With Anthony no longer trying to barbecue me, I took a look around at the complete clusterfuck still going on. And we were winning… maybe.

  Skadi had cornered the big bad bandit queen, though she also managed to catch an arrow with one of her thunder thighs. Not that it seemed to bother her too much as she laughed and swung her new axe around like a demented top. Ralof meanwhile looked more red than blue now with all the gore stuck to him, three corpses at his feet.

  They probably decided he was the safer target, and ended up being turned into a macabre art project.

  I didn't hesitate this time when I saw one of the bandits trying to slink away. I had seen firsthand what kind of monsters they were, and the people they had been working to death were still back there.

  I could have also made a joke about gingers having no soul anyway, but that would have probably been in poor taste.

  It was still kind of surreal watching the magic lash out and literally bisect him, the two halves of him falling over. Like, fuck, wasn't it supposed to be one of the most basic bitch spells there was?

  I glanced at Uurwaen, muttering curses under her breath as she stared at the arrow lodged in her shoulder. While I couldn't do much against her cousin for the very real fear of friendly fire, I could at least make sure that her and Anthony didn't try anything.

  Skadi seemed to have things well in hand anyway, and Ralof was moving in to assist.

  Uurwaen spat at Anthony when I put them together, but the guy just kept looking at me like I was about to eat him or something, which, you know, I obviously wasn't going to do.

  The both of them jumped as a head landed in his arms.

  "Figured I should reunite our lovebirds," Skadi commented with a grin, blood splattered across her nose and cheeks.

  Uurwaen understandably panicked as an axe still slick with blood touched her neck. "Wait! Y-You don't have to! You'll get more if—"

  "We're dead anyway," Anthony whispered, staring into the blank eyes of the literal decapitated head. Should I feel bad that it didn't bother me as much as it should have? "Jarl Siddgier will have us silenced as soon as we're in his hands."

  "Jarl Siddgeir?" Ralof was watching him closely, wiping some blood off his own axe.

  "Syalleth… she paid him a cut and in return he looked the other way…"

  Uurwaen spat at him again. "You're the one who brokered it!"

  "Are you saying the Jarl of Falkreath is in league with bandit scum?" Skadi asked incredulously.

  Thinking back, I did remember the guy as being extremely sketchy.

  He gave a quiet laugh. "You shouldn't have even known we were here. We kept the shipments going…"

  I felt a quick smooch on my cheek. "You can thank Russ here for that."

  The miserable way he looked at me didn't make me feel sorry for him, not after the shit he pulled. I just gave him a shit-eating grin back instead.

  "It's not Falkreath we're heading to," Ralof admitted. "We'll take you to Riverwood. You can plead your case to Jarl Balgruuf."

  "We don't have anything to hold a mage," Skadi commented as she looked over the arrow still sticking out of her thigh.

  There was a glint of something in the Stormcloak's eye. "I think the Imperial here knows this is his best chance at keeping his head attached to the rest of him."

  Skadi shrugged after a moment. "I suppose it merits some looking into. If it's true, the good people of Falkreath deserve a jarl who isn't in league with scum like this."

  "That they do," Ralof agreed quietly.

  "I'll be taking this back then," she said as she retrieved the head like it wasn't someone's head. "It should fetch some septims, at least."

  Next came the favorite pastime of any murderhobo, the looting. We split the septims they had on hand evenly, and I even 'found' some boots that weren't one step from falling apart. All nice, but that wasn't what really put a smile on my face.

  That would be the spellbook I saw with a few other less valuable knick-knacks. One of them must have been something of a hoarder.

  Opening it, the same thing happened as last time, though the sudden migraine wasn't as bad.

  The way it worked made even less sense to me, but I didn't need to know how it worked to do it anymore than the Sith lightning. The problem was more that I almost blinded myself trying it out, and it wasn't hard to figure out why. I had been thinking about magicka, and so it pointed out magicka to me.

