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#ildari sarothril
weirdisme · 6 months
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FUCKING FINALLY DID SOMETHING
After weeks of art block I finally drew something. It’s mostly practice and I was just desperate to draw something, so thats what I’m mostly proud of.
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Mmmmmmm underrated villain moment.
I want to say more but I don’t know what to say- I’m just really happy I finally made something
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vidvana · 9 months
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A bit too late to submit for @nerevar-quote-and-star pin-up challenge but I loved the prompt ideas sm that I couldn't resist painting spellcrafting Ildari :3
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toad-n-tonic · 4 months
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Welcome to Solstheim. Hear voices, lose control, commit homocide.
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the-sunlit-earth · 2 years
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crossover of Skyrim + Spirited Away :) Talvas and Haku share the same voice actor, so I drew my fav dunmer as a dragon 🐉.. but it turned into a whole project, so here's the rest of the Tel Mithryn crew, too ^^
Talvas Fathryon / Haku as sweet adorable apprentice   |   Neloth / Yubaba as antagonist enchanter who's in charge   |   Ildari Sarothril / Zeniba as enchanter's enemy   |   Miraak / No-Face as oblivious masked weirdo who hangs around   |   Elynea Mothren / Lin as beloved friend and motherly figure   |   Ulves Romoran / Kamaji as guy who slaves over a hot stove all day   |   my cute Breton OC as Chihiro :)
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Nixiel Veres: What the Dunmer in Raven Rock don't understand is that weird noises always come from the Ashlands and we just ignore it. If you go out to investigate and get got, that's on you. Ignore it and go back to sleep like a rational person.
Talvas Fathryon: Master Neloth once told me not to be scared of noises in the wastes because if something was going to kill me, I'd never hear it coming. I'm fine now, but my predecessor was apparently too scared to leave the tower.
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elfcyclopedia · 7 months
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Fic Lines! Tag Game~
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Thanks @thana-topsy by tagging me :3 And therefore recognizing me as a fellow writer even though I still haven't posted anything online. Yet.
The fragments are from two fanfics I'm working on, both telling the story of Ildari Sarothril from her perspecive. They are namely:
"She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude" and "Ashes Feed My Revenge"
As I said, I haven't posted them yet. But if you get interested feel free to dm me, I'll gladly share my work so far with you :3
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Ok, so here we go:
A line from your fic that makes you sad
He looked around the graveyard once again. The dawn greeted him with shy, pinkish rays dispersed in the morning mist. Lighting the sea, the grave… The beautiful and deadly nightshades painted ornate, slender shadows on the ash. The dawn, the time of the Mother of Roses. Silver tears filled his eyes. Oh what a lowly mortal he is, in the face of death, in the face of the Gods. He leapt down on his knees, facing the rising sun, and prayed, prayed ardently being sorry for Azura, Boetiah and Mephala for what he’s about to do. But he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t help it!
(from "She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude")
A line from your fic that makes you want to punch a character
Master fucking Neloth. Ulves’ face was hued red with anger. It was him who killed her. He coaxed Ildari into performing some unfortunate experiment on her. Two days ago Ulves floated up into the main tower to bring his master food when he casually informed him to dig a fresh grave. His blood boiled from the sole thought of it. He wished to kill him with his whole heart. But he felt so powerless. The old sly wizard would fry him down to a crisp before he could even unsheathe his axe. The only option would be poisoning his meal… but it was very probable that this ash-sucker would survive somehow. And that would mean the end of Ulves’ life. And even if his master, what would that change? There was nothing that Ulves wanted to do after that.
(from "She Looks so Beautiful in Her Grave: A Prelude")
A line from your fic you want to talk about more
Imagine silence. But in its foulest form. The silence that is only found in places of death, sending shivers down the spines of the living. The stillness of a burnt-down village. The void that fills the space after a man has uttered their last words. Somewhere, all among that silence a faint sound could be heard. Ildari’s heart started beating.
(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")
A line from your fic you're proud of
And there she was outside, barely treading, yet irate enough to kick the ash left and right with a sour grimace. The grim landscape stretched before her - all was only ash and burned-down trees, with suggestions of the shoreline and the mountains of the other side. But they were distant, covered by the thick clouds of wind-swept ash. […] As much as she hated the musty air in the tower, outside it wasn’t much better. Even though the wind was merely a breeze, she already choked a few times on the ash that got inside of her windpipe.
(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")
A line from your fic that's full of symbolism
Her mind was failing her, it was like a barren soil that couldn’t hold onto any seeds of thought, and certainly not let them develop. After a whole eternity of torment, she couldn’t help but close her eyes.
(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")
A line from your fic that makes you laugh
“Knock, knock! Can I come in?” chirped Niyya right outside the door of her room. That was weird. She was getting suspiciously friendly so quickly. Well, so far it was harmless. She’s probably one of those people that take all of their life’s pleasures in serving the others and have the reputation of a saint in the society - unless you are the one they are actually helping - then they become really annoying.
(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")
A line from your fic you think could have been better
“Is everything all right?” How dare she ask such a question? Of course it wasn’t! Just look at her.
(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")
A line from your fic that contains an Easter egg
[I don't feel like I've ever written one, sorry ): ]
A line from your fic that's shocking WARNING: suicidal ideation
She put the book down and covered her face with hands. It only takes so much to strip a man off the will to live. What if the voices are never going to subside? And the pain? She can’t live like that! What will she do? Will there be anything to live for? She imagined herself, lifeless, half-buried in ash, like this poor young Bosmer necromancer not unlike her, rotting away - only to be found by a flabbergasted traveller that wouldn’t even have the guts to give the final rites. No voices would be heard then. No pain would trouble her. Not a single tormenting thought would ever cross her mind. Tempting. She heard footsteps coming.
(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")
A line from your fic that makes you go 'aww'
“Um… Ildari” Niyya hesitated. ”I think you are… pretty.” The Redguard’s face turned dark red. Now Ildari understood why Niyya was so suspiciously friendly. But, she was a girl - a mere miner for damn’s sake. And there she was, making goo-goo eyes at her. Ildari wanted to puke.
(from "Ashes Feed My Revenge")
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I don't know much fellow writers (yet) but I feel like @katastronoot and @greyborn2 might come up with something interesting :3
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dovakiind · 11 months
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Ildari Sarothrill - Skyrim
Sketch request from @onionloverboy
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This one took a bit, I hurt my wrist bowling a bit ago so its been a little painful drawing recently. I wanted to keep at this sketch tho so here she is! I definetly need to keep practicing mer, their eye angle is hard to nail.
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If you want to request a TES sketch, check out my pinned post!
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oxalisvtesblog · 7 months
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Ildari's journal
"I'm still weak from Neloth's betrayal. He promised me power and glory. He failed to mention the constant pain. And the voices. By the three, I would do anything to not hear the voices."
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"When my strength returns, I will have my vengeance upon my former master. I can feel the power of the heart stone beating inside me. I need to find a way to tap into its power. Then he shall pay in blood and fire and ash."
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"I can't attack Neloth directly, he's too powerful. But I can make his life uncomfortable. I've killed his steward. I've withered his home. Maybe I should poison his precious tea."
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madam-whim · 9 months
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for your character meme: ildari sarothril, faralda, and elisif the fair! (you needn't do all three if you don't want!)
Ohhh nice choice of characters!
Ildari
First impression: I found her to be an annoyance and didn't have a solid opinion on her, but I did think she was taking things one step too far, and murdering innocent people because of her desire for revenge and for no really understandable reason made me dislike her.
Impression now: I've come to dislike Neloth a lot more over the years, and I feel like now, I can understand Ildari a little better. She trusted that man, and he didn't care what happened to her. If someone who I looked up to and who was supposed to teach me treated me as nothing more than an experiment, I would snap too.
Favorite moment: Sadly, I don't have one as she gets so little actual screen time.
Story idea: The Dragonborn, who is also mad at Neloth after being experimented on and experiencing severe side effects, teams up with Ildari to mess that old man up.
Unpopular opinion: idk if this counts as unpopular, but the player should have been given the option to actually talk to her instead of just being able to read some journals.
Favorite relationship: We don't know of any outside the one between her and Neloth so... I can't really answer this.
Favorite headcanon: I like to think that she idolized Neloth a great deal, and she was young and naive enough to believe that he cared about her, and that's what really makes her so angry - not that he got her "killed", but that he didn't care.
Faralda
First impression: Lady ffs it's cold out here and you expect me to summon an atronach here when I have about 120 points in magicka?! No, but for real... she seemed pretty high and mighty at first.
Impression now: Still a bit high and mighty, but her heart is in the right place.
Favorite moment: When she rushes to protect Winterhold after Ancano messed with the Eye without hesitation.
Story idea: Her finally getting fed up with Nirya's shenanigans and deciding to do something about it.
Unpopular opinion: I... really don't have one?
Favorite relationship: Faralda and Mirabelle.
Favorite headcanon: I firmly beliebe that she has a mischievous streak that she never allows herself to show. But she has probably pranked Ancano once or twice, only nobody ever found out it was her.
