Torin stood alone in the middle of the rough mountain track, a broad, inviting target against the backdrop of grey stone and twisted Reach pines. He wasn't hiding. He wanted to be seen.
And seen he was. Eight Forsworn warriors, their faces painted with blue woad, their armor pieced together from leather, bone, and stolen steel, emerged from a bend in the path.
They spotted him instantly, their postures snapping from wary travel to predatory alertness. They fanned out, weapons clearing sheaths with the rasp of hatred.
Torin's grin was a flash of white in the gloomy daylight. He let go of his axe. It didn't fall. It hovered beside him, humming with latent power.
He raised his empty hands.
In his palms, two orbs of vivid, emerald-green light coalesced, swirling like captured storms. Without ceremony, he slammed them against his own chest.
The effect was immediate. His skin darkened, taking on the hard, lusterless black sheen of volcanic glass—Ebonyflesh. But it didn't stop there.
A deep, grinding rumble came from within him. His body swelled. Muscles corded and bulged under the blackened skin, straining against his armor straps. His bones creaked as they expanded, adding terrifying inches to his already massive frame.
In moments, he stood at a height that would make a mammoth blink in confusion, a living monolith of magically-hardened muscle and expanded bone. Gigantize.
His hovering axe shot back into his now-gargantuan hand. As his fingers closed around the haft, the weapon erupted. Golden lightning, thick as serpents, crackled and raced along the silvery metal, casting stark, dancing shadows across the path.
The display finally shattered the Forsworn's stunned paralysis. They erupted into frantic action. Two of them barked guttural words, their own skin shimmering grey as they cast weaker Ironflesh spells.
Two more nocked arrows to their short bows. Another began a guttural chant, dark energy pooling at his feet to summon a wolf familiar from the planes of Oblivion.
They never got the chance to attack.
From the thick, shadowed thicket to the north, an arrow materialized. There was no sound of a bowstring, no shout of warning. It was just there, a streak of fletching and death. It took the summoning Forsworn directly in the temple.
His chant cut off in a wet gurgle, the nascent wolf form dissolving into black smoke before it could fully manifest. The man crumpled.
Before his body hit the stony ground, a second arrow followed. And a third. A fourth. A fifth. Each one a perfect, lethal whisper. Thwip-thud. Thwip-thud. Thwip-thud.
It was a brutal, clinical symphony. One Forsworn archer dropped, an arrow through his throat. An Ironflesh caster staggered as a shaft punched through his magically-hardened ribs.
Another archer spun and fell. With each soft, final impact, another painted warrior was erased from the fight. In less time than it took to draw a full breath, the eight became three.
Torin's eyes narrowed, searching the thicket. He was impressed. This wasn't Aela's work. His shield-sister was a peerless hunter, but her shots were powerful and deliberate, like a hammer.
This was something else. This was the deadliest sewing needle he'd ever seen, stitching death with impossible speed and an almost casual, flawless accuracy. This kind of rapid, silent butchery required a superhuman agility, a connection to bow and arrow that went beyond training.
It required a Bosmer who'd grown up in the whispering depths of Valenwood.
No more arrows came from the thicket. The silence that followed was more telling than the shots themselves. Torin couldn't help but let out a low chuckle that rumbled in his expanded chest.
Testy, are we? Fine.
He turned his attention back to the three remaining Forsworn. Panic had sharpened into a desperate, split-second plan. Two of them, faces twisted with a mix of terror and fury, let out ragged screams and charged him directly, hoping to overwhelm him with close-quarters frenzy.
The third broke for the tree line on the opposite side of the path from Auri's deadly thicket.
Clever, Torin mused, his thoughts moving as fast as the lightning on his axe. Divide the attention. Two as a distraction, one to report back. Not that it'll do a lick of good.
He didn't move his feet. Instead, he exerted his will, his mind latching onto the powerful, latent magnetic field emanating from the lodestone core deep within his axe. Telekinesis, refined over years of practice, wasn't about lifting objects—it was about guiding forces that already existed.
He hurled the axe. It didn't just fly; it shot from his hand like a bolt from a Dwemer ballista, trailing arcs of golden energy. It crossed the distance to the fleeing Forsworn in a blink.
The impact wasn't a clean cut.
The heavy hammer-side smashed into the man's back with a sickening crunch of shattered spine and ribs. The force didn't stop. It carried the limp body forward, pinning it like a bug against the trunk of a gnarled pine with a final, wet thud that shook the tree.
By then, the other two were on him. The first, frothing at the mouth, brought a jagged bone axe down in a two-handed chop aimed to split Torin's magically-blackened skull.