  It was fucking everywhere. I needed a better way of testing it.

  Focusing my thoughts on treasure, valuables, something we might have missed, the magic pointed me in the direction of the waterfall.

  "Up to something?" Skadi asked, probably wondering why I was looking around like a hyperactive chipmunk.

  It seemed she had dealt with the arrow as well, only a faint mark left on her left thigh. The miracles of modern medicine, or potions. We had raided Anthony's stash earlier, which left me with three new vials filled to the brim with blue crack.

  "Magic," I answered mysteriously.

  She raised a very blonde eyebrow, but followed me to the waterfall without much protest, or rather a soft patch of dirt close by. My fingers felt a bit wooden, the spell hollowing me out on the way, but after a bit of digging I produced a small pouch that jingled with coins.

  Not the biggest haul but money was money, and it was a nice bonus on top of my share of the spoils.

  "A useful trick," she commented. "How are you feeling?"

  Her eyes had gotten surprisingly soft, so much so that I wasn't sure what to say.

  I had studiously avoided going down that rabbit hole so far. I had killed two people, even if they were awful fucking people, but then I was still struggling to believe that any of this was real. Then there was the whole taste the rainbow thing that happened. Yeah, that sure as shit didn't help my grasp on reality.

  Blegh. I wasn't going to trauma dump on her. "Fine," I finally answered.

  She gave a soft snort. "I have eyes, Russ. You're not used to this. Fighting. Killing."

  Well, so much for thinking I got away with it.

  "If we're going to be traveling together," she continued, "then I would have us be honest with one another."

  …Where would I even start?

  "I guess I'm an open book," I tried to joke instead.

  "You could say that." She looked at her nails like a smug cat. "I also happen to be an excellent judge of character."

  I watched her stalk to the pool of water to wash off the blood still on her. The way she was squatting down to do it though… I should get my mind out of the gutter.

  Ralof was speaking with the miners when we returned. They wanted to stay and wait for the jarl's men, and if that didn't work, then making the journey to Falkreath themselves when they were strong enough.

  We had agreed earlier not to tell them about Jarl Siddgeir potentially being a ratfucking bastard so they didn't meet a mysterious and sudden accident after making it back home.

  We were back on the road again soon after, with two new additions that couldn't stand one another. We'd also taken some supplies, like the gamey jerky I was chewing on. It could maybe have used a few more spices, but a slightly funky jerky was a whole of a lot better than fuck and all.

  I had a more serious problem on my hands anyway. Boredom. Ralof and Skadi tried to at least liven things up by telling stories, but I could only listen to some variation of 'and then I fucked them up' so many times before I lost interest. God, I missed the internet.

  All that was left was magic, and I took to it with a zeal born of crippling dopamine withdrawal. First up was figuring out how to at least somewhat modulate how much oomph I put into a spell, kind of important if I didn't drain myself dry just fucking around.

  Good news, I figured it out.

  Bad news… I might have set my cloak on fire. But I put it out quick enough that only Anthony noticed.

  That gave me the idea to ask him for some tips in a roundabout manner, and thankfully he got the memo and played along. Probably because he was trying to keep me happy so I didn't eat him, but I wasn't going to complain.

  I actually wanted to figure out how to get the hang of the ward or whatever it was that he had used against me, but when he started actually explaining it in detail, my eyes kind of just glazed over. What the fuck was a meridian lattice even supposed to be?

  Once the sun that wasn't a sun set again, the cold returned with a vengeance.

  Helping Ralof get a fire going again with some sparks, he was about to tie our two new friends around a tree together when they complained about the cold. He ended up tying them to himself instead before dozing off next to the campfire as they stared awkwardly.

  He had an impressive ability to not give a fuck that I envied. I was having much more trouble sleeping.

  At least watching Skadi comb her long hair again was something I could do for hours.

