal with that Falmer hive right after, and she was notoriously dreadful with Falmer. Gods, why had she taken that job in the first place? Everything hurt. There was blood trickling into her eyes from a jagged gash on her forehead and the wound from the silver blade still throbbed with pain. A stinging mixture of blood and sweat dripped past her lashes, colored the world, made it a sticky blur of red and brown. She tore off her helmet and swiped roughly at her eyes. As her vision cleared, the warm, flickering light of the hall came into focus, as did the quiet silhouettes huddled around the fire. The slender, dark-haired figure at the corner of the table, in particular, stood out. She crept across the room and slipped into the chair next to Aela, setting her helmet on the table.

"Welcome back, Lysa," Aela murmured without glancing up from her plate. Lysanor smiled.

"How did you know it was me?"

"How could I not? Clanking in here with all that armor, smelling like you've just slaughtered half of Whiterun..." Her gleaming, cracked-jade eyes flickered up and remained trained on Lysanor's face even as she tilted her head back to sip her mead. The glass bottle clunked softly against the table. "So? How did it go?"

"Fine. There weren't very many of them."

"Of course there weren't. What did you expect, an army?" Aela scoffed. "You think too much of them, girl. They're bandits, nothing more."

"Right." She watched, quiet, as firelight flickered over Aela's face. Perhaps it was just the strange way the light fell across her, but something about her face seemed oddly hollow. Aela's fingers traced invisible paths over the rim of the bottle in her hands. Troubled by the quiet and the strange look on Aela's face, Lysanor drew breath to speak, but Aela beat her to the punch.

"You did well," she said. "I'm glad you're back alive. If something happened to you, I'd be the only person left with any sense around here." She smiled and passed a bottle over to her, the odd emptiness in her expression gone for the moment. Lysanor smiled back. "Get some rest. You've earned it."

She stood with the bottle in hand, dismissed. "Thank you," she said, raising the bottle to her in a silent toast. "Goodnight." Aela waved and turned back to her drink, and Lysanor slowly walked across the hall. At the top of the stairs she paused, leaned against the railing, and took a slow, deep breath. Her chest felt painfully tight, but for a moment, when she breathed in, everything seemed to relax. She closed her eyes. For just a few seconds, things seemed right again.

"Gods damn it," she hissed under her breath, fingers twitching as she smeared salve over the gash on her arm. She'd "borrowed" the small, delicate jar from Farkas's room earlier in the day—it could cure all ailments, he had once told her, from a runny nose to a severed limb. He must have been exaggerating. The shallow scratches and bites from the Falmer had healed up well enough, but she must have smoothed the ointment into the wound from the Silver Hand a hundred times, eyes watering from the strong, spicy smell, and it certainly hadn't healed. It didn't even hurt any less. She gave a tired sigh, rubbing the back of her hand over her forehead.

"Ria? Are you—oh."

Lysanor jumped at the sound of the voice, and the jar slipped from her fingers and clattered against the wooden floor. She snatched it back up. Vilkas stood in the doorway, his eyes politely averted from her—she'd taken off her tunic to tend to her wounds. He was fully armored, save for his helmet. How had she not heard him in the hallway? She must have been losing her touch.

"Apologies, Lysanor." She waved her hand dismissively. Her modesty had trickled away, along with her dignity, long ago. "I was looking for Ria."

"She isn't here," she replied, gesturing to the rest of the empty room. "Did you need her?"

"She was supposed to be training with me," Vilkas muttered. A faint scowl was already beginning to grace his dark lips. Ria was in trouble.

Lysanor shrugged. "I think she went down to the Plains District."

"Hmph." He folded his arms over his chest. "Well, thanks."

She made a noncommittal sort of grunt, turning back to her arm. Instead of slinking off to go sulk in his room for a bit or perhaps go track Ria down and give her one of his famous tongue-lashings, Vilkas leaned against the doorframe, watching her.

"Is that my brother's?" he asked, pointing to the salve. She glanced down at the jar. If they could even identify bottles from one another's rooms, the twins were definitely spending too much time together. She nodded. "That's strange. It should have healed your wound by now," he muttered.

"I know. I'm not sure what to do," Lysanor sighed. The jar found a home at the bottom of her drawer, to be returned to Farkas when she got around to visiting his room again or he figured out that she was the one taking his things—whichever one came first. "These ones always hurt like hell, too."

"What do you mean, these ones?"

She glanced up at him, then back at her wound, her mouth twisting. "I got this from a silver sword," she admitted.