Torin's hand, black as polished obsidian and hard as the same, snapped up. He didn't block the haft—he caught the biting edge of the bone blade in his naked palm. There was a sound like grinding stones. He clenched his fist.
The enchanted bone, tough enough to cleave steel, disintegrated. It didn't break; it turned into a fine, white powder that trickled like hourglass sand from between his fingers.
The Forsworn stared, dumbfounded, at the empty haft in his hands.
Torin's now-empty fist didn't pause. It continued its motion in a short, devastating jab. It connected with the man's face. The sound was a wet, definitive POP.
The man's head snapped back on a neck that was no longer structurally sound, and his entire body lifted off the ground, flying backwards to land in a broken heap ten feet away.
The last Forsworn, a half-step behind his now-dead companion, roared in pure, unadulterated rage. He swung his twin, notched swords in a furious cross-cut aimed at Torin's torso.
Torin didn't dodge. He didn't even look at the man. He merely raised his free hand, fingers outstretched, in a casual 'stop' gesture.
From the pine tree twenty yards away, the axe wrenched itself free from the pulverized corpse and tree bark. It reversed its path, a silvery-gold blur screaming back across the clearing. It took the last Forsworn in the back of the head just as his swords were about to make contact.
There was no graceful severance. The combined momentum and weight obliterated the skull in a spray of bone and matter. The head simply ceased to be. The headless body took two stumbling steps before collapsing.
The axe completed its orbit, the haft smacking neatly back into Torin's waiting, outstretched palm. The golden lightning faded to a soft hum.
...
Silence settled back over the mountain path, heavy and final. The only sounds were the fading crackle of Torin's lightning enchantment and the soft rustle of leaves as two figures emerged from the thicket.
Auri stepped out first, her bow already slung over her shoulder, her sharp green eyes scanning the carnage with a hunter's detached assessment. Echo lumbered out behind her, the bear giving a dismissive sniff at the nearest corpse before ambling over to nudge Torin's leg with her broad head.
The Bosmer looked from the scattered bodies back to Torin, who was shrinking back to his normal, albeit still imposing, size, the ebony sheen fading from his skin. "That makes the twelfth patrol we've taken out," she stated, her voice quiet but clear.
Torin nodded, rolling his shoulders as the last of the Gigantize spell's ache faded. "Thirteenth," he corrected, "if Qasim and Aela are finished with theirs."
He let out a thoughtful hum, his gaze drifting up the winding path that led deeper into the jagged hills. "Seeing as the groups are getting bigger and the sightings are getting rarer… I'd say we've pruned the branches enough. Time to go chop down the tree... but first"
His plan for clearing the ancient ruins—and finding both the lost sword of Talos and, if the legends were true, the resting place of Red Eagle's blade—was straightforward in theory.
Taking out twenty or thirty Forsworn holed up in a crumbling fortress wasn't much of a problem for him alone. Add in the lethal skills of Qasim, Auri, and Aela, and it should have been a walk in a very bloody park.
The problem wasn't the fight inside the towers. It was the fight that would come after.
Forsworn had an uncanny, almost supernatural knack for smelling trouble in their territory. They responded like a kicked hive, swarming from every hidden crevice and remote camp. Raiding the Sundered Towers wasn't just a dungeon crawl; it was poking the biggest, angriest hornet's nest in the Reach.
Red Eagle's Redoubt was far too close to the Karthspire camp—arguably the largest known Forsworn stronghold—not to mention a dozen other scattered bases and hidden villages.
A prolonged fight at the towers would be a one-way ticket to getting surrounded by an endless tide of painted, howling reinforcements.
That's why they'd spent the last two days not marching on the objective, but lurking in the hills like wolves culling a herd.
Ambushing patrols. Cutting supply lines. Silencing scouts. Thinning the numbers that could respond to a crisis. It was tedious, but very much necessary work.
And that's exactly why Torin had been secretly thrilled when Aela and Auri showed up. With their unmatched tracking and killing efficiency, what would have taken him and the taciturn Qasim a week to accomplish alone had been compressed into two brutal, efficient days.
The forest paths were growing quieter. The hornet's nest was being gently, methodically, de-populated from the edges in.
"Let's circle back to the main camp," Torin said, hefting his axe onto his shoulder. "See if Qasim and Aela are done with their gardening. If they are… we strike the Towers tomorrow."
...
Torin, Auri, and Echo walked back into their camp as the last of the day's light bled from the sky. The camp was a relatively spacious cave they'd had to win from its previous owner—a particularly stubborn troll whose remains were now fertilizing a patch of mountain flowers further down the slope.
Inside, the fire was already crackling, casting dancing shadows on the rough stone walls. Qasim and Aela sat on opposite sides of the flames, wrapped in their usual companionable silence—Aela cleaning under her fingernails with a dagger, Qasim staring into the embers as if reading his future in the coals.