  I soon noticed her beckoning me closer with a finger. "Your hair looks like it hasn't seen a comb in months," she commented.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I didn't protest too much as she proceeded to take her comb to my hair, seeing as she was being uncharacteristically gentle. The real trick, ironically, was staying awake, and it only got harder when she started humming some tune.

  After a while like that, she held the comb out to me with a cheeky smile. "You try."

  It only hit me that she meant her hair when she positioned herself in front of me, pulling back her long strawberry blonde tresses for me. That's when it hit me through the many layers of irony and sarcasm I had put up as a defense mechanism recently.

  I was beginning to fall for her.

  …

  Man, if this all turned out to be a dream after all, I was going to have a few words with my subconscious.

  Following her example, I pulled the comb through her hair gently, feeling her relaxing more with every pass. Eventually, she just fell back into my arms, almost crushing me. But in a good way.

  Her very blue eyes stared up at mine as we sat under the stars, her hair splayed out like a sunburst.

  If this was a movie then there would have already been people shouting for me to kiss the girl. Not wanting to disappoint my imagined audience, I leaned in to do just that, and she let me.

  What could I say about it? It was nice. Besides the jerky we had both been scarfing down, I could also taste the mint she liked to chew on.

  I pulled back after a moment, not wanting to push my luck, and I found her eyes still closed. Fuck, for being one step removed from a Khornate Berserker, she was fucking adorable.

  We soon cuddled up under my monster of a cloak again, and this time she purposefully smushed my face between her breasts. I, wisely, didn't fight it, snaking my arm around her waist instead, the feel of her both firm and soft. A guy could get used to this, honestly.

  It wasn't long until I was dreaming of the tower again, still rising higher and higher.

  Actually, I was surprisingly… conscious? And now that I was thinking about it, I felt myself able to move around somehow. I didn't have eyes or a body… or anything, honestly.

  It was some 'I have no mouth but I must scream' shit.

  Still, I'd had so many shocks the past day or two that I just rolled with it. Who needs a body anyway? Not this guy!

  I left the tower and the sound behind, out into blackness that seemed to go on forever. There was something like a sky, but all around, a thin sheen surrounding the blackness. It was made up of so many colors that it would probably take me days to make them all out, but it looked just like the magicka I remembered seeing. Just… much more of it. So much more.

  The longer I explored, the more I was able to make out. The seemingly endless blackness was more like a mirage, and I could make some things out if I focused, oceans and deserts and a thousand other things.

  The creepiest thing was the feeling that everything was looking back at me as I looked at it. If I had a body, I might have had goosebumps.

  There was also something kind of at the center of everything, a thing of solid gold, but when I looked at it, it shifted. And it kept shifting, routinely and repetitively. Like clockwork. It was the only constant I could see.

  I only got close enough to see that it was something that looked vaguely like a dragon. No way was I picking a fight with that.

  I continued my adventure, seeing so many wondrous things, and those things giving me the side-eye like I was the creepy uncle at Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how long I kept at it, my sense of time all out of whack, but seeing something that somewhat resembled the sky, I finally dared to get closer.

  It was beautiful, individual grains of sand and water droplets each a different color, and the closer I dared to get, the more alive I felt. Suddenly I had lungs that let me breathe in the scents of a thousand flowers and ears to hear the sounds of birds.

  I still felt something watching me, however. The feeling was even harder to ignore now.

  "So the Abomination sees fit to visit me."

  I stopped, the words being spoken to me from everywhere at once. It was a beautiful voice, melodious, but also dripping with disgust and discontent.

  I watched as the colors slowly coalesced, revealing a woman with wings that burned with all the colors I had seen, and a sword just as colorful, the light refracting in ways that seemed impossible.

  "You are unpleasant to look upon," she harshly said.

  I scratched at the tip of my nose awkwardly. I couldn't say the same, she was fucking beautiful, but I wasn't going to say that when she was being so rude.

  I also ventured a guess. "Meridia."

