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A note from one of the authors:

All of the stories uploaded to this account are roleplays written by two people. They have been edited into a more novel-like format but sometimes you may notice a bit of jankiness, like abrupt POV shifts. Some of our stories include sex scenes but they will be buried somewhere in the middle and will be a very small part of the story. For the most part, these are plot-heavy adventure tales set in The Elder Scrolls universe. This particular story contains violence, a few references to torture, and mxm sex.

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He remembered nothing at all before the Font of Rebirth in Pinnacle Rock. Before that day he simply was not, and then he found himself lying naked on the cold cobbles under a distant gray ceiling, taking his first confused breath. He knew his name was Valka. He knew one or two other things, but they did not make sense of his situation.

"Up, get up!" A thin line of sharp-wrong-wet drew itself across his back, his first taste of pain, and he looked up and saw a violet-skinned woman in dark metal armor that barely covered her. She had a spear in one hand and a quirt in the other. She gave him a kick in the ribs and moved on to the next one. He climbed to his feet, looking around, and found that he was third in a row of many. Some looked more like her, and some looked more like what he saw when he looked down at himself, though they were in many shades from pale beige through pink through dark purple. He was a sort of middle tone of purple-gray. He had the same muscular naked body, the same height, the same build, as almost every male around him. A hand raised to his shoulder found that he had the same shoulder-length black hair as well.

"All right, listen closely, new ones." She stood in front of them with hand on her hip, leaning on her spear, smiling with cheerful good-humor. They all looked about, trying to make sense of the walls of mossy stone and the strange blue fire in the braziers on the walls. There was a fountain in the center of the room, vividly green water falling into the deep pool from leaves of metal that faced the cardinal directions. Valka knew what leaves and metal and the cardinal directions were, apparently. That was mildly interesting. He did not know what the font was for, so he was staring at it as the woman went on talking.

"You are Mazken, servants of the Mad God Sheogorath. Our enemies are the Aureal, the golden-skinned rabble who so poorly represent the aspect of Mania. Those of you that are more fortunate are women, as I am. The rest are men. Men, you will do whatever a woman tells you, or you will suffer punishment, like this one."

Valka looked up just in time to see the spear coming at his eye, and then agony flared in his head and there was nothing.

After nothing there was the Void. There was no sight, only feeling, only throbs of voice and sensation and the awareness of rapid movement. There were nexi of greater intensity - one speaking incomprehensible words, sonorous and strange; one that gave off the smell of blood and sweat and the sound of running feet; one whispering of bargains and promises; but the one that drew him was the sound of bright, mad laughter, happy threats and sad praise. Valka sped toward it and was drawn in, and gradually he became aware of density gathering around him, of bones knitting one to the other and nerves weaving around them out of nothing at all. It was agony until the muscles and flesh had finished creeping over them, and then that moment of stillness and relief gave way to the sensation of his lungs filling with water. He kicked and choked and flailed until his head broke the surface. He was back in the courtyard again, he realized. He climbed over the edge of the fountain and staggered to his feet.

"And that is what happens when you disobey," the woman in the armor was saying. The other new Mazken stared at him. "Each time you make your way through the Void you will lose all rank, all status. This one is lucky that this happened on his first day, when he has nothing to lose. Of course if you die in Nirn this does not apply. Make sure that you do not give a superior cause to end your incarnation here in the Shivering Isles. You will be issued armor and a weapon through the doorway to my right, and then you will be trained. Praise be the Mad God."

"Praise be the Mad God," Valka repeated with the others. That was one of the things that he knew without having to be told.

It would turn out that, though he understood the holy daedric tongue to which he had been born, the spear and the sword were_not_things that he knew without being told. He was killed several more times in the process of being trained, sometimes for moving too slowly, only once for failing to obey fast enough.

They gave him armor of a sort. The boots and gauntlets were of heavy, ridged metal, almost black, with lighter polished areas on the ridges. He had pauldrons secured with a harness. He had a ridged helm with a sharply pointed nasal, somewhat the suggestion of a bird's crest. And then he had a layered metal corset, cold and stiff against his flesh. It did nothing at all to protect his chest and upper back, but at least it covered his intestines. A skirt of stiff, iridescent green fabric, pleated in the likeness of feathers, depended from the corset to cover the softer flesh of his genitals and buttocks over his padded green pants.

