Chapter Text
The sun rose golden over Alinor, washing out the pale marble streets with a glimmering sheen so fine some bright-eyed new traveler to the Isles might mistake the stone for crystal. Crystal was everywhere, riches sprinkled down upon the city from the royal palace above; morning dew clung to grass and cherry-blossom trees like little shards of opal and aquamarine and the stars that still dotted the sunrise were pinpricks made of diamond in the yellow topaz sky. Even the ocean was alight with it, its salted waters turned to a vast pool of glittering blue sapphires under the sun’s rays, each and every one of them so magnificent and vibrant it was halfway blinding. All the Isles felt crystalline at this time of day. Elanya had forgotten how much she’d missed it. She was clad in a white and gold gown as she walked the familiar marble paths of the city she’d grown up in, ribbons flowing gently in the cool morning breeze. Her steps were instinctual, for she knew this place like the back of her own hand; it was a welcome change from the ever-present unfamiliarity, the sense of lostness, she’d experienced traveling outside her people’s blessed isles.
Had things gone the way they’d first been planned, streets like these would have been the only ones she’d ever walk, not the winding Graht-oak ramps of Valenwood or Elsweyr’s old stone paths with grasping hands of moss reaching up from the seams between cracked bricks. Here she knew each twist and turn of the road before her, for it had been laid out since she was a girl, each step decided for her the moment she opened her eyes. She would be—and now was—a high noblewoman of Alinor, daughter of Kinlord and Kinlady, radiant and ethereal as she walked the streets of her shining city. It was almost unsettling how easily she slipped back into that persona upon her arrival back home, how natural that artificially elegant gait felt on her hips and her legs. Eyes half-lidded, posture straight to display her height, face a mask of mystery devoid of emotion, she remembered each intricacy of the complex game, despite her fears that she’d forgotten. Deeply, resoundingly, she had changed in her service of the Aldmeri Dominion. But her change was wrapped and shrouded in the guise she’d been taught to carry since she could speak, and none in Summerset—not her betrothed, not her family, and certainly not the other nobles—were the wiser.
The city slowly began to bustle in the morning light, and the marketplace swelled with sleepy murmuring as merchants set up shop. Tuminderion, the armorer, had already gotten his stock together—at his smithy as soon as the sun had peeked out over the sea’s gemstone waters, early as he always was, Elanya was sure—and the Khajiiti tailor who’d set up shop beside him flicked his tail impatiently as he toiled over a faulty seam. Though she’d grown accustomed to seeing foreigners about with new faces and forms like those this man bore, it was still a bit strange to Elanya to see such diversity in Alinor. As if the Dominion had followed her home.
But, then again, some things were just as she’d left them. “Fivefold venerations, my lady!” Tuminderion called out to her, waving politely. “Enjoying a stroll on this fine morning?”
Elanya nodded back to him, approaching the stall he leaned over with arms crossed on the wooden plank that displayed his crafts. A lineup of strikingly elegant helms who proudly displayed the distinctive wing-shapes of the Aldmeri eagle above their brows were organized on one end; on the other, a matching set of greaves and gauntlets made in similar fashion. The morning sunlight reflected boldly off of the cuirass at the middle of the display, forcing Elanya to blink a few times until her eyes dulled of the pain and she could comfortably train her eyes upon Tuminderion. “I am indeed, my friend—I’d missed the beauty of Summerset in the morning. I’d bask in it ‘til noon, but I’m afraid I’ve misplaced our dear Welkynar-in-training. Any chance you’ve spotted him today?”
The armorer chuckled and shook his head. “I have a feeling you’re better at finding that boy than I am. He has a bit of a… vertical advantage over us all.” At that, Tuminderion took a glance up towards the sky, and Elanya’s gaze followed, even though she was pretty sure she wouldn’t make out any snowy white feathers in the pinkish clouds above. Suddenly, she craved the feeling of the cold wind whipping through her hair as she soared amongst the clouds, up there so far above it all on a lazy morning flight with Lanaren, but he’d already slipped out of the apartment by the time she stirred.
Apparently her comrades had been right when they said she slept like a dragon.
Hopefully they hadn’t been quite as right when they said she snored like one too.
It was a wonder that—
“Ah, I’ll catch him eventually,” she interrupted her own train of thought. “It was a pleasure to chat with you, Tuminderion.”
The armorer nodded towards her. “And you as well, young Lady Mirrenara. Do tell that boy of yours to come by sometime, hmm? I do worry that Relequen’s been beating a bit too much of the cotton out of him.”
