While we’re delivering our report on the death of the Black Dragon, Brema (the High Elf mage assassin) returns to the Sanctuary injured and while I’m healing her, she explains what happened.


    “I was in Anvil on a contract,” Brema says. “A Pact spy. Right after I finished him off, the Black Dragon got the drop on me. She dragged me off to torture me. Tried to get the location and password of the Sanctuary out of me. I was rescued by Dominion soldiers who’d come to investigate suspicious behavior around the building I was being held in.” She snorts softly. “If the pirates were still in charge, she’d probably have gotten away with it, too. To think I’d be thankful to the Dominion for anything.”


    Although I’m itching to kill Primate Artorius, Astara urges patience and awaits word from the Black Hand. I’m sure she won’t (can’t) stop me from just going over there and stabbing him, but it’s not like I have nothing else to do in the meantime. I assume the Black Hand has to have several lengthy meetings that probably involve being in a poorly lit room with everyone wearing ominous hoods or masks, talking ominously to one another.


    I imagine Speaker Terenus saying in his ominous drawl, “Primate Artorius must die. His soul must be sent to Sithis, to dwell in the darkness and silence of the Void forevermore.”


    “Let us discuss this matter over tea,” the Listener probably doesn’t say. “Brothers and Sisters in darkness, we must remove our masks to partake in this dark beverage, sacredly iced and sweetened, as the flavor of fear is sublime.”


    That’s probably not what actually happens at Black Hand meetings.


    While the Black Hand are having hypothetical tea parties, I go off and capture another keep. One of the Dominion officers, a young Altmer with more education than common sense, expresses concern over me leading an assault personally.


    “You must be new here,” I say. “Hi, I’m Neri, King of the Wood Orcs. Let’s kick some ass!”


    Anyway, yeah. I think I’ve said enough about this boring war. Cyrodiil is remarkably peaceful outside of a few hotspots and becoming more peaceful by the day as the Dominion cements its hold over it. Also, Fort Aleswell doesn’t have nearly as good of ale as it advertises.


    Imagine my surprise when I get a call from Grishka telling me that Speaker Terenus asked for Vara-do and Kisha.


    “How did he get in touch with you?” I wonder.


    “I took Mirabelle to Anvil,” Grishka says. “She’s doing much better now, by the way. We ran into him there and I said I’d pass along word.” A pause. “And yes, I was being inconspicuous. I know you always worry.”


    I collect Ilara and head to the Sanctuary. Speaker Terenus explains the situation. Primate Artorius might have lost the pirates, but he still has an army. Maybe a smaller army than he would have had otherwise, but still an army. The plan is apparently to send everyone from this Sanctuary to pick off his army like fetcherflies ripping apart a nix-hound.


    Hildegard is concerned about it being blasphemy to kill someone who “speaks for Akatosh”.


    “Don’t worry,” I say. “We have Akatosh’s blessing in this.”


    “We do?” Hilde asks in confusion.


    “Indeed,” I say. “Vara-do asked his statue to give a sign if he objected. Akatosh remained silent. This one will consider the silence of Akatosh to be his blessing in this.”


    “Oh,” Hildegard says. “I suppose it’s alright, then.”


    “We’ll purify the corruption out of Akatosh’s temple and he’ll wind up with better priests who aren’t fetchers,” I say.


    “That would be a good thing,” Hildegard agrees. “The priests of Dibella are always so nice.”


    “The Altmer blame Lorkhan for making people mortal, but it was Akatosh who made Time a thing to begin with,” I say. “Without Akatosh, there would be no death.”


    Becoming a concept sounds incredibly weird. No amount of reading mythology books while high can make sense of that sort of thing.


    I meet up with Tanek in Kvatch, who has found a way into the Cathedral from the mausoleum. Seriously though, it’s a cathedral, not a fortress. Still, we’re being assassins here, and breaking down the front doors or smashing stained glass windows probably goes against the whole subtlety thing. (I wonder what would happen if I could just come up here with an arrest warrant for Primate Artorius. Hiring assassins is probably a crime in Kvatch. Are Hist resin visions admissible evidence?)


