Sorry it's been like a month! Really have no excuse this time...but enjoy! Feel free to comment any suggestions for future adventures involving these two!

Vorstag's voice rings in the back of my consciousness, begging me to get up. I feel my body jostle, slowly pulling me from the darkness. How long had I been out? A few moments or a month? I couldn't tell.

"Saber!" He spoke softer, voice full of relief, as I opened my eyes. "By the power of Talos, I thought you had died!"

"I guess not," I manage, pushing myself away from him. He'd been holding me and, though the light was dim, I could tell he'd cried. My insides swirled nervously, and I let myself slide to the floor. I began to rub my temples. I could feel them throbbing under my calloused fingers. "What happened?"

"I was just about to ask you that."

"I'm—I'm not sure." I said slowly, trying to remember what happened, what I had done. "Oh no. Oh no!" I say, remembering the horrors that had transpired mere minutes ago. My hands began to tear and claw my face and hair as I recalled the evil I had done.

"Hey!" He said, reaching out and grabbing my wrists in effort to stop me from mutilating myself. "Hey, it's over! You're safe!" He then grabbed my scarred, bruised face in his large hands, cupping my cheeks. His hands were firm, but gentle as they directed my eyes to his. "We're safe. You saved us."

"My father—!" I cried, trying to pull away, "I killed him!"

"Saber, hey," he said pulling my gaze back to his. "Calm down. It's okay." His manner seemed different, like he was scared and joyous at the same time.

"But I killed him!"

"What do you mean?" He said, looking around nervously. "There's no one else here but you and me."

"My dagger," I said, tears flooding my eyes. "My dagger held my father's soul." I waited a moment, watching as the understanding filled his face. "Boethiah demanded an offering. I couldn't withstand her call. Not when it meant causing you to die."

His hands began to smooth my matted hair and he pulled me against him. I didn't resist. He held me there like a child, murmuring empathetically. "It's all right, it's all going to be all right. It's over. That soul gem was lost anyway. Maybe he can finally find peace."

"I—I know!" I said, quivering against him. "But I couldn't withstand her. I promised myself I'd never give into a Daedra again, that I'd never sacrifice someone for their cause."

He said nothing in return, for he knew it to be true. I had failed myself and no matter the reward I gained I could never recover from this loss. My sole goal in life had crumbled in just a few desperate, selfish moments. Was that really all it took to break my resolve? I guess so.

Just then the cavern began to rumble around us. We'd overstayed our welcome. "We should get out of here." He said, quickly remembering where we were. I slid from his grasp and mentally pieced myself back together. Our adventure wasn't over yet.

A door way had opened on the other side of the statue. It was so magnificent that it was hard to imagine it hadn't previously been there. Running through its archway, we headed up a steep stair incline. The ceiling was so low Vorstag had to hunch over. Still dizzy from my recent suffocation, I became winded pretty quickly, huffing painfully with each step. Vorstag reached back, hand out stretched. I graciously grabbed it and let him drag me along.

Suddenly the stair stopped, opening into a small room. The treasure room.

We halted, gawking at the piles of wealth. The room was littered with bags of gold and a variety of chests, the most impressive of which was in the room's center. The walls began to rumble as another quake thundered beneath us. Dust and grit fell from the ceiling.

"Come on!" Vortsag shouted, tugging me toward a smaller exit way. I ripped my hand from his.

"I'm not leaving without some loot!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, barreling to the grand chest. "Otherwise this whole escapade was for nothing!"

"Yeah, because you'll be able to spend all of it so well when you're dead!"

"SHUT UP!" I stuffed the bag full of the items in the large chest, not even looking at its contents, and silently praying I didn't grab hold of a blade.

"Saber, come on!" Vorstag called from the exit way, leading up into what looked like more darkness. Hopefully the exit hadn't been blocked off by a cave in as well, or our situation was about to get more complicated.

"Ok! Ok!" I yell back, frustrated by his sensibility. I couldn't grab anymore anyway. I had reached my weight limit. I noticed he also had swiped a bag on gold. It was bulging in his pack. "Don't judge me you hypocrite."

He flashed a wolfish smile laced with panic, and motioned for me to hurry. We burst up the stairway and into blackness once again.

Xxx

Thud. Thud.

"Come on, Vorstag." I complained. The smell of the earth was making me sick. "I swear to Kynareth that if we make it out of here I'm never going back underground again."

"I've got it, just hold on."

Thud. Thud.

Crack.

The wooden hatch broke open and the sunlight flooded into the hole, along with fresh air. I breathe it in greedily and claw my way out, flopping onto the grassy earth. I close my eyes and push down the threatening hysterics. We finally made it out.