A gentle laugh slipped its way past Elanya’s lips as she turned away from the stand. “Of course.”
~~~
With each passing hour on this wretched vessel, the Dunmer felt the guilt grow deeper, a still pool of black ink ever-rising in the low of her stomach that made her feel sicker and sicker with each rocking sway of the ship’s hull. It had to be this way, she told herself, forehead pressed against her own forearms as she sat curled up at the little table that served as the anchor mooring her to stability. It was only safe if it was this far away. The only way to protect her. The Dunmer rolled the beads on her bracelet beneath two fingers, tracing over each, counting them. One, two, three, four. Four beads that made all this worth it.
But the journey was so long, so harsh. Their people weren’t meant to be at sea—not for this endless stretch of time, not so long that the days bleed into each other and she could scarcely conceptualize when she left and when she’d dock in her destination. Shimmerene seemed like a distant concept, as distant as Vivec City, where she boarded this cluster of wood all the way across the continent, even though the logical side of her mind knew the shores of Summerset were far, far closer.
They’d be there within the day. Before sunset.
So why did it feel like they’d never arrive?
So why did the inky dread roil in her stomach, driving her into a deeper sense of ill than any errant wave could match, and the shadows around her seem to darken and stretch out beyond their bounds in attempts to approach ever-closer?
So why did it feel like two beads had shrunk back down to one?
~~~
Lanaren wasn’t too hard to find, not when one knew where to look. Elanya knew all his old hiding spots, the secluded places he’d retire to when he needed a moment of quiet. She found him quickly, perched upon a marble wall beneath a pergola of latticed wood with flowered vines curling around each strip to hold it close and captive, like a golden bird taking shelter from a stormy sky. He was holding a plate in his hands, with another at his side placed down next to a pair of chalices. It was no storm he gazed at, though; instead the Altmer peered over a sprawling field of amethyst grapes and the shimmering shore beyond it. Owned by her own Mirrenara clan and the land that made her parents Kinlord and Kinlady, the vineyard was the largest in Alinor, but Elanya knew it better as the place she’d explored at length as a girl; oftentimes with Lanaren by her side. Once they were wed, he would have a small claim to the property, being married into the house. It was a strange thing to think about.
Elanya considered how to greet her oldest friend as she approached, factions warring in her head as she debated between the casual, friendly words she’d used with him all her life and the more formal greeting custom of newly matched pairs such as them. She chose the latter, feeling suddenly awkward even around someone she knew so very well—a new development that had begun to spring up ever since the two were matched, which was far from a rare occurrence in pairings like theirs—despite the way her gait evened out into a more natural stride when she neared him.
“Fivefold venerations, dearest betrothed.”
Lanaren rolled his eyes. “Once you get us started down that road, we won’t be able to stop,” he told her, then raised his arm to his chest in a dramatic motion. “Seventeen-fold venerations, my dear Elanya, on this fine Alinor morning upon the finer, larger landmass of our fine Summerset Isles!”
Elanya groaned, swinging her long legs over the wall to take a seat beside him. “If that’s what the future has in store for me, I might as well run away now,” said the noblewoman, and Lanaren scowled.
“Not before breakfast,” he protested, and offered out one of the plates he’d been holding to her. On it were a few slices of herb bread, some soft cheese packed with even more herbs, and some cuts of summer sausage. It made her stomach rumble, and she took it thankfully from his hand with a smile.
“Not before breakfast,” Elanya agreed. She was already spreading some of the cheese onto the bread with needless excitement over a simple meal—after so long feeling bloated from the hearty meats of Valenwood and making herself sick off Elsweyr sweets, though, she felt she deserved this simple pleasure—when Lanaren leaned back and made a hum of contemplation. He took another bite of his own bread, nibbling thoughtfully.
“Where would you go?”
“Oh, I don’t know—” pausing her thought, Elanya took a bite of the bread and cheese that was very large and very unladylike. “—Maybe I’ll join up with the House of Reveries.”
At that, the squire laughed, and popped a slice of sausage into his mouth. “I’d like to see you try and impress them. Did you learn how to juggle in your time with the Dominion?”
Elanya groaned. “Only how to juggle far more responsibilities than I’d signed up for,” she sighed, then sipped down some water from the chalice her betrothed had handed her. It was ice-cold, perfectly so—she had an inkling that he’d used a little magic trick to cool it down when she hadn’t been looking. Gestures so small he had no way of even knowing, really, if she’d noticed them anyway. Gestures he offered her regardless of that. The water was perfect, but she swallowed it thickly. “If they don’t find that so stunning, maybe I’ll catch a boat to Greenshade. I’m sure there’s someone there who’ll take me.”
