I believe the best way to be a king is to make people like you. People who like you are less likely to prematurely end your kingship and more likely to want to sincerely help you. And the best way to make people like you is to make sure their situations are secure and their needs are taken care of. Crazy, I know. Some people might still be annoyed that you’ve made sure some other group that they believe less worthy is also receiving aid, but that’s what inspiring speeches are for and appealing to their sense of profits, or just confusing their worldview with religious nonsense.


    Pocket siege engines also help. High Elves are *very good *at enchanting things and very bad at figuring out what would be useful to enchant with what. As soon as the Pact and Covenant manage to up their game enough to ward their outposts against teleportation, the Dominion unveils its latest creation. We’ve been steadily gaining ground and fortifying our positions.


    The stupidest thing about Cyrodiil is that somebody stole a bunch of Elder Scrolls, and they’ve been regularly been re-stolen over and over by each alliance. Why? I can’t fathom. It’s not like any of them can even read the silly things without going blind, unless they’ve got a rogue Moth Priest in their pockets or something. (The Dominion doesn’t, so far as I know, but we still re-steal them anyway just in case.)


    Meanwhile, the Pact and Covenant aren’t trying to conquer the Gold Coast. (They’re not having much success in the rest of Cyrodiil either, but to be fair, the Pact are swift and brutal, but they’re heavy on offense and light on defense. They could conquer Cyrodiil five times a day and lose it again another five times.) Anvil is shockingly peaceful these days. There haven’t even been any mysterious murders lately!


    When I stop by the Sanctuary to check in on the whole Black Dragon thing, Astara informs me that Green-Venom-Tongue has tracked Lyra to an old Imperial ruin called Knightsgrave. Astara thinks she’s gone there to meditate or whatever. Venom has been given a contract to kill her, and Astara suggests we go after him to back him up. This is a perfectly sensible request, since missions the two of us are on tend to have fewer assassins die and Lyra is dangerous.


    “It’s obviously a trap,” I say dismissively. “Fortunately, Vara-do and Kisha are very good with traps.”


    I do wish we’d been able to accompany him the whole way there, but I’m sure nothing terrible will have happened in the meantime and it’s not like I was going to just hang around the Sanctuary to see if something happened. I have things to do, people to kill, towns to conquer, and so forth. We head out to the northwest corner of the Gold Coast where the ruin in question is located. A Skyshard stands on a cliff with a nice view of the ocean just outside a ruined tower with some crafting stations and a very confused woman who thinks I’m the Emperor. She says she’s kept the forges burning and the place is ready to restock troops. Okay then.


    “That’s fantastic,” I say. “But this one is in disguise at the moment. You cleverly saw through his disguise, but best not tell anyone he was here, yes?”


    I make a note to have someone come check the place out later. I don’t know enough about crafting weapons and armor to be able to tell if there’s anything worthwhile about the place, although more resources and facilities are always good.


    Knightsgrave appears to be a grave. Possibly even for knights! Although the temple (crypt? tomb? I’m not sure) is crumbling, there’s an undamaged blue-and-gold hourglass banner hanging outside the door as if the Black Dragon is just advertising her presence.


    “Obvious trap is obvious,” Ilara murmurs.


    Inside, down the stairs past some statues, we find Green-Venom-Tongue puzzling over a statue puzzle. It never fails to baffle me how often simple puzzles will stop someone.


    “Did the Matron send you?” Venom asks, looking over to us as we approach.


    “Nah, not really,” I say. “She told us where you’d gone, but this one is just paranoid and afraid something is going to go horribly wrong and you’re going to get killed like Cimbar and Mirabelle almost did. I’d rather be on hand to heal you than run across your corpse too late to help.”


    “I won’t complain of the company, then,” Venom says. “I was afraid she’d sent you to make sure I got the job done. That I wouldn’t hesitate to kill Lyra even though we were friends once.”


    “Kisha, will you get the puzzles?”


    It’s not that this pointless puzzle is too hard for me or anything. I’m just lazy and like my apprentice to get practice at this sort of thing whenever the opportunity presents itself. She solves it so quickly that Green-Venom-Tongue erects the spine of sheepishness.


    The Black Dragon taunts us through red-outlined shadows as we progress through the ruin, fighting angry minotaurs as we go. And then there’s a floating red spirit that is definitely not one of Lyra’s shadows.


