I leave Fai'mar and the thieves at Kynesgrove. Rikke tries to stop me at the bridge. "You're not going across there." I can't tell if it's a command or just an expression of incredulity. She should know me better.
"And I told you to leave," I answer. "Besides, don't I outrank you?" I keep walking, and she doesn't try to stop me. I can barely remember the days when I charged into battle alongside the Legion. For such small reasons. Money. Anger at Ulfric, I guess. So pointless.
Like these three standing in front of me.
I'm done being nice.
It doesn't take more than a second, this way.
"Shut up," I say to the quivering Argonian. "If you say a word, I kill you. I want you to get up, go inside, and tell that bastard Jo'rabi--yeah, I know his name--that I want to see him. If anything other than that happens, you can tell him that I'm going to come inside myself, and kill everyone in my way."
He seems to get the message. So I wait there on the bridge. Ironline manning the ramparts stare down at me. I ignore them.
Then, the gate opens.
"Hello, again," I say.
"Dovahkiin," Jo'rabi says. I can swear he's smiling behind that mask and it makes me sick.
"Listen," I say. "I'm here to kill you. Or you can kill me. I don't care. I'm tired of this. Show me Serana. Prove you have her. Or there's no reason for me not to kill you right here, right now. Maybe we'll fight again, and maybe you'll even beat me, but you know, that's a lot better than this stupid running around I've been at for the past week. I want this to be over."
Jo'rabi nods slowly. "Some sympathy I am experiencing, but the dissolution of your legacy is not yet complete. Our feet avoid the future I have selected for you."
"I know what you did, Jo'rabi. I know who you are. A slave. And then a moth priest. And you ransacked the White-Gold Tower. I'm guessing I know what you did, too. Read a bunch of those scrolls. Maybe a lot of them, before the blindness could set in. Why?"
Jo'rabi coughs. "You--"
Zoya cuts him off. "Just kill him, already! You told us Skyrim would be ours, but you continue to entertain this insufferable creature and his delusions of grandeur."
I put an arrow at her neck. "Maybe if you stay quiet, I won't move onto you and your friends after I finish with him."
A ripple through the air is the only warning.
I stare. Her body twitches and she gasps as small tendrils of electricity snake around her armor. Jo'rabi's fist glows again and he sends another bolt into her chest.
She stops moving.
Jo'rabi adjusts the ring on his right hand before glancing, languidly, back at me. "What purpose I had intended for her, I cannot recall. I had considered a future in which the Ironline served me in undoing what you have done in the world. Overthrew the leaders, the puppets. Returned it to as it was."
I look back at him, trying to find some point of focus in those dead, gray eyes. "You say you want to avoid chaos. She's chaos. And you did that. You brought her here."
"I agree," he says. Now I'm sure he's smiling. "Reshaping the world in deference to the established patterns is no longer a thing that is open to me. All that remains..." He lunges, hand flashing, and a heavy weight thrusts me against the wall.
"If you will spare me the distraction," he says, "there is a task which I must be about."
He turns toward the nearest Ironline before she can even recover from the shock of Zoya's death.
I watch, stunned, in more ways than one. A cold firmness settles on my body, forcing me down to the ground, to my knees. Jo'rabi walks out of sight. I try to turn my head to follow him but find myself unable.
My ears, though, do a fine job filling me in.