"Did you?" Vilkas's brows rose, but his tone was flat, as if he was acting surprised simply to be polite. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could see the strange, wary look that he had had on his face when she went to Farkas for the job. He was wearing the same look now. "Well, that explains it. That won't help with silver wounds."

"It won't?"

"No."

She dug her fingertips into her temple. "Well, what am I supposed to do, then? Healing potions don't work either."

"They won't," he agreed. Vilkas wasn't usually all too sympathetic toward her, but he looked at least a little bit sorry this time. "There's not much you can do. Just try not to get hit next time."

"Great," she sighed. She scratched around her wound until the skin grew warm and pink. "Why do they always burn like that?" she mumbled, more to herself than anyone else.

"Silver is the metal of the moons." Vilkas's voice had taken on that authoritative tone that it always took when he was sharing his vast oceans of knowledge with someone less worldly. Even as she mocked him in her mind, Lysanor listened. Vilkas always knew what he was talking about. "It poisons the blood. Our blood, that is," he clarified.

"It does?" Her wound didn't really look poisoned: no pus, no dark red lines stretching away from the cut in thin, sickly paths. But it did sting, and it looked just as bad as it had when she had gotten it. She touched it with the tips of her fingers. "How do they even know about that? The Silver Hand?" She'd never heard of any such metal that was like poison, and her father must have told her hundreds of werewolf tales when she was a child to keep her home after dark.

"They've been experimenting for years," Vilkas shrugged. "Have you ever been to a Silver Hand lair?"

"Of course I have."

"So you've seen the bodies, then." Oh. The bodies. She'd seen the bodies. When she was with on her Trial in Dustman's Cairn Farkas had done a good job of ushering her along and keeping her from doing much investigating, but she'd seen the bodies at Gallows Rock. Mangled, twisted, skinned…it wasn't hard to imagine herself or one of her brothers in the place of the poor souls strung up against the wall. She grimaced. "Exactly. We're not quite like any beast they find in the forest, of course, but we have many of the same weaknesses. Silver, lavender. That sort of thing."

"So…they haven't taken any of the Circle?"

"We usually bring our dead back before they can string them up and skin them. But they've killed plenty of our men. Skjor wasn't the first, and he won't be the last. And they've taken pieces of Wuuthrad, too. You know that." A fierce, sudden anger colored Vilkas's eyes. He stared bitterly down at his crossed arms. "They've taken enough from us over the years," he muttered.

Lysanor looked down at her hands, bloodied and limp against her clothed thighs, still sticky with the remnants of the special salve. All of a sudden they seemed empty without the handle of a blade clenched in their grasp. "I don't understand," she said finally, "how they even found out about our condition anyway. No one around here knows."

"Well," Vilkas said, "The man that formed the Silver Hand was once a member of the Circle, you know."

Her head snapped up. "Of…the Circle? Our Circle?"

"Our Circle," he said, nodding.

"But…we take an oath of secrecy. And we vow to honor and to serve the people of Skyrim…" Her voice trailed off, lost somewhere in her mind. "And they're bandits."

Vilkas was quiet for once, his pale, gleaming eyes flickering over her face like torchbugs beneath the shadow of his dark brow. "Vows don't mean as much as you think they do," he murmured. "He was one of our warriors, long before you were even born. He turned. And… he hated it. He thought it was…despicable. Shameful. And as it turned out, there were plenty that felt the same way."

"But you hate it too," Lysanor said, the words falling past her lips before she could stop them. His brows rose, just a little. He'd never really told her that himself—they didn't often have deep, heart-to-heart conversations. She'd just picked it up from snippets of conversations that she overheard from the others. Vilkas hated their boon just as much as Kodlak did, maybe even more.

"Yes," he said finally. "But I do not hate my Shield-Brothers."

She fell silent. For a moment, Vilkas hesitated in the doorway, his eyes still trained helplessly on her as though he had more to say but wasn't quite sure how to say it. Then he cleared his throat and tightened his armored arms over his chest. "You should go to Arcadia and get that stitched up. It will heal, slowly."

"I will. Thank you, Vilkas."

He bowed his head in acknowledgement. "If you see Ria, let her know I was looking for her."

"Alright."

One quiet farewell later he was gone, leaving Lysanor alone with her thoughts. The idea of a member of the Circle hunting werewolves…it was unfathomable. These were her brothers, her kin. There were times when she couldn't stand them, of course, but they were her family nonetheless. She couldn't imagine turning against them, hunting them like animals…she shuddered.