    We make our way through the tunnel, splitting up and sweeping through. The priests have no idea what’s going on. They don’t know why there’s a werewolf loose in the catacombs, and they don’t even see most of us before they’re struck down. They’d probably eventually find the bodies, but it doesn’t matter. It’s an absolute massacre.


    I’m not even bothering to go out of my way to spare anyone. Not when there’s assassins around who aren’t going to, either. Not when there’s no time to stop to tie people up or deal with the aftermath. And definitely not when dealing with religious fanatics, who you can never trust to do the sensible thing.


    There’s a cool fight with a big wamasu on an electrified metal grate, so there’s that. Fortunately, I’m the only one crazy enough among the Brotherhood to want to actually take that on. (Hilde might but she’s too fuzzy to make reasonable decision calls right now.)


    The catacombs bring us out into the cathedral’s main floor with big stained glass windows casting rainbow light upon the room.


    The Primate was waiting for us here, in front of the fancy window depicting Akatosh, as bearded mer and dragon. He still has an army waiting for us. Yep, this is definitely an ambush. We could have just come in the front door and saved ourselves the trouble crawling around in the sewers.


    I smother the room in heavy silence. Any attempt the Artorius makes to taunt us or preach at us gets swept away into the Void. His attempts at commanding his underlings are met with confusion and disorder. The worst of this is, I will never be able to use the power of silence as Neri, only as Vara-do. Neri is music and light, where Vara-do is silence and darkness. Sound magic is rarer in an era without the Dwemer, though hardly unheard of. Neri, however, has no use for muffle spells, and this is not a standard Mages Guild muffle spell. I’ll call it… Void Muffle. Dark Muffle?


    Primate Artorius, as befitting a priest of the Time Dragon, has annoying time powers. My fellow assassins get frozen several times, but I mostly manage to resist it for some reason.


    The real trouble is when I realize I’m not good enough with the daggers to be able to defeat him with them. I toss them aside and pull an axe out of my bag. My distinctive, unique axe with a name. My indistinctive axe that was pulled off a rack in a Dominion armory halfway across Cyrodiil after I lost two previous ones in Lake Rumare. (I wonder if weapons can be enchanted to return to you?) (In a distant, hypothetical future, I don’t want to lose a certain shiny thing.)


    I break out of Artorius’s time stop again like breaking out of a tangent. Oh, that’s why I can resist it. I’m high as fuck on potions and trying to resist my own tangents, too, because he’s forcing me to actually pay attention to the fight and goddamn it’s a good fight. Maybe it’s just as well no one can hear my mad laughter in the silence.


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Primate Artorius doesn’t even get a chance to speak any last words. I mean, I’m sure he must have said something before we came in the room, but still. His lips are moving but I’m not good enough at lipreading to figure out what he’s trying to say and don’t actually care all that much anyway.


    I conjure the Blade of Woe and silently stab him with it.


    With the Primate dead, I release my Super Muffle (yes, that’s a great name for it) and approach the altar.


    “Akatosh,” I say. “This one apologizes for having to murder your servants. You will get better ones.”


    Akatosh is silent. A number of things could conceivably be happening nearby that someone would be able to interpret as a divine omen or something. But I will continue to take Akatosh remaining silent as acquiescence. Though considering how little the Aedra intervene in the world, I’m sure that he wouldn’t strike me down even if he were annoyed at me.


    Time powers are rare enough that this might be the only time I will experience a battle in slow motion in dead silence but for an eerie tone and a drumbeat. It gave me the chills. And the thrills. The thrilling chills. The chilling thrills.


    I go to collect my discarded daggers, amused that for once I threw away my weapons deliberately. The other assassins look to be getting ready to scatter and sneak out of the city before anyone notices all the bodies. At this point I have to put in the sensible suggestion of just letting me teleport them all back to the Sanctuary, to which they agree.


