Tallis stood and watched as Hrisskar used his broadsword to section out chunks of the nix hound. There were murmurs of appreciation and plans for dinner from many of the other legionaries present. She was sure she heard someone mention sujamma at least once.

  His hand still on her shoulder, Falx said. "Nice work Mage Tallis. I feel back to one hundred percent."

  She looked around. "Is anyone else injured?"

  A legionnaire she didn't know turned toward her. His expression was cautiously hopeful. A steady trickle of blood was running down his right arm from a wound near his shoulder. He was trying to staunch it.

  Pompously Hrisskar muttered. "Not all of us are worried enough to mention our wounds." He punctuated the comment with another swing.

  Tallis saw a flush start on the face of the wounded man. Before he could step away, she spoke matter-of-factly. "Bleeding counts as enough to be worth mentioning." She called healing energy into her second patient before he could step away. Some of the tension of pain started to ebb from his face. That was nice to see.

  In a low voice she added. "I wouldn't expect anyone attacking the hound once its dead will have much in the way of injuries to report." That got her a brief twitch of smile from the patient. Hrisskar didn't reply, which Tallis took to mean he hadn't heard.

  There were no other obvious wounds, and no one requested any further healing. The warriors began to disperse. Then she was uncertain. Should she go back to Arrille's to drop off the fungi? She still owed him eight septims for last nights' lodgings; probably more than that considering the expensive meal.

  Falx said. "Are you all right?"

  "Um, sure."

  Slowly he steered her toward the census and excise office building. "First battle?"

  "I killed a rat, well a sort of a rat earlier today." She reported, then stopped, embarrassed. Comparing what she had done with an oversized and diseased rat to what had happened here didn't seem right.

  "Is today the first time you had to fight something that was trying to kill you?"

  Suddenly she felt bile at the back of her throat, and her stomach twisted up. She nodded.

  "You'll be okay. It just takes time. It's a serious thing the first time." He opened the door and gave a nod to Sellus in passing. "There's a pallet in the basement. No one uses it any more. You can sleep there whenever you like."

  Tallis took Sellus' lack of response for agreement.

  "So you are from Cyrodill?" Falx asked.

  "The Imperial City." She answered quietly.

  "Beautiful place, I've heard."

  He led her through the small courtyard and down a stair. At the bottom was a small room, furnished with a pallet, a couple of tuns in a rack and an irregular pile of storage sacks. The heavy layer of dust was testament to the lack of current use.

  "It's a long story," Falx explained. "But let's just say that for a while Socucius Ergalla needed a place to sleep away from home for a while. Things are better now, so you can stay as long as you like." He turned to go.

  "That rat," Tallis said, "It didn't seem right."

  He nodded, half turning back toward her. Somber torchlight from the upper hall seemed to touch him like sunset and sadness as he spoke. "Not much from the mainland does well here." Adjusting his weapon, he sat on one of the lower steps. "Early on I'm told they tried to bring horses and dogs. They didn't survive. Even the rats are sickly. And what with the increase in storms from Red Mountain, you'll sometimes see blighted beasts." At her blank look he added. "Think twice as strong and five times as aggressive."

  She shuddered at the idea. "I hope I never meet anything like that."

  Falx held up a cautionary hand. "You will. So hope instead that when you do, your plan is to kill it quickly and efficiently."

  Tallis nodded, and leaned back against the doorway. She flinched slightly as her left hip gave a twinge of pain at the contact.

  Falx was on his feet in an instant. "You are hurt."

  Tallis protested. "I'm not bleeding, I'm fine."

  Ignoring her words, he gently moved her clothing to reveal a purpling bruise that covered most of the left side of her hip. "No, you are not bleeding, but I'd still call you wounded, Mage."

  She touched the bruise gently.

  "You don't even remember it happening, do you?"

  She shook her head. Slowly, she pulled her shirt a little higher. The bruise went at least halfway up her ribs. As she got the shirt that far, Falx cleared his throat.

  "You might just want to heal it." His voice was a little tight.

  Tallis was suddenly aware of the intensity of his gaze. Saying nothing, she let her hands curl to hold the cloth, and gently called the magic. Slowly the bruise faded from an angry purple, to red, to a sickly yellow, and then it faded completely.

  Falx' gentle hand smoothed her shirt down again. She hadn't realized he was standing so close. "Get some rest." He said. "You'll probably have dreams about the fights. Don't worry, they're just dreams."