She limped—something was hurting her ankle—back out of the room when her arm was bandaged and her tunic was back on, ready to head upstairs and mull over the conversation with a bottle of mead. Just as she was grasping the railing and lifting herself onto the first step, though, her name rang out from the other end of the hall. She turned, squinting a little in the dim light.

"Aela?"

"Lysa," she said again once she'd hurried over to the stairs, Lysanor's name turning into more of a breathless gasp than a word. "Are you alright to leave later today?"

"Leave?" Lysanor repeated. "Where am I going?"

Aela waved a flimsy scrap of parchment in her face. "Rumor has it, there's a piece of Wuuthrad in a fort a little ways from Solitude. We're going to go check it out." Lysanor snatched the waving bit of paper out of Aela's hand, smoothing it out. Too impatient to work through each word, she skimmed through the long, smooth curves and dots of ink, picking up the occasional phrase here and there. Shard of Wuuthrad… Solitude… Silver Hand, all signed by a name she'd never heard of before. She glanced up at Aela's expectant grin.

"Are you sure you believe this?"

"Not at all. But even if they don't have a piece of Wuuthrad with them, we can get plenty of work done in a Silver Hand lair." She smirked. "What do you say?"

For a moment, Lysanor's mind flickered back to Vilkas, his bitter explanation of what the Silver Hand had taken from them, of what they did to her kind. But, really, the word "Wuuthrad" was all she needed to hear. She could limp across Skyrim if it meant getting back one of the priceless shards of Ysgramor's axe. Vengeance just made it sweeter.

"Alright," she said. "Can you give me a few hours?"

"Of course," Aela said, clearly made much more generous by Lysanor's compliance. "We'll leave right before dark." As Lysanor turned to leave, Aela cleared her throat. "Wait—Lysa."

She glanced back.

"I saw Vilkas in your quarters a little while ago. What was he doing in there?"

Lysanor frowned at her in disgust. "We were just talking, Aela."

"I know that," Aela sighed. "What were you talking about?"

"Nothing." At Aela's irritated look, she added, "I got hurt by a silver sword, and he was explaining why it wouldn't heal. And he told me about the Silver Hand."

Aela exhaled heavily, took a step closer. "That's what I thought," she muttered, her voice low. "Look. Why don't we keep our little campaign between us, alright, Lysa?"

"What? What does it matter if Vilkas knows?"

"It doesn't. But if it gets to Vilkas, then it'll get to Kodlak, and if it gets to Kodlak…it's just better if he doesn't know." She frowned at her. "What do you care, anyway? You don't even like him."

"No," she agreed slowly. "I just…didn't think it mattered that much. I don't think anyone will fault us for trying to avenge Skjor."

"They shouldn't. But you never know, so let's keep it quiet, alright?" She gave her shoulder a quick clap. "I'll meet you outside around sunset."

The sun crept lethargically into the sky, stilled at the peak of day like a sentinel erect at his post, then began to droop back below the horizon just as Lysanor was stepping out of Jorrvaskr. She shielded her eyes from the orange-white rays of light with one gloved hand. Aela was leaning against the wall, her gaze fixed somewhere far away. Lysanor walked over to her and prodded her arm. She jumped, eyes snapping to Lysanor's face.

"Shall we go?"

Aela nodded, strands of her auburn hair already beginning to fall into her eyes.

"Yes. Come on." Without another word, Aela turned, grasping the strap of her quiver with her free hand, and walked down the ancient stone steps outside of Jorrvaskr. Lysanor followed. At the last few steps, just across the Gildergreen, she couldn't help but turn and look back. Her eyes were drawn not to the vast walls and pillars of the mead hall, but to the immense statue of Talos embedded in the earth beside it. The statue, so heavily tilted to one side that Lysanor always worried that it would one day topple over, had been there for decades, maybe longer—perhaps as long as Jorrvaskr itself. The gritty, dimpled stone had long been worn smooth on Talos's hands, the hilt of his sword, by passersby and worshipers hoping to share in a bit of his glory. His eyes, though, stony and silent, were as they had always been. As she stepped down the stairs, for a fraction of a moment the sinking sun was concealed behind Talos's immense, stone head, as if it, too, was kneeling before him.

"Lysanor! What are you waiting for?"

"Coming," Lysanor called, her gaze still fixed on the strange shadows cast over Talos's face by the sinking orange light. The sun continued on its path into the curve of the earth, and the moment was gone. Her eyes fluttered closed for a heartbeat. Then she turned, her back to the falling sun, and walked down the last steps from Jorrvaskr.

