Chapter 24

**Merianna**

"Tell me again why this is a good plan?" I whispered uncertainly to Jasnine as we crawled through a sleeping little town chock-full of Nirn witches.

The wards around the border that we had slipped through gave me my first clue as to what we were dealing with on the inside. I had raised this point to Jasnine already when she put the heavy wards back the way we had found them without setting off a single ripple of energy.

"Because," She said softly while pulling me next to her "you're young. If you get caught, they are less likely to skin you than they would if they were to see me." She announced nonchalantly with a wicked grin.

I was slowly starting to come to terms with the fact that even beautifully sane Jasnine, might not be as sane as I had always liked to believe.

"So tell me, which Nirn type are we stealing from exactly?" I asked sweetly with a forced smile.

"Oh, just the normal kind you know." She said evasively with an excited glint in her eye. It was a glint that I was most definitely not going to trust anymore.

With a sigh I took stock of the situation in my mind.
Here I was with Jasnine. The bounty required her to retrieve a stolen artifact. Said stolen artifact had been traced back to this Nirn invested village on the other side of the realm. Said stolen artifact was an enchanted wand which had apparently been imbued with a deity's blood. Which by all rights would be a catastrophe in any one person's hand, and Armageddon in the right kind of hands.

Said Nirns were the right kind of hands for the worst kind of Armageddon. No matter if the Nirns were white Nirns or black Nirns. The Nirns are insanely dangerous either way when you get on their bad side, and I would say that this was going to put us on the top of their bad side list. My stomach dropped with the thought of us coming across even just one of them. Dealing with one Nirn was like dealing with the whole coven at once since Nirns are coven bound. Which meant that the power of all the Nirns together can be pulled by one member to use as they see fit at any given time. They were kind of like bees. Only, any one bee can have access to all the other bees's stingers all at once if needed.

And I hate being stung by bees...

I very much hoped that we wouldn't come across anyone.

Please stay asleep, please stay asleep, please-stay-asleep, pleasestayasleep-!

My inner prayers were cut short when Jasnine pulled me to a stop. Only to have them start up again as soon as I saw her pulling out the tracking charm that she had been given by the client.

Don't let it be here, don't let it be here, don't let it be here, for the sake of all things cursed and damned don't let it be here!

Jasnine looked from the charm to a dark two story stone building in front of us and back to the charm again. She smiled triumphantly at me as she put the charm away again.

"It's here."

Nooooooooooooo! My subconscious squeaked in despair. I swear I could feel a small piece of myself die on the inside...

"You remember the plan we made on the way here?" She asked excitedly.

"I wish I didn't." I mumbled dully.

"Come on Merianna, perk up. This is your first Bounty! Where did all the excitement go?" She asked while pinching my cheeks.

"I didn't think that we would be retrieving something so important from a Nirn village!" I whisper yelled back at her and smacked her hands away.

"Oh come now, this is nothing. Compared to the first Bounty you will be doing alone this one is fun!" She said enthusiastically. Yet, my body and soul refused to believe her.

"I would have been fine with something boring compared to most likely getting my skin flayed off of my still very alive body." I mumbled back.

"Nonsense! This is where you get to use all your hard earned abilities and where you will get to put all those lessons and skills from Raska into good use! If I know Noch well enough, then he'll most likely give you "herb gathering" or "guarding" as your first solo bounty." She shivered delicately at that thought.

I raised my eyebrow at her.

She looked at me again and gave a smile that a shark would have been proud of. "Time for you to crawl into the building Merianna. We have been stalling enough!" Without another word she dived for me.

I didn't even have time to let out a yelp before she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the shadows with her. Literally into the shadows. She held my hand firmly in hers and hauled me along the wall with her as she enveloped us in darkness and a silence that was so complete that my ears were ringing. The cool air of the shadows enveloped us as we moved without a sound.

My skin prickled as the darkness caressed my body. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but it also wasn't something that I would do on a regular basis. Sneaking a glance at Jasnine, I noticed that she had no problem with skulking around in the shadows at all. In fact, her usually friendly and serene face was now stretched into a wide evil grin that I had never seen on her face before.

If Nelia could see Jasnine now, she would actively rethink her saintly vision of her. She was in for a big surprise when I got back home.

Looking through the darkness my stomach dropped when I saw that the house's wall was now right in front of my face. I felt sick just thinking of what I could encounter on the inside.

"Now, as we planned. You are going to sneak in through the window, search the house and find the wand. If there are any spells around it you come back to me." Jasnine said confidently as she took up my hand and placed the tracking charm into it. "This will help you find the right location without needlessly opening doors that could wake someone up that should stay asleep."

Easy for you to say! I yelled out in my head. My face must have been saying the same thing because Jasnine gave me an innocent grin that I knew Nelia had picked up from her, and that grin always meant that, yes, she heard you, and yes she decided to ignore your opinions.

I silently groaned to myself.

"Everything is experience Merianna. If you don't do this now then how do you think you'll do if you have to do this kind of bounty on your own?"

My eye twitched in annoyance. She had a point. That is just something that I can see Noch tossing me into without any problem at all. At least in this instance Jasnine is here to back me up.

I gave her innocent face another glance, and she grinned.

I hope...

"Alright. Just make sure that if I get caught, you come charging in to my rescue the minute that you can." I glared at her straight in the eyes to make sure that she'll come for me.

"Of course! You will be the first one on my list!"

I gave her a dubious look. The Jasnine at the castle I knew I could trust without a doubt. The Jasnine here on the bounty? I didn't think that I wanted to chance that... much.

My options were low though. As soon as this bounty was over, we would go back home and I could continue my training with Noch. If he was there by then of course.

I glanced back up at the window we were crouched under and gave a sigh.

I silently stepped out of the shadow's cold embrace and looked down at where Jasnine was still crouching. Her physical form that I had seen a second ago was now gone, and only a darker shadow on the ground within the building's natural shadow gave away the illusion that something else might have been there.

The darker shade of shadow on the ground that was Jasnine moved away from the window and towards the back of the house where she would be scouting. It was always disconcerting to me to see someone moving within the shadows. It reminded me of minor demons that tended to hide within shadows and travel through them like spirits did through mirrors.

Shrugging off the feeling of the shadows clinging to my body I raised my eyes over the windowsill and scanned the inside of the house.

A small living room greeted my eyes as I looked inside. Intricate wooden tables along with a beautifully carved stone fireplace and some cushioned armchairs were inside. Which was already surprising to find within a village. In fact, a two story stone building in a small village was already something strange. All the other buildings around were also made of stone, but at least they were all only one level high like normal village houses with thatch roofs. Normal little houses also mostly had gravel floors or flat stone floors, along with normal rugged fireplaces. This one was laid in with wooden floorboards, something I had rarely seen on other structures besides some rooms in the Order, like the library.

Those floorboards in the library were only laid in because Fog had gotten tired of having Noch and I always sneaking up on him when he was engrossed in a grimoire. Now it was impossible to get close without the wood slightly creaking under our weight.

And I was stalling...

Heaving in an unsteady breath I nudged the window's inner latch with my energy. I was lucky that the building itself wasn't warded as well, otherwise we would have had two times the trouble.

I nudged the latch a little bit more until it popped free completely. Making sure that no one noticed the disturbance, I then slowly pushed open the window and put first my one leg and then the other through the sill into the room. I was extreemely happy that the hindges on the window didn't let out so much as a squeak.

A small thrill thrummed through my body once I finally stood inside the building. I smiled secretly to myself.

This was either going to be the best day of my life, or the worst...