The first time he saw the yellow-gold sky he was almost killed for insubordination again because he stopped to stare at it. Colorful clouds streaked the dome above him. It was beautiful and strange after the stone world of the Wellspring. He had to scramble to get back into marching order with the other kiskengo.

It was a long walk to New Sheoth, and at first he was fascinated by everything, by plants, by creatures, by the occasional mortal they passed who stared or waved or said things that made no sense. That ended quickly in Crucible. The women were guards in the streets, the gates, the palace, smiling and speaking sweetly to the mad mortals of Nirn who came to live in the great city and eat and shit and sleep and do all of the other revolting, incomprehensible things that satisfied mortal needs. Gradually he learned to speak cheerfully to them as well, even as he learned to despise them for the weak and deranged creatures that they were. There was one woman who constantly walked the street with blood streaming from her cut wrists. Valka's first spell was taught him so that he would be able to heal her. He didn't need it explained to him what madness was. That one he understood.

It didn't take long to learn their languages. At least, it didn't seem long to Valka.

He talked back to one of the female guards once, when she reprimanded him for a crooked pauldron as he emerged from a sewer grate. He protested that he had been fighting elytra for hours, was covered in ichor, and she was worried about a pauldron? She tried to skewer him. He stabbed her in the head. The other men in his unit piled him under immediately for fear of the consequences. He was stabbed literally dozens of times before he died.

When he emerged from the pool again after that one it was a long walk back to Crucible, and they made him fight against some of the other men for the entertainment of the grakendo, the lowest rank of officers. He was allowed a knife. No clothes. His next few deaths were as part of this entertainment, but they grew less frequent as time went on. He learned not to show his next move on his face. He learned to watch out for the ones that could sprout wings without warning, a gift that he had not been given. He learned to smile often . It unnerved some of the others.

After a while of this one of the grakendo, a tall peach-skinned Mazken called Selvig, had him transferred to her guard unit. She had a couple of other men as well, none ranked higher than kiskengo. By talking with them he learned that they, too, were winners in the game of courtyard dueling. Things were comparatively uneventful. He learned how to please Selvig, which was sometimes nice but more often was work; he patrolled twisted little side streets and collected bodies to chuck down the sewer, when the madmen fell out; he gave directions and broke up fights among the mortals as politely as possible.

He saw his first Aureal outside the city. He was seldom off-duty, but even the lowest-ranking male was allowed a day out of every ten to walk about or drink in a tavern or do more or less as he liked (unless Selvig had plans for him in_her_leisure time). He went out to walk by the lake that lay near the gates of Crucible, watching the sky change and darken above the mirrored surface of the water. And then a man with golden skin burst up out of the water, flinging droplets from his sodden golden hair, and tried to cut Valka's head off with the steaming blade of his longsword. Valka jerked away in time, and the longsword drew a line of freezing agony across his bare chest instead. The Mazken did a rapid tuck backward and threw one of his issued daggers underhand as he landed. It thudded into the other's arm where there was a gap in the armor, between pauldron and gauntlet.

"Why?" Valka demanded, backing away with his remaining dagger held at the guard. The blades were poisoned. He had been told poison did more harm to Aureal, but he had never connected that with the issued weapons until now. If it had been a mortal he would not have asked; some of them could breathe water without magic, and their actions would often not be explicable. But this creature in front of him had armor that he recognized as issued to the guards of Bliss, golden breastplate and pauldrons above a heavy mail skirt, layered greaves below, heavy boots. He must have been standing on the bottom, lying in wait.

"Shut up and die, Seducer," the other said, grunting as he withdrew the dagger from his arm. Blood spurted around it. The wound steamed. His next swing at Valka was weak, wavering. "Your kind are a shame to the Madgod, and bringing back your weapon will bring me favor among my aurmokel."

"Is an armokel like a grakendo?" He ducked under the Aureal's arm and found the seam of his cuirass, jabbing the dagger in as hard as he cold. The Aureal gasped in pain and shoved him away.

"Yes, damn you! It's the same rank! And now you've killed me, you... bastard..." His eyes rolled upward as the second dose of poison did its work, and he slumped back into the water.