Elisif
First impression: Sweet, very young and naive, but I always saw her as brave.
Impression now: She cares deeply for her people, and she's got so much potential. It annoys me how much the people she relies on belittle her - Falk Firebeard most of all, although I suppose he kind of means well. How the hell is she meant to become High Queen when nobody believes she can actually do the job?
Favorite moment: The moment she trusts the player with the task of getting Torygg's war horn to a Talos shrine. She has to know she's taking a huge risk, and she's doing it anyway because she feels like it's what her husband would have wanted.
Idea for a story: I don't know how yet, but one day I want to write a story in which there's a scene where Ulfric Stormcloak thinks "Oh fuck, she's frighteningly competent now." I have no idea how to get there, but one day I will.
Unpopular opinion: She is a lot smarter than people give her credit for. Her ideas and her orders are not stupid, she simply doesn't have the knowledge she needs to make informed decisions because Falk and Tullius shelter her to the point where she has no idea what is going on in her own hold. And I hate that it appears like she's slowly losing confidence with every dismissed idea, with every time Falk talks over her.
Favorite relationship: Elisif and Sybille Stentor. I feel like Sybille's the only one in that court who doesn't actively look down on Elisif.
Favorite headcanon: Believe it or not, I currently can't think of one :(
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Little background. Anara and Ildari are siblings. She originally wanted to work with Neloth, but Ildari got the position instead. Those 2 were close, but somewhere along the way, they both stopped contacting each other.
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kettlequills · 2 years
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c11, waking dreams: master of fate
Read on A03 here.
The next day dawned cold and clear over Raven Rock, heralded by a stiff and chill wind blown over the clawing peaks of the Moesrings. Frea gratefully kept her hood down for the soot-speckled snowflakes to kiss her hair and ruddy cheeks with flecks of welcome coolness. She was the only one; the dark, narrow streets of Raven Rock were utterly deserted despite the egg-yolk warmth of the pallid sun creeping over the churn of the seaspray out the harbour. Distantly, she could hear the mighty puffing of the forge bellows; old Mallory had seized an early morning start to his work. The night lamps were still alight, flickering with arcane-ruby warmth in the sunken recesses of the sullen houses with their glistening chitin shells.  
Stamping on the ale-soaked and ashy slush ringing the Retching Netch’s gutters, Teldryn ran chitin-plated gauntlets up his armoured arms with hair-raising screeches that jangled on her nerves.
Nikulas, stubbornly wrapped up tightly in his furs, was turning a slow, bilious red. “I’m not going,” he said, obstinately. “You can’t expect me to leave you here! Farani told me to go with you, to keep you safe!”
“Nikulas.” Frea couldn’t help the cut in her tone, they had been arguing since full dark when they’d woken in the bowels of the Netch. “You must, I need you to take word of what I am doing back to the Skaal. I will be days behind you at most, but I need you to warn them to keep away from the Tree Stone until I can return to cleanse it.”
“Frea…” His nut-brown eyes, shrouded by the fur of his hood, were deep and drawn under the furrow of his brows. “You are our only shaman.”
“And I will return,” Frea repeated as soothingly as she could, “Not long after you.”
Nikulas shifted his weight between his feet, thumbing at the seam of his glove. His breath misted like that of the frost-spitting dragon Frea and Laataazin had faced at Nchardak, streaming trails of icy mist even as it raised its glossy royal-blue and silver wings and fled howling into the great cup of the sky. Dragons seen flying over the temple of Miraak, the restless dead stirring from their tombs, the whispers that even now boiled from the Stones too far to hear but just close enough to sense like a tongue on the neck; myths and mysteries were stirring out of the unquiet earth, waking monsters enrapt by some unknown call to life resounding through every bone and stone of Solstheim.
Frea needed to protect her people, arm them with what she knew. The Skaal could not be caught unprepared by a disaster like this again, there were too few of them to lose. He knew it, as well as she did. They needed this knowledge and the awareness of threats on the rise.
“The Traitor turned to our people first for a reason, Nikulas,” Frea urged him, taking hold of his fur-covered shoulders. He avoided her gaze, cheeks reddened, but Frea tucked a lock of hair behind his lightly pointed ear, encouraging him to look at her. “He picked us off out of our village, familiar hunters, trappers and outriders disappearing from the icy paths, knowing the lowlanders would not know before his army was too strong. The lowlanders already think us all dead. Will you make us pay the price of our isolation a second time? Time to prepare alone will grant us the advantage, will firm our steadfast hearts against the whispering of the enemy.”
“…All right,” Nikulas said unhappily. A true Skaal, through and through, blood of the mountains. “I will return to the village.”
She exhaled. “Thank you.”
He glanced away from her, frustration written in the taut line of his shoulders, and she could not let them part in anger. Tugging his arm, Frea pulled him into an embrace, the fur of his hood tickling the snow in her hair as she pressed his forehead to hers. Something in her slotted into warm completion when he did not push her away, but closed his eyes and leant back into her, the heat and smell of his breath scented with onion from their hasty breakfast brushing over her cheeks like a caress from the concept of home.
He was warm and solid and there in her arms, her kin, her people, and in her burnished heart grew a fierce and loving desire to protect. No more Skaal would die. No more.
All it would take would be Frea to be separated from her people for a short while. It was agony, but it was a short price to pay. She had done it before, with Dragonborn Laataazin. This time, the victory against swelling threat would be absolute; she would ensure it herself.
“Be safe, brother,” she murmured.
“Shaman,” Nikulas said back, with equal reverence and quietude. “… Frea.”
His warm brown eyes found hers, steady as the deep heart of an oak. The warmth of his skin, the smell of his stringy hair, the streaky kohl under his eyes to protect them from the snow; desperately she tried to memorise him, pull him closer into her until the bones of their skulls ground through their foreheads, like if only she could try hard enough she could bring this fledgling part of her people with her, down from the mountains into the warm ashlands where the elves roamed, with their restless dead.
The hammer across her back dug painfully into the meat of her shoulder. Rolling it against the yoke of the strap, she ruefully stepped back. Nikulas turned to face the mountains, and it was as if the sunlight came into his eyes as he looked into the stony breasts of rock and snow where deep amongst the peaks the village awaited him. He was a son of the mountains; the sweat of the lowlands did not belong on his brow, the soupiness of the air was not meant for his lungs.
Without another glance back, Nikulas adjusted his strung bow over his shoulder and set off at a hunter’s easy lope. Amongst the houses and the rising kiss of dawn, he was briefly silhouetted against the sun, the furs of his hood glowing gold. The raking tip of his bow over his shoulder seemed to draw orange fire through the creamy twilight blue, like a god from Storn’s old legends of the Hunter Fox, whose ears were so sharp they rent the All-Maker’s veil between the living and the hall of the dead. All the old heroes came tumbling out, with gods-ale on their breath and dragon-song in their bellowing voices to root out the heresies striding the icelands that birthed Frea’s people, long ago, before even the Guardian and the Traitor, before even when Solstheim was a bigger land, unsundered by sea, in the old age of dragons and gods.
But those were simply stories of the heroic past, just as the Traitor would be again – a footnote, in the Skaal’s legend.
Behind her, Teldryn was packing crushed herbs in his pipe. With a flick of his finger, he lit it and puffed deeply. He hummed low in his throat and the gravelly sound seemed to travel all the way through Frea’s spine down to the soles of her boots. His hair gleamed with oil like brushed night, his grey skin stippled faintly with blues and yellows, carded through by the stark lines of his facial tattoo. His lips were wet with balm that kept them from cracking against the sharp, ashy air. His fingers were long and graceful, arched like the great ribcages of whalebone washed up on the rocky shore, harvested and picked clean by the wildfolk. Frowning, she glanced away before he could catch her looking at him, tugging at the straps of her gear.
“That’s the stuff,” he murmured to himself, then, “Ready to go, Skaal?”
“My name is Frea, Dunmer,” Frea sighed, and he grinned at her impishly. His smile made his red eyes sparkle like rubies in firelight. “Where is Talvas?”
“I’m here!” the elf in question cried, dashing out of the Retching Netch. He had half his buttons done up in the wrong holes on his sunshine yellow robes so they hung off him like a strange, colourful tent. His arms overspilled with papers and there was sauce on his cheek. “Oh – you would not believe – you see, at Tel Mithryn, I – well…” His grey cheeks purpled at the sight of Frea’s impassive expression, stony as the Bulwark. “… I overslept.”
“Lead the way,” she said, gesturing to the well-trod path out of town.
“Oh, right, yes of course, we should be heading…” He turned round and round, holding his map up to the rising sun until the squiggles of ink were backlit, as striking as Teldryn’s tattoos.
“White Ridge Barrow?” Teldryn intervened, not without a cynical glance to Frea that had her pressing her lips together in a refusal to smile, “It’s this way.” He pointed.
“Right,” said Talvas, again, and blushed. “Well, off we go then.”
