Hasir fell, for what seemed like a long time, through pitch blackness. Before he could contemplate where he was, a strange yet familiar land came into view. A voice called to him. He followed the voice to a rather impressive-looking tree. Thee voice belonged to a cyan figure that Hasir thought he remembered.
The Argonian instinctively placed his hands on the gnarled bark. When he did so, the realm distorted and swam before his eyes.
"Teetaka, please, hear me, this realm... i-it seems like I've seen it before, but ssomething is wrong. I feel a shadow threatening to shallow the realm I once knew. Please manifest to me, I beg you."
As Hasir took his hand away from the bark, a warm hand gripped his shoulder, which was wierd becausse Hasir thought, being a memory, her hand would've phased right through him.
"Hasir." She said, pleased to see him. "I am pleased as Hist sap to see you. What you told me... is concerning. I have felt it too, as if the realm is fighting our presence. Teetaka turned to look over the swampy horizon. "In my nightmares, I see this great shadow overtaking the realm, forcing it to shed its skin and take on a more... formidable appearance."
Hasir stared at her in disbelief.
"Shades sleep? Since when?"
Teetaka shook her head, telling the young Argonian to forget it. Just then, Hasir heard a sound like ten thousand whips going at once and the once-beautiful realm became more forboding. The peaceful curtains fell away to produce a rather macabre play. Prickly plants sprouted everywhere with sinister-looking orange flowers and yellow-eyed, purple-skinned beings began popping up out of the now viscous ground.
Hasir tore his eyes away from the rapidly changing evironment he thought he knew and looked, concernedly, at Teetaka.
"Do you know what's happening? Also, do you know why this is happening?" The cyan Argonian just stared through him. "Look," Hasir said starting to get flustered, "Do you know who is doing this or not? This is unnatural, I mean, why would the realm change like this?"
Teetaka finally found her voice and gestured far past the gaurdian tree to a point in the shadowy distance where a fire light shone.
"Far to the east lay a coven lead by witchmother Tearma. She is the pinnacle of the rock that threatens to roll over the Argonians. This was decreed by Molag Bal to help the god of schemes destroy the filthy horned god who lay a dirty blot on the parchment the was Tamriel that floats upon the sea of Oblivion."
Hasir's tail thrashed wildly behind him as something was bothering him. Teetaka's eyes narrowed as he let out a drawn out hiss.
"Is this what happened to Black Marsh?" Teetaka became confused. "Sorry, I'll clarify. When I was a newly hatched Saxhleel, there was an acrid gas everywhere. I didn't know what it was, but my mom attributed that noxious gas to Molag Bal or who she termed 'stone-fire'. I can only surmize that's what she said because I couldn't even talk yet; much less ascertain what was going on around me."
Teetaka thanked him for that clarification. She saw fit to shed more light on the situation; painting a clearer picture.
"Well Hasir... it sounds that your mom was a wise woman. Those 'noxious gases' you spoke of, they are the warning signs before the great anchors appear like a cat pulling a doomed rat into a tangle of its yarn ball. Before you ask, no, it didn't happen in Morrowind because he already had a goal in mind. He already knew he was going to align that bit of Vvardenfell with his dreaded realm of Coldharbor. With Blackmarsh, he did not know yet what his goal was so he decided to sow the seeds of confusion first."
Hasir thought this over before answering, trying to get his multiple rivers combined into one. When he got the gist of what she was saying, he strode past her toward the giant tree, placed his hand on the gnarled bark.
"Ancestors, I've a query to throw your way, catch the ball or do not, I do, however, seek an answer. My question is this: Is me dating an Altmer a breach of racial contract and if it isn't, iss it tied in any way to the 'Unholy Union?' Is this Molag Bal's plan or is there more?"
Suddenly, a voice blossomes to life inside his mind; speaking as if the voices were superimposed one on the other.
"Our scales molt at the thought of a grass-scale and a shaved golden ape mating. We are but the boat that the river of the Hist hold in limbo until we find new 'ports'. As for if there is a reed-fork stuck fast in the mud pudding of the union, we are uncertain. The river of time flows ever onward. If and when it reaches that underground passage, we'll know more, now, though, our tree is devoid of leaves."