Valka stood there staring at the body as it slowly sank from view, setting sun glinting gorgeously on the golden surfaces. Then he collected the longsword and took it back to Selvig. That was how he gained the rank of kiskella. After that things were better, for a while. With the change in rank he gained another day off out of every ten, and he was allowed to be part of the lower strata of the guard rotas, walking aboveground under the sky. He kept no track of time beyond that cycle. There were no seasons and there were no months or years, and only the highest ranking scholars of either race of servants of Sheogorath were aware of the distant past or the problematic future.

And then one day he met a mage.

He was aware that there were mortals who could, in their own ineffectual way, cast spells or study magic, and that for some this was their form of worship to the Mad God. He heard summoning whispered as, alternately, a dreadful fate or a serious annoyance, though he had no clear idea what that was. So when a mortal of the ash-skinned race (Dunmer, he thought they were called) stopped him to ask politely for his name, he gave it without a second thought. The mer was robed in velvet, which was not so unusual, though it was less usual how clean and kept he seemed. Valka chatted with him for a few minutes about the weather; then he wandered off, and Valka went back to patrolling.

An hour later he was climbing the stairs toward the higher districts of the city when the world suddenly warped around him. There was a sensation of rapid movement without sight, and then his knee slammed into a wooden floor and he knelt in a dark room. He was aware of a will contending with his, of power enclosing and smothering him, and he fought it with all of his might. He could see enough of the other mind to realize it was a mortal creature, and to yield readily to that insult would be not only unacceptable but unforgivable. He was even beginning to gain ground when a blast of ice struck his unprotected chest, knocking him back, leaving him arched and screaming in agony. In that moment all resistance broke, and he knew himself the slave of that other will. He rolled his head to see the source of his torment, the Dunmer he had seen earlier. The mer smiled at him, hand still upraised with a few flakes of ice drifting from his fingers to the floor.

"I bind you," he said. "By your name I call you, Valka, and to it you shall answer. In Oblivion you are your own master; in Nirn you will obey the wielder of this artifact."

The Mazken scrambled to his feet, hands reaching for his daggers, and then froze as the other will clamped him in place like an insect under a boot. Furious eyes uplifted, he saw that the other mer held a ring made of dark metal in his other hand, twisted into strands like the roots of a tree.

"I bind you," repeated the Dunmer, this time in the daedric tongue. He repeated the rest of the binding ritual, pointing at Valka with his empty hand. Valka felt the power gathering between them, the tingle of threatened frost in the air. He was still in pain from the burns of ice on his body, shuddering in the cold that was now part of him, not part of the room.

"By my name I am called," he finally gasped out. "And to it I shall answer. In Oblivion I am my own master. In Nirn I will obey."

"Dismissed!" said the mage, and the world seemed to implode as his body dissolved into sparks, and then he was back in the City from whence he had come. Returning from Nirn did not force him back to the Wellspring.

He would be grateful for that often in the coming years. The Dunmer, whose name proved to be Kerghed Hazzfanal, summoned him again and again, sometimes to perform tasks whose import he did not understand - "hold this, carry that, be still in this circle no matter the pain" - to suffer the torment of the dissection frame, or to fight other mortals for his master . He grew to recognize the blue skies and gray clouds of Nirn with hatred, to know the moons of this alien place by name, to count the scant stars that wheeled above their dwellings made of mud and dead animals. And when he returned to the great City he would be back at the same moment he had left, in the same place.

After some time had passed summonings grew less frequent, and Kerghed began to look stranger and stranger, his face heavy with sagging skin, his voice creaking like a ship under sail. And then the summoning stopped. Presumably the mortal had died. Valka felt only relief. He walked the streets of New Sheoth again without fear of having his magicka suddenly drained, of being thrown into some ruin to fight a daedroth, of being dropped in front of some mortal in a robe or pitiful weak armor and ordered to kill for reasons that he was never told.

And then the ring fell into other hands after all...

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Chapter 1

3E 426

Ald'Ruhn

A thump yanked Eldrin Llethri away from blissful nothingness. He was suddenly aware of tightness in his throat, throbbing pain in his head. He clenched his eyelids down against the light, the Dunmer's face contorting in fury at the scrape of claw on stone and the slight ruffle of fabric being picked up and folded. He knew it was that stupid slave gathering his laundry from the floor. Her footclaws always popped out when she was near Eldrin, some kind of anxious reflex.