  She glanced up to see that his expression was closed off, distant. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what dreams he'd had once, but she was pretty sure that was the sort of question he wasn't going to answer.

  So instead she said. "Thank you."

  ~~Next morning~~

  Tallis smiled and nodded to each of the legionnaire guards as she made her way over the bridge. Arrille had assured her that he would be happy to purchase any usable fungi she found. He'd also implied that he would buy rat, nix hound or even mud crab meat. However since that meant she'd actually have to kill something, that didn't seem like a very promising venture to Tallis.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The sky was clear, the sun was shining and in the distance she could see what she would have called birds, but that Arrille had assured her were much more dangerous. They were hovering over the coast. Careful to avoid them, she turned inland. Using the spear that Falx had recommended she carry as a weapon, as a walking stick, she made her way through the increasingly dim, moss strewn fern trees. Faint luminescence guided her to more specimens of the local fungi.

  She was standing in waist deep watery muck when she heard the scrabbling approach of what could only be a rat. She turned, and looked upwards. Sure enough on a nearby ridge, back-lit by what little sunlight could penetrate this part of the woods, stood an overly large rat. It looked just as diseased and sickly as the other she'd seen. Once she'd met its angry red-eyed gaze, it charged toward her. So it was just as aggressive as the other one.

  She quickly pulled the butt end of the spear out of the muck, and shifted it so as to prepare for the charge, and for the jump she feared would come at the end of it. Feeling a little sick to her stomach, she also called forth the campfire spell she'd used to kill the last one.

  Flame erupted under it's belly, and squealing furiously, the rat leapt toward her head. She raised the spear hastily. She could see that like the other one, reddened patch areas of skin were oozing something. It's eyes didn't seem to both be looking at the same direction. She wanted to just throw the spear away and run, or duck, but she held it out, trying to track the jump. "Steady." She imagined the drill instructor back in the Imperial prison. "Hold your ground."

  She struck a glancing blow to the thing, and it landed badly on it's side, still burning. Wading hastily backward, she brought the spear down, trying to hit it again, and smacking it on the side of the head.

  She cringed inwardly, imagining the drill instructor's sarcastic voice. "It's a spear you're holding, not a stick. Thrust. Again. Thrust. Again."

  Fortunately for her, between the awkward blows, and the fiery magic, it went still.

  She stood, spear held out, breathing hard. "Okay," She told herself, trying to sound confident. "Okay, you can do this. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

  Another scrabbling clicking sound answered her. She looked up to where the rat had been, up on the ridge. Now she could see a huge moving mound. It took her eyes a little bit to adjust; it was like some sort of rock or something, but moving. And claws, really big claws. A mud crab. A really big mud crab, bigger and meaner than the one that had turned out to be Regulus. And it was making it's way down to her, clicking hungrily with it's pedipalps.

  She called the magic again, and it came, though a little slower this time. Carefully, she backed away as she sent tendrils of energy towards the inexorably approaching mud crab. The fire burned only briefly before the thing got to the wettest part of the marsh, and dowsed itself in the water. Tallis thrust her spear at it, but only bumped against the hard shell.

  It was taller than she was. Each claw was as big as one of her legs. It circled around her. It seemed a lot more comfortable in this muck than she was. She kept the spear out, trying to block it any time it reached out with a claw, but for such a big thing, it was pretty fast. glancing to the sides as she moved, she tried to back away from it in a direction that would lead to dry land. There was no point in trying to use the campfire spell again as long as it was in the water. She tried to back away higher. It circled around her in turn, clearly wanting to keep them both in the water. She hit it in the mouth-parts. It swiped with a claw, missing with the pinchers, but hitting her right arm hard enough that her hand went numb for a moment.

  There was a roaring in her ears. All she could hear were the strikes back and forth. No one was coming to help her. If she couldn't hit it hard enough, she was going to die out here. She tried to hit harder, and the spearhead skidded uselessly along the shell. The thing swung again, and she dodged it, moving her grip up and slicing, cutting through most of one of the eye-stalks. It was angry now, but it was also mostly blind on one side.

  She kept striking at it, harder and harder. Why wouldn't it die? Hit it again. Why wouldn't it stop? Hit it again. She was chanting to herself, and she was saying "Again. Again." She kept hitting it, kept striking it. Then she realized that it wasn't actually moving any more.