  Her own nose scrunched in displeasure. "It is even less pleasant to hear my name from you."

  I put a little bite in my words next, crossing my arms. "Should I have said Merid-Nunda instead?"

  She somehow got even more pissy, brandishing her sword. "Speak that name again and I shall skewer the puppet you speak through and burn it from my realm. I am Merid-Nunda no longer."

  That she was threatening it and not doing it told me a few things. And a Daedric Prince of all things calling me an abomination? Funny.

  "Merid-Nunda," I said again, a smile on my lips. "I think it's a pretty name."

  It was fucking crazy, taunting her, but backing down might have made it more likely that she skewered me with that shiny sword of hers, not less.

  A few very suspenseful moments passed, but then the harshness of her light receded slightly, revealing a very sour expression. "Why have you come, Abomination?"

  My smile widened. There was something exhilarating about playing a game of chicken with a Daedric Prince.

  "You know, it's not nice to go around calling people abominations. Where are your manners?"

  The colors fluctuated as she stared at me. "There is no truer word for what you are, a thing that's painted on itself a thin veneer of form and substance." She sneered at me as she edged closer on her wings. "Look beneath that and you are revealed for the empty thing you are."

  Putting aside all the new questions her words gave me… "Have I hurt you? Harmed you in some way?"

  "I ask again," she grumped after another pause. "Why have you come?"

  "You caught my attention with how colorful you are. No other reason, really." It was the honest truth.

  Still, she sent me a look bordering on the incredulous. "You have disturbed me for so petty a reason?"

  I shrugged my shoulders helplessly. "Would you rather I lied and told you it was for some dark and nefarious purpose?"

  Alright, maybe I was having too much fun with this…

  "Yes," she answered immediately. "At least it would fit your nature."

  "I thought I was an empty thing? That sounds like it would take some substance," I snarked.

  I stepped closer to her this time, ignoring the fact that I was naked. Besides, with how sheer her gown was, she might as well be naked with me.

  "You'd really prefer an enemy when you could make a friend?" I continued. "And to think you called me petty, Meridia."

  She must have noticed me looking as well, her gown suddenly more opaque, her pointy nipples no longer poking through. Boo.

  I was tempted to poke fun at that as well when she gave a haughty sniff. "I am not so grand a fool as to think a thing like you could ever be a friend to me."

  I opened my arms wide. "Then smite me. Isn't that what you do to enemies? I won't stop you."

  Her eyes like a thousand gemstones found mine, the colors of her sword burning harsher again. She turned away after a moment, though I could still feel her watching me.

  "Another trick. Even if I were to smite your false puppet of flesh, the thing that you are will remain. I would not see myself sullied even further by your presence."

  I had a funny thought while she was waxing poetic like she was on Broadway. I was going to give myself a fetch quest. "I suppose I can't expect you to just take my word for it. How about I help you?"

  Meridia scoffed with a haughtiness the most spoiled princess in all the world would struggle to match. "Help me?"

  "Not here. On Mundus. There's a necromancer skulking around your temple, no? Who's actually defiled something of yours, unlike yours truly."

  Her wings twitched and she turned back around, gemstone eyes burning into mine. "What use would my favor be to a thing like you?"

  I couldn't help a small sigh. "Maybe not being called a thing for a start? Just a thought."

  "Hmph." She made a show of looking away again. "Seek out Malkoran if you wish, or don't. Now go."

  "I guess that could pass as cordial."

  Something gave me a surprisingly gentle push in response, and I decided I probably shouldn't overstay my welcome more than I already have, so I left, my body going poof as the colors bled out into that false blackness again.

  I returned back to my? tower. I didn't actually know if it was mine or what it was doing, but it's the only place I didn't feel eyes on me.

  I would have sighed again if I could, but no lungs. I somehow had even more questions now, and still no answers.

  Pretending to sigh instead, I listened to that sound and watched the tower rise again, waiting to wake up.