"Ayem curse you, n'wah!" he belted hoarsely. His groping hand closed around the neck of a ceramic bottle that was partially wedged under his back and Eldrin hurled it as hard as he could in her general direction, his eyes still closed. He heard ceramic shatter against the wall and a frightened yelp, and then scampering paws as Tsamabi retreated. Eldrin rolled over, burying his face in his silk pillows, but it was too late. He was already painfully aware of the pressure in his bladder and a hundred little aches all over his body from sleeping in bad positions. He groaned and forced himself up with one arm, the other hand cupping his throbbing forehead. He didn't remember coming home last night, but he'd somehow managed to make it to his bed after undressing himself.

Partially. Eldrin's torso was naked and his pants were gathered around his ankles, caught up on his shoes. He shifted around until he was sitting, blanket still tangled up in his legs, and reached down to yank those off. He pulled his pants up as he stood, kicked himself free of the blanket with all the grace of a baby guar wriggling out of its placenta, then stumbled out and to the washroom across the hall. The mer was 5'8" and about 165 pounds, sinuous beneath smooth ash-blue skin. He was without the sort of crass and bulky muscle that would be occasioned by a life of manual labor, but regular exercise had lent his body a sort of sleek muscularity.

An hour later Eldrin had bathed, forced down some fruit and water to quell the pains in stomach and skull, and finished dressing out of the massive armoire adjacent to an equally massive bed. It was piled with pillows of various sizes and shapes. The light duvet and most of the bedsheet were spilling over the side and across the floor where he had half-dragged them getting up earlier. Clothes from the previous night were strewn beside it. The room was otherwise very neat and orderly.

Beside the armoire, to the left of the bed, stood a table with a stool that doubled as wash basin and vanity. It was all one piece, carved from some dark wood imported from Black Marsh. The frame of the mirror that rose above the basin had been carved with the images of saints in flowing robes, their hands cradling the oval mirror. A collection of bottles and boxes cluttered the rest of the table the basin rested upon, containing various oils, perfumes, and ointments. A paper screen divided this corner of the room from the rest.

Moving counterclockwise around the room, several thick, round cushions for entertaining guests were arranged around a blown-glass hookah on a rug near the corner to the right of the door. A lute lay across one of the cushions. To the left of the door stood a little round table and two wooden chairs, a limeware bowl full of pomegranates resting on the tabletop. There were more limeware pieces on the nearby shelf, along with a few books, trinkets, and several bottles of sujamma very much like the one that now lay in shards by the door.

One of the wall tiles had broken when the bottle hit. It was really no matter; the vibrant tapestries depicting the saints or Almsivi and the potted scathecraw were already hiding several cracked or missing tiles. The cream and red patterned tiles decorated the bottom third of the tan stucco walls, and again formed their complicated geometry on the ceiling. The smooth, arching ridges in the high ceiling only mimicked the interior structures of a crab shell, but those ridges in the ceiling of the upper floor were genuine. It was comfortably cool here in the lower level.

The Dunmer now looked significantly less disheveled with his shiny black hair combed and smooth, dampening the back of his silk tunic down to his shoulder blades rather than hanging in balls of snarls. The tunic was a deep royal blue patterned with diamond fractals in a lighter shade, and embellished with strips of dark turquoise cloth running from his shoulders to the bottom hem, which reached to mid-thigh. Passages from Lord Vivec's Seven Graces were writ in gold thread here, although the lettering in Dunmeris was so heavily stylized that it was difficult to read. The flaring bell-shaped sleeves ended at his elbows and a tight, pale red undershirt continued to his wrists. His baggy gold pants were tucked into the collar of his shoes, which rose just past his ankles like boots. The toes curled up at the tips and they were decorated with more layers of soft, dyed leather and beads arranged in floral shapes.

A steel tanto hung from his thick, braided leather belt. It was not his favored weapon, but it was stylish and something Eldrin could easily carry in public. He picked up the golden-and-orange patterned shawl laying by his bed and threw it around his neck before taking one last look in the mirror and finding himself satisfactory. He wasn't even baggy under the eyes.

Heading out from his room for the second time, Eldrin noticed that the door to the family's private shrine was open. His father was kneeling before the triolith, head bowed in prayer, back to the door. Red candles on tall brass stems were lit throughout that room and in the hall. Eldrin had been too groggy to notice if Gilan been there earlier- hopefully he had not heard the bottle shatter. He crept toward the stairs directly opposite the shrine.

