"I've been told the Sload have no word for 'adventure'. The closest equivalent would be 'tragic disaster'." Three distant relatives in an ancient family are pulled into an expansive, convoluted web that will shake their lives to the core. A story of death, family, tradition, politics, magic, thieves, and ancestral tombs.

Chapter 1: Raynila

The departed spirits of the Dunmeri, and perhaps those of all races, persist after death - Ancestors and the Dunmer

Before she awoke, Raynila Aryon was aware of two things. The first was an overwhelming sense of cold, the kind of cold she hadn't felt since she'd forgotten her furs and pulled look-out last Frostfall, on one of the coldest nights of the year. She'd nearly lost her fingers that night, as the month had more than lived up to its name. That was the same night she'd resolved to finally learn the art of Restoration.

The second, and perhaps more literally pressing, was the feel of the hard ground against her face and body. Not the tightly packed earth or tunnelled stone, as she was used to (and some nights had to be incredibly used to, if she and Varon argued and he kicked her out of bed). No, this was smoother, even the fine layer of dust and grit felt almost comforting in comparison to what she had put up with in the past years.

Then, groggily lifting her cheek from the floor and shaking the cramp from her limbs, Raynila realized one more thing.

She had no idea where she was.

She jumped up suddenly, ignoring the creak in her muscles and looked round wildly.

The room, at least she guessed it might be a room, was completely dark. Her meagre night vision refused to reveal her location to her. She backed up slowly, her heart thumping and her breath tearing ragged holes in her throat. Then with a smack, she hit something firm and unyielding.

Shaking hands felt the surface uncertainly. It was the same as the floor, smooth, slightly gritty. Sandstone. Breathe. A wall. So a room, definitely. She gulped several mouthfuls of stale air, until she felt her hands stop shaking. It was not outside air, with its fresh, cool, or sometimes ashy taste, but the un-living, dusty air of a long forgotten place.

The world around her was shifting grey, the kind of blackness one finds on waking from a nightmare in the deadness of night. But, if she squinted, she was sure she could make out an expanse that was slightly less black than the rest of the void, directly opposite her. Another wall. Yes, a room. Breathe.

Raynila realised her hands had stopped shaking. Slowly, the panic ebbed away, to be replaced a more subtle fear and uncertainty. Where was she? She had to see. She had light potions in her bag… and that was when her now steady hands, tracing the contours of her robe, discovered that her bag was gone.

Shaking hands became wild again as they ran all over her body, searching for the strap. But it was useless. She should have realized the absence of its distinctive weight against her left hip. Was it by the floor, near where she had woken up?

She inched slowly forward, then could take the suspense no longer and dropped painfully to her knees, hands flying across the floor. But she found no guarhide satchel.

Raynila, grasped her head in her hands and screamed silently to herself in frustration. If this was some prank of Varon's… So maybe she shouldn't have added the shavings of scamp skin to his shein, but after so many years of coupling they were always searching for ways to spice things up… or to get one over each other. Sure their relentless pranks drove everyone else in the cave wild, but they had driven each other wild, in the beginning.

It always brought a smile to Raynila's face to remember how they first met, even if their relationship nowadays went between passion and passionate fighting at the drop of a cap.

Up he'd sauntered to the Temple, and he'd leant in the entrance archway in his shiny, foreign armour, just watching her sweep. Then he'd drawled, in that thick Tear accent she'd come to adore until so recently:

"If you don't mind me saying, muthsera, you look bored out of your mind."

She'd leant on the broom, mimicking his posture, and informed him that he must be far more bored, to engage a Temple priestess in conversation. Then she'd turned back to the job, informing him where the real attraction was: Vivec's Ashmask, downstairs, centre of the Temple, on the altar. That's what you've come to see, I suppose.

He'd smiled his roguish smile in response. "Maybe I had. But I think I've just found something far better to look at."

He'd told her later over a drink that she'd given him all he needed to know in her first sentence. Her growing apathy with the Temple. Her ennui (The Bretony word tripped beautifully off his tongue in that south Morrowind accent) with her current life.

So she'd told him everything. How she'd run away from home to train as a priestess to spite her parents. The Telvanni cared little for the Tribunal (in fact they cared little for anything other than themselves). But how, after five years, she'd grown weary of the pious and, above all, boring, lifestyle.

He'd leant back in his chair, one hand hooked casually over the back and the other curled round his goblet of shein, and he'd asked her a question.

"You can do magic right?"

"Some. I've studied the schools of Alteration and Mysticism most. Changing the world and how we perceive it. Hah."