    “Well, that’s one way to make sure nobody sees us leave,” Slim-Jah comments.


    “Where in Oblivion did you learn to swing an axe like that?” Tanek wonders.


    I shrug. “Oblivion.”


    There’s a celebration, at least as much as the Dark Brotherhood celebrates anything, as well as a ceremony. I’m receiving a promotion, although I’m not sure what being promoted in the Dark Brotherhood really means.


    “You are not the first to hold the rank of Silencer, but you are perhaps the most worthy of that title,” Terenus says.


    “Or at least the most literal,” Ilara says with amusement.


    Speaker Terenus ignores her failure to be completely solemn. According to Terenus, a Silencer is the personal assassin of one of the Speakers of the Black Hand, and not beholden to any one Sanctuary. Unspoken is the fact that he knows perfectly well that nobody can control me or convince me to do anything I don’t want to do, but it’s nice to pretend. Thus far, he hasn’t tried to tell me to do anything I wouldn’t want to do.


    ‘Thus far’ probably won’t last.


    …


    The next job he offers me names Roku as the target.


    “With all due respect, Speaker,” I say with forced calm. “This one will not kill King Neri’s hearth-wife for all the gold in Tamriel. Nor should anyone else.”


    “Are you disobeying orders, Silencer?” Terenus says.


    I snort softly. “Do you have any idea what King Neri will do if his hearth-wife dies? He kills gods for a living. He will wipe out the Dark Brotherhood. He will leave this Sanctuary a smoking crater. Killing that woman would be as good as murdering my Brothers and Sisters myself.”


    “Be that as it may, the Black Sacrament has been performed,” Terenus says. “A soul has been promised to Sithis.”


    I slowly pull off my cat-mask to allow Terenus to see my true face and drop the accent. “Tell me who wants my wife dead.”


    Speaker Terenus stares at me impassively and remains silent.


    I pause dramatically. “I have the gift of song and silence.”


    Fueled by silent rage, I call upon my music to bring up a sound, a single tone, so deep that the ears of mortals cannot hear it. I increase the volume slowly, feeling pressure build around me. Terenus, rattled by something he can feel but not hear, reaches up to his face to find blood dripping out of his nose and ears. Then I withdraw the power and heal him. It would be pointless to try to talk to him after intimidating him if his eardrums were still ruined.


    “What… was that?” Terenus says, his suave voice sounding shaken for the first time since I met him.


    “You know how very loud noises can cause damage?” I say. “There’s a kind of sound which the Dwemer refer to by a word that translates roughly as ‘below sound’. Like how you can’t hear a guar whistle for being too high pitched, it’s sound you can’t hear for being too low pitched. But if it’s ‘loud’ enough, you can still feel it.”


    Terenus wipes off the blood, staring at me incredulously, speechless.


    “I can kill you with silence,” I say quietly.


    I don’t think I’d actually be willing to kill someone this way even if I could push the volume high enough. It’s terrifying even to me, honestly. And would probably kill me as well to use it that way. I could kill him a million other more normal ways. This is purely intimidation. Anyone can threaten death. Plenty of people would have threatened him in his life. No one has threatened him with this, I’m certain.


    “If you kill me, you will invoke the Wrath of Sithis,” Terenus says, very uncertainly.


    I shrug. “I’m willing to risk that to protect my hearth-wife.” I fold my arms across my chest. “But, there’s a way out of the situation that would be better for everyone involved. Almost everyone. Tell me who made that contract and I will send their soul to Sithis instead.”


    Terenus is quiet for a long moment, and I remain silent and stand there waiting for his answer. “A king joined the Dark Brotherhood,” Terenus says slowly. “A king blessed with the gift of murder through silence itself. How did you come upon such a gift?”


    “It was given to me by Sheogorath,” I say. “The Madgod and the Sithis-shaped hole in the world.”