"We need to talk. A letter from the Savils came yesterday," his father said, straightening but not turning around, palms on his thighs. His graying hair was much shorter and tied back with a black ribbon. His robe was equally as ornate as Eldrin's own dress, but in muted reds and with stiff, flaring shoulders. Eldrin winced just as his hand touched the banister, but he turned and regarded his father's back with a neutral expression.

"Actually, I'm on my way to Uncle Narave's for breakfast. Could it wait, Father?"

"It's past noon, Eldrin," Gilan Llethri said tiredly. He finally did turn to look at his son over his shoulder, his face lined and weary. He was in his early 60s. It was easy to tell that they were related: both had very straight noses a hair away from being upturned, and pointed, jutting chins in addition to the sharp cheekbones shared by most of their race. His father had deeply defined laugh lines, and it was clear Eldrin would probably have the same, someday. Eldrin had his mother's mouth, both lips fat and a little wide, the upper lip bow-shaped. His arching brows were clearly manicured and his widow's peak, again, was a trait of his mother's. He was twenty-five, but Eldrin could have passed for a few years younger.

"Ah. All the more reason I should hurry. Good-bye, Father!" Eldrin hauled himself up the stairs and out the front door, which was not far from the landing, without waiting for a reply. His uncle was not actually expecting him, but Eldrin knew that he was welcome any time.

The Llethri family- not to be confused with the family of Councilman Garisa Llethri who lived under-skar- made their home in the shell of a juvenile emperor crab in the manor district, just East of the massive adult which dominated Ald'Ruhn. If he stepped outside his family home Eldrin would be facing a large plaza encircled by manors similar to his, sun-bleached shells of varying species and maturity. Some were a bit bigger, some smaller, but all dwarfed the rounded mole crab and rock crab homes of the commoners, which he could see clustered like barnacles on the gently descending tiers if he looked down at the sprawling city on a clear day.

The people of Ald'Ruhn did not really have yards, although the manors were not crammed so closely to one another as they were in the poorer neighborhoods, and lines of scathecraw provided a visible border between some of the properties.

The cobblestone plaza and roads leading away from it were swept daily, but drifts of red sand would still have blown across the stone. Looking South, a statue of Vivec grappling with the Ruddy Man dominated the center of the plaza, and past that one could see the domed top of the Temple.

Eldrin winced at the sudden glaring light beating down from above as he stepped onto the street. It was a clear, relatively cloudless day, so Eldrin did not bother pulling the shawl over his face as he set off for his uncle's home, frowning. He could only buy himself so much time before he would have to face his father and discuss whatever was in that damned letter. He'd probably receive an earful for staying out so late as well, as if it were some sort of crime for a young man to go out celebrating with friends every now and again.

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Zulkan Narave sat in a chair near his dining room hearth, sipping mazte-and-water from a clay cup. He was never without one of the heavy brown jugs near him. It was cut four to one, the uncut liquor smeared around the lip of jug and cup to intensify the scent, but no one else would know that.

The room had a high, curved ceiling, and the crackle of the fire seemed loud, causing the table and the chairs and Zulkan to cast strange shadows even at this time of day. The windows were heavy, opaque green glass, usually shut to keep out the sand. There was a vestibule through a doorway to his left, lit by blue paper lanterns, that also led to the library and a stairway up to the bedrooms. The manor was a lot for one man and two slaves. It had once held several more, and he and Salla had hoped for children. His fortunes had been better, back then. His hands had been steadier, and people had been proud to own jewelry made by him. His Skar-shaped amulets had been popular for literally years.

But no children had come - they had argued bitterly over whose fault that was - and then Salla had died of a seemingly incurable blight, taking from his life a major source of annoyance but also of stability. There had been nothing to keep him from the bottle. He'd lost most of her dowry over time, and by the time he had come to his senses it was almost too late.

He was nearly clean now, living on a thin trickle of mazte instead of glass after glass of cyrodilic brandy, and he sold the odd bit of wedding jewelry or harness decoration to those who remembered his name.

He was a mer of above the middle age, hook-nosed, high in the cheekbones, broad in the jaw. He was less in height and breadth of shoulder than those of the house of Llethri, his late sister's husband's people, but aside from a small bulge around the midriff and a certain heaviness about the eyes he was passable. His thin red hair was folded carelessly into a bun at the back of his head. There was no resemblance between him and his nephew at all. Still, he enjoyed Eldrin's visits. They brought him a sort of hope. He turned the black metal ring slowly in his left hand, musing as he waited. Breakfast was back in the kitchen being kept warm near the fire. The kwama eggs would be a bit rubbery when Eldrin finally did arrive, but however huffy La'zira and Bakes-Fine-Breads got over that, Zulkan would remain patient.