Hasir withdrew his hand, feeling both relieved and crestfallen. He turned to see Teetaka eying him wearily. He smiled back,
"The news was good... and not so good." He told her, his tail hanging limp behind him. "They had no qualms with me and Ceralyne being 'swampmates' but, they had no more leads on the bigger picture of this 'unholy union'.
Teetaka hissed forlornly, tail hanging limp. She was about to curse the heavens when the realm shifted once more and was replaced by a sandy desert far as the eye could see with bazzaars bustling with many khajiit. The hist trees became decorative sandy pillars and the murky swamp became an elaborate sandstone-walled palace.
Hasir looked from the cyan Argonian to a rather long and impressively draped wooden table. Upon the table was an equally impressive feast: sausages, venison chops, various fruits and one, succulent, young lamb.
Teetaka eyed this warily and urged the mouth-watering Argonian to keep away from the, by her logic, 'impressive trap.'
"Hasir, I think this is all some kind of ruse set up by either Tearma or her master, Molag Bal."
The argonian ignored her and ran for the table and, with his razor-sharp fangs, tore one of the poor lamb's leg's off.
"Who cares? I'm starved. Thank the nature gods this feast is her. It looks like it can feed an entire army."
Teetaka rolled her eyes as Hasir bit into the leg of lamb.
"The picture you see before you is a ruse, a bright backdrop for its muddy underbelly. You may as well've bit into you friend before the colors drain from the portrait."
As the cyan Argonian predicted, the rosy picture of the palace fell away and Hasir was looking at crumbling sandstone walls and, where there was once sparse vegetation and multiple breeds of khajiit, there was more sand than before and khajiit bones as well as, Hasir screamed when it happened, the headless body of Xochitl, neckwound fresh with blood and Inigo, laying lifeless as a kid's toy, with a chunk takeen from his leg.
Hasir forcibly removed the chunks of flesh from his teeth, reached into his bag, took a drink of water to cleanse the sour taste in his mouth. He had no idea that the succulent leg of lamb was actually a hidden invitation to infect his friend with lycanthropy. Hasir closed his eyes and wished to see another painting; one without red in it.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a faithful reproduction of Blackmarsh. As with the realm itself, the 'swamp,' if that's what it would be called, was a bit off. The argonian walked, dream-like, along the dirt paths set on reed platforms in the murky swampwater toward a hut that loomed in the distance. When he reached it, he knocked on it.
Hasir could hear shuffling behind the door as if whomever dwelled there was rearranging furniture. The door opened and a white-haired breton female appeared.
"Yes, who is it?" She croaked. "Speak up, my hearing is not what it was."
Hasir cleared his throat, sounding like a dying frog in the process.
"Hello, I'm Hasir and you must be Tearma." He said, his tail thrashing about wildly. "I was wondering, do you have a khajiit in here? I seemed to have misplaced him."
Tearma bade him to enter. Hasir did so and sat on a rickety wooden chair, marvelling at the cramped, yet cozy, space.
"I have no such khajiit in here." Tearma stated. "No one has visited me in eons. You're the first visitor I've had here in a while." She said, shuffling over to the cauldron by the fire and throwing some ingredients in. "I sense you're here for something else, what is it?" She said, eying Hasir suspiciously.
Hasir shifted uneasily in his chair, nostrils twitching with the acrid scent emanating from the cauldron.
"Well, erm... I heard on the wind that you are the reason for the vision I saw earlier."
Taerma moved over to him, a concerned look on her face.
"What sort of vision?" She asked.
Hasir launched into a tale of sand-strewn valleys and phantasmic sand palaces. He colored the otherwise bland tapestry with a landscape full of a myriad of colors that drained away to the dullest greys, blacks and whites. He also told her of the dead oak that he stripped of some of its bark. When he'd finished, she was gobsmacked for the slightest of moments.
When she found her voice, a bird afloat on uncertain skies, she reassured Hasir that she'd no part in his 'vision.'
My dear lizard, I had no part in that. What you told me of the 'trees' in your tale sound like the real culprit, not I. I am but a humble witch set to help Tamriel, not poison it."
Hasir pressed her further about the 'trees' she supposedly heared about.
"What do you know of the Hist?" He asked her, eyes narrowed.
The breton female walked over to the cauldron and beckoned Hasir closer.
"Breath deep and all will soon become clear." She told him.