Vorstag flops beside me, panting like a worked dog. I hear him shrug off his bag, its metal contents clinking profitably. I push myself up, looking at him. He is filthy, blond hair matted, full of bruises, cuts, and dirt. The red warrior paint is smudged beyond recognition, and crusted blood stands out on his dented armor. I can imagine I look just as bad.

"Well, that was profitable." I say flatly.

He murmurs in agreement, settling his arms behind his head.

"A pleasure doing business with you." I push myself up, and wince, realizing just how badly damaged I am. He's up on his feet before I know it, checking me over.

"Try healing yourself." He suggests.

"I don't feel up to it right now." I say, taking a shaky breath and massaging my arms. "Too tired. Besides, I feel fine."

"You can drop the bravado act." He says smugly, searching me over for any signs of harm, though I had just insisted I was fine. "We both know there's a different side to you."

"A different side?" I say, both scoff and surprise in my voice. I can feel my eyebrows raise, provoking him to explain himself.

"It kind of showed," he said scrunching his nose during a dramatic pause. "In that cave."

"You mean hell hole?" I say, slightly taken aback by the extreme understatement. "That forsaken Daedric bowel we just crawled out from?" He was acting different. A good different, more like how when we first met. He was relaxing and attempting to vex me. I would take his jeers any day over going back down there.

"And by side you mean weaker and weepy I presume?" I still couldn't believe I had let myself fall apart like that.

He didn't respond right away. "No." He finally says in a quiet voice. "A human side."

"Oh." I shift uncomfortably, but can't stop a faint smile from appearing on my face. "Then I guess I saw that side of you, too."

"What? No!" He laughs awkwardly, breaking the intense eye contact. "Anything, er, noble," he says the word with a shudder, "I did back there was strictly business."

I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes. "Oh come on." I say, voice rising slightly. "You were no longer in it for just the money. We both know that, Vorstag." My face grew hot with embarrassment the moment the words came out.

"Yes I was!" He said, feigning offense. "How do you think I was supposed to get paid if you were dead?" Suddenly, he put his hand out as if he'd just remembered. "Speaking of which, my payment, if you please."

I scoffed, dropping the bag of loot to the ground. "You're such a child." I spit as he lunges and begins rifling through it like a kid searching for presents during the New Life Festival. I was thankful though that his pride had overshadowed my previous, awkward words. I take some deep breaths and, by the time he looks up, the redness has drained from my face.

"I found the spoil I wish to claim." His face is wild and excited, a crazy smile growing wider by the second.

"Well, go on," I say waving for him to pull it out and show-off what he had picked. "Let's see what valuable I'll be relieved of."

Dramatically, he pulls out a black armor cuirass, ebony armor glinting violently in the bright sun. Ebony armor. Good and hard to make, even harder to find, but not something worth that adventure for. I noticed something different about it though. Its blackness was unnatural, the darkest shade I'd ever seen. It was as if I were staring into a smoky void. It also lacked the dramatic creases and winged layers of a normal ebony cuirass, and it shifted easily in his hands like it was lighter and made of…mail.

"Ebony mail?" I say, my breath catching.

"Yes!" He exclaims excitedly, shaking it in the air, letting the dark links jingle obnoxiously.

I realize my mouth is agape, my fingers twitching. I want it. Badly. But a deal is a deal. "That's amazing, Vorstag. One of those hasn't been seen for centuries. I'm sure it'd sell well over 5000 gold." I can't keep the envy from my voice. In all my adventures I'd never possessed more than a thousand gold at one time, and here Vorstag was holding a hunk of metal over five times that.

"Sell it?" He says suddenly, his voice aghast and disturbed. "I'm keeping it! You don't just give something like this away. You show it off. Now excuse me while I put it on."

"Vorstag!" I say, my eyes wide. "You don't have to—!" But he was already pulling off his gear, to my slightly pleased mortification.

xxx

Back in Markarth, we cleaned up, got a good meal at the inn, and cashed in our profits. I purchased some new leather armor, this time enchanted to resist fire, and had a healthy wallet jingling by my thigh, right next to my daedric dagger. It was an empty husk now. A tool simply for the use of cutting throats. It no longer burned or flared with red power. And there were no more voices in my head upon touching it.

It was useless, really. I'd never been one to fight with the dagger. I'd only kept it this long because of my father. But now that he was gone, I pray to Arkay somewhere pleasant, I had no need for it. But when I sold my goods and crafted a new ebony blade, I couldn't bear to part with it. The hunk of metal had become a part of me, a link to my past. And the past was something I could never outrun. I knew that now, though I still didn't fully like it.

Vorstag stands idle, his black armor gleaming in the pale light. The guards that passed us commented on it enthusiastically, noting how it seemed to almost be shrouded in a smoky aurora. I didn't trust them and told Vorstag to be weary.

