Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

I have spent the better part of a week becoming convinced that Skyrim is trying to kill me personally. This would be easier to dismiss as vanity if the province had not made such a determined effort. I crossed from Cyrodiil half-frozen, was chased through the Rift by bandits, wolves, more bandits, one bear, and a pair of cryomancers who seemed offended that I objected to being turned into road decoration. Someone even fired at me from Rift Watchtower. In fairness, I was sprinting through the woods after dark with a flame atronach beside me, so I cannot claim the silhouette inspired confidence.

Not that I blame them. I did not look especially trustworthy either. Am I lying to a piece of paper? Really? I think I look somewhat handsome, but that night I looked terrible.

I spent two days hiding in a cave with a shoulder wound and barely enough food. By the time Riften appeared through the morning mist, I was muddy, exhausted, bleeding through my left sleeve, and prepared to pay unreasonable money for a bed. Naturally, the guard at the gate demanded five hundred and eighty-three septims to let me enter.

Not five hundred. Not six. Five hundred and eighty-three. The precision offended me more than the extortion. It felt as though he had looked at my injuries and calculated the exact price of my dignity.

I told him what I thought of the arrangement.

I should record that I had more than a thousand septims on me. I could have paid. I nearly did, which somehow made the whole thing worse. Five hundred and eighty-three septims for the privilege of being extorted at a gate? Absolutely not.

I left, circled the walls, and eventually found a section near the canal where the stone sloped low enough to climb. Entering Riften illegally felt preferable to rewarding the man. I am aware this may not survive serious moral examination.

A homeless woman saw me drop into the alley. I gave her ten septims and apologized. She accepted both without asking why an Imperial scholar had entered the city like a burglar. Riften looked better at night than it smelled.

Lanterns trembled in the canals, flowers spilled over old timber, and the market remained busy long after respectable cities would have gone quiet. Beneath that was rot: fish, wet wood, stagnant water, and the particular sadness of a place where everyone seemed to know something was wrong and had learned to price around it. I sold the last of my loose gemstones to a Dunmer merchant and found Grelka before she packed away her stall. She had the warmth of a locked cellar and looked at my torn clothing as though I had offended her professionally.

I offered her seven hundred and fifty septims instead. She stared at the purse, then at me, and for the first time lost the expression of someone preparing an insult.

Because I needed armor that night and she had it; walking to Windhelm for the privilege of buying it seemed like a failure of commerce. She accepted the argument after deciding the money was real. The scaled armor was reinforced, lightly enchanted, and far better than what I had crossed the border in. I also bought a spare set of leather gear because recent experience had made redundancy feel less like paranoia. That decision acquired a purpose before I left the city.

Riften keeps its jail beneath the keep, where stone sweats into the straw and everyone sounds guilty after enough hours underground. I had gone there following one of several bad leads concerning Aurelian and instead found a blue Khajiit in a cell who looked at me as though I had arrived late to an appointment neither of us remembered making.

The Khajiit rose the moment I stopped outside his cell. He looked relieved, which was not the reaction I expected from a prisoner seeing an armed stranger. Before I could ask his name, he gripped the bars and spoke as though we had been in the middle of a conversation for years.

I remembered none of this. Not the shooting, not the friendship, not whatever version of me he had spent years apologizing to in his own head. He did not speak like the Khajiit I knew from the Imperial City, and there was nothing theatrical in the shame once he stopped shouting. I had bought spare leather armor an hour earlier. At the time, that had felt like paranoia. Suddenly it looked useful.

That was how I acquired Inigo. The guards, having accepted payment to imprison him, were equally happy to release him once I agreed to take responsibility. I gave him the spare leather gear and learned almost immediately that accepting a debt and trusting the debtor were separate problems. Still, leaving him there felt worse. We left Riften together before I could invent a more respectable explanation.

A week on the road with Inigo has established several things. He talks to animals. He carries more arrows than I consider reasonable. He believes dried fish solves problems I have not yet identified.

And despite everything strange about our acquaintance, Skyrim feels less hostile when he is walking beside me. It has not made Aurelian easier to think about. Aurelian. Gods, that looks dramatic sitting there by itself. I am leaving it.

Even writing the name slows my hand. I came north because his letters stopped. That is the simplest version.

There was also the matter of the crush I had on him when we were younger, which I am recording only because apparently I have already begun lying to this journal by omission. I never told him. It faded. The affection did not.