“If you can get through their door without knocking off your head,” Lanaren snorted. He munched down the last of his bread, and—in a manner just as undignified as Elanya’s own chomping—drew his finger across his plate to scoop up the last bits of herb and cheese off the smooth ceramic surface. After all, even pristine Alinori nobles had to get their sillies out sometime.
As Elanya moved onto her second piece of bread, she put a free hand up to her forehead dramatically. “Ugh, don’t remind me,” she groaned. “It took our healer hours to get it back on my shoulders last time that happened.” The Welkynar laughed like a ringing bell, a high and joyful thing that Elanya remarked with some surprise that she hadn’t heard in years, and lightly punched her shoulder. “Careful!” she yelped with little bite to the word, coughing a bit around the bread and cheese she’d been trying to finish before being so rudely interrupted. “I’m still healing. It would not be pleasant if my head went rolling down the balcony.”
Lanaren looked out over the vineyard. “I wonder if you’d be able to knock down that bucket, there.” He pointed at a round wooden bucket, half-filled with Alinor grapes. The Argonian who tended it had his back turned as he plucked grapes from the vine.
Scheming, Elanya popped the last of her sausage slices into her mouth. “I’m mighty skilled, by now. I bet I could make it down to the beach.”
The two locked eyes. They knew these motions well; a challenge and an answer. “I’ll race you,” Lanaren offered, and a grin spread wide across Elanya’s face.
“I’ll win,” she said smugly, and dashed.
Running through the vineyard once again brought newer, fresher air to the noblewoman’s lungs. She felt elated, revitalized, as if the wind were carrying her on its back instead of her feet thumping against the ground. Narrowly dodging a nearby trellis, she skirted around a lattice of wood with vines curling around each twig, holding it close and captive. The path down to the beach was, as most of Alinor was, carved of marble, though it puttered out to dirt near the shore. The sound of her steps shifted as she merged onto the path from the field, her boots clacking against the rigid stone. Though her vision was a blur of the pinks and reds of the flowering trees around her and the green of the grass at her feet, she knew exactly where she was going, and felt mighty accomplished as marble faded to dirt and she realized she was nearly there.
As dirt turned to sand, though, her pride was cut short. Just as she reached out her arm to tap an outcropping of coral and stake her claim to victory, Elanya let out a huff as a heavy weight collided with her back. The Altmer felt sand on her face and darkness in her gaze for a moment before sitting up straight and shaking her head, letting the grainy stuff fall out of her hair and wiping at her eyes to clear them. When she blinked, the sun was blinding, but a form covered it quickly. A massive creature with white feathers, speckled on the wings with little crescents of black like rock peeking through snow, peered down at her. A gryphon. That cheating bastard.
Sure enough, Lanaren stood leaning against that very piece of coral that was Elanya’s goal, looking like the cat that caught the canary. “That isn’t fair! I thought Lindorril was against the rules!” she objected, brushing sand off her arm and onto her friend. He yelped through his laughter and held his hands up in surrender.
“You were the one who got a head start!”
Elanya rolled her eyes, despite the smile on her face. “You just aren’t as quick as you used to be.”
“Maybe not,” said Lanaren in a croaky voice. He hunched forward, his legs beginning to shake in an attempt at feebleness, and plucked a piece of driftwood from the ground to lean upon like a cane. “I’m an old man, Elanya. I’m not long for this world.”
“This is dire. I think Grandfather Lanaren is going senile,” Elanya’s brow knit in false gravity as she turned to the large, feathered creature beside her, who let out a trill and swished his tail. All of a sudden a blow came to her side, making her yelp—Lanaren had turned his driftwood cane into a driftwood weapon. His gryphon, startled, backed away from Elanya and hissed, unsure if he should view her as friend or foe. “Ow! Put down the stick, you crazy old bat!” Soon she grappled the thing out of his arms and tossed it forward into those crystalline waters where it landed with a sullen plunk . It might have been a mistake, for Lindorril reacted immediately, ears perked straight up and tail just as high, and then in a flurry of feathers and sand he was gone to fetch the thing. On instinct, both the elves beside him covered their faces, but the haphazard action wasn’t enough to save them from the shower of salt and spray swept up in the gryphon’s wake. Lanaren sputtered feebly as Elanya coughed, both stunned for a moment until something landed back in front of them with a heavy thwump . Lindorril crooned rather confidently at his successful retrieval of the object he deposited before the pair, and Elanya—eyes still closed as she tried her best to scrape the debris out of her intricately styled hair—spat, “crazy bird.”
