Trocari's docklands were, in theory, a purely industrial area, yet life spread its roots throughout the length and breadth of the cityscape. The streets splashed with children's dashing feet, their laughter occasionally drowned out by a blaring riverside horn or the barking of street dogs. Through the main streets, fleet-footed couriers and salespeople hauling hefty wagons ducked out of each other's paths, embracing the broader, quieter roads away from the city's bustling centre. Even under rain's pervasive gloom, their mismatched outfits and flapping cloaks meshed together into a momentary kaleidoscope of colour.

    Her gaze locked on the road ahead, Talwyn tightened her hold on the cart's reins. "I'm fine. I've got this. Driving goats is easy. It's just like riding a horse," she repeated to herself in broken, hurried whispers. Suddenly, a loud hiss scraped against her ear, and a pair of soaked, scraggly cats darted into the street. Standing rainwater splashed over her head, and she swerved her startled miregoats just in time to avoid trampling the tabby miscreants into the cobbles.

    As the cart veered, a sharp, pointed pain jutted into Talwyn's side, and Darius barely saved himself from falling flat into her lap. "Gosh, sorry! Are you okay?" Talwyn cried as she removed his elbow from between her ribs. She eased her companion back onto his side of the seat, her awkward laugh failing to paint over her embarrassment. "I've never driven through a busy city like this, so the ride might be a little rough."

    "It'll definitely wake us up," Darius quipped, straightening his slanted hat. Scrapes eked out from the crates that rocked between the cart's walls, yet he betrayed no nerves about losing any of the boxes. All that filled his eyes was trust. "You're doing great, don't worry. The goats trust in your capable hands to guide them, and so do I."

    He pressed his fingers to the back of Talwyn's hand, reminding her that she still clung to the lapel of his jacket long after he had righted himself. His thumb wrapped around to take hold of her palm, absentmindedly drawing small circles over where her scars hid beneath her glove. Soft, sunken pulses emanated from somewhere deep beneath her loitering fingertips – a heartbeat, not deathly slow like Kerensa's, but bright, bounding, and brimming with the urge to connect with others. It was also beating faster by the second, like the stray tickling sensation that grew just outside her mind.

    Talwyn pulled her arm back and regained her grip on the reins, her own heart coursing with new electricity. "Thanks," she muttered as she prayed for the morning gloom to veil the fires that very obviously burned in her cheeks. "I'll try to not nearly throw you out your seat again."

    "Don't speak too soon. I might deserve it before long." Elbows resting on his knees, Darius spun his jagged ring around his finger, his lips pursed in thought. "Not to pry, but...teleporting through walls, your friend's creepy dark-eyed alter ego: is all that normal with you two?"

    "Isolde's been bugging Kerensa since well before we met. It's...a long story," Talwyn said, keeping a watchful eye over her friend as she walked beside the cart. The occasional passing pedestrian or stall worker took a double glance at the necromancer, yet none caused her any trouble. If anything, Kerensa's macabre appearance kept people at bay even more effectively than Arlo's outward hostility behind the wagon. They were untroubled, and the rare moment of safety removed one of the chains that locked Talwyn's worries away. "The teleporting thing is new, though. I don't know how or why it happened, but it was the same way with all my powers. They have a habit of surprising me like that."

    Ripples blanched the colour from Darius' face. "So, weird things just happen around you? And you don't know whether it'll be something helpful, or..." His voice trailed off, though the liquid blue windows of his widened eyes uncovered clandestine tunnels to the heart of his concerns. With a reluctant look into Talwyn's eyes, he dredged up words that pricked him as he spoke. "Talwyn, I don't mean any disrespect by this, but I have to ask: are we safe travelling with you two?"

    It struck Talwyn again. That tentativeness. That fear. That natural, primal impulse that pushed almost everyone to flee from her. "There's a reason it's been just the two of us all this time, Darius. We're not the sort of people others like to keep around," she said, squeezing her hands around the miregoats' reins until her knuckles burned with lily-white blooms. She had run into the storm in her dream – facing down this fear would be no worse. "And I've liked it that way. I'd take hiding out with Kerensa in some rundown shack in the sticks over an inn packed with noisy strangers any day."