Aela looked up as they entered, her sharp eyes missing nothing. A slow grin touched her lips as she focused on Auri. "Well? Run into any trouble out there?"
Auri scoffed, a surprisingly sharp, dismissive sound from the usually quiet Bosmer. She unslung her bow and leaned it against the cave wall. "From those hill-humping salad-eaters? By Y'ffre's roots, Aela. I thought we were friends."
Hearing the slur, Torin couldn't help but let out a short, amused chuckle as he dropped his axe beside his bedroll.
Salad-eater. It was the Bosmer equivalent of the Nord's 'milk-drinker,' though with far more specific cultural baggage. It was a term used almost exclusively by strict adherents to the Green Pact—the Wood Elves who were religiously forbidden from harming any plant life in Valenwood.
The irony, which Torin had always found darkly funny, was that the Pact didn't technically forbid them from eating vegetables. It just forbade them from picking or harvesting them, or buying them, since that would encourage the act of harming the plants.
Many Bosmer did, in fact, eat salad… usually stolen, scavenged, or provided by non-Pact followers. It didn't stop them from using 'Salad-eater' as their go-to insult for anyone they considered soft or too civilized.
The logic was as twisted as a Reach briar, but it got the point across.
Aela gave Auri a dismissive wave of her dagger. "I wasn't talking about the Forsworn, twig. I was talking about him." She jerked her chin toward Torin, who was now rummaging in his pack. "This is your first time working a job with him. He can be a real handful. Thinks he's clever. Makes weird plans. Attracts strange books."
Auri turned her gaze fully on Torin, her head tilted like a bird considering a curious bug. She gave him a slow, appraising up-and-down look, taking in his size, his gear, the quiet confidence in his posture. After a moment, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips.
"No trouble from him either," she said, her voice quieter now. She settled onto a flat rock near the fire, pulling her knees to her chest. "I found him to be… quite impressive, in fact."
As Echo flopped down beside him with a contented sigh, Torin didn't bother looking up from the pack he was organizing. "See?" he said, his voice dry. "Your friend's got good judgment, sister. And good manners. You should learn from her. Or find other company, lest you drag her down to your level of grunting and elbow-jabbing."
Aela opened her mouth, a sharp retort ready on her tongue, but Auri spoke first.
"Aela's company has been nothing but wonderful," the Bosmer said, her voice soft but firm. She was staring into the fire, her expression thoughtful. "I have learned much from her. About the hunt, about this land… about loyalty."
She paused, the firelight catching the green flecks in her eyes. "It's funny you should say that about leaving, though. "She let out a small sigh, the sound almost lost in the crackle of the flames. "I have been planning to leave. And now seems as good a time as any to break the news."
Aela's head snapped around, her teasing annoyance instantly replaced by genuine surprise. "You're leaving? The Companions?"
There was no accusation in her voice, just blunt curiosity tinged with what might have been the faintest hint of disappointment.
Auri offered her a small, apologetic smile. "I was not a Companion for long. But I don't think it is something a person can truly 'leave behind.' The bonds, the lessons… they stay."
She shook her head, her gaze drifting around the cave as if seeing the stone walls of Jorrvaskr instead. "Still… Jorrvaskr is not a place where I can lay my roots. Not for long. The space is too limited. The stone does not sing to me. If I stay, I fear what roots I try to put down will only rot."
Aela frowned, her brow furrowed. The nomadic, rootless life of a Bosmer was a concept she could grasp intellectually—they were hunters, wanderers—but the poetic way Auri spoke of it was foreign to her Nord sensibilities.
"I don't understand half of what you just said," Aela admitted, her voice gruff. "And I don't agree with the other half. But I can see it in your face. You've already made up your mind."
She jabbed her dagger into the dirt near the fire, a gesture of resigned acceptance. "So. Where will you go?"
Auri let out a soft, considering hum. "Well," she said, "I have already seen the greener side of Skyrim. The Rift, Falkreath…"
Her gaze lifted, shifting across the fire to land on Torin with a flicker of open, thinly-veiled interest.
"Perhaps," she said, her tone light but deliberate, "I will try going further north. I hear the ice has its own kind of song."
...
I'm motivated by praise and interaction, so be sure to leave a like, power stone, or whatever kind of shendig this site uses, and more importantly do share you thoughts on the chapter in the comment section!
Want more chapters? Then consider subscribing to my pat rēon. You can read ahead for as little as $1 and it helps me a lot! -> (pat rēon..com / wicked132)
You can also always come and say hi on my discord server -> (disc ord..gg / sEtqmRs5y7)- or hit me up at - Wicked132#5511 - and I'll add you myself)