She’d been expecting Lanaren to tell her not to poke fun at him, or make some snippy remark about her now-disheveled braids, but instead he made a sort of worried hum that caught her off guard and made her eyes snap back open. “Uh, Elanya,” he grabbed her attention by grasping onto her forearm, “have you seen anything like this before?”
In truth, she hadn’t. What lay before her was roughly the same shape, sure, but with its yellowed, bony structure, the sharp angle of a joint down the middle, and the large crab-like pincer at one end it certainly wasn’t the piece of driftwood she’d flung out to sea. Hesitant, she leaned down to pick up the length of exoskeleton and turn it over in her hands. This wasn’t the severed leg of an unfortunate coral crab snatched up by some seagull… no, this thing was longer than her arm. The look of concern upon her face seemed to confirm to Lanaren she was just as lost as he was, for he sidled up closer and tapped lightly at the strange claw’s hard surface to produce a dull, hollow sound. “Do you think the newcomers brought it?” he muttered with a twist of his head.
“I don’t think so,” responded Elanya, who ran her thumb over the pointed growths on the pincer’s surface. They weren’t sharp enough to pierce her with such a light motion, but she imagined getting smacked by them would really smart. Were they defensive spines, or was this thing a predator? “I can’t imagine why anyone would bring an oversized crab along with them.”
Though Lanaren opened his mouth to speak again, he was quickly interrupted by a flash of white as his gryphon erupted into motion and dove into the sand, pinning something beneath his claws. Whatever he’d caught wailed horribly before the sound petered out with a sharp crunch and he leapt back with a yelp. Lanaren winced a moment, tensing his own hand, but quickly rushed to his partner’s side to check the paw the gryphon now held up close to his belly while he hissed at his newfound opponent half-buried in the sand. The Welkynar grimaced, saying, “this is going to hurt, buddy,” before taking hold of something on the underside of his talons and yanking hard. Lindorril tossed his head, but allowed his friend to safely remove the splinter, and a moment later Lanaren held in his hands a viciously sharp black spine nearly as long as his own forearm.
“Yeesh,” Elanya couldn’t help but exhale at the sight of the thing, which compelled her to reach up and scratch the scruff of feathers on Lindorril’s neck soothingly. Lanaren was already striding forward to shift the pearly sands with a careful hand in search of whatever had attempted to skewer the gryphon’s foot, gasping just slightly as they fell away to reveal the corpse of a spidery creature beneath the surface. Elanya gave the gryphon one last pat before heading forward herself with newfound urgency to take a closer look—unsurprisingly, the thing was practically covered in those same awful spikes, its bloated abdomen prickling with danger. Strange divots crossed its body, blue light pulsing from their depths and the points of its deadly spines, as if it were infused with otherworldly magic.
“It looks sort of like… a Daedra?” muttered Lanaren, hesitantly clasping one of its legs to examine the glowing shapes branded upon its exoskeleton. Elanya crouched down at his side with a long piece of coral in hand.
“That’s the best I can think of,” the noblewoman responded while she prodded at the strange spider with the branch. “Though it doesn’t look much like anything I’ve seen.” Lanaren crouched, thinking, for a moment longer, before getting up in a rush to pluck the clawed limb they’d recovered from the water back up. He held it close to the smaller creature, comparing the two. “Do these look similar to you, Elanya?”
“They both look rather horrible to this one, five-claw.”
The limb slipped from Lanaren’s startled hands into the sand below as he whipped around to come face-to-face with a grinning Khajiit, tail lashing side to side as he rested his paws on his hips. Most of his fur was light tan, starkly contrasting the bright red of the mohawk atop his feline head and the whiskers that matched it. Elanya let out a sound of excitement—a sound Lanaren hadn’t heard from her since they were very small, before it was fully hammered in by both their families that such displays of emotion were unbecoming of their status—and reached forward to shake the stranger’s shoulder rather roughly in some form of greeting. “Raz!”
“Raz?” Lanaren couldn’t hide the confusion in his voice.
The Khajiit bowed and extended a hand towards Lanaren in a far more appropriate gesture. “I am Razum-dar,” he introduced himself, “Queen Ayrenn's Eye and dark-lantern agent extraordinaire. This one worked quite closely with Elanya to protect Queen Ayrenn from those who would harm her.”