Weeks passed without an answer, and every explanation I invented became worse than the last. I tried studying. I tried conjuration drills. Once I began a summoning and realized halfway through that I had forgotten what I intended to call. The spell collapsed into sparks and embarrassment.

Every night I read his last letter. I no longer need the page, but I carry it anyway.

A letter, addressed to Vellericus Justicius, from Aurelian Vesuvius

To my friend Velleric,

How are you these days? I remember when our biggest worries were scraped knees and getting caught sneaking out after dark. Those were simpler days. I miss them sometimes, but growing up is not something we can avoid, I guess.

I have news to share! I found my calling, at last. Many mages grow impatient with slow study, and that frustration often turns into temptation. Dark magic. Daedric whispers. Promises of shortcuts. I've seen where that road leads, and it is never anywhere good.

That is where I come in. I intervene and I talk to them. I remind them why they began studying in the first place. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it takes days. Sometimes it takes standing between them and the worst decision of their lives. It's difficult work, but it's honest, and when it succeeds, it feels like setting a broken bone rather than cutting off a limb.

I'm happy. Truly. I've helped dozens of mages and it really fulfills me. I've taken on something larger now, though. I found an entire group of renegade warlocks acting together. I usually work one on one, but perhaps it's time to try something more ambitious. I believe people are better than their worst impulses. I have to believe that.

Don't worry about me, my friend. I know what I'm doing. And know this as well: I'm proud of the person you've become. It is good to know that even as our lives pulled us apart, we both found ways to stand on the right side of things.

Warm greetings, my friend. I will write again soon.

P.S. Never forgiving you for conjuring a rat in my backpack. Skeever butt.

Every trail since then has led somewhere and nowhere. Falkreath. Whiterun. Travelers remembering a Vigilant asking questions about rogue mages. A scholar carrying journals. A man helping strangers along roads he had no reason to walk. Every cave became possible. Every body became difficult to approach.

Inigo agreed to help without making me ask twice. I have thanked him for this exactly zero times because gratitude becomes embarrassing when spoken aloud, and I am hoping this book will not testify against me. Today we found another cave.

Three bandits occupied the entrance with a warlock who attempted to remove my face with lightning. The fight lasted less than a minute. My atronach took two, Inigo put an arrow through the mage at an angle I would rather not reconstruct, and I dealt with the last man before he could reach the passage behind us. It was efficient. I dislike how comforting efficiency has become.

Inigo also continues to distrust my summons. Most people do. Daedra are not comforting subjects, but conjuration at least has structure. Terms. Limits. The entity arrives because something has been called, bound, or bargained with. Even an atronach understands the conditions under which it stands beside me.

Aurelian understood why that mattered. He used to tell me that conjuration needed limits on both sides of the circle, not only the caster’s. I cannot remember the exact wording now. He probably said it better. I thought about it several times while looking into the dark passage ahead.

The cave was Brittleshin Pass. I know that now. At the time it was simply a place the guards had warned us not to use, a tunnel beneath the mountains connecting Falkreath and Whiterun where travelers had begun disappearing. The deeper we went, the less ordinary the silence became.

Then something groaned ahead of us. Wet. Hollow. A corpse making the motions of life without possessing any of it.

I have always loved conjuration because calling something is not the same as owning it. Necromancy violates that distinction completely. I understood this academically before today. I do not think I understood it at all.

The lower chamber smelled of rot, burnt hair, and old blood. Soul gems sat in crude arrangements beside circles cut into the floor. Someone had dragged a body across the stone recently enough that the smear still shone near the edges.

Then I saw a brown leather pack beside a figure in Vigilant robes. My body recognized it before my mind allowed the rest.

He came beside me and went silent. Aurelian stood near the center of the chamber with his back partly turned. For one absurd, merciful instant, relief reached me first. Then he turned.

His eyes were cloudy. His jaw hung wrong. Burned skin climbed one side of his face and blood had dried beneath the collar of the robes I remembered him wearing in his last letter. Nothing in his expression recognized me.

My sword hit the floor. The necromancer beside him smiled.

I remember his amusement more clearly than his face. Aurelian groaned. My knees nearly followed the sword. I searched his expression for anything: irritation, recognition, that small lift at one corner of his mouth when he was trying not to laugh at me.

There was nothing there. No friend. No scholar. No man who had spent years talking reckless apprentices away from shortcuts.

Only a corpse forced upright because someone else found him useful. The necromancer kept talking. Inigo later said it concerned gifted mages making excellent servants. I heard none of it. Aurelian raised one hand. I knew the motion. Thunderwave.

