Eclipse

Eclipse: Chapter 5

Eclipse: Chapter 5

by Spottedleaf9 and Dracanoth Dereal

(Valisilwen)

I hadn't expected Dracanoth to agree so easily. He was so cold and calculating, I was sure that he was going to see it for the ploy it was. I could've gone on quite a bit longer without needing to visit a fletcher. In the first place, I already knew how to craft my own arrows. An archess without the ability to resupply herself was a hopeless loss.

The carriage driver took twenty septims from me and I settled onto the crude bench in the back of his wagon. "Hop in." I grinned at Dracanoth and his creepy friend. "It's a long, bumpy ride from here to Solitude." While Michael boosted Dracanoth onto the back, I cast a quick look at the sky where a ghost of the moon was still visible. It had already been far more than twenty four hours since I had last called upon the magic of my beast blood, but I'd been in that form for so long, I'd needed to wait two full moons to use it again. That time was now almost upon me. Lucky.

What are you going to do if killing Dracanoth activates some sort of trap in the headache spell? My inner voice spoke slyly to me and I scowled inadvertently. I had considered this and with a decision that rent my heart in two, I decided that I had to do whatever I could to finish off Dracanoth and Michael, even if it left me in agony forever or tore my soul away to some world separate from the life I'd built here in Skyrim. But, he had told me that if I simply gave myself to the other world so H couldn't come, Dracanoth might simply conquer it himself. In other words, I had found a loophole. So if I kill him, H can't come to this world and Dracanoth can't conquer it.

A grim expression had settled over my face as the driver of our carriage began to lead us along the bumpy path. Dracanoth watched me with a chilled look that made me look away. I didn't like feeling as if he were dissecting my emotions and somehow magically discerning my plans. For all I knew, the link between my mind to proximity with Dracanoth could allow him to look into my thoughts. I had to be careful of this magic from another world or I could end up in the deepest trouble I'd been in for a long time. As it was, I had a plan. Within two days, I could execute it.

Hating to be idle more than anything else, I unstrapped my bow from my back and took a cloth out of a chink in my armor. I began delicately cleaning out the grooves in the elven metal; lovingly caring for the weapon that had saved my hide more than once. I could feel the eyes of the two men with me boring into me. I suppose they had nothing else to do but watch me either.

"So..." I made an attempt at conversation. "What are you men going to do when people begin questioning why I'm in your company? My name isn't exactly a foreign one. I'm known all over this country. You couldn't have chosen a worse travelling partner for remaining incognito."

"We're close friends in research of a great magical spell that would take years to develop, after meeting the Dragonborn we learned of her many adventures in encountering many lost artifacts. We are after a specific artifact that may help our research, and you had happened to have heard about it from an innkeeper along your travels. There are artifacts in your world, are there not?"

I hadn't counted on them coming up with that kind of excuse. I'd rather hoped someone might look at us and see captors and prisoner; the way it really was. However my plan played out, I was going to need help. I was not escaping on my own. Not like this. "That's not exactly true. I hope the Divines strike you down." I frowned, in a sour mood now.

His face skewed in confusion. "I don't see what people on the street knowing the truth has to do with us. It does not matter whether we lie to them or not, what matters is they leave us alone so that they don't put us in prison separating us from you and thus killing you. Or worse yet, us being forced to kill the guards. That would only lead to more pesky beings on our tail."