Someone was tapping at the door. He could hear the Argonian slave's feet scuffing rapidly as she scooted downstairs from making the beds. She was a sturdy girl, brown-scaled and homely with her short and toothy muzzle, but she was good at taking care of this big house with little help. "She is coming, coming!"

Eldrin closed his eyes and rubbed at his nose after knocking. His head still hurt a little and he was fighting to keep the growing dread at bay._Stop worrying about it. Father will lecture for an hour and then it'll be over. Why is that such a big deal?_Then the door opened and Eldrin dropped his hand to his side.

"Hello, Bakes-Fine-Breads," he said, briefly glancing at the Argonian's eyes and then forward. He walked in without waiting to be invited and removed his shawl, holding it out for her to take. "Uncle is around?" But Eldrin was already heading for the dining room before an answer came.

"Good morning, Master Eldrin! Yes, he waits in the dining room - ah." She took the shawl and shut the door as he vanished from view. To be unnoticed by young Eldrin was generally a blessing, in her opinion. She hurried to the kitchen to wait for the bell.

Zulkan looked up as he heard voices. He did not have to force a smile as he tucked the ring into the pocket of his loose trousers. They were of serviceable blue cotton printed with white vines near the hems. His tunic, loose-sleeved and gathered at the wrists, was gray linen. Only the broad sash around his waist was particularly fine, made of brown silk that gleamed sullenly as it reflected the firelight. He owned finer things, but he didn't often bother dressing up these days.

He stood up as Eldrin came in, setting the cup aside. "Good afternoon, my boy. Have you eaten, are you hungry?" He could see from the younger mer's face that he did not yet know what was coming. Either his father had been a coward, or perhaps he had not stayed to listen.

Eldrin smiled broadly as he came in and moved toward the hearth. He pulled out a chair from the table as he went, to put beside his Uncle's before clasping the older mer's arm. Then he spun it around and sat down backwards, arms crossed over the back of the chair.

"Good afternoon. Thank you, Uncle, but I don't think lunch would agree with me just now. It's quite lovely and clear outside today. Have you stepped outside?" Eldrin would have enjoyed it himself if the sun hadn't seemed so blindingly bright to his eyes. It was likely that they would only have that cloudless sky for a few hours before an ash storm set in.

"What, hung over again?" Zulkan asked mildly, resuming his seat. "I'd be sorry to see you end up like me, Eldrin. I went for a walk this morning. La'zira's planted some fireflowers in the old bed on the East side. Salla's old scathecraw finally gave up the ghost, so I thought she wouldn't mind." He laid an arm over the back of the chair, slumping slightly in his seat. "Have you spoken with your father yet today?"

Eldrin waved a dismissive hand without uncrossing his arms, still smiling.

"I could do far worse than to end up like you," he said affably. The idea of winding up an alcoholic widower with no great deeds to his name and only slaves to warm his bed was disheartening, but there truly were worse fates. Considering Eldrin's current trajectory, it might be an improvement.

The smile dropped off and he looked seriously at Zulkan, lips pressed in a tight line.

"Not really," he said. "Why? I'm assuming he's about to tell me I'm to marry that Savil girl. You know she's from house Oreyn? Imperial-bedding pigs, the lot of them. If I have to suffer a wife, at least let it be a Redoran woman." He sounded very bitter, but Eldrin didn't raise his voice. He looked away from his uncle's face, into the fire. He continued sullenly, "Her family owns several ebony mines, that's all it is. Father is a fool if he thinks_he'll_see any of the profit from_that_."

"Is there someone else you have in mind?" Zulkan asked. "I've seen the Savil girl. She's pretty enough, maybe seems a little dull in company."

"No," Eldrin responded immediately, a little harshly. Then he sighed, releasing the ugliness from his face and voice. He looked away from the fire, the room suddenly very dark and blotted in comparison.

"Why speak of these things? There's nothing I can do. My father would shoot down any suggestion of mine if the match was not something he considered beneficial." He shrugged. His smile was easy but not genuine. Perhaps someday soon he would finally pass the trials to join the Armigers and then he'd be campaigning far away from whatever stupid nagging wife his father set him up with. "But let's speak of pleasant things, shall we? I come here to forget that drama."