The path that wound through Whiterun's icy, glimmering plains seemed to stretch on before them without end, drawing them closer and closer to the setting sun. Lysanor's boots crunched through the snow, the pack heavy on her shoulder and her breath puffing out in wispy clouds. She looked over at Aela. Her companion's eyes were distant, gazing off into the fog where the broad dirt path disappeared into the mist.

Aela's chosen target, a crumbling fort in the vast swathe of land where Haafingar blended into the Reach, was a long, painful trek from Whiterun—they were marching across just about half of Skyrim. Without horses the journey seemed even longer. Aela insisted, then, on stopping as little as they could manage without just dropping dead in the middle of the path. They didn't need to sleep, she argued, so what good would it do to stop for anything other than meals—if that?

Lysanor was just as eager to get there and finish the job as Aela was, but even when she was dragging herself up the seven thousand steps to the Throat of the World and back again, she stopped every once in a while to put her things down and rest her aching legs. Aela seemed to think they were running out of time, though. Every time they stopped and sat down, she would watch the skies with her knee frantically bouncing up and down, as if even her legs were awaiting Lysanor's "let's go" with bated breath. The one evening that Lysanor managed to convince her into spending the night at an inn, sheltered from the harsh winds that buffeted the Whiterun tundra, she sat quietly in a corner and glanced out the window every few minutes to check for the light of day. When she finally succumbed to curiosity and asked Aela what the matter was, she responded, "I just don't want them getting away, is all. They're skittish."

So Lysanor gave in, if only to give Aela a little peace of mind, and they traveled through the nights as quickly as they did the days. By the time the frostbitten tundra melted into rocky plains with orange-yellow shrubs that looked as though every sunrise set them ablaze, every inch of Lysanor was aching. After all, Aela hadn't really given her any time to recover from her last excursion before sweeping her off onto another. The wound in her arm still burned with an icy sort of fire, though she'd had it stitched and smeared with ointment at Arcadia's. She wasn't quite sure that she would have the energy to lift her sword, let alone clean out a Silver Hand lair.

As weeks of travel drew to a close, Aela finally pointed out an immense stone fort flush against the side of the mountains that marked the borders of the Reach, overlooking the grand Karth River. "Finally," she growled, her fingers quivering with either excitement or the cold—perhaps both. "I thought we'd never get here. Are you ready for this?"

She wasn't, but it didn't seem like the best time to say that. Instead, she muttered, "I hope they're still there." It wouldn't have been the first time that she trekked across Skyrim to get to a bandit lair only to find out the place had been abandoned weeks ago. Aela shot her a dark look that told her that wasn't the right response, either.

"Let's go make sure."

The rocky side of the mountain crumbled like snow beneath their feet as they clawed their way up. Taking the winding path around the base of the mountain would take too long, said a now-worried Aela, so they decided to scale the side instead. Lysanor's fingers were worn to the bone by the time they stopped outside the grim stone walls of the fort. Aela couldn't have been much better off, but she didn't even pause to catch her breath before stalking inside, shooting down the sentinel at the highest point of the fort.

There was nothing special, really, about the grimy, dark innards of the fort; it was just like every other abandoned tower or fortress in Haafingar, quiet and filthy with dense, musty air. It was so wholly innocuous that it seemed to be making Aela a little angry. She crept through twisting stairways and dark halls like a sabre cat stalking its prey, not even bothering to look back and see if Lysanor was still behind her. "Where are they?" she whispered to herself. "There has to be more than that. Come on out, you little rats."

Her plea was answered quickly enough. At the top of one of the towers overlooking the rest of the fort they found two men sitting in rickety wooden chairs, muttering to themselves. Lysanor gutted one and Aela drove an arrow through the other's throat, and when both bodies were still, Aela picked up one of their swords and ran her bare fingertips over it. She shuddered and the sword clattered to the floor.

"Silver," she said, satisfaction thick in her voice despite the disgust etched on her face. "You had me worried for nothing, Lysa."

Lysanor murmured an absent-minded apology, but Aela was too busy rushing back down the stairs to listen. The discovery, and the kill, invigorated her. She swept through the halls with a renewed passion, shooting arrows at even the slightest movement and ransacking every fresh corpse. Lysanor couldn't help but feel a little more wary; on her Trial, they'd found the shard of Wuuthrad clenched in the cold, bony fingers of a draugr that drew its sword the second she'd pried the shard from its grasp. At least all the men they'd slaughtered so far were all wholly alive before they were beheaded.

