I decide that I’d best investigate this castle full of religious fanatics that are apparently preparing for a war on someone. If they’re building siege equipment, they might be planning on trying to retake Anvil from the Dominion, because I have no idea why you’d need siege equipment if you were intending on assaulting the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary or something.


    I run across Mirabelle outside the Enclave of the Hourglass, hidden on a nearby rocky hill and watching the place. She rudely rebuffs any suggestion of working together and intends to go after the Black Dragon herself. She also doesn’t seem to think we stand any chance. Really, she doesn’t know us very well, although that’s hardly her fault.


    “This one does not begrudge your grudge,” I say. “However, so long as we are here, it makes sense to watch one another’s backs, yes? This one will make sure that all eyes are upon Vara-do and not you.”


    “You intend to just barge in and fight them all?” Mirabelle looks at me incredulously.


    “It will be a good workout,” I say. “Really gets the blood pumping. Fights have been too easy lately. Vara-do does not think these priests and pirates will give him a good challenge anyway.”


    “By yourself?” Mirabelle wonders.


    I shrug, and pull out my communication orb. “Rocky, Vara-do is about to take over another castle. Have the crew ready to loot it when he’s done.”


    “Acknowledged,” Merry replies.


    “Who in Oblivion are you?” Mirabelle asks, looking at me like I’m insane.


    “Your Dark Brother,” I say. “Who happens to be very good at hitting things. Kisha! Take out the siege equipment. Vara-do is going to start putting blades into bodies.”


    “Kisha’s here too?” Mirabelle says. “Of course she is.”


    I head in. For all that they’re in a castle preparing siege equipment, the Order of the Hour is completely unprepared for actually being attacked. The gates are wide open and unguarded. Sure, they might notice a Dominion army heading toward them long before it got here, and no amount of attention paid to the gates would stop determined assassins, but it’s just sloppy.


    A pirate captain and an Imperial soldier (possibly a lieutenant, their positions guessed by how fancy their armor is) are discussing initiating pirates. The pirate woman is concerned about the official pardons coming through, and does not even slightly sound repentant. More than fine with me. I take out the soldier in swift order, but stop to talk with the pirate.


    “Throwing in your lot with priests, captain?” I say. “Were you truly that desperate?”


    “We didn’t have much choice,” the pirate captain says, relaxing a fraction of a hair upon seeing that she wasn’t my target. She introduces herself as Marie Elena.


    “Well, there’s another choice for you,” I say. “You can work for Vara-do.”


    “Or you’ll kill me?”


    I shrug. “You don’t need to join him. Just don’t be his enemy. That tends to go poorly for people.” I glance aside at the corpse on the floor.


    “You’ve certainly been doing better for yourself,” Marie says. “Strange that I’d never even heard of you until you sacked the Jarol Estate.”


    “Everyone comes from somewhere, yes?” I say.


    I offer her a Dominion pardon edict as if it were currency. (It’s not even counterfeit.)


    Marie looks it over critically. “This is real?”


    “That’s King Neri’s official seal on it, right there,” I say.


    “This is either the most convincing fake I’ve ever seen or you stole a real blank pardon edict,” Marie says. “Do you have more of these?”


    “Take it to Anvil and show it to the Dominion officials,” I say. “Ask them to sign your crew on as privateers and swear loyalty to the Aldmeri Dominion. They are also big on redemption and recruiting their former enemies, and won’t shove religion down your throat in the process.”


    “Privateers for the Dominion sounds way better than the damned priests’ offer,” Marie says. “Fine. I can see which way the wind is blowing. The eagle banner is on the rise, and only a fool sails into a storm. I still can’t believe they took Anvil right out from under our noses like that, but I suppose you had something to do with that, didn’t you.”


    Marie accompanies me through the castle, so that her crewmates can be sure I’m not lying, or at least if I’m lying, I’m doing so in a way that has convinced their captain.


    There’s a group of pirates being initiated in the most temply-looking room we’ve run across. The priest notices me approaching (not a difficult task as i wasn’t hiding) and calls upon the pirates to prove their worth. They just pause and look over to their captain, who is pointedly not attacking me.


    “We’ve got a better offer, crew,” Marie says. “Kill the priests!”