He had taught me the spell himself. That broke whatever remained of thought. Inigo put two arrows into the necromancer before Aurelian finished casting. I threw myself forward and drove Aurelian aside as the spell discharged, hard enough that both of us struck the stone.

My atronach tore into another corpse somewhere behind me. Lightning caught my chest and made every muscle seize at once. I reached a pillar on instinct. Inigo's next arrow clipped the necromancer's face. He survived.

That was his last useful decision. I stopped conserving magicka. Fire. Frost. Sparks. Force. Anything that answered, I used. The chamber disappeared beneath smoke and steam, and by the end my vision had narrowed to a bright tunnel around the man I wanted dead.

I do not remember killing him. I remember silence afterward. I remember Inigo above me, one hand striking my cheek while the other forced a restorative tonic between my teeth.

I woke fighting him. My left ribs ground when I breathed. My hands shook too badly to form a clean sigil. Aurelian's body had collapsed with the necromancer's spell and was already losing shape among the ash.

There was no proper goodbye available. I looked at what remained of Brittleshin Pass and cast one final firestorm into the ritual chamber. I told myself I was cleansing it.

Perhaps I was.

I remember little of the road back toward Whiterun. Pain took most of it. Inigo repeatedly asked whether I remained alive, which became irritating mainly because I was not entirely certain of the answer.

At one point I attempted to summon a flame atronach and produced sparks, smoke, and nothing else. That frightened me more than the ribs. Conjuration had always been orderly in my hands. A circle, a call, a response. After Brittleshin, even that briefly refused to behave.

West of Whiterun we passed two wagons carrying bodies toward the city. Imperials and Stormcloaks were stacked together beneath linen because death had apparently solved their political disagreement. One soldier complained that another necromancer pit had filled the Hall of the Dead faster than they could clear it. Then I saw Aurelian's pack among the dead. A guard asked whether I recognized someone.

The answer came so quickly that even I did not believe it. Inigo put a hand against my back and kept me walking before the guard could ask again. The Temple of Kynareth smelled of dried flowers, damp moss, bitter herbs, and rainwater warmed over a brazier. Danica Pure-Spring took one look at me.

She used the same tone one might use upon discovering mold in a pantry. I informed her that I had suffered a minor disagreement with a necromancer. Inigo, traitor that he is, told her I had briefly stopped breathing. Danica's expression became less charitable.

Restoration is gentler than conjuration. Warmth moves through the body slowly, persuading tissue back into place rather than forcing it. I slept in the temple for nearly two days and woke feeling only partially dead, which seemed like progress.

By the second day I had also developed a theological objection to temple gruel.

The sentence sounded enough like my mother that I obeyed before pride could intervene. Recovery left me with too much time to look at the Gildergreen outside the temple. The tree was enormous even dead.

An old lightning strike had split the trunk, bark curling away in pale sheets while branches reached over the courtyard without leaves. People still stopped beneath it. They still touched the roots. Children still played around the stone where its shadow should have been.

Danica told me the tree had once been a living symbol of Kynareth in Whiterun. She also told me there was a way to restore it. Naturally, the method required a blade hidden among witches near Helgen.

Unfortunately, he was correct.

Helgen was disappointingly normal. I had expected a fortress full of grim soldiers and found merchants, chimney smoke, bored guards, bad ale, and locals who became noticeably less conversational when I mentioned Orphan Rock. A hunter named Torolf pointed toward the cliffs.

He then decided he had contributed enough to the expedition. The climb was worse than the town. Fog clung to the trees. Feathers, bones, and small animal remains hung from branches in arrangements too deliberate to be natural and too ugly to be decorative.

We heard chanting before we saw the witches. The fight did not feel like Brittleshin. That worried me afterward.

There was no panic. No grief. Only the clean narrowing of attention that comes when somebody has already decided to kill you.

Ice took the first witch through the throat. Inigo dropped another before she reached him. The hagraven near the summit managed half a spell before lightning filled the air around her. I did not enjoy it.

I was relieved by that. Nettlebane rested on a crude altar surrounded by roots and old bones. The blade felt warm through the wrapping, like something alive doing a poor imitation of metal. I did not test the impression. We left.

When we returned to Whiterun, the Temple of Kynareth was loud enough to hear from the steps. A robed pilgrim stood beneath the dead Gildergreen arguing with Danica as though outrage were a form of prayer.