    “Dare I ask what you had to do for it?”


    I give a sharp grin. “I made a deal with him, and succeeded. I made a prince choke in shock merely by speaking my true name.”


    Terenus pointedly does not ask me what my true name is. (I normally wouldn’t lay on the melodrama quite this thick even for a direct threat to my family, but I think this guy will appreciate my style.)


    “Silencer,” Terenus says finally. “I believe we can come to an… arrangement.”


    “I’m listening,” I say.


    “Few know that we do not accept every Sacrament that is made,” Terenus says. “I have had to decline ones that I deemed incredibly foolish or impossible even for us. A vampire once performed the Black Sacrament to ask us to kill the sun. I, of course, killed him for being an idiot.”


    “Ooh!” I say, immediately brightening. “You want to send me into some good fights?” I pause. “I mean, not the sun, obviously, but…”


    “One cannot walk into any tavern without hearing a song about Neri the Orc King doing glorious battle with everything from Sea Elves to ancient necromancers to Daedric Princes. If you have killed half of what the bards claim you have…”


    “They don’t know the half of it,” I say.


    “…then I believe it would please the Night Mother more to take out some of those impossible contracts,” Terenus says. “The Listener gave me some rather unusual instructions, you see. She said that should you refuse the contract, to simply dismiss it.”


    “What if I’d killed you?”


    “Then I would be meeting our Dark Father sooner rather than later,” Terenus says, unconcerned. “You are no mere assassin. You are the hand of chaos. I shall decline any contracts against those close to you. And if someone else wants something ridiculous dead, I will call upon you.”


    I’m not sure whether he thinks he’s negotiating or that he knows he just gave me two gifts to save himself. I’m sure he probably figured it out quickly at how I couldn’t resist being cheerful at the prospect of cool stuff to fight.


    “Did you happen to have any Sacraments made for Molag Bal?” I wonder. “Or Mannimarco?”


    “Indeed,” Terenus says.


    “Hadran? Krin Ren-dro?” I go on, then chuckle at Terenus’ increasingly taut face.


    “I will… need to speak with the Listener,” Terenus speaks aloud, but his face says, “Kill me if you want but don’t make me do all that paperwork.” His eyes also say, “You forgot to take off the tail again.”


    “So,” I say, returning pointedly to the point. “The name?”


    “A High Elf woman by the name of Varustante,” Terenus says. “You may find her in Skywatch. She seemed quite annoyed at the amount of respect a ‘mere Orc’ has been receiving.”


    “Var…us… Could you spell that for me? Fucking High Elf names.”


    Terenus’ eyebrows go, “Wait, aren’t you a High Elf?” but his mouth decides it doesn’t actually want to know what the fuck my deal is and just spells it for me.


    Varustante turns out to be a racist bandit officer who managed to escape my gratuitous massacres. I think I’ve actually met her before, but I was wearing a fake beard at the time, which would be why she didn’t wind up dead. I wish I’d gone back and killed everyone on that island just to be sure. Then there wouldn’t be bitches like her thinking they could fuck with my family and live.


    She definitely doesn’t expect me to simply walk into her room, ‘Hail Sithis!’ her in the chest, cut off her head and stick it on a pike in front of Dra’bul as a traitor. She really ought to have seen it coming, though.


    When I return to tell Terenus the racist bandit is dead, I take the chance to leave the cat-mask off for a moment. It’s not the most comfortable thing to be wearing constantly even in a place I’m supposed to be safe.


    “I was wondering if you would ever show them your true face,” Slim-Jah says.


    “You knew?” Terenus says.


    “Yes,” Slim-Jah says. “I met him even before he became a king. It was not my secret to tell.”


    Terenus’ forehead goes, “I wish I’d known that before I asked him to murder his hearth-wife,” but his mouth remains silent.


    I think I’ll go actually give Green-Venom-Tongue that interview he wanted.