"Don't worry about me." He says, dismissing my concern with a hand wave. "This'll ward off thieves and attackers more than it'll encourage them."

I smile faintly but it was just a front. My mind is otherwise occupied and my gaze rests just over his shoulder.

"What do you plan on doing next?"

The question jolted me, eyes snapping to his inquisitive face. "Umm…" I stammer, trying to pull my thoughts back together. "Well, for starters, I need to get out of Markarth."

His eyebrows rise. "What for?"

"It's time." I respond flatly. "I've used up whatever I could get out of this place, and I'm ready to head out. Catch a wagon ride over to the Rift." I pause, debating whether to divulge more. What the hell. "I need to get away from the Reach. Everything about this land, the colors, the smell, the people, it all reminds me of my past."

"I thought you were tired of running away from the past?"

"I'm not running away anymore." I say staring hard into his confused face. "I'm moving on. This whole time I think I've been lingering here because I wanted to forget who I was. Like the harder I tried to get away the harder to became for me to leave. Like I was trying to prove to these people I was something I'm not. But now that I've made peace with it I'm finally ready to move on, accepting who I am and finding a life elsewhere."

"I see." He says, thin lipped. He crossed his arms in a tight, tense way, as if he were trying too hard to pose himself while in conversation.

He didn't say anything else, so we stood in silence, uncomfortable for the first time. "What about you?" I manage. "Where do you plan to go?"

"Well, I don't really travel for the sake of traveling." He says with a sarcastic half-smile. "I usually just hold up here, waiting for work to land in my lap."

I laugh at this. "Land in your lap? You practically threw yourself at me!"

He scowls. "I was bored and desperate for work, and you seemed very distressed and susceptible to my charms."

"Oh, really?" I say, my turn to raise eyebrows. "How'd that work out for you?"

"Got more than I bargained for." He growls playfully. He pauses, face twitching like he's trying to say something but can't find the words. It was making me feel increasingly uncomfortable.

"Well, there's no point for me sticking around anymore." I say with finality, eager to get away from this confusion I was beginning to feel. "Good luck as a mercenary?" I stuck out my hand, ready to say our farewells.

"Saber," He says timidly, looking at my hand. "What if—I've been thinking, about this since we got out of there—what if we worked together?"

This catches me off guard. I never wanted to form any attachments. It'd been our original deal to travel on several missions together, but, after the events in the sacrificial crypt, I'd decided I needed to end our partnership sooner than later. He gave me this weird, unsettling feeling I couldn't understand. And I didn't like not understanding things.

"Like continue going on adventures?" I say offhandedly, trying to dissuade the topic.

"More like quests." He says, his voice growing strong. "What if we were to give our adventures meaning? Like we were heroes or something?"

"You don't just choose to be a hero." I say, shaking my head at his childish idea. "You can't just run around saving people your entire life all for the sake of heroics."

"You can if you have a purpose."

"What are you getting at?"

He smiles big and begins his proposal. "We hunt Daedra. We stop them from hurting people and help people caught in their snares."

"Like join the Vigilants of Stendarr?" I ask, slightly confused and scared.

"We could," he says quickly, "but I never like the sound of their methods. I was thinking it could just be us. We made a great team."

"We failed." I say, my voice flat. "We were ensnared just like every other fool who messes with that stuff. We only got out because we cooperated."

"Yeah," he says, like this was part of his point. "We did fail. You gave the daedra a sacrifice. But did it really get what it wanted? We went around its rules, found a loop hole. After all the suffering we went through, the voices in my head, losing your father's soul, we withstood its desire. We can stop them, find loop holes everywhere, save people from making mistakes, destroy their cultists."

"That's suicide, Vorstag." He's ranting like a madman.

"No its not." He says, fully convicted in this idea. "We could do it. We have motive. You talk about always running away from your past, now making peace with it and moving on. What if you were to use it as fuel? What you've been through, your complete hatred for the Daedra, that's motivation to do the most powerful things."

I didn't say anything. Instead I stared at him through squinted eyes and a curious tilt to my head. It was insane. There was no doubting that. But at the same time it fulfilled every desire I had ever had. Every angry thought, every liberating idea, every bit of coming to love myself. I could help people, I could fight the Daedra rather than accepting their power over us. Maybe even save others from making the same mistakes as me. My past wasn't something to be ashamed of. It was fuel. Maybe it was even my destiny. And I wouldn't have to do it alone.

"Okay, Vorstag." I say, a crazy smile spreading across my face.

"Really?" He asks, a wicked gleam in his eye. "You're up for it? Your magic and my sword spreading justice and staking human claim to this world?"

I nod my head. "Let's hunt some Daedra."