    A trapped gate forces us to split the party. Green-Venom-Tongue goes off in one direction while Ilara and I have to take another. I send Ilara off to see if she can find another way to slip through.


    The Black Dragon’s projection appears again, ranting about the “lies” the Brotherhood told her, about them being “family”.


    “Lyra, this one thought the point of joining an assassins’ guild was to be paid to kill people,” I say. “Not to find a family and have warm fuzzy feelings. This one has not been lied to. Perhaps it is you who had mistaken expectations.”


    She doesn’t seem terribly happy about my retorts, and vanishes again. You know, if I could cast projections like that, I’d think I’d find something better to do with it. Then again, I could just get an enchanted item to do it for me if I really wanted to do that. Then again, I actually already have enchanted items that do that. Those projectors we confiscated from Arenthia have been squirreled away somewhere (look, I didn’t say kwamaed away).


    I hate weird magic, but normal magic is pretty great. Then again, being a mer, perhaps my idea of “normal magic” is different from that of a Nord or something. Would most Nords consider simple projection spells to be “weird magic”? I’ll have to ask the next dumb Nord I meet. (Not to imply all Nords are dumb, but smart Nords are people like Shalidor, who was clever enough to build a Library of the Mind but dumb enough to attack Sheogorath.)


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    (Tangents are a personality trait unrelated to location of soul. It feels like the only real effect of my soul no longer being in Coldharbour is a lack of persistent soul-crushing despair so pervasive I’d forgotten it was even there.)


    Ilara meets up with me again. “Come quickly. This one found the way through and Venom is wounded. She gave him a potion but it looked pretty bad.”


    I hurry after her to find Green-Venom-Tongue laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. I start healing the minute I get into line of sight.


    “You are not dying today, Venom,” I say, going up to him and continuing to heal him.


    “Brother…” Venom says, coughing. “She got the drop on me.”


    “You’ll be fine,” I say.


    “You’ve acquired quite the habit of saving assassins,” Venom says, climbing slowly to his feet. “I am most grateful. Don’t push me off onto your healer. I can still finish the mission.”


    “This one will keep healing as we go, then.” I pull a potion mislabeled in Dwemeris as ‘vengeance #6’ out of my pack. “This will improve your body performance for about an hour. It’s also poisonous. Contains nightshade. You’re probably resistant. Lucky Argonian.”


    “Thank you,” Venom says, drinking the poison. He’s a grown Argonian. And he deserves his chance at vengeance.


    Also, he just drank a drink from someone who explicitly said it was poisonous, which I find quietly hilarious even if it’s highly unlikely I would have been trying to kill him immediately after healing him.


    “Do you often use potions like this yourself?” Venom asks as we make to continue on.


    “Oh, yes,” I say. “Usually not ones quite as poisonous as that one unless doing up against a god or something, but it’s always something. This one is high as fuck right now.”


    Green-Venom-Tongue hmms thoughtfully. “I suppose that would make it difficult for most sane people to steal your secret recipes. They would kill themselves trying to duplicate something you’ve built up a tolerance to. I never thought of that. I joke sometimes that my name is because I drank so much poison my tongue turned green, but I never considered deliberately poisoning your own potions.”


    I didn’t consider that it might deter thieves. I just take advantage of reagent interactions and consider a heightened mental state to be advantageous. I’m at the point where it would take someone practice and tolerance in order to take advantage of it like I do. I block out distractions and imagine useful things like enemies glowing red or my vision pulsing when I’m hurt because my pain tolerance is so high I don’t always notice and forget to heal myself.


    The three of us press forward. The Black Dragon does not know when to shut up. It gets to the point where she’s popping another shadow directly in front of us to say another stupid taunt and disappear only to reappear in front of us again. How much magicka does she have to burn on that stupid spell!?


    Finally, she bothers to fight back, or at least sends three shadow copies of herself at us to keep us occupied. While still taunting us incessantly.


    “Ugh,” I say, fighting one of the shadows. “Vara-do wants her dead just so she will shut the fuck up already.”


    “Can’t you send back better quips?” Ilara suggests, dodging out of the way of another shadow.


    “Yes, but this one prefers when he is the one giving the quips and other people are stunned speechless by his words.”


    “This one will bet you a pound of moon sugar you can’t stun her speechless,” Ilara says.