    The two sat together in the pensive peace of the goats' clopping hooves, yet Talwyn's mind was far from undisturbed. Strokes of the shadows, the storm, and the woman in her dreams touched her senses, as did the sense of security imbued by Kerensa's arms around her. Almost involuntarily, the next words leapt from her tongue. "Kerensa's my rock. I don't know what I'd do without her."

    To her surprise, the fear receded from Darius' surface without protest. In its place came not a flood, not an eruption, but a gradual snowfall of wounded sadness. Flake by pensive flake, the distinct textures of his thoughts slipped from sight until everything was smooth, and shapeless, and bitterly, piercingly cold.

    Rain dripping from the brim of his hat, Darius looked to the blue ribbon around his ring finger. His thumb moved to brush its fabric, and as his digit made contact, a short, hot blast of psychic energy burst into Talwyn's mind. It was noise without sound, speech without voice, body without weight. It was a flash of sunlight on a calm ocean, a flourish of smiling, sparkling pink as it ventured over the horizon, a hurt that ran deep, deep, too deep, too deep to follow and too deep to pull back and deeper and deeper still.

    Vestra.

    Darius did not speak the word – in fact, the word was not spoken at all, nor was it a word at all, but a feeling, an idea. It occurred to Talwyn from the sunken depths of her mind, leaping from her subconscious waters in a fan of twinkling droplets. Enchanting and effervescent, the concept captivated her for one sun-spangled moment before it plunged back into her seas, swimming out of reach.

    As the sensation descended into the ocean's dark core, so too did Talwyn understanding of what it meant, of the pain that had concealed it, of the joy that finally seeing it had brought. Something precious, exquisite, even irreplaceable was about to slip through her mind's fingers. "No! Stop!"

    The feeling slinked further away. Talwyn projected her voice with all the power she could. "Come back!"

    "Talwyn?"

    At the muddled call of her name, the weight returned to Talwyn's form, and an invisible power picked her out of whatever far-flung alcove she had ended up in. She warped backwards in a heartbeat, numb to the countless circles of emotion and chaos that had constituted her inward trip. She was being forced out.

    "Talwyn?" The voice reached out for her again, its strains solidifying as the blur cleared from her vision. Her eyes were sore, sweat soaked her skin, and a strong grip closed around the back of her head. Over her, shining against the sky's frond-flecked gloom, Darius's face hung creased with worry. "Can you hear me?"

    She could, though a dry, sour taste foiled Talwyn's first attempts to answer. "Darius?" she murmured as she found her arm splayed over her companion's knees. At some point between feeling the burst of psychic energy and now, she had ended up in Darius' lap, overheating and overtired. "What happened?"

    Darius produced a small handkerchief from inside his jacket and dabbed at Talwyn's nostrils. Rose-red blood bloomed over the cloth's soft face. "I was about to ask you the same thing," he said as he wiped the trickling lifeforce from Talwyn's upper lip. He tilted her head back, threading his fingers through her hair's lapping waves. "Let me guess: another one of your surprises?"

    As she checked her nose, Talwyn managed a silent nod. While no fresh blood escaped, fearful thoughts poured unabated through her mind. Not only were the episodes coming more frequently lately, but they were growing more and more severe, sending her beyond the realms of superficial emotions to hazy, yet overstimulating memories.

    The worst of Talwyn's headache fled, peeled away by the cool morning air and the diligent trot of the unfussed miregoats. "It's passed now, I think," she said with a rub of her heavy eyes. Shifting her weight over Darius' legs, she uncovered a dot of lost blood that had slipped between the folds of his cloak and tainted the hem of his jacket. "Oh gosh. Sorry for messing up your nice clean clothes."

    Looking down, Darius spotted the stain and shrugged. "It's nothing. Better you than an oversized jungle bug."

    If he wanted to lift Talwyn's weight from his lap, he betrayed no desire to do so. If Talwyn was uncomfortable cradled in his hold, she made no move to sit up straight. They both remained still, disarmed by the warmth and comfort of close contact, a bud of unexpected peace on the brink of mirthful blossom.