"Of course. I have something to give you, in fact." Zulkan dug in his pocket for the ring and held it up in his hand. It caught the firelight strangely, the metal almost oily. Green and purple highlights shifted across the surface in any indirect illumination. Touching it for long raised the hairs on Zulkan's neck.

"It belonged to Sella's grandfather, and her mother had it after he died - he seemed to think it was awfully important, but his mind was nearly gone by that point. Old Kerghed was a mage, you know. Made the family's fortune with the things he found in the old daedric ruins, but he was always a bit mad. Sella always thought it was enspelled, but she couldn't even use the things I made, and I am no enchanter." He held it out. "I'm afraid the writing inside the band is too small for me to read, or it's some foreign script. Either way, it was dear to her, and I'd rather you have it than some stranger"

Eldrin sat upright, holding out his palm for the ring.

"Why, thank you!" he said. Eldrin did not expect that the ring was anything special, but this was a gift, and one that had meaning to the older mer. That judgment quickly changed, however, when he turned it in his fingers and squinted at the writing. Part of it was in Daedric, which he couldn't read, but the phrase in Dunmeris was obviously a summons: I call Valka.

"It's a ring of summoning!" Eldrin said excitedly, closing it in his fist and looking up at Zulkan with wonder. "It's a daedra called Valka. Could it be a dremora, do you think? I'm really not so sure you should be giving this to me-- it must be worth a fortune." Yes, he was even more sure of its purpose as he spoke. Eldrin could feel power from the ring even as he held it in his palm.

"The truth is that I can't bear to keep it," Zulkan said quietly. "She - she wore it every day." He looked aside into the fire for a moment, reaching for the cup. A solid pull at the mazte remedied his apparent loss of composure. "And anyway, don't get too excited. It might be a scamp, or an imp, or some lesser creature. Nobody really knows. Oh, and I'm sending home a brick to go under your mattress, keep your feet warm. I know it gets drafty in that big place at night." He reached for a bell on the mantelpiece and rang it. "La'zira will bring it. There's not much magicka left in these old hands, but I can keep a brick warm."

Eldrin nodded, watching his uncle with sympathy.

"Whatever it turns out to be, I promise the ring will stay in my hands until my dying day," he said very seriously. He slipped it onto the ring finger of his right hand, acutely aware of the hair-raising prickle that shuddered up his arm. His friends weren't going to believe this! He grinned at the thought of watching everyone fawn over it._No one_his age kept a daedric servant.

He winced internally at the mention of a brick, but his face never lost its pleased and expectant composure. He knew that it would be futile to tell Zulkan that the temperature in his room was actually very pleasant. Eldrin's gentle protests never did stop his uncle from sending him home with some asinine thing that would end up in the back of his closet, like the sun hat with frost shield or the fortifying boots of slowness. He did not feel comfortable asking why those enchantments, but Eldrin figured years of alcoholism were to blame, and he didn't want to embarrass the man.

The Khajiit that appeared was very pretty, buxom and healthy with cream-colored fur speckled with light brown. She wore her brown mane of hair tied back with white ribbons, not an entirely standard addition to the plain gray robes of a maid that she shared with the Argonian. She carried a basket in both hands, bouncing cheerfully. From long experience Zulkan suspected Eldrin saw her as no more likely a sex object than the brick. Many Dunmer saw betmer as literally animals. His way of thinking was more along the lines that if an animal talked, and said yes, and had bouncing jugs the size of melons...

"He is ready for Master Eldrin's foot-warmer, yes yes?" her voice was a soprano warble.

Normally Eldrin had to force himself not to frown at La'zira, but now his appreciative grin was large and genuine. The ring, at least, had to be something useful. Something powerful! He couldn't wait to try it out. If the price for the artifact was feigning gratitude for a brick, the price was too low.

"Right, then," Zulkan said. "Don't summon it in here, it might break the crockery. Off you go, boy." The Khajiit demurely handed him the basket - its weight was certainly heavy enough for it to be a brick - and brought him his shawl at the door.

"Young Master has a good day!"

She waved.

Zulkan had another drink, sighing. He hated to do it, but it had to be done. He had prepared for so long. Hopefully Eldrin would actually get the thing into his own room. It didn't have to actually be in the bed to do its work.