He set off, made it three paces, and stumbled over the hem of his unfastened robes. Maps and papers went flying. Talvas yelped.
“By Azura,” Teldryn muttered.
“Aye,” sighed Frea.
They shared a look, then Frea bent to help the hapless mage gather his papers.
After their slow start, it proved to be a gruelling trip. Barely had they stepped out of the gates than they were attacked by more of the shambling, eyeless ash-spawn lurching out of the dusty grey soot. The early morning chill and calm proved evasive under the humid ash-cover, and Frea had to rewrap her eyes and mouth with damp cloth that stuck unpleasantly to her skin every time they stopped, lest she choke to death on the dust. Bitterly, she envied Nikulas his ability to take the switchback Skaal hunting paths up the mountains, quicker, safer, and cleaner, to boot.
Teldryn seemed entirely unaffected, strolling through the ash clouds as if his boots did not kick up plumes that roused the ‘spawn, at times even smoking his pipe. His atronach followed them at a distance, heat simmering off it like the fire round a cookstone. It was a slim comfort that Talvas appeared just as miserable as Frea; the young mage clearly struggled to keep up with Frea’s mountain-bred stride or Teldryn’s apparently indomitable stamina. He shrouded himself in magical flames that no matter how hot they burnt never seemed to touch his robes or the rings he wore on his bare hands, but still shivered even with sweat on his brow.
The Dunmeri sellsword refused to keep his mouth shut, turning every quiet moment into an opportunity for aggrandisement. If the best damn swordsman in Morrowind wasn’t making sly jokes or complaining, he was bragging. A headache quickly took root behind Frea’s eyes and stayed there, but she gritted her teeth, thought of her people, and marched on.
It all began to go truly downhill after the sixth time they were attacked on the road. This time, reavers, a band of four skinny and ragged, one elf mage and three humans; Nords, Frea thought, by their salt-rough accents as they swore at her. One had a tattered mask hooked to his belt, still glowing faintly with enchantment, pale as bone and as striking as the very first time ones like it starred in Frea’s dreams, when the cult of Miraak had begun swarming around the Tree Stone, stealing free minded Skaal with their purple-tongued lies.
Immediately, Frea had gone for the ex-cultist, swinging Laataazin’s hammer as hard as she could. The momentum was intense; the wind whistled and shrieked, and the hammer all but leapt eagerly through the air, its brutal blunt face a vision of crushing evisceration. The cultist danced back, and the hammer met nothing – arrested by its weight Frea continued to spin, and narrowly avoided a rusty axe in the back.
Afterwards when the reavers were corpses bleeding dully into the ash, Teldryn rounded on her and snapped, “Is your sentimentality going to get us killed, Skaal? You don’t know how to use that damned thing!”
“I know enough,” she spat back, hot, tired, and angry. “If you’d not been distracting me all the way – what’s that?”
For Teldryn had scrabbled in the bloodsoaked dirt and come up with the ex-cultist’s rusted axe. “Here!” he thrust it at her, “Use this, and maybe we won’t all get killed.”
“No!” Frea hefted the gory-headed hammer, its threatening weight a solid and steadying burden. Reminding of her purpose, her people. What she was doing all this for. And Laataazin’s gift, to protect her people. She had to keep it safe for them, until they returned.
“Why carry around that thing?” Teldryn demanded. “It doesn’t make you the Dragonborn!”
His scorn hit too close to home, and Frea blushed hotly with anger and embarrassment. She slung the hammer off her shoulder and stepped up to him, squaring off against the shorter elf until his face was in shadow from her broad shoulders and looming height.
“You do not understand, elf!” she told him, jabbing him in the chest. “I was charged with using this weapon until its rightful master returns to claim it!”
Teldryn’s red eyes burned like coals. “Grow up,” he snarled, “Are you truly waiting for that drunken s’wit to come back and save you? They’re not coming back, Azura be praised, they’re dead in a ditch!”
“You may think the worst of the world, but I don’t,” Frea hissed back, “I believe in my friend. I believe the All-Maker sent us what and who we needed. I believe in all the sacrifices we have made to reach this point!”
Teldryn started laughing before she was done, bitter and raucous. His atronach did an uneasy flip behind them. “Tell me, Skaal – what kind of warrior leaves their best weapon to fight a would-be god, in the hands of someone who doesn’t even know how to use it?”
Frea hardened with fury, but he only shook his head at her, the poison in his fiery eyes so disappointed it seared her. “Face it, I knew it when that fetcher, rat-faced off more sujamma than Geldis’d sold all year, swaggered into the Netch looking for a local to take ‘em up to that temple, and I told them: no amount of money’s worth that death-wish, and I knew it when they came back with some pretty, brainless Skaal in tow with a blindspot as big as your precious fucking honour!”
“How dare you-!” she began to hiss, but he cut her off with an impatient swipe of his hand, the silver ring on his finger glinting like a star.
“The Dragonborn’s abandoned us to whatever the fuck’s going on now. Get used to it, kid, the heroes don’t care.”
“Enough!” a clap of lightning, and Frea looked at Talvas. His eyes were red rimmed, he was shaky and pale. “We just killed four people, and you two are arguing about – what, how you could have done it faster? No –!” He raised his hands, forestalling their objections. “Shut up! It doesn’t matter! Both of you, shut up and help me find this damn barrow, so I can go home!”
He turned away, his breath rising on nearly a sob. Frea glanced down at the four dead bodies, cooling slowly besides the path. Blood sprayed liberally across the dirty ash, dripped slowly from the head of the hammer over her back. She could smell its iron tang even through her cloth, feel its warmth against her back. Talvas held the sleeve of his robe to his mouth and shuddered, like he was going to be sick.
Silence.
“Fine,” said Frea.
With one last glare at Teldryn, she shouldered the hammer again and went to Talvas. She tried to reach for his arm, to comfort him, but he shook her off, marching away with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, like he was keeping himself held together. His cheeks were very pale; Frea suddenly saw how very, painfully young he was, even through his elven features and strange, luxury-softened skin. He stood out in his cheerful yellow robes like a butterfly pinned to a board, a familiar hollow misery tense in his eyes.
Dropping her hand, Frea fell back. The first were never easy. Had it truly been so long since her own that she was numb to the brutal cost of violence?
In the dust behind them, Teldryn searched the pockets of the dead and rolled them into a pile. He tossed a flame spell into the corpses and left them there to burn, the pillar of greasy smoke like a trail marker in the sky.
They reached White Ridge Barrow after one long, tense night spent camped out in the wilderness, huddled up against the ash-blown trees. On the morning of the second day, snow had started to fall heavily, slowing their progress. Frea went ahead, breaking the snow with her sturdy legs for the smaller elves. Teldryn walked behind Talvas now, in case the mage stumbled and did not rise; his flame cloak had long flickered out, and he shivered like a sad plant in the harsh gusts. Unable to bear the pathetic sight, Frea had leant him her cloak which presently swallowed him in a mound of furs, until only his black hair and chilly, red-pinched ears peeked out the top.
Frea could not help the rise in her mood as they worked their way higher into the mountainous, rugged landscape. The air seemed easier to breathe, fresher and clear. The snow was dirty grey from ash, but the further they got from the warmer lowlands the less they found. The path was not hard to find, either, broken by wandering feet; perhaps a herd of wildfolk had come through this way, leaving no trace of their presence but softened snow over hard-packed, pressure-crushed ice.
Not hard to find for Frea, anyway, the two elves followed her like sooty ducklings, complaining about the chill on their boots. But Frea heard the earthsong of the All Maker in the rock and snow, in the playful wind that tossed at her hood and pinched her cheeks. The All Maker smiled down on them from the chilly sun, and Frea was at peace.
The ruin itself crouched like a squat reikling in the lee of a rocky cliff, the hump of its stony back gathered with wicked icicles. At first it was nearly invisible, a hulking shadow of black rock nestled resentfully against the sturdy lip of unhewn stone, but Frea felt it, that stillness in the air that whispered of the resting place of the old elders. The elements here were poisoned by ancient magics, necromantic spells and dark, twisted energy bent to the service of dragons and their priests, gods amongst men. It manifested as an eerie chill that crept up Frea’s spine. The All Maker’s presence in her blood dimmed, a couched warning she did not need.
There was darkness here, ancient and slumbering.
They approached in cautious silence, Teldryn recasting his flame atronach for some needed light. The daedra’s crackling face stared eyelessly forward, the graceful arcs of its soaring body sending twists of light across the old stone, painting the ice with rubies. The vast porch of the ruin was held up by a wavering column of ice-packed brick, blackened by the remnants of some ancient fire and thousands of years of scouring. A hollow coolness enveloped them as they stepped beneath its shadow and faced the wrought-iron doors, sealed against intrusion. Talvas clustered uncertainly close to Teldryn’s atronach, seeking the heat.
Frea glanced at her companions. “Ready?”
Talvas swallowed, but nodded, his grey face pallid and blue. Teldryn only smirked, flipping his sword easily in his hand. Facing forward, Frea pulled the hammer off her back. With a creak, she pushed the door open, and then as one, they stepped into the abyss.