Danica did not look up from the bandages in her hands.

That was how I met Maurice Jondrelle. The moment he saw Nettlebane at my belt, indignation transformed into interest so quickly I suspected divine intervention.

Unfortunately, yes. Maurice spoke of the sanctuary with the reverence most people reserve for saints, ancestors, or exceptionally good wine. Then he asked to accompany us. Inigo watched my face with visible delight while I realized I had somehow acquired a pilgrim. Skyrim has a talent for assigning companions without consulting me.

Valtheim Towers had been occupied by bandits collecting tolls from anyone who preferred not to be shot while crossing the bridge. I told Maurice to wait behind the rocks while Inigo and I cleared the road.

Maurice relaxed.

Maurice stopped relaxing. The first sentry never saw me approach. I climbed the eastern tower from behind and caught him leaning against the battlements, watching the road toward Eastmarch. I grabbed his jaw and drove the dagger into the side of his neck.

The blade caught against bone before I could pull it free. Blood ran hot over my hand. He made a wet choking sound and clawed at my forearm hard enough to tear the sleeve while I tried to keep him from making anything louder.

I held him there until the struggling stopped. By then my glove was soaked through. A second bandit turned at the noise and Inigo reached him before he could shout, his sword driving through the man's open mouth and out beneath the jaw. The others died quickly once the towers stopped being theirs.

One tried to surrender late; Inigo's blade opened his throat nearly to the spine before either of us decided whether he meant it. We did not discuss that on the road afterward. Maurice did not ask what happened in the towers. I was grateful for the silence, though I do not know whether the gratitude belonged to him or me.

Eastmarch changed around us as the road descended. Grass gave way to volcanic soil, steam hissed from cracks beside the path, and mineral water turned the air thick with sulfur. Maurice grew quieter with every mile. The Eldergleam Sanctuary deserved the silence.

Water moved through roots larger than houses. Sunlight entered from openings high in the stone and broke across mist in pale columns. Moss covered the walls. Even Inigo lowered his voice when we stepped inside.

Inigo stopped beneath the first great root and stared upward.

At the center stood the Eldergleam. I have seen old things in museums. Old books. Old ruins.

Bones labeled with dates so large they become abstractions. The Eldergleam did not feel old in that way. It felt continuous. As though the cave had formed around it rather than the tree growing inside the cave.

Then I drew Nettlebane. The nearest roots recoiled. Not metaphorically. They moved away from the blade. The sanctuary groaned around us. Maurice turned on me with horror replacing reverence.

That irritated me more than it should have. I had been stabbed, burned, starved, and nearly electrocuted over that half-breed stump.

The faster answer was in my hand. Cut the bark. Take the sap. Return to Whiterun. Danica heals the Gildergreen. Everyone receives what they asked for.

Then Brittleshin returned with perfect clarity: Aurelian upright because somebody else had decided usefulness mattered more than what he was, his hand forming a spell he had once taught me freely. The comparison was imperfect. Sap was not a soul, and Danica was no necromancer. But Nettlebane had already made the tree move away from me. That was enough. I lowered the blade.

Maurice stared at me, then at the Eldergleam. The anger left him by degrees. He stepped forward and knelt beside the roots.

I almost objected that one does not negotiate with trees. Skyrim has punished me for sentences like that often enough that I remained silent. Maurice prayed. The roots shifted.

A small shoot emerged from the earth near his hands, pale at first, then green as the leaves unfolded. No cut. No sap. Nothing taken.

Maurice looked radiant when he lifted the sapling.

I looked at Nettlebane in my hand and wrapped it again.

Danica reacted to the sapling exactly as expected.

Maurice stepped forward before I could decide whether retreat was possible.

They argued theology for nearly ten minutes while I practiced the useful scholarly discipline of remaining silent when two experts have independently decided I am wrong. Eventually Danica accepted the sapling. It was planted beside the dead Gildergreen rather than in its place.

New green against split grey wood. Nothing repaired. Nothing erased. Just another thing beginning beside what could not be restored.

I stood there longer than necessary. It was the first time in Skyrim the saving itself had asked me to destroy nothing. That evening I bought Maurice Honningbrew mead and made the mistake of asking what I should do next.

Maurice, already pleasantly drunk, considered this with the solemnity of a priest receiving prophecy.

I considered the practical benefits of not being attacked by every bear in Skyrim and turned toward Inigo.

Inigo looked as though I had described the worst imaginable fate.