Cycle of the Serpent

The last vestiges of sunlight wound through the snow like golden threads. Their boots made prints atop the firn. Sometimes, fresh flakes would fall from the branches of the high pines, Wyndrelis scrunching his nose as the scant, icy particles brushed his face, and wondered how snow could still be falling this far into the season. The day had been too long, his pack too heavy for his aching limbs, and all he sought in his future was a warm bed and a fresh meal and a bath, preferably a long one, perhaps even with herbs and oils from the local herbalist. He was not one to often seek out the finer things, but he had earned himself a spot of comfort. His spine nagged at him under the weight of the bedroll and supplies, warnings that he would rather ignore as long as he could. One day he could see himself getting used to it, the long hikes through mountains and nights in unfamiliar woods. That did not mean it would be any less unpleasant.

The voice from the stone now cradled in Athenaths arms had shaken Fort Hraggstads foundation, the small tremor that left the trio afraid of the thing they had found. A presence, suffocating and sun-hot, drenched the room and made the hair on the back of Wyndrelis' neck bristle, every torch blown out, the dim light replaced by the stones own illumination. The unnatural object had fallen from Athenaths hands as he gave a weak yelp as if burnt, despite no visible signs of injury and whispers of reassurance from the bard that he was fine. Emeros had drawn his hunting knife, and Wyndrelis' magicka gathered into his hand much to the evident chagrin of the alchemist.

When the presence drew back, and the comfort of the cold, dark room came over them once more, the trio split looks between one another, unease written along their features as if by fine quill, detailed in open mouths and knit brows and attempts at questions over what had happened, but a new goal manifested itself. They had commands, now, to go to Mount Kilkreath, though none of them knew the way, nor the reason why. A foul presence waits there, they had been told. Emeros produced the map, and once the three found a decent route, he rolled it up and sheathed his blade. "We should head on, then," he growled, the curl of his lip in the dim a vicious sneer, "wouldn't want your puppets to turn on us."

Through the ever-growing dark, mud caking the soles of their boots, the three elves trudged down from the fort, Wyndrelis taking the rear position. He kept his hands on the straps of his knapsack, a keen anxiety having made itself a home in him, knuckles threatening to split open from the dry, frigid air. The skies above went pale and grey with the sun's descent, the gold ring of light adorning them like the taunt of day that would soon disappear behind the spruces and pines. Wyndrelis ambled carefully a few feet behind his friends, watching Emeros as the other marched forward. The Bosmer gave the occasional glance back at the mage as if to say that he knew what he was, and saw what he had kept hidden.

And every look told him of his ever-growing disdain.

The College of Whispers took the Dunmer in when no one else would or wanted to, and with already limited options since the dissolution of the Mages Guild at the end of the Third Era, who was he to go to when his studies were all he had left? The Synod turned their noses up at him outright. His accident, they'd jotted down in quill strokes so harsh that he'd wondered time and time again if this was the fourth or fifth paper they'd used up trying to write his rejection, had been the fault of Conjuration. 'And Conjuration,' they'd written, faux-polite, 'is the gateway of a necromancer, and the dangerous line that can and is often crossed by the Conjurer is one we do not risk entertaining.'

As he thought back on this day's events, perhaps they had been right to deny him entry. The College of Whispers gave him a chance in those cynosures so absurdly silent that it served to prove their name and little else. Their secrecy, the research they would guard with their lives, guided his nervous hand. He would funnel his magicka through his veins, pool it into his palms, out through his fingertips, until the very essence of it bloomed as blood under a shirt, light staining the cadavers he'd practiced on so diligently. He wore masks with aromatic herbs under his nose to keep out the stench, his study of the bodies provided to the college par for the course for any mage who wished to have a thorough grasp of Restoration.

And then he'd gone a step further. Wyndrelis had never been religious. Yet, during those dark nights when the moons waxed and waned above him and he forgot when he had last eaten, slept, or taken a break, exhaustion gave way to near-religiosity, the closest thing to the Aedra or Daedra he had ever known. Again, and again, he taxed himself until he saw motion under the sallow flesh, the small twitch of muscle. The blink of closed eyes. The mouth, trying to open.

Perhaps this was his curse. His talent for the forbidden art.

Here, it split a chasm. Here, he could feel it, the fracture of himself away from the other two like the spirit of a rabbit that drained into a twinkling soul gem. Could he cross this divide with a conjured bridge? Could he trivialize the issue with a joke and move on? Humor was never his strong suit. He'd always been told he had such a dour face, but he could try, couldn't he?

Athenath smoothed a palm over the beacon, tossing it high, catching it in their arms over and over, dents in the snow made by their tight-laced boots. Emeros walked behind them, shoulders round with tension. He'd glance back here and there, amber eyes lingering a moment too long. His brow would tighten, his gaze would narrow, and Wyndrelis would shrink further into himself. Perhaps a joke was out of the question. This was no mood he could ease.

The first stars winked in and out of the dark, the horizon deep blue and pricked with black trees like iron rails of a gate. The sullen silence swept through them, Emeros tersely admonishing Athenath against nearly dropping the beacon, stumbling to catch it, and the Altmer rolled their eyes. The pair exchanged words, the half-hearted remnants of what could have been a small and barely lukewarm argument if not for the exhaustion stealing their will to fight. Emeros wrapped up what he'd been saying, jaded and day-worn voice low in his throat. A long pause. Then, Athenath threw the beacon up into the air, caught it, and continued on.