The first thing Frea noticed was the cold. The second, the silence.
It was deathly still, so cold that her breath plumed in front of her as she stared into the slick, icy darkness. The tunnel’s mouth was ringed with ice, sleeting over the steps down into the dusty ruin. There were no whispers, no skitters, no uneasy shivers in the rock with the presence of watchful eyes – nothing but silence, and cold, and death.
The frost-choked walls stretched on and on into the bowels of the earth. Not even dust fell in the wobbly, watery gleam of light through thick ice. It was like the whole place was suspended in time, caught between one breath and the next.
Frea’s boots handled the slippery ice well, but Talvas and Teldryn had to crawl at points, easing themselves down smoothened steps on their hands and knees. The fire atronach Teldryn kept behind them as to not weaken the ice they scrambled over. Her passage left little runnels of melted icewater, dripping clear over entombed shadows of what looked like hundreds, thousands, of tiny, spidery bodies.
Entire cobwebs had been plastered against the wall and frozen solid, egg sacs had ruptured in the howling cold and frozen mid-explosion, spiders trapped in perfect form, some still curled up in their webs, beneath the ice. Their eyes gleamed, bright and dead.
“I hate this,” Teldryn announced, “In case you were wondering, I truly hate this.”
He eased himself round the frozen-solid corpse of an uncomfortably translucent spider the size of his torso with a grimace Frea could all but feel even behind his chitin helmet.
“This ice is not natural,” said Frea, “I wonder if we will meet the mage who cast it?”
“By the Three,” Talvas moaned, and no one said anything for a little while.
Eventually, the cramped, winding tunnels opened out into a hall, and the spiders began giving way to bodies, instead. Mostly human, a few others, and all absolutely dead. Some were frozen still sat in chairs or in beds, abandoned games of dice stuck to their cold, frost-bitten flesh. Others had fallen, their expressions twisted up in terrible shock and horror. Whatever had come for them, they had not expected it.
“Loot’s still here,” said Teldryn, prising some coins off the table with his dagger, “No one cleared this cave.”
“Then where are the elders?” asked Frea, and an uneasy silence fell. Numbered among the dead, they had seen no draugr, no walking dead, but plenty of niches, tombs, and resting places. They had been here – but where were they now?
“Where’s this artefact you’re looking for?” asked Teldryn, and Talvas shrugged uneasily. “Experience tells me its probably at the ass-end then,” sighed Teldryn.
They proceeded further through the ruin, into the sanctum of White Ridge Barrow. Here too, it was dark and still and silent, but there was barely any ice. Only a trail of frost, oddly familiar, blazed the way down through the ruin like a clairvoyance spell. It was only when Frea’s eye landed on Teldryn’s atronach doing a lazy flip that she realised what the frost trail reminded her of; the fire that played at her ankles, blurring and burning along behind her in a smoky line.
Frost atronachs did not float with ice trailing under their feet, though, they stomped. Their ice, though it felt different to true ice, did not feel as rigidly unnatural, as dead as this ice did. This ice was near-sentient with a palpable aura of sorrow and the rigid, static anger of the dead. It seethed, crunching bitterly under Frea’s boots like it resented her and every living thing that passed over it. With a subtle and malignant glitter, it reflected the shine of their weapons, the elves’ glowing eyes, like it watched them.
And in the distance, a soft scratching started. Nearly inaudible, like a grating against the inside of Frea’s eyes.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, it went.
Squeezing the grip on the hammer, Frea swallowed around a dry throat. She kept her eyes on the ground in front of her and edged forwards, wishing that Teldryn had taken the lead. Talvas behind her cleared his throat.
Scratch, scratch – silence.
The scratching paused.
Frea froze in place. With a grunt, Teldryn collided with Talvas, and they both hit her. She lost her grip on the ice and slid, and with a hoarse yell all three of them tumbled down the sloping staircase to the icy bottom. Teldryn swore loudly the whole way down, his fire atronach flickering after them with the smug air only the flighted could, at the flightless.
They landed heavily on Frea, crushing the breath out of her. She started to complain, but Talvas shushed them both impatiently.
Scratch, scratch, scratch. In the silent darkness, the scratching started up again.
“Can you hear that?” Frea hissed, and she felt Talvas nod against her shoulder.
“Let me guess,” Teldryn said, dourly, “We are going towards the creepy noise.”
“We have to investigate,” said Frea, shaking them off her like puddles of sulky, armoured rainwater. Teldryn groaned in resignation.
The scratching got louder the further down the trail of ice they went. They edged round the corner into a wide hall capped by a magnificent subterranean wall, carved with strange, archaic words that bit at Frea’s vision, demanding attention. She scanned the darkness carefully, but nothing moved.
“I don’t see anything,” she whispered, and felt Teldryn press up behind her. His warmth tickled at her nape as he came up behind her with a creak of leather and the soft rasp of chitin on chitin. She waited in taut silence while he judged the room ahead.
His closeness made the pit of her belly shiver and roll over itself. She was near enough to smell the musk of leather and sweat, armour oil and soot that clung to him. His lips brushed her ear as he settled forward on his toes, leaning into her space. Her heartbeat picked up.
With a flick of his fingers, he gestured his flame atronach forwards. She drifted past, a pillar of gracefully twining flame. Insouciant, unbothered, she made her way into the centre of the room, and executed a single, lazy flip.
Then, quite promptly, she exploded.
Teldryn’s hand clasped immediately over Frea’s eyes, pushing her back against the stone. She yelped, but he shushed her, his warm voice catching in her ear like smoke in her throat. Her toes curled. She felt the strength of his grip, his fiery heat, the tough wiriness of his arms, his compact chest. He was like no man she had ever touched; no Skaal with their sensible layer of padding and hair, no, he was all raw, lissom elf, blazing with rude heat.
Quite against her will, Frea’s face flooded with pink.
“We’re good,” he said.
Teldryn released her, and she yanked out of his arms and stormed away before he could see her bright blushing cheeks. She did not want to deal with his teasing. And she knew, she knew he would have something to say about this. It was just – blood. It was warmer next to him than it was anywhere else, it was just a simple reaction to temperature. She was still angry with him.
It didn’t mean anything.
She was distracted by Talvas’ loud cheer. “This is it!” he darted over to examine the rock wall, fingers trailing over the jagged carvings. “There should be a stand…”
He turned, and his face palpably fell. The towering lectern Talvas was approaching sat directly across from the wall of dragon words and the large tomb between them. It radiated a fearsome aura of darkness. Tentacles squirmed forever just inches away from their goal, hidden eyes nestled between their thick, oily strands and glistening wetly, even as immobile stone and metal. It loomed threateningly, just tucked out of sight of the entrance, but planted opposite the silent tomb of the barrow’s most powerful elder like a terrible, ominous watcher.
A vicious black stain scarred the top of the lectern, where a Book should be.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, went the eerie noise.
“This isn’t right,” he said, “No, no, there’s supposed to be…”
He started forwards, but Frea grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. His sunshine yellow robes bunched up around her hand and he wheezed indignantly.
“Stop,” said Frea, “That looks like Herma-Mora’s work.”
“It’s not…” Talvas grimaced. “Fine, it’s the artefact I was sent to retrieve for Neloth. He knows how to study the Books! There are no safer hands for them than his.”
“No,” Frea snarled at once. “Those Books are evil-! We should be so lucky that they have all gone, back to their dark master.” She spat on the ground, like it could shake the image loose of her father’s body, pierced through with Herma-Mora’s writhing, hungry corruption.
“I’m more concerned about where the dead are,” broke in Teldryn diplomatically. “Perhaps one took the other?”
He had wandered off to the side during Talvas and Frea’s exchange, and now as she turned to face him, he kicked the front of a coffin. The eerie scraping redoubled itself, along with a faint, nasty snarling Frea swore she could feel on her throat. Teldryn flipped his sword, grinned at them, and wrenched the coffin open.
A desiccated draugr fell out.
Darting to one side, Teldryn raised his sword for a killing blow, but the draugr did not attack him. It did not even look at him. Instead, it dragged itself forward on its skeletal arms, its blue gaze burning with a ferocious and unspeakable purpose. Teldryn’s glittering red eyes tracked it crawling across the floor towards a dark passageway.
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t suggest following that,” he said, “That’s creepy shit, that way.”
“We should follow it,” said Frea, and Teldryn groaned. “It could be a trap.”
“Exactly!” said Teldryn, “That’s why we shouldn’t follow it!”
“Wherever its going could be where the rest of the draugr are,” suggested Talvas. “Maybe they have the Book?”
“For the record, I don’t like this,” Teldryn grumped, but fell in line behind Talvas anyway.
“You don’t like anything,” Frea snapped.
“Nothing that’s likely to kill me, no,” Teldryn retorted.
Ignoring them, Talvas forged on after the draugr fearlessly, conjuring a magelight that floated above his head. Frea brought up the lead, glaring at the back of his head. She remembered being pressed against his chest in the passageway and fought the spreading warmth in her face. Her own blush roused a sour taste on her tongue, remembering the bitter flash in his eyes as he mocked her for her belief in her friend.
