Two Blades, One Road

4E 201 | Early Sun's Dusk | Fifty-Seven Days Since Arrival

Whiterun learned their names together.

They cleared deserters from a watchtower, escorted a healer to Rorikstead, recovered stolen goods, and hunted a frost troll beneath a bridge. Katana opened problems with fire, knives, and sarcasm. Tsukihana finished them with precision.

Their reputations grew through smaller acts: repairing a farmer's fence after a giant attack, finding a missing child near the river, dragging two drunk mercenaries from a well.

The Gildergreen changed them more than any bounty.

Danica Pure-Spring sent them to the Eldergleam Sanctuary with Nettlebane, a blade capable of cutting the ancient tree's roots. When Tsukihana raised it, the sanctuary groaned in pain. A pilgrim begged her to stop and prayed instead.

The Eldergleam answered with a sapling.

They returned to Whiterun without wounding the old tree. New leaves soon appeared beneath the Gildergreen's dead canopy.

Life pushing through what everyone had mistaken for finished.

The Jarl summoned them soon after. Balgruuf entrusted them with a sealed missive for Jarl Igmund of Markarth. The roads through the Reach had become unstable, and he needed messengers unaffiliated with the Empire or Stormcloaks.

They bought a chestnut mare named Fen.

Fen liked Tsukihana and attempted to bite Katana three times.

"She has excellent judgment," Tsukihana said.

On the third day west, war swallowed the road. Forsworn descended from one ridge, Imperial troops formed below, and Stormcloak arrows came from the opposite slope. Tsukihana and Katana fought through smoke without choosing a banner. Fen bolted beneath them as fire broke stone from the canyon walls.

They escaped into a basin surrounding a Dwarven ruin.

Cold spread across the bronze pipes.

A familiar laugh echoed from nowhere.

Mei Kaminaru appeared between the two swordswomen with her chain already moving.

"You made a friend," she said.

Katana drew first.