"So you could pick a lock with your mind? Or close a door? Teleport? Make someone believe they were immobile."

"I suppose so." She was Telvanni by birth after all.

Varon Sadralo was a perceptive man. When Vvardenfell had opened itself to colonisation (or, more accurately, the Imperials had declared it fit for settlement) many had come to seek the treasures of the land–its untapped ores and mineral seams, its bounty of kwama mines and fertile fields. Varon had seen another benefit in such a virgin land. So he'd worked through his extensive network of contacts, and found an opportunity. There were those who saw the true potential in living on Vvardenfell, he said, and he was working his way north to join a group of them. It'll be an exciting life… perhaps you'd care to join me?

They'd left that night, her naïve and giggling in the arms of the man she saw as her exotic saviour–the handsome stranger who'd pulled her from a life of drudgery. They'd headed north, to Sargon.

Back in the present, Raynila was cursing her youthful naivety. But, ten years later, was she any less stupid? This time, Varon had gone too far. This wasn't funny. Ancestors curse the man, and his fickle nature! When it had become apparent over the months that opportunities for banditry in the north of Vvardenfell were less plentiful than he'd hoped, he grown sullen and unresponsive. That was when Raynila had responded, the only way she'd known how, the way she'd drawn him to her in the first place–by being playful. And it worked, sometimes. And sometimes, it was the only satisfaction to be had in that cave. Her youth meant the others, all hardened Dunmer unsatisfied with their lot in life, were slow to warm to her. The leader, Nerer Beneran, a bald thug in fancy armour, had been disgusted to learn she had little to no skill in Destructive or Restorative magic.

"What use is this chit of a Dunmer who cannot heal us or use fire in our defence?" he'd snarled upon her arrival.

Her lack of skill in Destruction was most cruel to her now, when she needed a flame the most. Instead, she groped blindly across the floor to the wall, and traced it round, stepping slowly and carefully. Finally, after what seemed like an age, her fingers brushed old wood.

She pressed herself against the door, running desperate hands up and down its length. Upon finding the handle, she turned it, casting a desperate prayer to the Ancestors. It seemed they heard her, for the door slipped open easily.

Now a chink of dim light fell into the room, revealing it to be bare. Sandstone walls, slightly curved in the Velothi style. What was this place?

Raynila opened the door cautiously, wishing she had a weapon, wishing she had something besides her tattered robe.

The dim light was coming from a nearby half-extinguished torch. She abandoned all sense of security, and ran across the corridor pulling it from its iron fitting on the wall. Then she cast it around, sending the room beyond the short hall into sharp relief.

Altars. Urns. Offerings. This was an ancestral tomb.

What was she doing in an ancestral tomb?

Raynila was more curious than annoyed now. This had to be one of Varon's most creative pranks yet. What, did he expect her to think she was dead or something?

She shivered despite the nearby flame, and pulled her cloak closer. She knew the kinds of beings that watched over tombs. It had been a point of pride amongst her family that their tomb was guarded by the most powerful Daedra and flesh animations. She didn't want to be caught in a battle without her magicka potions or her staff. She had to get out, and soon. Breathe.

She crept through the corridors; past carefully presented offerings and neatly swept ash pits. This was a particularly well-kept tomb, clearly belonging to a large family, probably both rich and devoted. She had never seen inside an ancestral tomb before; she found the things slightly creepy despite her reverence for the ancestors. But there had been a communal area in the Gnisis Temple for those unable to afford tombs. It had been similar, if the offerings were poorer. Here she could see scrolls and enchanted items–perhaps the dead had been mages in life? And there were neatly folded silken clothes with golden threads. Nobles, perhaps? Her fingers didn't even twitch. She had never been a thief.

She had been expecting to be disturbed by the tomb, but as she went on, trying to find the exit, she found that she was growing calmer. There were worse places to end up as a result of your crotchety partner's stupid prank. The ghostly whispering from the pits seemed almost comforting.

Suddenly, she heard a noise from above, and tensed. She had been wandering for Gods knew how long now. Could she have inadvertently awakened a guardian? But no, those were footsteps of the more earthly kind. Somebody was blundering around an upstairs room of the Temple. She knew two things at once. One–she had to go up. Two–there was now an intruder to deal with.

Raynila's lip curled in disgust as she quickened her pace. True it was just probably some thief, some Imperial dog who had no respect for the culture he'd invaded, but what if it were a necromancer? She'd heard of the filth they got up to in those foreign provinces. Apparently, necromancy was even legal in the Cyrodiil branch of that joke organisation they called a Mages Guild. She hoped she didn't run into them, for their sake. If she did, she would unleash such a barrage of magicka that they body would be tricked into thinking it was dead before it took another step. Breathe.