She looked down at the hammer she held. It was too heavy to carry it without an immediate threat present, not like Laataazin had, hoisting it on one powerful shoulder like it weighed nothing at all despite having a head almost bigger than theirs. For all her size, her strength, Teldryn was right. She was used to her dual hand axes, quick and biting and good for scaling cliffsides in a hurry. She wasn’t a warrior, like he was.
But she was a shaman, and she would always fight for her people.
She felt the touch of the All Maker in the sun that pierced shyly the long tunnel, warming her cheeks. It was wan and pale, but all their steps picked up with palpable relief. No one wanted to linger here.
The passageway was steep and dusty, winding up to the surface. In places they had to scramble up on hands and knees, goat-hopping up collapsed stairways. A chill, fresh wind wisped past them, ruffling the sweat on Frea’s brow.
The draugr was unaffected by the ice and had already made it out onto the broken snow by the time Frea scrambled out of the half-collapsed exit. The snow here was crushed and spotted by dozens of walking feet, spotted with decayed fragments of cloth and rust. A skeleton was sprawled across the path, its rat-gnawed bones ancient and brittle. The dead had passed through, heading inexorably away from the ruin, into the snow.
“Where are they going?” Talvas asked.
Frea did not answer. She frowned at the skyline. The tracks were headed loosely southeast, towards the heart of the mountains. Were the missing deadwalkers of White Ridge Barrow planning to go through the mountains to the lowlands, or worse, to the temple that lurked in its centre? What was the likelihood that Frea’s suspicions of the Traitor’s murky and incomplete defeat had something to do with this as well?
A glacial wind picked up as they followed the draugr, scattering snowflakes and bites of icy hail. A roiling fog lingered at the peaks of the mountains, obscuring the glittering snowfields. The broken snow stretched on, punctuated by the detritus of death; fallen organs pickled and dry, scraps of skin and bone. The snow fell, swift and remorseless, threatening a gathering blizzard. Above, clear and unconcerned, the sky was smooth and untroubled by clouds.
“It is magical,” Frea called over her shoulder, reaching back for Talvas’ hand. He took it, his grasp hot and sweaty against her glove. “I cannot feel the All Maker in this.”
“Great,” Teldryn muttered, gripping onto Frea’s belt.
“We must be getting close!” said Talvas.
They kept close to her as they pressed on, using her taller body as a wind break. Frea pulled her scarf up over her nose so the wind had less of her cheek to bite. Bending her shoulders to the unnatural wind, she grit her teeth against the sting of prickly, defensive magic that steered the wind’s howl. It almost pushed them away with intangible hands, protective and malignant.
Teldryn saw them first. With a hiss, he pulled on Frea’s shoulder, halting her in her tracks, and pointed. Through the thickening snow, Frea glimpsed a knot of strange, tattered figures, standing motionlessly in front of a collapsed cliff as if uncertain. A few draugr were braving the climb up the ice-slick rock, tumbling back down again almost as soon as they got up.
In their centre, a great and terrible figure hovered. Not in the way Teldryn’s atronach had, as if buoyed by its own flame and heat, but like an image, pasted onto the world after the rest had already been drawn in. It did not fit, hanging there listlessly like a corpse from a tree, at once too animate to be truly dead, and not enough to be alive. Forewarned by some arcane sense, the figure turned towards them, the blizzard swirling around its tattered robes. The mask on its face gleamed coldly, cruelly, with ancient and deathly darkness. It spoke, in a rumbling, inhuman voice, guttural and harsh, its skeletal hands gesturing in front of it. Icy blue scales guarded its shrunken chest, royal blue and white.
Though the wind was harsh, its dead voice carried clearly through the air, echoing with an uncanny resonance like the wind loved its words too dearly to let them die. Dragon-tongue, and dragon-words.
“Bronze balls of Seht! That’s a dragon priest!” cursed Teldryn, “We need to get out of here.”
The words were familiar, tickling the back of Frea’s mind. It almost sounded like old Skaal, the tongue of stories and myth. She picked up odd words, here and there, and when the dragon priest stopped it extended its hand and beckoned to them. That was a gesture she did know.
“Drem. Bo-aav het, mal-briinah,” the undead priest rumbled. Its bleached white hair blew softly about its mask, escaping from holes in its ragged hood.
“It’s not unfriendly,” said Frea quickly, and Teldryn scoffed disbelief.
“It’s an undead,” he hissed.
“These are her ancestors,” said Talvas, peering uncertainly round Frea’s shoulder. “By the flame, shut up and let her handle them.”
“Los Frea,” she said, mustering herself, and clapping her palm across her chest.
The dragon priest drifted forward a step, the light shimmering over the icy scales on its chest. Closer, she made out the intricate details on the frayed and tattered robes, fractal patterns that reminded her of snowflakes. The mask gleamed coolly, like the reflection of a still pond under moonlight. Unholy blue eyes blazed out from behind the mask. It radiated wrongness, an offence to the sky that held it.
“Zu’u Dukaan,” the priest, Dukaan, growled back, imitating her. “Koraav hi drog-Krosulhah? Bo mu krii se munax nau golt. Zu yah thuri-Miraak. Aav-mu, Frea-briinah?”
“What did it say?” Teldryn asked her urgently. He was gripping his sword, staring at the dead with terrified hatred.
Frea recognised only one word, Miraak. She bared her teeth, reaching for the hammer. “Traitor!”
“Vahlok-aar!” The dragon priest screamed back, and summoned its staff to its hands. “Alduin rel ko Solstheim fen al! Mu fen stin! Aar – krii daar wo krif thuri-Miraak!”
“Mu fen stin!” a deathlord bellowed, and the fight was on.
There were too many of them. The draugr swarmed them like locusts across the snow, blown back by Teldryn’s fire and Talvas’ wild, explosive spells. Frea guarded their front, swinging Laataazin’s hammer like an instrument of doom. But they kept coming, and all the while Dukaan tossed chunks of ice and pure force at them, forcing them to run behind rocks.
“We need to run!” Teldryn shouted as one such temporary shelter shattered around their heads, sending chunks of razor sharp rock rocketing through the air.
“Miraak!” Dukaan wailed, as if in answer. “Faal Dovahkiin bo! Rok aak mu!”
“We can’t outrun that!” Talvas yelled back, “it’ll shoot us down from behind!”
Teldryn swore loudly. Frea swung Laataazin’s hammer into the chest of a draugr, grunting as the hammer nearly spun out of her hands in its eagerness to maim.
Teldryn shot across the ice and parried the blow, jarring Dukaan’s staff from its grip. It dropped the staff and retaliated with a blast of frost that he dodged nimbly, his sword dancing out flickering with fire. He traded swings with the priest for a minute, and then hastily scrambled backwards as his atronach bulled in and exploded in flames, its summon expired.
Dukaan seemed unfazed, and blasted him backwards. Teldryn collapsed into a snowdrift, but Frea could not spare a second to check if he was alright, she was already charging forward to re-engage. The draugr knotted around Talvas, who yelped.
Lightning forked – a sudden, hard flash of stark purple. A ring of draugr collapsed into fire, and a powerful storm atronach swirled up from the ashes, tossing thunderbolts. Talvas was screaming, somewhere, but magic was snapping over the sky, frostbolts and thunder crackling among the fire.
“Zahkriisos!” Dukaan howled with such clear grief that Frea bit her own lip, hard. “Ahzidal! Aak hin fahdon! Krosulhah! Hon-ni dii zaan?!”
Frea closed with it, going for an overhead strike. Dukaan swayed back out of the way, its eyes glowing fiercely with magic. Its scale armour glinted wickedly.
“Your people are dead!” she taunted the priest, “Your time is gone! And soon, so will you be!”
Dukaan’s guttural snarl was her only reply.
Dodging a blast of frost from Dukaan aimed at her head, Frea squinted over the battleground. Teldryn, there – sword in hand, back to back with someone – Talvas? But then – who was that, on the ridge, graceful arms upraised like a conductor, hurling thunderbolts like snowballs?
She had no time to question it, because sensing the battle turning, Dukaan flung itself at her with an immortal screech of rage and grief.
The dragon priest pushed her down, its skeletal hands going for her neck and squeezing. She coughed for air, pushing at the intractable arms. Dukaan’s masked face loomed over her. This close, Frea could almost see hints of what Dukaan had once been; alive, mortal, like her and her people. Before the gruesome pact with power, following the traitor past death. Stringy, brittle white hair poured out from around the hood, a veritable mane when it was alive. Dukaan had Nikulas’ small pointed ears, Farani’s thick hair, but harsh blue eyes that glowed with fierce undeath. Whatever colour they had been was wiped away by the cursed magic that animated it now.