  Carefully she poked it with the spear. No movement. Nothing. It was dead.

  Moving with exaggerated care, she slowly climbed far enough out of the muck to sit down in a clump of branching feathery leaves. It matched the description Arrille had given her of a slough fern, but right now all she cared about was that between the rock and the fern, she was pretty well hidden. She leaned the spear against the rock, and sat down with her arms wrapped around her knees and just shook.

  She wasn't any kind of warrior. She didn't like to kill things. And that rat had been ill. What was she doing here anyway? Her emperor wanted her here for a reason, but what reason is there to send someone from a prison to a swamp? And what was she ever going to accomplish if it took her all morning just to survive being attacked by a horribly oversized sick rat and a giant mud crab?

  This was crazy. She stood up, and for just a moment she felt light-headed. She reached out to the nearest thing to steady herself, and it turned out to be a thicker branching of the fern with some kind of pod at the top of it. Ampule pod. Arrille had said he would buy ampule pods. Okay then. this must be a good sign.

  She turned, looking down at the mud crab, at the rat. She knew that the meat of both could be sold. She knew the rudiments of cleaning and gutting an animal. Her spear wasn't the best choice, but it would work. She swallowed, and thought of what Gold Heart would say. "Morrowind is a land of predators." She would need to learn to be one.

  Afternoon sun lit her path as she headed back in what she devoutly hoped was the direction of Seyda Neyn. Despite having stopped to cast Arrille's cleaning spell onto her clothing, she still felt grimy. From the distance ahead of her, she heard footsteps. And was that whistling? That was encouraging. She trudged faster.

  Ahead of her on the gravel roadway, she saw a well dressed looking dunmer leading what was obviously a pack animal. It looked like a wide-headed lizard, but stood on strong hind legs. As they passed a clump of bungler's bane growing on the trunk of a fern-tree, the creature bobbed it's head and took a huge mouthfull. She could see that it's large teeth were blunt like a horse's. it was a plant-eater.

  The dunmer gave an exaggerated sigh, made a gesture up to the sky and said something in dunmeri that sounded very sarcastic. He tugged on a bridle sort of thing, but the huge lizard showed a complete unwillingness to move away from the trunk while there was anything left growing on it.

  "Hello?" Tallis spoke in Imperial.

  The Dunmer looked startled for a moment, and then smiled broadly. "Greetings, outlander." for once, the term seemed simply descriptive, rather than being an insult. His Imperial had only the faintest of accents. "Teris Raledran, trader extraordinaire." He offered a very slight bow.

  "My name is Tallis." She was careful to make her bow lower than his.

  "Friend Tallis," Teris began. "Let me show you a few things."

  The promised few things turned out to include clothing which was beautiful but expensive, jewelry which was lovelier and even more expensive, and then when an unexpected growling of her stomach interrupted his description of an interesting yellow colored amulet, he insisted that she take a look at his kwama eggs, since those were "an ideal meal for the hungry adventurer."

  He showed her several large oblong white shapes; two of which were fairly symmetrical enough that she would have called them eggs. The other two were a little smaller and sort of flattened, sort of ridged, and reminded Tallis of something she'd seen before. Carefully she examined them, and then as her fingertips were tracing the ridges on one of them, she felt it. Movement. Something was alive in there.

  She blinked and rubbed her eyes, and in the moment when she was regaining focus, she realized what the things reminded her of. Ants went through a stage that looked like this. A lot smaller, of course. So maybe inside these things was something that would look like a very large ant when it got out. A nix hound, they were called around here.

  This was never going to be a good place to have a dog. Maybe she could tame a nix hound. Maybe she could tame these ones. Maybe she wouldn't say anything about there being something alive inside. That would surely increase the price.

  Purchasing all the "kwama eggs", Tallis carefully tucked the two living ones inside of her shirt and tied it off at her waist. It might look a little strange, but she was pretty sure that ants mostly did things by smell. She thought it might be a good idea for these little guys to get used to her smell even before they hatched.

  She decided to leave the road for a more direct path back to the town. Using what she thought was the lighthouse as a guide, she cut across a hill, pleasantly dry after the muck she'd been in most of the afternoon. Something blue lay across the ground up ahead of her. Initially she thought it might be flowers, but as she got closer, she realized it was clothing. Of a person. And the person was lying very still. It was a dead person.