"We should set up camp." The voice gave the other two a start, pair whipping around to meet the Dunmers gaze as Wyndrelis stopped his pace. Emeros halted with a thick crunch in the snow beneath his boot, looking back at the other with a harsh glare. Wyndrelis drew in a breath, and added on in his often-monotonous voice, "we're not making it to Mount Kilkreath tonight. And if we hope to do any good there, we need to rest."

"Really?" Emeros rumbled, throat-low objection caught against his teeth. His words came out sardonic and scornful, a harsh contrast to the elf Wyndrelis had come to know. "I think we'll be just fine. If anything happens, gods know you can just march us along the road like one of your thralls."

"Emeros," Athenath snapped in a hush, quick and sharp like the breaking of a twig beneath heavy stride.

Wyndrelis shifted in observing the pair, one then the other, the friends he had fought a dragon with and healed after battle, the ones he slept on the same bed with every night in perpetually warm inns, the ones whom he'd been under the impression had made him a part of their lives, despite the very short time of knowing one another.

He swallowed a dry lump in his throat.

"I will not use my other talents on you. That's not something that I would do." He stated plainly.

"Oh, really? How can we trust you? Surely you understand why necromancy was outlawed in the first place."

"You think that I don't?" Wyndrelis snorted. "I am not ignorant to the reasons people may despise it."

"And yet, you lied to us." Emeros' nostrils flared, his posture tight, body stiff and statuesque. "You hid this from us."

"I never lied," Wyndrelis knit his brow, arms folding over his chest. "The topic never came up, there was no opportunity to even deny what work I do. I never once lied."

"You still hid this from us," Emeros enunciated as he balled his fists at his sides, nails dug into his palms, angry red crescents in his hands, "what the devil did you think there was to gain in hiding something so gods damned appalling?"

As the Bosmer's voice rose, Athenath shrunk back. He would flick his focus to Wyndrelis, then to Emeros, something tight in their jaw as though he were swallowing down objections, but the shiver on their shoulders and arms wrapping tight around the beacon gave away the anxieties that prevented him from opening his mouth. Wyndrelis looked to them, then to Emeros, drawing in a long breath. Exasperated, he put all the calm he could muster into his words. There was no point in arguing against the other's notions, especially not now, when all of them were tired and worn and hungry after such a long day.

"We need to set up camp. You do not have to be anywhere near me, make a separate camp if you must. But we need sleep." Wyndrelis asserted. He could see the idea of a decent sleep settle into his friends' minds, as when he set his pack down and began to gather wood and tinder, Emeros joined in, grumbling to himself. Athenath stood for a while, then set the beacon in the snow, and followed suit.

In the end, there was one camp, with two bedrolls placed far away from one another, and the last in the center, an uncomfortable semicircle of distant islands around a fire. They had eaten in silence, and stoked the flames, and gone to bed without a word between the three. Wyndrelis shifted under the fur lining, glasses laid beside himself, the noise of the sea in the distance a perpetual lullaby. A fox called somewhere and ran off. The birds above them settled into their nests. He laid in the vibrant, alive world, while his mind dug up the things he wish were dead.

The taste of Colovian wine washed along his tongue, first, with the image of a long table set for several. The dinners with other Apprentices and Adepts, the ones who stood out to his former mentor, the ones who made something of themselves. All of them shared one talent in common, one day doomed to excel in it. The older Dunmers voice, so smooth and sweet that it dripped with Khajiiti moonsugar, something he was even rumored to indulge in from time to time. Wyndrelis had once hung on every saccharine word, and this, too, had been his curse.

He rolled over, spotting the dark eyes of the younger elf, Athenath still awake and watching him closely. The two made eye contact. Wyndrelis furrowed his brow. Athenath frowned and scrunched up his nose. They glanced to Emeros, who sat up to keep watch, and then back to Wyndrelis, and gave a long, worn breath.

"I think we're all tired," the Altmer murmured, "let's try to sleep. We'll... I don't know. Figure this out. I think."

Wyndrelis thought back on the day, with the Altmer in silence on the road as Emeros poked and prodded with his presumptions. Athenath had not shown him the same vitriol. But had their inaction been worse? He could not tell what they thought, or how they saw him anymore, their wordless mouth open and shut, and their exhaustion plain in the way his shoulders drooped and their eyes barely kept open now, in the dim fire light.

He didn't reply. He gave a small nod, and buried himself deeper under the warmth of his bedroll.

Morning crept over the mountains like a thief, and as the sun snatched the blanket of darkness from the trio, Wyndrelis sat up, rubbing his eyes. He pulled his glasses on, and spent a while by the fire, stoking it with the end of his sword. By the time the other two awoke and all had a meager breakfast of dried fruits, bread, and preserved cheeses, they were eager to return to the road. A proper rest had taken some of Emeros' heated agitation, but in the night it had become an unemotional gelidity. A grunt here or there as response, a roll of his eyes. A curl of his lip, a lower of his brow. These were all Wyndrelis could get from the other as the trio set out for Mount Kilkreath, and while it was quieter than the way he snapped at the mage last night, it ached more. To be entirely shut out, to the point of barely gaining a reaction to the other's presence, he almost wished back the temper as the trio found the road, worn stones and dispersing snow under their feet, soon to be taken over by mud and grass.

There was nothing Wyndrelis could do to remove the actions he'd taken, but he'd done it to save their lives, and if Emeros could not understand that, then he would not explain it to him. Still, he mulled over the way Athenath had looked at him in the dark and spoken softly, the crackle of the fire carrying the three to bed. The words from his mouth had been the wish for things to return to normal, even if that part went unspoken.

Wyndrelis only hoped the same.