But the fort seemed to have a thousand rooms and halls and stairways to check, and they had yet to come across any sign of Wuuthrad at all. That wouldn't have mattered all that much if there had just been more men to kill. The place looked just as abandoned from the inside as it did from the side of the mountain. They crept like shadows through the dark, damp underbelly of the fort, torches aloft.

"Can you believe this?" Aela muttered as they pushed open a wooden door with a jarring creak. The room behind it was vast, littered with chairs and tables and wardrobes, with a high ceiling littered with broken rafters—and it was empty.

"No. This wasn't worth the journey." Lysanor set her torch in a sconce and lowered her axe. "Where do you think they all went?"

"I don't know. If this place was a major hideout they can't have cleared out that fast. I guess there just weren't that many of them here in the first place." She glanced down at her belt, where she'd tucked the letter, and scowled. "Ice-brain," she added under her breath.

"Might as well leave then, I suppose." They were both quiet a moment as they looked around the empty room. As Lysanor turned to step toward the doorway, there was a quick flurry of noise and movement and a heavily armored man dropped, almost silently, from the rafters above her. She gasped, stumbled back—into another body. She whirled around. All around the room, bandits dropped from the ceiling, burst out of hidden doorways and wardrobes, gleaming silver weapons bared. Through the chaos and the mass of bodies Lysanor's gaze found Aela, who was frozen in shock, eyes wide.

A lithe woman with a face masked in war paint and a heavy wooden bow grasped in her hands dropped from the rafters onto the table in the middle of the room. Over the heads of the snarling, quivering crowd of Silver Hand, the woman grinned.

"You won't be leaving just yet." She drew a silver-tipped arrow and let it fly, and all hell broke loose. Before Lysanor could even draw her weapon there were three men upon her. She flung herself backwards, reaching for her axe, only to tumble into the sword of the man in the doorway behind her. All she could register, for a moment, was pain and blood and the sound of Aela screaming in rage.

She grabbed at the blade of the sword lodged between the plates of her armor and yanked, flinging it aside. A second sword just missed her side, and another arrow whizzed past her head. She lashed out with her axe—thunk—then drew it back, splattering her face with blood. There didn't seem to be any faces, any individuals, just a wall of bodies and searing silver weapons that screamed through her flesh. She swung out again, hit her target.

But it wasn't enough. Her axe slipped, just for a moment, from her fingers, clattered to the floor and was kicked aside. Her helmet was torn off and the man behind her slammed something into her back, hard. Lights exploded behind her eyes. Everything was deafeningly still for a moment—then agony burned through her scalp as fingers hooked into her hair and dragged her up by it.

"Filthy bitch." His breath was hot, sour against her ear. The hand still fisted in her hair yanked her head back and cool metal pressed against her naked throat. "You live like an animal, you die like one."

The panic that had seized her slowly loosened its grasp on her throat, replaced by an icy calm. There was only one thing she could do. Her limbs relaxed, head lolled back, clenched fists fell open. Her skin tightened and stretched, the pain welcome, familiar. She could hear the archer screaming "Kill her now! Before she turns!"—but it was too late. Warm, pulsing strength rushed through her veins, from her chest to the clawed tips of her fingers. She threw the man behind her into the wall, the crack resonating in every stretching, twisting bone in her skull, and roared.

The room was a writhing mass of color and movement. Every sound, every clash of a weapon or cry of pain, echoed violently through the blood that roared in her ears. As she lumbered into the crowd of men, her clawed foot slipped briefly on her abandoned axe. She stumbled forward, regained her footing on the cold stone floor, and lunged, claws bared and maw gaping. Her claws ripped through flesh quicker than any blade could, and what was left fell prey to the glistening, dripping shards of her teeth. She barely felt the resistance of heavy iron armor or the pain of metal embedded in her flesh; she was locked somewhere deep within her mind, her body lost to her.

She tore through the last man standing before her, tossing the crumpled remains of his body aside and lifting her head. The air was thick with the sharp, sour stench of blood, but even through the haze she could still smell life. She started toward the scent, then stopped in her tracks, her chest heaving. That scent was familiar. She inhaled again, deeply. It was choked by the blood and the metal, but even then she could recognize Aela's scent. She said something, her words slow and distorted but her voice calm. It must be over.

Lysanor took a deep breath, bracing herself against the wall and tensing every muscle in her body. It was always much more difficult to seize back control than to relinquish it to the blood. Slowly but surely, she clawed her way back into her body. Her bones cracked and snapped, rearranging themselves with agonizing slowness, and her flesh twisted beneath her skin. It felt as though her insides had been melted down into a malleable sludge and were being shaped back into something vaguely resembling a human. Her vision cleared, the buzzing in her ears subsided, and she was left huddled against the stone wall waiting for the claws and the fur to creep back under her skin.