“Lanaren ‘cal Shillarion,” the squire bowed politely back at the Queen’s Eye, “Welkynar-In-Training under Sir Relequen. it’s good to meet you—my betrothed has told me much of her adventures.” Razum-dar’s tail flicked behind him and his whiskers shifted—suddenly, Lanaren wished he knew even a speck of Khajiiti body language—but any notion of apprehension or amusement or whatever-it-was was gone in a moment, replaced by that same polite smile. Did he recognize his name?
“What’re you doing in Alinor?” Elanya asked the Khajiit before Lanaren had a chance to ponder the notion that she’d spoken about him with the others off at war often enough for this fellow to remember… something.
“Raz has come to Summerset at the behest of Queen Ayrenn,” Razum-dar stepped back to lean quite casually against some jutting coral as he spoke, “to make sure her decree regarding the opening of the island proceeds as she directed. Rumors have reached the Queen and she is concerned, so Razum-dar comes to see what's happening and fights strange creatures. Now Raz is concerned as well.”
“Creatures?” Elanya pressed further as Lanaren crouched back down in the sand, sifting it apart to remove the length of exoskeleton brought ashore.
“Did they look like this?” the Welkynar presented the limb to the Khajiit, and Raz nodded—now that was a motion Lanaren knew how to comprehend.
“Exactly. This one encountered many of the beasts just earlier; they seemed drawn to some strange pearl, but that is not why Razum-dar is here. Raz has a proposal for you, five-claw,” there was an oddly mischievous glint in Razum-dar’s eye as he turned towards Elanya, as though he knew whatever he was asking was wholly unprecedented. “Would you—and your dear Welkynar, should he wish to join—be interested in traveling to Shimmerene for some… investigating?”
Elanya’s voice grew quiet when she asked, “what sort of investigating?”
“Just asking some questions around the city to determine the mood. Raz can speak with the newcomers himself, but the nobility are far out of his reach. That is where someone with your stature comes in.” The Khajiit rapped his claws against the coral he rested upon. “Attend a few parties, cozy up with the nobles, and perhaps you can learn what they think of our dear Queen.”
Stunned, Lanaren glanced at Elanya, then back at the grinning Razum-dar. Espionage? It was most certainly unprecedented, but… the Altmer couldn’t deny that it was exciting, too. He’d been worried his relationship with Elanya would turn formal and boring once they were finally betrothed, especially with how reserved she’d been as of late, but this was an entirely different side of her he hadn’t seen in years. She held out her arm cordially towards him, bent at the elbow, as if expecting him to link his own with hers. “Perhaps ‘Alinor’s newest fairytale’ should make a public appearance or two in Shimmerene?” the woman offered, and with a smile, Lanaren took her arm.
“Perhaps.”
~~~~
The marble docks at Shimmerene were crystalline, morning sun rising golden over the murmuring cityscape as the Dark Elf woman’s chitin boots hit solid ground for the first time in what felt like an eternity. She’d grown used to the hull swaying constantly beneath her feet, so her knees felt wobbly when she moved along across the marble docks, the steady creaking of wood and rope all around her and the sea air salty with each inhale. Nearly blinding were the white marble structures all around her, entirely alien to any architecture she’d seen before. Long gone were the netch-hide yurts of home or the Redoran bughouses and rectangular Hlaalu manors and towering Telvanni towers of the cities, or the reedy mud-huts of Black Marsh, or the sturdy stone-and-wooden homes of Skyrim that kept away the biting cold with thick walls and warm hearths. Now all that remained were stretching, silvery towers of sharp shapes and thin lines reaching so far above the horizon they seemed to pierce the sky, staring down at her below them from the hilltops they were built upon with a calloused regard.
Deep in her stomach, there was a dark feeling that even the city itself didn’t want her here. She figured that was true enough.
Perhaps, she mused to herself, they weren’t here at all—perhaps they were enjoying Khajiiti sweets under a cool Senchal breeze, indulging themselves in music and merriment on their time off between missions as they lazily watched catfolk of all shapes and sizes drift through the city streets, mentor murmuring to his student the names of all the furstocks that passed them by. Perhaps they were in Grahtwood, lips curled in revulsion at the taste of rotmeth on their tongues and deciding that the pork and venison served at whatever party they were investigating together was far, far better than the drinks.
But indulging in fantasies wouldn’t get her anywhere, and she didn’t come all this way to dream. There was a burning in her chest, now that her feet had settled down on dry land once more, and she didn’t know its name. A few guesses came to her mind—determination, worry, anger, apprehension—but there was only one thing she knew for sure.
She had to find him.
She had to find her.
And she wouldn't let anything get in her way.