Its hands were icy cold, fighting for purchase on the thick furs around her neck.  She knew, somehow without knowing, that the dragon priest could not even see her, that some other foe had gripped its deathless mind. It screamed as it choked her, insane with rage and a brutal sorrow that burrowed into her heart like an ice spike, aching and chill. Frea writhed under its hollow-boned grip and wheezed for breath, dark spots appearing before her eyes.
She was going to die. It was going to break her neck, and she was going to die here, without ever going home again.
Uselessly, her fingers twitched for the haft of the hammer knocked out of her hands. Hot tears squeezed out of her eyes, blurring the gruesome visage of the dead priest, the rasping gasps of her final exhales muddying the icy visage of the scalloped mask.
A spell rippled over her head and struck Dukaan in the chest like a clap of thunder. The dragon priest was blown backwards by the force. Frea’s ears rang. She scrambled to her feet and lurched for the hammer, grabbing it and swinging it over her head. She still couldn’t breathe, wobbling for steadiness around crashing, discordant colours.
Dukaan’s eyes seared her, wrought in horrific agony, a grief so potent it ached. A second spell clipped the edge of the mask and it spun, pinwheeling away from the rotten face. Laataazin’s hammer crashed into the weakened skull half a breath later, shattering it into an explosion of bone fragments. The awful blue gaze winked out, but she kept going, couldn’t stop. The hammer lurched in her hands like a living thing, directing her, moving her, driving her to a final and brutal vengeance. She kicked the dragon priest’s body off the hammer and struck again, pulverising the chest this time, ancient bone and scale cracking under the fierce warsong of the hammer like eggs.
Dukaan’s deathless body began to flake and ash. Her next swing scattered the ash into an explosion of mothwing softness, arcane remains glittering in the foul snow. Dukaan’s mask, empty and still, lay a short distance away. Abandoned there among the blue-purple shimmer, it was almost beautiful, like captive silver in the heart of the aurora.
Breathing heavily, Frea raised her head, sweat stinging into her eyes. She blinked it clear – and saw the impossible.
A stone stood, pulsing with power, around the chest of a she-elf, whose fingertips dripped magic. She lowered her hands, her flaked-blood eyes throbbing with that terrible, wicked glow. Her summons flickered around her, the shapes of one – two –  three storm atronachs, standing at her shoulders like sentries, like bodyguards. Her body looked wrong, moved wrong, the joints stiff and unrolling, a blank, voidlike spot in the world where a normal body should be. The red stone sat in her chest like a disease, lurid, livid veins crawling up round her ears, into her brain like a cancer.
“Friend or foe?” Teldryn called from somewhere.
Frea hefted the hammer over her shoulder but fell before she could get it up past her elbow. She wheezed for breath, tugging at the collar of her furs. A slow agony spread over her shoulders and spine, starbursts pinwheeled angrily behind her eyes. Dukaan’s hands were still around her neck, clenching on, cold as the grave. The snow was wet against her knee, which throbbed with a distant ache – the forewarning of a mighty bruise.
The elf’s eerie glow died, and she pulled her robes around herself, shivering faintly. Through blurring eyes, Frea watched her stumble over to them, her gait uncertain and unsure, like the recently blind or terribly cold. She leant heavily on her lightning staff like it was a walking stick, burrowing into the shawl wrapped around her shoulders and face as if it were a security blanket. Her summons winked out as if they had never been there at all.
She reached for them like a child for comfort, her small grey hand crusted with ice crystals and snowflakes. Talvas met her, cautiously, and took that outstretched hand, gasping at her coldness. He gathered her against his chest, a flame cloak flickering weakly to life, despite his exhaustion.
“Frea.” It was Teldryn, Teldryn, coming up next to her. His warm hand clasped around hers, the other wrenching at his gauntlet. The chitin came off and he tossed it carelessly into the snow, his shimmering eyes red and concerned. “Frea, breathe. Where are you hurt?”
She wheezed, voice stoppered in her throat. He hovered above her, alien and handsome face twisted with some expression she couldn’t identify. Though he was gentle, the first touch of his fingertips to her throat made her hiss a strained objection.
“Azura,” murmured Teldryn, not a curse but somehow a prayer, and at once the pain in her throat dissolved to warmth.
Frea choked, and then coughed. She curled over herself, his restoration magic tingling in her bones like glitters of starfire, licking the inside of her skin. She could taste the goddess in the back of her throat, impersonal and twilit, a cold kind of glow that spoke of the gaps between the stars. A terrible knowledge and potent, esoteric grief ebbed at the agony Dukaan’s scrabbling madness had left behind, soothing the bruising of her throat with a coolness like a stranger’s chilly hand to her skin. Teldryn supported her onto her side in the wet snow, rubbing her back smoothly to ease her breathing.
“Thank you,” she rasped out, eventually, and his hand hesitated on her back.
“Think nothing of it, Skaal.”
“Travellers.” It was the she-elf. She spoke the mainlanders’ Cyrod thickly, through a grating voice. She lingered against Talvas’ chest, who brushed her down with a gentle, distracted air. After a stilted moment, her own Dunmeri fire began to lick against her skin, outlining her in a glowing wreath. Talvas smiled at her encouragingly, and stepped back, his own flame cloak as bright and boyish as he.
Teldryn rolled his shoulders back and matched them, his own fire strong and hot. She felt it from where he crouched next to her, the arcane birthright of his elf-blood burning like pitch in his veins, warming him with the hearts and ashes of his ancestors.
“Who are you?” Talvas asked her, curious but not unfriendly.
“Pardon my interruption,” continued the stranger, as if he had not spoken. Her fire was muted and dim, as shifting and strange as she was. Beside the brilliant bright yellow of Talvas, the rich and fierce heat of Teldryn, it reminded Frea of embers recently splashed with water, the faint memory of heat amongst sodden, silent ash.
Teldryn shifted beside her, groping for his gauntlet in the snow. His flaming hand cut a path through it, melting the thickly packed snow like it was freshwater. The light from the three elves blazed against the gathering teeth of the storm, outlining them like pillars, like beacons against the dark. The snow whipped at the robes of the mages, dusting the rich black of Talvas’ hair like dots of stars. Around them the ice was softened, dampened, gleaming with its own watery blood and the smoking remains of the dead draugr. Dukaan’s ashes shimmered.
Feeling human and alone, Frea gingerly pushed herself to kneeling. Her chest ached at the movement but surrounded by fey elves burning with their own magic, she did not want to lie dead like a corpse in the snow. Besides, it was getting cold, even for her.
“Sadrith accent if I ever heard,” he muttered. “Mainlander Telvanni,” he clarified for Frea, in an undertone.
Frea nodded. She wasn’t quite sure what a Telvanni was, but Teldryn spoke as if it was a bad thing. One of the Dunmeri clans, perhaps, a rival one to his own? The Dunmeri fought like scrapping foxes, always snapping and snarling. They warred with one another like they did not fear the winter.
“Are any of you … injured?”
“Thanks to you, nothing that magic can’t fix,” Frea managed. Her voice still sounded strained, but at least she could breathe easily. “May we know your name, stranger?”
“… Sarothril,” she said, slowly, as if struggling to recall.
“Sarothril?” Talvas repeated, “That’s funny – I saw, that is…” he trailed off, and then cleared his throat, “It’s just, I could have sworn I’ve heard that name before. Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Ildari Sarothil. Any relation of yours?” He beamed up at her.
“Ildari,” she repeated. “Ildari Sarothril.” She lurched a step closer. Her movements seemed wrong, sickly, as if she shivered with a vicious premonition none of them could see. “I am Ildari Sarothril.”
“Oh…” Talvas’ eyes widened. “I have to tell Master Ne-!” Her eyes gouted with red flames, and Talvas backpedalled hastily, as if thinking better of mentioning his irascible, often unfriendly mentor to a powerful stranger. “I mean, maybe I’ve made a mistake, I just, I swear – I swore I saw your name… somewhere at Tel Mith- uh, never mind. Are you a mycologist? An author?”
“I … was … learning,” she said, with great and painful effort.
“A researcher, then, I must have read one of your books, you are impressive with conjuration,” said Talvas. “Are you quite well, Miss Sarothril?”
It was a question Frea couldn’t fault him for asking. The conjurer may have helped them with powerful magic, but now the battle was over she stood hunched over, leaning on her staff, and looked nothing so much as lost. There was a dullness in her red eyes, more brown than the vibrant glitter of Talvas’ and Teldryn’s, and her skin was greyed with pallour. She looked half-erased, like charcoal washed by the waves, all blurred lines and silent misery. Her fire kept close to her body, like it was shy.
Uncomfortably, Frea was reminded of Dukaan, of the silence in the Skaal who were taken by Miraak, beating away at the Tree Stones. It was the expression of somebody who was transfixed by a darker, higher calling, perverting their mind and stealing their senses.
She had no doubt this elf was more than she seemed. Simply insane, or dangerous?
Frea was not willing to bet a sick woman’s life to a magical snowstorm to find out.
“Come,” said Frea kindly, “Sit by our fire tonight, mage. Your help was timely. I am Frea, of the Skaal.”