"An ambush." Aela's words were finally intelligible. It was strange how Lysanor's hearing was infinitely sharper when she turned, yet she couldn't seem to make out the simplest of sentences. "I can't believe this. They set up an ambush. The vermin… They dared…" She was quivering with rage as she looked over the carnage in the room.

"Aela," Lysanor tried to say, but the sound was lost somewhere in her throat. She tried again and Aela turned to her. "Wuuthrad?"

"Oh!" she whispered. "It must be in here somewhere." As Lysanor sat with her head between her knees and the sharp tips of her fingers buried in her hair, Aela set to work kicking aside bodies and rummaging through their knapsacks. A sudden jolt of pain seized Lysanor's limbs and she squeezed her eyes shut with a whimper.

"Lysa, look!"

She raised her head, eyes still watering. Aela stood before her, a triumphant grin on her face and a gleaming shard of metal, about as big as her palm with her fingers splayed out, clasped in her hand. Even through the ache in her bones, Lysanor could feel a quiet warmth as she looked up at the piece of their history.

"It was on that archer," she explained. She stood before her, waiting for a response.

"Good," Lysanor said through clenched teeth. "Just give me a moment and we'll leave."

Realization crossed over Aela's face. "Right. Take your time." She tucked the shard into the leather pack at her waist and wandered off, wading through the sea of bodies. Lysanor lowered her head again with a shallow breath. Her eyes burned when she closed them and her fingers twitched. This had always been the worst part—the recovery. The others could pull their claws under their nails without a moment's hesitation and be back on their feet seconds after turning. She had never quite gotten the hang of it.

Once most of the fur had melted away, she took a deep breath, waiting for tears to spring to her eyes. Her chest ached, but she rose to her feet anyway. On the other end of the room she could see Aela's silhouette, leaning over a table. She staggered over the cooling bodies toward her.

"Alright. I'm okay. We can leave now," she said to Aela's back. She didn't respond, still hunched over with both palms splayed over the desk. "Aela?"

"There's a letter," she said, an amused sort of lilt to her voice.

"A letter?"

Aela turned, the scrap of parchment clenched in her hands and a smirk on her face. "Listen to this. 'They have been slaughtering our people all over Skyrim,'" she read aloud. "'We need to deal with this…infestation before it can grow any more than it already has.'" She laughed. "Look at that, Lysa! They're going to hunt us."

Lysanor's teeth ground together even as Aela chuckled to herself. An insult of their honor wasn't funny. An infestation, like they were a swarm of insects preying on helpless crops. "Are they?" she murmured. She glanced over her shoulder at the bodies littered over the room, those precious silver weapons dull in the dim light. "But we are the hunters."

The quiet rap of Lysanor's knuckles on wood echoed through the dark halls of the living quarters. No response. She glanced back at Aela, who gestured to try again. Before she could, though, a tired voice rang out from within the room.

"Enter."

She creaked the door open and slipped inside. Kodlak was reclining in the well-worn, maroon chair that he seemed to spend so much of his time in, a heavy book balanced in his lap. He set the book on his bedside table and lifted his chin, evenly meeting her gaze.

"Lysanor. Aela." He waited, brows aloft and face open.

"Harbinger, we have found another piece of Wuuthrad." Aela stepped forward. Kodlak's gaze dropped to the shard of steel in her hands and delight spread over his face.

"You have? Wonderful!" he boomed, suddenly invigorated. He rose to his feet and took the shard from Aela's grasp, gingerly running his fingers over the jagged edges and delicately carved designs. The heavy steel gleamed as if newly forged as the light of the dying fire trembled over it. "Where did you find it?"

Lysanor's eyes flickered over to Aela, but she didn't even look at her. "An abandoned fort in Haafingar," she said, without hesitation.

"I see. Well, this is excellent." A warm smile creased the corners of his eyes. "With every fragment that returns to us, we come a step closer to restoring Wuuthrad's glory. You have done well, Aela." He turned to Lysanor and added, "And you, Lysanor, prove your worth here with every passing day."

She bowed her head. "Thank you, Harbinger," she murmured. She glanced up through her lashes and, for the first time since they'd stepped back into Jorrvaskr, found Aela looking back at her. She could see the same thoughts flitting behind her gleaming green eyes: they hadn't quite proven their worth yet.