    The pirates don’t need any encouragement or more explanation than that. For all the ways Tamriel has changed during my imprisonment in Coldharbour, the ways it hasn’t changed is greater.


    I press on, fighting my way through and eventually breaking away from the group of pirates. They can handle this themselves. I have complete faith in the pirates I just met to do glorious battle and either emerge victorious, die, or run away, and am not especially concerned which one. I’m here to investigate the Black Dragon, not just slaughter priests. I’ve already initiated enough chaos to thoroughly fuck up their plans. (I’m also kind of pissed that she took a name like the Black Dragon when I was just the Black Wolf. She thinks mighty highly of herself to elevate herself to that level.)


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I come upon a woman, dressed in simple garb like a servant. She holds up her hands to show she’s unarmed, which doesn’t mean much since there’s no way I’d be able to tell if she’s a mage or something. She requests to speak before I murder her. I oblige.


    Her posture is not the slightest bit afraid or intimidated. Her voice does not waver. I do not trust her at all. But I will play this game. Lyra (as she introduces herself) is obviously a spy or a plant, but who she works for (if anyone) is less obvious. I don’t recognize any of the movements she’s making or words she’s saying as signals for any secret organization I know of, though.


    “Vara-do seeks the one they call the Black Dragon,” I say.


    “Very brave of you,” she says with the tone someone I know might use to someone who claimed they were looking for me.


    “It is difficult for this one to find a challenge,” I lament. “Time and time again he is faced with disappointment.”


    Lyra tells me about how the Black Dragon is a former assassin who sought redemption, and asks if I have any regrets.


    I snort. “Life is too long to bear regrets. Never focus on what could have been at the expense of what could be.”


    “There might be some wisdom in that,” Lyra says. “The Primate says regrets are like stars in the sky that shine in the darkness.”


    “Very poetic, but the stars do not burn with regret,” I say. “They burn with hope. Regret will never guide anyone straight.”


    “It’s meant to be a metaphor,” Lyra says. “But I’m sure you didn’t come here to debate philosophy with little old me. I can introduce you to the Black Dragon. You probably don’t want to get caught by any Order members who might show up.”


    She seems blissfully unaware that there’s a tiny war going on in this castle.


    “Very well,” I say. “Show me.”


    Lyra leads me off to a large, fancy chamber with those ridiculously tall bookshelves you need ladders to get up. No one is in the Black Dragon’s chambers at the moment. I bristle, alert for traps. Lyra suggests waiting for the Black Dragon to show up.


    I pace about the room and “casually” glance at the clutter on the desk. One item stands out. The Black Dragon’s journal. Which quite plainly states that her name is Lyra. What a coincidence.


    Out of my peripheral vision, I spot Mirabelle being not nearly stealthy enough. I don’t give her away by looking directly at her, but Lyra spots her anyway when she obliviously “whispers” at me with all the subtlety of a forty-year-old child sneaking out to practice kissing and drink watered-down shein.


    Red shadows wrap around Lyra with a hail of sparks, covering her or transforming her into some sort of living shadow. Annoying red shadowy shit tangles around me as well. She teleports behind Mirabelle and summons the Blade of Woe before I can move.


    Ilara appears behind the Black Dragon and summons her own Blade of Woe into her back. The force pushes Lyra’s blade away from its intended mark. Mirabelle falls off the ledge onto her face in front of me. I quickly start healing. It was a deep cut and she’s bleeding profusely, but she’s still alive and it didn’t strike anything that would kill her immediately.


    Lyra makes her escape, leaving behind quite a bit of blood herself. Must be nice being able to teleport. I mean, to teleport wherever she wants. Without having to spend a couple minutes staring at the stars in my head to find and connect to the right wayshrine.


    “Dark Moons!” Ilara hisses, and jumps off the ledge. “She got away. Mirabelle?”


    “Alive,” I say, and call up a healer.


    Ezreba appears shortly and gets to work. Recruiting the pirates will complicate this mission for my loot crew. The actual pirates are going to want their share of the treasure, provided they succeed. I doubt the Black Dragon will be back just yet. She’ll need time to recover, and she’s lost the element of surprise.