Not to mention, Dukaan’s conjured storm had not blown itself out yet. It would not last long without its caster to sustain it, but Frea could feel the snow soaking through her furs, and she had no desire to be out late in it. She would not leave a stranger who had aided them out to freeze – let alone a sickly, strange one, who she was not certain had the wherewithal to find shelter on her own. Where had she come from?
“Sero. What were you doing up here?” Teldryn asked her flatly, and her lip pursed at the thought that their minds had followed a similar track. “Isn’t anyone taking care of you?”
“Niyya,” offered Ildari, dazedly, as if that meant anything to them. A name, perhaps? It sounded human. “Timely.” She looked down at herself, as if surprised by the concept that she could ever be something so convenient as in the right place in the right time.
“I’m Talvas,” said Talvas, brightly, and took Ildari’s hand. It seemed as if he meant it to be a brief gesture, but she clutched onto him like a lifeline. Talvas’ smile wavered, but he bolstered himself with kindness, and leant into her as if granting her his heat. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you.”
“Are you Telvanni?” Frea heard her ask, voice soft as ash on snow. “You look just like Master Neloth.”
“I – oh, well,” Talvas stammered back, “I don’t – really, I’m just an – do you think so?”
He sounded as if he couldn’t decide if he were flattered or insulted by the comparison.
Ignoring this interaction, Teldryn grunted, pocketing what looked like a necklace from the corpse of a draugr, stripping them of their valuables with the efficiency only a mercenary could have. Teldryn scooped and picked up Dukaan’s mask, flipping it in his hands.
“Cursed thing, this,” he said. “Probably worth some money.”
“Cursed,” said Ildari, and extended her hand for the mask. Talvas took advantage of the distraction to step away, resettling Frea’s cloak around his shoulders like it could hide his blush.
“Hey,” said Teldryn. “First pick of loot is mine.”
Frea planted the head of Laataazin’s hammer in the snow and used the haft to lever herself to her feet, blinking away spots. Her legs ached, and there was cold snow clumped on her knee and hip, where she had lain against it. Thinking of the Dragonborn’s warm small palms folding against hers as they scrambled over the mountain paths together, she ate some of the cold-staying berries from her pouch, their tartness popping over her tongue like kisses.
“Come on Teldryn,” said Frea. “She probably just saved our lives.”
“Your life,” said Teldryn, churlishly, but gave the mask to Ildari anyway. “Suppose it saves me the trip to Skyrim to find a decent buyer,” he said.
He heaved his pack onto his back, squinting round the half-circle of light the flaming elves made. “That’s everything.” He turned to Frea. “Where to, Skaal?”
She would have been irritated at the assumption that she had planned out the route for them already, but she had spent the walk up keeping a weather-eye out for shelter as a matter of instinct. She was Skaal, and he was a lowland elf – off the beaten path, it was her word they followed. She refused to admit to the small kernel of pride that his deferral conjured in her; it was practical, nothing more.
She cast an eye at the sky. “Come,” she said, “I saw a cave not far back.”
They set off, Ildari trailing after them like a ghost. Talvas hung back to speak with her, his chattering bright and interspersed with her awkward, confused replies. When Frea glanced back, she saw them huddling under her borrowed cloak like a pair of orphans, her white hair on his shoulder like a splay of bone. Teldryn walked closely behind Frea, letting her break the snow for him. The cave Frea had in mind was not far, a crack of shadow against the ice wall. She had stayed here once with Laataazin, nestled in the heart of the earth as a freak summer storm shook the peaks. The Moesrings were a haunted place, unquiet with the memories of long unburied dead and whispers from beyond. It was not uncommon to find cracks in the mountains, like the pressure of the stubborn, strange presence from beyond had tunnelled into soft rock.
In its shelter, Frea set to lighting a fire from the rolled fuel she carried with her, compact dung, quick to catch and slow to burn. Teldryn helped her, sticking his hands fearlessly into the young fire to rearrange it to a perfect shape to hold the heat all night. He kept his helmet on. In the dim light, from beneath, the shadows made the shell glimmer like living snakes across his body.
Talvas sank to his seat and groaned, rubbing his calves. “So much walking,” she heard him mutter. Ildari more fell than sat next to him, as if she had forgotten how to bend her body. She didn’t seem bothered by the graceless descent, but instead watched them all with wide, too-still eyes.
Frea set snow to melt for water, idly brushing at the frost still clinging to her hood from one of Dukaan’s misplaced attacks. Teldryn roped Talvas into helping him set out their bedrolls and break into the rations for their meal. In quiet agreement, no one asked Ildari to do anything. She curled her legs against her chest, staring at Frea with a divot between her brows, like she was trying to work out where she’d seen her before.
After an uncomfortable moment, Frea sighed and rose to her feet. She went to the elf and tucked her cloak firmly around Ildari’s shoulders, encouraging her onto her side. Ildari, pliant, went without a fight, letting Frea cover her up in the furs. Her skin was very cold to the touch, like stone, and her eyes absorbed the light rather than reflected it.
“I’ll bring you some food in a moment,” Frea told her kindly, resisting the urge to brush her straggling white hair away from her forehead. “Will you be alright here?”
Ildari stared at her. “Alright here,” she repeated, and then bit her lip, a darkness creeping into her gaze. She touched Frea’s cheek, her nails digging into the meat of her jaw, then lightly dragged a fingertip down the bruising of Frea’s throat.
Gently, Frea caught her hand, and replaced it under the blanket. “Try and get some sleep,” she said.
Obediently, Ildari closed her eyes and went limp. In moments, she was breathing softly, rhythmically. Feeling eyes on her, Frea looked up to see Talvas watching her, his unfathomable red eyes liquid and dark in the firelight. She felt at once a strange and sudden distance from her travelling companions, and missed Nikulas so strongly it ached.
She turned away, setting out her own bedroll. Their rations warmed on flat stones by the fire, and she busied herself poking at them. She did not look up when Teldryn hunkered down next to her, but blinked in surprise when she saw his bare arms, unarmoured, in the corner of her eye. His forearms were corded and lean with muscle, the right trailed with the dark shapes of another tattoo that disappeared tantalisingly up the sleeve of his shirt.
“Need warming?” he asked gruffly, after some time.
Realising he was referring to the frost that still clung here and there to her boots, Frea replied ruefully, “No. My people do not mind frost. Besides, it will remind me to duck an ice blast faster, next time.”
Teldryn chuckled. It sounded like stones grating in his throat – an unpleasant descriptor for a sound that made the tips of her ears warm. “Have it your way, Skaal.”
He did not move away, despite the conversation lapsing. His closeness brought a prickle of first awareness and then a stilted kind of guilt. She had been so angry at him all day for daring to question her, to poke so brazenly at her grief, but he had remained patient. Protecting her from the fire in the tunnel, healing her from the dragon priest’s attack, even now, lingering by her side in case she needed the benefit of a Dunmer’s powerful internal warmth.
Grumpy, irascible Teldryn shamed her with his kindness.
After a moment, a tentative kind of peace offering, Frea said, “Laat took a sword and shield with them, to fight the Traitor Priest.”
It was difficult to get the words out. The press of memories was hard to ignore, her father’s body pierced through with tentacles and horribly mutilated, bleeding wetly into the snow. Laataazin’s grim, resolute eyes, crimson in the dying light of the sun. The plume of their breath misting before their scarred lips as they pressed their hammer into Frea’s shaking hands.
“For your people,” their unreal, too loud voice whispered, dual-toned and throbbing with godly power. Frea’s ears cracked and bled and her nose streamed ruby, but she had leant forward into them regardless, too pain-stricken to stop them from leaving, too furious to want them to stay.
The Dragonborn had given them a strange, wry smile that had reached nowhere near their flat, sad eyes, and ducked into the cabin they had been sharing with Farani while they worked with the Skaal. The last Frea ever saw of them was their short, stout frame cresting the top of the hill, the shield on their back blazing like a molten eye in the setting sun.
Teldryn eyed her warily, as if uncertain what to make of this strange offering. He snorted softly. “A shield would have been useful today.”
“Aye,” Frea sighed, glancing down into the fire. A shield, to block Dukaan’s powerful magic attacks, without needing to run and duck behind rocks? Yes, it would have been better than the hammer. If Ildari hadn’t been there, Frea would have died from the need to get close enough to use it properly without a good defence. “It would have. Or my axes – you were right. I am not made for this weapon. It could have killed me, today.”
“I often am,” he said slyly, and when she glowered at him, he gave her a roguish smirk. Then his countenance shifted, became more serious. “A Dragon Priest – we were lucky. Nothing would have changed that. And,” he admitted, “that strike on the lich’s head was a good move.”
“Your parry, across the ice?” Frea countered, “I’ve never seen anyone move so fast.”
“Hah!” he grinned. When he smiled like that, his tattoo bunched strangely over his cheek, drew attention to the softness of his pale grey lips against the rasp of his stubble. The line of his cheekbones, the gleam of his teeth in his cheeky smile, transfixed her.  “Best swordsman in Morrowind, what did I tell you?”