    "Darius, dear," Kerensa hailed over her shoulder from a street corner up ahead, mist-soaked strands of darkness dripping from the spokes of her shadowy umbrella. "Are you positive we're going the right way?"

    Eyes wide, Talwyn shot back into her seat and snatched hold of the reins once more. One of her twin miregoats tilted its square, vacant eye towards her, and she hid her rapidly reddening face behind a wall of her silver hair.

    Her half-elf companion made a show of fixing his jacket, clearing his throat theatrically. "This is the way, I'm sure of it," Darius said, a soft blush clinging to his cheeks despite his controlled tone. "Is something wrong?"

    Kerensa aimed her umbrella down the street. "Oh, no. It's just that we seem to be approaching an utter eyesore."

    It was not difficult to see what the necromancer meant. Situated far from the main street, surrounded by rough-hewn jungle, an enormous, dazzlingly bright building stretched towards the opened sky. Towers of chalky stone better befitting a fortress or palace flanked the structure's shuttered entrance, and atop each tower's dome sat a slender finial that elevated a dark steel emblem of two knotted strands. A multicoloured maze of hedges, thin trees, and flawless white stone furnishings sprawled across the front courtyard, their smiling flowers and bulging fruits ignorant to the practical demands of logistics work. Lustrous despite the gloom, row after row of rich gold trim ribboned around the building's exterior, flecked with clustered gemstones of every colour that attracted the little falling sunlight. Marbled statues of imperious soldiers and rearing horses awaited travellers at the end of its freshly rolled track.

    Clenching his jaw, Darius stared at the offending building and scratched the back of his head. "I wasn't kidding when I said it was hard to miss."

    "No, you weren't. In fact, I'd even say your fine descriptive talents failed to do this place justice." Dark wisps dyed the raindrops that dripped from Kerensa's umbrella, staining the light cloak around her shoulders as a scoffing scowl marked her lips. "Although I'm afraid the only justice you could do here would be a well-aimed fireball."

    "Why stop at just one?" Darius cackled with a gesture over his shoulder to the cart's rear side. "We've got more than enough fire for the whole place, don't we, Arlo?"

    But Arlo did not answer. As the wagon rattled down the gaudy building's approach path, their eyes flicked from left to right, narrowing and sharpening with every step. "Something stinks," they growled, setting both hands around their hammer's handle, its double-sided head brandished high. "Normally, you can't so much as sneeze this close to the skyports without some asshole guard raising the alarm on you."

    Puzzled, Talwyn nevertheless pulled the reins close to slow their pace. "Wait, nobody's trying to stop us, and you're mad about that?"

    "Damn right I am," Arlo grumbled, their inner fire kindling behind their steely eyes. "This place is supposed to be crawling with Justicars and wing patrols. So, where the hell are they?"

    The dragonborn's voice boomed over the flattened terrain, chasing a flock of large-beaked birds from their dwelling. Beyond the drizzle of leaf-strewn water droplets from the treetops and the rustle of distant foliage, no answer broke forth.

    Then, with the warehouse's outer gate all but within touching distance of the goats' horns, the trees shook. A fierce whistle pierced the air, and from the jungle's twisted depths, a keen arrow tore over the flattened plains towards the convoy. Only Talwyn's hasty yet composed control of the reins steered the miregoats clear of the arrow's flight, its vicious head biting into the dirt just a pace away.

    Kerensa hopped close to Talwyn's side, tearing her umbrella into two balls of pulsing shadow. "You just had to say something, didn't you?" she called out as she scanned every inch of thick treeline for movement. "Well, we've found your Justicars, and their hospitality skills are sorely lacking."

    "Watch your tone, ma'am." Like wet paper, the thicket tore away beneath the powerful, predatory leap of a midnight-dark panther. A slender, ebony-skinned male human straddled the beast's back, a well-worn yew bow slung over the clay-brown patches of his light leather armour. He flicked his long, black hair out of his golden eyes. "We're no Justicar cronies. You're on Mauler turf now."