Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 1
"Hurry up, you wench," Nusha hissed. Nusha had been waiting in the cellar for almost an hour now, curled up between two crates like a viper around her eggs. The air was frosty and dank, poison to the Argonian's cold blood, and she dug her rake-like...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 5
Tun-Na heard everything. Nusha had been wandering through the forest for hours now. It was getting dark, but still she pushed onwards, as if pursued by her own fears. It wasn't the end of the world. She tried to tell herself that. Tun-Na's word was...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 2
Karme was many things, but a quitter was not one of them. She would make it through these godforsaken mountains and prove that charcoal-scaled Argonian wrong. Truthfully, she wasn't sure where she was going. The plan had been to leave Bruma by the...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 8
Karme had never been this exhausted. In the last day they had fled from vicious skeletons, traipsed through the underbelly of the Imperial City, and were now sneaking from street to street, dodging guards and battlemages. She had to give credit to...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 7
Hieronymus Lex had seen a lot in his time as captain of the city watch. He'd apprehended a vendor who was poisoning his competition, he'd quelled a horde of goblins who attempted to invade the city through the sewers, and he'd watched the Thieves'...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 6
This was not what Karme had expected from the Imperial City. Why exactly they had come here, she was beginning to wonder. Nusha had been sceptical, but Karme was sure that the answer to their quandary lay within the walls of the city. Her parents had...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 4
"I request an audience with Countess Arriana Valga." The castle guards blinked at her. She cleared her throat and repeated herself. "I request an audience wi--" "We heard you the first time. But you can't just waltz in here expecting to see the...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 3
Nusha's ears pricked up at the sound of horses and men's voices. She crawled out of her bed of mud and pine needles and stumbled through the trees. After a few minutes of trailing the sound she emerged onto a road where a caravan was trundling...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 11
For once, Nusha was the one who didn't want to sneak around. Karme had suggested that they climb over the wall, like they had when they escaped Bruma, to get inside the countess' castle, on the assumption that news of their escape would have spread...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 16
Hieronymus had survived great battles, bested men in fights while unarmed, and been assigned to dangerous missions in obscure corners of Tamriel. But he had never seen anything like the skeletons. They had been trapped in the palace for over a week...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 15
The chamber was dark when they entered. Nusha squinted, her eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom. It was a wide, spacious room, and all around the edges were crates, piles of clothes, and weapons. The Akaviri army had clearly used this room for storage,...
Balanced on the Knife Edge Ch. 14
Karme was greeted by a skeleton as soon as she stepped inside the fort. She readied a fireball realising that this one was well and truly dead. She approached carefully, in case it changed its mind, but it stayed on the ground. There was a piece of...