Hasir did as she instructed and was teleported back to the realm he'd known. In the distance, before a tree that had just taken root sat a young female green-scaled Argonian garbed in traditional Argonian garments.
Hasir walked over to the tree and felt its strangely smooth bark. He could hear faint, but present voices.
"Hi, who might you be?" He inquired toward the garbed Argonian. Just then, his thought sea parted, flooding with waves of clarity. "Teetaka, is that you?" He said, shocked. I... you're not...you're a scaly rock instead of see-through water."
The female Argonian rose and placed her hand within his.
"You feel.... familiar. May I ask your name and why you have come?"
Hasir faced her and held out a clawed hand as an offering of good faith and friendship.
"My name is Hasir." When she stared back stoicly, he added."You said I felt somewhat familiar? What in Oblivion do you mean by that?" He asked.
Teetaka stared at the ground and turned red as the crimson paint on her neck.
"I-I just meant you looked familiar." She said nervously. "More precisely, you look like my mate back in Blackmarsh."
Hasir looked into Teetaka's brown eyes and detected a flood threatening to overtake the banks.
"You look upset, did something happen to him?" He asked, concernedly.
The female Argonian nodded, unable to hold the flood back.
"H-he died a few moons ago... got swept away by the currents of Oblivion. Molag Bal took him and his family into Coldharbour and I came here to trying to repair the damage." She said, tears streming down her cheeks. "Every day, I pray to this Hist tree, plucked from the ground of his village, to recieve any news of what became of him. I do hope if his soul got shredded, it will return to the Hist to be born anew and not turned into a soul shriven."
Hasir wrapped his arms around her. He knew about missing a loved one, though he was the one who caused it. He didn't want to tell her that though.
"Teeetaka, I understand. I... erm... lost someone too." He admitted, eyes downcast. "My father... he was a good man. He died due to a spontaneous attack by a neighboring village. I, like you, felt anguish due to his passing. I promise you, though, it does get better. Keep your head high and be the rock even though the river constantly tries to weather it."
Teetaka thanked Hasir for his helpful insight. She felt for the hand that was previously on her shoulder but the snake had disappeared. She went over to a rock where he sat and found him with his tail curled about his backside.
"Hasir, why so dry in the scales?" She asked him, concernedly. "Youe river is supposed tto be clear so why do it run with poison?"
Hasir said nothing for the longest time and just sstared at the far off trees. When, finally, he did open his mouth, it was not all well-wishing.
"I know, it's just... What if my parents are disappointed in me? I mean, my parentss were shocked of my reveal of being a dragonkonknight, hence my father's untimely death. That's not the worst bit. My other reservation is what if they shun me for being a werewolf? I know they both were werewolves but what happens if they find out that their son is doubting his status of being a lycanthrope?" He turned to Teetaka, asking her is she'd a similar problems.
Teetaka strode over to the Argonian, her tail slithering like a snake through the grass. Like a tree that protects its sapling, She wrapped her tails around Hasir's back, embracing him like the Aunt he never had.
"Hasir, I have not suffered the circumstances you have, but, trust me when I say that your parents would be nothing but proud in their son. I am sure they have their own tangle of branches to deal with, if it were me, I would look to sunnier skies, not dwell in the mud with the insects."
Hasir took out a leather rag from his bag and wiped his tears away.
"There." Teetaka said, seeing Hasir's bright eyes amidst the swallow river cascading down his face. "Feeling better now that the flood has diminished to a mere trickle?"
Hasir nodded, stood up and thanked her for helping him see the light. He knew he had to swim in clear waters, not dwell in the mud.
"Thanks eggkin. You made my muddy waters run clear again and I am grateful for that." His tail thrashed about furiuosly. "I just can't shake the feeling that they'll be disappointed in me for.... something, I don't know what it is, but I've a nagging feeling in my gut." Teetaka eyed him suspiciously. "I've always had it, ever since I was hatched, a feeling that people are always better than me at things, doing bigger things that I know I should be doing. It just makes me so... so... Hss!"
Teetaka frowned as she scrutinized him. She knew all too well what Hasir was going through.
"Let that carnivorous Haj-Mota pass. It should have no more purchase on you than in your past." Teetaka moved toward the huge hist tree and placed a hand upon it. "Let us move on with our quest, we need to find Tearna.
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