    “Do you two always joke around in these circumstances?” Venom wonders, taking this fight far more seriously than us.


    “Yes,” Ilara and I say in unison.


    “Many of the Brotherhood are better assassins than warriors,” Ilara says. “It is to be expected, though. This one and her brother have seen much more action from things that are trying to fight back than most of you. And these two have killed far scarier things than one sad assassin.”


    “This one will be happy if she’s half the challenge of a Dremora Lord,” I say.


    “These shadow powers are neat, though,” Ilara says. “Khajiit has seen something like them before, yes? It is too bad that she had to give back that mask, but perhaps she can learn to do something like this for herself.”


    I grin widely. “You can do anything you put your mind to, little sister.”


    With the shadows dispatched and dissipated, we press on and finally come to a huge chamber with a massive dragon statue presumably representing Akatosh. The Black Dragon is waiting for us, still taunting.


    I don’t speak a single witty quip in her general direction. Oh, there are plenty of things I could say. I could give her some piercing religious revelation by speaking half-truths about the Aedra and Daedra or something. I might even be able to convince her to simply commit suicide in repentance. But no.


    I release the song powers I’ve been building up into silence so heavy it makes even my ears ring. Lyra staggers and her mouth moves, but no sound reaches me. Ah, good. Now that I have an actual target, I can shut her up.


    An eerily silent battle falls. Eerily silent with a soft background music that starts coming up unbidden. The tones feel right, though, so I don’t fight it.


    Even stunned silent, Lyra puts up a hell of a fight. It’s not like I stopped her shadow magic. But she falls, and Venom gives her a silent apology before stabbing her with the Blade of Woe. Then something weird happens with that spirit we’d spotted before, and Lyra’s ghost silently screams as she’s pulled away.


    I drop the muffle aura. “This one has no idea what just happened here.”


    “The Wrath of Sithis took her…” Venom says quietly. “That’s what it had to be.”


    “Sure,” I say, not feeling like arguing.


    “You literally stunned her speechless,” Ilara says glumly, pulling a bag out of her pack and passing it over to me. “That’s almost cheating.”


    “What did you do?” Venom asks. “You didn’t even cast a spell.”


    “Ah, it’s less of a spell and more of a gift,” I say. “This one was blessed by Sithis with the gift of silence.”


    It’s not even entirely false. Sheogorath is called the “Sithis-shaped hole in the world”, after all. I have no idea what that means but it does imply some sort of connection.


    “That is quite the gift,” Venom says. “It felt like… more than mere silence. There was a heavy pressure to it.”


    Hmm, that makes sense. I’m not actually stopping noises, just making more noise so that you don’t hear the other noise. That’s probably not be the “right” way to cast a muffle spell for exactly that reason. I may have accidentally created something more interesting than just a mere muffle spell. And let’s never mind the added bonus of being able to shut up monologuing villains if I am so inclined.


    That pressure of a loud sound you can’t actually hear. I wonder how far I can reduce the pitch? I could get that effect without canceling the noise if it were too low for most beings to hear. I never imagined being a tonal architect.


    I step up to the giant Akatosh statue. My feelings about him are… complicated, lately. I might be the only one alive on Nirn who has been a vessel for Akatosh’s power. He’s hands-off (or talons off, whichever), only intervening in the most extreme of circumstances, which I suppose I can appreciate. Nirn is already an arena of violence, but it doesn’t need to be a divine battlefield as well. The Planemeld was already enough of a mess.


    “Why didn’t you stop the Planemeld, Akatosh?” I say aloud. “Was it to punish your priests and prophets for their hubris?”


    Daedric Princes will sometimes speak through their statues, but Akatosh is silent and his statue gives me no answer.


    “Alright, well…” I go on. “This one intends to kill your Primate Artorius. If you do not wish him to be murdered, please give a sign.”


    Nothing happens, and the dragon continues to be silent.


    “This one will take your silence as indication that you wish us to slay this fetcher,” I say. “Do you want his soul?” Silence. “I suppose we’ll just have to send it to the Void, then. Thanks for the talk!”


    As we’re heading back to the Sanctuary (by which I mean I teleport us to the wayshrine outside of the Sanctuary), Venom asks, “Did Akatosh actually speak to you?”


    “Nope!” I say. “We’ll just have to take the silence of the Dragon God as his blessing in this.”