She rolled her eyes, face warm from his teasing, and then made to move.
“Listen,” he touched her arm to hold her back. “I don’t trust that mage.”
“Nor I,” she said. “She is hiding things from us.”
“Glad we agree,” he said, and released her. His eyes were gimlet in the firelight. He glanced down at his hands, turning a strange ring round his finger. The embossed moon and star glittered silver with strange power. “Watch the kid’s back.”
“And who will watch mine?” she retorted.
“I wouldn’t mind the view,” he replied without missing a beat, and had the temerity to grin when she shoved him.
Though their teasing had made her smile with a lingering and strange softness, a knot had formed in her stomach, tense and uneasy. She went to bed that night with hazy dreams blurring to a backdrop of the Dragon Priest’s betrayed screams and the haunted look in Laataazin’s eyes. In the dream, she begged Laataazin to come back and help them, but the Dragonborn only shook their head, placing hammer after hammer into Frea’s arms until the weight dragged her down, down, into a sea of inky, writhing tentacles, and Teldryn’s warm, laughing red eyes.
Notes:
“Drem. Bo-aav het, mal-briinah.” – A greeting. Come help us here, little sister. "Los Frea." - She is Frea. (Grammatically incorrect introduction). “Zu’u Dukaan. Koraav hi drog-Krosulhah? Bo mu krii se munax nau golt. Zu yah thuri-Miraak. Aav-mu, Frea-briinah?” – I am Dukaan. Have you found lord Krosulhah? We go to kill the cruel in these lands. I seek Lord Miraak. Will you help us, sister Frea? “Vahlok-aar! Alduin rel ko Solstheim fen al! Mu fen stin! Aar – krii daar wo krif thuri-Miraak!” – Servant of Vahlok! Alduin’s rule over Solstheim will be broken! We will be free! Servants – kill those who oppose Lord Miraak! “Miraak! Faal Dovahkiin bo! Rok aak mu!” – Miraak! Beware, the Dragonborn comes! He guides us! “Krosulhah! Ahzidal! Aak hin fahdon! Zahkriisos! Hon-ni dii zaan?!” – Krosulhah! Ahzidal! Help your friend! Zahkriisos! Do you not hear me calling your name?!
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weirdisme · 26 days
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Instead of sleeping I decided to finish this lol.
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Color and sketch under cut
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Talvas does not approve of his sister dating the woman who wants to kill his master but it’s not like he can really do anything.
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vidvana · 1 year
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A power-mad ancient wizard with dubious morals and a smug, self-seeking witch of an apprentice.
What possibly could go wrong? :3
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But I secretly do hope that in one of the parallel universes nothing wrong has ever happened and they live happily together. 🥺
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thana-topsy · 7 months
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Tumblr won't let anons link things anymore apparently :/ but I just saw this post of yours (https://www.tumblr.com/thana-topsy/726367720898281472)
and I was wondering, was this character ever mentioned in Skyrim?? Because that's the only Elder Scrolls game I play, yet I swear, I've heard that name before, but the character herself isn't familiar??
Hey hello YES she's a canon character! Here's the art for anyone tuning in:
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This is my take on Ildari Sarothril. She's part of a Solstheim quest for Neloth called "Old Friends" and was his former apprentice (who tragically died due to a failed Heartstone experiment).
This is her in the game:
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wellthebardsdead · 10 months
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Riiju-Lei: *laying in his bedroll in tel mithryn, trying to rest so they can track down Ildari in the morning and failing, still trying to figure out who this miraak person is and now… who he really is…* … *sighs and places his hand on his forehead and hisses in pain forgetting about his new third eyeball* Ugh… this sucks… *Reaches up again and gently touches it after closing it this time…* Voryn dagoth is… ur dagoth but… which one am I? *sighs and rolls onto his side, closing his eyes to try and sleep* …
———
Riiju-Lei: “Hot… why’s it so hot?…”
???: “Wake up…”
Riiju-Lei: “who?… who said that?…”
???: “don’t listen to him…”
Riiju-Lei: “I?… ny voice? Who? Who said that?
???: “Wake up dreamer. Accept your role as my vessel.”
???: “Please don’t trust him! Don’t listen to what he’s offering you!”
Riiju-Lei: “listen to who?! Who even are you?!”
Voryn Dagoth: “I’m you!”
Dagoth Ur: *suddenly flashes through Lei’s mind as the heart of lorkhan pulses behind him and the screams of those his plague corrupted echo in his ears*
“WAKE UP!”
Riiju-Lei: *sits up sweating, all three eyes glowing in the darkness of the tower, tears streaming down his face as he feels, genuinely feels, real fear running through him* I- I-
Inigo: *jumps a little from his sleep and looks over at him* my friend?…
Riiju-Lei: *starts sobbing quietly trying to explain what happened only to choke out a fragile whimper* I’m s-scared-
Inigo: *never once witnessed him displaying genuine fear before, or heard his voice so full of emotion* Leilei? What happened?… *crawls out of his bedroll and over to him sliding under the furs and holding him tight*
Riiju-Lei: *chokes back more sobs, whole body trembling as he hugs onto his friend* I don’t know wh-who I am…
*the next day*
Riiju-Lei: *sleep deprived, head in utter agony, only able to hear the voices and the heart beating loudly in his skull as he slices through ash spawn*
Kaidan: LEILEI BEHIND YOU- *freezes seeing the dunmer spin around at an inhuman speed and punch his fist through the ashen creatures chest, holding its heart stone in his hand as it crumbles into a pile of dust* good jo- *watches him crush the stone in his hand, it’s red energy flowing up his arm and into his glowing red eyes* that can’t be good-
Taliesin: what can’t be go- *sees Lei’s eyes and watches as the dunmer walks further into the ruin* that definitely isn’t good… *looks at the rest of the group and chases after their friend only to find him in a large cavernous area, staring Ildari Sarothril down*
Ildari: You've gone far enough. Neloth is a fool to think he could send some low life to finish me of-Ugh! What- my heart stone it’s-
Riiju-Lei: *hand raised towards her, slowly squeezing into a fist* I am not a low life… *blood pouring from his third eye as the voices grow louder and louder each screaming for him to choose them as the doom drum beats faster and harder against his skull* I am. *feels a moment of serene peace as he makes his decision* Voryn Dagoth. *clenches his fist crushing her heart stone*
*meanwhile in raven rock*
Elder Othreloth: It is an honour to have you here Hortator. Our settlement is small but we welcome you with open arms.
Nerevar: *smiles and nods his head* the welcome is appreciated indeed. I was not expecting to see this place so, lively. Last id heard it was a shell of its former glory with the empire having abandoned it.
Elder Othreloth: *chuckles* indeed it was. Only a week ago a young dunmer with an argonians name arrived and found out the truth of the east empire companies departure. With it brought to light the mine was reopened and already ships are arriving for trade. He even cleared out the temple of these foul creatures the guards have been calling ash spawn with no want for reward, heheh, I paid him and after he’d left I realised he’d snuck it back into my pocket when I’d turned around.
Nerevar: An argonians n- *remembers questioning the guards in whiterun after narrowly missing Voryn in the crowd* This dunmer, who was he with? I- oh gods I could only make out the Akaviri man and the high elf with him over the crowd-
Elder Othreloth: oh yes, he was with quite a strange arrangement of people but they clearly make an excellent team. yes he was with a great big hulking behemoth of a lad, a well kept high elf, an argonian, a young imperial man, teldryn sero who occasionally comes by to repent after spending his money poorly and regretting it the next day, and a, very odd blue khajiit. Why my lord, are you in need of his services to?
Nerevar: Something like that, but- he is here then? On the island?
Elder Othreloth: yes indeed I believe so. The last I heard they left the bulwark yesterday. I don’t know where though but given raven rock is the only port im certain they’ll return to leave at some point.
Nerevar: *sighs with some slight relief that he hadn’t come this way for nothing* thank you, it’s important I find him as fast as possible.
Galdrus Hlervu: *suddenly snakes his way over* Pardon me for butting in Hortator but are you searching for this, Riiju-Lei characte-
Elder Othreloth: Did I give you permission to approach our lord Hlervu? Have you forgotten yourself?!
Galdrus Hlervu: I- f-forgive me master Othre-
Nerevar: *holds up his hand in dismissal* I’ll allow it this once. Riiju-Lei… is that his name?…
Galdrus Hlervu: *bows his head* yes my lord, but I feel you must know. There have been rumours amongst the councillor and the captain of the guard that he grew a third eye after coming into contact with debris from red mountain. Just like dagoth u-
Elder Othreloth: Do not dare speak the title of the Sharmat in this temple or before your king! I will not allow you wandering around and spreading such ridiculous gossip freely!
Nerevar: third… eye-
*BOOM!!!*
Nerevar: *looks over towards high point tower seeing smoke rising up over the hillside* oh no…
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Neloth: You disappoint me.
Ildari Sarothril: Your approval means nothing to me.
*as soon as Neloth leaves*
Ildari: *poorly muffled sobbing*
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