    I take the journal and shove it into my bag. I could parse through this in my Library of the Mind myself, but I think I’d rather delegate this one. (Unless I get stuck in a really boring meeting. Sometimes I wish I could literally be in two places at once, but that would get entirely too confusing. I need a damned Mouth.)


    I make sure the loot crew is dressed like pirates and tell them if they run into problems with the pirates, just tell them they’re on Vara-do’s crew. (And if they run across Lyra in either guise, tell her they’re not on Vara-do’s crew and are on Marie Elena’s crew instead.) Still, I leave Mirabelle in Ezreba’s hands and head out to make sure the castle is actually getting captured myself. It wouldn’t do to acquire a new pirate fleet and then have them all immediately die fighting priests, militant ones or otherwise.


    Which leads to the question of who gets the loot, so I just tell them they can have whatever they can carry and don’t mention anything about magic bags. They don’t protest my crew taking furniture that they can’t haul out anyway, although they wonder aloud why we want the furniture.


    “Why are you always so intent upon trying to save mercenaries and spare bandits and pirates?” Merry wonders. “Not that I object to a bit of mercy, mind you.”


    I stare off for a long moment. “A long time ago… I was a mercenary, once. Many of the mer I worked with had been at blade’s ends with one another at different points in our careers. It was something of an unspoken rule when fighting one another to not go out of our way to kill one another. And not to fight to the death unless we sincerely believed in a cause rather than mere coin.”


    “That is fair,” Merry asks. “What about the bandits and pirates, though?”


    “Sometimes all it takes is one bad job or failed payment for a mercenary to become a bandit,” I say. “Fortunata’s pirates were backed up against a wall so badly they thought fanatical priests were a reasonable option. I simply gave them a better offer.”


    “What if they go back to banditry or piracy?” Merry asks.


    “Oh, the Dominion will be happy for them to do piracy,” I say. “On the Covenant and Pact’s ships. Plus an additional bounty on any Sea Elf ships sunk.”


    “And once the war is over and you’ve accidentally taken over Tamriel, they go back to being pirates,” Merry says.


    I shrug. “Then so be it. I can only give options. People have to make their own dumb choices.”


    …


    I return to the Sanctuary and explain to Astara what happened.


    “The Order of the Hour has a castle and an army?” Astara says. “That’s bad news.”


    “They–” I lick my lips. “–had a castle and an army.”


    “You sacked another castle,” Astara says flatly.


    “Yes.”


    “And the army?” Astara asks.


    “Vara-do turned the pirates against the priests,” I say. “Turns out Dominion pardon edicts are a more valuable currency to pirates than best wishes for one’s afterlife.”


    “Good work,” Astara says. “Where is Mirabelle? I need her to look into some things.”


    “She is with some of Vara-do’s people,” I say. “We encountered the Black Dragon and she was wounded.”


    “Khajiit failed,” Ilara says, looking down. “She tried to warn Mirabelle not to come out of hiding. And the Black Dragon got away. Kisha almost killed her. She’s got to be wounded at least as badly as Mirabelle now, but she teleported out before Kisha could finish her.”


    “What was Mirabelle even doing there?” Astara asks, scowling even more than usual.


    “Being sloppy,” Ilara says. “So sloppy. She needs to go back to assassin school!” She pauses. “Is there an assassin school?”


    “There’s one for Shadowscales in Black Marsh,” Astara says offhandedly. “Did you at least find out anything about the Black Dragon?”


    I pull out the journal from my bag and hand it to her. “Her life story. I think. Vara-do didn’t read too much of it. Her name is Lyra Viria. This one might not believe she was really one of us once, but he knows the Blade of Woe and that was definitely what she summoned to stab Mirabelle with.”


    There’s a good bit of shock about this dire revelation, and Astara passes off the journal to Green-Venom-Tongue to go through. Huzzah for delegation on both of our parts.


    “Vara-do knew she was no simple servant,” I say. “She was neither fearful nor deferent. But he did not realize who she was until it was too late. He thought she might be a spy, perhaps from the Pact or Covenant.”


    “We’ll find her,” Astara says vehemently. “If the Wrath of Sithis doesn’t find her first.”