Shaking hands, dried blood caked beneath her fingernails, Torina held her stomach to keep from bleeding out. She tried to make sense of how she got to this point.

The errand Dravynea sent her on had ended exactly as her mistress had desired. Killjoy had assisted in collecting the strange ebony blade from the Vigilants, all somehow without killing them and remaining undetected, and returned to his Guild with heavy pockets. Torina left the scene to head back home to Kynesgrove, the blade in tow.

Whispers plagued her the whole way. She had tried to listen, suspecting they were Dravynea's chosen daedric prince. Mephala, The Whispering Lady, had never spoken to Torina directly before. But no matter how much she tried to meditate and listen while traveling back to Kynesgrove, it was fruitless. The whispers remained at the back of her mind. They only taunted her by remaining too out of reach to hear or understand.

Night had fallen by the time she returned to her mistress's small one room home. A lantern was the only light. Before Torina could find a candle or cast a magelight spell, the blade on her back was unbuckled and in Dravynea's hands.

"Mistress," Torina said, mouth wide in a wicked smile of triumph. "I've brought the blade you requested, and I have wonderful news!"

Dravynea's eyes stayed locked on the blade in her hands. She gripped the pommel covetously as she whispered, "What is it, my child?"

Torina's heart soared at the way her mistress addressed her. Not pet. Not girl. My child . "Our lady Mephala has been attempting to speak to me since I collected this. I had hoped-"

"Then it's time to follow me. If our lady has indeed spoken to you then you must come. Immediately."

Mouth clicking shut as soon as Dravynea started to speak, Torina felt a bubble of anxiety and excitement burst within her. Without further explanation to where or why they were leaving in the middle of the night. Torina followed. She'd never known Dravynea to leave Kynesgrove. Ever. The sight was enough to shut her up for most of the trip.

By the light of the stars and moons, Torina saw the city of Windhelm far beneath them as they trekked up the side of a mountain. A few lights in the streets, visible even at this distance because of the early hour and darkness, started to snuff out as the city truly fell still and quiet. She forgot how much she loved those moments in Windhelm. It wasn't smart to leave the safety of the locked shop but she used to enjoy the lack of taunts from Nords or the chance to observe the strangest citizens the city had to offer.

"Where are we going, mistress?" Torina asked Dravynea the further they walked up.

"No questions, child," Dravynea replied. A manic glee colored her voice. "You will spoil the surprise."

Though she was likely far too old to be excited for surprises, a childish anticipation crept along inside of Torina, adding a spring to her step. She'd never seen Dravynea so happy and proud of her. She would not waste this moment by angering her with interrupting.

At the top waited an enormous shrine of a daedra that Torina did not recognize. Several worshippers ignored them and continued to spar with deadly force at the base of the impressive statue. Torina figured by now the first hints of dawn should have started to show, especially this high up in the mountains, but the darkness stayed the same around them. A chill of ancient magic ghosted over her skin.

Dravynea led her up the stairs to the statue and Torina's eyes locked on the bloodied skulls and poisonous ingredients that littered the ground around them on the way.

"Dravynea-" she started to ask.

Her mistress spun to grasp her face by the chin, pinching her fingers into the soft flesh of Torina's cheeks. Dravynea's breath was hot and reeked of rotten meat as she leaned in far too close for Torina's liking.

"Silence, lamb. The surprise is coming soon."

Almost every fibre in Torina's body revolted against the feeling, the absolute wrongness she felt at those words. But her mind tricked her. Dravynea had saved her, raised her, trained her how to be a great mage and fighter. She would not hurt her.

Torina was wrong.

She could not fight the spell Dravynea placed on her at the top of the altar. She did not get a chance to raise her arms to defend herself. The ebony blade of Mephala slipped between her ribs easily.

The blade kept her blood from spilling as fast as it wanted to. Torina had reached out to grab the blade with her bare hands in a desperate attempt to stop Dravynea from twisting it, or removing it to stab her again. The edges cut into her palms down to the bone. Every restoration spell she knew fled her mind in that moment, the pain overwhelming, even as her body screamed at her to use her magicka.

"Why?" she managed to croak out, staring up at her mistress as she bled on her knees.

Dravynea giggled manically, her eyes wide and lips cracked and dry, sending shadows of red blood over her white teeth. She did not answer Torina.

The blade started to act of its own accord, drawing lifeforce from Torina greedily. The betrayal she felt mixed with the acute agony was ichor to it and to the altar below. Working in tandem the blade of Mephala and the altar of Boethiah moved her closer and closer to death.

But, in a flash of anger, of self-preservation she felt down to the depths of her soul, Torina refused to die.

A rise of power she didn't recognize blossomed inside of her, a bubbling vent about to burst into a geyser of emotion and pain. She was powerless to stop it but felt no need to. Even through the pain she recognized this power as salvation and embraced it fully.

Her hands fell to the ground on either side of her. In her stance, on all fours, the blade inside of her was lodged firmly and Dravynea crowed in victory. Torina used the position to catch her breath as best she could, her eyes rolling back into her head, before springing to her feet and opening her mouth to scream the word itching at the back of her mind since she first grasped the blade.

" Qahnaar !"

Dravynea was blasted from her place on the altar to the stone wall of the mountain behind her. Clutching at her throat and eyes, the Dunmer wailed in pain. Torina ripped the blade from her gut in as smooth a motion as she could, and raised her hands to herself and poured all of the magicka she could command into a spell to heal herself. In a last minute decision, she grabbed the blade covered in her blood, and fled.

She ran all the way back to Kynesgrove, chest heaving, and gathered what little she owned. Eyes stared at her as she sprinted away from the village back to where she'd found the blade at first. Her clothes were still soaked in too much blood. They thought she was a murderer, for who could survive with that much blood on them and it be their own? The blade was returned to the Vigilants in Whiterun hold and she did not care to know where it was placed afterwards.

Torina knew Dravynea returned after that to Kynesgrove without a single memory of what she'd done. The one time she'd run into the Dunmer since that night she'd shown no ounce of recollection of ever knowing the younger Dunmer. Her memory loss didn't stop the hold from placing a bounty onTorina's head for attempted murder.

Going to the college was her first mistake. Unkind whispers followed her wherever she went. Torina blamed Mephala. It made life unbearable in the college and the mages only shunned her the worse the symptoms became. It didn't help she'd corrupted Azura's star while there, and missed weeks of study because of it.

Her wrongly accused crimes led to her capture at the border of Skyrim and Cyrodiil during an attempt to flee. And, what followed was a promise of a beheading in Helgen.

Torina didn't understand until she'd seen the black dragon Alduin that day that the whispers she'd heard were words of the Thu'um, not from Mephala. The whispers were warning her of her mistress's sudden, but inevitable betrayal.

Gruth . Betrayal. A betrayal she had declared and denied.

A betrayal that still haunted her to this day.

Huge thank yous to my reviewers and anyone taking the time to read this, but reviews feed my soul and keep the chapters coming. 3

This is by and large the most important chapter of the fic so far. I would greatly appreciate your comments letting me know what you think of it! Was there missing information you need to know? Something I can explain in future chapters, if I don't have plans to already?

The words in Dovahzul were pulled from Thuum dot org (FFN's rules remove the link if I don't type it out like that). I know I'm probably not conjugating them correctly, but the words are:

Qahnaar: to vanquish, to eliminate, to deny, resist. (might recognize this as part of the word Durnehviir calls the Dovahkiin)
Gruth: to betray, betrayal