But she was not panicking now, not at least until she went up a long slight of stairs, rounded a corner and saw the thing.

A hulking mass of flesh and protruding splintered bone. The crudest imitation of a mortal figure. But viciously effective, from what she'd heard. Some called them Flesh Atronachs, but her family had known them as Bonewalkers. She backed away, her breath hitching in her throat. But then the creature shuffled round, the bare tendons of its legs glistening in the half light, and it saw her. And it roared.

Raynila fought hard to contain the panic this time, but it clawed its way up her throat all the same. She backed away as, the creature advanced slowly. She didn't dare break into a sprint, not yet. Then she tripped on her robe and fell back, and the Bonewalker started to run.

Raynila knew it was now or never. She pulled her magicka from the well inside and began the spell in her minds. She reached out, not with her hands but her thoughts, squirming as they reached the half-raging thing that served as the creature's mind.

She remembered the words of her mother, when she'd taught her the spell, the spell that remained one of Raynila's most effective, the spell she'd cast on Nerer Beneran when he bemoaned her lack of magical skill.

You have to make them believe it, she'd said. Alteration is how we convince everyone that how they perceive the world is wrong. We can even persuade our own bodies that the world is different. The most talented among us can change the world itself. See that dartfly. See how it flits about in the air. That is not possible. It should be far heavier. Tell it is a stone. Make it weigh more than it can comprehend. Bring it to earth. Burden it.

The fly had fallen to the ground as neatly as a raindrop falling from a cloud. The little Raynila had turned to her mother in surprise and wonder, and she had realised that you do not need fire or ice to truly cause harm.

The suggestion was in the creature's mind now, and she swore she could almost smell its rank breath. She held the spell in her hands too, a faintly purple ball of magicka. Alteration always seemed to be purple. Then she released it, and saw it hit the creature square in the chest.

It kept coming.

Raynila closed her eyes. Maybe she was just a stupid girl, a silly Dunmer who kept running to rebel, who kept running to do something new, to hide the fact she couldn't do anything at all. She felt a tear on her cheek as the creature narrowed the distance between them and clenched her fists. No. She would die on a happy thought.

Back to the spell. Because once she'd shown Varon once. He'd just thrown all of her clothes out into the rain, and she'd cornered him in her undergarments, furious. But he'd just laughed again, in that infuriatingly charming way of his. So she'd thrown the spell at him.

He looked up at her from the ground.

"This doesn't seem very fair. How can we have any fun like this?"

She'd smiled. And then she'd walked over to him, and straddled his chest.

"And here I thought you were the one with the imagination."

Raynila blinked as a breeze passed over her face. The Bonewalker had stepped over her. She was still alive. She got to her elbows in time to hear a horrific scream. It had caught a robed Altmer in the stairwell behind her, and with a simple, brutal movement, snapped his neck.

Raynila got to her feet, a frown creasing her brow. So that was the intruder. But why hadn't the Bonewalker taken care of her too. She was intruding too, wasn't she?

She stepped over the Altmer's body, with barely a shiver. She was used to dead bodies by now.

It seemed like another age had passed as she ascended the steps behind the body. Then years more to traverse the winding corridors, leading ever upwards, passing infinite rooms of urns. Or was it days, or just hours? Her sense of time felt distorted. Breathe.

Finally, she reached a door, and there was a rim of sunlight shining where it joined the wall. She squealed in delight and ran forward. Then a plaque by the door caught her eye.

She slowed, eyes flitting between to door and the plaque. Then, curiosity overtook her.

She read it. Then she read it again, her frown deepening. It made no sense.

Aryon Ancestral Tomb.

Then the shock hit her and she backed away, tumbling back down the stairs and away from the light. She rolled, painfully, smacking into an altar with an urn resting on top. The urn wobbled, then tumbled, before landing neatly in her lap. As if it had belonged there all along.

She turned it over wearily, reading the name engraved upon it with eyes blurred by tears.

Raynila Aryon.

And she couldn't breathe.

A/N: Massive writer's/editor's block for chapters 11/12 of Heart and Stone prompted me to start this short story idea I've had on the back-burner for a while. Will update with two more chapters I think. Description is a bit naff so I may change it when I've written the whole thing EDITED - description has now changed. Image is an alteration of uesp wiki/ File: MW- place- Aryon_ Ancestral_ Tomb . jpg (without spaces), under the CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.